Christmas Gifts Read online

  “And yet,” he said, “you were shaking like a leaf after your ordeal this afternoon.”

  “Because you were there,” she said, “and Charlie. It is easy to give in to feminine vapors when one knows that one does not have to cope with a situation alone.”

  “Tell me where you work,” he said, “and I shall go and give the male inhabitants of the house a sermon on gentlemanly conduct.”

  She laughed, a low sweet sound. “How very kind you are,” she said, “and how different from what your eyes and your facial expressions proclaim you to be.” She flushed and lowered her eyes as if realizing too late what she had said.

  “And what do they proclaim?” he asked.

  She looked up at him again and hesitated. “That you are a man who cares for no one and nothing,” she said. “Would you really have beaten Charlie with your cane?”

  “And he would have deserved every stroke,” he said. “Thieving little urchin.”

  “You are wealthy, I suppose,” she said. “Have you ever tried to put yourself mentally in the place of someone who does not know where his next meal is coming from? Or someone who has on his thin young shoulders all the burden of having to provide for a family that cannot provide for itself?”

  “Muvver and Pa and Vi’let and Roddy?” he said. “And the metamorphosis of the sister and brother into Annie and ‘arry, who then had to become a friend from next door and an older sister, who of course—did it need to be said?—had just lost her employment? And I suppose the mother—if we were to ask the question—would be nine months less one week with child. Come, Miss Bevan, you are not still naive enough to believe that cock-and-bull story, are you? How long have you lived in London?”

  “I have lived,” she said, “for almost twenty-five years, my lord, and I learned from my mother and father to love people and to accept their stories without question. It is true that Charlie tried to steal from me yesterday, but today he risked his own safety to save me from harm. And he is a little child. Do you think he is more than ten years old? And poorly fed and poorly clothed.”

  “Is this the point at which I withdraw my handkerchief from my pocket to dry my eyes and blow my nose?” he asked.

  “Your eyes are cold again,” she said, “and such wonderful blue eyes. But you cannot deceive me, my lord. I remember the cakes and the extra pasty yesterday and the half crown. And I remember your walking home with me this afternoon when you must be accustomed to riding such distances.”

  “Perhaps I walked home with you because of your golden hair and emerald eyes,” he said.

  She flushed again. “I think not, my lord,” she said.

  “Well.” He looked about him for his coat and drew it on. “I shall have that child hailed up from the kitchen before I leave. Otherwise he may forget to leave altogether and become a permanent recipient of your charity.”

  “I think Charlie is of a more independent spirit,” she said with a smile, but she walked to the doorway at the back of the hall and called down the stairs.

  “Now,” he said before Charlie appeared, “tell me where you work so that I may be waiting close to there tomorrow to escort you home. It will be Christmas Eve, and there are likely to be some inebriated revelers about, looking for a little sport.”

  She flushed once more. “I cannot ask it of you,” she said.

  “You did not,” he said. “Where do you work?”

  She hesitated and then named an address on Brook Street, quite close to Hanover Square.

  “I shall see you tomorrow, then,” he said as Charlie appeared from the kitchen. “Ah, I see you are carrying away the spoils of war with you, my lad.”

  Charlie looked down at the bundle clutched in his hand. “The old woman give me some to take to Vi’let an’ Annie,” he said.

  “My congratulations,” the earl said. “Your memory is improving, Charlie. Come along. It is time to go home.”

  “Good-bye, dear,” Julie said, and she bent down to hug the child tightly to her and kiss his cheek again. And she slipped something into a tattered pocket before releasing him, Lord Kevern noticed.

  “Cor blimey,” the boy said when the two of them were out on the street and Julie Bevan had waved to them and closed the door. “I bet you would of give a bag of guineas to be in my place then, guv.” He walked along the curb, balancing on it with arms outstretched.

  “Two bags,” the earl said. “And I owe you a guinea and a half, Charlie. Here they are.”

  “Cor blimey,” Charlie said again, gazing down at the coins in his hand and forgetting to secrete them about his person with his usual magician’s swiftness. “Chris’mus must be comin’.”

  “No,” the earl said. “It is not that. It is just my conscience smiting me, for without your hint I could not have found out the information that you offered to sell to me, Charlie. Now be off with you to whatever hovel you call home.”

  Charlie stood still on the curb and muttered an address absently as he continued to stare down at his newfound fortune. And then he looked up and grinned cheekily. “I’m goin’ to buy ’em presents,” he said, and he darted off down the street and disappeared less than a minute later into the dusk.

  The Earl of Kevern was left with that feeling of emptiness again. Dusk and cold and an empty street. And Christmas gone, no sign of it at all about him. Just the way he wanted it. But that empty feeling.

  But not quite, either. “Number Five, Brook Street,” he muttered to himself as he began the long walk home.

  He really should have gone to Buckland Abbey, the earl told himself the following afternoon. Did it matter that last year he had felt like an outsider there, even though the property belonged to him and even though every single guest there had been a member of the family of which he was the head—and close family members at that? Did it matter that he had not been happy there, but had seen to the very heart of the cruelty of Christmas with the illusory joy it pretended to offer?

  At least he would have retained his sanity there.

  He was not at all sure that he was remaining sane in London. For one thing, he had delayed all morning, as late as he possibly could, before going out, not because the nature of his errand—purchasing gifts for his servants—was distasteful, although it was, but because he was expecting a visitor. And he found himself not only disappointed when Charlie Cobban did not come, but also worried. Why on earth was he disappointed, and why in heaven’s name had he been expecting him anyway?

  Worried about a street urchin whose neck would probably be stretched by a rope collar long before he reached manhood? Worried about a ragamuffin who could steal from someone almost as poor as himself and extort money for useless information and lie without blinking an eye and curse like a navvy?

  Why in hell was he worried? The child had walked off with a minor fortune in the past two days. And yet his lordship could not shake from his mind images of the boy spending Christmas in a den of thieves, stripped of the coins that had been given him and sent out to beg or steal more. Or of the boy all alone, seeking warmth and comfort in an alley somewhere, waiting for people to come outdoors again once Christmas was over. Or of the boy dreaming of a family—of two sisters and a brother, and a mother about to give birth again.

  Of a boy lonely as he was lonely, except that the boy was only a child and should have had a right to love and security and a family.

  An address kept repeating itself in the earl’s mind, the street one he had never heard of, certainly one he had never traversed. He did not even know where the address had come from except that he could hear the boy’s piping voice reciting it.

  The Earl of Kevern did his shopping eventually and then waited restlessly until it was time to wander out close to Number Five Brook Street. But he was not in a good mood and snapped at his valet for handing him his gold-topped cane when he wanted the silver, and scowled at a footman who jumped to open the front door one second later than he ought.

  He was in a savage bad mood. He might have known that Chri
stmas would open wounds that he had thought quite healed. He might have known that it would not be possible merely to laugh at the great myth. But it would have been possible too, he thought, if he had only ignored her standing before that damned jeweler’s window and walked on by. Had he done so, he would not even have seen the boy steal her reticule. And Charlie would have succeeded, and she would have been destitute.

  She was walking briskly along Brook Street, her head down, though twice she lifted it to look anxiously about her. The second time she saw him, and she paused and bit her lip.

  “Miss Bevan?” he said and raised his hat to her.

  She smiled, and her smile was like a soothing balm to his pain. He found himself smiling back.

  “Oh,” she said, taking the arm he offered, “you look quite different when you smile, my lord. You look human.”

  “I will not ask what I look like when I do not smile, then,” he said. “You smile all the time. Are you never bitter that your life has turned out as it has? You are the granddaughter of a baronet, and yet you must work for a living and put up with the insults of men who think themselves your superiors—and the even worse insults of women, I would not doubt, because you have the misfortune to be beautiful. You refused a marriage proposal because you have an aged and infirm grandfather and his retainers to care for. How can you smile?”

  “Because I am alive,” she said, “and enjoy good health and have people to love and be loved by. And I did not care for him a great deal, though he was a perfectly eligible gentleman.”

  “You are happy, then?” he asked.

  “My father used to say that happiness can never be achieved in this life,” she said, “except in brief moments. Brief glimpses of heaven he used to call them. There is always something else we want. Always something we yearn for even if we are not selfishly greedy persons. I believe he was right. I have yearnings just as you must. As everyone must.”

  “No,” he said. “Not me. Not for the future. I wish there were no future.”

  “Ah.” She did not smile when she looked up at him. “Something has hurt you. I have felt it from the beginning—was that only two days ago?”

  But he was saved from having to answer her. There was a group of carolers a little farther along Bond Street, and the merry sounds of singing caught their attention. They walked closer and stopped, as several other pedestrians and shoppers had done.

  If one were to paint a picture of perfect Christmas bliss, the earl thought, one surely could not do better than to draw a group of carolers, bundled up against the cold, their cheeks and noses rosy from the cold, their faces glowing with the happiness of the season and the birth of the child they proclaimed, their mittened hands holding the sheets of music for all of them to see.

  The only touch missing from this particular live picture was snow. The pavements were still quite wet and dirty. But even so the scene oozed sentimentality. Just two days before it would have delighted his satiric heart. But no longer? Had anything changed in two days?

  “Oh,” Julie Bevan said, and her head tipped sideways and almost touched his shoulder for a moment, “the nostalgia. It was what we used to do in the country every year on Christmas Eve when Papa was alive.”

  Her eyes, he saw when he looked down at her, were glistening with unshed tears, and yet she smiled. And then she fumbled with the clasp of her reticule. The carolers were collecting donations for a foundling hospital.

  “Put it away,” he said, touching her hand with his own before reaching into an inner pocket for his purse. He dropped a few gold coins into the hat upturned on the pavement, and they moved on.

  He might have brought his curricle. Not his carriage. She was a lady, however impoverished, and would not feel easy riding in a closed carriage, alone with a gentleman, but the curricle would have made the journey shorter and easier for her. But he had been too selfish to do so. He had wanted her company for as long as possible.

  And so their steps took them along Bond Street and past the jeweler’s shop window. Her steps lagged, and she turned her head, but she did not stop.

  “Ah,” was all she said, but it was more an expelling of breath than a word.

  “It is gone,” he said, “and has been replaced by a silver clock. Why did you like it so?”

  She looked up at him in some surprise. “The porcelain Madonna?” she said. “Have you been admiring it too, my lord? My father always placed one of carved wood at the front of the church at Christmas, though some people used to think it popish. When I first saw it in the window a week ago, it was Christmas to me and memories and home. And hope. I think it must have been wonderful for Mary to give birth to Jesus on Christmas Day. Don’t you?” She laughed suddenly. “Though of course it is Christmas Day only because she did so.”

  But he had swallowed and closed his eyes. And swallowed again.

  “What is it?” Her words were whispered.

  “Nothing.” The word sounded harsh even to his own ears. He had her hand clamped to his side with a rigid arm. “It is just all this talk of Christmas. It is merely a day in the year like any other. And yet one is asked to spend a fortune on gifts and to stuff oneself full of rich foods and liquor and pretend that human nature had been transformed and will remain so. We are asked to believe that nothing bad can ever happen at Christmas, only peace on earth and goodwill among men.”

  “Did something bad once happen to you?” she asked.

  But he would not answer her. He walked on, drawing her with him, reducing his pace when he realized that he was striding, but not talking. And he was sorry again that he had not gone to Buckland Abbey, and sorry that he had turned his head for a second look at her outside the jeweler’s shop two days before. And sorry for every incident that had led him to this moment.

  “I was sorry,” she said at last, when they were quite near her house, “not to see Charlie on Bond Street today. Somehow I expected to. Is that not absurd? I wonder what sort of a Christmas he will have. The family should at least be able to buy some food with the half crown you gave him.”

  “And with the money you slipped into his pocket yesterday,” he said. “Don’t believe too much in that family. Charlie is a street urchin.”

  “I have to believe in the family,” she said, “or my heart will break. He is just a child. I wish I knew where I might find him. I wish I had asked him.”

  “I believe I do know,” he said. “At least, an alien address keeps running through my head, and it repeats itself in Charlie’s voice.”

  Her face lit up. “Oh, do please tell me,” she said. “I shall go there. Tomorrow. I shall take more of Mrs. Stebbins’s cooking, and I shall see if I can find something to take as gifts for Charlie and the little children.”

  “Violet and Roddy?” he said. “Have you always been so gullible, Miss Bevan? But you must not go. It is doubtless a rough neighborhood.”

  “I shall go anyway.” She smiled up at him. “Oh, I shall look forward to seeing Charlie again and to wishing him a happy Christmas.”

  Leave well enough alone, an inner voice told him. Say good-bye to her now and leave well enough alone.

  “If you insist on going,” he said, “then I shall come too. I shall escort you there and watch your disappointment and disillusion when you find that the address is that of a den of thieves.”

  “Is that what you wish to find?” she asked.

  No. And damn the boy for pulling at his heart strings and twining himself about them. “I’ll take him home with me,” he said. “Doubtless my housekeeper can find him some tasks to do suitable to his age and strength and talents. Perhaps I shall train him to be my tiger. Would that satisfy you?”

  “Would you do that?” she asked. “For Charlie? Even if you are right and he is no more than a waif and a thief and a liar?”

  “He is a child,” he said irritably.

  “Yes.” Her smile was warm, though her cheeks shone scarlet with the cold. “Once he was like that little porcelain baby in Mary’s arms.”
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  “I shall come for you tomorrow morning, then,” he said. They had come to a stop outside her house.

  “Won’t you come in for tea?” she asked. “Grandpapa would be happy to see you again. And you have a long walk home.”

  “No,” he said. “Not today.” But he did not immediately bid her a good day and turn on his heel as he ought to have done.

  There is always something we yearn for, she had said earlier.

  Not me, he had said.

  And yet he yearned now for he knew not what. He took her gloved hand in his, felt with his own glove the hole in the palm that she had concealed, and turned her hand over to look at the worn patch in the leather. And he lifted her hand to set his mouth against her skin.

  Well, he told himself with all the old inner cynicism, say it. He might as well become a part of it all just like everyone else so that he could jeer at himself as well as at the whole world. Why should he be the only sane one in an insane universe? The only one immune to the myth?

  And so he said it. He touched her cheek with his other hand, resting his gloved thumb briefly against her lips. “Happy Christmas, Julie,” he said.

  Her eyes grew bright with tears again before he turned abruptly away. “Happy Christmas, my lord,” he heard her say as he strode away.

  Christmas Day. It was the first thought to lodge itself in his mind when sleep abandoned him, even before he opened his eyes. The Earl of Kevern rolled over onto his stomach and burrowed his head beneath two pillows as if in so doing he could block out the knowledge and will twenty-four hours to pass in a moment.

  Two years ago. It had all started to happen already by this time, although it had continued on through the whole day and into the night. It had not put a dampener on anyone’s spirits. Quite the contrary. How very wonderful at Christmas, his family had said. How very appropriate. And even he, restless and anxious as he had been, quite unable to think of gifts or the Christmas dinner, had been excited and happy too. Christmas. The most glorious day of the year. The most glorious day of his life.