Greetings of the Season and Other Stories (3 page)

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“Christmas gifting should be just for children,” Lady Montravan declared. “Gingerbread and shiny pennies and no bother to anyone else. This fustian of bestowing presents on everyone for miles around is too fatiguing for words,” she stated from her reclining position on the love seat, a pillow under her feet, a lavender-soaked cloth on her weary brow. The dowager countess credited her enervation to bearing her daughter so late in life. Others, such as her dresser, Travers, blamed it on sheer miserliness. Lady Montravan was so cheeseparing, she wouldn’t expand a single groat or an ounce of effort more than she had to. “Besides,” she went on now, sighing with exhaustion, “all these gifts take away from the religious celebration.” Which cost her nothing except her son’s donation to the church.

“Oh, Mama, you cannot mean you wish for a Christmas without presents! Just think of all the treats you’d miss and the surprises you have to look forward to.” At seventeen, Allissa Montford was still young enough to shiver with anticipation, tossing her blond curls. Allissa’s fair hair was her heritage from the father she barely remembered, while Bevin’s coloring came more from his mother, whose own dark hair was now gone to gray—from frailty, the dowager swore.

“Do sit still, Allissa. Your restlessness is agitating my nerves.”

“Yes, Mama.” Lady Alissa dutifully picked up the fashion journal she’d been studying, but she couldn’t drop the subject, not with Christmas just a week or so away. All the cooking going on below-stairs, all the baskets being readied for the tenants, and all the greenery being fetched in for decorations kept her normally high spirits at fever pitch. “Only consider, Mama, Squire Merton is coming for Christmas dinner. He is sure to bring you something pretty, and you know Bev always delights you with his gifts. I’m sure this year will be no different. Except,” Allissa said with a giggle, “this year he can buy me extravagant jewelry, too.”

“Oh, dear,” spoke a quiet voice from the window seat, where the light was better for her embroidery, since too many lamps bothered Lady Montravan’s eyes and used too much oil. “You haven’t been pestering your brother about a tiara again, have you?”

“Oh, no, I merely wrote to Vincent about it.”

Miss Sinclaire clucked her tongue and went back to her needlework. If Lady Montravan did not find fault with Allissa’s manners, surely it was not Petra’s place to correct the forward chit. Besides, she’d only be wasting her breath. Petra smiled to herself, a smile that softened her rather commonplace features into loveliness, to think that she was growing as stingy with her energy as her employer. She knew what Travers and the others thought of Lady Montravan: that she would let her son’s house burn down around her ears without lifting a pudgy, beringed finger, so long as her jewel box and bankbook were safe. Why, the abigail was fond of repeating, before Miss Sinclaire came to the Hall, the place was a shambles and Lady Allissa was running wild through the countryside with none to naysay her. ’Twas doubtful she even knew her letters before Petra took her in hand, the little savage. The staff adored the little hoyden—that was half the problem—but not one of them misdoubted that she’d make micefeet of her reputation ere long.

The tiara was
not
Petra’s problem, she tried to convince herself. Bevin couldn’t be such a gudgeon as to forget what was suitable for such a young miss. Then again, it would be just like the generous earl to cave in to Allissa’s demands, then leave it up to Petra to forbid the peagoose to wear it. And it would be just like Lissa to want to flaunt a diamond tiara at the small local assemblies before her less fortunate friends. At least Bevin would be at Montravan for the New Year’s ball. If he wanted to see his little sister make a cake out of herself in front of his ducal guests, or be labeled “coming” by the neighbors, even before her presentation, that was
his
problem. Christmas was Petra’s.

“You know, dearest,” she hinted, “you might think a bit more of others at this special season.”

“Oh, I do, Petra!” Allissa jumped up. “I wonder if Squire Merton will bring me a gift as well as Mama.”

“He can well afford it,” her fond mother commented, popping another bonbon into her mouth, then sucking on it as if the effort to chew was just too great. “If he ever gets his nose out of the smelly stables and kennels long enough to go shopping. And not in the village, either. There is nothing but pinchbeck stuff in the local shops. He’ll send to London if he has any sense.”

If the squire had any sense, Petra thought, he wouldn’t be hanging around Lady Montravan. The hunting-mad squire was going to see his carefree bachelor days ended, if Petra was any judge, as soon as Bevin brought home his bride. Lady Montravan had declared often enough her refusal to take up residence in Montravan’s pawky dower house. And why should she, spending her own jointure on its upkeep, when Merton had a perfectly fine manor house just waiting for a mistress?

The dowager had finally swallowed the sweet, but not the bitter thought of Merton’s coming the lickpenny with her present. “He’d better come down handsome, I say, after all the trouble I have gone to for his gift.”

The squire’s gift was to be the needlepoint pillow with a portrait of his favorite hunter on the cover, the one that Petra was currently embroidering.

Lady Montravan believed that handmade gifts showed greater feeling than mere monetary expenditures. “Why, giving Merton a gift he can jolly well go purchase for himself is foolish beyond permission,” the dowager had declared. “And as for buying Bevin a present, la, I am sure the boy has five of everything he could ever want or need. And doxies to provide the rest. Buying gifts for nabobs is like bringing coals to Newcastle.”

Still, he was her son, so after much deliberation Lady Montravan decided on a burgundy velvet dressing gown with satin lapels and sash, with his initials embroidered on the chest and the family crest embroidered on the back. By Petra. A lion, a scepter, and a hawk, in gold thread.

“Now that Mama is giving Bev such a marvelous surprise,” Allissa had mused to Petra, “I need a really special gift for him, too, to thank
him
for the tiara.”

“What if he gives you something else, something equally nice, just more suitable?”

“Then I’ll still want to give
him
something wonderful, so he feels guilty. My birthday is soon.” She twirled a golden lock around her finger, thinking. “Mama says handworked gifts show heart.” So Lady Allissa designed a pair of slippers to match the burgundy dressing gown, with a lion on the right shoe, a hawk and a scepter to be embroidered on the left. By Petra.

Miss Sinclaire kept sewing, turning to catch the afternoon light. Lady Montravan was still exhausted from reading Vincent’s lists out loud to her companion. “I swear,” she said, “this doling out of money to the servants is another ridiculous tradition. Heaven knows we pay them a good enough wage. Why should we have to reward them extra simply for doing their jobs?”

“Because they work harder at Christmastide, with all the extra company and such, my lady,” Petra offered. “And so they mi
gh
t have more joy in the season, buying gifts for their loved ones, too.”

Allissa looked up from her magazine. “And you know servants can never manage to save any money. Besides, Mama, you shouldn’t say such things. Petra is a paid employee, too.”

“Nonsense,” Lady Montravan stated, without lifting the scented cloth from her eyes to see Petra’s blush. “Petra is one of the family. Bevin explained it to you ages ago. We are not paying her a wage to make herself useful; we give her an allowance, the same as we give you one.”

Except that Petra could not refuse to make all the arrangements for the ball, the household’s celebration, and the arrival of the ducal party. She couldn’t say she was too busy to wrap and pack all the baskets for the tenants, and she could not choose to work on her own Christmas gifts instead of embroidering scepters, lions, and hawks! She certainly could not go spend Christmas with her sister and Rosalyn’s curate husband at their tiny cottage in Hampshire—no, not even if there was a new niece she had never seen, not with such an important event in the offing, the heir’s bringing home a prospective bride.

And as for her allowance, why, Allissa couldn’t pass through the nearby village with its two insignificant shops without spending more than Petra’s quarterly income. Not that Petra complained, ever. She was nothing to Lord Montravan, no obligation, no relation, no debt of honor, yet he supported her, and handsomely. He even insisted that her clothes money come from the household accounts, not her “allowance.” The dowager agreed, not surprising since the bills were on Bevin’s tab, and since a well-dressed Miss Sinclaire was a suitable enough companion to send out with Allissa on her rounds of the neighbors, saving Lady Montravan the stress and strain of carriage rides and morning calls. Besides, the dowager liked to show Petra off to the local gentry and her Bath cronies as a symbol of her generosity.

Lady Montravan
was
generous, in her way. She treated Petra like a daughter—just as negligently as she treated Allissa.

*

That night, long after the other ladies were abed, Petra sat up reflecting, not for the first time, on Lord Montravan’s generosity.

It was not enough. Her quarterly payments, her life savings, and all the coins she’d managed to squirrel away in a more frugal fashion than even Lady Montravan espoused were not enough for her Christmas shopping. So Miss Sinclaire sat up sewing through the night on her own Christmas gifts.

A gift from the hands was a gift from, the heart, she tried to convince herself, echoing Lady Montravan’s oft-repeated sentiments. The recipients would appreciate Petra’s laboriously worked handkerchiefs more than some store-bought bauble. And pigs would fly. Petra tried to imagine
Allis
sa preferring the lace-edged, monogrammed linen squares to a diamond tiara. Instead she pictured Squire Merton wiping the manure off his boots with his initialed handkerchief.

No matter, she thought, yawning but still setting neat stitches in the bib for her new niece, she could not afford to squander her ready on gifts for people who wanted for nothing. Oh, she set aside coins for the vails for the servants; that was different. And there’d be a coin wrapped in the handkerchief for her sister, and another in the toe of the socks she’d knitted for Rosalyn’s struggling husband. But that was all. Not another brass farthing was going to leave her hands, not even if those hands were so needle-pricked, they snagged on her stockings. She looked over at the considerable pile of handkerchiefs. Rosalyn, Cook, and Mrs. Franklin, the housekeeper, were all getting some, as well as Allissa, the squire, and Lady Montravan. And his lordship…

When the tiny stitches blurred in front of her weary eyes, Petra set her sewing aside and stretched her stiff muscles. Then she went to her bureau and reached under her gloves for the old reticule that held her fortune. It was heavy. Pound notes rustled and coins clinked. Petra could almost hear the devil whispering temptations in her ear. If it weren’t the middle of the night, she’d take all the money and go buy him the most lavish, stupendous, one-of-a-kind gift she could ever hope to find, something a lot more worthy of the Earl of Montravan than another handkerchief or another embroidered lion, hawk, and scepter.

But it was the middle of the night, and Petra did know that she needed every last pence of her savings if she was going to make her own way in the world. Who knew if Lady Montravan would even write her a reference if she left? Or how long before she found another position, or how much a decent lodging would cost until she found one? Rosalyn and her curate were barely surviving, so Petra could not add to her sister’s burden, even if they had room in their tiny cottage.

For certain she could not stay on at Montravan Hall much longer. The earl was bringing home a bride. It was not official yet, but it was all anyone could talk of, and a sure thing, according to the kitchen wagering. She was known to be a peeress with fortune and face, manners and a mind. Lady Belinda Harleigh. Petra said the name over to herself. Belinda. Belinda and Bevin. Perfect.

Lady Belinda would have been brought up to manage a household like Montravan; she’d be an experienced guide for Allissa through the shoals of a London Season; Lady Montravan was already calculating the settlements.

So there was no reason for Petra to stay, nothing here for her except more heartbreak. Could a heart keep breaking eternally, or would it just crumble into dust and blow away?

Petra had loved the earl forever, it seemed. When the wiry thirteen-year-old had ridden over for his Latin lessons and offered a nut brown hobbledehoy six-year-old a ride, she was lost. When he sat by her ailing father, sent her macaroons at school, trusted her with Montravan’s r
unning
, she loved him the more. Loving Bevin Montford was like loving the hero in a romance novel—from a distance. Bevin was more handsome, more dashing, more caring than any hero—and just as unattainable for a poor vicar’s daughter who had to earn her living.

Petra looked over to her wardrobe door, where the burgundy robe hung, the slippers placed neatly on the floor in front, almost as if the earl would walk into her bedroom at any minute. And pigs would not just fly; they’d start teaching astronomy at Oxford. Earls did not look at impoverished nobodies except in charity. And charity was cold comfort indeed when a heart ached for a much warmer touch.