Authors: Father Christmas
Dash it, Ware thought. Before this no woman had ever been afraid to be alone with him. The way the widow was clenching her fists, he wouldn’t be surprised if she picked up the poker the next time she dithered at the fireplace. She was even more attics-to-let than the rest of her family if she thought he’d make improper advances after her previous response. He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Warrington, I owe you an—”
My stars, Graceanne fretted, Ware was going to think they were all lunatics! Heaven knew what Papa had said, but the duke was angry after he’d gone to see the collection. She could tell by the way his lips thinned. Graceanne also noticed how he unobtrusively observed the lack of amenities in the house—and now the lack of courtesy! And, oh, dear, she still hadn’t had the opportunity to beg his pardon for her own shocking behavior. With his thick brows already lowered in a frown, he was most likely wondering how soon the court papers could be drawn up giving him custody of Willy. “Your Grace, please forgive—Oh, excuse me.”
“Pardon. No, ladies first.”
Graceanne licked her lips before starting again. “Your Grace, I cannot tell you how ashamed I am of my dreadful words and actions when I called at your home. I am so sorry to have—”
Before she could say precisely what she was sorry to have done, Ware held up his hand. He knew what
he
was sorry she’d done. “Please, say no more. I also owe you an abject apology.”
“In your—”
“You were provoked. I have no excuse for my own less than noble conduct.”
“But I—”
“Shall we call it quits? Do you think we have eaten equal amounts of humble pie?”
Graceanne stopped wringing her hands. “Not very palatable, is it, Your Grace?”
He muttered, “Even worse than the scones at tea,” which finally brought a smile to her face, which so enhanced her appearance that Leland was reminded why he’d made his dishonorable proposal in the first place. He smiled back. “Do you think we might start over?”
Graceanne had to remind
herself
that one could “smile and smile, and still be a villain.” She nodded anyway, and Ware was just speculating that he could win her over after all, when a disheveled serving girl came in without knocking. Her grayish uniform was wet and rumpled, and she had a wriggling, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms.
“Here’s the first ’un, ma’am. I figure he wouldn’t stay clean long enough for me to dress t’other without someone watching.” She dumped a child in Mrs. Warrington’s lap and tromped out.
“Hello, my cherub,” Graceanne said, peeling away the blanket and kissing damp curls. “I’d like you to make your bow to His Grace, the way we practiced.”
The little fellow did, looking up at Leland with hazel eyes that matched his own. “If you’re His Grace,” he chirped, “whose grace is Mama?”
Graceanne blushed. They obviously hadn’t practiced enough. “My Grace is part of my name, sweetheart. The duke’s grace is his address, part of his title.”
The boy lowered his brow in concentration, a habit that somehow looked familiar to Leland. Perhaps Tony…
“My papa was a major,” the sprout solemnly announced.
Leland squatted down to the child’s level, and just as seriously agreed, “That’s a very proud title.”
Tony’s son patted the duke’s arm. “Don’t worry, maybe someday you’ll be a major, too. I’m going to be a major in this many years.” He held up two chubby hands and spread his fingers out twice.
“Are you?” Ware asked, sitting back down in his chair, having found squatting to be deuced uncomfortable. “Wouldn’t you rather be a duke and live in a big house and—”
“That’s enough,” Graceanne said, scooping the boy into her lap. He climbed down immediately and began inspecting the tassels on Ware’s boots. Graceanne watched him with a worried look, but continued: “Stop filling his head with such flummery. He will never be a duke.”
“He might be. You cannot know for sure. What if I fell off my horse tomorrow? Granted, it would be a first, but I could be struck by lightning. One never knows. Besides being a true Warrington, the boy has all the makings of a duke. He is confident, intelligent—”
“And he’s not your heir. This is your namesake, Leslie, the second-born twin by ten minutes. Wellesley, Sir Arthur’s godson, is the elder. Willy is the quiet one.”
Embarrassed, the duke looked down, to find one tassel unraveled and the other missing altogether. “The deuces! Uh, pardon, dexterous, isn’t he?”
With his eyes on his brand-new boots, Leland missed Graceanne’s grab for Leslie, who disappeared under the sofa. She gathered up the gold cord instead, to see if she could reconstruct the shredded tassel. Silly affectations anyway, she thought, wondering how much they would cost to replace. But she mustn’t let a petty expense distract her from the point she had to make: “Even Willy is only so temporarily in line for the succession that I cannot understand why you insist on calling him your heir. Surely at your age you intend to remarry and have any number of sons. Therefore— Oh, dear, I shouldn’t give him my watch to play with.”
Leslie had climbed over the back of the sofa and was standing next to the duke, examining his diamond stickpin. To distract the boy so he could continue his conversation with the mother, Leland unhooked the watch from its fob chain. He tried to defend his ignorance. “I thought children liked watches.”
“That’s infants, Your Grace. They like the ticking. Older children tend to be…oh, my.” She’d have to sell her wedding ring to repay the duke for this day’s work if he didn’t leave soon.
Ware put the pieces of his grandfather’s ticker back in his pocket and watched the child, who was
not
his heir, thank goodness, try to climb the window curtains. Amazed at the widow’s apparent nonchalance as she plucked her son from certain disaster, he tried to explain. His Grace of Ware was not used to justifying his behavior to anyone, least of all to a scheming widow in a harum-scarum household. He did feel he owed some excuse for that bacon-brained letter he’d sent, though. “I was married twice, Mrs. Warrington, with no issue either time.”
“But your wives died early, Tony told me. That’s just bad luck. Your next wife might have twins. I’ve heard such things run in families.”
Leland got up to fetch Leslie, who was now trying to stand on his head atop the pianoforte stool. With his back to the widow, he said, “I never fathered progeny outside the marriage bed, either.”
“You mean you can’t? With your reputation as one of London’s greatest rakes?” Graceanne clapped her hand over her mouth when she realized how very improper this conversation was becoming. “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
What, she was sorry he was impotent or sorry she’d been so indelicate? He’d show her impotent! “I didn’t say I was incapable of the act,” he snarled, “just that the outcome has not been productive. Perhaps you’d like me to demonstrate?”
Graceanne was saved by Meg from having to make some kind of reply. “Here’s the other ’un. Do you want me to clean the ashes or mop the floor before the bathwater seeps through the ceiling?”
Ware missed Mrs. Warrington’s answer, watching how Leslie took his brother’s hand and led him to the guest. Leland was prepared for twins, but this was uncanny. They were the same boy!
He looked up at the widow, who clucked her tongue, used to this reaction. “They are just twins, my lord, not two-headed pigs in a freak show.”
Leslie was making the introductions: “He’s Papa’s cousin, Willy, and Mama says we’re to call him His Grace.”
The duke could see now that they were not the same people at all. Willy made his bow, but with his eyes cast down, then he went right back to his mother’s skirts.
His brother told him, “Don’t worry, Willy. He’s only a duke.”
“Why don’t you call me Cousin Leland? Or Lee, if you prefer. That goes for you, too, ma’am, if I might be permitted to call you Cousin Graceanne.”
She nodded. “Cousin Leland.”
“Cou-lee!” Willy pronounced, still from the safety of his mother’s side.
“No, that’s a dog,” Leland told him. “A collie. A sheep-herder. You know, woof-woof.” Willy clapped his hands, dropped to all fours, and started barking and woofing around the room, Leslie hard on his heels.
Willy was the quiet one?
Graceanne called them to order. “Boys! We have company.”
Leslie wanted to know if that meant they could have the good cakes, not Cook’s scones. Graceanne saw the duke’s raised eyebrows and looked away. Willy, meanwhile, had changed his chant to a singsong “collie cake” at the top of his lungs.
“Can we, Mama, can we? Meg didn’t give us anything to eat all day!”
“Collie cake, collie cake, collie cake.”
Graceanne turned helplessly to the duke. “May I leave them with you for a moment? There is no one else to send to the kitchen.”
The duke hadn’t managed to eat half of one of Cook’s stone scones. “Of course. I’d like to see the ‘good’ cake myself.”
Graceanne chewed her lip uncertainly, but she left to prepare a respectable tea this time.
When she returned with a well-filled tray, Cousin Leland’s neckcloth was limp, his superfine coat was awry and missing a button, and his carefully combed curls looked like a sparrow had made a nest there. He had a slightly dazed look. “They have a bit of energy, what?”
“It’s the cold weather,” she explained as she put the tray down atop the pianoforte, well out of her darlings’ reach. “They do not get enough exercise.” She spread a ragged tablecloth on the floor and began to lay out heavy crockery dishes and sturdy mugs of milk. “Here, sweethearts, your favorite raspberry tarts. And I brought you each a gingerbread man, if you’ll promise to be very good while Cousin Leland and I have our tea.”
The duke was relieved to see she was setting only two places on the floor. He was also relieved to see she was placing another raspberry tart on a pretty porcelain plate. They were his favorites, too. He got up to assist her, and tried to straighten his cravat while her back was turned. “They seem to do fine in here.”
“Yes, but today is special. Usually they have to play upstairs so they don’t disturb Papa’s studies or Mama’s rest. There’s not nearly as much room to run and jump.” Graceanne realized she was giving him more ammunition to find the vicarage inadequate, so she hurried on: “But we do get outdoors most days. Just now there is less time, what with the preparations for Christmas and all.”
Leland could not help looking about him. Christmas might be months away rather than less than a week, judging from the dearth of decorations. “Your preparations must be behind times indeed.”
Graceanne’s hand shook slightly as she poured the tea. “Yes, well, ah, I meant teaching the village children their parts for the Nativity pageant and rehearsing the choir. One lump or two, Your Grace?”
“One. And I thought it was to be ‘cousin.’”
“Cousin.” She handed over his cup and plate, then took her own seat after righting one spilled mug of milk.
Leland sat again, too, taking a bite of a truly excellent raspberry tart. “Delicious,” he announced. “Your cook must be as temperamental as my French chef. Some days ambrosia, the next day offal. The only reason I put up with him is his way with pastry.”
Inordinately pleased, Graceanne confessed that she was responsible for the better fare. “I learned in Portugal, when there was not much else to do. Unfortunately my baking for the holidays has also taken time away from the boys. Mince pies, sugarplums…”
“I remember helping to stir the Christmas pudding as a boy, making my wish. Have you and the children done that yet?”
Graceanne stirred her tea. “I’m afraid Papa would not permit such a thing,” she said in a voice filled with frustration. “I see you have noticed Papa is very strict in his notions of celebration.” She frowned at the bare walls, the cheerless arrangement of faded silk flowers. “He is very devout, you must know, and resents the incursion of pagan superstitions into the religious observation. Since many of the Christmas traditions are holdovers from the Druids’ winter solstice rites, Papa has tried to avoid all those trappings.”
“And all the lovely aspects that make Christmas such a pleasure, especially for a child,” he said under his breath, but Graceanne heard. She privately agreed, but loyalty demanded she defend her father.
“But we do have a Nativity pageant and the choir will sing carols.”
“Reverend Beckwith must know he’d have no audience at all to listen to his sermons if he forbade those.”
“The congregation members respect my father’s piety in church,” she said. And then they went home to uphold all the old traditions, but she didn’t tell him that. The Christmas pudding for wishes, the Yule log for luck in the new year, the holly and ivy to ward off evil, the mistletoe for fertility. Good heavens, did he know…? She hurried on: “And you mustn’t think the boys are missing out on all the anticipation and celebration. We’ve been decorating the nursery”—may he never learn how—“and both twins have small parts in the play.” Mostly because she could not leave them home when she held rehearsals; His Grace needn’t know that either, just that her sons were not being deprived. “And of course they will have special treats and a few little gifts.” She nodded toward her knitting basket and the mittens sticking out the top.
The boys were getting mittens for Christmas? His tenants’ children did better! Yet the twins did not look downtrodden or underprivileged. They were certainly healthy and spirited little tykes, obviously doted upon by their mother. They were handsome to boot, if he had to say so himself who shouldn’t, seeing how the lads were the spit and image of himself at their age. Of course he and Tony were often mistaken for brothers instead of cousins, so alike were they in appearance. Nothing could be more alike than these two peas in a pod, he marveled again, watching Leslie and Willy playing at soldiers or whatever with their gingerbread men cookie figures.
He couldn’t understand a word of their game, no matter how he listened, although the gibberish seemed to make sense to them.
As if reading his thoughts, Graceanne told him they’d jabbered like this long before they learned to speak the King’s English. “In fact, I despaired they’d ever communicate with anyone else. And yes, they understand each other perfectly.”