‘It is indeed,’ Tess said. And if I can work a miracle there will be eleven of us. So far, so good. We have a party. Now we need presents.
* * *
Alex tossed the sale catalogue aside. Nothing in it got his acquisitive juices flowing. He felt bored, he realised incredulously. No, not bored exactly. Stale? Tired of London, tired of routine. Unsettled. It was ridiculous. He was normally so involved with his work and with his social round that Christmas was a welcome opportunity to sit back and relax. He regarded his drawing room with disfavour. It was too damn tasteful, too blasted orderly.
It was Tess who was responsible for this mood, he suspected. She was turning the place upside down. Hannah had been efficient, but mostly invisible. She left him to himself except for the occasional evening when she would shed her housekeeper’s cap and come and curl up in a chair in the drawing room and gossip over a glass of wine. She was an old friend, she had a busy life of her own beyond his front door and she left him alone to live his life as it suited him.
But Tess was there, in the house, day and night. And she expected things of him beyond the regular payment of housekeeping money and a list of meal times when he wanted to be fed at home. She expected him to react, to involve himself with the concerns of the other staff. And she was up to something with this Christmas obsession of hers. And that was leaving aside the nagging awareness of her physically, the effort it took not to think of the slim figure, the soft mouth, those wise, young, blue eyes.
There was a tap on the door, the modest yet definite knock he was learning to associate with his temporary housekeeper.
‘Come in.’ Yes, it was his little nun with her confounded notebook. He got up from the sofa where he’d been sprawled and waved her to the chair opposite.
Not such a little nun now, he thought as she settled her well-cut skirts into order. With good food and a warm house she had lost that pinched, cold look. Taking command suited her, put a sparkle in those blue eyes and a determined tilt to that pointed chin. And the food had done more than keep her warm, it had given her curves that were most definitely not nun-like.
My staff, my responsibility, he reminded himself, sat down and dumped the Christie’s catalogue firmly onto his lap.
‘Are you all right, my lord? I thought you winced just now.’
‘Alex, for goodness’ sake.’ He smiled to counteract the snap. ‘And it was just a touch of...er...rheumatism.’
‘Rheumatism?’
He shrugged and the catalogues slid helpfully, painfully, into his throbbing groin. ‘What can I do for you, Tess?’
‘Christmas presents,’ she said. She flipped open her notebook, produced a pencil and stared at him as though expecting dictation.
‘Whose Christmas presents?’
‘For the staff. The men, of course, Dorcas and little Daisy. And Annie. I think Annie should stay for a few nights, I don’t like to think of her having to go back to that lonely lodging house.’
‘Who the blazes is Annie? The scullery maid? No, don’t answer that. Do what you want about staff meals, but why presents? I give them all money on St Stephen’s Day.’
‘Of course you do and I am sure it is very generous. But Christmas presents are special, don’t you think? Personal.’
Alex considered a range of things he could say and decided it was probably safer not to utter any of them, not when faced with a woman armed with a notebook. ‘I’ll give you some money and you can buy them.’
‘I think the staff would really appreciate it if you chose them yourself.’ He could feel himself glowering and could only admire her courage as she continued to smile. ‘It is more in the Christmas spirit, don’t you think?’
‘Tess, you know perfectly well what I think about Christmas spirit. Codswallop. Humbug. Ridiculous sentimentality.’ Anyone else would have backed down in the face of that tone and his glare. All the men he knew certainly would have done. They obviously raised them with backbones of steel in convents.
‘But I know you value your staff,’ she said in a voice of sweet reason. ‘We could go out this afternoon unless you are very busy.’ By not so much as a flicker did her eyes move towards the pile of discarded journals, abandoned catalogues, crumpled newspapers and the other evidence of a lazy morning. ‘It isn’t raining. And I have a list.’
‘I’ll wager you have.’ Alex got to his feet. ‘I surrender. Wrap up warmly, I’ll get the carriage sent around.’
* * *
Half an hour later when he met her in the hall she was wearing a smart mantle that matched a deep-blue bonnet and she had decent gloves on. How pretty she is with the bruise gone and that bonnet framing her face. ‘Where is Dorcas?’ he snapped.
‘Daisy was fretful and Dorcas has a lot of work on her hands hemming petticoats for me and it would only distract Annie from her work if she has to watch the baby, as well. We don’t really need Dorcas, do we?’
The innocent question, the questioning tilt of her head to one side, got to him every time. He just wanted to kiss her silly. Which is not going to happen. ‘Not if you feel comfortable alone in a closed carriage with me.’ Alex kept his voice neutral, but she still turned a delicate shade of pink.
‘Of course I do. We discussed...that. I thought we had forgotten about it.’
Forgotten that kiss? Forgotten that you admitted that the attraction wasn’t just one-sided? When you become prettier and happier with every day that passes? When hell freezes over. Alex wasn’t going to lie to her. ‘I think we are doing a very good job of pretending it doesn’t exist,’ he said drily. ‘Best put that veil down in case anyone sees you. Now, where to?’
‘A music publishers first, there’s one in Albemarle Street. I want music for MacDonald and Phipps—good tunes, ballads, dances. MacDonald can play the violin and read music and Phipps plays the flute, but only by ear, so MacDonald’s going to teach him to read music. They’ve only got one or two pieces now.’
* * *
Alex helped her out of the carriage and into the shop, his ears ringing, while Tess talked. He had learned more about his footmen in ten minutes than he’d known in five years, he realised as he stood back to let her go through the door into the shop in front of him.
‘That was easy,’ Tess said fifteen minutes later as she gave a satisfied pat to the brown paper parcel on the carriage seat. ‘Now then, tobacco jars for Perring and Hodge. John Coachman says he’ll not be responsible for his actions if he has to deal with two grooms squabbling over which tobacco is whose much longer. And he takes snuff, so a new box for him, don’t you think?’
Alex directed John to Robert Lewis’s tobacconist shop in St James’s Street and sat back to digest the discovery that he was actually enjoying himself. Part of it, of course, was Tess’s company. Her enjoyment of the shops, her enthusiasm and cheerful goodwill was infectious, and he found he had no objection at all to the image he saw reflected in shop windows of the two of them arm in arm. But strangely, it was more than that.
‘Do you know, I find this oddly satisfying, like working out the attribution of a painting,’ he confessed as they emerged later from Gray’s the jewellers with a coral-and-silver teething ring for little Daisy. ‘Are we done now?’
‘Not yet.’ Tess looked back over her shoulder as she got into the carriage.
Alex closed the door behind him and then stayed on his feet to shift parcels on the seat. ‘More?’
‘Well, yes. There’s—’ Tess began as the carriage started off, then stopped with a lurch.