Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Read Free Page B

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