'Twas the Night After Christmas Read Free

thought to make it all go away.
    She’d been trying ever since the funeral, two years ago. Whenshe’d mentioned his coming “home,” he’d asked her why it had taken his father’s death for her to allow it. He’d expected a litany of patently false excuses, but she’d only said that the past was the past. She wanted to start anew with him.
    He snorted. Of course she did. It was the only way to get her hands on more of Father’s money than what had been left to her.
    Well, to hell with her. She may have decided she wanted to play the role of mother again, but he no longer wanted to play her son. Years of yearning for a mother who was never there, for whom he would have fought dragons as a boy, had frozen his heart. Since his father’s death, it hadn’t warmed one degree.
    Except that every time he saw one of her letters—
    Choking back a bitter curse, he tossed the unopened letter to his secretary, Mr. Boyd. One thing he’d learned from the last letter she’d written him, when he was a boy, was that words meant nothing. Less than nothing. And the word love in particular was just a word. “Put that with the others,” he told Boyd.
    “Yes, my lord.” There was no hint of condemnation, no hint of reproach in the man’s voice.
    Good man, Boyd. He knew better.
    Yet Pierce felt the same twinge of guilt as always.
    Damn it, he had done right by his mother, for all that she had never done right by him . Her inheritance from Father was entirely under his control. He could have deprived her if he’d wished—another man might have—but instead he’d set her up in the estate’s dower house with plenty of servants and enough pin money to make her comfortable. Not enough to live extravagantly—hecouldn’t bring himself to give her that —but enough that she couldn’t accuse him of neglect.
    He’d even hired a companion for her, who by all accounts had proved perfect for the position. Not that he would know for himself, since he’d never seen the indomitable Mrs. Camilla Stuart in action, never seen her with his mother. He never saw Mother at all. He’d laid down the law from the first. She was free to roam Montcliff, his estate in Hertfordshire, as she pleased when he wasn’t in residence, but when he was there to take care of estate affairs, she was to stay at the dower house and well away from him . So far she’d held to that agreement.
    But the letters came anyway, one a week, as they had ever since Father’s death. Two years of letters, piled in a box now overflowing. All unopened. Because why should he read hers, when she’d never answered a single one of his as a boy?
    Besides, they were probably filled with wheedling requests for more money now that he held the purse strings. He wouldn’t give in to those, damn it.
    “My lord, Mrs. Swanton has arrived,” his butler announced from the doorway.
    The words jerked him from his oppressive thoughts. “You may send her in.”
    Boyd slid a document onto Pierce’s desk, then left, passing Mrs. Swanton as he went out. The door closed behind him, leaving Pierce alone with his current mistress.
    Blond and blue-eyed, Eugenia Swanton had the elegant features of a fine lady and the eloquent body of a fine whore. Thecombination had made her one of the most sought-after mistresses in London, despite her humble beginnings as a rag-mannered chit from Spitalfields.
    When he’d snagged her three years ago it had been quite a coup, since she’d had dukes and princes vying for her favors. But the triumph had paled somewhat in recent months. Even she hadn’t been able to calm his restlessness.
    And now she was scanning him with a practiced eye, clearly taking note of his elaborate evening attire as her smile showed her appreciation. Slowly, sensually, she drew off her gloves in a maneuver that signaled she was eager to do whatever he wished. Last year, that would have had him bending her over his desk and taking her in a most lascivious manner.
    Tonight, it merely