'Twas the Night After Christmas Read Free Page B

begun to seem more and more pointless. There’d been no deathbed reconciliation, but also no attempt to keep him from his rightful inheritance. And no explanation of why he’d been abandoned. None of it made sense.
    The fact that he wanted it to make sense annoyed him. He was done with trying to understand it. The only thing that mattered was that he’d triumphed in the end. He’d gained the estate while he was still young enough to make something of it, and clearly that was the most he could hope for.
    Of course, now that he was the earl, people expected him to change his life. To marry. But how could he? Once married, a man had to endure the whims of his wife and children. He’d grown up suffering beneath the whims of his parents; he wasn’t about to exchange one prison for another.
    He pounded the keys. So for now, everything would stay the same. He would go to the opera this evening to seek out a new mistress, and life would go on much as before. Surely his restlessness would end in time.
    Leaving the pianoforte, he was walking out of the drawing room when the sight of Boyd heading toward him with a look of grim purpose arrested him.
    “An express has come for you, my lord, from Montcliff.”
    He tensed. His estate manager, Miles Fowler, never sent expresses, so it must be something urgent.
    To his surprise, the letter Boyd handed him hadn’t come from Fowler but from Mother’s companion. Since Mrs. Stuart hadn’t written him in the entire six months she’d been workingfor him, the fact that she’d sent an express brought alarm crashing through him.
    His heart pounded as he tore open the letter to read:
    Dear Sir,
    Forgive me for my impertinence, but I feel I should inform you that your mother is very ill. If you wish to see her before it is too late, you should come at once.
    Sincerely,
    Mrs. Camilla Stuart
    The terse message chilled him. Based on Mrs. Stuart’s recommendation letters and references, not to mention the glowing accolades heaped on her by Fowler, Pierce had formed a certain impression of the widow. She was practical and forthright, the sort of independent female who would rather eat glass than admit she couldn’t handle any domestic situation.
    She was decidedly not a woman given to dramatic pronouncements. So if she said his mother was very ill, then Mother was at death’s door. And no matter what had passed between them, he couldn’t ignore such a dire summons.
    “Boyd, have my bags packed and sent on to the estate. I’m leaving for Montcliff at once.”
    “Is everything all right, my lord?” Boyd asked.
    “I don’t believe it is. Apparently my mother has fallen ill. I’ll let you know more as soon as I assess the situation.”
    “What should I tell your uncle?”
    Damn. The Waverlys were expecting him in a few days; hestill spent most holidays with them. “Tell Uncle Isaac I’ll do my best to be there for Christmas, but I can’t promise anything right now.”
    “Very good, my lord.”
    As far as Pierce was concerned, the Waverlys—his great-uncle Isaac and his second cousin Virginia—were his true family. Mother was merely the woman who’d brought him into the world.
    He ought to abandon her in death, the way she’d abandoned him in life. But he still owed her for nurturing him in those early years, before he was old enough to be fobbed off on relatives. He still owed her for giving birth to him. So he would do his duty by her.
    But no more. She’d relinquished the right to his love long ago.

2

    I n a cozy sitting room of the dower house on the Montcliff estate, Camilla mended a petticoat while keeping a furtive watch on her six-year-old son, Jasper. With his blue eyes wide, he sat in Lady Devonmont’s lap, waiting for her to read him a story.
    “What shall we read?” Lady Devonmont asked him. “ Cinderella ?”
    “That one’s stupid,” Jasper said airily. “Princes don’t marry servant girls.”
    Camilla bit back a smile as she pushed up her spectacles. Lady