Under the Mistletoe by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Anthologies, Adult
ISBN: 9780451223456
Google: tv-5vP1ah38C
Amazon: 0451219791
Barnesnoble: 0451219791
Goodreads: 785108
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2003-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas Eve dawned gray and gloomy, and Viscount Buckley, surrounded by all the foolish sights of Christmas, his nostrils assailed by all the smells of it, felt his irritation return. Because she—Miss Jane Craggs, the tyrant—had persuaded him into the madness of allowing a party for young people to take place in his home tomorrow, he had been faced with the necessity of absenting himself from that home. And so he was facing the unspeakable monotony of a Christmas gathering at the Oxendens’. He was being forced to enjoy himself.

Well, it could not be done. Just look at the weather. He did just that, standing at the window of his bedchamber, gazing out at raw, cheerless December.

But one hour later he felt foolish. How was it he had recognized none of the signs when they had been as plain as the nose on his face? For of course the grayness and the gloom were harbingers of snow, and before the morning was even half over, it was falling so thickly that he could scarcely see six feet beyond the window. And it was settling too, just like a white blanket being spread.

Good Lord, snow! He could not remember when it had last fallen at Christmastime. Certainly not the year Elise had humiliated him and broken his foolish young heart. It had been raining that year and blowing a gale. Typical British winter weather. This was not typical at all. He wondered if Veronica had seen the snow, and was halfway up the stairs to the nursery before he realized how strange it was that he had thought of sharing the sight of snow with a child. But he continued on his way.

They were all in there, Veronica and Deborah kneeling on the window seat, their noses pressed against the glass, Miss Craggs standing behind them.

“Look, my lord.” She was the only one who had glanced back to see who was coming through the door. “Snow. We are going to have a white Christmas. Can you conceive of anything more wonderful?”

Sometime before she returned to Miss Phillpotts’s school he was going to have to sit down and have a good talk with Miss Jane Craggs. There was something deep inside the woman that could occasionally break through to her face and make her almost incredibly beautiful. She was beautiful now, flushed and wide-eyed and animated. And all over the fact that it was snowing for Christmas.

He found himself wondering quite inappropriately what her face would look like as he was making love to her. Totally inappropriately! He had a mistress waiting for him in London with whose services he was more than satisfied. He had had her for only two months. He had not even begun to tire of her yet.

“I am trying,” he said in belated answer to her question. “And at the moment I can think of nothing.”

She smiled at him and his heart and his stomach danced a pas de deux.

Good Lord, he wanted her, the gray and prim Miss Craggs.

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