LITMIR.BIZ

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across the room, disturbing the pack of small terriers sleeping on the hearthrug before the fireplace. They jumped to their stubby feet and began loudly protesting. Aunt Alice continued to snore in her chair by the fire, immune to the indignity of her precious darlings.

      Lily snatched up her brother’s letter and read through it, the words nearly lost in the jumble of yapping canines.

      ‘Quiet down, all of you,’ she commanded, but it did nothing to silence the tiny pack or calm the panic racing through her. ‘He’s coming tonight, on Christmas Eve?’

      ‘I imagine so if he’s to be here for Christmas.’ Daisy shrugged, the red ribbon in her brown hair as askew as those around the terriers’ necks.

      Lily crushed the letter to her chest as she took in the sorry state of the sitting room. With the exception of her corner where the easel sat neatly over the oil cloth protecting the floor, nothing else was as it should be. The house was already filled to near bursting with family. Besides Aunt Alice, their eldest sister Rose had descended on them yesterday with her husband, Edgar, and their five-year-old twins, James and John. The boys’ shoes littered the stone hearth where they’d been discarded when they’d torn by after coming in from playing in the snow. Their mittens fared no better, one having been tossed over the back of a wooden chair, the other flung across the seat to wet the sturdy fabric. The rest were strewn about the room, except for the one being chewed on by Pygmalion, the smallest terrier with the longest name. Her other sister Petunia had arrived this morning with her husband and daughter, increasing the chaos. This wasn’t the festive atmosphere in which to bring someone unaccustomed to the confusion of the Rutherford family, especially one as arrogant as Lord Marbrook.

      ‘Did you tell Mother about Laurus’s plan?’ With any luck she’d object, what with the staff already overwhelmed and, if the butler was any judge of things this afternoon, sampling the wassail brewing in the kitchen. Lily also hoped, for once, the family might side with her against a man such as Lord Marbrook, though she wasn’t sure why, since they never had before. Because he was Laurus’s oldest school friend, they’d been all too willing to overlook his slight of her. The indignity of it still stung.

      ‘Mother thinks him being here is a wonderful idea. You know her, the more the merrier.’ Daisy kicked her legs over the arm of the chair to recline across them and read.

      Lily grabbed Daisy’s ankle and tossed it off the embroidered arm. ‘Why? Did she feel we didn’t expose our family to enough ridicule the last time Gregor St James was in our midst?’

      They hadn’t seen Gregor St James, Viscount Marbrook, since Petunia’s wedding to Charles Winford, fifth Baron Winford, four years ago. St James had only been a second son then. Now, with a title hanging in front of his name, he was sure to be even more arrogant than before and all too eager to sneer down his sharp nose at her and her family again.

      ‘You were the only one who made a fool of herself, tripping while dancing with him during the Scotch reel,’ Daisy pointed out.

      Aunt Alice snorted in her sleep as if agreeing with Daisy, the slurp of the dog chewing the mitten punctuating it.

      ‘Thank you very much for reminding me.’ Though she’d never forgotten it, or the callous way Lord Marbrook and his family had treated her afterwards. Their very public disdain had encouraged the most vicious in society to follow their lead, making her the focus of wicked ridicule and turning every subsequent ball and soirée into a drudge. She’d left London less than a month later and hadn’t returned since.

      ‘I have no desire to attend our Christmas ball and face the entire countryside, most of whom were at Petunia’s wedding. It’s bad enough I have to endure Sir Walter’s cracks about my graceful dancing every year, but to have Lord Marbrook there when he does is more than anyone should have to bear.’

      ‘I don’t know why you care about what wrinkled old Sir Walter says. No one else does.’ Daisy turned over a page of her letter. ‘Beside, Lord Marbrook is sure to have forgotten your tumble by now. Mother said he was with Wellington at Waterloo, before his elder brother died and he inherited.’

      Lily didn’t share her sister’s confidence in Lord Marbrook having been changed by his time in France. Nor could she imagine a Marbrook sullying his hands on a battlefield or taking orders from anyone of lesser rank, not with the way the whole family revelled in their lineage more than the Prince Regent.

      ‘He probably wasn’t anywhere near the fighting but the aide-de-camp to some fat general with a higher title than his father’s,’ Lily retorted as she stomped back to the canvas and snatched up her palette. She mashed together yellow and blue with her knife, the memory of Lord Marbrook standing arrogantly over her while the other dancers had laughed, not bothering to acknowledge her or even help her rise from where she’d fallen, still made her cheeks burn. Yet it wasn’t so much the haughty man’s condescension which enraged her as how little she’d deserved it, especially after all she’d done for him in the hallway outside the ballroom before the dance.

      She set down the knife and took up her brush, but fumbled the smooth wood. It dropped to the canvas covering the floor. She reached for it, but it disappeared in a flash of brown fur as Pygmalion snatched it up.

      ‘No, Pygmalion, bad dog.’ Lily chased after the animal, wincing as it scurried beneath a table with its prize, painting the bottom of one oak leg as he moved backwards. Lily knelt down in front of the table and reached for the brush. ‘Give that back.’

      The toll of the front bell echoed through the house, sending the dogs scurrying from the hearthrug in a hail of yapping and toenails scraping across the wood floor. Pygmalion, still gripping his treasure, darted past Lily to join the pack, leaving a streak of red on the white door moulding as he passed.

      ‘It must be Laurus and his guest.’ Daisy tossed aside her letter and, like one of the dogs, hurried off down the hall. Aunt Alice continued to snore in her chair, oblivious to the excitement of her darlings.

      Lily sat back on her heels, ready to run in the opposite direction, but she could hardly hide from the family at Christmas. Nor could she leave Pygmalion to mark up the house, not with such an esteemed visitor about to grace it with his presence.

      She hurried after the pack, jumping over the twins’ discarded lead soldiers and tin horns, wrinkling her nose at the red bits of paint blobbed on the floor and streaked along the low bottoms of the walls. She hurried down the hall, eager to catch the dog before it did more damage and made the house, which was already in sixes and sevens, even worse. Her family wasn’t slovenly, but there was a messiness to Helkirk Place, as if it wasn’t just lived in, but well-worn. Her mother was too lenient with the staff, allowing them to shirk their cleaning duties, as Lily often reminded her. However, attending to such matters would involve her parents looking up from their precious plants long enough to give more care to what the servants were doing.

      Passing the long tapestries and dark panelling of the Tudor-era house, Lily inhaled the woodsy scent of the pine boughs covering the sideboards and mixing with the savoury spices from the roasting pig’s head wafting up from the kitchen. In the smell was every Christmas they’d ever spent here, except for the year they’d ventured to London for Petunia’s wedding, the one Yuletide Lily did her best not to recall.

      ‘Laurus, you made it.’ Lily’s elder sister Petunia embraced their brother. Behind her stood Mrs Smith, the nurse, with Petunia’s toddler daughter Adelaide perched on one hip. Charles, Petunia’s husband, stepped forwards to shake Laurus’s hand. Beneath them, James and John ran in circles like the dogs around the adults.

      ‘Uncle Laurus, what did you bring us?’ the boys demanded, stopping to dig in Laurus’s pockets.

      ‘Boys, don’t pester your uncle,’ Rose chided as she and Edgar entered the foyer.

      ‘They aren’t bothering me. Besides, I need to get rid of this twist of sweets.’ Laurus withdrew a small paper cone from inside his coat pocket and dangled it over their heads before depositing it in James’s hand. He and John tore at it, extracting their treats while the dogs waited at their feet for the crumbs.

      In

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