A Yuletide Invitation: The Mistletoe Wager / The Harlot's Daughter. Christine Merrill
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took a deep breath to calm herself, and tried to explain the situation again, hoping that he would understand. ‘A gathering of this size will still be a challenge. The servants obey me sullenly, if at all. They do not wish a new mistress, Harry. They want Elise back.’
His face clouded for a moment, before he smiled again. ‘We will see what can be done on that front soon enough. But for now, you must do the best you can. And look on this as an opportunity, not an obstacle. It will give my friends a chance to meet you. They do wonder, you know, that you are never seen in London. I think some of them doubt that I have any family at all. They think that I have imagined the wonderful sister I describe.’
‘Really, Harry. You make me sound terribly antisocial.
It is not by choice that I avoid your friends. Father needs me at home.’
He was looking down at her with a frown of concern. ‘I worry about you, sequestered in Shropshire alone with your father. He is a fine man, but an elderly vicar cannot be much company for a spirited girl.’
It was perfectly true, but she smiled back in denial. ‘It is not as if I have no friends in the country.’
He waved a hand. ‘I am sure they are fine people. But the young gentlemen of your acquaintance must be a bit thick in the head if they have not seen you for the beauty you are. I would have thought by now that there would be men lined up to ask your father for your hand.’
‘I am no longer, as you put it, “a spirited girl”, Harry. I do not need you to act as matchmaker—nor Father’s permission should any young men come calling.’ And she had seen that they hadn’t, for she had turned them all away. The last thing she needed was Harry pointing out the illogicality of her refusals. ‘I am of age, and content to remain unmarried.’
He sighed. ‘So you keep telling me. But I mean to see you settled. And if I can find someone to throw in your path …’
‘Then I shall walk politely around him and continue on my way.’
‘With you so far from home, you could at least pretend to need a chaperon,’ he said. ‘Your father made me promise to take the role, and to prevent you from any misalliances. I was quite looking forward to failing at it.’
Her father would have done so, since he did not trust her in the slightest. But she could hardly fault Harry for his concern, so she curtseyed to him. ‘Very well. I will send you any serious contenders for my hand. Although I assure you there will be no such men, nor does it bother me. I am quite content to stay as I am.’
He looked at her critically, and for a change he was serious. ‘I do not believe you. I do not know what happened before your father sent you to rusticate, or why it set you so totally off the masculine gender, but I wish it could be otherwise.’
‘I have nothing against the masculine gender,’ she argued. In fact, she had found one in particular to be most to her liking. ‘I could think of little else for the brief time I was in London, before Father showed me the error of my behaviour and sent me home.’
‘You are too hard on yourself, darling. To have been obsessed with love and marriage made you no different from other girls of your age.’
‘I was still an ill-mannered child, and my rash behaviour gave many a distaste of me.’ She had heard the words from his lips so many times that she sounded almost like her father as she said them. ‘I am sure that the men of London breathed a hearty sigh of relief when I was removed from their numbers before the season even began.’ At least that was true. At least one of them had been more than glad to see the last of her.
‘But it has been years, Rosalind. Whatever it was that proved the last straw to your father, it has been forgotten by everyone else. I think you would find, if you gave them a chance, that there are many men worthy of your affection and eager to meet you. There are a dozen in my set alone who would do fine for you. But if you insist on avoiding London, then I must bring London to you.’
‘Harry,’ she said, with sudden alarm, ‘tell me you have not done what I suspect you have.’
‘And whatever is that, sister dear?’
‘You have not used the Christmas holiday as an opportunity to fill this house with unattached men in an attempt to make a match where none is desired.’
He glanced away and smiled. ‘Not fill the house, precisely.’
And suddenly she knew why he had been so cagey with the guest list, giving her rough numbers but no names. ‘It is all ruined,’ she moaned.
‘I fail to see how,’ he answered, being wilfully oblivious again.
‘There should be a harmonious balance in the genders if a party is to be successful. And it sounds as though you have not invited a single family with a marriageable daughter, nor any young ladies at all. Tell me I will not be the lone partner to a pack of gentleman from your club.’
He laughed. ‘You make them sound like a Barbarian invasion, Rosalind. You are being far too dramatic.’
She shook her finger at him. ‘You will see the way of things when we stand up for a dance and there is only me on the ladies’ side.’
He ignored her distress. ‘I do not care—not if you are presented to best advantage, dear one. This party will give you a chance to shine like the jewel you are.’
‘I will appear, if anyone notices me at all, to be a desperate spinster.’
‘Wrong again. You assure me you are not desperate, and you are hardly old enough to be a spinster.’ He held her by the hands and admired her. ‘At least you certainly do not look old enough.’
‘That has been the problem all along,’ she said. ‘When I came of age I looked too young to consider.’
‘Many women long for your problem, dear. When you are too old, I expect they will hate you for your youth. It is something to look forward to.’
‘Small comfort.’
‘And you needn’t worry. You will not be the only female, and I have not filled the house to the roof with prospective suitors. I believe you will find the company quite well balanced.’ He smiled as though he knew a secret. ‘But should you find someone present who is to your liking, and if he should like you as well, then I will be the happiest man in England. And to that end, I wish you to play hostess to my friends and to try to take some joy in it for yourself, even though it means a great deal of work.’ He was looking at her with such obvious pride and hope for her own welfare that she felt churlish for denying him his party.
‘Very well, Harry. Consider my good behaviour to be a Christmas gift to you. Let us hope, by the end of the festivities, that the only cooked geese are in the kitchen.’
For the next two days, Rosalind found herself buffeted along with the increasing speed of events. Harry’s carriage was unpacked, and servants were set to preparations. But they seemed to have no idea how to proceed without continual supervision, or would insist that they knew exactly what was to be done and then do the tasks in a manner that was obviously wrong. It was just as it had been since the moment she had stepped over the threshold and into Elise’s shoes. At least she’d managed to gain partial co-operation, by begging them to do things as Elise would have wanted them done, as proof of their loyalty to her and in honour of her memory.
It sounded to all the world as if the woman had died, and she’d been left to write her eulogy instead of run her house. But the servants had responded better to her moving speech then they had to anything she could offer in the way of instruction. At some point, she would have to make her brother stir himself sufficiently to retrieve his wife from London. For Rosalind was not welcome in the role of mistress here, nor did she desire it. But it must wait until after the holidays, for she had made Harry a promise to help him for Christmas and she meant to stick to it, until the bitter end.
At last the house was in some semblance of readiness, and the guests began to come—first in a trickle and then a flood. Arrivals were