Read Online A Yuletide Treasure by Cynthia Bailey Pratt - Free Book Online Page A

foot was twitching impatiently beneath the hem of her day dress. “I understand from my daughter that you have been instrumental in rescuing Mrs. Mallow from some misadventure or other.”
    Camilla responded to this challenging statement with nothing more than a nod. It seemed safest somehow.
    Lady LaCorte came out of the doorway. Her mourning clothes were profoundly black, made of some dull, heavy silk that didn’t even glimmer, nor did it rustic. “Let me see if we’ve made you sufficiently comfortable.”
    She swept along before them. Camilla glanced with half a frown into Sir Philip’s face. At first, he seemed slightly perturbed, watching the slow gliding figure of his sister-in-law. Then, feeling Camilla’s gaze upon him perhaps, he met her eyes and threw her a quick wink.
    Lady LaCorte was hardly as tall as Camilla herself, but she bore herself with that effortless posture that Mrs. Twainsbury had never managed to inculcate completely in her daughter. Camilla did her best, but when she was tired, her back would touch the back of a chair. She felt that Lady LaCorte could never unbend so far.
    Whatever hair she had was stuffed out of sight under a black cap with the merest hint of lavender frill. She must have been very pretty once. Camilla could see that the lines of her face were very good. But the whole expression was so taut with some emotion that she could not guess that Lady LaCorte looked older than her years. Perhaps her widowhood was enough explanation.
    For that reason, Camilla fought her instinctive wish to be equally cold in reply. Pride wouldn’t help her now; while Nanny Mallow was incapacitated, she herself really had nowhere else to go. She must remain at the Manor on sufferance. She would bite her tongue if necessary and make herself useful.
    Inside the room, Sir Philip swung her down to stand barefoot on the hearth rug. “Here, now,” he said. “That’s not much of a fire.” Going down onto one knee, he groped for the poker. “I’ll soon have this more lively.”
    Lady LaCorte lit the candles. ‘You have baggage, I presume.”
    “It’s at the inn in the village.”
    “Indeed? I shall lend you some of my things from last year.” The offer was coldly made, but Camilla accepted eagerly.
    “I should be glad to see the last of this dress for a while.” She turned toward the fire, putting out her hands to the cheerful blaze, smiling thanks to Sir Philip.
    He sat back on his heels, the firelight calling forth the deeper highlights in his hair. “Nothing like plenty of wood for the fire. Traipsing around in all this snow makes one appreciate the smaller luxuries.”
    “I certainly appreciated the ones your cook offered. She was kindness itself. But I must ask: where did she learn to make such wonderful hot chocolate?”
    “It’s my mother’s receipt, handed down from the sixteenth century,” Lady LaCorte said. “A family secret.”
    “A luxury, indeed, even a treasure, my lady,” Camilla said. “You should never divulge it to a soul.”
    “I won’t. Except to my children.”
    “I imagine they adore it.” Perhaps her children were the subject that warmed her heart. Certainly the mention of them seemed to soften her hard dislike.
    Sir Philip rose to his feet. Letting his hand rest for an instant on her shoulder, he looked with friendliness into her eyes. “I’ll leave you to make your arrangements with Beulah. We’re not very formal here, but dinner is usually served at approximately half-past six. Don’t feel you must come down if you’d rather not.”
    “It will be no trouble to bring you a tray,” Lady LaCorte said in a tone which contradicted her own statement. “Mrs. Mallow will be having one, I’m sure.”
    “May I answer later?” Camilla said. “I’m not really tired now, but it has been a long day.”
    Once again, Sir Philip flicked an eyelid. Camilla wasn’t quite sure that a wink was proper between an unmarried gentleman and a spinster, but somehow this