Free A Very Selwick Christmas by Lauren Willig Page B

appeared to mean it. Maybe she had been in love with Richard, even if just a little bit. It was an appalling thought.
    Miles shook his head. “Doing it a bit too brown. Old Richard there has many talents, but verse ain"t one of them.”
    “Oh?” said Richard. One eyebrow appeared over Lady Jerard"s high-piled curls. “What about your Ode to Spring?”
    “Oh, for—I was only eight!”
    “Ten. „When the leaves pop out on the tree, tra la/ And the sun shines over the sea, tra la"….”
    “At least he had the sense to give it up before he turned twenty,” Henrietta waded into the fray on her beloved"s behalf.
    “Sense, ha!” Miss Gwen cut off the recitation with a judicious thump of her parasol. Under the force of her glare, no one had the nerve to inquire what she was doing with a parasol inside the house, in the depths of December, at three in the morning, in the midst of a snowstorm. “If you had any sense among the lot of you, you"d think twice before leaving the library littered with the operatives of a foreign power. It is pure sloppiness.”
    “I suppose we shall have to put them somewhere,” agreed Lady Uppington with a sigh. “And on Christmas, too. Too, too provoking.”
    “We could tie them up with holly and stuff their mouths with mistletoe,” contributed Miles cheerfully.
    “Or not,” said his brother-in-law. “Can we hurry this along? My arms are getting tired.”
    “You could just hit her with the warming pan,” suggested Amy. “I found that worked well for me. And it makes such a satisfying thunk.”
    The corners of Jane"s lips twitched before she stuffed them back into their bewildered expression.
    “You haven"t an oubliette, have you?” demanded Miss Gwen in tones that indicated than she found the lack of one an unpardonable omission.

    “Noooo….” Lady Uppington"s face brightened. “The very thing! The box room. I always forget things in there. Miles, darling, if you wouldn"t mind carrying the one on the floor?”
    “Aye, aye.” Miles smartly saluted and marched his way across the library.
    “I get to search her!” sang out Henrietta, scurrying along behind.
    “And I,” said Lady Uppington, with a martial glint in her green eyes, “shall personally escort Lady Jerard. She and I have a few things to say to one another.”
    “Now, mother….” Richard released his hold on Lady Jerard, who haughtily shook out her skirts, looking like nothing more threatening than a society matron whose nose had been put out of joint by a mismatched seating plan or too little lobster in the lobster patties.
    “Don"t you „now mother" me, young man. As for you, I want you to keep your hands where I can see them at all times. Try any tricks with hidden pistols and I"ll have you trussed like a Christmas goose before you can say treason. Do we understand each other, Lady Jerard?”
    Now that she was no longer being held twisted into a knot, Lady Jerard appeared to have regained some of her sangfroid. “I don"t in the least understand why any of this is necessary,”
    she said, in the soft, muted tones that accompanied her dewy-eyed look. “It"s not as though I did anything.”
    “Other than waking the entire household,” grumbled Miss Gwen, marching forward and taking a firm hold on the woman"s right arm. “And consorting with foreign agents. Before breakfast!”
    That last appeared to be the final condemnation. Consorting with foreign agents at teatime was one thing; receiving them before breakfast quite another.
    “To the box room with you,” said Lady Uppington firmly, taking Lady Jerard"s other arm and marching her forward.
    “My mother won"t like this at all,” retorted Lady Jerard.
    Lady Uppington"s voice floated back through the door. “No,” she said cheerfully. “I don"t imagine she will.”
    On that sobering note, Lady Jerard was silent.
    “Up we go,” said Miles, hoisting the second woman over his shoulder. A muffled squeak revealed that she wasn"t quite so unconscious