Free Greetings of the Season and Other Stories by Barbara Metzger Page A

thanking the squire for his consideration. Allissa made barely polite responses, then waved a glove to tease Pug into a game.
    Lady Montravan opened the box from her portly gallant and lifted out a fox tippet, complete with glass eyes. While the squire related every detail of the poor creature’s gory demise, Lady Montravan was turning it this way and that, searching the box and tissue for the ring. “How nice,” she said, tossing the object of at least seven hunts aside, knocking over a glass of restorative sherry. She mopped at the spill with Petra’s handkerchief, then threw the soiled lace-edged linen to the floor.
    “We might as well open Montravan’s presents,” she grumbled. “He’s not coming.”
    “Don’t you think we ought to wait for his lordship?” Petra suggested.
    “No, I do not, miss, and I still make some of the decisions around here. I am worn out with the tension of worry and must seek my bed soon. If that rakeshame is so inconsiderate as to be late, then he cannot expect me to ruin my health. Allissa, bring the gifts. I’ll start.”
    No one dared contradict the countess in such a mood, not even Allissa, who merely whined at her mother to hurry; she’d go next.
    Lady Montravan unwrapped a magnificent ruby brooch. “Oh, the dear boy,” she cooed, holding the pin to the lavender gown to judge the effect. Then she reached for the enclosed card just as a commotion was heard in the hall.
    “‘Greetings of the season,’” Lady Montravan started reading when a disheveled, dirty earl tore into the room.
    “Mama, don’t!” he shouted. Too late.
    “‘Looking forward to seeing you with your esteemed parents,’” she continued, puzzled. Then she shrieked. “He wants me dead! It’s not enough that he’s sending me to that dreary dower house; now he wants me in the vault with my ancestors! My heart! My heavens!” And she swooned dead away, there on the sofa.

9
    “There’s been a dreadful mistake,” Lord Montravan tried to say into the ensuing chaos, but no one paid him any attention after Petra’s first tentative smile. The butler was shouting for her ladyship’s maid and the housekeeper, while Petra was scrambling under the sofa for the smelling salts. Squire Merton poured out another glass of restorative—and swallowed it down. Then he started coughing and bellowing for something decent a fellow could drink at a time of crisis. Footmen were sent running in all directions, and Allissa was gulping back sobs of frustration, saying that she’d never get her tiara at this rate and if her older brother was in such a hateful mood.
    “That was despicable,” she raged at him. “You know how Mama’s nerves are so easily overset. And at Christmas, and your coming late! How could you write such a thing?”
    “I didn’t, brat, so stubble it,” he began, looking on helplessly as a maid started burning feathers under Lady Montravan’s nose.
    Allissa snatched the card off the table and thrust it at Bevin. “It’s your handwriting, isn’t it?”
    Petra glanced up from her place at the side of the reviving, moaning countess. Those were indeed Bevin’s heavy, slanting strokes on the holly-bordered card.
    “Yes, but the messages—” he began again, his words lost anew to Lady Montravan’s groans and clutchings of her heart.
    Her mama being alert and her usual stridently complaining self, Allissa now felt free to gather up the box with her name on it while no one was watching. Petra glanced over, frowning, just as the younger girl ripped the wrappings apart. The earl had bought Allissa a tiara after all, but Petra was relieved to see the circlet was of delicate gold, with no ornate tracery and no diamonds. The coronet would look sweet with flowers woven through it, entirely in keeping with a young miss’s debut.
    “It’s for babies!” the young miss wailed when she saw there were no diamonds. Then she reached for the enclosure at the bottom of the box.
    “No!” Bevin shouted,