Free Barbara Metzger by Christmas Wishes Page B

proud and happy to be your wife. Circumstances were such that I feel I can call you Merry, instead of Lord Jordan or whatever your title, but I cannot marry you. I cannot take advantage of your nobility and generosity and am therefore leaving. I have nothing to leave you for a Christmas gift or to thank you for your kindness, except that I might help grant your Christmas wish after all. Now you shall have one less responsibility, one fewer persons hanging on your sleeve.
    For your birthday I am giving you Pansy. I cannot travel well with her, and she would not be happy in London, but that is not why I am leaving her with you. She is a very smart pig, and I know you will care for her, but mostly she will make you smile. I defy any man to be a sobersides with a pig as a companion. She likes sticky buns and having her ears scratched, but I expect you already know those things.
    I have borrowed five shillings, so you do not need to worry about my reaching London. I shall return them to you in care of the postmaster at Bramley as soon as I am able. I regret taking them without your permission, but you would have argued about my decision to leave, and I could not bear to see you angry again. I shall remember you sleeping instead. Thank you for your kindness and best wishes to you. Sincerely, Juneclaire Beaumont.
    St. Cloud cursed and threw his ring across the barn, the ring he was going to give her as proof that her Christmas wish was coming true. Pansy chased it, chuffing at the new game, nosing in the straw until she found it.
    “Botheration,” he raged. “The blasted animal will likely eat the damn thing and choke. Then Junco will have my head for sure.” As he traded the last apple for his ring, St. Cloud realized he was thinking of Miss Beaumont in the future, not the past. Never the past, gone and forgotten. He was going after her.
    He wiped his slimy, gritty ring on his sleeve—the once elegant greatcoat was ready for the dustbin after these two days anyway—then put it on his own finger, until he found Juneclaire and could place it on hers. After he strangled the chit.
    “Fiend seize it, she must have been gone for hours! She could be halfway to London by now if Bramley is as close as you said.” The boy nodded from the doorway, miserably aware that he should have awakened the gentleman ages ago. He wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve, to his lordship’s further disgust. The earl stomped back to the stall where his pistol and his flask lay.
    “After all my efforts to keep her out of this scandalbroth,” he growled, “she has to go make mice feet of her reputation. The Devil only knows what she’ll say about Charlie Parrett or you.”
    Ned was inching along the railing in the barn, not sure whether to flee his lordship’s wrath or stay to take the pig home after the furious gent butchered it. Ma’d be right pleased to have fresh ham for Christmas dinner and bacon for Easter. Mention of Charlie Parrett stopped him in his tracks. “Me? You think she’ll go to the magistrate and turn me in?” His voice was so high, it cracked. “But she didn’t want to last night.”
    “No, brat, she won’t peach on you on purpose. She’s got bottom. But if she comes from this way, the good citizens in Bramley are bound to ask if she saw anything. And how is she going to explain being on her own? And if I go after her, there are certain to be more questions.”
    “Naw, no one’d dare quiz a fine swell like you.” Ned didn’t mention that most of the villagers would run inside and slam their doors rather than ask such a fierce-looking, arrogant nobleman what he was doing in their midst.
    St. Cloud was pacing the length of the barn, the piglet trundling after. He was talking more to himself than to Ned, who was filling buckets for the horses. “But if they don’t talk to me, I’ll never find out where she went. And if I don’t give some answers, they’ll make them up. I know village life. It’s the same as London