Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

scepters, lions, and hawks! She certainly could not go spend Christmas with her sister and Rosalyn’s curate husband at their tiny cottage in Hampshire—no, not even if there was a new niece she had never seen, not with such an important event in the offing, the heir’s bringing home a prospective bride.
    And as for her allowance, why, Allissa couldn’t pass through the nearby village with its two insignificant shops without spending more than Petra’s quarterly income. Not that Petra complained, ever. She was nothing to Lord Montravan, no obligation, no relation, no debt of honor, yet he supported her, and handsomely. He even insisted that her clothes money come from the household accounts, not her “allowance.” The dowager agreed, not surprising since the bills were on Bevin’s tab, and since a well-dressed Miss Sinclaire was a suitable enough companion to send out with Allissa on her rounds of the neighbors, saving Lady Montravan the stress and strain of carriage rides and morning calls. Besides, the dowager liked to show Petra off to the local gentry and her Bath cronies as a symbol of her generosity.
    Lady Montravan was generous, in her way. She treated Petra like a daughter—just as negligently as she treated Allissa.
    *
    That night, long after the other ladies were abed, Petra sat up reflecting, not for the first time, on Lord Montravan’s generosity.
    It was not enough. Her quarterly payments, her life savings, and all the coins she’d managed to squirrel away in a more frugal fashion than even Lady Montravan espoused were not enough for her Christmas shopping. So Miss Sinclaire sat up sewing through the night on her own Christmas gifts.
    A gift from the hands was a gift from, the heart, she tried to convince herself, echoing Lady Montravan’s oft-repeated sentiments. The recipients would appreciate Petra’s laboriously worked handkerchiefs more than some store-bought bauble. And pigs would fly. Petra tried to imagine Allis sa preferring the lace-edged, monogrammed linen squares to a diamond tiara. Instead she pictured Squire Merton wiping the manure off his boots with his initialed handkerchief.
    No matter, she thought, yawning but still setting neat stitches in the bib for her new niece, she could not afford to squander her ready on gifts for people who wanted for nothing. Oh, she set aside coins for the vails for the servants; that was different. And there’d be a coin wrapped in the handkerchief for her sister, and another in the toe of the socks she’d knitted for Rosalyn’s struggling husband. But that was all. Not another brass farthing was going to leave her hands, not even if those hands were so needle-pricked, they snagged on her stockings. She looked over at the considerable pile of handkerchiefs. Rosalyn, Cook, and Mrs. Franklin, the housekeeper, were all getting some, as well as Allissa, the squire, and Lady Montravan. And his lordship…
    When the tiny stitches blurred in front of her weary eyes, Petra set her sewing aside and stretched her stiff muscles. Then she went to her bureau and reached under her gloves for the old reticule that held her fortune. It was heavy. Pound notes rustled and coins clinked. Petra could almost hear the devil whispering temptations in her ear. If it weren’t the middle of the night, she’d take all the money and go buy him the most lavish, stupendous, one-of-a-kind gift she could ever hope to find, something a lot more worthy of the Earl of Montravan than another handkerchief or another embroidered lion, hawk, and scepter.
    But it was the middle of the night, and Petra did know that she needed every last pence of her savings if she was going to make her own way in the world. Who knew if Lady Montravan would even write her a reference if she left? Or how long before she found another position, or how much a decent lodging would cost until she found one? Rosalyn and her curate were barely surviving, so Petra could not add to her sister’s burden, even if