Page 4 of A Cinderella Christmas

Not that he should care. He’d spent the past two years trying not to care about … anything. His state of blessed numbness made it easier to go on without his father and his sister.

Still, he felt the opposite of numb as he continued with Eve down Holborn Street. Just seeing her reminded him of his sister before her illness—how the two girls had giggled at his ridiculously pompous pronouncements, how they’d groaned in unison when he’d chided them like a typical older brother. He had to find some way to help her. Natalie would want that, wouldn’t she?

“Do you often go to Lincoln’s Inn Fields?” he asked, hoping to figure out how she and her family had come to this pass. The carriage traffic cleared, enabling them to cross.

Her features softened. “As often as I can. Even in winter, there’s enough greenery to cheer the soul.” With a sudden smile, she nodded to her brother. “And this one likes to run about in the gardens. There wasn’t much of that in Verdun. Papa was afraid of him straying too far.”

Her soft spot toward her rapscallion of a brother was endearing, to say the least. “How did you end up in France, anyway? I can’t remember if Natalie ever said.”

“Papa was determined to take me there during that brief period when the war halted. He had some notion of improving my education by exposing me to architecture and the arts in Paris. Sadly, we’d only been there a month when it was announced that the war was back on and Napoleon made his decree concerning the English who were still in France.”

The decree that sent them all to detainee camps. “Your father must have been disappointed to find himself restricted to a Verdun détenu camp for so many years.”

“You don’t know the half of it. He nearly got into trouble over a pamphlet he wanted to publish concerning Napoleon’s outrageous behavior. Lord Jonathan—I mean, the duke—talked him out of it. And when His Grace saw I had an interest in embroidery, he recommended that Papa engage my stepmother to teach me sewing, too.” Her face lit up. “She was wonderful for Papa.”

His heart sank. “Was?”

She stared off down the street. “I should have mentioned that, I suppose. Papa is also … gone. He died on our journey from France.”

That struck him hard. He was painfully aware of how deep such grief could run, and to think she had suffered, too—“I am so sorry to hear that. Your father was a good man.” As opposed to his own feckless father, who’d nearly wasted the entire family fortune enjoying himself, never meeting a horse race he didn’t wish to put money on.

“Thank you,” she said, looking distressed. Once more, he’d banished the joy from her face, which he hated doing.

“And now, I’m the Baron Archer,” James announced, puffing out his chest. Then his face fell. “Or I’m supposed to be, anyway. If I hadn’t been born in France.”

“What does he mean?” Noel asked Eve as they approached Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “James being born in France shouldn’t change his claim to the title. It might impact his ability to serve in Parliament, but—”

“Jimmy,” Eve said, shooting Noel a quelling glance, “could you run ahead and see if Mr. Washburn is in this morning?” She grabbed James’s arm before he could leave. “And no picking pockets, do you hear? Or there will be no gingerbread for you when we get home.”

As James nodded solemnly, then ran off, she sighed.

“No gingerbread?” Noel said dryly.

Apparently misunderstanding his point, Eve said, “One of my mother’s customers has a cook that makes the most heavenly gingerbread, and sometimes she’s generous enough to give us some. It’s Jimmy’s favorite treat.”

“Still, that’s your idea of a punishment for picking pockets?”

Her cheeks flamed as she released his arm. “I know it’s inconceivable to a man of your standing that anyone should feel so desperate,” she said, the words pouring out of her, “but the lad is trying to fill rather big shoes—our papa’s. He thinks it’s his duty to provide for me and my stepmother. And it’s not as if he could find a job at his age … unless it’s dangerous, like sweeping chimneys or working in a bootblacking factory where—”

“I wasn’t advocating that,” he said quickly.

“Weren’t you?” She walked briskly ahead.

“Of course not. I merely didn’t realize things had become so bad for your family.” He mused a moment. “I wish you had come to me. It’s not as if you don’t know where I live. I might have been able to help.” Even as he heard himself say the hasty words, he groaned. The last thing he needed was to get involved with a woman who clutched at his heart with every cough.

“You would hire my pickpocketing half brother as a footboy, I suppose?” she said with a shaky laugh.

“That might not be a bad idea,” he quipped, willing to say almost anything to keep her laughing. “A light-fingered footboy could steal a rose for my mother from the neighbor’s garden, slip my uncle’s flask of fine whisky out of his pocket and into mine, and remove eggs from beneath our hens without alarming them.”

She eyed him askance. “Surely you do not actually keep chickens in Mayfair!”

“No. Only at our estate.”

“In that case, I can’t allow Jimmy to work for you as a light-fingered footboy,” she said teasingly. “We would miss him too much if he moved to the country.”

“I see. Then I shall just have to settle for trying to help your family some other way.” He sobered. “I was thinking more in terms of loaning your stepmother money until such time as the matter of James’s title is settled.”

Her face reddened with embarrassment. “They’ve told us it could be years. Forgive me, sir, but we don’t need your charity.”