Chapter Eight
“Look,” said Wilfred firmly, trying not to grin with delight, “you asked for my help and—”
“And so I expected to receive it!” shot back Irene, a dark look in her eyes as she tried to hold far too many parcels wrapped in brown string. “I suppose you helped Miss Fletcher with her Christmas shopping with far more alacrity!”
He should not have been so delighted. Wilfred knew it, but that did not change the shifting warmth in his stomach that made it impossible not to be elated.
She was annoyed. Annoyed! At him!
“Here,” Irene snapped, shoving a handful of small brown parcels into his arms. “Hold these.”
“You know, this would have been easier had you not insisted on losing Wharton, as usual. She would have carried some.” Even so, Wilfred happily accepted the parcels, trying not to grin as his best friend and the woman he loved attempted to reorganize her handfuls of presents.
He could never have believed it would work so well.
Michael had been clear: just make sure Irene sees you with another woman, and that would do the trick. Wilfred had scoffed.
He was not scoffing now.
“I am tired of being watched by a poor, overworked servant who should not waste her time making sure I’m not dragged into dark corners and ravished.
” Irene froze for a moment and Wilfred wondered if she was thinking about the night he’d kissed her, but she quickly recovered.
“I am certain Miss Fletcher doesn’t struggle to hold all her parcels,” Irene was muttering, almost as though she were not aware she was doing it.
“Miss Fletcher, though apparently free to take walks in the park unsupervised, probably has a servant alongside her when she shops who’s far more help than you! ”
Wilfred knew he should not have been smiling. His best friend was annoyed at him, and he should not have been so ridiculously cheered by it.
But he was. If Irene had shown no interest in Miss Fletcher at all, well, then he would have given up the attempt and would have been out a guinea and a half crown, and that would have been the end of it.
She had shown far more interest in Miss Fletcher than he had, and ever since then, there had been an undertone of irritation with him that Wilfred had expected to grate him but was finding most exhilarating.
Irene was jealous.
“Right,” Wilfred said happily. “Is that all?”
His best friend straightened with a glare that would have melted a lesser man. Wilfred was surprised it did not melt the frost that had not yet succumbed to the pale, wintry sun.
“It is not all,” Irene snapped. “Why are you being so ridiculous today?”
“And why are you being so bad-tempered?” Wilfred asked mildly, secretly thrilled to ask the question. “I have not done anything to offend you, have I?”
Irene opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and looked likely to speak, but then brought her lips together and said nothing.
The Christmas market around them buzzed with excitement.
Wares were being offered and snapped up by eager customers seeking that perfect Christmas gift.
There was a stand selling mulled wine, which spiced the air, and a bonfire at the end of the street had attracted a few street children, who were whooping and laughing as they leaped around it.
“You…”
Wilfred’s eyes snapped back to his companion. “Yes?”
“You have not done anything wrong,” Irene said lamely, with a weak smile. “Wait a moment. Give me those.”
Most against his better judgment, Wilfred handed back the small parcels she had been finding so challenging to keep in her arms and watched as Irene stepped past a stall selling the most delightful pies—truly, he had never smelled better—and toward the street.
He watched with curiosity, trying not to notice the sway of her hips as she walked and the very direct way she moved through a crowd.
That was the trouble with Irene. You always knew she was going to get her own way.
She was currently getting her own way by barging past a gentleman who was about to get into a hansom cab and pouring the parcels she had purchased onto the seat.
There was a rapid conversation with the gentleman, a conversation Wilfred could not hear, and then the man was bowing to her with a smile and Irene was talking to the driver.
Wilfred had to force a pleasant expression on his face and not glower at the man for having the audacity to talk to the woman he loved.
The poor man could not have known, after all.
The hansom cab lurched forward and Irene returned to Wilfred with a crisp nod. “There.”
She sounded and looked most satisfied.
“Have you put all the gifts you have bought as Christmas presents…into a hansom cab?” Wilfred asked curiously.
“Yes,” Irene said smartly, wriggling her gloved and now-unburdened fingers. “Goodness, that feels better.”
“In a cab. On their own.”
“Well, I don’t wish to cease shopping. I haven’t yet found anything for Dempster or Wharton,” Irene said calmly, as though people decided to send presents away by hansom cab all the time.
“I was most clear in my directions to the driver and told him that when all presents arrived safely at the Pernrith townhouse on Queen’s Square, he could apply to the housekeeper and gain an additional shilling. ”
“You are very trusting,” Wilfred observed, rather startled by her innocence.
Something mischievous glittered in Irene’s expression.
“Oh, Mrs. Kinley has a most excellent memory for faces. If the number of boxes that the driver gives her is not fourteen, I shall instruct Mrs. Kinley—or better yet—broad-shouldered Dempster to take a note around to the Peelers. No one steals from me.”
No, you do the stealing, Wilfred could not help but think wistfully. She had stolen his heart five years ago and she had not even realized she had done it. It was truly a talented thief who stole without ever being the wiser themselves.
“And besides, you haven’t purchased any Christmas presents at all!” pointed out Irene with a shake of her head. “You would have thought Christmas wasn’t coming!”
“I don’t have that many presents to buy!” Wilfred protested.
In truth, he had hardly any. When he had been a child, Mrs. Ansley had taken it upon herself to buy gifts for all his servants—making sure never to spend more than three shillings on a maid or ten shillings on the upstairs staff—and to his utter shame, he had never gotten into the habit himself.
Besides, his housekeeper liked doing that sort of thing. Didn’t she?
“Who are you buying Christmas presents for, anyway?” asked Irene, casting him a look he could not translate.
It was an excellent question. Wilfred started counting on his hands. “You, of course—”
“Of course,” Irene said with a giggle. “Something ridiculously expensive, of course.”
He had wondered, when he had gone up to university and left the Chances behind, whether it had been truly appropriate for him to buy presents for young ladies to whom he was not engaged.
He was, after all, a duke—and Wilfred knew that many in Society would talk if another gentleman of similar standing had bought presents for unbetrothed young ladies.
It was not done, after all.
But somehow he had kept doing it, every year, and Wilfred saw no reason to stop now.
“Of course something expensive,” he said gravely as they started to meander through the stalls again, though Irene’s laugh told him she had seen the sparkle in his eye. “Something each for your sisters—goodness, now your eldest is married, do you think I should buy her husband a gift?”
“Probably safer to get them a joint present,” Irene said thoughtfully, picking up a handmade candle and sniffing it. “Too much tallow.”
She put the candle down and they continued on.
“Something for Michael,” Wilfred said, still counting on his fingers and wondering how he would ever repay Irene’s brother for helping him make Irene actually notice him. “Something for your parents. And…that’s it.”
Irene stared, halting before a stall selling the most delicate china ornaments. “‘That’s it’?”
Wilfred shrugged. “I have no family. I only have you. Your family, I mean.”
It was a slip of the tongue he had not intended, but it did not appear that Irene had noticed anything amiss.
“I suppose not. I just thought… Well. That you would have other friends. Gentlemen friends.”
Most people presumed that, and time and time again Wilfred would attempt to explain that he had a best friend already. Her name was Irene.
“And what about Miss Fletcher?” Irene asked, staring at the china perhaps a bit too fixatedly.
He spoke before his mind could catch up with his tongue. “What about her?”
“Wilfred!” Irene tapped him sharply on the arm. “Do you not think you should be getting her a Christmas present? That is…if it is appropriate, naturally. Perhaps you should wait until you propose. If you have not already.”
It was marvelous fishing. Wilfred had to give her the credit for it—not that he was going to answer her questions directly. He would rather keep her on the hook. “Perhaps I have.”
“Well? Have you?”
Wilfred hesitated. This charade with Miss Fletcher could only last so long, and he did not wish to actually lie.
Yes, he had thought to pretend she was a lady from France or somewhere else on the Continent if anyone asked, but he had managed to not have to actually explain that much thus far.
He was not a liar by nature, and if there was one person in the world he did not wish to lie to, it was Irene.
“Oh, look!”
Wilfred did not need to ask what Irene was referencing.
The snow had started suddenly, going from tranquil skies to clouds that gently divested themselves of their fluffy burdens.
The flurries came down in twisting, twirling squalls, the light wind catching the snowflakes and lifting them up, just for a moment, before they fell down again.
Irene stared upward, eyes bright and exultation obvious. “I love snow!”