Chapter Nine
“The real question is, what are you going to get the most important person in your life?”
“Who?”
“Me, of course!”
“Of course it’s you.”
“I’m just saying,” came a teasing voice from the doorway, “is that enough ribbon?”
Irene did not immediately look around; she was using her thumb to hold down a complex piece of ribbon and her index fingers to hold some ribbon and her other hand—
The whole parcel fell apart, the ribbon slipping from her fingers and the brown paper opening up around the delicate china shepherdess that was, as it was turning out, almost impossible to wrap.
Irene sighed as her cousin Samuel, perennially lost looking with hair that swooped rather than laid flat, entered the room. “You are here to help, I trust?”
“Far be it from me to turn down a lady’s request for assistance,” said Samuel with a grin. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
It was a fair question, even Irene had to admit. It was, after all, his parents’ home.
“Frank said that she would help me with the wrapping—something about a perfect engineering solution to calculating the precise amount of ribbon required,” said Irene with a wry smile as her cousin dropped into the dining chair next to her. “She was helpful for about five minutes—”
“You mean, she lectured you for five minutes,” interrupted Samuel with a snort.
Irene wanted to give him a stern reproof, but as that had been exactly what his sister had done, she was forced to say, “Then she suddenly stood bold upright, yelled something along the lines of ‘It might just work,’ and then ran out of here. Most incomprehensible.”
“And yet very Frank,” said Samuel blithely. “She’s my sister, so I am allowed to say such things.”
Well, she wasn’t sure about that. Of all her cousins, Irene understood Frank the least. Two years between them, Frank was an intellectual who loved to work with her hands.
Twice, she had heard her Uncle John scold her cousin Frank for getting engine oil on her gown, and the number of times her Aunt Florence had murmured to Irene’s own mother that there was no possibility Frank would ever attract a suitor with ink stains on her fingertips… Well. Irene had lost count.
Frank’s eldest brother, Samuel, peered at the gift Irene was attempting to wrap. “Who is that for?”
“My mother. She has started a collection, which makes me shudder to think how many we may end up with,” Irene admitted, “but she likes them.”
It had been the second-to-last present she’d had to buy, and it was proving a real bother to wrap.
Samuel leaned back in his chair, evidently not that interested in actually helping her. “Would it not be easier to wrap if it were in a box?”
Irene blinked. “‘A box’?”
Why had I not thought of that? It was an excellent suggestion, and one she rather wished she had alighted upon herself. So why had the incredibly simple idea not occurred to her?
Because, a small voice whispered at the back of her mind, much to her surprise, you’ve been too busy thinking about Wilfred.
About his present, she corrected herself with a sudden rush of heat to her cheeks. The man was impossible to buy for. That was what came of being the second daughter to a relatively impoverished viscount, when your best friend was a duke.
“You look pensive.”
Irene started. Her cousin was examining her closely, a strange sort of worry on his face.
Worry, about her? When there were people like Frank in the world?
“I’m just attempting to think of the perfect Christmas gift for Wilfred,” she said with a wry smile, leaning back herself and giving up on wrapping the shepherdess until a suitable box could be procured. “The man is impossible!”
“‘Impossible’? I always thought old Aynor was a considerably easygoing sort of chap,” Samuel said mildly. “What’s he done now?”
“Oh, nothing, except be completely inscrutable,” Irene said vaguely, trying not to allow her mind to meander back to that walk in the park.
That walk he had not initially taken with her, but with that woman. Whoever she was. Miss Fletcher.
“It’s just—he’s a duke,” she continued with a sigh. “The man has more than enough money to merely buy whatever he wants whenever he wants it. There’s nothing he has ever denied himself and so thinking of a gift he needs—”
“Isn’t the point of Christmas,” her cousin interrupted, “that a gift is something you want, not something you need?”
There was absolutely no reason why her pulse would skip a beat at that precise moment. “But I don’t know what he wants.”
Oh, she knew his hopes and dreams. Wilfred wanted, Irene was fully aware, to found a school one day. He had been mightily impressed with her cousin Thomas’s efforts with the St. Thomas’s Orphanage and wondered if his own focus could be a school for the poor.
“I want the name Aynor to mean something,” he had once said to her earnestly. “Not just in my lifetime, but beyond.”
But something small, something she could actually afford…and it had been his birthday but six weeks ago. It had been challenging enough to think of a birthday gift.
Irene’s eyes sharpened. “Wait a minute. You’re going to be the Marquess of Aylesbury one day.”
It was perhaps not the most politic thing to say.
“What, you mean when my father…” Samuel started, a stiff terseness in his voice.
“No, no, I meant—well, Uncle William gave up his title of Duke of Cothrom for Cousin Thomas, did he not?” Irene said hastily, discomfort twisting her stomach. “It is perfectly possible that your father might do the same for you.”
The look of horror on her cousin’s face was quite unmatched. One would have thought his mouth had been pried open, his jaw unable to close. “You don’t think so?”
“So you would be a nobleman with a fancy title. What do you want for Christmas?” Irene prompted, hoping to goodness he would give her a good idea.
Samuel wiggled his eyebrows. “Are you saying you haven’t got me a present yet? Is this all a subterfuge? You’ve already purchased old Aynor a present, haven’t you?”
“You know perfectly well that we outlawed cousin presents five years ago. It was getting ridiculous with so many of us,” Irene said shortly, her temper rising. “No, it’s—look, Wilfred is one of the kindest, most joyful people I know. He’s patient, he’s always on time—”
“Something my mother is still attempting to learn,” interjected Samuel with a snort.
“He really is the most…the most impressive…” Irene swallowed.
She had never intended to begin a monologue of how amazing Wilfred was, and unfortunately, it appeared that her cousin was going to tease her about it.
Of course he was.
“You seem enamored of him,” Samuel said lightly.
“I am not enamored.”
“No shame if you are. He would be an excellent match for you,” her cousin continued.
Irene almost laughed. An excellent match—for her? “You mean because I am a mere viscount’s daughter with no title?”
“Because he is a good man,” Samuel said steadily, a slight crease in his brow as he beheld her. “Can you think of one better?”
Certainly, she could. In a moment, the name would come to her and she could declaim it and that would show her cousin just how ridiculous he was being.
Excellent match, indeed!
The trouble was, now that Irene came to think about it, there was not a single name that came to mind.
There were few people as tender as Wilfred, as charming as him, as kind as him.
She could think of no one who was so utterly selfless in his manner of moving through the world, and he was… Well. He was not bad-looking.
Irene determinedly did not think about that kiss. That mistake. That error in judgment that both of them had somehow slipped into.
It would never be repeated, of course. Even if she—no, it was ridiculous.
“You do, don’t you?”
Her cousin’s words were more incredulous than teasing, and when Irene looked up, it was to see Samuel’s wide-eyed face in slack shock.
“Do what?” Irene asked vaguely, still trying to get the memory of Wilfred’s hands on her arms as he’d kissed her most thoroughly from her mind.
Samuel exhaled slowly, not taking his eyes away. “You love him.”
“No, I—don’t be ridiculous. I don’t love—”
“Hallo there. Your mother said you’d be here,” said Wilfred happily as he stepped into the Aylesbury dining room.
Irene hastily rose to her feet in shock, her body propelling her in a direction that was utterly nonsensical. A pair of scissors, six feet of ribbon, and a flurry of brown paper cascaded from her skirts onto the floor.
“Careful, Reeny!”
Both Wilfred and her cousin shouted the two words as though that could change the fact that the scissors had stuck blade down into the carpet a good two inches away from her foot.
Irene exhaled shakily. “Whoops.”
“Honestly, sometimes you’re as bad as Frank,” Samuel was muttering, but Wilfred had leaped forward and was already pulling the scissors out of the carpet.
“You’re not injured?” Wilfred asked quietly, his gaze surveying her face.
“I-I… No, I am quite well,” Irene managed.
That was, her pulse was thumping wildly and her nerves were taut from the shock of what could have been and Wilfred was holding on to her arms in the precise manner as when he had kissed her and the physical reminder was melting something strange in the pit of her stomach and her head was spinning—
“I think that’s quite enough Christmas present wrapping for you,” her cousin said firmly. “You can leave all that paraphernalia here, and I’ll get the butler to find a suitable box for your shepherdess.”
“I hope that’s not my present.” Wilfred offered a cordial smile, but his expression became serious again as he looked down at Irene. “You are quite certain you are unharmed?”