Barbara Metzger by Christmas Wishes

as Madonna-like hours ago. Now he was rearranging his impression of this hobbledehoy waif. The translucent beauty and the purity were still there, but Miss Juneclaire was no child. She was a damned desirable woman. He could think of few things he’d rather do than run his hands through those silky masses or feel her soft lips smile with pleasure under his kisses or—
    “No,” he answered curtly, getting up to snuff out the lantern. “I don’t seduce innocents.”
    “Oh.” Juneclaire could not keep the wistfulness out of her voice. She’d never even met a rake before and was hardly likely to again. She sighed and thought she heard a chuckle from his makeshift bed in the neighboring stall. She must be wrong. Her stone-faced savior was not much given to light humor. “Merry?”
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t you find me attractive?”
    That was a definite chuckle, followed by his own sigh. “Very, minx, but I find I am still somewhat of a gentleman. You are under my care, and that means you are safe, even from me. Especially from me. So stop fishing for compliments and go to sleep, Junco. It’s been a long day and you must be tired. I am.”
    He rolled over in the straw. Juneclaire pulled Pansy closer for warmth but did not shut her eyes. She could see starlight through the chinks in the barn’s roof. Every now and again one of the horses would stamp its foot.
    “Merry?”
    He turned around again, bumping his elbow on the wooden partition. “Blast. Woman, do not try my patience.”
    “But, Merry, I do not wish to sleep. Then I will never know about the animals. Won’t you talk to me a bit so I stay awake?”
    He grumbled, but she could tell he sat up. “What do you wish to talk about?”
    “I don’t know. . . . What do you do all day? Usually, I mean, when you are not traveling about the countryside saving silly girls?”
    So he told her about his clubs and his wagers, Gentleman Jackson’s and Manton’s, the House and the War Office, agricultural lectures and investment counselors. He told her about the opera and the theater and balls, thinking that’s what a rural young miss might care about. None of it whatsoever seemed interesting to him: neither the telling nor the living. Juneclaire, however, seemed to be swallowing his tales as eagerly as Pansy relished the windfall apples stored in another unused stall.
    Juneclaire was thinking that she was right: he was indeed a man of means. His lordship’s life was full and glamorous, dedicated to his own pleasure. He was as far above her as the stars overhead. She never felt her lowly status so much as when he asked what she did all day and she had to tell him about going to church and visiting the sick, helping Cook and directing the housemaids, mending and polishing and tending the flower gardens.
    St. Cloud thought again of seeing her relations drawn and quartered for turning their own flesh and blood into a drudge. They hadn’t managed to ruin her spirit, though, for he could detect the pleasure she derived from her roses and her sugarplums, the pride she took in seeing her aunt’s house run well. Juneclaire was a real lady, and a rakehell such as he was not fit to touch her hem.
    That did not keep the earl from moving his pile of straw to her side of the partition, though, so they could talk more easily. Juneclaire scrunched over to give him more room. St. Cloud did not want to talk about tomorrow, when he would have to force unpleasant decisions on her, and Juneclaire did not want to discuss the future, when this enchanted interlude would be only a memory to savor. So they talked about the past, the happier times before his father was injured and her father was killed, before his mother turned him over to tutors and hers slipped away. They talked of Christmases past.
    “When we were in France, the whole family gathered in the kitchen to stir the Christmas pudding. Did yours?” she wanted to know.
    “The children, sometimes. I doubt my mother even knows the