Page 51 of How the Belle Stole Christmas

Christmas fast approached, and Sir Nicholas Bowen was ready.

In a fortnight, he’d slip through the window once more, heaping modified coal into the stove and leaving new toys on the children’s beds.

This time, they’d know better than to show off their prizes.

This time, they’d keep the damn things. And surely the soused secretary of the foundling hospital wouldn’t notice the new long-burning coals for several days at least.

Nico predicted a successful run this year.

If the governess would cooperate.

He saw her as soon as he entered the hospital courtyard.

Miss Dean stood in front of the large door, behind a small boy, her hands on his shoulders.

A vision of prim propriety. Everything about her average from her height to her features to the brown gown encasing her frame.

What people saw who weren’t good at seeing.

Nico saw a rare sort of woman, the kind with a heart as strong as her spine and a brain as sharp as her tongue.

Her prim trappings hid well the sumptuous beauty of her honeyed hair.

No coiffure could be more severe than hers, no shoulders more set.

If she only knew what he was thinking every time he saw her.

What color are her stockings? Red?

God, he hoped so. But she never flashed them.

Never gave more than a peep of her practical little half boots.

The length of her skirts was infuriating, demonically precise, supernaturally prudish.

What magic did she use to keep them eternally in place?

No magic. She had none. Just sheer will alone.

Or perhaps some speck of her family’s transcendent blood inhabited her veins, laying mostly dormant, focusing itself entirely on her hemline.

Didn’t matter that women couldn’t inherit transcendent magic.

If anyone could defy nature, it would be her.

If she just lifted her damn skirts a half inch, he might see red.

His mad impulse of a Christmas gift might encase her calves, which were, in all likelihood, finely shaped, the perfect size for his palm as he ran his hand up her leg.

Governesses didn’t need toys, he’d told himself a year ago; they needed things of a practical nature.

As if a man secretly gifting a woman stockings was practical.

As if red—he removed his hat and ruffled a hand through his hair—was practical.

As if knowing a woman for a mere fortnight and wanting to kiss her was practical.

Good God, focus, Nico. Courtyard. Orphans. Task at hand. Focus.

“Good morning, Miss Dean,” he said, sweeping low for a bow.

Her brown eyes glowed in welcome, but her pink lips thinned. They always did, their tightness growing or lessening depending on how far he took his flirtations. He’d rein it in for now. Business first.

He smiled at her small charge. “Good morning, Timothy. My friend Lord Knightly will soon be here to sweep you away to London. Are you ready for an adventure?”

The young boy’s head bobbed up and down, a duck on a choppy waters.

Miss Dean gently tugged his earlobe. “Timothy is quite excited to begin his apprenticeship with Lord Knightly’s father.”

“Mr. Grant is one of the best alchemists in England, and Timothy will become an excellent alchemist under his tutelage.” Nico had noticed the boy’s aptitude earlier that summer when he’d sent sparks flying off a copper cup.

“Lord Knightly’s sister, Miss Grant, is traveling with him.

She bakes excellent biscuits. I would wager she’s made some for you. ”

The boy grew solemn as he looked up at Miss Dean. “Can I have one? It’s still morning, and you say we can’t have sweets until afternoon.”

Miss Dean’s gaze flashed to Nico, softened. They both knew damn well the boy never had any opportunity for sweets. Biscuits were not merely a rarity, they might as well be nonexistent. “You may have as many as Miss Grant pleases to give you. You’ll be in her care starting today.”

Timothy’s eyes brightened. Likely, he already salivated.

“And where is the hospital’s illustrious secretary this morning?” Nico asked.

“Mr. Jameson is sleeping.” Miss Dean’s voice possessed a sigh across every syllable.

Jameson enjoyed brandy a little too much. He was supposed to control the day-to-day operations of the foundling hospital since its owner, the Duke of Morington, lived in London or at his country seat. He merely controlled the already too-tight purse strings while Miss Dean managed the children.

Miss Jane Dean.

Did she recognize him? A question his mind rolled over and over whenever he saw her.

She’d never even hinted that she suspected he was the man who’d kissed her last Christmas.

It had been dark. His veins had pumped with the exhilaration of doing something…

inadvisable. He’d tried to give the toys to Mr. Jameson the day before, had been rejected.

Children of the sort housed in the hospital, Mr. Jameson claimed, should become used to doing without luxury. Toys were luxury.

Like hell they were. Toys were like air to children, necessary for the mind and for the soul.

Behind him, coach wheels and horse hooves rattled over the courtyard drive. Temple Grant, Baron Knightly had arrived.

“Don’t be nervous,” Nico said, patting the boy’s shoulder as the coach creaked to a stop. “The baron and his sister are quite—” the door opened, and a man and woman stepped down—“friendly.”

The man, big of body and dark of hair, was scowling.

Timothy curved into Miss Dean’s embrace.

Nico burst forward, slapping his old friend on the back and hugging Miss Sybil Grant. “Sybil, terribly good to see you.” He turned to Temple and hissed in his ear, “Smile, you arse. You’re scaring the boy.”

Temple’s lips pulled back into a not-quite smile beneath steel-gray eyes and a thick mane of dark hair. “Is this Timothy?”

Trembling, the boy shook his head. “No, sir. Not me at all.”

“Oh, the poor dear.” Sybil knelt in front of Timothy, giving him the full force of her wide smile and sparkling blue eyes.

A lock of honey-gold hair fell over her temple, and she brushed it away.

Temple’s decision to bring her along was brilliant.

Young, bright, and with so much kindness in her eyes, she’d put the boy at ease where Temple—big, rough-hewn, and scowling—would not.

“My brother’s countenance is harder than his heart.

Don’t fear him. Besides, if he gets grumpy, I’ll make him travel outside the carriage.

Here.” She pulled a bundle from her pocket. “Would you like a biscuit?”

Timothy looked to Miss Dean, who nodded with a smile, and then he took the outstretched sweet, stuffing every inch of it in his mouth at once.

Sybil laughed and stood, and Temple, his face softening, handed Timothy a rock, black and brown and green, its rough, speckled edges flecked with metallic shine. “Here. Copper, yes? That’s your element?”

“As far as we know,” Nico said. “Copper is abundant here. It may simply be what he’s had access to.”

The boy took the rock, chewing around puffed-out cheeks. He turned it and turned it, held it up to the sun, narrowed his eyes. Then the rock moved, all the copper spreading to the rock’s edges.

“Excellent.” Temple slipped his hand into his greatcoat pocket, likely to find what resided in Nico’s pocket, too. “Keep it with you at all times. It will help you sharpen your talent.”

Alchemists carried their tokens from childhood on. Each man’s token was a raw chunk of whatever metal they worked best with. The sides of Nico’s silver had been rubbed smooth long ago. No doubt Temple’s thumb swept over the iron in his pocket.

“Well, Mr. Timothy, will you give me a tour?” Sybil stood and smoothed her skirts, and the boy, cheeks now the usual size and new token pocketed, grasped her hand and pulled her inside.

“We’re staying at the Copper Fox tonight,” Temple said, “before returning to London. I’m headed there now to secure accommodations.”

Nico nodded. “Thank you. The boy needed a home.” All the children did, and homes were scarce.

“Thank you. You don’t have an apprentice that I’m aware of. You could have taken him for yourself.”

“I’ve no work to speak of right now. I declined to accept my father’s old munitions contract.

” The crown had offered, but he had never been able to see himself making weapons, no matter how lucrative the trade.

“Besides, your father needs him.” The Grant family had been ousted from social and professional alchemist circles.

It was no simple social exile, either. They’d been expelled from the Alchemist Guild.

Mr. Grant had been the Master of the Guild, and Temple rising to that position.

And now no family would send their sons to apprentice under them, no daughters would consider Temple for marriage, and every suitor had dropped their interest in Sybil.

The younger Grant sons had been forced to find apprentices and work outside of England.

That the price of leaking alchemist secrets to the king.

It hadn’t been all bad. The king had paid Temple well for his losses, making him a baron and dusting off an old court position for him: Royal Alchemist. They’d come up in the world, technically.

But no one from their world accepted them any longer.

“Thank you,” Temple grumbled. Guilt hung heavy on his shoulders, pulling the corners of his mouth into downward arrows. “He’s been overworked in his forge. Timothy will be a great help.” He cleared his throat, clapped Nico on the shoulder, and boarded the coach.

As it rumbled off, Nico sidled closer to Miss Dean. “You seem pensive.” The first time he’d spoken to her after their midnight encounter, he’d thought his voice would give him away. But without the rough whispered desire that had coursed through it that night, she’d not seemed to notice.