A Yuletide Treasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

three faces, some quite young, were peering into the room behind him. She raised her hand in greeting, and for a moment, it looked as if he wouldn’t be able to keep them from swarming in. “Not yet,” he said, quite kindly. “Let me talk to her first.”
    He glanced at Camilla again, then turned back, adding, “Run along, Tinarose, and tell Cook there’ll be one more to dinner—whenever that is.”
    “Oh, no,” Camilla said, starting forward.
    “Come, you’ll surely stay to eat with us. Then Merridew will take you wherever you want to go, though I’ve no doubt he’ll complain mightily while doing it. You mustn’t take any notice, however. It only encourages him.”
    Without quite knowing how he did it, Camilla found herself sitting on the settee once more, the knitted quilt again tucked around her knees. She pushed it aside. “I’m entirely recovered, Sir Philip. I thank you for bringing me inside, but I’m afraid I must delay your dinner.”
    “You can’t possibly delay it more than my cook does.”
    As he was speaking, a burly young parlor maid bustled in, the ribbons on her cap a-flying, carrying a large silver tray, burdened with a fat, gleaming teapot. Cups and saucers, little serving dishes and eating utensils, rattled like castanets as she walked, her steps firm and rapid. She hooked a small table with her large foot and sent it, with a kick worthy of a rugby player, skating across the highly polished wooden floor. It stopped in front of the settee, more or less.
    With an emphatic bang, she dropped the tray on the table. A few small cakes slid off their plates. “There you go,” she said cheerfully. “Cuppa’ll soon get the roses blooming in your cheeks, miss.”
    She stood there, arms folded across her significant bosom. “Well, g’wan,” she said, when Camilla hesitated under this unorthodox treatment. “Set you up a treat, it will. Nobody makes a cuppa like Cook.”
    “It’s very good of you,” Camilla said with a sideways glance at Sir Philip. He didn’t seem to find anything odd in his parlor maid’s behavior.
    “Try one o’ them little pink cakes,” the maid urged. “They’re my favorites. She makes ‘em special for me.”
    “Thank you for sharing them.” She felt that for two pins the maid would have nudged her companionably and asked her to make some room. Having been raised to show scrupulous politeness to everyone, from the highest in the land to the most lowly, Camilla allowed no trace of her amazement to appear in her expression.
    “Lawks,” the maid said cheerfully, “I’ve been and forgot the milk. I’ll be back before the cat can lick her ear.” Still with resounding footsteps, the maid hurried off.
    “Mavis doesn’t often forget the milk,” Sir Philip said, leaning forward to pour out a cup of the blackest tea Camilla had ever seen. “Usually it’s the sugar. She’s right, though, the little pink cakes are delicious.”
    Though she tried to look attentive, all Camilla’s interest focused on the steam that coiled up from the Queensware cup. The savory scent ofthe tea wafted toward her, rich, vibrant, Indian. He smiled and passed her the cup.
    Her mother and Nanny Mallow would have sneered at the tannin-thick brew. To Camilla, feeling the last shred of ice melt away from within under the pressure of the bitter, boiled liquid, it was the finest cup of tea ever created. She sighed with contentment, replacing the cup in the saucer, which, she now noticed, did not match the creamy whiteness of the Wedgwood cup. On the contrary, the saucer blazed in shades of red and blue, Imari from mysterious, cloistered Japan.
    “You wanted that,” he observed, reaching out to pick up the pot again.
    “Yes.” Restored, she recollected her duty. ‘Thank you, Sir Philip, for rescuing me from the snow. I may have seemed insensible, but I am aware of your kindness.”
    “Kindness? Not a bit of it. I merely thought you looked untidy lying out on my lawn.”
    She smiled