A Duke for Christmas by Cynthia Bailey Pratt Page A

wooden floor cold as marble under her feet. When she picked up the poker, it felt like an icicle. Nevertheless, she stabbed at the logs, banked and covered in black and ash, until a red glow awoke in the charred wood and flames began to revive. Then she fed it with a new log, nearly dropping it on her toes. Another jab with the poker and a bright blaze began to warm the room. Sophie watched it for a moment, to be sure all had caught, then made a flying ran across the floor to burrow deep under her goose-feather coverlet once more.
    She watched the flames reaching up as if to claw back and devour the cold as her cold feet sought for the flannel-wrapped brick in the depths. Its heat was long gone. Her eyelids began to drift closed again and she did not fight the sensation. When she awoke the second time, it was to the sound of the curtain rings shaking and the scent of tea. Tea!
    Sophie struggled free of her enveloping covers, sitting up. A neatly mobcapped maid had her arms up as she adjusted the hang of the curtains. Another stood by, a supervising light in her eye, her hands full of a tea tray with a most intriguing set of covers upon it.
    “Good morning, madam,” this one said. “Did you sleep well?”
    “Like a top,” Sophie replied. “I made up the fire.”
    “Yes, madam. You should have rang.”
    “Oh, but it was so early. At least, it felt early. I don’t think that clock is right,” she added, pointing to the wooden-case clock on the mantel between two Chinese vases. It said half-past ten.
    “I’ll ask the butler to look at it, madam,” the maid said as she set the tray across Sophie’s knees. “Mr. Tremlow is a dab hand with a clock. Sets and winds them all himself.”
    The other maid, satisfied at last with the curtains, turned about. Sophie glanced at her discreetly, then stared. “Che bella giornata, Lucia!” she said.
    The girl’s large brown eyes flicked to the English maid. “Good...” she prompted.
    “Good mor-ing, Signora Banner.”
    “Morn-ing. Morning.”
    Lucia gave one of those incredibly impressive shrugs by which a Roman says so much more than mere words can express. The English girl gave her own nation’s contribution to silent scorn—an exaggerated eye roll.
    Sophie called her back just before she closed the door. “What’s your name?”
    “Parker, madam,” she answered, looking slightly worried.
    “Parker, I want something from you.”
    “Madam?” Her vague worry solidified into an expression of considerable alarm, as if she were
examining her conscience and finding it foil of gaping
holes. 
    “Could you imagine that you have just been dropped down in a strange country, where you hardly speak a word of the language and haven’t seen a friendly face yet?”
    “Madam?”
    “Would you be very kind to that young lady and her sister? They have a hard time ahead of them just in learning English, let alone discovering all their duties.”
    “Yes, madam. Though that Angelina girl seems to understand more than this one does.”
    “Does she? Well, be kind to them, if you please. Don’t laugh at them or make the mistake of thinking that because they speak no English that they must necessarily be fools. I’m sure that with your example, the other servants will follow along.”
    “Yes, madam,” she said. Sophie was perfectly well aware that Parker couldn’t very well have said anything else. However, she felt confident that some of her meaning had reached the maid.
    After half an hour, Sophie trotted down the stairs, adjusting her shawl about her shoulders. She didn’t see Dominic until she all but ran into him at the bottom of the staircase.
    His hands came up to fend her off, winding up catching her against his chest instead. For one instant, breathing in sharply, Sophie flushed with a remembrance that was more of the body than of the mind. She had the impression that she stared up at him like a frightened doe for a long time. In reality, it couldn’t have been more