Barbara Metzger by Christmas Wishes

gossip. No, I’ll have to hope no one recognizes me.”
    “What about your uncle Hebert, the magistrate? He has to know you.”
    “Prosy old puff-guts always hated me, too. He’s not even a real relation, just by marriage, his sister to my uncle. The dastard’s bound to ask a lot of questions.”
    “Like what happened to your face.”
    “I haven’t even seen how bad it looks.” The boy’s grimace told him. “A carriage accident.”
    “And where did you sleep?”
    “Under a hedge.”
    “And what were you doing Bramley way, when everyone knows the Priory is clear west and north?”
    St. Cloud started leading out the chestnuts, and Ned ran to help. “I was meeting Miss Beaumont to escort her to my home. And if anyone asks where is my groom or her maid and how did I mislay a female in my care, I’ll tell them it’s none of their deuced business. Especially not Hebert Cantwell’s.”
    Ned whistled, impressed in spite of himself. “Guess it’s no wonder they call you Satan St. Cloud, telling all those bouncers, and on the Lord’s birthday, too! But they’re going to wonder all the same, a top-of-the-trees gentleman like yourself all mussed up and Charlie Parrett laid out dead. What’ll you say if anyone asks if you killed him?”
    “The truth, brat, that he was such a bungler, he shot himself with his own pistol.”

Chapter Eight
    J uneclaire was on her way out of Bramley before St. Cloud was aware she was gone.
    How silly he was, she had thought on the short walk toward the village earlier that morning, as soon as the cock crowed in predawn light. How silly and how sweet, to think about saving her from gossip. But ruination was only for ladies of the ton, not poor females. Indigent misses could not afford to worry overmuch about their good names, not when they had to consider their next meal. As for Juneclaire, she had no name to speak of, so how could she lose it? Her aunt already considered her no better than she should be because of her parents’ marriage. She made it plain no respectable man would have Juneclaire to wive without good reason.
    Merry, Lord Jordan, though, with all his talk of heirs and London, was Quality. He was of the ton, and he respected Juneclaire enough to offer marriage when he need not at all. He thought she was good enough to bear his own name, bear his children. No one else’s opinion mattered.
    He said she was beautiful and brave. The thought kept her warm on the way to Bramley. She was not feeling very courageous, once wagons and carriages started passing her, local people on their way to church dressed in all their finery, staring at the outsider. She was truly alone now, without even Pansy to talk to, to watch out for. Her own solitary state seemed much magnified without the little animal, now that she was coming among strangers. Merry would look after Pansy, she assured herself, before she fell into a fit of the dismals with missing her companion. The pig, not the man, she tried to convince herself. He was a real gentleman—the man, not the pig—so Pansy would be safe. Juneclaire did not think he’d bring that formidable temper of his to bear versus an innocent creature. Not that his ill humors were a sham, she admitted, but they seemed more an ingrained habit than from genuine meanness. He was kind. He had been mostly gentle with her and more than fair with Ned. He was concerned about his groom and worried that his people were fretting at his late arrival. He was a good man. He wasn’t appreciated by his relatives either, which was just about the only thing he and Juneclaire had in common, besides a night in the barn. Her mind had come full circle. That was enough to dream about, not enough to marry on.
    “Do you need a lift into town, miss? Bells are starting to toll.” An old couple in an antique tilbury had pulled up alongside her while she was woolgathering. “I be Sam Grey,” the man said, “and this be my Alice.”
    Alice took in the odd condition of