'Tis the Season: Regency Yuletide Short Stories

by Christi Caldwell

  “Hey,” Frederick exclaimed.

  With her spare hand, Creda ruffled his dark curls and continued her enumeration.

  “He did not so much as twitch a facial muscle when you, Iris, said you wanted to become the first female doctor so you could cut open dead bodies.”

  Martha buried a laugh in her hand. “Graham wouldn’t.” He was unflappable. That ease and calm didn’t come with the rank he’d just recently taken on as an agent for the Home Office.

  Iris bristled. “Graham being unfazed merits more of a reaction than the prospect of cutting open dead bodies?”

  “Only because we all know you couldn’t have changed that much since you were gone,” Frederick supplied for her. “You can’t even tolerate a worm in your hand.”

  The girl’s cheeks went bright red. “There were fifty of them… in my bed.”

  Frederick thumped the table, commanding the pair to silence. “Creda has not finished her defense of Graham.”

  Martha’s eldest twin gave a toss of her head, reveling in that defense. “More important, it bears stating and repeating that Graham could have quite contentedly left us behind at Mrs. Munroe’s.”

  “We wanted to be at Mrs. Munroe’s,” Iris pointed out.

  That cut through the lightness the previous dialoguing had stirred in her chest. Martha frowned and sat upright. “What?” Her daughters had wanted to remain at Mrs. Munroe’s?

  Her daughters continued speaking over her query. “But he said he wished to meet us and introduce us to his family,” Creda countered. “It doesn’t matter that we want to remain at Mrs. Munroe’s, but rather, that he wished to meet us. After all, most stepfathers are content without young children underfoot.”

  “Says who?” Frederick shot back, bristling with his ten-year-old’s indignation.

  Iris released a long sigh. “Everrrrybody knows it. But Lord… Graham was more interested in meeting us, and therefore, that speaks a good deal about him.” A mischievous sparkle lit her eyes. “Furthermore, Graham is fine with you underfoot, so he has to be incredibly patient.”

  Frederick stuck his tongue out, and as the pair resumed their bickering, Martha’s focus lingered not on that endearing and observant enumeration provided by her daughter, but rather, one statement. “You want to remain at Mrs. Munroe’s?” she blurted.

  That cut across the quarreling siblings. “Of course we do,” Creda said for the pair.

  “I… see.” Martha clasped her fingers and stared at the interlocked digits. What did you expect? You drove your daughters away. Did you think they should want to live with you? Yes, it had been to protect them. And now she’d rushed headlong to Mrs. Munroe’s to retrieve them… with a new husband… and stepfather.

  “You’re sad,” Iris said hesitantly.

  “I’m not.” How did Martha manage that lie so easily? Since Graham had asked her to marry him and said he wanted to be a family with her three children, she’d been only happy. Until now.

  Creda covered her hands with one of her own. “It is… not because of you, Mama,” she said gently, in the greatest of role reversals. “You do know that?”

  No, she didn’t.

  “Why should she know that?” Frederick snapped. “When you don’t even want to be with u-us.” And the façade of anger gave way to a trembling syllable that conveyed the depth of his like sadness. “Is it because of Graham?” The fire was back in his eyes. “Because if it is, it’s only because you don’t know him. He’s kind and wonderful, and he throws snowballs and—”

  “You think that’s what this is about?” Creda creased her eyebrows. “That we don’t want to be with you, as a family?” Folding her arms at her chest, she passed an accusatory stare between her mother and brother. “That we don’t like Lord… Graham?”

  Martha wet her lips. “You… do?”

  “Of course we do,” Iris said with another of her usual eye rolls. “We’re not so selfish that we don’t want to see our own mother happy.”

  “What manner of ill opinion do you have of us?” Creda muttered.

  “We are very happy to be reunited for the holidays,” Iris went on, the eternal peace-keeper. “And come to know Graham.”

  “He smiles quite a lot, and it’s hard not to like someone who smiles so much,” Creda chimed in.

  “We just have come to enjoy our lessons and instructors at Mrs. Munroe’s.”

  Martha sank back in her chair. “Indeed?”

  These almost two years apart, she’d imagined her daughters morose, missing their cottage in High Town, forlorn. Only to find that, all this time, they’d been—

  “You’re happy there?” Frederick asked the question for her, his incredulity her own.

  Both girls nodded and spoke in unison.

  “Quite so.”

  “Abundantly so.”

  The twin girls exchanged a look. There was another slight nod from Iris, who spoke on their behalf. “Now would be an apt time to ask that, after the holidays, we be permitted to return for the next semester.”

  “We’re studying powerful women in England’s history,” Creda said excitedly. “Or we were… but we left and did not see the conclusion of the unit.”

  This was what this was about? Her daughters wanted to remain on as students?

  “I daresay Frederick and I have the great honor of spending company in three women to rival those late figures.”

  Martha gasped, and she and her children swung their gazes to the tall figure towering over them.

  Her heart did another quick leap, as it always did—as it always had—whenever her husband was near.

  “Graham!” Frederick cried, jumping to his feet. He rushed headlong into Graham’s arms, and her husband immediately folded the boy in an easy paternal embrace that Martha’s own father, who’d loved her, had never managed. Nor the man who’d sired Frederick.

  Dropping their chins atop their palms, the twin girls released matching sighs.

  Over the top of Frederick’s tousled curls, Graham held Martha’s stare. “The carriage is readied.”

  She forced a smile, the muscles of her face strained so tight her cheeks ached.

  It was time.

  Chapter 3

  Graham despised his mother and father’s winter house parties.

  To be fair, he’d abhorred them since he’d been a boy of three. It was, in fact, one of the oldest memories he carried. He’d been marched out in a neat little line with his two older brothers, presented like little ducks for the lords and ladies invited by his mother.

  The guests had oohed and aahed over the ducal heir, spare, and… Graham, the third-born, less-useful spare.

  Now, he’d subject his new family to that same misery.

  “It is so very grand,” Creda whispered.

  Pulled from his musings, Graham looked to the little girl with her nose pressed to the carriage window.

  “I can’t see,” Frederick grumbled from the opposite end of the bench the three siblings occupied.

  Iris and Creda ignored him and vied for the better place at the lead pane to catch sight of the properties. The wooded hills and valleys lay covered in a smooth, untouched blanket of snow. The winding waters surrounding the sprawling manor had since frozen.

  “It is… a castle,” Iris breathed.

  The monumental country house had been constructed just over one hundred years earlier. “A palace,” he replied, the rote familial ancestry lesson slipping out. The design by Sir John Vanbrugh had been commissioned by the current duke’s great-grandfather. “The castle-constructing phase of English history had been completed by—”

  “The year 1500,” Iris interrupted.

  Graham bowed his head in acknowledgment of that acumen. “Very impressive.”

  The young girl preened under his praise. “We’ve studied architecture of Great Britain,” she explained. “I enjoyed the classes, but Creda fell asleep during the lectur—owww.” She glared at her twin. “Don’t kick me.”

  “I didn’t fal
l asleep.”

  “Girls,” Martha admonished, and as the pair continued their quarrel, Graham found his first smile of the day. This… normality was something his own family had been without.

  He and his brothers had not expressed their discontent with words, but had instead settled disputes and fraternal discord with battles: swimming, racing, fencing, and ultimately the ride that had claimed his brother Lawrence’s life.

  The pain of that loss was always more acute… here, in the place where it had happened. The fateful race between Graham and Lawrence had seen his elder brother with a broken neck and then dead. It was, of course, why his family hated him…

  Martha slid her fingers into his, and he clung to them, accepting the offering of support she gave, finding comfort when there’d been none all these years.

  His driver knocked on the door.

  “Are you ready?” she mouthed.

  To suffer through the whispers and pointed looks? He’d become accustomed long ago to the gawking interest. His new family, however, had not. As such, he was tempted to order their trunks hefted atop the carriage once more and the conveyance turned back to London. “As ready as one can be prepared for my family,” he muttered as Terry drew the door open.

  The children clambered for the door, pushing and shoving against one another. “Hurry.”

  “Move.”

  “Won’t you please get—”

  Frederick’s, Creda’s, and Iris’ frustrated commands all rolled together, until there was, at last, silence.

  Neither Graham nor Martha made a move to climb down.

  “I should… warn you before we enter, my father isn’t a warm man.” Graham clenched and unclenched his jaw.

  Why can’t you be more like Heath or Lawrence?

  In the bereaved tones of his father, those words had been a lamentation nearly two decades ago. Now, they rang out as clear as they had then, that moment Graham had come to acknowledge that his father saw him as a failure and nothing more.

  Martha touched two gloved fingertips to his jaw. “You’ve shared enough with me about your father to know he’s not warm. No man should treat his son the way yours did you. But I’d still have you know peace with your family.”

  It was the fanciful wish of an optimist. “You’re certain? It is not too late to return to London and skate at Hyde Park.”

  Martha laughed softly. “As tempting as it is, we will have to wait for Hyde Park. Now, go.” She gave him a teasing shove.

  Graham jumped out, the gravel crunching noisily under his boots. Reaching back, he held a hand inside, and Martha, without hesitation, placed her fingers in his.

  Together, they made the trek down the remaining length of the drive and up the first tier of long limestone steps.

  The wind gusted lightly, carrying the excited murmurings of the three children ahead. Their laughter came so freely. Even with the struggle they’d known at their tender years, they had somehow reclaimed—or, mayhap in the girls’ case, retained—an innocence, an ability to laugh. Whereas Graham had been so guarded, building walls to keep everyone out early, early on.

  “It’s going to be all right, Graham,” Martha said softly, lightly squeezing his hand.

  He paused at the first patio, bringing them both to a stop. His wife gave him a questioning look. She sought to reassure… him? “There is no one like you,” he whispered, brushing several crimson curls back behind her ear.

  Her cheeks pinkened. “I’ve not done anything.”

  Graham lowered his brow to hers. “Any other woman would embrace her deserved resentment over my family’s treatment and let my mother go hang for her interference. And yet, you insist on us being here.”

  “Because it is the right thing to do,” she said so simply that he fell in love with her all over again.

  “Mama? Graham?”

  Standing at the top step, his little hands propped on his hips, Frederick stared impatiently down at them.

  “He and his sisters are far braver than I,” he said from the corner of his mouth as they started up the second tier of stone steps.

  “They’re children. And somehow still have an optimism that most would have lost had they experienced what they did.” Martha’s expression briefly darkened, but then that shadow lifted. “You helped him find that child’s joy again, Graham. You.”

  “No, together we did that,” he murmured. How very different the little boy now skipping in an impatient line was from the surly one he’d met over a month ago. “You, me, and Frederick together.” They’d all helped one another heal.

  And for her talk of a child’s innocence, Martha’s resolve to be here at the holidays and her talk of peace with his family revealed more of her son’s optimism than she credited to herself.

  They reached the terrace, and Frederick abruptly stopped his pacing. “About time,” he groused, trotting over to his sisters, who remained in a neat line at the arched entryway. The trio parted as Graham and Martha came forward.

  Graham had reached for the door knocker, that regal winged figure he’d been intrigued by as a child, when Creda spoke.

  “Zeus and… the Nike of Samothrace,” she breathed, reaching past him.

  “Who?” Frederick asked.

  “She’s just spouting off a tale one of the instructors regaled the younger girls with,” Iris insisted, but her sister continued on, pausing only to glare at her twin.

  “It’s not a tale. The Greeks worshipped her because they believed she could prevent them from dying and help grant them the ability to be victorious in any task they undertook.”

  And there was the ode of his father, the reason he’d despised Graham, a child and then young man unable to properly focus in any task. Once, his father’s shame had gutted him. He’d hardened himself to that rejection. It hadn’t been until Martha, however, that he’d come to see his own worth, to realize that his weaknesses did not define him, but rather, were just part of him.

  Graham held her gaze. “I love you,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes lit. “I love you, too.”

  With that, Graham found the courage to knock.

  Before the metal even hit the oak panel, the doors were drawn open, yanking the bronze Nike from Graham’s fingers.

  Avril, his hair a stark white and a vivid contrast to the crimson livery he wore, greeted Graham with his usual smile, even as the family’s loyal butler knew every secret and story of the nobleman he served. “Lord Whitworth.” He swept aside, allowing them to enter.

  Despite the tension and unease that had dogged him since his mother’s letter had arrived, Graham felt himself grinning. “Avril, my good man,” he returned as he allowed Martha, the twins, and Frederick to enter ahead of him. “May I present my wife, Lady Whit… worth,” he finished as his stare caught on the regal duchess at the top of the curved marble staircase.

  His mother wound her way down the crimson carpets that lined the center of the steps. “Graham,” she called down, her voice bouncing off the forty-foot ceiling. Those crisp tones managed to at last silence the three children.

  Graham? What… in blazes? None of his kin, not even his mother, had called him by that preferred name. It was a nonsensical detail to note as she made her deliberate march, slow step by slow step, toward his new family, the family she’d previously rejected, and yet, even with that, Graham’s brow creased.

  Martha stood with a regal bearing to rival the Duchess of Sutton’s, her shoulders back, her spine straight, and her head up. If she was unnerved by her first meeting with Graham’s mother, she gave no indication.

  Aside from the handful of servants milling about, there was one notable absence for Graham’s homecoming… or rather, two: the Duke of Sutton and Heath.

  Anger simmered within him, safer and more welcome than any of the regret that his brother and father could never, nay, would never be the men he always expected them to be.

  Quashing those useless sentiments, Graham slipped his hand into Martha’s in a telltale showing of
solidarity.

  Her fingers curled reflexively in his, clenching and unclenching.

  His mother stopped at the bottom step and surveyed the group assembled upon her white Italian marble foyer, before her gaze ultimately settled on Martha. Or, more specifically, on Graham’s and Martha’s joined palms.

  His wife’s chin came up a notch, and then she dipped a slow, deep curtsy. “Your Grace,” she murmured.

  Martha’s daughters immediately followed suit.

  Creda shoved a discreet elbow into Frederick’s side.

  With a grunt, the boy added a belated bow.

  His mother drifted closer to Martha and then paused, stretching her palms out.

  Confusion in her eyes, Martha looked at the duchess’ hands before placing hers in them.

  A watery smile curved his mother’s lips. “I am so very happy to meet you, Martha.”

  As Martha’s mouth parted with her shock, the duchess drew her close and folded her in her arms.

  Martha’s arms hung uselessly by her sides, and over the top of the smaller woman’s head, his wife’s gaze met his. Then, with a smile, she brought her arms up about Graham’s mother.

  Chapter 4

  When she’d mentally braced herself for her first meeting with Graham’s mother, Martha had anticipated an icy derision only a noblewoman could manage.

  She’d suspected her new mother-in-law might ignore her.

  Of all the expectations Martha had, a warm smile and a hug had not been among them.

  No, that cool reception inevitably came… from the guests assembled at the duke and duchess’ dining table.

  This was the life her father had desired for her, seated amongst lords and ladies with the most venerated titles.

  Coward that she was, Martha found herself counting down course after endless course and envying her children, who’d had the good fortune to be whisked away to the nurseries.

  For this was a special kind of hell.

  Her skin burned from the furtive and, in most cases, not-so-furtive glances sent her way by the thirty guests assembled.

  The smallest of gratitude, however, came from being seated alongside an occasionally dozing white-haired nobleman, Lord Lisle.