'Tis the Season: Regency Yuletide Short Stories

by Christi Caldwell

  “Ewan,” she said, sliding from this lap and taking a spot beside him on the settee. She turned to face him, catching both his hands and lifting them to her heart. “I don’t know what brought this reflection on and the self-recrimination along with it, but you cannot beat yourself up like this. There were a great many good reasons for you to be uncertain of what I was offering. Was it a battle at times? Yes. But not one I ever regretted. Ultimately you accepted it.”

  His frown didn’t lighten. There was a long hesitation, a silence that was not comfortable. She could see him struggling, and it broke her heart.

  “I didn’t accept it entirely, though, did I?” he signed at last.

  She stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “The children,” he signed. “When you told me you were pregnant with Jonny and later Abby, my reaction was…well, I know it hurt you.”

  She moved her hands to cup his cheeks, feeling the roughness of his beard against her palms, smoothing her thumbs along his cheekbones. “The only thing that has ever truly hurt me is that you couldn’t see your own worth.”

  He smiled then, briefly, a shadow. “You taught me that. Back then you put me on a path, and it’s different now, I hope you know that. I’m different.”

  “You’re you, Ewan,” she whispered. “There is no need for you to ever be different. If you accept yourself more, that’s all I ever wanted.”

  He leaned in and kissed her briefly. When he pulled away, she cocked her head. “What’s brought all this on?”

  He shifted, and she sensed the deep discomfort in him. Her heartrate increased as he lifted his hands and signed, “Jonathon apparently overheard a conversation recently about…”

  He reached out and covered her belly with one hand. With the other he slashed out four letters as his gaze held hers. “B-A-B-Y.”

  Chapter 4

  The look of horror on Charlotte’s face erased all of Ewan’s remaining questions about whether what his son had heard was true. Charlotte was obviously pregnant and shocked that he had exposed the news she had withheld from him. Her shaking hands dropped down to cover his on her stomach as she stared at him in silent surprise.

  He slid his hand away so he could sign, “I understand why you didn’t tell me, Charlotte.”

  “I don’t think you do,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “I was so afraid the first two times. So worried the babies wouldn’t be perfect. That they would be like…like me.”

  Her face crumpled and a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. “You are perfect.”

  “No, I’m not. But neither are they. No one is, are they?” he signed. “And if this baby—” He brushed her stomach a second time with his fingertips, in wonder that there was a son or daughter there, being protected and housed by his wife’s body. “If this baby was born and couldn’t speak, I want you know that I no longer feel like that’s something to be mourned or feared.”

  She blinked and her lips parted in wonder. “I—you don’t?”

  “No. I was sitting with a not-quite-two-year-old and a three-year-old today, and they were signing without even thinking about it. Even better, they both understood everything I signed to them. The new baby will learn to speak with our language, Charlotte. Just as Jonny and Abby have. Our family language.”

  Her smile broadened. “Just ours, no one else’s.”

  “And I’m certain if he couldn’t speak, he would learn to write earlier so he could communicate with those in the outside world. I did just that, even though my father tried to deny me any education.” A bitter taste filled his mouth. “I overcame what they tried to do to me.”

  “You did,” she agreed, lifting her chin as if she would like to battle the long-dead man who had hurt him. Ewan had no doubt she would win.

  “I realize now that if the baby inside of you was born mute, he wouldn’t be held back that way. Or treated as broken or damaged. I would know he wasn’t. My child would never be ousted like I was, abused like I was. His cousins and his friends would never even see his mutism as something different because they would be so accustomed to it.”

  “Your friends are used to it. When we were in London last, I watched Baldwin hand you a quill when your pencil broke without even seeming to notice he’d done it,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “He didn’t even miss a beat.”

  “I have been nothing but accepted by them my entire life,” Ewan signed with a nod. “Sometimes it was hard for me to take that in, but the truth is, I was always part of a group who would protect and love me to the end. Not because they felt I was weak, but because we’re a family. And you, you are the leader of that family. The most important member. I don’t doubt for a second that if this baby couldn’t speak, you would be his greatest champion.”

  “Or hers,” she said.

  He grinned. “Or hers. But Charlotte, I need you to know, really know, that I feel no fear in this news. Only joy. Because I am not afraid of what I am or what I’m not anymore. I would never say that being mute isn’t a huge part of who I am. But it is not the only part. I have no fear of passing on any part of myself to my child.”

  She stared up at him, her smile wide and broad now. Filled with happiness and joy and love. He drowned in it. Charlotte’s smile had always been his undoing. He knew it always would be.

  “My love,” she said softly. “To hear you say all that brings me such joy. Especially since I know how difficult it has been for you to overcome the feelings of inadequacy that your horrible father and mother and brothers put on you during your most formative years. But I want you to understand what my motives were in not telling you I was pregnant.”

  He shifted. He knew she deserved to be able to speak about her disappointment or worry. He wanted to be open to that, though he already felt enormous guilt in it. “Go ahead,” he signed.

  “I didn’t keep the secret about the new baby out of fear. Certainly not out of some sense of frustration in how you reacted in the past.”

  “No?” he signed, relief flooding him.

  “This was your Christmas gift,” she said, touching her stomach with a laugh. “Or at least the most important one. I had every intention of telling you tomorrow, after the arrivals of our friends and family. It was to be part of our celebration, timed as a whisper as the clock struck midnight and Christmas Day was begun.”

  He blinked at that clarification. One he hadn’t actually thought of with his mind turning on his own regrets over his past behavior.

  “So I have made this great confession and ruined your Christmas surprise for nothing?” he signed with a smile and a shake of his head.

  She touched his hand. “No, my love, not at all. We talked a great deal about your image of yourself and your worries about our future all those years ago when everything seemed so uncertain. But since our marriage, we haven’t really taken the time, have we? To reevaluate where we stand, what we think.”

  He shrugged. “I suppose not.”

  “And yet we’re in such a different place from where we began. So maybe this misunderstanding was the perfect opening for us to talk about a subject that has held less and less power over the years.” She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I know how much our family means to you. And I would never hide something this important from you out of a fit of pique or worry. I pledge that to you today.”

  He nodded. “I think I knew that. I was just so surprised by what Jonathon said and then the realization that he was right. I thought back to how I reacted in the past and jumped to a conclusion. But I’m not sorry. After all, it helped me look at where I am, who I am. I accept myself.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks, but they were happy tears. Ones that lit up her expression and warmed him all the way to his core. To the heart she had owned from the first moment he met her, all those decades ago.

  “You could not have said that when we first shared a Christmas at this house five years ago,” she said. “You couldn’t have even thought it.”

&n
bsp; He shook his head. “No,” he signed.

  He thought of his life, which had begun so fearful, so lonely, so dangerous. He had been threatened with asylum, with death, with abandonment. Until he came to live with his aunt and uncle and Matthew, there had been no certainty.

  And then…there was. And though it had taken many years, many instances where his faith in his friends or Charlotte was proven right, he had developed more confidence in himself as well. He knew his strengths, his intelligence, his foibles, all of which had nothing to do with his ability to speak.

  He smiled at her, feeling the sting in his eyes, the tears that, like hers, were joyful.

  “I’m so thrilled about the baby,” he signed. “I cannot wait to meet him or her. To see this new child fold into our family and become their own person. I am so excited to see it all. And to fall in love with you even more because you are the mother any child would be lucky to have.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. And thank you for this gift. You telling me that you are finally able to accept yourself, your pleasure at this news…Ewan, it is the best gift you could ever give me for Christmas or any other day.”

  “So I should take this ring back?” he signed before he tugged the ring box he’d been carrying around all day from his pocket and popped it open.

  She stared down at the sparkling square-cut sapphire, which was flanked by diamonds. He could see how much she liked it. Charlotte was not a vain woman, but she was stylish and liked pretty things.

  She glanced up to his face and her smile was wide. “Oh, well, since you’ve already purchased it, it would be silly to take it back.”

  He grinned as he took the ring from the box and slid it on her finger. As it shone in the firelight, she leaned forward and kissed him.

  And all was right with the world.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  If you enjoyed Silent Night, check out Ewan and Charlotte’s original emotional romance, The Silent Duke. And enjoy all the books in the 1797 Club Series:

  The Daring Duke

  Her Favorite Duke

  The Broken Duke

  The Silent Duke

  The Duke of Nothing

  The Undercover Duke

  The Duke of Hearts

  The Duke Who Lied

  The Duke of Desire

  The Last Duke (Coming November 13)

  Enjoy a short excerpt from The Last Duke

  He got up but didn’t back away. He came closer, settling back into a seat next to her. Now she could smell him. A soapy, clean, fresh and masculine smell.

  “I pulled you out of the water,” he continued. “And my world shattered when you weren’t breathing.”

  She blinked. It was all she could do in the face of this unexpected confession, in the face of all the emotion in his voice and his dark eyes. She watched his hand lift, hesitate, and then he touched her cheek.

  It was like someone set her body aflame. He slid his fingers along her cheekbone and tingles flared in their wake, making her aware, once more, of what a precarious position they were in. He ought not to be touching her while she lay in his bed.

  But she wasn’t about to stop him.

  Nor did she stop him as he leaned in, closer, close enough that his breath stirred her lips. And then he kissed her. For a brief moment, it was the lightest of touches. A chaste brush of lips on lips. Then his fingers burrowed into her hair, cupping her scalp as he tilted her head, and the world exploded.

  His mouth became insistent. She opened to him without understanding why and tasted his tongue as he breached her lips. She reached for him, trying to find an anchor as she lost all sense of time, of space, of propriety, of everything but the feel of him as he touched her.

  She was alive. Back from the dead. And she understood it now, felt what she had nearly lost under that dark water. This. This pleasure, this wicked bliss, this dark desire that pulsed through her entire body and settled in the most private and inappropriate places.

  But she didn’t care about appropriateness anymore. Or whether he liked her or judged her. All she cared about was that she didn’t want this heated, sparkling moment to end.

  All she wanted was more.