by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Laura Matthews
“We pass round a collection plate?” Jack asked. “Things are looking up!”
Youngblood’s full lips moved upward a fraction. “Your grace is pleased to joke. Ha. Ha. No, your grace, these are the sixpenny pieces for you to give to the mummers.”
“I toss them into the crowd?”
“Not at all, your grace. That would encourage unruly behavior. You give one to each person along with a comment upon their singing or their costume.”
On the floor below, the main doors opened and the rowdy singing abruptly grew in volume. “ ’Struth,” muttered Jack. “A favorable comment, I suppose.”
But suddenly fond memories assailed him, memories of his youthful days when the costumed mummers had been an exciting part of Christmas, especially if they acted out the story of George and the Dragon.
Since he clearly could not slip away, he threw off his bitter mood and grabbed the bowl. “Right. Everyone to the hall!” he declared in a voice that had carried over battlefields. “Let’s greet the mummers properly.”
He grinned at his scandalized great-aunt and his sour-faced mother, neither of whom wished to get close to the lower orders. “Come along, everyone. That’s an order.”
He’d tamed unruly battalions in his day and the tone still worked, even from behind a smile. The glittering company rose and followed him down the stairs to cram into the spacious hall.
Some of the older people looked decidedly mutinous, but if he was the blasted duke, for once they could do as he said. No matter how bucolic, this entertainment couldn’t be worse than what he had endured thus far. The mummers—a motley crowd in ragbag costumes—stood ready to sing, though they looked startled at the crowd they’d drawn.
“Welcome!” Jack declared, acting to the full the part of the generous lord. “Let’s hear your songs, my good men, and see your play, and you’ll be well rewarded.” The group cheered—though a couple, he noted, were so drunk they were propped up by their fellows—and started into the traditional begging song, “Come gentlemen at Christmastide, give cheer to all mankind...”
They sang raggedly to begin with, but soon settled into it, even managing a bit of harmony. Jack led the applause.
The mummers seemed to think they were done, but as the largess didn’t begin, they looked at each other, murmured for a moment, and started the wassail song. When they got to the line about pennies in bowls, quite a few bowls appeared as a broad hint.
“Excellent, excellent!” called Jack, applauding again. “But now, my good fellows, have pity on a poor soldier who’s not spent a Christmas in England since he was a boy. Can you give me the play of George and the Dragon?”
The motley group shifted uneasily and he suspected that they were not actually in the habit of acting any kind of play. What had England come to? He was about to take pity on them and give their bounty anyway, when one George clanked forward. “By God, but I can play my part for a hero of the wars,” he declared. “Indeed I can! Is there no dragon here to help me?” After a moment, a man in a dragon head and long green cloak shuffled forward. “All right, all right. But be careful with that blinking sword, Georgie.”
St. George waved the sword, which Jack noted did actually look real—no wonder the dragon was concerned—and declared, “I am George, great soldier of Rome and Christ.” His accent was solid Gloucestershire. “I ’ave come to rescue the fair maiden, Melicent...”
At that, he looked back at the group and repeated, “The fair maiden, Melicent...”
Yet more shuffling and murmuring, including a “He’s stone-drunk,” and “Not on your jolly life.” Then a creature in a bright pink dress with a wig of long yellow yam was ejected from the group.
The fair maiden Melicent ran to huddle behind the dragon, more in the manner of one seeking protection than one waiting to be saved, but it sufficed. St. George took up his part.
“I come,” he yelled, so his voice bounced and echoed off marble pillars and gilded walls, “to rescue the fair maiden Melicent, cruelly given to the foul dragon to be its dinner.
The dragon got into the spirit of things and growled. It sounded more like a complaint of acute indigestion, but the younger members of the house party decided to support him with cheers.
“Odds on the dragon!” shouted one young spark. After a moment Jack found a name for him. Stephen, Viscount Leyland. Perhaps there was more to the jessamy than he’d thought.
“St. George always wins,” the saint pointed out, somewhat aggrieved.
“My money’s still on the dragon,” replied Leyland. “I like the way he roars.”
The dragon stood taller and roared again.
More cheers.
Jack laughed for the first time since coming to Torlinghurst. “My money’s on St. George,” he declared. “He handles his sword like a true hero!”
St. George stood taller and swung his sword, narrowly missing a horse nearby.
“Watch it!” squawked the horse.
“Well, keep out of the way!”
“I’m trying to blinking help. St. George ’ad to ’ave a blinking horse, didn’t ’e?”
“Oh. All right then, Fred. But keep back.”
St. George adjusted his helm, which tended to slide over his eyes, and turned to face the dragon again. “Give up that fair maiden, foul dragon, or I will kill you.”
“Direct and to the point,” declared Jack. “Good man!”
“Come on, dragon,” called Leyland. “What say you to that?”
“I defy you!” declared the dragon. “This tasty wench is my dinner!” He hauled the maiden from behind him and pretended to eat her arm.
“Save me, oh sir knight!” the maiden screeched, clutching her wig.
“An excellent maiden!” called Jack. “A guinea for you, my friend, if your voice don’t break before the end.”
“Help, help!” screamed the maiden at an even higher pitch, clearly after the reward.
“Release her!” bellowed St. George.
“Not on your pipe and drums!” bellowed the dragon.
“Oh, my head,” groaned Jack’s mother from beside him.
Jack grinned. “Excellent speeches, my friends, but let’s have some action.”
Holding his helmet with one hand, St. George advanced, sword first. “Let her go.”
The dragon clutched the maiden tight. “Go blow yerself!”
Jack’s mother gasped.
St. George poked with the sword, but as the maiden now formed a shield, she shrieked, “Stop that!”
“Sorry, Melicent,” said St. George and tried a poke from the side and made contact.
“All right, all right!” cried the dragon, flinging the maiden at the saint. “You’re a blinking lunatic with that sword, Georgie!”
The maiden staggered, tripped on her long skirts, and fell at the saint’s feet. Grinning, St. George put his foot on her and took a victory stance, sword high. “Thus prevail all righteous Englishmen!”
“Bravo! Bravo!” shouted Jack, applauding. “Thus should every hero vanquish the women who seek to entangle him!”
As the hall rang with cheers and applause, the maiden pushed away the holy foot and scrambled up, adjusting her costume and flashing Jack a surprisingly angry look. He ignored it and gestured to the servants to .come forward with the punch and pies, then went about putting silver sixpences into hands and bowls, always commenting on their excellent costumes and singing.
The spirit of Christmas did finally seem to be sparking in his soul.
When he looked for the maiden to give him the promised guinea, however, the man had disappeared. Clearly the poor fellow really had been embarrassed at playing such a part.
Sad to have bad feelings on Christmas Eve, but Jack held on to his lighter mood. Before the stultifying atmosphere could return, he gathered some of the younger people, including Leyland, and started a game of hide-and-seek. Not only was it wild fun—which had the added benefit of annoying Great-aunt Caroline and his mother—but it gave him a chanc
e after a while to hide in a place where no one would dare to seek.
When he slipped into his private study, however, he found a strange woman pulling a book off his shelves.
Justina hadn’t expected to play such a prominent part in the mummers’ show, but it hadn’t interfered with her plan. She had still managed to slip away and discard her costume to reveal her other one—a gray round gown, some years out of date and faded, worn over a prim white chemisette and under a sagging brown knitted shawl.
Round wire-rimmed spectacles and a wilting cap completed the appearance of Miss Esme Richardson, genteel young lady of reduced circumstances.
As she stuffed her Delilah costume into a large Chinese vase, however, Justina seethed at Lucky Jack Beaufort. Not only was the man a heartless traitor and murderer of his companions-in-arms, he was a buffoon and a misogynist! She could still see the glint of his white teeth as he cheered on St. George in his conquest of women.
How wickedly unfair that he should survive the war to enjoy glory and riches while other better men perished.
Hurrying along corridors toward his private rooms, she added to his list of sins. No doubt he’d been exploiting his dark curls and sculpted features all his life to use women, to conquer their virtue with not a moment’s thought of the consequences. Doubtless abandoned Beaufort bastards littered Europe!
This fueled Justina’s already fiery resolve. She could imagine what havoc such a wretch could create as an English duke. He must be stopped.
Once in his private suite, she set about a search that would leave no secret unexposed.
An hour later she rubbed dusty hands on her drab skirt and admitted that she had found nothing.
The enormous ornate desk was as good as unused, with neat stacks of unmarked paper beside undisturbed rows of pencils and pens. No pencil had so much as been blunted by use.
“Bone idle as well,” she muttered.
But Justina wouldn’t be so easily thwarted. The very blandness of everything showed she had not found Lucky Jack’s real possessions. She’d set about a rigorous search for secret compartments, even crawling underneath the desk to tap for hollow spots.
Eventually, she emerged disheveled but no further forward.
Pushing her cap frill out of her eyes, she stared around the room. Where could the dratted man be hiding things?
Perhaps in his bedchamber? She opened an adjoining door to see a large tester bed with the handle of a warming pan poking out, and a nightshirt hanging on a rack close to the fire.
Two wardrobes and a set of dressing drawers offered many hiding places, but a bedchamber was open territory to servants, who had to clean all the corners and dig around in the drawers. He’d be a fool to hide his secrets there.
No, she thought, closing the door and turning back, it was much more likely that any incriminating material was hidden in the study where few would venture. In fact, it was probably hidden among the books.
She surveyed the tiers of shelves, almost overwhelmed by the task, but Charles had trained her well. Searches were not butterfly affairs—a peep here, a poke there. They were tedious and methodical. But in the end, painstaking precision brought results.
Making herself think of only one book at a time, Justina started at the glass-doored shelves to the right of the main door. She climbed the library steps, took down the first book on the top shelf, and riffled through the pages. Then she checked down the spine for inserts, and inspected the endpapers to see if they had been disturbed.
Nothing.
She replaced it and took the next.
She had worked her way down three shelves, remembering to check that the shelves themselves did not have false backs, and was standing on the carpet with a new book in her hand when Jack Beaufort walked into the room.
They stared at each other in shocked silence for a moment.
Then he snapped, “What the devil do you think you’re doing, ma’am?” Anger scorched through it, but leashed in a way that alarmed her more than open rage would have.
Justina pushed the glasses back up her nose and tried to calm her frantic heart. “Oh, sir! My lord ... Your grace! What a fright you gave me.”
And that was the honest truth.
From a distance, his height had not been so apparent, or his broad shoulders and shrewd, steady eyes. She was suddenly reminded that Jack Beaufort had served as a colonel and been decorated for it.
He was undoubtedly a very dangerous man.
Stepping closer, he said, “I’m likely to give you a worse fright. What business have you in here?”
He was so close that Justina had to tilt her head back to face him. Anger was emanating from him like heat, parching her mouth, causing sweat to slick her palms...
She managed not to back away, but she had to escape those furious dark eyes. To save a scrap of honor, she told herself she was looking at the book in her hand, seeking an explanation for her intrusion. To her relief, she found it was a gazetteer. There could conceivably be a reason for someone to want such a reference book late at night.
“I ... I was looking for some geographical information, your grace. For her ladyship...”
“What ladyship?” he demanded.
After a quick review of his family tree, she picked a great-aunt of his who Maplethorpe said always attended this Christmas gathering. “Lady Dreckham.”
“Great-aunt Caroline?” Something in his tone let her risk a peep at him. She was right, his anger was fading. “Do you have the misfortune to be that woman’s companion?”
Justina looked down again, knowing how easily eyes revealed a lie. “Yes, your grace.”
“Poor you.” His tone was markedly more sympathetic. “She could have played the dragon’s part in the mummers’ play, couldn’t she? Well,” he added, with a startling touch to her bare hand, “ ’tis the season for entertainments, it would seem. Let’s pretend we’re in a new play, one where a poor companion and a duke can meet as equals. Join me in some wine.”
Alerted by touch and tone, Justina looked up to find that he really was smiling at her. It was not the wild smile he’d worn while cheering on St. George, but a charming one with a certain wistfulness behind it.
Now she did step back, away from both touch and smile, clutching the book to her chest like a shield. “Oh, I couldn’t, your grace!”
“Scared?” He moved away, strolling lazily toward a tray holding decanters and glasses. “Yes, I’m a little drunk—I had to deaden my senses in some way—and I intend to become more so. But I’ve never been a bad drunk. I become a bit silly, and inclined to be indiscreet...” He stopped speaking to pour amber fluid into two glasses.
Justina, however, had the feeling that the action was the excuse for the pause rather than the reason for it. What in his words had so distracted him?
Her nerves were settling now he’d moved away, and so her wits were returning to their normal sharpness.
He’d accepted her story. First skirmish to her. And drink made him indiscreet, did it?
If Lucky Jack Beaufort was about to be indiscreet, Justina Travers would be here to witness it!
He turned, glasses in hand, and if he had been disturbed in some way he’d overcome it “Because of the indiscretion, I haven’t touched more than a sip of wine in three years. I’m making up for lost time. The freedom to get thoroughly foxed is the only advantage I’ve found in my change of circumstance.”
With another disturbingly charming smile, he offered one glass to her.
Justina took it with what she hoped was an appropriate simper. If her imaginary Esme Richardson had actually found herself sharing wine with a duke late at night in his private apartments, she would certainly simper.
Miss Esme would probably run screaming from the room, but that didn’t suit Justina’s plans at all.
She sipped the wine and let out a genuine gasp. “Oh, my! What is it?”
“Port.” That smile still lingered, muted in intensity but not in effect. “A new experience for yo
u?”
“Yes, your grace.” It wasn’t a lie. “It tastes very strong.”
“I suppose it is, but I assure you, on my honor, that one glass will not turn you into a wanton woman. Won’t you be seated?”
A titter seemed to be in order, so Justina let one out as she perched on the edge of the seat of an upholstered chair by the fire.
He took the other chair with all the lazy elegance of a man in fine physical shape who was master of all around him.
Simon would be in equally fine shape but for him, Justina reminded herself. She needed to prick her mind back to its target, for her image of Lucky Jack Beaufort did not accord with this pensive, friendly Duke of Cranmoore.
Downing half his glass in one gulp, he studied her with those shrewd, experienced eyes. “Now, my companion-in-mischief, what is your name?”
“Miss Esme Richardson, your grace.”
“Esme.” Perhaps there was a slight slur on it. The sooner he became indiscreetly drunk, the happier Justina would be. “A lovely name. You must have Scots blood.”
“My mother, your grace.” To be thorough, Justina had devised a complete life history for her character, but she hadn’t expected to have to produce it in a situation like this.
“And where were you born?”
“Rugby, your grace.”
He drained his glass. “Can I persuade you to not call me your grace?”
“What else am I to call you, your gr—”
Laughing at her slip, he said, “Cranmoore? No, too mannish, I see that.” He slid a little further down in his seat. She did hope he wouldn’t pass out without the indiscretion stage at all. “You could always call me Jack,” he said wistfully. “No one does these days.” Simon had called him Jack in his letters. Jack was such fun. Jack was a knowing one. Jack was the best of all fellows.
“That would be most improper, your grace.” Why the devil couldn’t the man show his true stripes and be obnoxious? This bosky amiability made it hard to remember that he was her enemy.
“It’s improper to be here drinking with me,” he pointed out. “Consider it a wild adventure, my dearest Esme, and go the whole way. Call me Jack.”