A Regency Christmas VI

by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Laura Matthews

  Justina could find no way to refuse and stay, but it was only with great reluctance that she said, “Very well ... Jack.”

  He graced her with a devilish and even more dangerous smile, as if they were confidants engaged in mischief. “How very pleasant this is. Now, tell me what search for knowledge brought you here.”

  Justina realized she still clutched the gazetteer in one hand. She placed it on a tambour table by her chair and took another tiny sip of wine, trying to think of a location that would require research. “Lady Dreckham wished to know where Senegal is, your ... Jack.”

  He blinked. “And where the devil is it?”

  “On the coast of Africa.”

  “Why would she want to know a thing like that?” With audible hope, he added, “She isn’t thinking of traveling, is she?”

  Justina had to suppress a chuckle, which was alarming. Humor had no place here! “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a case of good works.”

  “Poor bloody Africans. So, how long have you been her dogsbody?”

  “A year.”

  “An age. Is this your first visit to Torlinghurst?”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned. “You can’t bear to call me Jack, can you? And since I won’t let you call me your grace, you end up not calling me anything. Poor Esme, imprisoned in conformity.”

  Poor Justina was aware that if this man wasn’t who he was, she would be sliding under the influence of his lazy charm like ice under warm water, and like such ice, melting.

  She couldn’t melt, though. If she thawed, then like a child’s snow statue, she’d cease to exist entirely.

  “I could call you sir,” she said crisply.

  “You’re not one of my subalterns.” Suddenly sober, he added, “But call me Colonel, if you want. I still probably respond to that in my sleep.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” His eyes turned steady. The effect of drink on him was alarmingly mistlike, and easily dispelled.

  Taking a sip of wine as distraction, she muttered, “I don’t like to think of the war.”

  “Lose someone?”

  This was dangerous ground, for if she said yes he’d want regiment and engagement. “No one in particular. It is just that so many promising lives were lost.”

  “True enough. Far too many. Far, far too many...” He tried to drink from his glass but found it empty, so pushed out of his chair to return to the decanters. Justina suspected that he, too, was seeking distraction. From what?

  Grief?

  Or guilt?

  This time he brought the wine back with him, offering her more.

  “No, thank you.”

  He sat, then filled his glass to the brim before placing the decanter by his elbow. After downing about half the wine, he said, “At least the slaughter’s over. Tell me about your family.”

  So. He didn’t want to talk about the war. Not surprising, if he had any conscience at all. But a guilty conscience didn’t absolve him.

  However, Justina obligingly related her fictitious story of a parson father with a large family, of her stint in a girls’ school, followed by this post as companion to Lady Dreckham.

  “And will you stay?” he asked, refilling his glass yet again.

  How much did he need to drink to become indiscreet? And how much to escape into insensibility? “I suppose I must,” she replied, assessing his state.

  He looked back at her over the rim of his glass. “You don’t seem the type for servitude, you know. I detect an adventurer beneath the mousy disguise.”

  For a moment she thought he’d caught her out, but then realized it was merely an honest observation. It showed again that alarming shrewdness, however. “I have little choice, your grace.”

  “Ah ha! You slipped up. I think I’ll make you pay a forfeit for each ‘your grace.’ ” He dug in his pocket, pulled out a sixpence, and placed it carefully on the table. “I’ll mark each one with a coin.”

  “Nonsense.” He was right. Drink turned him silly. It was time to pump him before he drained the decanter and fell asleep. “Now you should tell me about your family, Colonel.”

  Yes, Colonel suited him. He still had the physical and mental effectiveness of a good officer, even dressed in the height of fashion and blurred by drink. She had the strange thought that he, too, was in disguise.

  Of course he was. Beneath it all he was a foul traitor.

  “My family,” he repeated. “As ordinary as yours, really. My father was the grandson of the third duke, so he had no title, but he married well. Which means, he married money. He kept busy and out of the house as a member of parliament, even a minister now and then. Not a bad fellow, but he died when I was twelve, which left me in the clutches of my mother.”

  “She was cruel?”

  He laughed dryly. “Not unless it’s cruel to bore someone to death. She’s an amazingly stupid woman who loves to talk but has nothing to say that isn’t petty or malicious. She could find a bad side to a haloed angel. Mostly I could avoid her, though, which is more than can be said for my poor sisters. No wonder they all married young. All except Mary, who’s a hopeless case.” He grimaced at her. “See what I mean about indiscretion? I’m sounding as malicious as she is, and boring you with personal matters, to boot.”

  “I’m not bored, Colonel.” Justina wanted to keep him talking at all cost, but she wished he wouldn’t go on about his family. She didn’t want him to be a human being with feelings and flaws, parents and siblings. She needed to see him as a black-hearted monster cackling over his ill-gotten gains.

  He toasted her. “How polite you are, Esme. Anyway,” he continued contemplatively, “my childhood was pretty good. My brother and I had great fun in the schoolroom and then at Westminster, after which I went into the army and he went into the navy.” He sipped from his glass. “He died without glory in a storm off Portsmouth four years ago.”

  For simple words, they carried a weight of stark grief that caught her breath. For a moment she wondered if this was his reason for sin, an excuse of sort. But no. Nothing could excuse treasonous murder, and why would the death of his brother turn him toward Napoleon?

  “I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

  He shrugged. “That’s war for you. Just one damned death after another, and most of them without glory.” After draining his glass, he added, “I didn’t die.”

  “That is clear.” Since his wits were clearly now all adrift, she pushed a little closer to matters that interested her. “You must have made good friends in the army.”

  “The best. They died, too...”

  But then he sat straighter and made a visible effort to rise up out of gloom. “Forgive me—this is no talk for Christmas.”

  He looked at his glass and seemed surprised to find it empty again. Refilling it, he said, “We had the strangest Christmases in the army, you know. One year, we had nothing to eat but onions and stale bread, and nothing to drink but water. Another, we spent in a Spanish estancia drinking wonderful wines and feasting on...”

  Suckling pig, Justina could have completed. Her bitterness, her pain, her memories, all came rushing back. No wonder his careless words had been cut off. No wonder he was staring into space as if lost in dreams.

  Or nightmares, more like.

  She’d read and reread Simon’s hilarious letter about that Christmas Eve three years ago, about the sudden abundance of food and wine, about the behavior of the demure ladies of the household, who proved not to be demure at all. One had ended up in Lucky Jack Beaufort’s bed, and Justina had always wondered if perhaps one had ended up with Simon. She was a realist about these things.

  In fact, she rather hoped one had, for that had been the last letter Simon had ever written to her. He’d died the next day, Christmas Day, in the ambush surely orchestrated by the only survivor, Lucky Jack Beaufort.

  Lucky Jack sat before her now, staring into his wine as if it reflected his soul like a crystal ball. If only she could look into that glass
and see what he saw.

  She knew the official report by heart. The troop had been caught in an impossible situation without cover, and picked off by musket fire. All except Lucky Jack. She’d assailed the Horse Guards with this fact, demanding that they court-martial the villain, but nothing had ever been done.

  She stared at the wretch, graceful even in a sprawl, handsome even with disheveled black hair and drink-slack eyes, and wondered how he could bear to be alive when so surrounded by corpses. She tried to pick his secrets out of the shadowed line of his mouth, out of the shape of his strong hand around the glass, or the smudge of his shielded eyes.

  She could not decipher him at all.

  Suddenly, he looked up with a smile, but this time it was clearly an artificial one. “Most Christmases weren’t one extreme or the other. I usually spent them in dreary billets eating salt cod and dreaming.”

  He’d slid away from that memory, but she’d get him back to it. She swore it.

  “And what did you dream of?” she prompted.

  “Oh, England. Goose and plum pudding, watching mummers’ plays surrounded by friends and family ... And now look at me.”

  “Eating goose and plum pudding, and watching mummers’ plays surrounded by friends and family.”

  It was a mistake to speak so sharply, for he focused his eyes on her. “How can they be family if I don’t know ’em? And what few friends survived the war are off with their own families, wise fellows.”

  As Simon would have been, you villain.

  He relaxed again, resting his head back against the chair and staring at the ceiling. “When I thought of home, in fact, I thought of Northham. That was where I grew up. A decent, solid, red-brick house with just enough space for a family and just enough servants to cope. Not this,”—he waved a vague hand—“this monstrous pile.”

  “Torlinghurst is considered one of the finest homes in England.”

  He slanted his eyes down to look at her. “One of the finest houses, perhaps, though to call it less than a bloody palace is ridiculous. It’s not a home.”

  Justina could tear her hair out. She was not at all interested in a discussion of English architecture. The only thing, however, was to keep him talking and hope she could steer him back to Spain and that ill-fated Christmas three years ago. “Yet people seem to be enjoying their visit here.”

  “Are they? How nice.”

  Some of her feelings escaped. “Your ennui and bitterness are absurd, your grace. You are the envy of England!”

  Her unwise words cut through the alcoholic mist. He straightened slightly, snapping to alertness. “That’s two, dear Esme,”—he placed a florin by the sixpence—“and people often envy foolishly.”

  He surged to his feet and paced the elegant room like a caged lion. “Consider, if you will, my excellent situation. Certainly I have money enough to indulge every whim, but unless I permit myself a total disregard of duty, I cannot do as I really wish—I cannot live in a simple home. I cannot seek a wife who would want to live in a simple home, for then she would be as miserable as I. Instead, I must seek a wife who thinks this place delightful, who thinks being a duchess desirable, and who is thus the direct opposite of the type of woman I admire!”

  She stared at him and he suddenly stopped his pacing. “You probably think me mad.”

  “No,” said Justina. “I understand.”

  And she did. Unwillingly, she was remembering some of Simon’s letters, the ones in which he’d talked admiringly of Jack Beaufort. Jack was the best of fellows, brave, bright, and always lighthearted unless he got into his cups and began to talk of his position as heir to the Duke of Cranmoore. On that subject he soon became morose. Simon and the others had cheered him with the fact that his distant cousin, the duke, was young, healthy, and recently married, and so bound to provide little Beauforts to stand between Jack and his dire fate.

  Because Justina had been obsessed with this man, she knew the rest. The duchess had proved to be a poor childbearer. She had suffered two miscarriages, then perished of the third. Before the duke could remarry, he had succumbed to a simple cold that settled in his chest and carried him off on the very day of Napoleon’s abdication.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Cranmoore prompted lazily. “Or am I just boring you to sleep?” He’d come to rest with one arm stretched along the marble mantelpiece, and the dancing flames illuminated a disturbingly fine length of leg and torso.

  “You are giving me much to think on,” Justina replied, wishing her thoughts were more disciplined. “You could almost be an object lesson to all those who lust after riches.”

  “Oh, I’ve nothing against the riches,” he admitted with a quirky, endearing smile. “It’s the trappings I mind. This is my house, or so they say, but if I try to change anything I am positively assaulted by the pain and anxiety of the staff.” He picked up a bristol figurine and walked around to place it on the other end of the mantelpiece. “That will be back in its place by the time I wake up tomorrow.”

  Before she could comment, he went on. “And of course my mother seems to think Torlinghurst is a museum where everything should be preserved unchanged forever. She’s a distant Beaufort, too, you know. She always wanted to end up here.”

  “Then perhaps your problem, your grace, is inbreeding.”

  After a startled moment, he laughed. “I knew you were no prim and proper miss! Miss Esme Richardson, you were sent to me by angels.” But he tossed a ha’penny with the other two coins.

  Justina eyed those coins with some concern. They were evidence that his wits were still very much in place, and she had to wonder just what forfeit he intended to claim.

  Then he was beside her with the decanter unstoppered. “A little more?”

  Justina realized with alarm that her occasional sips had drained her glass. She let him fill it, but resolved not to drink any more. The faint effect of the wine had fueled her saucy tongue. Much more and it could be she who turned indiscreet.

  And that could prove fatal. Literally so. She had no illusions about the lengths to which a man like Jack Beaufort might go to keep his secrets.

  He looked down at her. “Will Lady Dreckham be looking for you? Frankly, I’ve no mind to cause a scandal.”

  Justina had to think quickly. “No. She was going to bed when she gave me the command.”

  “And how did you end up in here?”

  “I thought this was the library.”

  Without warning, her chin was raised by a strong finger so she had to meet his steady eyes. “You’re lying, my dear. The library is on another floor entirely.”

  A shiver ran through Justina. Despite the effects of wine, no one could doubt that this man had been an officer, and a capable one. She supposed effective officers had to learn to keep their wits about them, even when clouded by drink.

  “But this place is so confusing. It’s hard to remember even the floor one is on! Your grace,” she added desperately, hoping it would send him off to add another coin to his hoard.

  He grinned, clearly seeing straight through her ploy. “I’ll mark that with another coin when we’ve sorted this out, my charming debtor. I want to know exactly what you’re up to.”

  Though his tone was light, Justina shivered again. In her wildest dreams she had never expected an encounter such as this, never expected to fight a battle confused by such sensuous maleness.

  She had to escape his touch!

  The warmth of his finger on the sensitive skin beneath her chin was tearing her apart. No man had touched her so since Simon.

  She had to escape his closeness.

  She could even smell him. Nothing unpleasant, but him.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly, brushing her chin with his thumb, “you made no mistake. Perhaps you are just where you planned to be. Do you have someone primed to interrupt us?”

  That snapped Justina out of her weak, muddled thoughts. He thought she was here to trap him into marriage! “Of course not,” she declared, twitching he
r chin out of his control. “I merely mistook the rooms, your grace.”

  He moved away and tossed two more coins onto the small table. “You must think the forfeit will be pleasant. A lifetime imprisonment here, perhaps?”

  “Really!”

  But he overrode her. “So, no accomplice. Perhaps you are relying simply on your charms. Let me guess how it was. You knew you would have no chance to be noticed out among the pretty young things with their simpering admiration and artistically exposed ankles. But here, you thought, in private, you might catch my eye. Congratulations, Esme.” He gave her the accolade of a nod. “You have, in fact, caught my eye.”

  Justina was gaping at this interpretation. It was so far from reality that she had no idea how to react.

  He moved closer, and again raised her face with his hand, raised it to study. “You are not bad looking, you know.” His thumb came into play again, stroking across her chin. “Good bones. But even better strategy. Everyone knows that the way to attract a man is to listen attentively to his ramblings.” He grinned. “You look astonished.”

  Furious was more like it. Furious at his appalling arrogance! Justina grasped his wrist to force his hand away, but her fingers didn’t even meet around it and her push had no effect. “I came here looking for a book. I am not such a clever creature as you imagine.”

  “Not clever?” His thumb brushed her skin again. “I’ve learned that cleverness and good looks do not relate, Esme, but there is a look that goes with intelligence, and you have it. Don’t try to act the simpering idiot. Please. At least be honest.”

  Justina pressed her head back, trying to escape him, to escape his words, his touch, but above all, the effect he was having upon her. “I tell you honestly that I have too much sense to want to marry Torlinghurst!” His finger and disturbing thumb never lost contact with her skin.

  “Fustian. It’s a burden, but even I’d choose it over servitude to Great-aunt Caroline.” Desperate to be free, she shifted her grip to his thumb, remembering a trick Simon had taught her ... Then froze and squinted down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly passive in her hold. “Does it bother you?”