Regency Christmas Box Set: Risking it all

by Regina Darcy

  Her response came later that afternoon.

  Dear James, she wrote, pleasing him with her willingness to address him by his name,

  I am grateful for your advice. I should like the letter to be addressed to my maid, Miss Sarah Leeson. That is the name that I am using here at the inn, as you know, but if you are able to undertake the delivery of a letter from me, then it should go to her.

  It is not that I do not trust my family’s judgment; they will certainly prefer to learn of my safety than they would choose to ally themselves with the Duke against me. But alas, they are not dissemblers. Father cannot lie no matter the circumstances, and Mother believes that lying is a sin, no matter the circumstances.

  My sisters are obedient daughters and would immediately take any message directly to my parents. If the Duke is in contact with them, as I am sure he must be by now, then they would not be able to sustain the secret of my disappearance.

  Therefore, I intend to compose a letter to Sarah, which I will sign, so that she can show it to them. It will say only that I am safe and will give away nothing of my location. But I will be able, in the letter, to provide Sarah with signals to explain my reasoning; she will interpret my meaning without my family being any the wiser. Sarah is more a friend than a servant to me. She alone knows how I truly feel toward the Duke, and she understands why I loathe the prospect of marriage to him.

  This will reassure my family while alerting Sarah to the true nature of the situation. She will be much relieved that I am freeing myself of the Duke’s presence in my life, but she will also understand, more than my family, that his rancour at being thwarted may be venomous. Not, I assure you, because of any deep regard for me, but because he cannot conceive that his attentions would be rejected by one such as I, a simple vicar’s daughter from a nondescript village who has no prospects of a marriage of distinction.

  If you are able to send your servant to the inn by eight o’clock tonight, I shall have a letter for him to be delivered to you, so that you may see that it is sent to Sarah on the morrow. She will, I assure you, know what needs to be done and she will attend to it with her natural wit and resolve. As I write these words, I think it a pity that men such as the Duke, or perhaps many in the peerage, cannot perceive the worth of a person like Sarah who, although a servant, has a character which far exceeds her lowly station.

  With gratitude,

  Cassandra Bennet

  James re-read the letter, then folded it carefully and, after a pause, placed it in his safe. In the wrong hands—namely, the Duke of Cantenberg’s—the letter could be dangerous. It made no secret of Miss Bennet’s intention to avoid the marriage, something which would infuriate Ogden perhaps beyond a point of endurance, given the man’s overweening sense of self. Miss Leeson, the maid, would be an easy victim for someone of Ogden’s influence. James was not sure why he felt so strongly, with no evidence to support his suspicions, that the Duke would prove an ominous adversary.

  That adversarial grasp could very well jeopardise all that James had built in the time since he had finally divested himself of the resentment against his brother and applied himself to using his own attributes to create a livelihood for himself. Since he had invested his savings and acquired investments from men of means, he had found a new sense of accomplishment. He was independent of the Dennington title and earning a substantial income with no need to go cap in hand begging to his brother.

  He had a reputation as a man who was a shrewd businessman, but also one who could keep a secret, a priceless trait in a city which nibbled on revelations involving the private lives of others. If Ogden should learn that James was assisting Miss Bennet in her intention to escape marriage to him, the thwarted aristocrat was likely to retaliate, and that would mean that James’s hard-won independence would be in ruins.

  “Then, he must not learn of it,” James said to himself, as he closed the door to the safe.

  ***

  It was a hectic night at the Imperial, but James did not forget the instructions of Miss Bennet, and promptly at eight o’clock that night, his servant went to the inn for the letter which was addressed to the maid, Miss Sarah Leeson. The letter was unsealed; James was surprised by this indication of trust from the young woman. Sheltered she might be, and her background might be simple country rather than sophisticated city, but he did not think her gullible, and he was pleased to see that she accounted him a man of integrity.

  The rooms were occupied with men who seemed to be hurrying to load all of their favourite practices into the brief time available before Christmas, their travels to their home estates or to the manors of friends, for the absence from London would deny them the opportunity to execute their sporting natures. James made his presence known, keeping a close eye on those whose state of intoxication was likely to render them reckless, and after leaving instructions for Heaton, returned to his office.

  He lit the candles upon his desk, bringing the illumination of the flames to eliminate the shadows. He decided against a brandy—there were times when, as host, he was obliged to share a drink with the Imperial’s clients, and he had no wish to partake of an excess of liquor. Not now, not when his senses told him that he needed to be on his game, in case something should go awry. It was not merely of the clientele of the Imperial that he thought when he ignored the decanter and sat at his desk.

  Dear Sarah,

  Please assure my parents that I am well and in no danger. They will decide what to tell my sisters. I am finding that after all the seeming splendour of fur coats and diamonds, I must seek a simpler direction for my future.

  Many will think me fickle for deciding that I would rather milk cows than dance at balls, but I have realised that this is so.

  Such simple tasks, the household chores which occupied my days, attract me ever more now that I am knowledgeable about the grandeur that is London and its fashionable set.

  As nothing has been published, and there is no official announcement, I believe that my disappearance is the soundest manner of addressing my decision.

  I know that I cannot, just now, return to the house in London, although it grieves me to be apart from my loved ones during this joyous season.

  I am on my own, but I am not without resources. I have found myself an occupation which suits my talents and meets a need, and what better way to spend the days leading up to Christmas than in service?

  The Scriptures tell us that when Mary, the Mother of God, was in Bethlehem, there was no room at the inn for the Holy Family to lodge. And yet, in the midst of the imperial edict of Rome, that humble family found a place where angels would sing, shepherds rejoice, and wise men bring gifts.

  I take comfort in these reminders that God does not abandon us, and I trust that you will convey word of my safety and my certainty to my parents, assuring them of my love. I am sorry to bring disappointment to my family, but I place my confidence in their abiding love for me and their faith in that babe, who when he grew to manhood, became the servant of all.

  The letter was not signed. There could be no doubt of the identity of the writer, though, even though she did not explicitly reveal herself. James smiled as he folded the letter and addressed it to Miss Sarah Leeson. Miss Bennet had cleverly worked in a reference to both the inn and the Imperial; he supposed that the maid must be bright enough to decipher the information and distil it from the scriptural allusions in which it was encased.

  The Duke of Cantenberg was fully appreciative of Miss Bennet’s beauty, but he was blind to her intellect. It was to her credit that she disdained marriage to a man who only prized the outward appearance of the treasure box and did not look inside to discern the wealth within.

  Due to the way James had started feeling about her, he could not have suffered her being ripped away to be with another.

  TEN

  Cassandra felt an enormous sense of relief after she handed the letter she had written to James’s servant and, from her window, watched him as he travelled the brief distance betw
een the inn and the gentlemen’s club. The private rooms of the club, with their individual entrances and their high walls of hedges, made it appear as if the two establishments must be separated, but she realised that the servant knew a hidden entrance which led directly from the inn to the Imperial. She realised this when, without warning, he vanished from her view.

  She gave a sigh of relief, and when Mrs Anthrop knocked on her door to ask if she would like her dinner now, Cassandra expressed assent.

  “With a nice mulled wine?” the innkeeper’s sister suggested. “’Tis good for keeping off the chill on these bitter cold nights.”

  “Yes, that would be excellent. Thank you. Mrs Anthrop—”

  “Aye, miss?”

  The woman turned her hand on the doorknob.

  “I wish to thank you for your help these past few days.”

  “’Tis no bother at all, miss. Mr Dalton, he’s a good sort of a man, for all that he runs a gambling house, and he’s always good to us. Often sends one of his people over here for lunch during the day and he never fails to pay. Not like some of the nobs, you know, who think us impudent for expecting coin for our work. He’s a gentleman.”

  This praise from a practical woman who worked for her bread impressed Cassandra.

  “Yes,” she said, “he does not put on airs nor regard himself as superior to the rest of us.”

  “Not him,” the woman declared. “Not that he can’t dress down a toff the same as he would anyone else if they cross the line of propriety. I reckon that, in that line of work, he sees some things what would scandalise us. But he never tells, and he don’t make a profit from it. There’s those who can’t be trusted with secrets, but he’s not one of them. I’d wager that he’d make a pretty penny on the side if he’d give up what he knows, but he’ll never do it, not if they threatened him with his life.”

  Cassandra had not considered this.

  “You mean…” she began and then did not know how to continue.

  How much did the innkeeper and his sister know about why she was here? She did not want to reveal information which could prove detrimental to her safety. The middle-aged woman sensed Cassandra’s dilemma and she chuckled.

  “Never you fret, miss. Mr Dalton ain’t the only one who can keep his tongue inside his mouth. Me and my brother, we’re cut of that same cloth, though we be lowborn. Besides, grand folks take no notice of such as we are. Mr Dalton, he’s a canny one. He keeps that room you’re in paid and private; when it’s not occupied, he pays for it as if it were. He wants it available, you see, for circumstances such as yours.”

  “Really? Does he often rescue maidens in distress?” She spoke humorously, but she found that she was curious about the status of the room and its purpose.

  Mrs Anthrop sobered. “There are evil men afoot, miss, and too many innocent young women with no one to turn to when they’re in a bind. Where can a lass go when she’s pursued by a man with power? Maybe her family don’t know what’s about, or maybe they don’t want to know. There’s been one or two ladies, runaway brides, my brother and I call them, who’ve fled their suitors and found a way out of a marriage they didn’t want. But it takes a brave soul to go that far, for London isn’t hospitable to those who have no one to look after them. Mr Dalton… he’s got a hard business head, I grant you, but a soft heart when it comes to those who have no one to turn to. I reckon it’s because he knows what it’s like to be on his own and trying to make up for past mistakes.”

  James was not a man who readily divulged his deepest secrets, at least he did not seem to be, Cassandra thought. Yet Mrs Anthrop spoke of him as if she knew him from another time when he had not been prosperous and successful. It sounded as though she admired him. James did not present himself as someone who merited admiration; he was quite the opposite of Jeffrey Ogden, whose belief was that, because he was born, the world was a better place. But Jeffrey would never pay for a room in an inn so that it would be available if someone who was helpless and desperate needed to stay there in safety.

  “He seems to be very honest,” Cassandra said.

  “That he is, miss, that he is. Well, enough of me jabbering on. I’ll bring up your dinner and your mulled wine so that you sleep well tonight. ‘Tis bitter cold out; before you’re ready to turn in for the night, I’ll bring up a hot brick for the linens so that you sleep cosy inside.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Anthrop, you have been very kind.”

  “’Tis easy to be kind to some,” the woman said with a smile before opening the door and leaving.

  Cassandra returned to her seat by the fire and her knitting. At home at the vicarage, the sisters and their mother had spent many a companionable evening by the fire in winter, knitting blankets for new-born babies or shawls for elderly widows, while Father read from the Bible. It was homey scenes like this which gave her the certainty of knowing that she was right in her decision, even though it was not the decision which the worldly would have espoused.

  She only hoped that her sisters would understand. Would they accept the idea that instead of being wooed by the younger son of an English lord, they might make a happier match with the village clerk or the schoolmaster? She could not say. Her parents wanted the best for their daughters and knew that their best, while sufficient, was not the material of which young girls’ dreams were fashioned.

  Sarah would find a way to send word to Cassandra after sharing the contents of the letter with the Bennets. Would Mother and Father be hurt that she had not sent her letter to them? Cassandra hoped not, for it was not her intention to do anything which would induce her parents to believe that she did not trust in their judgment.

  It was their great love for their offspring which made Cassandra choose discretion over affection; Sarah would be clear-sighted about the matter, rather than sentimental. It would be Sarah who would understand that all the gifts which the Duke had bestowed upon Cassandra needed to be returned to him, for she wanted no obligation to him, knowing as she did that his largesse was offered at too high a price. Sarah would understand that it was necessary for Cassandra to make the point that she could not be purchased.

  She knew that she was safe inside the inn, where her identity was concealed and no one knew she was there. But even though the weather outside her window was not appealing at all, being enclosed was confining. James had not come to visit that day, although he had sent a message with his apologies; the Imperial was so busy at night that he needed to attend to business and could not break away.

  However, I shall hold to your agreement to come shopping with me to choose a Christmas present for my nephew, his note read, and I hope to be at leisure tomorrow.

  Yours,

  James Dalton

  She was excited at the prospect of being outside in the fresh air and in the company of James. There was very little about her current status which evoked the Christmas spirit, and even though she knew that for James, anything to do with the holiday must have seemed a chore rather than a joy, she wondered if she could, perhaps, find a way somehow to persuade him to regard the day not as a memory of his mother’s abandonment, but as a reminder that God had not abandoned his people and had sent himself to them in the form of a child, vulnerable and humble.

  Father preached often on the subject of Christ the servant and it was one with which his eldest daughter was in complete accord. It would not have pleased the Duke, she knew, this notion that Jesus expected his followers to wash people’s feet. She wondered how such Christians as the Duke accounted their faith when it was so clearly they who wished to be princes.

  What of James? She did not know what he believed. His resistance to Christmas was entirely personal. She wondered, as she finished the dinner that Mrs Anthrop had brought her, what the older brother, the Marquess of Dennington, Michael Dalton, had to say about the matter. The scandal regarding his half-brother’s birth and the subsequent elopement of his stepmother with her lover would have had an effect on him as well, as he struggled, a young man, to deal wit
h his father’s withdrawal and his half-brother’s hurt.

  How complicated families could be, she realised. Accustomed as she was to the tranquillity of her own family, she was guilty of forgetting that in many homes across the land, other families met with very different fates. Father’s work as a vicar was enhanced by Mother’s compassion for the needy in the parish and by her shrewd judgment. Father was a good man, Mother often said, but she had told her daughters that the Lord had said to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Father had the innocence of a dove, she often said, therefore it was up to her to be the serpent.

  Of course, they laughed at the notion of their loving mother in the guise of a snake. But as she thought of the comparison, Cassandra considered that perhaps Mother was correct. It was not enough merely to be good; one had to recognise the bad that existed or else it was all too easy to fall victim to it.

  Was James’s mother a bad woman or merely one who had been unable to tell good from bad?

  After all, James’s father had gotten his mother with child and had not married her until she was already carrying the fruit of their illicit union. Had he loved her or desired her? And after marrying her, had he honoured her as his wife or treated her disdainfully, thus setting up a scenario where a woman might seek affection in the arms of another? The views of the older brother, the son who had inherited the title but also the duty of caring for a younger brother embittered by the conduct of the adults who had brought him into the world, would perhaps clarify things.

  It was unlikely, she knew, that she would ever have the opportunity to discuss the matter with the Marquess. She was unlikely to ever meet him. Furthermore, she had no indication from James that he would tolerate her intruding into his very private affairs. Nor, she knew, was he likely to have any empathy for her countrified yearnings. He was a Londoner, through and through; it was apparent in the cut of his clothing, his posture, his demeanour; this city, boldly pressing forward to make its presence known and respected among all the stately capitals of the world, was like him. Or was he like it? She supposed the latter, for London had come first, and those up-and-coming young men who lived within it bore its imprint.