by Sara Lindsey
“I would suggest that’s frustrated desire, but I’m sure you would tell me I’m wrong.”
“You are correct.”
Charles eyed him warily. “I’m correct that your urge to strangle Miss Weston is frustrated desire?”
“No, you were correct that I would tell you that you were wrong. In any case, if I did happen to pursue a female, I would not need your help.”
He pushed a laughing Charles out the door and locked it. He sat down at his desk, savoring the quiet. Lord, he hoped what he had told Charles was true. He had no real experience with rejection.
The women of his youth had put themselves in his path. Actresses, bored widows, and the like. He never knew if they wanted him for his title or for his looks. They hadn’t wanted him for himself, that much was certain. Those women had had as little interest in knowing him as he had in knowing them. There was only one way they knew each other, and that was in the biblical sense.
And then, during his last year at university, Jason had met Laura. On the death of their father, Laura and Charles had moved to Cambridge to live with their uncle, the Master of Trinity College. From the first time he saw her, Jason was besotted. He had foolishly expected her to fall in line with the rest of the women of his acquaintance, but Lord, had he ever been wrong. Her serene, smiling exterior had masked a backbone of tempered steel. The first time Jason had tried to steal a kiss she’d given him a black eye.
The devil knew why, but he had gone back for more. Not for another shiner—he only had to be taught that lesson once—but for more of her. She hadn’t believed he was serious in his addresses, but she’d let him court her, hoping to attract a more suitable suitor. After a few months, however, he had managed to persuade Laura of his intent.
Her uncle had given them his blessing at once, but then Hinchliffe was no fool. His brother- in-law had been awarded a baronetcy, the title of which had passed to his nephew, but having his niece land the heir to a marquisate was beyond his wildest imaginings. Jason’s father had come from London, where he was relentlessly pursuing a young, beautiful widow, and had been delighted by his son’s choice of bride.
Jason hadn’t cared a whit for either Hinchliffe’s or the marquess’s approval—if necessary, he would have eloped to Gretna Green. To the moon, even. So long as he and Laura were together, nothing else mattered. They had been so happy, so in love. . . .
He should have known then it was too perfect to last.
Chapter 7
“Not to be a-bed after midnight is to be up betimes.”
Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3
With Cook busy getting ready for the Christmas feast on the morrow, dinner that evening was a quiet, simple affair. Actually, most of Jason’s meals were quiet, simple affairs, since he thought the preparation of elaborate dishes quite unnecessary for one person. For a long time he had found sitting alone in the dining room so dismal a prospect that he had taken his meals in his study or in the library, but eventually he had grown accustomed to his solitary repasts.
They were eating at a later hour than usual so as to sustain them through the long hours ahead, and a primitive hunger seemed to have won out over the civilized trappings of conversation. So focused on their food were the four adults, the only sound in the room came from the clinking of cutlery against china. As he listened to the oddly pleasant cacophony produced by a good meal, Jason heard a little whisper of a sigh from the vicinity of Miss Weston.
She was pushing her food about her plate, rather than tucking into it as the rest of them were. A lonely air—stiff and melancholy—hung about her, one he knew all too well. The emotion did not sit right on her . . . and it bothered him.
“You look pensive, Miss Weston. Is something amiss?”
“No, not really. A touch of homesickness brought on by the quiet.”
“And how else should it be?” His words were more defensive than he meant them to be, but he somehow felt responsible for her unhappiness . . . and that bothered him, too.
“I don’t mean to say it’s a bad thing exactly, but it’s very different from what I am used to.”
Jason looked at Katherine and Charles to see if they were making any sense of this.
“You’re forgetting that Lord Sheldon is an only child, Livvy, or he was for most of his life.”
“What’s that to do with anything?” Jason wanted to know.
“I’ve six brothers and sisters,” Miss Weston explained, “and two are older than I am. So whether I was taking meals in the nursery or old enough to eat with the adults, I’ve always had at least one sibling, usually more, at the table with me.”
“Which equates to noise?”
“Naturally. Or perhaps it is not at all natural. I suspect my family is unnaturally vocal.”
“But ever so much fun to be around,” Katherine insisted. “Why do you think your brother always had so many school friends wanting to come home with him for the holidays?”
Her niece looked at her in surprise. “I always supposed it was for Izzie, once she started showing signs of being a Great Beauty.”
“Goose. It’s because everyone in your family is so welcoming. You’ve big hearts, all of you, and you want to share the blessings you’ve been fortunate enough to have been given.”
“Aunt Kate . . . ” Miss Weston protested, looking quite pink in the face.
“You’re right,” Katherine said, a determined look on her face. “This place is too quiet.”
“Hear, hear!” Charles raised his glass to her.
Jason had a feeling—one he was growing quite used to—he wasn’t going to like whatever was brewing in his stepmother’s mind. “Now see here—” he began, but he stopped when Katherine turned to him, her eyes bright with excitement.
“It’s the season for giving, isn’t it?”
No was the answer Jason wanted to give her, but she was looking at him so expectantly, he forced himself to say instead, “Where exactly are you headed with this?”
“I know it is short notice but I thought perhaps we could host an entertainment. Not a ball, for I doubt we’ve the numbers for that, but a dinner party with dancing and games. The neighbors will come, if only out of curiosity. This household has been kept in mourning too long. I know you still grieve, Jason, but—”
“What date did you have in mind for these festivities?” he asked quickly, hoping to distract her from talking about the past.
“It must be Twelfth Night. Olivia can be our guest of honor, for her birthday is nearly upon us, and she is named after the character in the play, you know.”
“I did not. Shall I have a willow cabin made at the gate for the occasion?”
Miss Weston looked pained. Charles and Katherine just looked confused.
Jason gave a disgusted sigh. “Don’t you know your Shakespeare?”
“Not particularly,” Charles answered cheerily. “I’m afraid my mind is on other things when I attend the theater.”
“I’m sorry, dearest,” Katherine said to her niece. “I should have warned you. My stepson is very fond of Shakespeare.”
“What have you got against him?” Jason demanded of Miss Weston.
“How long do you have?” she retorted.
“I’m afraid my sister is a bit Shakespeare- mad,” Katherine said. “It started when she was a girl and only grew worse over the years. She’s been working on a book about all the great heroines for, oh, heaven only knows how many years now.”
“It’s practically impossible to have a conversation with her without some bit of Bardic brilliance worming its way in,” added Miss Weston. “And she named me and all my siblings after characters in the plays, though my father made certain she kept within the bounds of normalcy. The truly outlandish names were reserved for the horses and hounds.”
“Poor beasts.” Charles shook his head in sympathy.
Livvy laughed. “I doubt they know the difference and, in any case, I must point out such literary names are a bit more dignified than the, um
, colorful names so popular here.”
“I am just thankful Edward was in the midst of learning his colors when I brought them home,” Jason put in. “Only imagine if he had still been learning to count. We would be stuck with One Dog and Two Dog instead of Red Dog and Blue Dog.”
“Once Aunt Kate promised Charlotte a great Danish dog, my mother began campaigning most vociferously for the name to be either Hamlet or Ophelia, depending on the gender, of course.”
Jason laughed. “I think your mother sounds delightful.”
“Oh, I love her dearly, but it is quite frustrating to ask for a bedtime story and have your mother fetch a volume of the Complete Works. Not,” she said thoughtfully, “that it didn’t put us to sleep quickly.”
“ ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,’ ” Jason quoted.
Miss Weston groaned. “Now you’re just being cruel.”
“Not to mention dull,” Charles put in. “I fear you are going to need my pointers after all.”
Katherine looked interested. “Pointers for what?”
“How to be sociable. So he won’t scare off the . . . guests,” Charles improvised, transferring his gaze from Katherine to Miss Weston as he spoke.
Jason wondered, not for the first time, if his brother-in-law wasn’t a great deal more intelligent than he let on. Fortunately, Katherine misunderstood Charles’s subtle jab.
“Then we may have our Twelfth Night revels?”
Jason thought of the torture such an undertaking would likely inflict. Not only would the entire place have to be thoroughly cleaned and aired out, but he would have to endure the actual party. The whispers and stares of his former friends and acquaintances . . .
“No” hovered on the tip of his tongue.
Then he thought about Miss Weston’s concern for his son, and Charles and Katherine coming every Christmas to see that he and Edward were not alone. If this would make them happy, then he could suffer a bit of discomfort in return.
“Oh, very well. But keep it small, mind you. Charles, make yourself useful to the ladies. Laura always used to say I—” He stopped himself and rose. “Forgive me, I have some work I must see about. I cannot waste my time in idle chatter.”
“Be off with you then.” Katherine made a shooing motion. “We have important matters to discuss, Charles, Olivia, and I, and we will not have you meddling in our affairs. I shall send someone to fetch you when the children come down for the toffee making.”
Jason stalked off to his study.
He feared he knew exactly what important matter they had to discuss.
Him.
Olivia could not, in all honesty, say she didn’t remember the last time she had waited up long into the night. It had only been a few months since she had kept vigil for endless hours while her sister Isabella struggled to give birth. Then, nine months or so before that, there had been the equally long night when Izzie had set off to get herself compromised to save the life of the man she loved.
Livvy had pieced together that plan—and quick work she’d had to make of it, too—and there had been at least a thousand and one things that could have gone wrong. She’d bitten her nails to the quick imagining them all, though she hadn’t given in to her fears until her sister was already out of the house and on her way to the seduction. It was nice to be awake at a late hour without worrying that something dreadful had happened, was in the process of happening, or was about to happen.
After dinner, she, her aunt, and Sir Charles had settled in the drawing room to discuss their plans for the Twelfth Night fete. Sir Charles and her aunt had discussed it, at any rate. Livvy could not help with the guest list as she had no knowledge of the neighboring families, nor could she say whether the dancing ought to be held in the Great Hall, which Aunt Kate thought would be festive, or in the ballroom, which Sir Charles believed would be more comfortable, as she hadn’t known the castle had a ballroom. She voiced this last thought aloud.
“The ballroom lies above the gatehouse,” Sir Charles explained. “It may not have the same flair as the Great Hall, but it is far less draughty.”
They decided Olivia must see the ballroom and have another look at the Great Hall, since her vote would decide the matter, but they only made it to the Great Hall, as the kitchen was on the way to the ballroom and Sir Charles, who was always hungry, insisted on a quick detour. They found Mrs. Maddoc there alone; Cook and the rest of the servants were off having their own celebration to while away the hours before going to church.
The kitchen was a spacious room with whitewashed walls and stone flagged floor, very much like the one she had grown up with at Weston Manor. Dark oak shelves and dressers displaying shiny copper cookware lined the wall opposite the hearth, where the housekeeper sat stirring the contents of a pot set upon the range.
“A good thing you’ve come by. I was just trying to figure out how to send for you.” Mrs. Maddoc fanned herself with her free hand. “You’ll want to be gathering everyone, now I’ve set the taffi to boil.”
“Livvy, come with me and help me get the children up. Charles, you fetch Jason,” Aunt Kate directed, “and do at least try not to provoke him.”
The children had been given an early supper and then put to bed to rest before the festivities, so Olivia and her aunt had to wake them and get them dressed. By the time they made their way back to the kitchen, Sir Charles had successfully retrieved his quarry. They all gathered on stools and benches around the large pine worktable while they waited for Mrs. Maddoc to pronounce the toffee ready for pulling.
“How will we know when it’s time?” Edward asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
“I think it’s time now, lovey, but we’ll check to be sure,” the housekeeper responded.
“How?” inquired Charlotte.
“I’ll tell you, Lady Inquisitive. See this cup of water I have here? I’m going to pour a spoonful of the hot taffi into the cup. If it hardens right away, then it’s reached the right temperature,” Mrs. Maddoc explained. “ ’Tis best if done by an unmarried girl.” She beckoned Olivia over. “Go ahead, miss.”
Livvy had heard that the Welsh were superstitious, and though she could not think how her gender or marital status possibly affected the outcome, she took the proffered spoon and dumped the boiling sugary mixture into the cup of cool water. As Mrs. Maddoc had hoped, it hardened at once.
“Good,” the housekeeper exclaimed. “It’s ready.” She took the pot off the fire and carefully carried it over to a large marble-topped trestle table. She slowly began to pour the mixture onto the cool stone slab she had greased with butter.
Sir Charles ambled over and fished the piece of hardened toffee out of the cup. He was about to pop it into his mouth, when Charlotte spotted him. She tugged on her mother’s sleeve. “Why does he get to have the first piece? The rules are girls first.”
“Ladies first,” her mother corrected, “though I doubt you’ll be mistaken for a lady anytime soon.”
“The only person who’s touching that bit of toffee is Miss Weston,” Mrs. Maddoc broke in. “No one is to eat it until we’ve had a chance to look at it.”
Sir Charles examined the toffee. “It looks edible,” he pronounced. “What more do we need to see?”
“We need to see what letter it looks like. The taffi forms the initial of a girl’s true love,” the housekeeper explained.
“Does it now?” Sir Charles mused. “Well, just look at that! I do believe this is a J. What do you think of that, Jace?”
At that, Lord Sheldon got up and came over. He took the hardened toffee from his brother-in-law. “You’re looking at it the wrong way. It is quite clearly a C, Charles.”
“Don’t everyone fight for me at once,” Livvy muttered as she snatched the piece out of the marquess’s hands. “You’re both wrong. It is most definitely a U.”
“A U?” Sir Charles shook his head. “What man’s name begins with U?”
Olivia thought hard and came up blank. “I don’t kno
w,” she huffed. “There must be someone.”
“Maybe it’s his title,” her aunt suggested, coming over to see. “Lord Underwood must be out of mourning by now.”
“I doubt he was ever in mourning,” Sir Charles said. “Rumors are he killed his wife.”
“Oh dear.” Her aunt shook her head. “Not Underwood, then. Ulster, perhaps?”
Lord Sheldon shot her a disgusted look. “Ulster is eighty, if he’s a day.”
“In any case,” Sir Charles added, “he just married a dairymaid.”
“That would be awkward,” Aunt Kate agreed. “And speaking of awkward . . .” She followed Mrs. Maddoc’s example and covered her hands in butter, then reached for the hot, gooey mess on the slab.
Mrs. Maddoc was twisting and pulling a long rope of the stuff, which had turned a lovely golden brown and smelled simply heavenly.
“She makes it look easy,” her aunt told her, nodding her head in the housekeeper’s direction, “when really it’s anything but. I always bungle it, but it’s fun to try.”
Rather than the rhythmic stretching that Mrs. Maddoc employed, her aunt’s method seemed to consist more of juggling the hot toffee from hand to hand.
“Here, you work on this, miss.” Mrs. Maddoc handed Livvy some toffee she had been working on. “Just keep pulling at it until the color turns a light golden brown.”
Olivia soon got the knack of pulling the toffee and thought it quite fun. Once all the toffee had been pulled, Mrs. Maddoc cut the long strands into smaller pieces and made up a plate for them to take back to the drawing room. Actually she made up two plates—one for Charlotte and another for everyone else—then sent them out of the way so she could clean up.
Eating the toffee, Livvy found, was even more enjoyable than making it. The candy was soft and chewy, and it seemed to have the very taste of Christmas. As they ate, they prepared to make garlands out of the evergreens Dimpsey and the children had collected that afternoon. Mrs. Maddoc had found a mess of red and green ribbons that had been used to tie up the greenery some Christmas past, which Livvy, her aunt, Charlotte, and Edward set about untangling.