A Regency Christmas: Scarlet RibbonsChristmas PromiseA Little Christmas (Harlequin Historical Series)

by Lyn Stone

  “I trust our greenery hunt met all your expectations,” he said, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable.

  “Yes, of course,” she said impatiently. “Miah, what is going on?”

  “Not a thing,” he said. “I must tell you, though, that I have to return to Plymouth immediately.”

  There was no way she could disguise her disappointment. She put her hands to her mouth and pressed hard against her upper lip. Sometimes it worked to prevent tears.

  “Hey, none of that,” he admonished gently. “I’ll be back.”

  “In a year? Two years?” She couldn’t help it that her voice was rising. In another minute she would sound like one of the fishwives on the quay.

  “On Christmas Eve,” he said. He uncrossed his legs and looked directly at her. “You need to know this—Admiralty has offered me a frigate, part of the convict convoy to Australia. It leaves in March, I believe. I have to go to Plymouth and inform the port admiral of my acceptance, which he will forward to London.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. She returned her hand to her lip and pressed harder. She took a deep breath because she felt herself getting light-headed. Don’t go, don’t leave me, she thought. There was no sense in telling him that, not with him looking so pleased. He probably couldn’t wait to get back to sea. What did you expect, Ianthe? she scolded herself. He came here for Christmas.

  She waited a long moment until she had control of herself, and found herself further unsettled by the look in his eyes. She didn’t know if she had ever seen another human being so sad.

  “That’s good news,” she managed. “I know you wanted another ship.”

  “Excellent news,” he assured her. “When peace breaks out, it’s hard to know the future.”

  Don’t tell me about the future, she thought. I am terrified of mine and now you are leaving. “At least you will be here for Christmas.”

  He stood up. “That I will, but I must be going now. I’ll pack my duffel.”

  Her face must have looked as bleak as she felt, because he looked down at her, then crouched beside her chair, which was a relief, because she had no strength to rise.

  “I’ll be back Christmas Eve,” he reminded her. He touched her cheek. “Hey, now. Should I take along Jim as a surety?”

  “Never!” she exclaimed, startled, then took a closer look at him. “You’re quizzing me.”

  “A little. Ianthe, I’ll do what I said I would. I’ll even leave my journals here. You know I’ll be back for those.”

  She clutched his arm. “Did you write in there how Jim really died? I…I want to know, Miah. It’s my right.”

  He stood up then, too quick for her comfort. “I’ll never tell you.”

  She rose too, shaky, but on her feet. “That was the only letter I ever received from you, and I did not believe it. You said he went quickly and was in no pain. Is that the letter you sent to all those who died? Was it?”

  He was backing toward the door now, holding up his hand as if to ward her off. “He did go quickly. Beyond that, I’ll not tell you. I have to go now, Ianthe, if I’m to make the coaster.” He left her then, to go upstairs and throw a few things in his duffel while she sank back into the chair, disturbed beyond measure by the look in his eyes again.

  I do want to know, she thought, miserable, but why did I ask? She was still sitting in the chair when he came downstairs. He set his duffel at the foot of the stairs and went into the kitchen, where she heard Diana and Jem wish him goodbye, and then laugh at something he said.

  He came into the sitting room next to kiss her head. “I left my journals on your bed. I haven’t exactly been a saint for twenty-two years.”

  “I never expected that,” she said softly. After he closed the door, she leaned back in her chair, so tired.

  Chapter Five

  Ianthe knew it wasn’t anything she said to her children that caused them to walk quietly about the house for the next two days. Maybe it was the look on her face; maybe it was her own distraction when they spoke to her that turned them less lively than usual. For a moment, with Jem at least, she had a suspicion her son was missing Captain Faulk. Heaven knows he had sucked the air out of the room when he left.

  He lingered there in an interesting way. The next day she received a visit from the grocers with everything she needed for a Christmas dinner such as they had not enjoyed in years. The butcher came next, lugging a beef roast of kingly proportions and a goose large enough for banqueting purposes. The gifts were anonymous, but she had no doubt of their originator.

  With more cooperation than she was accustomed to, Diana and Jem decorated the house, and then found excuse to take their leftover greenery and continue their work at Mr. Everly’s vicarage. While they were gone, Ianthe made herself comfortable on the sofa and looked through the journals Miah had left.

  She began immediately with the 1805 journal, turning to October 21. The captain had written nothing of the battle that took her husband’s life, which disappointed her until she read the closest entry, dated October 31. No need for me to write what happened off the coast of Spain, she read. This engagement will be long-remembered, and others will tell it better. I promised Jim I would look after Ianthe and their daughter, and the child unborn. Why did I do that?

  It was question a for the ages. “Because for all your common upbringing, you are as honorable a gentleman as I have ever known, that’s why, you idiot,” she murmured, then rested the journal on her stomach. Considering how busy he and other commanders had found themselves during far too many desperate days of war, Jeremiah Faulk had taken the trouble to send her enough money to buy the house and allow her to help out her own mother. It had never occurred to her then that he should have done any more; it never occurred to her now. What he did was enough.

  She thumbed through the volumes. Most entries—he tried to write every few days—were a deepwater man’s comments on the trim, the sail, the course, the duty of his career. She didn’t understand much of it, but she did appreciate the beauty of his style. She relished those moments when he took the time and space to describe his world of war, the domain of men.

  Before Trafalgar, and then most recently, she knew he had been posted to the Mediterranean. She smiled at his comments about women he had bedded—particularly a duchess and a widow—too much wine drunk, and card games won and lost. It was a man’s life, told by a man with real skill in writing. Too much skill, she decided, when she felt herself getting warm with his descriptions of his amours, and realizing she wished herself in their place.

  He never mentioned her at all, but she did pause over one entry both ambiguous and tantalizing. It was April of 1809, and he was at Basque Roads during that sharp and controversial fight. He had written numbers beside his entry as he had with other battles. These must be the dead and wounded, she decided. This time he concluded his entry with this sentence that got her on her feet and digging in her cask of letters. I’ve read through the letters again. On days like this, when we fight and die, they give me heart, even though…The thought was unfinished, as though he had been called away. There was not another entry until a week later.

  She took Jim’s old letters to her from their rosewood box, a gift from him on their last day together. With an eye toward the street below, the better to see her children return, she wrapped a blanket around her and tucked the letters beside her. She read them again, not as Jim’s letters this time, but as Jeremiah’s letters to her.

  He had begun “their” correspondence formally enough: Dear Ianthe. After ten months, he wrote only Dearest. Each one was a gem of declaration and commitment to her from Jeremiah Faulk, steward’s son, if she chose to read them that way. For the first time, seriously, she saw all the love that was there, as he wrote to her for his friend.

  Years of widowhood had conspired to convince Ianthe she saw things only as they were, and not as she wanted them to be. She tried to put the idea out of her mind that Jeremiah Faulk, childhood friend, was anything beyo
nd a sorely pressed man doing a favor for a dying friend.

  He had never made any push to see her, or even to write, but how could she have given him any encouragement? Newly widowed or otherwise, ladies did not write unsolicited letters to men. And where during war was there much time for contemplation? Did love need time and space, or could it grow in hidden places, untouched when the larger firestorm of war passed over, searing everything?

  If she was reading too much into letters, so be it. She could say nothing, do nothing, and nothing would happen. She could also take a chance. There was also the smallest suspicion, growing hourly, that he needed her, too. The blank in his journal after Trafalgar, and the way he recoiled when she asked to know how Jim had died told her volumes beyond his written words.

  With these thoughts in her mind, buoyed by the food he had sent, and his insistence that he would return, she resolved to pass the next two days at peace with herself. If he chose not to return or respond, she would at least enjoy this final season in her home before she sold it to further her dreams for her children.

  Faulk almost found himself short-tempered with Mrs. Fillion during his brief stay at the Drake. They were not on a first-name basis, but he had assumed an easy attitude toward her, during all those years the Channel Fleet called Plymouth home port. Still, he wished she would not pummel him for information about his stay in Torquay. He preferred to keep his business to himself.

  His business was straightforward enough. He visited Brustein and Carter first thing in the morning, handing over the document of sale from Trelawney and Majors and requesting that amount in a bank draft.

  “You are buying a house in Torquay?” Brustein asked, looking at him over his spectacles.

  “I am, indeed.”

  “Settling down?”

  Why did everyone on the Devonshire Coast want to know his business? “No, sir, I am not.” He answered the unanswered question, not because he liked Brustein or Carter, but because—possibly—he wanted to convince himself that his decision to sail again was the only one. “I have been offered another frigate and will leave in early spring.”

  But Mr. Isaiah Brustein would ferret about, damn the man. “I hope you will not be leaving it empty, Captain. Empty houses seldom prosper.”

  “It will not be empty.”

  Nosy man, meddling man! “May I wish you happy then, Captain?”

  “What you may wish is that I do not lose my temper while you waste my time,” Faulk said, addressing his banker and solicitor in the same low tone that had terrified years and years of midshipmen. With no small glee, he discovered it was just as effective on bankers.

  Faulk put on so quelling a face that Brustein did not dare question him when he established a trust fund for Diana Mears, to be applied for upon her marriage, and left in the control of Ianthe Mears. He set up a larger fund for James Mears, simply because he had no idea how much medical school cost, and Diana’s pretty face wouldn’t require much larding in a dowry. Both trusts contained a clause that more funds could be requisitioned as necessary. He left both Brustein and Carter to the task of drawing up the documents while he accomplished a few more errands about town.

  With advice from a helpful hatmaker, he bought a bonnet for Diana, one adventurous enough to appeal to a young lady on the verge of womanhood, but not something to alarm said young lady’s mother.

  Ianthe was trickier to buy for. The rogue in him—never too far below the surface, else what’s a navy man for?—wanted to buy a silk nightgown. He decided instead on a pair of kid gloves, understated and hugely expensive. He cased the crowded shop until he found a lady about Ianthe’s size, bowed, and requested her hand for a moment, so he could choose the pair. Maybe no woman can really resist a man in uniform. He had no trouble soliciting help.

  Jem’s present was the easiest of all. Since Trafalgar, Faulk had saved his friend’s telescope, dented from use. The lens had broken when it fell to the Conqueror’s deck in Jim’s last moments, but Faulk had seen to its repair. Mrs. Fillion found him a box. Not feeling up to any Star Chamber questions, he never showed her his other purchases. He wrapped burlap around the hatbox and Ianthe’s gloves fit tidily over his heart in his inside breast pocket.

  When the documents and draft were secured from Brustein, Faulk took a moment to visit the port admiral, just so he could make true his lie to Ianthe. Over a glass of rum, Faulk accepted the man’s congratulations and best wishes for a new year of peaceful sailing. It all sounded like a dreadful bore to Faulk.

  His skepticism must have registered on his face because the admiral shrugged his shoulders. “Peace. What can we do about that?”

  He had to hurry to make the coaster for Paignton and Torquay, running because he had returned to the shop with the expensive ready-mades and bought that nightgown for Ianthe. He tucked it in the bottom of his duffel bag, already regretting the purchase. There was barely time to make the sloop.

  As it was, the winds were unfavorable; it took considerable tacking to leave the harbor. He stowed his dunnage carefully below and went on deck. He was ready to offer all kinds of advice on trimming the sails just so, but no one asked. The whole experience made him yearn for his own quarterdeck, even as he felt a growing discomfort over leaving Ianthe and her children.

  You’re a fool, Miah, he told himself mildly. You haven’t even arrived yet, and you’re already missing them when you leave. He wasn’t totally sure of his reception, considering that he had left on an abrupt note, with her asking how Jim had died. His answer had been more brusque a tone than he wanted to use with Ianthe, but surely she did not need to know everything.

  Braced by the cold mist coming off the sea, he had to be honest, reminding himself that he did not wish to recall the event, either, even though it still haunted him occasionally as he slept. It was one of several fraught moments he knew he would take to his deathbed, but it remained the most vivid. He knew he could summon it before his eyes right now, but he did not wish to. Better to concentrate on the lee shore and remind himself that owners of coasting vessels had considerable skill.

  It was full dark when they tied up at Torquay’s jetty. No one lingered on the vessel. It was Christmas Eve, and everyone had somewhere to go. “Even I,” Faulk said under his breath. “This is a novelty.”

  He approached the house with the blue shutters that belonged to him now, at least until he handed the deed back to Ianthe tomorrow morning, and the money. She was standing at the window, hugging herself, looking for him. He stayed in the shadows, watching her.

  It came over him like a benediction, because he knew how much he loved her. Until it was taken from him during his Spanish imprisonment, he had carried the letter he had written with Jim’s proposal. He had thought it would have been wrenching to write, but he had only done what his heart dictated. He had always wanted Ianthe for himself.

  He would never come if she stood at the window, Ianthe scolded herself. Besides, the coastal carrier had come and gone, and it was too late for any coasting vessels. He had changed his mind.

  She was determined not to show her disappointment to the children, who would be disappointed enough, especially Jem. She would paste on her usual cheerful face, the same one that had seen her through years of young widowhood, disappointment and that peculiar ache from too many years spent craving a man’s love. Her only consolation was that England was full of war widows who knew exactly how she felt.

  She could have fallen to the floor in relief when Miah knocked on the door. Jem got there first, opening it wide and then amazing her by enveloping the captain in a hug. Miah dropped his duffel and returned the embrace, looking at her over the boy in his arms, his face so serious at first, and then so happy. She had not seen that look on his face since he left for sea with Jim many years ago.

  “Heavens, Jeremiah, let him be,” she said.

  “I’m doing my best,” Miah said, at the same time her son said, “But Mama, he’s back.”

  “No. I mean…” she began, then stopped. T
he captain obviously didn’t know. My stars, she thought. He doesn’t know. He thinks I named Jem after his father.

  She pulled them both into the room and shut the door. Jem had released his grasp now, which allowed her to move into his place. With not a thought to propriety, she unbuttoned the captain’s overcoat then wrapped herself around him inside the folds of the garment.

  She hoped he would kiss her, and he didn’t disappoint, even though his hat fell off. His arms went around her and his embrace was entirely proprietary, as though she belonged to him.

  To make things even more pleasant—after all, the entry hallway was prone to drafts—he wrapped his open overcoat around both of them, cocooning them against everything. She had never felt safer in her entire life, even if he did smell of brine.

  Surely not much time had passed, considering that kissing requires some air. She was not so totty-headed a romantic to think that time stood still on such occasions. It was the thick silence behind her back that made her pull away finally.

  Miah must have had the same thought. He released her, but not by much, and surely not enough for her to be free of his overcoat. He merely looked over her head at Diana and Jem, standing in dumb-faced wonder, she didn’t doubt.

  “Jim. Diana. It’s like this—I am extraordinarily fond of your mother. Come to think of it, I’m a bit besotted with all of you.”

  He opened his arms wider then, and there was room for Jem immediately, and then Diana, who tucked quite tidily under his arm. Ianthe closed her eyes in the basest sort of pleasure when the captain rested his chin on her head.

  After a long pause, he said, “Thank God no one is crying,” which made them all laugh, and Ianthe and Diana reach for handkerchiefs.

  When they all finally separated, he noticed the children were wearing coats and cloaks. “We were just about to leave for evening services,” she told him. “Unless you’re an old heathen, you’ll join us, won’t you?”