by Carla Kelly
“I remember that battle well,” he said, tears forgotten. His voice hardened. “Marmot, Clausel and Foy—three marshals could not defeat Wellington!”
“How sad that men die, even on the winning side,” Lucy said. “Mrs. Lonnigan is going to sew for Mrs. Little, and Mary Rose would like to help in your kitchen. Could you allow her, Honoré?” She paused a moment. “I am certain it would have been Mama’s wish, too. After all, she worked so hard to get the Lonnigan children, Catholics all, into the village school.”
While he thought about the matter, Lucy delivered what she hoped what her coup de grâce. “Honoré, if I ever marry, and I suppose I must, all I want you to do is serve us strawberries dipped in chocolate, if it is summertime.”
He smiled at her now, probably well aware of her little subterfuge, but perhaps willing to overlook any manipulation. “That is all? You would perhaps let me serve you sparkling cider to go along with fraise enrobé de chocolat?”
“Cider makes me sneeze,” she said, “but if you would like to serve it, very well.”
“And if you should marry some fine gentleman in the winter?” he asked, more at ease now, because the deep crease between his eyes grew smaller.
“I will hope for a snowstorm so there will be no visitors to bother us,” Lucy said after giving the matter some thought. “We will slip and slide our way to the church, and get married. I will toast cheese with my husband and drink your wassail.”
“That will never do,” he scolded gently. “Wedding parties must be noisy, elaborate affairs, where everyone goes home with a headache and perhaps a few regrets. People expect a party.”
“It will do for me,” she said, her voice equally gentle. “Until I find such a paragon, you need not worry about Clotilde or my Aunt Aurelia muddying the waters here. Will you have Mary Rose in your kitchen?” she asked.
“Oui, mademoiselle. I like your idea. Have her here at eight of the clock, for her first day.”
He gave her a sly look next, that exiled son of La Belle France. “And if you can really find a way to keep Lady Aurelia away—”
“I will do my best,” she promised. All she knew was plain speaking. Perhaps if it came from her, the least important member of the household, Lady Aurelia would be so surprised she would leave. One could hope, and it was the season of hope and cheer, after all.
Lucy kissed his cheek and darted for the hall, hoping that the Frenchman would not change his mind. She looked around the entryway, which in a few days would be decorated with garlands and bows. Everyone would celebrate such an advantageous match for the daughter of a country gentleman, the daughter who was probably even now crying and wringing out her overtaxed handkerchief. What on earth was the matter with Clotilde?
CHAPTER NINE
U
“Please have these in the right hands by morning,” Miles said to the post rider, in his many-caped riding overcoat.
The man took the letters and money and gave a cheerful salute, opening the bookroom door just as Lucinda was trying to enter from the other side. They bumped into each other, which made Miles’s cousin laugh and apologize. The post rider gave her a quick salute and hurried on his way.
“Are you all right, cousin?” Miles asked, imagining how any other young lady of his acquaintance would have shrieked and put on die-away airs.
She nodded, and plumped down in her usual chair. “I admire a man who lets nothing stop him from his appointed rounds. Is he taking your letters?” she asked.
“Aye, miss,” he said, trying to sound like the post rider, which made her dimple up in that adorable fashion he relished. “How did you fare in the kitchen?”
She gave him a sunny smile. “Beyond my expectations. I played on Mrs. Little’s kind heart, and sewed a terrible seam to make her look forward to Mrs. Lonnigan’s arrival in the morning.”
“And Honoré?”
“Miles, he is more than happy to employ a little kitchen girl whose father died fighting those dastardly French who drove his beloved royals off the throne of La Belle France.” She tucked her legs under her. “I promised him that if I ever get married—”
“Which you most certainly will—”
“That is open to doubt, Miles,” she said. “I promised Honoré that if I marry in the summer, all I will require of him are strawberries dipped in chocolate and eaten outside on the lawn. I did agree to champagne.”
He laughed at that, remembering how champagne made her sneeze. “And in the winter?”
She gave him a complacent look, the sort that passed between friends and needed little, if any, explanation. And crazily enough, he understood her completely. “All I want to do is shoo everyone home and eat toasted cheese and drink wassail with my darling husband, should I find such a creature. Honoré is convinced I have lost my mind.”
Miles marveled how something so simple should sound so right. “You may have hit upon something, Lucinda. Toasted cheese and wassail.”
She gave a gusty sigh. “Easy for us to say. We are neither of us in love. Perhaps being in love makes people turn crazy and demand towering cakes with Pisa-like tendencies, flower arrangements, and dresses that itch.”
He laughed at that, which made her snatch up a pillow from the sofa close by and throw it at him.
“I ask you, Miles, how would you feel with scratchy lace digging into your armpit?” she asked. “That is my unfortunate lot.” She sighed again. “I would prefer flannel and bedroom slippers, but no one asked me.”
“Nor will they, scamp,” he said. “I managed to corner your father when he returned from dinner at your neighbor’s, and he was only too happy to let you accompany me to London tomorrow and then to Portsmouth, with our little charges in tow. I have already arranged for a post chaise for the four of us—we’ll be crowded but they are small. We haven’t the luxury of time to wait for replies. Pack a bandbox and be ready.”
She gave him another one of those smiles that was making his heart do strange things. He would have to request some bicarbonate of soda before he went to bed. Perhaps the filet of sole for luncheon was slightly off.
“Oh, please, at least one night in London with your parents,” she asked. “I love them.”
“Certainly. They would disown me if I were to deny them a visit from you.”
“That is the correct answer, Miles,” she told him, in all complacency. “I will pack and be ready first thing in the morning.”
He wanted to ask her to stay a little longer but there was no particular reason, beyond the reality that he liked her presence. Miles Bledsoe had thought he wasn’t a man who required company, particularly since he had spent so much time recently in library carrels. He watched her leave, marveling how she seemed to suck out the air with her. He must be tired; that explained the sudden feeling of loss.
He tried to tell himself that she was warming to him, beyond her own natural affection as his second cousin. He had seen her reaction when he whispered in her ear; it was all a lover could wish. And then she had done the same thing to him, perhaps as a joke.
He knew himself as well as any man his age probably did. From his years at Oxford, he was already well-acquainted with his tendency to over-think matters. Was he trying too hard? Was he not trying hard enough? Great gobs of monkey meat, what next?
He went to the window and stared out at the loveliness that was Kent, even in the depths of winter. And if by the smallest chance Lucinda Danforth discovered that she loved him, too, would someone as quiet and dear as she enjoy the life of a diplomatist’s wife?
“You’re over-thinking, Miles Bledsoe,” he scolded his reflection in the mirror. He wished he could talk to his older brother Matthew and ask him what to do. Matt was a husband and father several times over now.
On a whim, he picked up the Bible. He turned first to Proverbs 17, and saw, in his mind’s eye, Lucinda as the merry dose of medicine that probably kept Cousin Penelope alive for a few more precious months. He then turned to Micah 7, and read again, “When I sit in dar
kness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.”
They weren’t even Christmas verses. As he closed the Bible thoughtfully, Miles knew that if he survived this season, they would always mean Christmas to him. “Try not to over-think Lucinda Patterson,” he told himself as he lay down to sleep, sighed, and turned the matter of Lucy over to the Almighty. A man in love can only so do much.
CHAPTER TEN
U
Her mind a perfect blank, Lucy knocked on her aunt’s bedroom door. She opened it when the voice within permitted her and saw her redoubtable aunt just sitting there at her dressing table, hairbrush in hand, shoulders slumping.
She wanted to be angry at this managing lady who was trying to wrest all power into her own hands and organize the dickens out of them, but she found she could not. She saw a tired woman before her, one looking at her now in the mirror’s reflection.
“Aunt Aurelia, let me do that for you,” she said, coming closer.
Her aunt turned the hairbrush over to her, and Lucy ran its boar’s head bristles down Aurelia’s beautiful tresses. She brushed and brushed until Aurelia’s reflection looked almost at peace.
“We’ve worn you out here,” Lucy said. “That was never our intention, dear aunt.”
Then came a litany of scolds and trials that seemed to tumble out of her mouth in a never-ending stream. Shocked at first, Lucy began to listen, and her heart softened further.
Probably not even aware of it, Aurelia had segued from Clotilde’s inability to make up her mind about anything, to her brother Roscoe’s cowardice or laziness in wanting nothing to do with anything that smacked of exertion, to her own disappointment at Sir Henry Burbage, who was gambling away the family fortune, to her distress at a long-faced daughter who would probably never marry, to another daughter dead in childbirth five years ago, and then to their only son, who seemed to be following in his father’s rackety footsteps.
Lucy brushed and listened, thinking of the times she had poured out her troubles to Mama, who probably had troubles enough of her own. She thought suddenly of Miles, who never minded dropping everything to listen to her, when she was melancholic about Mama, or dreading her upcoming London Season. When had she ever listened to him?
What happened as she brushed her aunt’s hair was an epiphany Lucy never expected, not when so much was going on, and she felt powerless. We only want someone to listen to us with love, she thought. I am eighteen now. It is time I started listening to others. I wonder if Miles would let me listen to him? I believe I want to.
When she finished, when Aunt Aurelia’s handsome gray hair was an electrical nimbus, Lucy laughed out loud and kissed her aunt’s head, wherever it was down there. She pulled her hair and began to braid it as Aurelia sighed and then was silent.
“There you are now, Aunt,” she said, after tying each braid with a bit of yarn.
They were both small, so she sat on the narrow bench beside the woman she had been fearing. Looking in the mirror, she saw her own resemblance to Papa’s sister, here when she had thought she looked so much like her own mother.
“Look at us,” she said softly, unwilling to disturb the moment. “We have the same blue eyes.”
Aurelia smiled at their reflections. “I believe we do.”
Mama, help me say the right thing now, Lucy thought. “Aunt, we have worn you out. I so wish you would go home tomorrow and rest a bit. Just think: Clotilde’s wedding will be on Christmas Eve. You can be back here in four hours, and you will be rested and ready to enjoy it. You’ve laid the groundwork here, and I can carry on.”
Aunt Aurelia stiffened, and Lucy held her breath. With a sigh, her aunt relaxed again. “That would be pleasant. Henry and your cousin are in London right now, probably gambling at White’s.” She passed her hand in front of her face and then brightened. “I would have the house to myself, wouldn’t I? Or nearly so. Maude keeps to her room.”
“You could get up when you wanted, eat breakfast when you wanted,” Lucy said. “I do like breakfast!”
“I know you do, Lucy,” Aurelia said playfully, becoming the energetic but enjoyable person Lucy remembered from years ago, before troubles and challenges turned Papa’s sister so brittle. “I remember that time you ate so much bacon in my breakfast room that you had a stomach ache and swore never to eat pork again.”
“I didn’t keep that vow very long,” Lucy said. She took her aunt’s hand and tucked it next to her cheek. “Trust me to finish up here what you have begun so admirably. Papa will happily loan you his carriage for a trip home, and we will see you back here on Christmas Eve.”
They turned to each other. Aurelia put her arms around Lucy, who felt her own troubles slip away. “This is my Christmas gift to you, dear aunt,” she whispered. “You have done so much for us.”
Lucy stayed a few minutes longer in her aunt’s room, listening as Aurelia talked now of the few remaining things she wanted to do at her home, before Christmas came. Lucy blew her a kiss goodnight and closed the door quietly.
She stood in the darkened hall a long moment. She heard the front door open and close downstairs, and Milsap greet her father, who had taken dinner with a neighbor. Through more mature eyes, she saw Roscoe Danforth for what he was—a troubled man floundering about without his wife to guide him. “Bless you, Papa,” she said in the dark. “I pray time will help.”
She went to her room, but paused with her hand on the doorknob. It was far too late to bother her cousin, wasn’t it? She tiptoed to his door and looked down to see a bit of light coming from inside.
It’s just Miles, she told herself. He won’t mind. She knocked her usual knock: two knocks, a pause and two more.
“Lucinda, what in the world do you want?” she heard.
“You, I think,” she said. The door opened more quickly than she would have thought. He must have leaped from his bed.
He was in his nightshirt, a handsome blue-and-white-striped affair that showed off his legs to some advantage. She could tease him about that later.
“Get back in bed,” she ordered. “You’ll freeze your toes.”
He did as she said, and she saw a flash of more Miles than she expected. She sat on the chair by the bed, hopeful that blushes didn’t show in near dark.
“I did it, Miles,” she told him. “Aunt Aurelia is going home tomorrow.”
He had been sitting up. On that news, he flopped back and made her giggle.
“Seriously?” he asked, raising up on one elbow.
“I never joke about liberation,” she teased, and then turned sober. “Miles, all she wanted was someone to listen to her and sympathize a bit. I went to her room determined to do that in jest and meanness, just to get rid of her, but I listened instead, I really listened. Life has been hard for her.”
“Lonnigan hard?” he asked, his hands behind his head now as he watched her.
“No. She will always have enough to eat and wear, even if Henry Burbage gambles on cards in the winter and horses in the summer. Hard just the same. She has disappointed hopes.”
It was absurd in the extreme, but Lucy wanted more than anything to curl up next to Miles and never move until morning. She sat where she was. There would be plenty of time in the new year to work through her own silliness.
Staying there wasn’t helping those thoughts go away, so she stood up and went to the door. “I wanted you to know. She will leave in the morning, and I will be ready to go with you to London with the Lonnigan boys.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything. He just looked at her with those wonderful deep-brown eyes of his, round like a child’s.
She stood in the open doorway a moment more. “Mama listened to people,” she said, and closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
U
Giving Aunt Aurelia a heartfelt embrace, Lucy waved goodbye to her next morning from the front steps.
After baked eggs, toast and rashers of bacon in the servants’ hall that made the Lonnigan brothers’ eyes open wide, Mrs.
Lonnigan gave her own contented sigh and arranged the first of several petticoats on her lap to hem in Mrs. Little’s comfortable sitting room.
Mary Rose, her eyes hopeful now, scraped carrots and chopped them under Honoré’s watchful eye.
“She is adept, for one so young,” the family chef whispered to Lucy.
“I knew she would do,” Lucy whispered back. “Remember to give her bites to sample now and then. She has been hungry for too long.”
Honoré drew himself up with pride. “No one leaves this kitchen hungry, mademoiselle,” he said. He leaned closer. “Is Lady Burbage truly gone?”
“Truly,” Lucy assured him. “She will be back Christmas Eve for the wedding.” She gave him her best smile. “If she becomes a bit managing then, you can bear it, Honoré, because it will only be for a few hours.”
“I believe I can,” he agreed. He kissed his fingers and stretched his hand in her direction. “Miss Lucy, quelle magnifique!”
“Indeed she is.”
Lucy looked around with a smile to see Miles wearing his many-caped coat and low-crowned beaver hat, two little boys on either side of him. For the tiniest moment, she imagined they were his own children. Miles, you will be such a father some day, she thought. I wonder who their lucky mother will be?
It was a beguiling thought, but one which did not please her. How in the world would such a wonderful man find a lady good enough?
Lucy shrugged off her unease. She knew she could bully and tease her cousin to her heart’s content, but the matter of his finding a wife was patently none of her business. For one moment, she wished them both children again, with few worries. The moment passed, because she knew she could do more good, and do it right now, to make sure this was her best Christmas ever, even with Mama gone.
She couldn’t help but admire the Lonnigan boys. Mrs. Lonnigan had turned them out in what Lucy suspected was their best clothing. They were shabby but tidy, faces serious because life was a serious business. She realized with a pang that they knew more about hard times than she ever would. In one respect, they were equal: the boys had lost a father, she a mother.