The Danice Allen Anthology

by Danice Allen

  “Miss, ye dinna mean me t’ take it all, do ye?”

  “I do indeed!” Gabrielle assured him. “But I expect you to spend it wisely. Buy some warm mittens for your little sister and a pudding for your mum to boil on the morrow for Christmas dinner. I do not think it would be at all amiss if you made yourselves a little merry for the holidays!”

  The boy’s face lit up. “Mum’s been sick. She said we’d not have a puddin’ this year.”

  “Now you may!” Gabrielle said with cheerful insistence. “A good plum pudding after an excellent Christmas dinner will have your mum back in prime twig in no time. Take this money, young man, before I change my mind!”

  Gabrielle’s empty threat did the trick, and the boy darted out his cupped hands into which Gabrielle dumped her pile of coins. “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Will, miss. Will Tuttle’s me name. Oh, miss, I dinna know how t’ thank ye!” he stammered, looking down at the money, then up at Gabrielle with misty eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching with a manly effort to control his emotions.

  “You already have thanked me,” she assured him, her own eyes misting a little from the idea that the paltry amount of coinage she carried around as pin money could seem like such a fortune to someone else. She dropped her gaze to the girl, who was hanging on the coattail of one of the other boys and hiding her face behind his arm, one eye peeping through the triangle he’d made with his crooked elbow. “I’d like to give your little sister something for her very own, if you don’t mind. What’s her name?”

  The boy smiled fondly at his sister and answered, “We call her Bella. Arabella’s her Christian name.”

  Gabrielle stooped down, not minding that her skirt rested in the snow and would likely soak up a lot of dampness. She gently caught hold of the little girl’s hand and pulled her round in front of her brother till she was face to face with Gabrielle. Bella was shy but unresisting. Gabrielle couldn’t suppress the urge to reach out to test the softness of Bella’s hair, to hold it just so and observe how the golden strands shone in the street lamp’s pool of diffused illumination.

  “I know someone who has hair just like yours, Bella,” she said. “Hair as shiny and yellow as sunbeams.” Gabrielle reached inside her purse and pulled out a last coin. “As bright as this new guinea, which is yours.” She took Bella’s hand, the fingertips still so pink from the cold, and pressed the money into her palm.

  Bella just looked at the coin for a moment, then returned her wondering gaze to Gabrielle, her eyebrows and lips puckered in an endearingly bewildered expression. “Are ye a good fairy, miss?” she asked.

  Gabrielle laughed. “No, Bella. I’m just another mortal such as you, but I’m not half so pretty as you because I haven’t got such glorious golden hair. Do you want to know a secret?”

  Bella nodded vigorously.

  Gabrielle leaned close, so that they were cheek to cheek, then whispered, “I’m going to marry a man with hair the same color as yours, so that whenever I wake up in the morning and the sun’s hidden behind a gray cloud, I’ll have my very own sunshine right there beside me. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  Once again Bella responded with energetic headnodding.

  “Gabrielle? What are you doing, my love?”

  Gabrielle had expected to be interrupted eventually by Regina and Aunt Clarissa, who would have caught up with her by now, but not by Rory. He was supposed to be at Charlotte Square, waiting with the Murrays and a few guests for their return, after which the evening’s festivities would commence. But his appearance was not unwelcome. She straightened up and turned about with a ready smile, immediately extending her hands, which were then just as immediately seized by a tall, mustachioed young man with glossy chestnut hair and blue eyes, dressed in a midnight blue, double-caped redingote. Behind him stood Aunt Clarissa and Regina and the servants, all of whom looked none too pleased with her for having wandered away.

  Rory leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Done with your Christmas shopping, sweetheart? I hope you found something for me that will be just to my taste, or else I shall have to insist that you recompense me for my disappointment in some other way.” He lifted one dark brow to a provocative arch.

  Gabrielle laughed. “How do you expect me to find you a Christmas present if you do not allow me a little privacy?”

  Still in possession of her hands and with no apparent intention of releasing them, he said, “You ought to have bought me something days ago, Gabrielle. Or doesn’t your betrothed warrant such forethought?”

  “Having never before been engaged, my lord, I don’t know the proper amount of forethought one’s betrothed is entitled to,” she retorted with an impish grin.

  “Oh, oodles, my love,” he murmured. “Positively oodles!”

  “Well, I’m still learning what to do and what not to do in this interesting contract called a betrothal,” Gabrielle admitted with a tiny shrug of her shoulders. “You shall simply have to put up with me, Rory. But now, since it grows late, perhaps you had better help me pick something out for you which is precisely to your taste so that we won’t be late for dinner.”

  Done with flirtatious sallies, Rory’s attention strayed to a point beyond Gabrielle’s shoulder where Bella and her brothers still stood. Gabrielle hoped the eldest boy, Will, had pocketed the money she’d given him, because she did not wish Rory to know that she’d just parted with the entire contents of her purse. She had no idea whether or not he would understand or approve of such an impetuous gesture of charity and she wasn’t in the mood to defend herself.

  She twirled round and was relieved to see that the coins were out of sight. She was actually rather surprised that the children had not already fled the scene of their unexpected rise to temporary prosperity in dread of their benefactress changing her mind. But rather like stray dogs that hung about after a stranger has deigned to pat them on the head or toss them a scrap of food, the children’s devotion had been easily earned, and they seemed reluctant to go. To preserve her composure, which was minute by minute being jeopardized by the increase of compassion she felt for these urchins, she firmly bid them good-bye. “And have a happy Christmas!” she added with a special smile for Bella, who was staring at her perplexedly.

  Somewhat chagrined, Gabrielle realized that Bella’s puzzled stare must be the result of Rory’s appearance being so inconsistent with the description she’d given the little girl of her husband-to-be. Unable at the moment to explain the inconsistency, Gabrielle took Rory’s arm and briskly drew him down the street in the opposite direction. “By the way, Rory, my love, you’ll have to loan me the money for your present. It seems I’ve overspent!”

  While Rory laughed, Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder at the children. She saw Bella eyeing the golden guinea and twirling her finger in a lock of loose hair. Hair like Zach’s.

  Chapter One

  Edinburgh

  New Year’s Eve, 1831

  The carriage wobbled, swayed, and sometimes lurched over the mucky roads that wended through the Pentland Hills south of Edinburgh. Zach was afforded a bird’s-eye view of the city when the road took a sharp turn westward to circumvent an especially large outcropping of basalt rock. The night was as black as the devil’s soul, but gas lamps, torches, and candles lit up the shadowy vales and stark promontories of Edinburgh’s hellishly uneven geography so that it shimmered like an oasis in the desert. Like a phantom lake on the Sahara, it was too beautiful, too incongruent a sight next to the surrounding solitude, to be real.

  God help him if it weren’t real, thought Zach, stretching out one long slim leg across the carriage to rest his foot on the opposite seat, taking care not to disturb his slumbering valet. He’d come from one end of Great Britain to the other to see Gabby, and if the next hour didn’t herald the ending of his long journey, he’d very likely lose his mind. The walls of the carriage seemed, like the front lines of a relentless army, to be gaining on him inch by inch. Slow, steady, deadl
y.

  No one but Bleader knew how he suffered from the phobia of being in too small or airless an enclosure, and he would take great care that no one ever would. On long trips such as this, he stopped the carriage frequently to stretch his legs and always kept one window slightly cracked to admit fresh air.

  This fear of being trapped probably had its origins in the incident of eleven years before when he and Alex had rescued Gabby from a collapsing tin mine. Zach’s mouth twisted in a tiny ironic grin. Gabby had been looking for knackers—Cornish pixies who resided in underground caverns. Gabby was a dreamer, a fancier of the mystical and mysterious. But he sincerely hoped her betrothal to the Marquess of Lome was based on something real and substantial like love and respect, and not on some idealized conception of romance.

  After leaving Alex’s house in Surrey, where he’d stopped to spend Christmas Eve with his brother, Beth, and the children, Zach had intended to travel with all due haste to Edinburgh. From the moment he’d received Gabby’s letter, he’d been aflame with curiosity to meet and—figuratively speaking—disassemble for inspection, piece by impossible piece, the paragon who had inspired her effusive praise.

  But when Alex and Beth had intimated that he was reacting to Gabby’s betrothal as if it was a catastrophe rather than a happy event, attributing that view of Gabby’s impending nuptials as an indication that Zach’s feelings for her were more than brotherly, Zach had forced himself to calm down and look at the situation objectively. The first thing he’d decided to do was spend a few more days in Surrey, rather than run after Gabby like a starving cur after the butcher’s wagon, tongue hanging out, mouth frothing. But every time he read that damned letter…

  Zach reached inside the pocket of his jacket and pulled out Gabby’s letter. He kept it close at hand to refer to for precise directions to the Murrays’ townhouse in Charlotte Square, where Gabby was staying. The weak puddle of light from the carriage lantern provided Zach with little illumination to read by, but what he couldn’t make out by the lantern’s glow, he could easily recall, having read the short missive innumerable times.

  First, before trying to squint through the text of the letter, Zach lifted the parchment stationery to his nose and breathed in the delicate scent of orchids—no doubt the result of Gabby’s London-learned notion of dousing her letters with Parisian toilet water. Zach frowned. The exotic scent in no way coincided with his mental image of Gabby. When he thought of his little friend, thirteen years his junior, he conjured up the smell of moor dirt, sea-salted breezes, and the pungent fragrance of damp bracken and heather after one of Cornwall’s frequent rainfalls.

  In thought, Gabby was Cornwall and Cornwall was Gabby, one and the same. Beloved, familiar… familial. She did not smell like orchids. Even when she’d gone off to London for her Season last spring, though she’d looked a bit like a stranger in her new toggery and self-conscious maturity—breasts and all—she had simply been Gabby rather awkwardly outfitted for some sort of fancy dress masquerade.

  Now she was getting married, and he could hardly credit it. From the tone of her letter Zach surmised she was well and truly smitten with Rory Cameron. Zach bent to the irritating but curiously compelling exercise of rereading Gabby’s letter.

  Dear Zach,

  Perhaps Mama has already told you the news, though I will mail this letter at the same time as I mail hers, but I have something truly wonderful to tell you! I’m getting married! Do close your mouth, dear friend, and find a chair in which you might collapse! It’s true, I have finally decided to leg-shackle myself for life, even though my reluctance to entertain proposals from London beaux probably made you think my case a hopeless one. I suppose I was simply waiting for just the right man to come along! Mama will be ecstatic, I know, and I can’t wait till she meets my dear, darling Rory!

  Oh, Zach, I hope I may not tire you with praise of him, but as my sister is married to your brother and you have stood almost as a paternal protector of sorts over the years, I feel a certain license in allowing myself to bore you silly with homage of dear, darling Rory…

  Zach grunted cynically, as he invariably did whenever he got to this point in reading the letter. She was right about one thing: if he didn’t love her and have a strong interest in her happiness, Zach wouldn’t be able to tolerate such stomach-disordering encomiums about one mortal man who probably was just as riddled with imperfections as the next fellow. He continued reading.

  He’s as tall as you, Zach, maybe even an inch or two taller. He’s dark and handsome, like Alex, though not quite so gypsyish. Did you know I liked dark men, Zach? No, neither did I… till I met Rory! I will not mention Rory’s title because that would be vulgar of me, but I imagine the distinction of being grandmother to a future marquess has made a favorable impression on Mama. You know I care nothing about such folderol. I would be happy married to a shopkeeper if he made me feel like a queen … like Rory does!

  “Balderdash!” Zach said out loud to himself. “What high-flown romanticism is this? Fortunately no shopkeeper with such a talent for toadeating has come her way, the silly goose!”

  Did I mention that he’s a bruising horseman and an excellent amateur pugilist?—talents I felt sure you would admire! He has a fine baritone singing voice, I might modestly add, and we’ve whiled away many evenings in the charming occupation of singing duets. Several of the songs we sing are poems Rory has written and later put to music.

  “Gawd! I might lose my dinner yet! Not satisfied to awe the ordinary people with his physical prowess, he must needs be a singer and a poet, too!”

  Suffice it to say, my dear friend, Rory is everything a girl could want in a husband, too dear, too wonderful to be true!

  “That is only too likely, Gabby!”

  I wish you could meet him. I’ll be spending the Christmas holidays in Edinburgh with the Murrays. Naturally Rory will be in constant attendance. But it is his wish to take me early in the new year to his ancestral home, Dunollie Castle in Perthshire, to meet his grandmother and to keep me as a “prisoner of love” till spring and the necessary removal to Cornwall to plan our wedding. I hope you may visit me at one or the other of these places and tell me what you think of my dear, darling Rory. But I do not tremble at the thought of the two most important men in my life meeting. I make no doubt you shall esteem him as highly as do I! The directions to the Murrays’ townhouse are…

  Zach refolded the letter and poked it viciously into his coat pocket. “ ‘Prisoner of love,’ indeed! She does not mention that dear, darling Rory will find something in me that he might esteem, only the other way around! Gawd, it’s enough to make me puke!”

  “So you say, sir, every time you read that letter,” came a sleepy, beleaguered voice from the dark carriage corner.

  “Oh. Bleader. You’re awake, then,” muttered Zach, removing his foot from the opposite seat and sitting up a little straighter—gathering his dignity, as it were.

  Bleader leaned over into the light, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Yes, now I’m awake, sir.” His straight brown hair was all on end, and he had a deep crease along his cheek from leaning too long against the corded edge of a carriage cushion.

  “None too soon, either,” Zach informed him briskly, still striving to recover his composure after being caught talking to himself. Then genuine amusement and appreciation for Bleader’s disheveled appearance made him smile and say, “I can’t imagine my consequence increasing with Miss Gabrielle’s illustrious host and hostess if my valet were to alight from the carriage looking like a pugnacious tomcat lately emerged from an alley brawl.”

  Bleader grinned, the expression flattening his nose and transforming his eyes into narrow slits. Just so, thought Zach, he did look rather like a cat. Bleader’s large, slightly pointed ears did not detract from this comparison, either.

  My, how whimsical became his thoughts when he had rather not confront the more pressing and serious issues at hand, Zach reflected wryly. But while Bleader combed his hair and straightened
his clothes, Zach mentally addressed those issues by attempting to nurture his objectivity in this matter of Gabby’s betrothal. He did not for a minute believe Alex’s hint that he had a secret tendre for Gabby. That was too absurd a notion to entertain for even a second. He was simply deeply interested in her happiness. She’d always been like a dear little sister to him, taking Beth’s place as comforter and friend when Beth married Alex and left Cornwall.

  True, there was a vast difference in their ages, but there had always been an affinity between Zach and Gabby—a kinship of souls. But never had he thought of Gabby in a romantic way. Even if he were inclined to think of her thus, he didn’t deserve the love of such a wonderful girl. History told that story well and history often repeated itself. The fact was, Zach had never brought anything but grief and calamity to the women in his life. He would not play Gabby such a cruel trick by turning passionate toward her, but instead would keep her quite safe by loving her only as a little sister.

  Suddenly the carriage jolted to an abrupt stop. Zach reached for the loaded pistol he kept in a compartment beneath his seat, ever on the alert for highwaymen. Clutching the stock of his gun, he looked warily through the carriage window into the black night. They had been steadily climbing for the last few minutes. Having visited Edinburgh before, Zach was well aware that they were on the edge of Old Town, the perimeter of which they must skirt before descending into the prosperous district of New Town.

  “Auld Reekie,” as the locals called the ancient area, meant “Old Smokey,” and it was well named. The soot-covered, medieval city was crisscrossed with dark, narrow passageways towered over by many-storied dwellings with gothic turrets and crowstepped gables. The architecture was picturesque, but the stench and hopelessness of poverty, ignorance, and crime hung over the place, as tangible as the dark clouds of smoke coming from the chimneys.