A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5)

by Cecilia Grant

  But looking across the tea table now, it struck her that beauty itself was a virtue to which she had perhaps not accorded sufficient weight in her reckonings on these matters.

  “Would you care for sugar, Mr. Blackshear?” Lucy said, for no good reason other than to see if he might blush again.

  “Thank you, no,” he said to his tea, which was halfway already to his mouth. He had a strong, expressive mouth, fit for barking out commands or whispering improprieties to a lady as he brushed by her in a dance. He had eyes dark as the mahogany inlay on the tea-chest, and hair like polished cherry-wood, and arms and legs and shoulders made to take up space. Men who looked like Mr. Blackshear generally strode through life helping themselves to what they wanted, or so she’d always assumed. They didn’t take pains with courtesy, and they certainly didn’t look aghast at having innocently offered a seat in a dry carriage to a young woman walking in the rain.

  If he were handsome and unblushing, or modest and plain, he would not intrigue half so much. That was the trick of it. Not the handsomeness all on its own. She would be sorry, now, if there were no men of this stripe at Aunt Symond’s party.

  “Has your sister owned a hawking bird of any sort before?” She stirred a lump of sugar into her own tea. Time enough to think of the party, and the men she’d meet there, after this transaction was done.

  “No, never. I expect I’ll want your most tractable specimen.” His mouth kicked up into a guarded smile, revealing a dimple on the left side. It changed all the lights of his countenance, hinting at a mischief utterly out of keeping with his blushes and the polite distance in his speech.

  “Never owned a bird?” Papa, unconcerned with dimples, jumped in with the right response. “But she’s flown them, I trust. Perhaps at a house party?”

  Mr. Blackshear brought his teacup to his lips at that moment, preventing a reply and probably giving him time to deliberate on what answer would best serve his purpose. “No,” he said after swallowing. “She’ll be new to the sport.” Whether on principle, or because he doubted his powers of dissembling, he’d opted for the truth. She couldn’t disapprove of that.

  But she could—and Papa could—disapprove the ill-thought-out acquisition of a bird. Too many times they’d been visited by fashionable men and ladies who viewed falconry as but another diverting fad, the bird an accessory to be shown off like a new beaded reticule or gold-topped walking stick. They always sent those customers away.

  And so they must do with Mr. Blackshear. Almost certainly they must. Never mind how drab the parlor would look without him.

  “Is it something in particular that’s precipitated her interest?” She leaned a few degrees forward. As if by proper application of will she could somehow compel him into giving an answer more to their liking.

  His eyelids lowered; he frowned at his tea. He didn’t like the questioning, obviously. But he was too polite to say so. “She’s to be married soon, to a fellow of sporting tastes.” His left hand held the saucer and that thumb was fidgeting, edging back and forth along a half-inch of the rim. “He likes shooting and fox-hunting and so forth. A hawking bird will give her a way to…” His thumb stilled, all energy redirected to choosing the proper words. “Share in his amusements… without simply adopting all his preferences for her own.” His cheeks were flushing. He seemed a little amazed at himself for telling so much. “I thought she ought to have something that belonged only to her.” He ended with a long swallow of tea, eyes still lowered, thumb now clamped down hard on the saucer’s concave surface.

  Lucy slanted another inch toward him, consciousness blooming like a spoonful of cream dropped into tea. This was why he’d come all this way in the rain, and why he sat here now submitting to impertinent questions, uncomfortable in his still-damp cravat. He cared for his sister. He wanted her to be happy in marriage, but to remember her separate self. It was admirable and elegant, from a philosophical perspective. It was also…

  She bent her head to study her own cup as a tiny fissure opened just under her heart. Mama had not lived long enough to give her brothers or sisters.

  There was little point in mourning a thing you’d never had, and so she didn’t mourn, most days. Indeed she’d had a fine childhood, full of books and occupations for the mind and of course Papa’s benevolent attention, doled out in such measures as would not have been possible had there been other children among whom it all must be shared. She understood that. Only, confronted with this example of a brother’s warm affection, it was difficult to not at least reflect—in an objective way—on how different life might have been if she’d grown up with siblings.

  “Do you mean to say the falcon isn’t her own idea?” Papa’s voice jerked her back to the business at hand, and rightly so. Brotherly affection was neither here nor there in the question of whether the bird would go to a fit keeper.

  “It’s mine, I suppose.” Mr. Blackshear set his tea down on the table by his armchair. Impatience threaded through his voice. “But it’s an idea based on three and twenty years of acquaintance with my sister. I know her habits. I remember her picking up fledgling birds fallen from the nest and feeding them on bread dipped in milk when she was but seven or eight years old. I wouldn’t have come all this way to purchase a bird without I was sure she’d care for it properly.”

  Poor Mr. Blackshear. So well-intentioned, so sure of himself, so very very handsome in asserting his case, and so woefully mistaken. She sent one look to Papa. I shall manage this. Leave it to me.

  She would be honest with the man, perfectly honest, because she almost always was. But she would be mindful of his fine feelings, too. As gently as truth and facts allowed, she would disappoint him.

  She set aside her tea. “I think we ought to visit the mews now, Mr. Blackshear. I’ll have the butler fetch your coat.”

  * * *

  “The one nearest you is a goshawk. Don’t offer him a finger; I cannot vouch for his manners.” She made the joke for her own benefit. Clearly Mr. Blackshear had not the least intention of approaching the goshawk or any of the other birds.

  Nor of approaching her. He’d stationed himself mere inches from the mews door and remained there, hands thrust in his greatcoat pockets, face still showing remnants of the abject disapproval he’d worn when Papa had raised no objection to her leaving the house with him.

  Well, it made a useful reminder, didn’t it, of how the world viewed a young lady’s conduct with men. Papa might put his trust in her good sense, and in the three or four outdoor servants who worked within earshot and would spring to her aid at the slightest alarm, but Papa’s views, as Aunt Symond and more than one governess had gently hinted, were not quite regular.

  Nothing to be done about it now. She would be more mindful of appearances when she went into society. And in the meanwhile, she would not be cowed by Mr. Blackshear’s dour looks.

  “The next two are both peregrine falcons, and the small one there is a sparrow-hawk.” He did at least glance from bird to bird as she pointed each one out. “The sparrow-hawk kills, as its name suggests, the sorts of birds your sister used to rescue. In fact all of these birds kill those birds. None of them is meant to eat bread and milk.” None of them is suitable for a tender-hearted lady. She would give him a minute to draw that conclusion for himself, before voicing the words.

  He tilted his head, frowning up at the rafters. His jaw worked for a moment; doubtless he was seeking some tactful reply. “I appreciate your being plain with me as to the nature of these birds. I hope you will do me the courtesy of believing that I—” He stopped. His chin came down and his gaze met hers through the afternoon shadows. “Pardon me, but can we please acknowledge that we met earlier, in the lane? To speak any further without owning that fact feels… less than proper.”

  “Of course.” Lucy sent her own gaze to the straw-covered floor. So very odd, the effect he had on her, when she ought by rights to find his manner irritating. She ought to pity him, really, his behavior so constrained by rules and p
recepts he’d had no hand in forming, nor probably ever once subjected to a rigorous evaluation. She oughtn’t to feel so diverted and disarmed. “I did suspect you to be the gentleman from Cambridgeshire, when I saw you. Probably I ought to have said something.” She brought her eyes back to his, because to keep them averted was missish and silly. “It wasn’t my intention to take you by surprise.”

  “I confess you did, though. Take me by surprise.” His voice… did something. An empiricist would say it went lower by part of an octave, and a few degrees quieter as well; or rather an empiricist would probably say she perceived his voice to do those things. His glance flicked to the nearest bird, and back to her. “You don’t look at all the way you did in the lane.”

  Lower and quieter didn’t begin to tell it: his tone had the sweet, spiced complexity of mulled wine, and it went to her head as if she’d drunk down his words on an empty stomach. “My maid is quick in dressing me.” Her hands didn’t know what to do, under his gaze. They went to smooth her skirts but of course her cloak was in the way. She lifted one hand to her hair instead, though it didn’t need smoothing. His eyes followed, tracking her movements with a perspicacity that would have done credit to any of these birds.

  “You were coming from somewhere. May I ask where?” He stood so still. The air was thick with his attention.

  “I’d been to check the snares.” She knotted her hands, at last, behind her back. “That’s how we acquire birds; through baited snares. We don’t take small ones from nests, as some falconers do. Yearlings are easier to train.” He didn’t care, she could tell. He wanted to know why she’d been gallivanting about with her hair all undone.

  Well, a pin had come out, and then another, and it had been easier to take it all down than to try to put back the pins. She hadn’t expected to meet with any men on the road back home, and anyway her cloak hood had concealed her irregular state. Until the wind had knocked it back, and until she’d encountered a gentleman who stared at her as though she were something altogether past his reckoning, some nymph or wood-sprite just come from her secret bath in the glen. She’d wanted to stand with her hair uncovered for as long as he’d look at her that way.

  A bird to her left stretched out its great wings. A bustard, newly captured and not yet reconciled to its situation. The bells on its ankles jingled as it shifted from side to side on its perch.

  She’d come out here for a purpose: to resign Mr. Blackshear to going home without a falcon. All she had to do was proceed with her explanation. They’re not like dogs. They care nothing for people. They’re cold, unpleasant, opportunistic creatures and I cannot countenance sending one to a lady who might not wish for it. Tell your sister she may come to us herself if she truly wants a hunting bird.

  Then he would have his traveling carriage brought round, and he would climb in, or perhaps up top, and go back to Cambridgeshire. And tomorrow she would go to Aunt Symond’s party, and meet men who would surely have charms to equal his—charms to exceed his, really, when you counted in the fact that they’d be in a festive holiday mood and ready to be charmed in their turn by marriageable young ladies. There was no good reason on earth to regret Mr. Blackshear’s departure. Not with such a prospect before her.

  He waited, hands in pockets, for her to say whatever she was going to say next. When her eyes came to his he arched his brows slightly and twisted his mouth into just enough of a smile to show the dimple.

  For all that came afterward, she would have to blame that dimple. The dimple and perhaps his mulled-wine voice. And his stature. And his painstaking propriety, and his admirable affection for his sister, and the sweet fizzing awareness that raced through her blood when his eyes followed her hand from her skirts to her hair.

  Lucy stepped forward. She brought her hands from behind her back and clasped them in front. And she opened up her mouth and told a base, capricious, perfectly indefensible lie.

  The “connection” to Hume turned out to be slighter even than he’d imagined. He’d had in mind some distant shared blood, or, failing that, the participation of some Sharp cousin in the intellectual circles of Edinburgh once upon a time. But the source of the baron’s pride, it developed, was a single short letter from the philosopher, thanking him for having written with some apparently insightful observations on the Treatise of Human Nature.

  The letter had a date of 1772. Lord help him if he should one day be regaling captive guests with accounts of a distinction—he used the word generously—now five and thirty years in the past.

  “You must have impressed him indeed with your insights,” Andrew said, reaching for his glass. “I don’t imagine many households in England can boast of such a letter among the family holdings.”

  “Oh, well, as to that, the truth is that Hume was a prodigious letter-writer. I don’t flatter myself I made any more of an impression upon him than did any of the doubtless hundreds of admirers who must have received similar acknowledgments from the philosopher, in their time.” The baron rearranged his knife and fork as he spoke, flushed in the face, his modest demurral barely sufficient to mask his pride.

  A glance across the table found Miss Sharp beaming unabashedly in Andrew’s direction. Her pleasure leapt over the plates, the glasses, the cloth, like a presumptuous cat determined to land in his lap.

  He oughtn’t to be thinking of laps. And to hold her gaze felt downright indecent, when her satisfaction pulsed so plainly between them. He brought his glass to his lips and lowered his eyelids enough to shut out the sight of her as he drank.

  If you’re determined to have a falcon, your best chance is to stay and dine with us, she’d said, at that strangely charged moment in the mews when he’d expected her to say he must go home empty-handed. I’ll tell Papa I’ve decided a few more questions are in order. She’d implied that the pleasures of a meal, some conversation, and a glass of wine or two would put her father in such an agreeable mood that she could then re-introduce the bird topic, to better result this time.

  The problem was, Sharp was onto his fourth glass of wine now and had apparently not yet become persuadable, to judge by Miss Sharp’s failure to steer the conversation falconward. Indeed, he showed little sign of being affected at all by his three and a half glasses. Which was rather impressive, as Andrew had begun to feel dangerously warm and carefree halfway through glass number one.

  He put his wine down after the smallest sip. She was looking at him, still. As though he’d been set down in the opposite chair for just that purpose, like an interesting piece of statuary, or perhaps a visiting chieftain from some land where people wore face-paint and slept in grass huts.

  Someone ought to explain to her it wasn’t proper to look at a man that way. She ought to be told, with utmost obliqueness and discretion, of course, that such a gaze produced inconvenient stirrings in a gentleman, and could leave lingering impressions that might burgeon, in his private hours, to un-virtuous effect.

  Not to say that this was her responsibility. A gentleman held the reins of his own passions, and did not look for others to blame if he lapsed. Still, a lady ought to be informed, for her own sake. She would surely be mortified if she knew the figure she might make in a man’s thoughts.

  “I suppose he may have found my own ideas to be of interest.” Right, philosophy. And Hume. The baron still had things to say, and Andrew’s job was to hear them, with a show of keen attention. “You needn’t be told, I’m sure, that the Empiricists—the Rationalists too, for that matter—concerned themselves chiefly with ways of knowing. With the question of how we know what we claim to know.”

  “Yes, of course.” Really. If there was a more futile, unproductive, dog-chasing-its-own-tail occupation for a man’s mind than the study of how we know what we know, it was beyond him to name.

  “Which is all very well for books and papers and elevated discourse with other philosophers. But then we come to the matter of morality, and how to apply the philosopher’s wisdom to the average man’s daily life.”

&nb
sp; Well, this he couldn’t disapprove. Morality was a subject always worthy of study, and if Lord Sharp had bent his efforts toward a moral application of philosophy, one that could better a man’s everyday life, then—

  “In short I wrestled with the question of how we are to define a moral life, absent the superstitions and mysticism that have made up our moral scaffolding for all of history.”

  Andrew bit down on his tongue. He felt for his wineglass, found it, and took a very long drink, not trusting himself to look at either the baron or his daughter. Good God. Had the man just proclaimed himself an atheist? To a guest in his house, good as a stranger, and in front of his own child as well? No wonder the girl lacked decorum. No wonder she marched about the neighborhood with her hair hanging like a heathen’s. No wonder she didn’t know any better than to stare at men.

  “I’d never presume to say I influenced Hume, but anyone familiar with his Dialogues on Religion may attest that he, too, gave substantial thought to that question.” Sharp used his knife to shovel green peas onto his fork, speaking all the while with a sunny affability suited to a man discussing his trout-stream, or his prize hothouse roses. “And we come to the same conclusion regarding man’s innate virtue. Though of course the philosopher said it more stylishly than I ever could: ‘The smallest grain of natural honesty and benevolence has more effect on men’s conduct, than the most pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems.’”

  Right. A gentleman could tolerate only so much. He set his own knife and fork down, with precision directly proportional to the flare of his temper. He would politely but firmly change the subject, demonstrating to Lord Sharp and Miss Sharp the sorts of things civilized people discussed over dinner.

  No, he wouldn’t. He would follow their example, and say precisely what was on his mind. Speak of pompous views, he would begin, or perhaps he would formulate some cutting remark involving the morality of birds—the glass of wine was impeding his wit, but in another several seconds he’d come up with the right thing and then—