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

by Cecilia Grant

  He nodded. His hands, which had been feeling up and down all the spokes, came to rest one on the hub and one on top of the wheel. “He’s… sad, Lucy.” He looked up at a spot higher on the carriage. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Sad because your mother died?”

  “I think he was always sad. Subdued, at the very least. He’d stay in his study and we’d see little of him. And I suppose that kind of temperament is naturally more vulnerable to sorrow. Even before my mother died, she was delicate and unwell so much of the time, and disappointed from the children she’d lost, and I think he felt that very keenly.” His voice lowered. “I think he took it upon himself.”

  What an achingly lonely house his must have been, with a delicate and disappointed mother and a father shutting himself away with his melancholy. No wonder Mr. Blackshear had worked so hard to make the holidays happy for the brothers and sisters who came after him. No wonder it meant so much to him to reach home in time for Christmas.

  “He’s been worse since the loss of my mother.” His right hand came off the wheel and set to gathering straws, pointlessly, one by one from the floor. “It’s been seven years now—she died in childbed—but he carries the grief as though it had been yesterday. I know from speaking to the servants that there are days he keeps the curtains drawn and never gets out of bed.” He stilled his hand, as if only now noticing its aimless occupation, and let the collection of straws fall.

  “Andrew, I’m sorry.” The words came out near-whisper, the tiniest evidence of an overwhelming urge to cross the six feet of space between them, sink to her knees, and wrap him in the sympathetic embrace he must have long ago learned to do without.

  He didn’t rebuff her, the way he’d done when she’d offered a like condolence in the carriage. He nodded, and went back to inspecting the wheel.

  “I already thought your brothers and sisters were lucky to have you. Now I’m twice as certain.” She did close a little of the distance that divided them, making her way almost to the carriage door.

  “I’m not sure they’d agree.” He suddenly rose, dusting both palms against his greatcoat. She was near enough now to read his face, even in the shadows, and she could see the beginnings of a smile. “I expect they’d be grateful for a little more misrule, and a little less of my acting the humorless schoolmaster.”

  “You’re strict because you care for them. Surely they understand that.”

  “Perhaps.” He’d shifted a step nearer, not to approach her but to make a study of the carriage window. His gloved fingertips dragged audibly over the glass: he must be looking for any cracks sustained in the accident. “I confess there are days I suspect I set them a poor example. I fear the younger ones may grow up to be a lot of stiff-necked prigs who take too much interest in following rules and too much responsibility for other people’s problems.” He inclined his head, sideways since he was facing the window and not her. “I do possess a bit of self-knowledge, you see.”

  More than that, he possessed an uncomfortable understanding of exactly how she’d thought of him, earlier. But her opinion had perhaps undergone some change. “I can only imagine your influence on your siblings has been overwhelmingly beneficial. And whatever mistakes you’ve made are simply a part of loving someone. If you expect to never make a mistake with the people you love, you’ll only disappoint yourself. Over and over.”

  Now she could see his eyes—possibly she’d taken another step toward him while speaking—and how they watched her once more the way they had when she’d been an intriguing stranger in the yew-tree lane.

  “I think, Mr. Blackshear, that you’re the finest brother I’ve ever heard of.” Her pulse was beginning to pound in her ears. “I think your siblings will all turn out wonderfully well. And I’m not sorry you came to get the falcon.” She set her own hand against the window to keep herself steady. “I’m sorry for what happened to your carriage. I’m terribly sorry you’ll miss part of your Christmas. But I can’t be sorry you decided to buy your sister a bird.”

  His chest rose and fell with his breath. His eyes roved all over her face. A swallow rippled down his throat. And of a sudden she could not look anywhere but at his mouth, strong and expressive and made for whispering improprieties.

  His hand came away from the window—she saw it from the corner of her eye—and up to touch the side of her head. That was all. His gloved fingers made one pass over her bound-up hair, and the hand fell away.

  “I’m sorry you’re missing your Christmas, too.” Without moving an inch, he withdrew. He might as well have marched all the way to the other end of the barn. “Shall we go in the house now, and drown our sorrows in buttered rum?”

  “Yes. I think it’s nearly ready.” That was what she ought to have said ten minutes ago.

  Outside, the sun was sinking and the snow fell relentlessly on. She took his elbow because he offered it, but neither of them spoke on the walk from the barn to the house.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later his hand still tingled. It had been a small, small liberty as liberties went, and it had nevertheless shocked him to his libidinous core.

  No, that wasn’t right. The libidinous part wouldn’t be shocked. He must re-cast the thought to employ better logic, and he must meanwhile slow down his consumption of toddy.

  “Did you know even then that you wanted to marry her?” Miss Sharp occupied the drawing room’s one armchair. By the light of the fire and a pair of tallow candles, she looked like a visiting queen. She inclined a few degrees forward, with each passing minute more deeply engrossed by everything the Porters had to say of their lives.

  Her cheeks were flushed. The buttered rum had gone a bit sooner to her head than anyone else’s, because she’d eaten no dinner. He should have brought her a pie.

  “I knew without knowing. It’s hard to explain.” Mr. Porter passed his cup from his left hand to his right and back again as if that would somehow help him to find the right words. “Only I’d been seeing her all my life, in church or about the village. I don’t see how I could have married anyone else.” On the sofa beside him, his wife smiled into her own buttered rum.

  “When did you know, though, that you’d fallen in love? If you don’t mind my asking.” Miss Sharp beamed at them both, exactly as she’d beamed at him across the dining table yesterday, or this very afternoon when he’d pretended to like the tea.

  A stab of absurd jealousy visited itself upon him. He hadn’t realized she employed that look so generally.

  “I don’t suppose I ever did fall.” Mr. Porter furrowed his brow. “There was nowhere to fall to. I’d just always been there.” He busied himself with a drink of his toddy, apparently embarrassed by this mild effusion.

  Miss Sharp looked to be on the point of swooning. “I think that may be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” She felt on the table beside the armchair for her cup, finding it on her second try. She took a good long drink.

  Jealousy came again, this time simmering in his stomach. Or perhaps it wasn’t jealousy this time.

  Even through his rum-slackened reasoning he knew it was a good thing, for both of them, that she’d found a way out of their having to marry. But did she really need to go calf-eyed over the Porters’ admirable-but-pedestrian story of courtship so soon after scrambling with such urgency to escape the apparently unbearable prospect of a life with him?

  “That’s quite enough about us. What about you?” Mrs. Porter nodded to Miss Sharp, and then to him. “How did you meet and come to marry?”

  His counterfeit wife smiled, and lowered her lashes, and took her time setting down her cup. He could feel her discomposure. They hadn’t bothered to invent a story for this occasion, and the rum might compromise her inventive faculties.

  “May I tell the story?” Yes. He would. He would rescue her from the difficulty of spinning a tale, and he would leave her with a better idea of what was meant by romantic.

  He settled back in the straight chair he’d carr
ied in from the kitchen, and crossed his ankle over his knee. He balanced his cup in both hands, warming the palms. He spoke.

  “I had need of a hawking bird, and I’d heard of a baron in Norfolk who raised them. On my way to his house it began to rain, so I turned down a lane with tall yew trees on either side.”

  * * *

  No more words than those were wanted to stop her breath. Her heart catapulted halfway up her throat and she could scarcely hear the words that followed. She didn’t dare turn and look at him.

  “You must picture Mrs. Blackshear, in all her magnificent stature, loping down the middle of that lane as if she owned it, her cloak gusting about her in the wind.”

  “I’m sure Mrs. Blackshear never loped.” She could safely look at Mrs. Porter, and send her a smile in thanks for this defense. Then she must look closely at her rum.

  “She didn’t. You’re right. But I haven’t the word that can tell you her style of ambulation. Only imagine something grand, as would stay in your thoughts for hours and days after you’d left her behind, if you hadn’t stopped to speak to her.”

  She sipped at her toddy. Her ears were so warm.

  “You must have made quite the impression, Mrs. Blackshear, if he would stop to speak to you.” That was Mrs. Porter again.

  “I oughtn’t to have done it.” The sound of his voice told her he’d twisted to face her. “I don’t even remember deciding to stop. But the wind threw back the hood of her cloak, and I saw her. And she was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

  The toddy had hold of his tongue. No doubt he felt a pleasant warmth running through his veins, and the insidious assurance that he could not possibly come to regret anything he said now. She ought to stop him speaking, for his own sake.

  She couldn’t.

  “I scarcely remember what I said to her.” That wouldn’t be true. Toddy or no, he had command enough of his faculties to deliberately omit mention of his having offered her a ride in his carriage. “Told her she’d be safer walking on the side of the road, I believe. But I couldn’t in decency keep her there talking, so I went on to the baron’s house. And I might easily have come to believe she’d been the invention of my own fancy, but that twenty or thirty minutes into my call, a point arose on which the baron wished to consult with his daughter. You may imagine my sentiments on being presented to her.”

  Finally, finally, she summoned up the courage to look at him. He’d twisted his whole upper body toward her, and laid his arm across the back of his straight chair, cradling his cup in one hand. He didn’t flinch when her eyes met his. He didn’t look embarrassed in the least to have said all those things, though that might have something to do with the rum.

  And it might not.

  “You said I took you by surprise.” She took herself by surprise, saying this. She would have laid money she’d lost the power of speech.

  “Yes, I suppose she must have done.” One of the Porters murmured this. Mr. Porter. She oughtn’t to have to work at telling the difference. But Heaven help her, she could barely register the presence of anyone else in the room.

  He registered the Porters, though. He inclined his head to acknowledge Mr. Porter’s remark, his lips curving in a rueful smile. “I was defenseless.” He addressed himself to their hosts, though his body still angled toward her. “Not a week later, I’d found a pretext to return. And I asked her if she might like me to call again. Then I asked her father for permission to court her.” He sent her a different smile, sparkling with the sly pleasure of counterfeit. He couldn’t so adroitly improvise these facts if his brain had been truly muddled by the rum, could he?

  “I liked his manners and his conversation.” She sounded insipid. Not at all like the woman he described.

  “And I liked yours.” He took a drink. “But the truth is I was a hooked fish from my first sight of her. It went against everything I believed about how I would one day choose a bride.”

  “Sometimes you just know, and that’s all the explanation there can be.” Mr. Porter delivered this summing-up with the satisfaction of a man who had just known in his own turn. It was odd, really, that his true story and Mr. Blackshear’s fanciful one could be summed up the same way, as different as they seemed. “Would anyone like me to fill his cup?” He rose, ready to make a trip to the kitchen.

  “I wonder if we might offer a cup to the servants.” This was an easier topic on which to speak, and her brain found its footing again. “It’s Christmas Eve for them too, and they’ve all been put to extra trouble on my and Mr. Blackshear’s account.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Porter put a hand on her husband’s wrist. “Will you have the men bring in Mrs. Blackshear’s trunk from the barn first? I already had Mary make up the bed in Julia’s room. And Mr. Blackshear is without his trunk, so you might send a few of your things along for his use.”

  Mr. Blackshear coughed on a swallow of rum. He’d heard it too. Or rather, not heard it. There’d been no mention of any second room, or second bed. Lucy’s hand curled round the chair’s arm so hard her knuckles hurt.

  “I beg your pardon.” He had to cough again halfway through. “Is there not—that is—I’m not familiar with the house. Where am I to go?”

  “The room that belonged to our married daughter. Upstairs at the front of the house.” An anxious crease appeared in Mrs. Porter’s brow. “It will be smaller than you’re used to, I fear.” Her glance, flicking back and forth from Lucy to Mr. Blackshear, did away with any remaining doubt. “It’s fairly quick to warm once we’ve laid a fire, though.”

  “I see.” He sat forward, fingers making a sort of basket in which to hold his cup. “I hate to impose more than we already have, but my wife and I are used to separate rooms.” His voice dropped low and apologetic. “I’m a restless sleeper, you see. My wayward legs and elbows are likely to plague Mrs. Blackshear and prevent her from getting a proper night’s sleep of her own.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Porter’s face flushed. She looked down at her hands, smoothing her skirts. “The fact is we don’t have another bed in the house.” Mr. Porter, still standing before the sofa, touched her shoulder. How much must it pain them to have their straitened circumstances laid bare before a pair of fine, privileged strangers?

  Lucy forced her fingers to uncurl from the chair’s arm. “I’m sure your daughter’s room will do perfectly.” She wasn’t sure of that at all. But no second room would magically appear, no matter what she said. She might as well say what might reassure the Porters. “We don’t need space for a maid or valet, since they went ahead. And Mr. Blackshear exaggerates about his kicking and elbowing. I assure you I haven’t the least trepidation about sharing a bed with him.”

  She drained what was left of her toddy. From the corner of her eye she could see Mr. Blackshear was doing the same.

  Mrs. Porter hadn’t lied. The room was small.

  The bed, in consequence, seemed enormous. Unless he stood in a corner, face to the wall, there was no way to avoid a view of it.

  Or unless he went to the window. “There must be other beds in the house.” Andrew lifted the drapery and peered out into the dark. Ghostly snowflakes danced on the other side of the glass. He had a feeling he’d drunk too much.

  “Why would Mrs. Porter have said there weren’t, if there were?” From the location of her voice, and certain rustling sounds, he could tell Miss Sharp had sat down on the bed. He had a feeling she’d drunk too much too.

  “Something in the servants’ quarters, I mean. They found a place for John Coachman, after all. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to offer me one of those rooms. I’ll wait a half-hour or so; then go downstairs and look for a place to sleep.”

  “No.” Her voice came delicate as the dancing snowflakes across the few feet of floor.

  “Pardon me?” He summoned up all his strength, and what remained of his sobriety, before turning. If he saw even the smallest hint of invitation in her eyes… well, he would make sure she saw nothing but cold disapprova
l in his.

  “No.” The word gained strength on repetition. “You can’t go downstairs.” She perched on the edge of the mattress, the dark red of her gown almost lurid against the pale linens and bed-hangings. The look on her face was nothing near invitation: rather, she had the appearance of someone girding herself for fierce argument. “If you’re found out, they might guess we’re not really married.”

  “If I’m found out, they might guess. They might also think I’ve gone away to spare you from my kicking and crowding, as I said. And they might not find me out at all. I’d rather take that pair of chances than stay here in this room and know, no ifs or mights, that I’ve compromised you.” Inwardly he kicked himself. Of course she hadn’t intended any invitation. He’d heard her voice through the veil of drink and of his own guilty desires, which fact made a powerful argument for his spending the night somewhere other than in this room.

  “But you won’t have compromised me.” Her hands made determined fists, fingers curling round the fabric of her skirts. “This is exactly the conversation we had in the barn. We didn’t choose what’s happened. We’re not going to do anything improper. Only if our acquaintances knew of our being here could I be compromised, and no one knows or will know.”

  “No one? So you don’t intend to tell this part of the truth to your father.”

  “No.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Does that not indicate to you that we cross the boundary of impropriety merely by passing the night in this room?” They’d crossed that boundary already, truth be told, by speaking so intimately out in the barn. He’d crossed it in a flying leap by raising his hand to her hair, and sprinted recklessly onward with the rum-fueled things he’d said of her downstairs. I was hooked like a fish from my first sight of her. God, where had his judgment gone?

  “Perhaps. A little. But I’d rather commit this insignificant transgression, and carry it in my conscience, than have the Porters find out I lied to them.” She did look at him now, her dark eyes pleading. “They’ve been so kind. I don’t want them to think ill of me.”