ONCE UPON A REGENCY CHRISTMAS

by Various

  Every new fact she found out about him pointed to further questions.

  She’d sent the staff to bed save for her maid Anne, who sat outside in the corridor as a sop to morality and the rudimentary observation of manners.

  Her mother had taken to her bed again because she did not enjoy the Christmas season and had for years spent most of the month of December in repose. One less worry. Alice would have fretted to find her only unmarried daughter here alone in a room with an injured and half-dressed stranger.

  For the first time that night Christine smiled. Perhaps her mother would have reason to be upset, but there seemed no other avenue open to her save leaving the American and finding her own bed and she knew that she could not do that.

  She would never rest knowing he lay here lost in fever and sickness.

  * * *

  He stirred an hour later and when she opened her eyes he was watching her, sweat on his brow where the fever had broken.

  ‘How...late...is it?’

  Her eyes went to the clock on the mantel, the heavy tick-tock of time heard in the room.

  ‘Half past four.’

  He then looked down. ‘Who undressed me?’

  ‘I did. Not completely, though. I left your trousers on because...’

  He smiled and for the first time in hours she thought he might yet live.

  ‘Did you...find my...knife?’

  ‘Yes. It is here.’ Opening the small drawer in the bedside table, she took it out.

  ‘Can you put it beside...my left hand...in case...?’

  He left the rest unsaid as she did as he asked, though horror washed across her. ‘You think the man you fought would come here, to the house?’

  He closed his eyes, but she could see them moving behind his eyelids rapidly in thought. ‘I don’t...want...you hurt.’

  Standing, she looked around, at the ornate pulled-thread cover on the bed and the ruffled curtains at the window, at the vase of pink roses on the table and the specially scented French soap by the Sèvres washbasin.

  Her life. A good life. A life of luxury and wonder and safety.

  And here he was, imagining evil to be broaching such a fortress, to be coming for him or for her she knew not which, even at the dead of night with all the doors double-locked and a watchman stationed in the hallway downstairs awake. Here in one of the best streets in London.

  His life was marked and marred and distrusting. So very different from her own.

  ‘You have been hurt before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By whom?’

  He shifted and groaned with the pain, his eyes bloodshot and weary, the growth of new stubble darkening his chin.

  ‘Virginia was not an easy land...to grow in. There were times...’

  ‘Who marked your back?’

  ‘Fire. I got caught in the summer of 1806 in the bush and it came on quick...’

  ‘And your arms?’

  ‘Shifting timber down the James one autumn. By myself that time, for they were already dead.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  He didn’t answer, but raised his right hand to look at, it frowning deeply. ‘My finger isn’t broken, I think. It’s happened before and it hurt a lot more than it does now.’

  ‘Who did this to you, William?’

  ‘A man without conscience or honesty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For so many reasons I do not even know where to begin. The start of it was all just so very long ago.’

  He had shut his eyes and she knew he did not wish to speak longer, though he surprised her by asking one last question.

  ‘When is your brother home?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Stay inside, then. Promise me you will do that, Christine, that you will not go outside. Promise me.’

  He lifted his hand then, trying to find hers and she came back to him and they sat there in the light of a candle and the glow of the fire, just being quiet and alone. And Christine could not remember ever being so thankful for such a recovery. She felt peaceful and joyous and in love.

  The last thought made her sit straighter than she had been.

  It was true. She did love him.

  He was mysterious, dangerous, scarred and strong. He was also watching over her and she had not felt that safe for such a long, long time; before her father and brother had died, before the river had taken them, before her mother had fallen into the blackness of depression and never escaped it.

  William Miller brought her the light. Like a candle at Advent, the first candle, the purple one that signified a coming.

  She sat as still as she could and felt the frost leave her, unfurling piece by piece from the frozen waste of her heart. She sat and watched over him until the morning came and bathed his face in beauty.

  * * *

  Lucien arrived before lunchtime and he had come to London alone. He found her asleep next to William’s bed and he did not look at all pleased. She was glad he did not demand her answers there and then, but gestured that he would see her outside.

  They left the patient entwined in the arms of sleep, his knife within hand’s reach and all the implications of danger that such an action involved.

  ‘Go to bed, Christine. You look exhausted. I will speak with you this evening.’

  ‘You won’t hurt him, though. William. You won’t send him away?’

  ‘No.’ He touched her cheek then, the old marks of tears no doubt upon them. ‘You did well looking after him, but I am here now.’

  ‘I love him, Lucien.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t care what he has done or who he is...a murderer, a pauper, a man without much...’

  ‘He is none of those things. I promise.’

  Shock ran through her. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Go to bed. I will sit with him until you wake again.’

  * * *

  Lucien was there now, watching him, eyes as pale as his sister’s, but much more scheming.

  ‘It was that bastard, Warrington, wasn’t it? He did this to you?’

  ‘Not personally. But, yes, he probably set them on me.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Five.’

  Lucien swore. ‘I sent you into the lion’s den myself. This is my fault. If it is any consolation Rodney Warrington is reported to have left England. Some scandal, it is said. He is escaping with his name intact to foreign shores. Rumour has it he has taken a large part of the Melton finances with him. There should be no more trouble with the shops, at least, for it sounds as if you did a good job of frightening him off. I couldn’t imagine what you said to have him running like that...unless it was something you did not say at all.’

  ‘Lucien?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am on my sickbed. I don’t want to answer more of your questions.’

  ‘You have a knock to your head, a badly sprained finger and a knife wound that has passed through no major organ on your side. I think you will be up by tomorrow now that the fever has passed.’

  ‘Did you hear anything of the health of the old Duchess as you delved into your murky channels of intelligence?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Where is your sister?’ He wanted her there beside him, Christine with her quiet cleverness and her beautiful smile.

  ‘In her bed. She looked exhausted. I promised her I would watch over you.’

  ‘Like a hungry hawk would watch a wheat field full of mice,’ William countered and heard Lucien Howard laugh.

  ‘Or like one lord would watch another in his hour of need, William?’

  Will felt a strange pull of friendship that had been so foreign in his life thus far.

  ‘Will
,’ he returned. ‘No one has ever called me William.’

  ‘And was it Miller in the Americas?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It was always Melton.’

  * * *

  Will dreamed of the past when he slept. He dreamed of his mother, born in Boston and lost in the back blocks of Virginia. He dreamed of Rupert, too, his father, his anger never truly settling until he had reached a land of wilderness and wasteland, a place that called to his wild untamed nature as England never had. A place he would not leave even in death, his remains buried under a tall red cedar high on the Appalachian slopes and far from any settlement or other humanity.

  Just as he had liked it in life. People disappointed him, and he them. In the forest with the trees, breaking in land that had been virgin for all the years of the earth’s existence, Rupert had found a solace he had not known before, a place that was his. His mother had tried to like it, but she had died bitter.

  ‘If anything ever happens to us, Will, go back to England, but tread carefully. The Melton family wield much power from what I have heard, enough to see you dead if they feel you to be a nuisance.’

  She had said that to him many times, once after the grass fire and again after the winter where they had nearly starved. She had said it when she lost a baby as he turned seven and another when he was nine. She had screamed it when his father had taken to him with a heavy stick after drinking too much, the homemade whisky strong and pure and a sop to his bottomless disappointment. She had sobbed it when she had bound his broken arm with the last of her petticoats and a splint made from hardwood branches that he himself had found on the edge of the forest.

  He was a child of violence and of beauty. He was a child of regret and disappointment as well as the hard honest labour of breaking in fields, planting seed, hunting until the moon came up and the quarry came out and the morning brought him home.

  For everything he didn’t believe in, Rupert had faith in the spiritual and applied it with more gusto than was expected. Every kill had been prayed over, each soul of the dead given their proper rights to see them into the afterlife.

  Will had never forgotten that lesson. Even yesterday before coming forward with his knife the words had been there, recited and honest.

  For man is a creature of chance and the beasts are creatures of chance, and one mischance awaits them all.

  Another of the Bible passages his mother had read and taken up by his father as a learning. Ecclesiastes, if he remembered rightly, and he usually did.

  A life of two halves. Of here and there. Could he be enough for her, for Christine? Would she want what was left of him, what he’d cobbled together in the years of aloneness out there on the lower slopes of the high Appalachians?

  He wished he could ask Lucien to bring him his haversack for he would have liked to have held his Flowing Hair lucky silver dollar and his golden-crested Melton ring. His whole life in two objects.

  But he did not want the nuisance of asking so he turned over and went to sleep.

  * * *

  He was up when she came to the room that evening, his day clothes upon him and his hair tied back. She saw her brother’s letter on the table, the wax seal broken. When she looked closer she saw the name of Melton in the writing, though he pushed the missive into a drawer before she had the chance to look at it further.

  ‘You seem a lot better. Lucien said you had even eaten a substantial meal.’

  ‘You have spoken with your brother about me?’

  She frowned, not quite understanding the wariness in his tone. She felt uncertain somehow, with him, with the kiss between them, with the heartfelt confession she had made to her brother, with the sickness gone and the beauty of him returned.

  ‘Lucien has had your things brought up from the garden room. He wants you to stay in the house from now on. With us.’

  The haversack lay on the floor near the desk by the window, his hat tucked into one of the leather belts. The bag looked almost empty.

  ‘You travel light, Mr Miller.’

  ‘I always have.’

  Christine felt a sense of trepidation creeping across her.

  ‘Lucien told me you had been to see Warrington. I hope that your injuries are not a direct result of your attempt to warn him away from me, for Lucien said he had some hand in writing that note and I wouldn’t want you hurt on my account.’

  He stood and walked across to her. She was always surprised by how tall he was and how big because men were more usually her height or smaller. His right eye had blackened overnight and there was a graze on his forehead that looked worse than it had.

  ‘You were lucky...’ she began and gestured to the wounds, but he shook his head.

  ‘I am sorry if I frightened you.’

  She began to say he had not, but then stopped. She had been frightened and he had been drinking and here in the town house in London the kiss from the other day seemed a long time ago and a long way away. She wished they could have been back on the hills above Linden Park, alone and free.

  ‘I wasn’t drunk.’ It was as if he could see the accusation in her eyes and she looked up at him.

  ‘Then why?’ Her brother was no angel, but he had never come home half-dead from public brawling and smelling of the liquor.

  ‘I am not quite the man you think I am. I have family here in London, but...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘They do not know who I am and I am not sure if I want them to.’

  Now he was talking in riddles, but as she was about to ask what he meant exactly there was a knock at the door and one of the servants came in.

  ‘There is a visitor downstairs, my lady, that the Earl would like you both to meet.’

  Christine frowned. Who would come uninvited this late and why would her brother want William to come down with her?

  Ever since meeting the American she had felt off centre and she had barely sat down for a moment to her sewing. Suddenly she wished she could just for the quiet of it and the peace.

  With a nod to the maid they followed her out, down the stairs and into the side salon with its wide French doors opening to the garden.

  * * *

  Will’s grandmother, the Duchess of Melton, sat there, on the sofa, her dark blue gown making the white of her hair most remarkable and the red around her eyes more visible.

  She stood as she saw him, a handkerchief turned in her fingers and a look in her eyes that Will had seen on his father’s face so very many times. Dislocation and anger finely balanced across hope.

  ‘You are Rupert’s boy, aren’t you? My grandson?’ Her voice wavered across the last words and he heard Christine take in a breath. ‘You got my letter and came?’

  He stayed silent.

  ‘I looked for your father so many times and I prayed...’ She could not go on.

  And he could not answer either. There was too much in the way of history between them and Rupert had made certain that forgiveness would never be an easy thing.

  ‘My own mother chose her husband over me and tossed her only son out. Told me if I did not go she would have me carried off, shanghaied if needs be. That’s the tainted blood of betrayal that runs through your veins, Will. Never forget it. Never forgive.’

  Elizabeth Maythorne was tall and thin and very pale. Like a ghost of what he had imagined for all of those years because she only looked human now with her wrinkled hands spotted with age and the pink of her scalp showing through.

  He’d lost his parents when he was just seventeen, left alone in the mountains, miles from anywhere and anyone, and if he’d cried for them he barely remembered it for there was timber to be taken down the river and sold and he was the only one to do it.

  ‘Poor Will Melton with his angry father and his bitter mother.’ He’d heard that once in a trading station when
he was just thirteen. A woman had said it with a muffled voice behind her hands as he’d passed her by. ‘Poor Will Melton.’

  And here standing in front of him was the one who had made it such, the only correspondence she had ever sent arriving ten months ago.

  I looked for you so many times. Another lie.

  ‘My father hated you.’ The words came softly even though the message in them was harsh. ‘He never forgave you even as he died.’

  He did not look at Christine or at Lucien as he said this because it was not his way to be so mean. He only looked at her...his grandmother, and saw the single tear that fell down one pale cheek at his news. And he swallowed.

  ‘My husband was an angry man, too. Together they were like...poison.’

  She said the last word beneath her breath and he believed her.

  ‘I wanted my son safe and if safety was far away then that was my penance. My punishment. I just wanted him alive. They tried to kill each other, you see, more than once, and I could think of no other choice. Love forces your hand sometimes and I have regretted it ever since.’

  She was crying now, the words tumbling across sobs, no pretence or defence, nothing hidden even in front of strangers. Without knowing it he moved towards her, taking her into his arms and against his chest, cradling her age and her sadness against his own; like a treasure that had been given when he least expected it. Half-warm.

  She held on to him as if she might never let him go. He could feel her frail fingers around him, digging in. Mine, they seemed to say, and he closed his eyes and felt it, too. My grandmother. My blood. My name. My history. It was so much sweeter for having never had a true idea of family.

  ‘They called me William, but I answer to Will,’ he said when she finally seemed to calm and could listen. ‘William Lynton Melton.’

  ‘My father’s name,’ she said. ‘Lynton was my father’s name. Perhaps...’

  He nodded because even the hope of forgiveness was sweet and he wanted there to be an end to all the bitterness that he had lived with.