Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Goose

by Stephanie Laurens

  When he finally raised his head and looked down at her, a smile the like of which she hadn’t seen for more than a decade wreathed his face. Lighthearted, joyous, it was the smile of the devil-may-care, devilishly handsome young gentleman he had once been. Yet he was no longer that young man; the rough and pocked skin of his left cheek resting beneath her palm testified to that.

  She saw in his eyes, now shining with simple happiness, the man he now was. A man who had walked through cannon fire and survived, who had, at last, found his way home.

  As if to prove that, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bedraggled sprig…

  She stared, then laughed. “Mistletoe?”

  “It is the season.” He held it up, over their heads. “It’s even got berries, so I can claim a kiss.” As he bent his head, he whispered, “We shouldn’t let our matchmaking crew’s efforts go entirely to waste.”

  She was still laughing when his lips claimed hers.

  She tightened her arms, sank against him, and let her heart and soul flow into the kiss—one of dreams undreamt, of passion yet to be spent, and an unwritten, unscripted promise for a shared future of laughter and tears, of children and home and family. Of a shared life they would both take delight in living.

  Of a love still burgeoning, still growing and evolving—a reality they needed no more words to claim.

  * * *

  After the adventures of the previous afternoon, that morning, Therese found herself at something of a loss. Jamie and George had asked permission to go to the green and play with the other boys; she’d granted it, more than anything else to get them out from under her feet while keeping them appropriately occupied. With Lottie drawing by the fire, Therese tried to settle at her escritoire, but found the ink drying on her nib while her thoughts wandered.

  She had, she suspected, done all she possibly could regarding Christian and Eugenia. Really, no one seeing the pair together—how each looked at the other—could fail to comprehend that they should carve out a life together, but how long it would take for one or the other to broach the subject was anyone’s guess.

  With no further action pending on that front, there remained the vexing mystery of the missing geese. Earlier, Mrs. Haggerty had delivered the news that although Bilson had hoped to get in sufficient extra cuts of beef to tide the village over, he was no longer so sure he would be able to satisfy the unexpected demand.

  Mrs. Haggerty was now conning her cookbooks, trying to find recipes that might serve to dress up the capon she had hanging in her larder. To Therese’s mind, and she felt sure everyone else’s, capon was a poor substitute for goose.

  She frowned at the letter she’d started. She’d barely got past the salutation.

  The clocks throughout the house chimed the hour—eleven o’clock.

  As the peals and chimes faded, she realized another peal was ringing in the servants’ quarters, then she heard Crimmins’s measured tread cross the hall to the front door.

  The clatter of footsteps and a medley of piping voices reached her. Lottie stopped her drawing and looked up, then she picked up her paper and crayon and came to Therese’s side.

  The door opened, and Crimmins looked in. “Lord James, Mr. George, and some of their young friends, my lady.”

  Therese raised her brows, then Jamie and George were leading a small band of village boys into Therese’s sanctum. She made a mental note to explain to Jamie and George what the word “sanctum” meant.

  Then she took in her grandsons’ faces and instantly came alert. Both Jamie and George looked…transformed. Eager and urgent and not at all like the halfway-bored boys who had trooped out to play. “What is it?” she asked.

  Jamie and George came to stand beside her. Jamie made the introductions. “This is Johnny Tooks.” He gestured to each boy in turn. “And Roger and Willie Milsom, and Ben Butts, and Will Foley.”

  As Jamie said his name, each boy performed what was doubtless his best bow.

  Therese nodded at them all. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, my lady,” they chorused, and all of them bowed again.

  Therese glanced at Jamie. “And…?”

  Jamie all but puffed out his chest. “And Johnny has something to say.”

  “Oh?” She focused on Johnny and did her best not to look intimidating but merely interested.

  She must have succeeded, because Johnny solemnly nodded and said, “The day the geese went missing, Dad went off to market like he always does—real early, he goes, long before the sun is up. And I’m supposed to feed the geese morning and evening while he’s away—we’ve been fattening them up for the past month, you see—but…” Johnny stopped and looked at Jamie.

  From the corner of her eye, Therese saw Jamie level a determined look at Johnny, who was several years the elder.

  Johnny looked pained, yet he shifted his gaze back to Therese’s face and went on, “But that day, soon as Dad was off, I left to go fishing with some lads from Romsey.”

  Therese waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, she prompted, “Yes?”

  Johnny blinked and looked at Jamie.

  Who quietly sighed and explained, “He didn’t feed the geese. He left them hungry, and because they’d been feeding on extra for the past weeks, they would have quickly got very, very hungry.”

  “At least that’s what we think,” George put in.

  “And then,” Roger revealed, “Johnny didn’t get home until late. Until dark.”

  Again, Therese looked to her grandsons for clarification.

  Jamie obliged. “It was after six when Johnny got home and went to feed the flock—that was when he found they were missing. But he should have fed them earlier, before it got dark and they roosted for the night.”

  “Ah.” Therese looked at Johnny. “So the geese had, in effect, missed two feedings?”

  Johnny hung his head and nodded. “Me dad’s gonna skin me.”

  “That,” Therese briskly informed him, “is an excellent reason to do all you can to help us locate the geese.” When Johnny glanced up warily—hopefully—and met her eyes, she said, “I gather this means the geese would have been exceedingly hungry.” When all the boys nodded, she asked, “Would they have—could they have—gone looking for food?”

  “That’s what we think must have happened, my lady,” Will Foley said.

  “Terrible hungry, they musta been,” Johnny added.

  Therese sat back and ran her eye over her now-expanded band of searchers. “Very well. It appears we have to think like hungry geese. Let’s assume they were hungry enough that they wandered off looking for food. Where would they have gone?”

  “They might hunt for grain,” Johnny said, “but more likely scraps. They love those.”

  “But,” George pointed out, “we know they’re not in any of the barns or stables or anywhere else around the village.”

  Therese considered, then said, “There has to be somewhere we haven’t thought to search—somewhere with food that would satisfy geese.”

  “But where?” Jamie demanded.

  She was saved from having to shrug by the doorbell pealing. They all waited as Crimmins went to the front door, then he tapped on the parlor door, opened it, and looked in. “Mr. Fitzgibbon and friends, my lady.” He lowered his voice. “They appear quite excited and say they have something to show you.”

  Therese blinked. This seemed a morning for the unlikely. “Very well, Crimmins. Show them in.” She waved the younger boys deeper into the room. “Stand over there, if you please.”

  The five village boys cautiously shuffled toward the fireplace, leaving just enough space for Henry and his four friends to get through the door and line up facing Therese.

  Five more enthused and excited faces looked at her.

  “Lady Osbaldestone.” They all bowed.

  She waited until they’d straightened to ask, “Yes, gentlemen?”

  Henry’s guests looked to him. But before Henry could even open his mouth, the doo
rbell pealed again.

  This time, when the parlor door opened, Crimmins announced, “Miss Eugenia Fitzgibbon and Lord Longfellow, my lady.”

  “Good heavens!” Therese muttered. She waved and more loudly said, “Further in, boys.” She flicked her fingers at Henry’s friends. “You, as well, if you would. We appear to be getting a trifle crowded.”

  All her guests complied, allowing Eugenia and Christian to come in and Crimmins to pull the door closed behind them.

  Therese looked at her latest guests, read their news in their faces, and beamed.

  Christian saw her understanding and smiled. “As you’ve guessed, we’ve come to share our news.” He glanced at Eugenia. She looked up and met his eyes, and her face positively radiated happiness. Christian glanced at Therese. “Miss Fitzgibbon has done me the honor of agreeing to marry me.”

  “Excellent!” Therese’s smile couldn’t grow any wider.

  Congratulations erupted from Henry, from his friends, and even from the village boys.

  Jamie, George, and Lottie sang their felicitations, then, beaming, turned to share a thoroughly triumphant look with Therese.

  Still smiling—indeed, beaming, too, which she rarely did—she looked up as Christian said to Henry, “We looked for you at the Hall, but you’d already left. I take it you have no objections?”

  “Of course not! None at all.” Henry beamed, too. “I literally couldn’t be happier.” Henry looked at Eugenia and caught her eye. “I’m very happy for you both.” He kissed his sister’s cheek, and she patted his.

  Therese let the excitement run for a moment more, then lightly rapped her cane on the floor. When the occupants of her parlor fell silent and looked her way, she fixed her gaze on Henry and his friends. “You gentlemen were about to share some news, I believe.”

  “Yes, indeed.” With a nod, Henry invited Dagenham to speak.

  Transformed by his enthusiasm and for once looking younger than his years, the viscount suddenly appeared shy, but then he drew breath, inclined his head to Therese, and said, “We”—he indicated the other three—“felt…well, guilty over cracking the ice and spoiling the village’s day of fun, and we’d heard about the missing flock of geese, so we thought to make what amends we could by scouting around and making absolutely certain that the geese weren’t anywhere on the Hall estate at least. Only the boundaries aren’t marked, and it seems we ended in the woods at the back of the estate, but the long and the short of it is that we found these”—like a conjurer, Dagenham held up four largish, mostly white feathers—“on a narrow path through the woods to the west and a bit south of the Hall.”

  Everyone stared at the feathers.

  Then Jamie, his eyes shining, stepped forward, plucked one feather from Dagenham’s hand, and showed it to Johnny. Johnny touched it, then nodded eagerly.

  Jamie held the feather aloft and announced, “At last! A clue!”

  Chapter 13

  By the time Therese and company—Jamie, George, Lottie, the village boys, Eugenia, Christian, and Henry and his friends—reached the stretch of path along which the feathers had been found, quite half the men of the village and several of the women had joined them.

  Farmer Tooks, summoned by Johnny, came plodding along the footpath from the direction of his farm. “I knew this path existed—it skirts around the back of the Hall and the back of my fields and goes north all the way to the West Wellow lane—but even if they was driven mad with hunger, I can’t see why the birds would have come this way.”

  “Regardless,” Therese said, “we now have a direction.” With her cane, she pointed southward along the path. “I suggest we follow and see where your vagrant birds have taken themselves off to.”

  There was a rumble of assent from all those there.

  “We should spread out as best we can,” Christian said, “and keep our eyes peeled for further signs. Just in case the flock veered off the path at some point.”

  Those in boots duly spread out to either side of the path beneath the trees. With Therese, Eugenia, and Mrs. Colebatch keeping to the path, the company set off.

  They advanced purposefully in a southwesterly direction, with the path paralleling the banks of the stream that fed the lake. Although the skies were gray and the temperature hovered only a little above freezing, under the trees, they were protected from the chilly breeze. Everyone was bundled up appropriately, and although the footpath was clearly not well frequented, the going was easy enough.

  When the woods to her left thinned, Therese glanced in that direction and saw they’d drawn level with the meadows behind the Mountjoys’ property.

  A little way ahead, the path swerved west and, via an old single-person bridge, crossed the stream, which was swollen and sullen and running only sluggishly, half choked with ice. From a liberal scattering of droppings and several more feathers, it was obvious the flock had congregated on the bank there. Tooks studied the area, then pointed to a patch where the winter grass had been flattened. “Looks like they spent that first night there.”

  The rickety bridge spanning the stream was constructed from the sawn bole of one large tree trunk fitted with a timber handrail on one side. Henry’s friends had already crossed. Heads bent, they’d been studying the ground on the other bank.

  “Yes!” Raising his head, Thomas Kilburn looked across the stream at the bulk of the company and pointed to the ground near his feet. “There are webbed prints in the softer ground here.”

  “And bits of down!” George Carnaby triumphantly held up a few whitish-gray wisps he’d picked from some bushes along the next section of the path.

  That was good enough for the rest of the group. The younger boys and Lottie scampered fearlessly across the ramshackle bridge, their steps light and sure. The others crossed more carefully, with Christian instructing that no more than two adults should be on the somewhat ancient structure at any one time. Reverend Colebatch assisted his wife across, Christian followed, leading Eugenia, and Rory Whitesheaf grinned, bowed, and offered Therese his hand, which she accepted with gracious thanks.

  They crossed the stream without mishap and continued on. The path twisted and turned. Roughly one hundred yards farther on, they came out on the shore of the lake. They all halted and looked around, getting their bearings.

  “This is the western side of the northern arm.” Christian looked right, then left. “I’d completely forgotten this path was here.” He glanced at Dagenham. “I take it you four didn’t come via this path yesterday?”

  Dagenham flushed slightly, but shook his head. “We used the path on the eastern side of the woods, running along the edge of those meadows we passed.”

  “I’d showed them that path,” Henry said. “It’s the one the Hall household always uses to get to the lake.” He glanced back along the path they’d followed. “I never knew this path was here.”

  Tooks grunted. “Skirts your boundary, it does, so it’s not on Hall land, and the path’s not so easy to see unless you’re on it.”

  Christian turned to look on along the path. “My memory of this path isn’t perfect, but as I do remember being on it as a child, then I suspect—I think—it must go on and at least come close to the Grange holdings.”

  “More down!” Roger Milsom waved from farther along the path where it curved around, following the lake shore.

  Therese gestured with her cane. “As it seems our feathered friends went that way, I suggest we continue on.”

  They tramped steadily on, with the younger members of the company forging ahead to search for feathers, down, and droppings. And by all such signs, Farmer Tooks’s flock had, indeed, doggedly plodded on.

  “Where the devil are these wretched birds going?” Tooks grumbled. “They must have been ready to eat twigs by the morning of the day after they left.”

  Therese considered, then said, “Presumably they found sufficient fodder to sustain them along the way, but I take your point in that it seems they must have had some place—some destination�
��in mind. Which seems odd.”

  “Devilish odd,” Tooks agreed. “Contrary, they are, geese. I can’t see them going off somewhere for any other reason than food, but how would they know?”

  “And what was it they knew,” Christian said, “given that none of us can guess?”

  They might, finally, be on the trail of the geese, might at last be able to postulate that the flock had gone in search of food, yet the birds’ intended destination remained a confounding mystery.

  They walked around the western shore of the lake all the way to the southwestern corner, and still the path led on, a narrow path barely one person wide plunging deeper into the woods. Encouraged by continuing discoveries of signs the flock had passed that way, they trudged on in a generally southerly direction, but gradually, the path swung to their left, toward the southeast, and climbed the low ridge that was the extension of the rise that separated the lake from the village green.

  Of necessity, the company slowed as they toiled upward; Therese was glad to avail herself of Rory Whitesheaf’s assistance again. But once they reached the top of the ridge, the path continued along it, more or less flat, and the children raced ahead until Christian called to them to remain within sight.

  Not long after, he said, “We’re nearing the rear boundary of the Grange estate.”

  Tooks grunted. “If memory serves, the path passes by your rear boundary, just as it does with the Hall and my farm. Then it heads on past the back of Milsom Farm, and a while after, it splits—one arm runs down the east face of the ridge to our lane, and the other goes west and all the way down to the Salisbury road.”

  His gaze distant, Christian continued walking. After a moment, he said. “Yes, I believe you’re right.” He refocused and glanced at the other village men. “I haven’t yet caught up with George Milsom. Are all his fields currently under the plow?”

  “Aye,” Ned Foley replied. His brother John ran Crossley Farm, another of the outlying farms of the village. “George has two tenant farmers as work the fields closer to the ridge, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not much by way of anything to attract geese there, I’d’ve thought.”