Christmas Delights

by Heather Hiestand

  “The Romans didn’t celebrate Christmas, you know. They were pagans,” Victoria said.

  “They did have Saturnalia,” Rose said thoughtfully. “It’s a pagan festival in December, celebrating the Roman god Saturn.”

  “Do you know any ghost stories from your neighborhood about that?”

  “I do actually. ‘The Ghost Lights.’ ”

  “That sounds promising,” Penelope said, resting her head against Victoria’s arm as the train jerked again.

  “Ice on the tracks?” Victoria asked.

  Rose wiped a spot clear on the window and peered out. “It’s snowing.”

  A conductor opened the door and poked his head into the compartment. “We’re getting word of trouble with the branch lines. I believe the end of the road tonight will be Brighton.” He shut the door.

  “That’s twenty miles from Polegate,” Rose said.

  “We’ll have to cable to get a carriage,” Victoria said. “Unless we can hire something at the station.”

  “My father’s driver, Robbie, will have it all arranged,” Rose said with an air of confidence. “He will have discovered the line to Polegate is closed and will drive to Brighton. We can take you to the Fort.”

  “Are you sure? It will be a cold drive.”

  “They will keep us for the night, if it is too late to return to Redcake Manor.” Rose hid a yawn behind her gloved hand.

  “ ‘The Ghost Lights?’ ” Penelope probed with a childish disinterest in their travel arrangements.

  Rose sat back. “Oh yes. On the mound, every December eighteenth. That’s when Saturnalia began, so we’re told. It was a festival of lights, you know, to make the human sacrifices more visible.”

  Victoria’s brows lifted. “They had human sacrifice?”

  Rose nodded cheerfully and continued her tale. “Of the local Christians.”

  “How Christmassy,” Victoria said, remembering Rose’s earlier complaint about her story.

  Rose threw up her hands. “But the lights are pretty.”

  “They’re real?” Penelope’s eyes widened.

  “Yes. Probably gases or bugs or something.”

  “Or the ghosts of a hundred Roman soldiers, protesting the death of a good Christian,” Penelope said reverently, fingering the cross around her neck, one her mother had given her for her seventh birthday.

  Christian zeal irritated Victoria, and Penelope’s mother had been something of a fanatic, following her vicar’s wife around Liverpool like an acolyte, aping her good deeds. Victoria had never liked the desperate light in her aunt’s eyes. Why had her child been removed from her? Because of religious fervor?

  They continued trading stories until their train pulled in at Brighton Station. The wind buffeted them when they reached Trafalgar Street, but Rose recognized her family’s carriage.

  “How did it get here so quickly?” Victoria asked, battling with her hat against a gust.

  “They must have known hours ago.” The sound of Rose’s cough was hidden by the wind.

  The driver jumped down from the seat to help the porter they had acquired with Victoria and Penelope’s considerable baggage.

  “We’ve warm blankets,” Robbie said. Rose allowed him to help her into the carriage as the porter wrestled with the bags.

  With a sigh, Victoria took Penelope’s arm and followed Rose. She hoped they could reach Polegate in two hours, but that speed was unlikely with hired horses and their baggage weighing down the carriage. At this time of year, it was already dark. Inside the carriage, a lantern swung dizzily, creating a kaleidoscope of her companions’ faces.

  The driver had been able to supply thick sandwiches and jars of water. Victoria refused it all; she could see that whoever had prepared it had not been expecting to feed three people. Penelope was growing fast, and in a spindly stage. She needed the food far more than Victoria.

  A good three hours passed before the horses slowed as they approached Polegate. “I’m sure we can find accommodation for you at the Manor,” Rose suggested with a yawn.

  Victoria blinked, startled out of a half sleep by her words. “How much farther to Pevensey?”

  “Another seven miles,” Rose told her.

  “Then we shall accept your kind invitation,” she said, looking at her cousin, fast asleep with her head on Victoria’s lap. Once again, she remembered the bawdy fun she’d dreamed of when she’d first accepted this invitation for a holiday house party on the coast. Nothing was working out as she had imagined.

  CHAPTER 2

  They had a late start the next morning, since Lady Redcake, Rose’s mother, had insisted they allow Robbie a full night’s rest. Victoria and Penelope ate breakfast with the family in the formal dining room. The two fireplaces, one on either end of the room, were covered in holly and evergreen boughs, and two small trees on tables near one of the fireplaces had cheerful red ribbons tied to many of their branches, along with an assortment of German ornaments. When Victoria had two steaming cups of black tea in her, she realized that the next day was Christmas Eve.

  “How nice to have a house full of family,” she said politely to Lady Redcake, hoping to distract herself from the plate of fried apple dumplings that had been placed in the middle of the table after everyone had served themselves from savory dishes on the sideboard. The scent of cinnamon had her mouth watering.

  “This is not everyone, of course,” Lady Redcake said, her flowing sleeve drifting into her bowl of porridge. “Just our youngest daughters and one grandchild. We will see Alys and her family tomorrow afternoon, and Sir Gawain and his family for Epiphany.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d married, or been widowed, Lady Allen-Hill,” Matilda, the middle daughter, broke in. She did not share her younger sister’s cool blond looks but had red hair, pulled severely away from her face, and a dusting of large brown freckles across her cheeks and forehead.

  “I did become engaged in London but married in Liverpool very quietly,” Victoria said. “My husband passed suddenly and then—”

  “And then you had to go into mourning for what, twenty-four times longer than you’d been wed?” Matilda interrupted. “Outrageous, really, these customs of ours.”

  “Matilda has become quite strong-minded.” Lady Redcake sighed. “She’s working in the family business now. Do you do the same?”

  Victoria gave in to temptation and reached for an apple dumpling. Penelope giggled. With a sigh, Victoria cut the fragrant pastry in half and slid a portion onto Penelope’s plate, though she thought it would have been quite reasonable to keep all of the fruit for herself.

  “Cousin Victoria has taken charge of me.” Penelope poured cream from a jug over her dumpling, overflowing the plate. “And I’m quite a handful.”

  Victoria’s fork stopped just over her sugar-iced pastry. “Penelope!”

  Sir Bartley, Rose’s father, chuckled. “The young lady has just proved her point. You will have a time managing this one. No children of your own?”

  Victoria shook her head. “No, I wasn’t blessed.”

  “Pretty girl like you, certain to find another husband,” Sir Bartley said, his ruddy face creasing into a smile. “I’d offer you a son if I had any to spare.”

  “There’s Lewis,” Rose said. “Our cousin Lewis.”

  “Who makes the birds?” Penelope asked.

  “Yes. I thought he was coming down for Christmas.”

  “I invited him,” Matilda said, with a significant glance at her father.

  “He’s never been one to take meals,” Lady Redcake said serenely. “Always fussing over some bit of machinery.”

  “Who is going to be at this house party you’re attending?” Matilda asked. “Anyone from the neighborhood?”

  “The earl’s family, of course, the Gills. He has two sisters, his mother, and an aunt, I believe. A family called Dickondell,” Victoria said.

  Rose glanced up from her apple dumpling. “It’s a large family.”

  “Ah. I only knew the nam
e. Are you acquainted?”

  “Yes. They are related to Hatbrook’s family.”

  Victoria nodded. “My father will be coming. Honestly, I’m not sure who else. Are there Dickondell men who might marry some of the earl’s sisters?”

  Rose smiled. “There are definitely Dickondell men. Three sons, two of marriageable age. This is the Earl of Bullen? Why have I never met him?”

  “I know the answer to that,” Matilda said. “He’s a scientific man, like Lewis. Awkward in company. He came to call with his mother and sisters once, shortly after we’d moved here. Barely spoke a word.”

  “I don’t think he did speak,” her mother said. “Lady Bullen is a forceful personality. How do you know the family, Lady Allen-Hill?”

  “Connections of my late husband. Second cousins, perhaps? They all came to the wedding, and Lady Barbara, one of the earl’s sisters, has become my frequent correspondent.” Victoria passed the rest of her dumpling to Penelope after limiting herself to two bites.

  “It sounds like a great deal of fun,” Rose said. “The masquerade ball is tomorrow. We’re all attending.”

  “Goodness, I’d forgotten about that,” Victoria said. Her trunk had been sent on ahead.

  “Would you like to stay until tomorrow and go in with all of us?” Lady Redcake asked.

  “I think it would be best if I settle Penelope in now,” Victoria said. “If a carriage can be spared.” The Redcakes were all very pleasant, but this was a house full of women, not the kind of holiday she had in mind.

  Lady Redcake nodded and called a footman to make arrangements. An hour later, Victoria and Penelope were on their way.

  Snow dusted everything but the centers of the roads, giving the landscape a frosted appearance. Icicles pointed their teeth down from eaves and branches. The carriage would have been intolerable if not for a robust collection of hot bricks and lap robes.

  “It does look like Christmas. I was afraid it wouldn’t in the south,” Penelope said.

  “Christmas should be an internal feeling. That way it doesn’t matter where you are. A feeling of innocent joy.” A time, perhaps, of relief from the strict propriety of daily life.

  “You sound like such a mother, Victoria.”

  She was startled by Penelope’s comment. Did she really? Fascinating, when all her thoughts were of the possibility of illicit pleasure. Victoria stared out of the window, her hands anchoring her to the seat as the wheels occasionally slid on patches of ice. Her cousin huddled under the thickest robe.

  Up ahead, she could see a shadowy patch on the snow: a large bush perhaps, or a fallen tree. But then, as the carriage rattled closer, she saw some kind of strange, wheeled machine.

  Two figures bent over it. One stood, then, blowing on his ungloved hands. She could see wide palms, long fingers. The cap he wore gusted off his head as wind rushed through a stand of alders, revealing a thick shock of blond hair, the same shade as Rose Redcake’s. He wore heavy clothes but gave the impression of solid strength and broad shoulders. The other figure was reed thin and tall, dressed similarly. A youth.

  As the carriage drew alongside, the man turned and waved his arms over his head.

  Did he need a rescue? Where had the horses gone? Only then did she notice the smoke curling up from the carriage: slow, sickly gray, and heavy. Maybe it was one of the new horseless carriages she’d read about in a magazine.

  She tapped the roof of the carriage to make it stop, but it was slowing already. Penelope got to her knees on the cushion as Victoria opened a window and peered out.

  The man didn’t come to talk to her, though she could hear voices. He was speaking to the Redcakes’ driver. She heard a chuckle, a responding male growl. Did they know one another?

  A moment later, the carriage door opened and the man appeared, still hatless. “Hullo,” he said with a friendly grin.

  The way his lips curled at the edges, the dimples that were exposed by his smile, stunned Victoria into speechlessness. When she had hoped to make this house party a sensual idyll, she hadn’t considered intimate relations with a servant, but perhaps she should have. Good heavens, did they make all the carriage drivers this pretty in Sussex? She’d been living in the wrong part of England.

  Penelope poked her, and Victoria regained her self-possession. “May I help you?”

  “We were out testing the Marquess of Hatbrook’s new contraption and something’s gone wrong,” he said with a wave at Penelope. “Mind if we join you in the carriage? We can’t force the engine to turn over, and it’s getting colder by the minute.”

  “I certainly do,” Victoria huffed. The cheek! And yet, his voice was surprisingly cultured. Could he be the marquess’s butler or some other kind of upper servant? “We have not been properly introduced.”

  “You’re Victoria Courtnay, are you not?” he asked. “I know your father. We’re members of the same club, the Euphonious Commerce Society.”

  “I am Lady Allen-Hill now,” she said. “But yes, Rupert Courtnay is my father.”

  “I remember meeting you once, at a holiday party, I believe. But you don’t remember me.” He injected a question into his words.

  She wondered how she could possibly have forgotten someone so handsome. Perhaps she’d met him when she was newly engaged, two years earlier? No, she still would have noticed him.

  But what did it say that he knew her father? If he was a member of the club, he’d likely be a businessman, not a servant. Someone like her father.

  “I am sorry I do not recall being introduced.”

  “Perhaps we were not,” he admitted with a sly grin. “But I saw you. I remember the curls in your hair and those lovely gray eyes.”

  He probably remembered what he wasn’t saying. Her rotund figure. In fact, she was surprised he even recognized her, but maybe the coachman had told him who was inside. “Do you live in the area, Mr.—”

  “Noble. Lewis Noble, Lady Allen-Hill. I live in Battersea, but I’ve been staying at Hatbrook Farm to work on this vehicle, and then I’m off to Pevensey-Sur-Mer Fort for the holidays.”

  “Oh,” she breathed. “You are Lewis Noble. The bird maker.”

  His blond eyebrows lifted. “I am?”

  “We spent much of yesterday with your cousin Rose. In fact, we stayed at Redcake Manor last night because of the snow.”

  “I make motor carriages,” he said, with no hint of his previous levity. “And dabble in kitchen improvements.”

  “He’s brilliant,” said the youth, coming up to the carriage. He was in the super-stretched growing phase, though his voice had finished deepening, maybe fourteen. “He’s the secret behind Redcake’s, you see.”

  “You don’t say,” Victoria said, wondering who this brash lad was.

  Lewis cleared his throat. “May I present Eddy Jackson, my apprentice?”

  Penelope stuck her head out of the door. “Introduce me, Cousin Victoria.”

  Victoria did so, feeling acutely uncomfortable. One did not have social occasions on the side of the road in winter.

  “Now, would you mind giving us a lift?” Lewis asked again. “Are you going somewhere with a telephone, or could you drop us at the next pub?”

  “We are headed to the Fort,” Victoria admitted. “For the house party.”

  “Jolly good. Can you give us a ride?” he repeated, rubbing his hands together.

  Her eyes were drawn to those long fingers again, inventor’s fingers. He did not have the hands of a gentleman. They were stained, callused, even marred with small cuts. “Is it safe to leave that contraption on the side of the road?”

  “Nothing else to be done until I can get the part I need. I’ll borrow a horse there. Waste of a day, but there you go.”

  “Can’t you send someone to tow it back to the Farm and stay at the Fort? You don’t want to miss the masquerade ball,” Victoria said.

  “I don’t?” he replied. “I’m as social as the next man, but my work comes first.”

  “I’m not sugge
sting you leave the carriage to rust, just that you don’t have to be the one to take care of it.”

  He regarded her with cool, solemn appraisal. Without turning his head, he said, “Eddy, when we arrive at the Fort, I’d like you to return with Robbie to the Farm to retrieve my bolt case. It’s likely the case will have what we need to fix the carriage.”

  “Certainly, guv.” Eddy grinned at Penelope and started telling a joke in an exaggerated Cockney accent. Victoria, resigned, made a welcoming gesture, and the pair entered the carriage and sat opposite them. Eddy leaned toward Penelope and kept talking, a practiced storyteller. The two passed the rest of the ride in youthful jollity, while the adults were silent.

  Victoria’s hat had netting that somewhat covered her eyes. She took advantage of it to peer at Lewis from time to time. When he caught her once, she turned away quickly, as if she hadn’t been looking on purpose.

  She wished he had more of Eddy’s joie de vivre and would engage her in chatter, but the man was all business. He wasn’t likely to be interested in a midnight dalliance. Although he had bent a little, deciding to send Eddy instead of going himself for tools.

  And really, you never knew what a man might be willing to do in the middle of the night unless you approached him.

  “Would you like a robe?” she asked.

  Lewis shook his head without speaking.

  Eventually, Victoria began to stare out of the window again. They drove through a small town, then climbed a hill. The landscape of dirt fields, dusted with pearly snow and bare trees waving in the wind, gave way to streams, then fens, and, finally, she could see the sea to the right. Through the trees, what looked like a fairy castle appeared, the high stone curtain wall broken only by arrow slits. They were all crenellated on top, with a tower at one end.

  “Amazing,” Penelope breathed in her ear. “Do you think Sleeping Beauty is asleep in that tower?”

  “It looks as if the Fort is perched on the water,” Victoria said.

  “It is fronted by a moat and backed by a lake,” Lewis said.

  “Will we be staying in the real, medieval castle?” Victoria asked.