Lord Calne's Christmas Ruby

by Jude Knight

  Aunt Hannah suggested charitably the rector perhaps ran out of time to discuss the many heroines of Bible stories. Why, even Chapter 31 of Proverbs was primarily about the characteristics of a virtuous woman: the wife who was worth more than rubies, who managed a household, a family, a vineyard, and a textiles business.

  “And Lalamani is a very pretty name, I think,” she added, and then had to repeat what the Reverend had said at the gate. Philip agreed, and Lalamani found herself explaining it meant ‘Ruby’, in celebration of a spectacular trading deal her father and uncle had signed just before her birth, which set their enterprise on the road to success.

  At the house, Aunt Hannah invited Philip to join them for lunch, and he sent the carriage back to the hall without him. Aunt Hannah was telling him all about the work they had been doing, “which is just as well, for we are to have visitors! Why, I believe half the village intends to call. They wish to meet Lalamani, of course. We shall be quite merry, and I am so grateful to my dear niece and her maid, for I do not mind telling you the heavy cleaning has been too much for me and poor Addy for some time.”

  Let him make what he would of Lalamani doing the cleaning. She was not ashamed of working with her hands to help her aunt. The smile he gave her seemed admiring, but she knew aristocrats demanded idleness from their wives and daughters. They could direct servants, but never sully their own fair hands. Well. She was no aristocrat, and she wouldn’t pretend to a gentility she lacked. And as to the gentry of the village who had so neglected a woman who had served them for forty years, she would be polite for Aunt Hannah’s sake, but she would certainly not pretend to them, either.

  However, Lord Calne showed no signs of scorn, nor of objecting to once more eating in the kitchen with the maids. And when, as they were finishing their meal, Aunt Hannah and Addy began a low-voiced debate about what time to light the fire in the parlour for the expected guests, and which other rooms in the house could be left fireless until they could find someone willing to chop some of the wood in the woodshed into fire-sized pieces, he demanded to know the location of the axe.

  “I will be back for visiting hour,” he said, and set off to chop wood.

  After an hour and a half, Lalamani went looking for him. The woodshed allowed for large pieces to be stored—drying—along one side and stacked chopped pieces on the other. The stack was at least triple its former size. Lord Calne, stripped to the waist, was at the chopping block in the centre of the shed, and she stood for a long moment admiring the width of his shoulders and the ripple of his muscles as he lifted a heavy mallet with his good arm and brought it down on a metal wedge inserted into the slice of trunk on the block.

  The other arm was well muscled to the elbow, but the scarred forearm was markedly less robust than its counterpart, and his ungloved hand was twisted and deformed.

  He brought the mallet down again, a mighty blow with all his weight behind it, and the trunk split, a chunk falling to the ground. He bent to pick it up, and his pantaloons tightened over his buttocks, riveting her eyes.

  As Philip bent to pick up the bit of wood he’d knocked loose, he sensed Lalamani’s presence and turned in time to see her admiring his anatomy. A moment too late to disguise her interest, she dragged her eyes up to meet his, flushing to her hairline. He was in time to squelch his smirk, which—he was certain—would not find favour with her.

  “My aunt sent me to let you know there is warm water in the scullery, for you to refresh yourself,” she said, her gaze now fixed on the rafters of the shed and her voice higher pitched than usual.

  “Thank you.” Philip reached for his shirt, then changed his mind and bundled it in his jacket, pulling on his great coat instead. He’d been perspiring freely while chopping, and would like to wash before dressing again, but even in the shelter of the shed he could feel the chill now he’d stopped.

  The rain had cleared for now, and the afternoon was fair but cold, with a biting wind that hissed across the small kitchen courtyard and infiltrated beneath the skirts of his coat.

  Lalamani was halfway to the house before he caught up with her. “I have a stack of wood we’ve cleared from the buildings at the Hall, Miss Finchurch. I’ll have a cart load chopped into manageable pieces and send it over.”

  “That would be very kind of you,” she said.

  He cleaned himself as best he could in the scullery, grateful for the warm water and a handful of soap jelly. Beyond the door to the kitchen, he heard her telling Mrs Thorpe of his offer. He dried himself off and dressed again, resigned to being thanked, and sure enough, though he assured Mrs Thorpe the scraps he planned to give her were destined to burn and might as well provide someone with warmth while doing so, he had to bear the burden of her gratitude until the first of the afternoon callers arrived.

  He had intended to leave in proper form after the civil thirty minutes. But Arthur Picknell annoyed him, with his sullen and reluctant attentions to Lalamani, and the other puppies accompanying their mothers were no better. And so Philip appropriated for himself the duties and privileges of a nephew of the house, even to addressing Mrs Thorpe as Aunt Hannah, and advising one over-enthusiastic youth to mind his manners.

  Aunt Hannah failed to notice. Lalamani’s glare promised retribution, but she went along with his masquerade until the last of the afternoon visitors was escorted to the door, and even then, allowed him to make his own farewells and escape into the evening.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a reprieve only, and when he stopped work the following day to let the men go home for their nooning and saw Lalamani waiting for him, he knew he would need to account for his sudden desire to slay dragons for her, or—failing a good fire breather—to protect her from nuisance. Though he doubted he could explain. He had spent the past evening and all day so far today trying to understand it himself.

  “I am sent with food, Lord Calne,” his damsel told him. “Our Aunt Hannah is anxious her new nephew should not starve.”

  “About that.” He trailed her to where she had set a blanket in a patch of weak sunlight against the one stone wall still standing from the carriage house. “I can explain.”

  “What did you think you were doing?” She sounded more bemused than annoyed. “If you sought to convince those silly women and their sons you are courting me, I cannot fathom the purpose. And it won’t serve, since you will be gone soon. Besides. It is ridiculous.”

  He had been intending to apologise, but that distracted him. “How is it ridiculous? That a poverty-stricken engineer like me might look so far above him?”

  “That is not what I mean, and you know it. You are an earl, even if none of them realise it. And only an idiot would mistake you for anything but a gentleman. While I am daughter and niece to a merchant, without a drop of blue blood in my veins. Which at least means no one will be surprised when you disappear. They will simply decide you could not stomach the smell of the shop.”

  That sounded like a quote. From those women he’d interrupted at the Haverfords’ dance, no doubt, or others just like them. Philip swallowed the urge to tell her what he really thought of her. For one thing, she wouldn’t believe him. For another, he couldn’t act on his feelings. Yes, she had more than enough money for both of them, but if he found the idea of marrying an heiress undesirable in the abstract, he discovered it was even more distasteful now he had found an heiress he could fall in love with. He could never consent to touching the money her uncle left her. And without it, he could not afford to marry.

  “I do have to leave,” he said. “But I am torn to pieces about it. For one thing, working here brings back all my father’s stories. He grew up here, and used often to tell us stories about him and his younger brother, and the games they played in the grounds and in the dower house where they lived. I thought it would be no hardship to sell a place I had never seen, and didn’t want to inherit. But it is wound around my bones, thanks to my father.”

  Lalamani’s eyes widened. “You plan to sell? But what of
the entail?”

  “There is none. An entail must be renewed from time to time, and my cousin outlived my uncle long enough to inherit. The earl had sold everything that was his to sell, even the lands around here he acquired through enclosure, but under the entail he held the Hall in trust for his son, and his son held it in trust for the next heir.”

  “You.”

  It was not a question, but he confirmed it anyway. “Me. Because my cousin didn’t renew the entail, I inherited free and clear. Apart from mountainous debts, which I have no way of paying except for selling what is left.” Whether he wanted to or not.

  Lalamani passed him a cup of something from a flask, and he took a sip. A lemon drink, still warm and rich with honey.

  “You said that was one of the reasons you feel torn.”

  “I feel guilty about leaving the local people to the non-existent mercies of the local gentry. I have heard a few stories this week, and they’re suffering. You’d think the rector would champion them, but… Well. You heard him yesterday. And according to those I’ve spoken with, he was the power behind the enclosure act, and is ruthless in collecting his tithes.”

  “But what can you do about it,” Lalamani asked.

  “I am the earl. I hold his living. I could show by example how to act. If I could stay.”

  He was going to tell her his third reason, which was his attraction to her, but he suddenly realised that, in connection to the first two, it would sound as if he was trying to persuade her to put her fortune at his disposal. And it was the rest of her assets he wanted. Her charm, her intelligence, her sense of humour, her delectable body.

  “Come on,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Let me show you around and tell you what I’m doing.”

  He found himself sharing the stories he’d had from his father, who had known every inch of these lands where he and his twin had roamed until Gerard died and Hugo was sent to school, seldom to return.

  Lalamani took Lord Carne a midday meal the next day, too. And the day after.

  When she slipped up and called him ‘my lord’ in front of the workmen, he brushed it off with a laugh, but after they had left, asked her to call him Philip. “For if I have adopted Mrs Thorpe as my aunt, you must be my cousin,” he suggested.

  “Or your sister?”

  He froze, every muscle alert, his eyes suddenly intent. “Definitely not my sister.”

  She couldn’t look away. The conversation of the departing workmen faded and the corner they had chosen as their own picnic spot dimmed. Philip was suddenly more real than all of it; the only solid thing in a ghostly world. She swayed towards him and he gripped her shoulders, his eyes fixed on her lips, his face moving towards her… Until he straightened and turned away.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Finchurch.” He kept his back to her, as if the ruin of his Hall was far more appealing than one slightly over-aged spinster.

  He must have heard her sigh, because he spun round to face her. “You must know that, if circumstances were different…”

  Was she supposed to believe she had swept him off his feet and he was only resisting with difficulty? What he took from her expression she didn’t know, but he suddenly swore, and reached again for her shoulders, crushed her to him, then cursed again and lifted her bodily onto the log they had been using for a seat.

  Now her head was a little higher than his, so she had to curve her neck to reach his lips when he lifted his face. She had been kissed before, a few times. Some of the ambitious young men who thought to win her uncle’s favour had been almost convincing in their courtship. Besides, she was as susceptible as anyone to curiosity and the temptation of a private spot in a warm lush garden after a night of music and dancing. On the whole, the experiences had been unremarkable.

  She could, were she not so distracted by his firm but gentle lips, catalogue the many differences between those disappointing kisses of long ago and this one, from the setting to the sensations. But he was running his tongue gently along her lips, and she opened, wondering what he intended, then forgetting everything. The oak, the chill wind, the possibility a workman might return early. Philip was all that existed in the world. Philip, and her body coming alive where he touched her, still only with his lips, and a hand lightly kneading each hip.

  Until he groaned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her from the log to mould her against him, his mouth hardening over hers, his tongue stroking even deeper over hers as she clasped him back and lifted her legs to curve them around his hips, heedless of anything except the urge to be closer still.

  For one long endless moment, she was lost in sensation, and then he drew his head back, to drop a flurry of kisses along her jaw bone, so she tipped her head back to give him access, and blinked as a large rain drop fell in her eye.

  It was followed by others, first a spattering, then a deluge, and Philip stumbled a couple of steps to set her down against the trunk, out of the rain.

  His laugh was rueful, and his voice shook as he said, “They said in the inn last night that the rain would set in this afternoon.”

  He still held her, and she leant against him, uncertain her legs would hold her up. “That was…” She didn’t have the words. “Philip,” she said, instead. A statement, because she was afraid to make it a question.

  “Lalamani,” he breathed back, and rested his chin on her head, which had somehow lost its bonnet in the past fifteen minutes. One hand rested on her waist while the other stroked her back. “Lalamani,” he said again, then, just as quietly, murmuring into her hair. “I owe you an apology, but I am not sorry. To have missed that kiss would have been a crime. But I had no right.”

  His obtuse male attitude steadied her, and her own voice was calm as she reminded him, “If any apology is required, it is for me to offer it. I started our kiss. And I am not sorry, either.”

  He chuckled. “I am glad. But I still… Were circumstances different, I could court you in proper form and hope one day for the privilege of taking our kiss to its proper conclusion, but I have nothing to offer a wife, Lalamani. It could be five years before the canal pays enough to provide more than bachelor accommodations. Even were you not used to the best of everything, I could not…” He trailed off.

  “I do not need someone to provide for me,” Lalamani reminded him. “I have more than enough money for me and anyone I truly loved.” That was as close to a declaration as she dared, but it did not have the desired effect.

  “Ah, Lalamani.” He sighed, then kissed her again, a light touch on the forehead, and pulled away. “I cannot live off my wife. Can I?” He shook his head as if to clear it, then held out his undamaged hand. “Come. I should see you home to your aunt’s house.”

  Ridiculous man. In their conversations, and in that kiss, she had glimpsed a hope for which she had thought herself too old. If he didn’t see it too, or if he would let his male pride stand in its way, then she was too proud to pursue it. “I will show you a quicker way,” she said. “There is a path and a gate straight to the house.”

  They ran through the rain hand in hand, and arrived at the house’s side door, wet and laughing, the awkwardness left behind at the tumbledown Hall.

  “Was this once part of the estate?” Philip asked, as he sat in the parlour rubbing his hair dry with a towel.

  “It was the dower house,” Aunt Hannah told him. “The earl sold it after his mother died, though by rights it should have gone to his youngest son. But, of course, young Hugo had been gone for many years by then.”

  “The dower house?” Philip was looking around, wide eyed.

  Aunt Hannah lowered her voice so it did not carry beyond the room. “Yes, my lord. This was the home of your great grandmother, for whom you are named. Your father and uncle grew up here.”

  Lalamani looked from her aunt to the earl. His eyes were round with shock. He pulled himself together enough to close his gaping mouth. “You knew?”

  “I was rector’s wife here for forty years, Lord Calne. I knew a
ll the Daventrys, especially the Dowager Lady Calne, who raised your father and uncle after their mother died. I daresay you think if the villagers knew you were the earl they would expect you to solve all their problems overnight. I do not blame you for keeping your identity hidden until you work out how you can do your best for your people. Do not worry. I will keep your secret. And so will Addy, of course.”

  Milly came in just then carrying a tray of tea makings, and Aunt Hannah changed the subject.

  “It is so delightful to have plenty of tea, dear Lalamani. I do enjoy it, though one should not be attached to worldly things.”

  Philip was reeling. His father had loved the house in which he and his twin had grown, exiled from the Hall when his mother died shortly after their birth. Loved it, at least, until the incident that had cost him his brother. It must have been before Mrs Thorpe arrived in the parish, but perhaps she could answer some of the questions Philip had always had about his father’s family. Surely people had talked, and if they talked to anyone, it would have been to the rector or his wife.

  And she took it for granted he planned to stay. He wished he could. Not just so he could court Lalamani, but so he could do his duty by the people who had served the earldom for many generations.

  There was one possibility, and to follow it through he would have to disclose his identity. The villagers would not be impressed with his deception, but perhaps they’d be grateful at the unmasking of a villain.

  When a break in the rain came, he said his farewells. “I will be sure to bring an umbrella next time I come,” he said.

  “Will you come to dinner this evening,” Mrs Thorpe suggested. “We always have the rector and his sister on the third Thursday of the month, so you would have fine company.”

  Philip accepted. Meeting the rector on a social occasion would suit his purposes nicely.