Mistletoe Magic

by Sophia James

  After a moment she pulled away and introduced the girls, pleased when her father asked one of the servants to take the children to the kitchens and give them a ‘treat’.

  In his library he closed the door and helped her to a seat. When Lillian caught her reflection in the mirror, she was astonished by her paleness and could see why her father looked as worried as he did.

  Pride stopped her saying anything. Ridiculous pride, if the truth be known, given that the story must be all over the countryside by now, though her father did not seem to have heard the gossip. For that she was glad.

  ‘Can we stay here, Father?’ she ventured instead and the line of worry on his brow deepened.

  ‘For tonight?’ He seemed to be testing the waters.

  ‘For for ever,’ she returned and burst into copious tears.

  She felt better after a brandy and a Christmas tart, the seasonal joy having its own way of dulling her problems.

  ‘I should never have forced you into this marriage-there has been nothing but problems ever since. In my defence I might add that Lucas Clairmont charmed me.’

  She smiled. Her first smile since lying in bed with her husband clad in nothing save air. She shook away the thought.

  ‘Then we are alike in that,’ she returned.

  ‘Perhaps if we filed for divorce to the Doctor’s Commons under the name of insanity, and then went to the House of Lords with a suit? Though then, of course, we would need an Act of Parliament to enable you to ever marry again.’

  Lillian frowned. Goodness, to get into a marriage was so easy, but to get out of one…?

  She could not think of it, not now. She needed to get stronger first and build up her courage.

  Reaching over, she took her father’s fingers in her own. Sorrow filled her, for him, for them and for a future so uncertain now.

  ‘Are the children his?’

  ‘No. He is their guardian. They are his wife’s sister’s girls.’

  ‘Yet you brought them here? Does he know that you have?’

  She shook her head. ‘I did not speak to him about it, but they need a home without violence. They need to be loved and cherished and protected. I can do that.’

  Her father smiled. ‘I believe that you can, my daughter. Welcome home.’

  Lillian watched the driveway religiously all that evening and all the next day, but Lucas did not come. Nor did Daniel. She wondered if she should say something of her cousin’s part in the whole fiasco to her aunt and then decided against it, for what exactly could she say?

  Your son is a murderer just like my husband.

  Christmas was now four days off and the house was dressed in its joyous coat for the children’s sake as Hope and Charity dashed from this tree to that one, oblivious to every adult nuance that passed above their heads, the delight of wrapping presents and setting out gingerbread men and marzipan candies a wonderful game. Twinkling lights now hung on fragrant boughs and garlands of fresh sprigged pine bedecked the mantel, the children’s hand in everything.

  And then finally Lucas came at dusk on the second evening.

  She met him on the front steps, glad that her father had gone with his manager to look at some problem on the property, for at least she did not have to worry about his reactions.

  Gesturing for her husband to accompany her upstairs, she took him to her bedroom, the intimacy of it affording her no problem with her state of mind.

  ‘You lied about everything?’

  He had the grace to look disconcerted. ‘I did not tell you everything because I didn’t want you involved-’

  She stopped him, jumping in with such a shout the back of her throat hurt. ‘Involved? When I am watching Lord Hawkhurst lying in a pool of blood whilst you shoot at my cousin like some wild-west gun-toting cowboy. And what of Hope and Charity? Two little girls exposed to fighting and shouting. I should not worry about that, I should not be involved?’

  Pain crossed his face. ‘Are the girls well?’

  When Lillian nodded he looked so relieved that the anger she felt inside her was squashed down a little.

  ‘I cannot even begin to understand a motive that would bring a man from America to England with the express purpose of killing another.’

  ‘My wife had an affair with your cousin. I think that the child she carried was his.’

  ‘Child?’ The question spluttered to nothing on her lips.

  Stopping, Lillian saw his heartbeat gather pace in the tender flesh at his neck.

  ‘If he had been sorry I might have understood, could have forgiven. But he wasn’t.’

  He swiped his fingers through his hair.

  ‘I was a soldier once.’

  Lillian wondered as to his hesitancy in telling her of his involvement in a profession that was after all a noble one.

  ‘I was seconded into intelligence work in my third year and I learned and did things that were not in any army rulebook. Once you know how to kill a man and do, you cross over a line. Whether or not it is for king and country you cross a line and you never come back from it. From that moment you are different…isolated, and the choices that are easy for every other person are not quite so for you.’

  ‘You killed others in America?’ The horror in his voice told her that he had.

  ‘Not for fun or gain or glory. Not for that, you understand, but I have killed people. People who died because they believed in things that the military did not and sometimes they were good people…’ He stopped again.

  ‘Did you kill Daniel at Woodruff?’

  ‘No.’ She felt the relief at this denial until he continued, the world around her condensed into breath and heartbeat and pure raw fear!

  ‘I wanted to, though. I came here to do just that, but found that I could not. When my uncle died, your cousin’s name was the last thing on his lips. He had swindled him out of some land, you see, and made a fortune out of Stuart’s infirmity. Paget had a hand in the bargain, too.’

  ‘So when you mentioned the subject that night at the dinner table…’

  ‘He knew that I knew.’

  Vengeance. Retribution. Reprisal. The words shimmered in the air between them, harsh words actioned by a hardened man, used to blood and danger. A life for a life…She waited as he went on.

  ‘The strangest thing about all of this is that it was not revenge in the end that saved me, Lillian. It was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I was married once to a woman who could not be happy, not with me, not with life, not with anything. The night she died her child was trying to be born…’ The tremor in his voice was steadied by pure will-power. ‘She would not stay at the house for she believed the midwife couldn’t be trusted.’

  ‘So you took her with you?’

  ‘And overturned the carriage when she opened the door and threatened to jump out while shouting out the name of your cousin. I did not know exactly what that meant at the time, though now of course…’ He shook his head. ‘She died as I reached her.’

  ‘My goodness! Were you hurt?’

  ‘This scar…’ His fingers traced the mark from his ear down to his collarbone. No slight injuries for him either, then, and a wife and child lost in betrayal.

  ‘When I recovered and got back to the farm, I began to drink heavily. To forget.’

  Water! She had never seen him touch anything stronger. The small pieces of a puzzle clicking into place. An explanation of what made a man complex. No easy choices. No one reason.

  The truth. Not laundered. Not tampered with. Not piecemeal. There was beauty in a man who did not try to hide behind illusion.

  The silence stretched, boundless, and it was Lucas who broke it first.

  ‘When I saw you at the Lenningtons’ you were…perfect. Perfect in a way that I was not, had never been.’

  ‘Perfect?’ She shook her head. ‘No one can be that.’

  ‘Can they not?’ His eyes were softer now, not as glitter-sharp as they had been, the anger in them dimmed by honesty
and relief. ‘There is a cherub on the chapel ceiling at my home with eyes and hair just your colour. Beside it is a sinner who is being…saved, I would guess, saved as you have saved me!’

  There was violence in his words, desperation in the way his fingers reached out to the bare flesh of her arm.

  ‘I am not a bad man, Lilly, and I need you. Need you beside me to make sense of the world and to shape my own.’

  He tipped her chin up so that her eyes met his, direct and hard, no denial in the movement, no gentle easy ask.

  ‘I would never hurt you, Lillian. Never. I would only ever love you.’

  The words were not soft either, tumbling from nothing into everything.

  Love.

  You.

  Overwhelming need and fear mixed with waiting.

  Only them in this fire-filled cold winter’s evening, three nights before Christmas, bound in troth for ever, the silence of the house wrapped around them.

  Waiting for just one movement.

  Towards him.

  She simply stepped into his arms, her tears wetting the front of his jacket, the buttons old and mismatched and the elbows patched with leather.

  He was perfect for her, too.

  They stood there for a long time, listening to the heartbeats between them and feeling the warmth, not daring to move towards the bed for fear her father would knock on the door and find them. No, not wanting anything to be ruined again by violence and hostility.

  Finally her father came, the sound of his steps in the passage and then a knock on the door. He came through quietly, waiting as they parted though their hands were still joined.

  ‘I have been told what has happened.’ His glance caught Lillian’s. ‘You are all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His face creased into a smile. ‘And he has given you his secrets.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Luc said and his fingers tightened around her own. ‘I am a wealthy man, Lilly. My estates are numerous in Virginia, for timber is a lucrative trade.’

  ‘Wealthier than my father?’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘Then the flowers did not break you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your bunch of flowers! I thought at the time they must have cost you a small fortune so I saved one and dried it to show you.’

  He shook his head. ‘If you wanted a roomful, I could afford it.’

  ‘But I don’t,’ she said solemnly and walked in to his waiting arms. ‘All I want is you.’

  The bells rang out from the village near Woodruff, tumbling Yuletide bells with joy on their edge, though they were muffled by the snow that had fallen all day, filling the windows with white and making ghosts of the trees in the garden.

  They had eaten and danced and sang, and the sweet smells of cinnamon and spices hung in the air, the last of the visitors to Fairley finally gone and the big Bible in the front parlour closed from the many different readings. The whole day had been noisy and rushed and wonderful. None of the silent ease of Christmases past but all of a building excitement and joy, with the squeals of delight of Hope and Charity.

  Goodness, she had changed completely in these few weeks, for she could not imagine again a pale and ordered Christmas, nor a home with as few guests as she had always cultivated.

  Charity and Hope had made up games to play, Stephen had organised charades and Patrick had shadowed Lucas all day with questions of Virginia and its riches.

  Her father had spent a quiet moment with her in the early afternoon, taking her aside to give her his present, the pearls that she knew had been her mother’s.

  ‘She was a person who made one wrong choice, Lillian. But before that she had made many right ones. You, for instance,’ he said and kissed the tip of her nose.

  It was the first time she had heard him talk of Rebecca since her death, and that gift was as important to her as the double strand of matched pearls that were strong in her memory.

  ‘You told me once, Father, that I would thank you for this marriage and I do.’

  ‘Lucas has let Daniel leave the country, so his stupidity shall not be the ruin of the Davenport name after all. I think even Jean understands the generosity of Lucas’s gesture and has elected to go along with Daniel.’

  She smiled at her father’s relief, the burden of the family reputation one he had always taken so very diligently to heart.

  ‘You look better than you have in a long while, Father.’

  He smiled. ‘I believe I am well because you are happy, my love.’

  And much later when the moon hung high she smiled again as Lucas placed a kiss on her stomach where candlelight played across her skin.

  ‘I want lots more children, Lilly. Sisters and brothers for Hope and Charity.’

  The ruby caught in the light as she brushed the length of his hair from his face.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about the inscription inside the ring.’

  ‘I had it engraved in London for you.’

  ‘But you did not know then that I would even marry you!’

  ‘“Whither thou goest, I will go.” I knew that after our first kiss in your drawing room.’

  ‘It was always just us then?’

  ‘Just us,’ he whispered back and, bringing a sprig of mistletoe from the cabinet beside the bed, held it above them, a wicked smile in his dancing amber eyes.

  Sophia James

  ***

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