An Enchanted Christmas

by Barbara Metzger

  Nick blinked back a drop of moisture from his own eyes. “What, do you think I dragged him off by the nose to keep me company in Hell? I tried my best to dissuade him from joining up. My family were all soldiers; yours were not.”

  “But you and his other friends were everything to Gregory. He’d always chosen to spend time with you rather than with his own family.”

  “We were young men, my lady, not little boys on leading strings.”

  “You were Gregory’s idol since he was breeched, though, and he’d have followed you anywhere, tried to emulate your every action. You were a year older, supposedly wiser, and should have set a better example, by George. You should have stayed in England managing your properties, raising sons to succeed you, and my son would have done the same.”

  About to hand Lady Rostend his handkerchief, Nick replaced it in his pocket. His voice was like a knife when he asked, “Are you saying that I have not done my duty?”

  “Your duty was here, curse you!”

  “I have already been cursed, if you listen to the local lore, and I was born to be a soldier like my father, and his before him.”

  Lady Rostend shook the ring in his face. “A man’s first duty is to his family, not marching off to war, leaving a corkbrained cousin to inherit. Gregory should not have left, and so I told him when I refused my permission for him to sign up. Who lent the clunch the money to purchase his commission?”

  “Gregory was six months from his majority and control of his own fortune, and threatening to take the king’s shilling if I did not make him the loan. Would you have had your eldest son enlist as a foot soldier? He’d not have lived to his birthday. No, madam, I will not take the blame for Gregory’s buying colors. It was his own decision, and he died living the life he’d chosen.”

  Nick knew that he and Lady Rostend would never see eye to eye on this matter, so he changed the subject. “Now, you have to let your niece live her life as she sees fit.”

  “She sees fit to five it with one such as you?”

  “I am hopeful that she returns my regard,” he answered, somewhat evasively.

  Lady Rostend glared at him. “And if I do not give my blessing to this misalliance?”

  “Then I hope to wed her regardless, God willing. But know this, madam: if you do not approve our union, if you do not acknowledge my wife, you will be the one who is hurt. Mrs. Merriot will be upset, of course, to be on the outs with her closest kin, but she will outrank you in the neighborhood. She’ll have a higher title and deeper pockets. You will look no-account, turning your back on Baroness Worth, and your own standing will fall in the eyes of local Society as well as the London ton, where I intend to see Amelia take her rightful place.”

  Lady Rostend was no fool. She could see that she was going to lose her unpaid companion one way or the other, so she might as well get some advantage out of it. “My niece, Baroness Worth,” sounded a great deal better than “My niece, Amelia Merriot, mill-owner’s widow.” She nodded her turbaned head a fraction of an inch. “In the spirit of the season, then, I wish you happy.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your good wishes, and I am certain Amelia will also. Meantime, to show your goodwill and to dispel any rumors, would you attend a Twelfth Night dinner party at the Keep on Friday next? I intend to celebrate the recoveries of the Mundy sisters, as well as the house surviving another year of the so-called Christmas Curse. With luck, I will celebrate my engagement to your niece also.”

  “With luck? Am I to understand that you have not offered for the girl yet? I thought your asking for my permission was in form only, after the fact. If not, you had no business kissing her, Worth. A formal announcement of your engagement is the only way to stop the gossip.”

  “In my own time.” Nick stood to leave, hearing Amelia’s voice in the hall. “You’ll come, then?”

  “I’ll come, and I’ll hear that announcement or I’ll know why.” Lady Rostend twisted the ring between her fingers. “You make sure that Gregory’s sacrifice means something.”

  Chapter Eight

  “What will we do?” Lady Edryth asked, with a sigh that echoed through the empty Great Hall like a breeze through the pine trees. “It is nigh onto Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas, our last day this year to affect earthly actions, and the heir has not yet proposed. ’Struth, I am not certain he loves her yet. He still thinks of making a marriage of convenience, saving the widow from a life of penury, and himself a life of hired companions and paid chatelaines.”

  “He loves her,” Sir Olnic insisted, thumping his sword on the ground. “He has to. Have you seen the way he watches the lady when she crosses his path? Like a drowning man who espies a floating barrel. And Mrs. Merriot is beyond smitten, all full of sighs and shy smiles, dainty blushes and lowered lashes, when she’s not in an agony of despair.”

  “I swear she’s also taken to lowering the necklines of those funeral vestments she dons.”

  “No, I tipped a perfume bottle into the drawer where she kept those fichu things. They are in the wash.”

  Lady Edryth was too despondent to fly into the boughs over the fact that her husband had trifled with a lady’s intimate garments. It was all for a good cause, at any rate. “They are sweet together, aren’t they, in a youthful way?”

  “Youthful, my arse. Why can they not act like the adults they are and simply get on with it? Neither is in their teens, and the days are hurrying past.”

  Lady Edryth sighed again at the reminder of time’s passing. “Nick is acting the gentleman, I suppose.”

  “If he wants to be a gentleman, he can get down on his knees like a damned courtier and propose.” His own knee pieces were badly in need of oil. “The problem is, they are never alone enough for him to come to the sticking point. Every time I manage to get them together, one of the old besoms calls for a lemonade or a cool cloth for her head. Or a servant comes with a question about the dinner. Or the blasted dog starts leaping about and barking as though I had another bone for him. One or two stolen kisses is all they’ve managed.”

  “Methinks that is just as well. A man is not so eager to purchase the cow when he can have the milk for free. Certes, if Nick does propose, and the lady accepts, he’d only place that pearl ring on her finger. I do not suppose you can steal it away from him, can you?” Lady Edryth did not mind Sir Olnic messing about with the baron’s belongings, it seemed.

  The old knight grunted. “It’s too heavy for me to move. Asides, he’d only purchase another. Or send for that mound of ugliness in the London vault.”

  “Then what can we do, Ollie?”

  “Pray?”

  Lady Edryth removed the gold fillet that held back her red curls, as if she had the headache. “I do not think,” she murmured, “that Heaven answers prayers from such as us.”

  “Then we’ll have to rely on ourselves, by Saint Sebastian’s sepulchre, and that accursed Twelfth Night cake. The heir will have the right ring in his possession long before the clock strikes midnight.”

  “The heir? Who knows what he will do with it? Mrs. Merriot should get the ring, betokening marriage. A woman is bound to try it on to see if the ring fits.”

  “But he has to declare himself. With a ring.”

  “He has to be nudged along. With the ring on her finger.”

  “He’ll get the ring in his slice of cake, by Heaven. I am the one who has to see to it.”

  “You were the one who lost it in the first place.” Lady Edryth turned her back on Sir Olnic. They did not speak for another hour, which was not entirely untoward. Sometimes years had gone by without their talking to each other. Finally she turned back and raised her hand to his visored face, as if she could stroke his cheek. “There will be so little time, after they cut the cake and before midnight. What shall we do, Ollie, if we cannot get the ring on the heir’s beloved’s finger tonight?”

  “Do? Why, we shall do what we have done these decades past: wait for the right opportunity. Meanwhile we’ll continue to wal
k the halls, chivy the servants, frighten away bill collectors, that kind of thing.” He tried to sound jovial, and failed. “It won’t be so very bad, will it, my lady-wife? We’ll still have each other.”

  Without being able to touch or hold each other or share caresses. Without a chance to make love here or find eternal peace elsewhere. “No, my dear,” Lady Edryth softly said. “It will not be so bad.”

  *

  The kitchens at Worth Keep had rarely seen so much company. It was a wonder Mrs. Salter was getting any cooking done at all.

  Mrs. Merriot visited first. The baron had asked her to check the menu for the night’s dinner, Amelia said, the Mundy sisters’ first meal in the dining room. With Lady Rostend due, along with Vicar and Mrs. Tothy, and Squire Morris, Lord Worth wanted everything perfect. Did Mrs. Salter need any assistance? Amelia shouted, claiming that she was a dab hand at cake baking.

  Up to her gnarly elbows in flour, Mrs. Salter declined any help. “What’s that, a cake? Lord love you, ma’am, you’d do better to help the master with his bookkeeping,” she hinted, thinking it was past time for Lord Worth and Mrs. Merriot to come to an agreement. The only way they were going to get together was to be together, so Mrs. Salter tried to shoo Mrs. Merriot out of her kitchen, into his lordship’s book room.

  The widow declined, however, for Lady Rostend’s harsh words had struck home to her niece. Aunt Viveca was right: Amelia could not afford to have her reputation sullied, not over a doomed affair. She could not, therefore, afford to trust herself with the baron. For the most part, Nick had acted the gentleman, to her regret, since her own thoughts were anything but ladylike. To make temptation easier to resist, Amelia knew she had to keep her distance from her too-appealing host.

  To that end, Amelia had Miss Charlotte Mundy move into the bedroom with Miss Henrietta, so that neither sister would be alone if the midnight mischief-maker decided to return. Mrs. Merriot and her maid Stoffard took the second bedroom in order to be on hand, yet get some rest, without being alone. The old ladies were well on their way to recovery and did not require day-and-night nursing. In fact, the London physician had declared them fit enough for a short carriage ride, so they could be leaving anytime, after which Amelia could not stay on at the Keep, of course, not without branding herself a fallen woman. Even if the Mundys remained, the Keep’s maidservants would be arriving back at the castle on the morrow, when superstition said the ghosts would be laid to rest for another year. There would be no excuse for Amelia’s continued presence after that—no good one anyway.

  Stoffard was already packing. They’d go home with her aunt after the dinner party tonight, Amelia had already decided, but she’d take one more lovely memory back with her. After all, those memories were all she would have for a lifetime.

  “I know you are baking a special cake for Twelfth Night,” she loudly told Mrs. Salter. “I was wondering… That is, if you could, do you think you might put this into the cake?” She held out a tiny horseshoe that the head stable man had fashioned for her out of a nail. “It has to get into Lord Worth’s slice, to bring him luck. He needs a good luck token, to counteract all that nonsense about the castle being cursed.”

  “How am I to see it gets in the master’s serving, Mrs. Merriot?” the cook asked, frowning at the batter in her bowl, where the ring was already concealed. She hadn’t figured how to make sure that bit of gimcrackery got on the widow’s dish yet, either.

  “Why, I don’t see why you cannot insert the token after the cake comes out of the oven, and mark the location somehow for when Mr. Salter slices the dessert at the table.”

  “Clever, ma’am. I can put frosting on top, so no one will see the knife marks. That ought to do the trick.” Yes, Mrs. Merriot would make a perfect match for his lordship.

  …Who arrived next. He placed two gold coins on the table next to Mrs. Salter, where she was icing a cake. He dipped a finger in the frosting mix and licked it before asking her if she could somehow contrive to get the coins into the cake and onto the Mundy sisters’ plates.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” the cook confided, “but the whole game is rigged. In the spirit of fun, a’course.”

  “Of course. While you are, ah, performing your legerdemain, could you add this to the cake also?”

  Mrs. Salter might not know what the long word meant, but she did know what a ring did. Did his lordship? “You know the ring in the cake is supposed to foretell a happy marriage.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said with a smile, having decided that he could ask for Mrs. Merriot’s hand tonight, at last. They could be married tomorrow with the special license he’d purchased, if only she agreed. One more night of torture, of acting the gentleman with her so near, was about all his body could stand. “Yes, I do know about the ring.”

  Mrs. Salter smiled back, showing a missing tooth. “I don’t suppose I need to ask whose slice you want this in?” she asked, ready to consign the token already in the cake, under a bit of candied pineapple, to someone else. Mrs. Merriot’s horseshoe had a holly leaf on top.

  After the baron left, Mrs. Salter added the gold coins under dabs of gooseberry preserves, and the pearl ring under a dollop of peach jam, then finished icing the cake.

  She was nearly done when a messenger arrived from Lady Rostend, with a twisted paper in one hand and a coin in the other. “The mistress requests you add this to your Twelfth Night cake.” He handed her the paper. “She sent this for your trouble.” He handed her a farthing.

  Mrs. Salter looked at the completed cake and then at the pittance of payment. “Right generous, your lady.”

  The footman winked and left, snabbling a cream tart on his way out.

  “Now, who’s supposed to get this?” Mrs. Salter asked herself as she unwrapped yet another ring, a man’s gold signet. She straightened the paper out, to see Lord Worth’s name written in a spidery hand. She scratched her head at the ways of the gentry, then stabbed her knife into the pretty cake and pushed the ring in. And the farthing for good measure, and a tiny key that didn’t fit anything. The ring got a raisin, and the farthing’s spot was marked with a fig, the key’s with a curl of icing. “There. One more hole in the cake, and it will fall apart before it gets to the dinner table. So it’s the gold under the gooseberry, the farthing under the fig,” she repeated to herself, so she could remember to tell her husband. “The horseshoe has a holly and the key has a curl. Lady Rostend’s ring got a raisin, the pearl got peaches, and the pawky ring got pineapple…or was it the other way around?”

  Chapter Nine

  “Forsooth,” Lady Edryth cried, “I do not think I can stand the suspense.”

  “For certain the candles cannot stand your fluttering about, woman. Now, light somewhere and be still.” Sir Olnic was himself stationed in the corner of the dining room. For once he was wearing hose and a tunic, blue to match his lady’s velvet gown, richly embroidered in golden threads by her own hand. Tonight the knight could not afford to clank, to frighten anyone away from the table.

  For once his lady listened to him, taking up a position next to the serving board, but the wringing of her hands was cooling the food. “I pray you know what you are doing, Ollie.”

  “Hush, my love, I have a plan.”

  Lady Edryth started weeping.

  *

  Dinner was a festive affair, despite Lady Rostend’s scowls. Aunt Viveca had come, and that was enough for Amelia, proving she was not yet sunk beyond reproach. Mrs. Merriot was pleased, too, with the table she had set with Worth Keep’s heirlooms. She was happiest, though, with a dress from before her marriage that Stoffard had altered for her. Seams had been let out as far as possible, and although the bosom was still somewhat confining, the gown was pink, not gray, and pretty. She’d threaded a matching pink ribbon through her blonde curls in lieu of her lace widow’s cap, earning her aunt’s censure. Nick’s smile of appreciation was worth the scold. Nick’s smiles were worth almost anything, Amelia thought.

  He was magnificent tonigh
t, the first time Amelia had seen him in formal evening attire. The de rigueur dark colors might have seemed austere or forbidding on others, especially with the scar on his face, but Nick only looked more elegant and attractive in the midnight-blue coat and white satin knee breeches. The emerald at his throat flashed as green as his eyes, alive with enjoyment and anticipation.

  The Mundy sisters were in alt. Lord Worth had invited them to stay on as long as they wished, since the castle would be too empty without their presence. In addition, they had Squire Morris to themselves, since that strumpet Mrs. Silvers had refused dear Worth’s invitation.

  Vicar Tothy and his wife Bess were au anges also, after their conversation with the baron before dinner. He’d promised them a new house for their growing family, and repairs to the church, which Lady Rostend had, predictably, refused.

  Nick looked down his table to see Amelia at the other end, and thought that this was how things ought to be: good food, good friends, good feelings, and a good woman across from you. His old soldier’s heart was warm despite the cool air in the room, telling him that life could be as sweet as he hoped Mrs. Salter’s cake was going to be.

  The only thing to mar the evening pleasure was the pesky draft that kept the candles flickering in their sconces. The windows were tightly shut, and no cracks could be seen in the walls. Still, when they first sat down, the ribbon in Mrs. Merriot’s hair was fluttering, making Nick wish he could be the one to remove it, to spread her golden curls on his pillow. That thought took care of the chill. Squire Morris was too full of the baron’s best wine to notice, but the ladies kept their shawls close around their shoulders—robbing Nick of an enticing view of Amelia’s entrancing bosom. At his side, Lady Rostend grumbled about the draft, so Nick promised her a warmer reception in the parlor, as soon as they’d had dessert. They could not disappoint Mrs. Salter, could they?