Holly and Hopeful Hearts

by Caroline Warfield

  “These fellows are bred for both,” James told him. “Maneuverability, too.” He found himself demonstrating in the stable yard, riding Seistan bareback without bridle or halter as they went flawlessly through a series of figures.

  They had most of the stable boys as audience by the time James brought Seistan to a rearing halt in front of Bellowes, who removed his pipe from his mouth long enough to say, “You can ride, sure enough, my lord.”

  Several stable boys jostled for the privilege of tending to the horse, and James gave Seistan the word to accept the services of the two Bellowes selected. Seistan went willingly, expecting to be fussed over and rewarded for a flawless performance.

  As they led him in through the stable doors, a shadow detached itself from the interior and strolled out into the thin winter sunlight.

  “Clever horse,” the Marquis of Aldridge said. “Knows quite a few tricks.”

  “He does, yes.” James smiled. He had selected Seistan from the herd himself when the colt was still at his mother’s heel.

  Bellowes pulled some threads of tobacco from a pocket and tamped it into the bowl of his pipe, carefully avoiding looking at either aristocrat.

  “Even how to limp when you tell him.” Aldridge shot a look at James from under raised brows.

  James pursed his lips. Now what? He could not in honesty deny the charge, though he could refuse to answer.

  Bellowes straightened from his slouch against the stable wall. “I’d best keep an eye on the boys, my lords. Looks like a few days’ more rest will put that horse of yours back on his feet again, Lord Elfingham. And so I will tell anyone that asks.”

  “Thank you, Bellowes.” James inclined his head to the head groom, who bowed to him and to Aldridge and strode off into the stables.

  “Corrupting my stable master, are you?” Aldridge sounded amused. “I acquit you of nefarious intent, Elfingham. You are here a’courting, and a man might be forgiven for being inventive in such a case.”

  James tipped his head to acknowledge the point. “I mean no harm to the lady in question, or to the duchess and her guests. I give you my word on that.”

  “There is betting at the clubs about which lady you will choose: Felicity Belvoir or your cousin Charlotte Winderfield, who is your grandfather’s choice, they say.”

  James eyes widened, but he managed to control any other reaction. “Fools with too much time on their hands,” he suggested.

  “Yes. Fools indeed. It is Sophia Belvoir, of course.”

  James smiled a little, tipping his head again.

  “You do not seem to be making progress,” the marquis observed. “She has been avoiding you.” He waited, but James said nothing. “She has heard about the wager in the clubs. I suspect she means to save her sister from your wiles.”

  “Her sister is at no risk,” James hissed.

  “And your cousin?”

  James glared at his tormenter. “Is my courtship your business, my lord? Your father and mine are not friends.”

  Aldridge dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “I am not asking on my father’s behalf, nor do I make enemies at his command. I don’t ask for your friendship, Elfingham, but I am willing to offer mine.”

  “Why?” The English rushed negotiations by the standards that James had been raised to, but that was an abrupt question even for them.

  Aldridge regarded him for a long moment then heaved a sigh. “Shall we say fellow feeling? I know what it is to be invisible to the lady who has attracted one’s regard. In your case, the solution is simple. Tell the lady that you are courting her and only her.”

  If there were a trap in the strategy, James could not see it. “And in your own case?”

  Aldridge took his time to answer. “Let me just say that I have my own reasons for wanting friendship between our families… and for not promoting your grandfather’s scheme for your marriage.”

  “My grandfather is doomed to disappointment.” Could it be true? James thought back to ballrooms during the season, where he propped up a pillar, watching Lady Sophia while Aldridge did likewise from across the room, watching… “Charlotte? I take it your intentions toward my cousin…”

  Aldridge smiled, wistfully. “My damnable reputation. I seek a wife, not a mistress, if that is what you are delicately not asking. But the lady is not interested, I fear.”

  “Not in anyone, or so she told my grandfather when he announced his scheme. But you have not abandoned hope, it seems?”

  “Talk to Sophia, Elfingham. At least remove the lies between you.”

  “I will,” James decided. “If I can catch her away from your oh so charming brother.”

  * * *

  * * *

  James wandered back through the gardens. He had wanted to see them since he and Seistan arrived three days ago. They spread for acres around the house, island after island after island, each planted in a different style and connected to its neighbors by ornamental bridges in dozens of different shapes and forms.

  Used as he was to his dry mountains, James had thought gardening on the flat would be boring, but water made all the difference. Even in winter, with many of the beds sleeping under a carpet of mulch, these islands were a feast for the eyes, and he could see the first green shoots peeping out of the soil in some sheltered beds: an early promise of spring.

  He noticed the approach of the woman from several islands away, the pastel dress under her pale outer coat marking her as one of the younger ladies. Alone, too, which did not bode well. When she turned off the direct path toward him, crossing to another series of islands, he castigated himself for a conceited popinjay. His relief was short-lived, however, for she soon turned back toward the island he currently occupied.

  He contemplated taking the direct route back to the house before she arrived, or even retreating to the stables, but he balked at fleeing.

  Moments later, he recognized the fair face under the warm hood. Lady Felicity. What did she want? For he was her destination, that was certain. She was close enough now for him to see the smile of welcome. If caution urged him not to be caught alone with one of these English maidens, curiosity demanded that he hear the sister of his beloved.

  “Lady Felicity, should you be out in the gardens alone?” he asked as she drew near.

  She frowned. “Are you not pleased to see me, Lord Elfingham?”

  That sounded ominous. Surely Lady Felicity had not fallen into the same error as the London fribbles. He had shown her no special courtesies or attention, and besides, she was barely out of the schoolroom.

  James narrowed his eyes, the elder brother glare coming naturally to the eldest of ten. “What are you up to, young lady?” he asked.

  Felicity giggled. “You do that so much better than Hythe. All those brothers and sisters, I suppose.”

  Despite himself, James felt one corner of his mouth twitch as he suppressed a grin. “You have not answered my question, Lady Felicity.”

  “You are not my brother yet, Lord Elfingham,” the impertinent child answered, “and I probably will not answer your questions even when you are. I am quite old enough to be married, you know.”

  James grinned. If he interpreted that correctly, not only did she not want him for herself, she supported his courtship. “You are, I do not doubt, a great trouble to your brother, Lady Felicity. He could do with reinforcements.”

  “I think you should call me Felicity, and I will call you Elfingham,” she announced. “I expect us to be great friends.”

  “Call me James. I barely know who this Elfingham is. Besides,” he shrugged, “I do not expect to hold that title for long.”

  “Oh, dear. Do you think the Lords will declare against you, then?” Felicity creased her brows together in consternation. “That will make things more difficult, James. I think Sophia will not care, but Hythe is very proper.”

  James choked back a laugh. So much for English ladies being kept ignorant! “No, Felicity. I do not think the Lords will declare against my fa
ther. My father has… Well, never mind. But I expect the Privileges Committee to confirm me as my father’s heir, and my children after me.” He sobered. “And I expect my father to be duke within the month, making me the Earl of Sutton.”

  “Is your grandfather so sick then?”

  James nodded. The duke was dying, only his own sour stubbornness keeping him alive.

  Felicity said, “So what does your father have? No, don’t tell me. I expect I can guess. He has documents? And witnesses, perhaps?” James must have shown some reaction, for she laughed and clapped her hands with delight. “He does! But why do you not say? Hythe would not oppose you if he knew…”

  “Felicity, you must say nothing of what you suspect. If there were witnesses, and I am not saying that there are, those who oppose my father might…”

  How could James tell such a sheltered lady the lengths to which his father’s enemies might go when a witness needed to be silenced? The Anglican cleric who married his parents had not been a young man when he travelled the Silk Road more than thirty years ago. He now lived retired in Kent, and was elderly and frail. But still sharp of mind, and well able to remember and report on the wedding over which he had presided between an English exile and his chosen bride, and several baptisms on subsequent trips.

  Once again, Felicity leaped to the correct conclusion. “They might threaten the witnesses, or bribe them, or even hurt them. I shall say nothing, James. Word of a Belvoir. Except I could tell Sophia?”

  “Nothing, Felicity. I will tell your sister myself.”

  He left the topic. Felicity would stay silent, or she would not. He would make sure the guard on the Reverend Harris was doubled, however. For the moment, though, he would turn the conversation in a direction more to his liking.

  “Do you favor me for your sister, then, Felicity? Does Lady Sophia favor me?”

  Felicity met that remark with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Sophia is as silly as Hythe. They both think you must be courting me because they are convinced that Sophia is on the shelf. I expect once she realizes you prefer her to me, she will be quite pleased. After all, you are pleasant to look at, and rich, and will be a duke one day. And she would make an excellent duchess, I think.”

  “I think so, too,” James said. Felicity’s assessment was not much to his liking. Quite pleased? He would prefer a little more enthusiasm.

  Felicity looked doubtful, too. “You do like her, do you not? It is not just that she is a Belvoir?”

  “Your sister is a fine, noble, clever, generous, and warm-hearted woman, Felicity. I like her a great deal.”

  “That’s good, but you will need to convince her, James. And she will be reluctant to take the chance a third time, especially after that scoundrel Berringer… You have undoubtedly heard?”

  When James had first heard hints of the gossip, he had questioned Charlotte’s mother, Aunt Grace, who had told him about both of Lady Sophia’s ill-fated betrothals.

  “The man absconded with another lady just three days before the wedding,” he said. “A fool, as well as a scoundrel, if he were unable to see the treasure he so nearly had in his keeping. His ill fortune is my gain, Felicity.”

  Did Felicity know that the other lady was Berringer’s long-time mistress? James wondered if Lady Sophia considered herself fortunate not to end up with a husband who loved another woman. Certainly, she deserved better.

  Felicity’s thoughts must have been tracking with his, for she asked, “Do you keep a mistress, James?”

  “Felicity! You cannot go asking men such a question!”

  “How am I to know, then? I did not know about Berringer’s mistress until after he ran off with her.” Felicity screwed up her mouth and nodded decisively. “Mind you, James, I was only fifteen. But you could be as big a rakehell as the Marquis of Aldridge, and I dare say no one would tell me.”

  James fixed her with the stern look that sometimes worked on his sisters. “It seems you have ways of finding out anyway, Felicity.”

  “I cannot help it if people gossip when I happen to be near enough to hear,” Felicity said, trying for a composed dignity that was somewhat marred by her blush. “One cannot believe everything one hears. Why, to hear the stories, Lord Aldridge is the devil incarnate, and as dangerous as the Duke of Richport, and no maiden is safe within five miles of him, but he has always been courteous to me, and he is accepted in all the best drawing rooms, which Richport is not. So I do not know the truth, James. To hear the stories, your father kept a harem, and each of you has a different mother…” She drew back a little, paling. “I did not say I believed them, James.”

  James composed his face and forced his voice to calm. “Do not listen to gossip, Felicity. Little of it is true. And no, I do not have a mistress. Nor shall I. I shall make my vows to one woman and keep those vows for a lifetime, as my father did.”

  Felicity nodded. “I believe you, and that is why I came outside to tell you that Sophia is on her own in the second parlor, making preparations for tonight’s costume party. Do you not think it is time you made it clear that you are courting her?”

  James grinned, the irritation at the scandalous rumors disappearing at the prospect of a private interview with his beloved. On an impulse, he bent and gave Felicity a brotherly peck on the cheek.

  “You are an impertinent child, but I rather like you,” he told her.

  “I foresee you will be even bossier than Hythe,” Felicity replied, “but I rather like you, too. Now hurry, James.”

  “Come along then,” James said, offering her an arm, “for leave you alone in the garden I shall not. You are safe with me, Felicity, but do not go off on your own with gentlemen who are not brothers, I beg of you.”

  Chapter 9

  Sure enough, Sophia was alone in the room to which the doddery old butler directed James when he asked after the second parlor. He gave the room a quick and cursory scan before focusing his attention on the woman standing on a ladder and hanging garlands across the huge painting on the window wall. She leaned to her right to reach up to the carved pediment above the window, clutching at the draped maroon curtains to keep her balance.

  James was across the room in seconds. “Careful,” he said, steadying the ladder.

  Sophia looked down. “Lord Elfingham. What are you doing here?”

  “I was looking for something useful to do, Lady Sophia. May I be of service?”

  She examined his face and then nodded. “You are between Scylla and Charybdis, are you not?”

  James laughed. “You have it exactly. On the one side, the ladies who think it worth the gamble to pull a possible future duke down into their watery vortex, and on the other, the multi-headed monster of innuendo and insult in the company of the gentlemen.”

  “Neither ladies nor gentlemen by their behavior,” his own lady said tartly. “Very well, Lord Elfingham, I will put you to work.” She put one hand on his shoulder to help herself from the ladder. “Bring the ladder, please. I have more garlands to hang.”

  James lifted the ladder and followed obediently in her wake. “What are we doing, pray tell?”

  “We are having a costume party tonight. You heard?”

  James nodded. His wardrobe was limited to what he could carry in his saddlebags, but the duchess had ordered chests of costumes and fabric brought down from the attics, and he had found the means to replicate his festival clothes as a mountain prince, or at least close enough for the audience.

  If they wanted a barbarian, he would give them a barbarian.

  “We did not decorate in here on Christmas Eve, since we had so much else to do, so I am putting up Christmas decorations. See? The evergreen is a symbol of life in this most holy season. And the holly, have you heard the song about the holly?”

  Sophia sang for him, in a light alto, all the verses his father had taught them when he was a tiny child. This European holly was not precisely the same as the holly he had grown up with, but it was similar. For the pleasure of hearing her voice, h
e kept his counsel.

  She went on to explain the other Christmas customs, not just the foliage and ribbons and other materials used in the decorations, but the pudding that had been served at Christmas dinner, the Yule logs burning in various fireplaces around the house, and the boxes that the duchess had delivered the previous day to poor families around the district.

  “Cedrica and I, and several of the other ladies, were her deputies,” Sophia explained. “It was wonderful to see the happy little faces of the children, James.”

  James had stayed back from the hunt organized for the men in the hopes of spending time with Sophia, and had found out about the charity expedition too late to offer his services. “I am sorry that I missed it,” he said sincerely.

  He noted one glaring omission in her descriptions. “Just a decoration,” she had told him, mendaciously, when he asked about the kissing boughs.

  And now pretending to be ignorant of these English Christmas customs was about to pay off. One day, when she was safely his wife, he might admit to Sophia that he and the whole gala had hung on his father’s tales of an English Christmas, that his mother and her maids had decorated high and low, and his father had led the troops out to find a fitting Yule log to carry home in triumph on Christmas Eve. A harder job in his dry mountains than in this green land.

  But this was not the time for that story. Not when Sophia was relaxed and about to pass under a kissing bough that retained its full complement of mistletoe berries.

  James suppressed a grin. “Look,” he said, at the opportune time, pointing up. “My kaka—my Papa—told me about these.”

  She stopped, as he had intended. With a single stride he reached her, wrapped her in his arms, and captured the lips that had been haunting his dreams this past eight months.