Regency Christmas Wishes (9781101220030)

by Layton, Edith; Jensen, Emma

  Adam pondered as he walked, not paying much attention to his surroundings. He was an ordinary chap, with his feet firmly on the ground, he told himself, not any mystical, poetical, portent-seeking fellow. All of the recent events must simply have been coincidences, having nothing whatsoever to do with his wants or wishes. On the other hand, the one clutching Miss Relaford’s card as though it were his ticket to Paradise, he had never believed in love at first sight before, either.

  What else could this feeling be? His innards were tied in knots, his tongue was as thick as a sheep hide, and the thought of taking tea with the young woman almost made him drool. He was thirsty and hungry, that was all, he told himself. And did not believe himself for an instant.

  Could it be mere infatuation with her looks? No, for Miss Relaford was as charming as she was beautiful, sweet and intelligent, too.

  Lust? Adam shook his head and muttered a denial to himself. A woman with a small child in hand anxiously crossed to the other side of the street.

  Oh, at the thought of Miss Relaford’s soft hand, soft lips, soft skin, he grew hard enough, but the feelings Adam felt for her after such a brief acquaintance went much further. He had never had so burning a need to make a woman happy before, to cherish her and protect her. Why, he’d just made a fool of himself again, insisting he see her to her waiting carriage as if a whole building full of Bow Street officers could not keep Miss Relaford safe. And he was counting the hours, multiplying out the minutes, until he could see her again. If that was not love, what was? Perhaps he’d ought to consult one of those poets after all. They were always going on about the tender emotion.

  Tender, hell. His head was tender, his ribs were tender. His heart was a maelstrom of confusion, and the whole mess was too much for his aching head to contemplate. He needed a meal and a room and a bath. Then, maybe, he could begin to understand what was happening to him.

  Just in case, though, Adam tucked Miss Relaford’s card in his fob pocket, next to the lucky coin, closed his eyes, and made a wish. “I wish I were worthy of her love,” he said. Nothing was different when he opened his eyes, of course, and nothing happened except that a woman with rouged cheeks passed him on the walkway, winked, and said, “You’re worthy of mine any day, dearie.”

  Adam took a room for one night at the coaching inn, intending to catch the next day’s stage to Suffolk. He paid extra to have the inn’s staff do the best they could with his stained coat and scuffed boots, while he did the best he could with his injured ribs. After a hearty breakfast and a long hot soak, Adam tied his new neckcloth—of finer linen than any he owned—higher than usual, to try to hide his discolored chin. He brushed his damp curls back, over the gash in his head, and brushed his teeth, twice.

  Then he went shopping for a bouquet of flowers to bring to Miss Relaford.

  Roses, of course, pink like the blush on her cheek. Or sweet-smelling violets. A rare orchid, perhaps. A bouquet of wildflowers would be more in keeping with his countryman’s taste, and purse, but this was London, not the country. And it was December, not June. The street-corner flower sellers offered red-berried holly, mistletoe, and ribbon-tied boughs of fragrant evergreens for decorating, dried lavender and clove-studded apples, not posies for a lady.

  The shop he found had ferns and ivies and orange trees, and a small selection of flowers from forcing houses—at prices that would have forced him to part with far too much of his recent windfall. He might give his soul to the lady, but not food out of his dependents’ mouths.

  “I still have a bouquet of roses what weren’t fetched yesterday,” the florist told him when the man saw Adam turning away. “You can have ’em cheap. They ain’t too droopy yet, and the red’s so dark, your gal won’t notice the brown edges on the petals.”

  A few petals fell off when Adam carried the roses out, so he held them close to protect the bouquet from the blustery winter wind as he walked to Half Moon Street.

  He checked Miss Relaford’s card again, as if the thing were not etched in his brain, and then stood outside the house in despair. It was worse than he’d thought; she was wealthier than he suspected. The place was immense and immaculate, with nary a speck of soot on any of the myriad windows. Why, some of his windows at Standings did not even have glass!

  Lud, what was he doing here? He might have turned and gone back to the inn, but he was no quitter, else he’d have given up on Standings ages ago. What he was doing here, Adam told himself as he tried to straighten his hair that the wind had disarranged, was taking tea with a lovely lady, so he might have another pleasant memory to take home with him, nothing more. Still, he could not help wishing he made a better, more dashing appearance. Miss Relaford was so beautiful while he was so blasted ordinary, if one ignored the garish colors of his chin. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown coat, and brown breeches—how boring. He sighed and raised his hand to the gleaming door knocker.

  Just as he let the knocker fall, a gust of wind, stronger than before, blew up. It would have carried a hat away, if he’d been wearing one, but it played havoc with his hair instead—and with the roses. Adam did not have time to smooth his hair again for the door immediately opened to reveal a butler so niffy-naffy he could have served in a duke’s residence. Hell, Adam thought, the fellow could have been a duke. At his side was Miss Relaford herself, her mouth open in an O of astonishment. Even the superior servant seemed taken aback.

  Adam bowed, and handfuls of rose petals fluttered off his head and his shoulders, swept by the wind onto the tiled hall. A few were lodged in his neckcloth and lapels and the top of his waistcoat.

  Dashing? He felt like dashing for a hackney to carry him away! Well, that tiled floor was not going to swallow him up, and a fellow seldom died of mortification, unfortunately, so Adam did the only thing possible: he held his collection of now bare stems out to Miss Relaford and said, “For you.”

  Her lips twitched. The butler’s lips twitched. Adam’s lips twitched, and then they all burst out laughing. The butler recovered first, recalling his position and his dignity, even if his mistress and her unconventional guest had forgotten theirs. He cleared his throat, announced that he would see about a broom, and made a decorous exit, although they could hear one last chuckle as he headed down the hall.

  “That’s what comes of a poor country clodpole trying to impress a princess, I suppose,” Adam said, still grinning.

  “Are you?”

  He laughed again. “Poor? Countrified? A clumsy fool? All of them, my lady, I assure you.”

  Jenna brushed a rose petal off his shoulder. “Trying to impress me?” It was little more than a whisper.

  Adam could only sigh, take up her hand, and bring it to his lips. “With all my heart, if only I could.”

  The butler returned and cleared his throat again.

  “Are you coming down with something, Hobart? You would not wish to be ill at yuletide,” Jenna said. She did, however, take her hand out of Sir Adam’s and invite him to follow her to the library where some of her father’s other curios were displayed, until her uncle returned for tea.

  They admired carved jade horses and purple beads made of clamshells, examined a case of dead butterflies and another of oddly shaped pearls of different colors, for her maid’s sake.

  The maid was mending in the corner, for propriety’s sake.

  What they were actually doing was admiring each other, examining their startling new feelings. They let their hands touch over each ebony figurine and their shoulders brush in front of the paintings. They compared their tastes, learning about each other in the process and liking what they learned, very much indeed.

  As they went from object to object, Jenna told Adam about her merry papa, the second son of an earl, who had fallen in love with a merchant’s daughter and eloped with her aboard one of her father’s ships. She died in childbirth, but James Relaford stayed at sea, becoming wealthy in his own right, ignoring the scandal, ignoring his family, ignoring everything but the baby daughter left with his wif
e’s brother and sister-in-law. Now he was gone, as was Jenna’s dearest aunt, and the grandfather earl who had never acknowledged her birth.

  Adam in turn told her about his beloved Standings and his horse-mad father whose schemes had sent them into penury, if not yet bankruptcy.

  “We have both had great losses in our lives,” Jenna said. “And yet you have your lands and I have an uncle who cares for me as if I were his own daughter, so we are more fortunate than many others.”

  Adam agreed just as they heard the front door opening, then steps heading down the tiled hall in their direction.

  “Uncle,” Miss Relaford said, “may I present Sir Adam Standish. Sir Adam, my uncle, Mr. Ezekiel—”

  “Beasdale!”

  “Standish?”

  “This is your uncle?”

  “This is your hero?”

  “This is your niece?”

  “This is preposterous!” Beasdale looked about to suffer an apoplexy, his face was so red. “How dare you, you villain, dangle after my niece when I particularly warned you against such a course? Here I was thinking of relenting on that payment date, but now? Extend further credit to an encroaching, unethical parasite? You might consider yourself clever to scrape up an acquaintance with my niece on such short notice, but I consider you no better than a worm, a slime-slithering—”

  “I take it you two have met?” Jenna asked in a quavering voice.

  But Adam was not daunted, not at all. He raised his chin, bruises and all. “I do not consider myself the least clever, else I would have asked the name of Miss Relaford’s uncle before I leaped to her assistance. As it is, you impugn my honor, sir. If circumstances were otherwise, I would ask you to name your seconds. Instead, for Miss Relaford’s sake, I shall bid you good day.”

  “Wait!” Jenna called as Adam turned for the door. “Uncle, I do not know what you are concerned about, but I swear Sir Adam and I met by chance. He was bringing a coin to Mr. Schott’s to be appraised. The same type of coin I showed you at breakfast yesterday. Let him see, Sir Adam,” she added, with a silent plea for him to understand a loving uncle’s obsession.

  Adam took the coin out of his pocket. Then, for Miss Relaford’s sake, he relented. “I had no other reason for entering that shop yesterday, Mr. Beasdale. I swear it.”

  Beasdale examined the coin. “Harumph. I suppose I owe you an apology, then. And my gratitude for keeping my poppet safe.” He mopped at his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. “And I guess I shall have to extend that deadline after all.”

  Adam had more pride than to take crumbs from a begrudging hand, especially in front of Miss Relaford. “No, sir. That is unnecessary. I have come into a bit of the ready, enough to tide me over until spring. I shall make do.”

  Beasdale harumphed again, but was pleased, they could see, pleased enough to sit to tea with his unwanted guest.

  “But do not mistake my gratitude or my hospitality,” he told Adam while Jenna was busy filling cups and plates. “I will not have a titled fortune hunter paying suit to my niece.”

  Adam almost wished the banker to the devil, but he was Miss Relaford’s uncle, and she seemed fond of the old curmudgeon. The tea could have been ditchwater and the cakes might have had bits of macadam instead of poppyseed in them, for Adam’s appetite, and his pleasure in the day, had fled. He made his farewells as quickly as politeness allowed.

  Miss Relaford walked him to the entryway. As the stiff-backed butler held the door open, she pressed a card of invitation into Adam’s hand. “I am having a small party on Friday evening in honor of a friend who is recently wed. I would be pleased if you could attend.”

  “I am sorry, ma’am, but I must be returning to the country. And your uncle . . .”

  “This is my party. And if you are concerned about the company, not everyone will be as disapproving of your circumstances as my uncle. My school friend married Lord Iverson, and some of his friends will be coming, as well as Uncle’s business associates and their families.”

  “Ivy? Why, I went to university with him. You say he is married?”

  “To Uncle’s best friend’s daughter, who was my bosom bow, Miss Sophia Applegate. Then you will come?”

  He had no formal evening wear. He had no hope of winning over Mr. Beasdale. He wished it could be otherwise, but why torture himself further by spending more time in Miss Relaford’s company? “I shall think about it,” was all he could say, knowing he would think of nothing else.

  “Please,” she said, and only went inside when the butler, who was not ill at all, but would be soon with the door open, coughed again.

  5

  “How could you, Uncle?”

  Mr. Beasdale merely harumphed into his second serving of tea.

  “Not only were you discourteous to a guest in your house,” Jenna went on, “but you insulted a gentleman who might have saved my life. The officer at Bow Street said that thief was a dangerous criminal.”

  “He’s poor,” said the banker, reaching for another macaroon.

  “Of course he is. Wealthy men do not steal ladies’ purses.”

  “Not the thief. Standish.”

  “So what?” Jenna asked, moving the plate farther from her uncle’s reach, for the sake of his waistline. “You and my mother were poor once. You always told me how your father started life as a free trader.”

  “He’s a nob.”

  “Pooh. A mere baronet. My grandfather was an earl.”

  Beasdale’s snort said what he thought about that, and about all titled gentlemen in general. “Like half of the swells, this one is in debt. He owes the bank more than he’s worth.”

  A frown formed on Jenna’s forehead. “Was he the one who took out the loans?”

  “No.”

  “Has he defaulted on his payments?”

  “No, dash it. Am I to be interrogated in my own home, besides starved?”

  Jenna placed one slice of lemon cake on his plate, a small slice. “I have one more question. Although Sir Adam seems to be a brave, kind, honorable gentleman, you will still refuse him permission to call?”

  Put like that, Beasdale had no good answer. He set his plate aside, his stomach roiling. “I only want the best for you, my dear.”

  “What if I consider him the best, the finest gentleman I have ever met? What if he is what I want?”

  “Faugh. It is too soon for you to know. He’ll be leaving soon, anyway, back to his goats and hens.”

  “Sheep and cows, Uncle, and a few hogs. And perhaps he will not leave town so shortly. I invited him to the dinner for Lord and Lady Iverson Friday.”

  “Where he’ll fit right in with those other useless swells, all puffed up with their own consequence.”

  “Sir Adam is not like that, and you are sounding like a French revolutionary. Besides, he might not attend. He did not exactly accept my invitation.”

  “Good. I think I will have that piece of cake after all.”

  “Will you be polite to him if he does come?”

  Whatever Beasdale muttered was lost in the sounds of swallowing. Jenna persisted: “You would not be so selfish, would you, to deny me the opportunity to get to know such a pleasant gentleman simply because he does not suit your notions of an eligible parti?”

  “Since you have invited him already, what would be the use? Perhaps it’s for the best. Once you get to know the chap you’ll see that you two won’t suit at all.”

  She smiled, a soft, private smile that quite ruined Beasdale’s digestion for good. He groaned. “Devil take it, poppet, I only want your happiness. You would not be content in the country, minding those ducks and geese.”

  “Sheep and cows, Uncle. But are you saying that if, by some chance, which is far too early to consider”—although she had, of course; her blushes gave her away—“I did marry Sir Adam, you would not invite me to visit here?”

  “Do not be foolish, girl. I am not like that idiot earl who disowned your father. You will always be welcome in my home, no matt
er whom you marry.”

  Jenna stood up and bent to kiss her uncle’s cheek. She drew back when he added, “Of course, I’d be more welcoming if you were to wed Leonard Frye, the new junior partner. He comes from a powerful investment family. He is prudent and polished and knows what is proper.”

  “Mr. Frye is also a prig.” Jenna called for Hobart to take the tea cart away. “I’d sooner wed one of Sir Adam’s hogs.”

  “Harumph.”

  Adam, meanwhile, was walking back to his inn, thinking of the visit. Beasdale was as stiff-rumped as ever, but his niece was even more of a delight than Adam had thought possible. Her conversation, her wit, her humor, all entranced him deeper than her physical beauty ever could. The only thing he did not like about Miss Relaford, in fact, was that she was so far above him. Granddaughter to an earl, by George. Niece to a nabob, botheration. No amount of wishing was going to make him worthy of such a prize. Blast it.

  What made Adam feel worse was that he’d never really considered marriage before. He always knew he could not afford a wife, and he was too practical a fellow to hunger for what he could not have—or at least he had been before this trip to London.

  Thinking of hunger made him stop to buy a hot meat pie, since the few bites he’d taken at Beasdale’s house were not nearly enough to satisfy his appetite. Neither, now, was the mere glimpse of heaven enough to satisfy his yearning.

  He wanted a life companion, someone to share his thoughts, share his woes, and share his successes, besides sharing his bed. He wanted a friend, but one who would give him unquestioned, unconditional love. He wished he could find someone who believed he was worthy of being loved in return, despite all his faults and failings.