Hope and joy swelled so fiercely within her that Alice thought she might burst on the spot. Suddenly she was laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, Gareth, I never stopped!”
She was ready to tell him about her own wish: that he might, just once, kiss her as he once had. She didn’t have the chance. His hand snaked out to wrap around the back of her neck. In an instant, she was flat against him and he was kissing her in a way he never had. As if his very breath depended on it. When he finally released her, her lips were tingling, her heart was going like thunder, and she was seeing stars.
“Well,” she managed after a moment, “you’re very good at that.”
His smile was quick and wicked. “I can be better.” Then he sobered. “You’ll marry me, Alice. As soon as possible.”
Heart bursting, she could only nod. Then, after a moment, “I’ve one request to make of you.”
“Anything.”
“I will go anywhere with you, Gareth, gladly. But I would very much like to come home for Christmas every year. Could you stand that?”
“That is your request?” He smiled again, but this time with a hint of sadness. “You could ask me for the moon and stars, sweetheart.”
“I know. But I’ll settle for a piece of Ireland. I understand your need to travel. Even if Clarissa’s baby is a girl, you needn’t be here all the time—”
“We will be here. At Christmas, at the harvest, whenever possible. If the baby is a girl, I’ll have to be in London for the parliamentary sessions, but other than that, we will be here in Kilcullen.”
“But, Gareth, you don’t want the title, the responsibility. And you shouldn’t have to shoulder it.”
He shrugged his uninjured shoulder. “I’ve found that my feelings have changed on a few matters. If the title comes to me, so be it. Kilcullen is well worth whatever work comes with it.”
“And if the baby is a boy?” she asked, a new hope rising.
“Then we’ll build our own home nearby. Raise children and sheep and throw massive joins at Christmas. I know a duke who would greatly enjoy an evening in the company of the Sullivans.”
This time it was Alice who kissed him, with enough joy and enthusiasm to leave them both breathless. And she might have gone on kissing him until Christmas morning had not a voice interrupted from the doorway.
“Alice!”
They both jumped and Alice nearly tipped herself off the mattress. “Clarissa? I . . . oh, dear. Well, you see . . .”
“Your sister has graciously consented to marry me,” Gareth announced smoothly and, Alice thought, a bit smugly.
“Yes, yes, splendid,” Clarissa replied. “And I do say it’s about time. But we’ve more pressing matters at the moment.”
“Clarie?” Alice was off the bed in an instant. “What is it?”
“This baby isn’t going to wait until Twelfth Night, apparently.” Clarissa clutched the door frame, face pale. “Oh, heavens. It’s time!”
The Merry Magpie
by Sandra Heath
1
“Beggin’ your pardon, my lord, but it is Marchwell Park you want, isn’t it?” The postilion leaned into the hired chaise to awaken his young gentleman passenger. Christmas Eve was bitterly cold, and a flurry of fine snow whisked past the lantern that swung on an adjacent cottage.
“What in God’s own name—?” Startled into shivering wakefulness, Sir Charles Neville struggled to get his bearings as he heard the storm soughing through bare-branched trees. For a moment he thought he was back in Madras, where Bay of Bengal breakers thundered constantly upon the exposed shore; but then the raw cold and stray snowflakes reminded him he was in England again, his long journey from India almost at an end.
It wasn’t easy to collect his thoughts because he was exhausted and the blustering December air seemed to hail from the Arctic itself. The heavy greatcoat he’d managed to purchase on disembarking in Portsmouth wasn’t as warm and protective as he’d hoped, with the result that the penetrating cold seemed to lie upon his skin like a layer of frost. By all the saints, he’d never thought he’d miss the Madras heat as much as this.
The tired postilion, no longer in the first flush of youth, stamped his feet and rubbed his gloved hands in an effort to restore some feeling to his extremities. He was swathed in capes and scarves, a jockey hat tugged low over his forehead, and his rather weasely face looked demonic in the moving light of the lantern as he addressed his passenger again, more exasperatedly this time. “Is it Marchwell Park you want or not, Lord Melville?”
“Don’t shout, damn it, I’m not deaf!” Charles sat up properly and tipped his top hat back on his sun-bleached blond hair. He had long since given up trying to educate the numskull about his correct name and rank; besides, right now it was probably an advantage for the gatekeeper not to know who the new arrival really was.
The postilion wisely moderated his tone. “Begging your pardon again, my lord, but I asked you three times and you didn’t awaken.”
“Even so, as you know perfectly well that Marchwell Park is where I’m going, I hardly see why you suddenly need to confirm it again. Perchance it is your memory that is defective, not my ears.” It was Christmas Eve and a hefty sum had already been demanded before setting out on this drive from the coast to Lady Marchwell’s estate near Windsor, so if this was some eleventh-hour ruse to extract more money . . .
Well versed in the uncertain temper of the aristocracy, the postilion was at pains to be reassuring. “I remembered, sir, but then the gatekeeper said that as all Lady Marchwell’s Christmas guests had now arrived maybe I’d come to the wrong address. He thinks it’s probably Marshgrove House you want, farther toward Windsor, so it seemed best I should check with you . . . just in case.”
Charles’s pulse quickened and he looked again at the cottage, belatedly recognizing it as one of the twin lodges that flanked the impressive armorial gates on the road from Maidenhead to Windsor. “Kindly tell the gatekeeper to stop asking damn-fool questions and just let us through. Lady Marchwell has no idea I’m coming, but will receive me.” Charles crossed his fingers as he spoke, for he was by no means sure how his wife’s doting aunt would react to his sudden return. The last time he’d passed through these gates was when he’d been thrown out and told never to come back. Yet here he was, chancing his dubious luck again. He was twenty-eight now, older and hopefully wiser, and had come back from the other side of the world to tackle the past.
“Very well, sir.” The postilion closed the chaise door and went to speak to the gatekeeper, who seemed most reluctant to admit a newcomer, no matter how titled.
Charles watched the two men arguing, then his attention returned to the cottage, where an uncurtained window allowed him to see a plump woman and two little redheaded girls laughing as they sorted through some freshly gathered greenery for decorating their home. Festive joy would be their lot over the coming days, he mused enviously, conscious that happiness, Christmas or otherwise, had eluded him for six wretched years now. No doubt this one would not prove any different, for in his heart of hearts he expected Lady Marchwell to send him away again without even deigning to see him. And why should she not? After all, he had been a faithless husband to her beloved niece, whose tender heart he’d broken most cruelly.
He repented his sins, oh, how he repented them, but wishing the past could be undone would not bring about the reconciliation he yearned for. He had to face Juliet’s only relative, and throw himself on her mercy. Maybe after all this time she would relent at last, and tell him where his wife now lived. Would it be too much to hope that Juliet was here at Marchwell Park for Christmas? Too much to hope that the wedding ring he now wore on a purple ribbon around his neck would soon grace her finger again?
That had been his wish ever since separation. It was a fragile longing, a prayer that was whispered only in his soul, where his true self now hid away behind the false smiles and air of confidence he presented to the rest of the world. He had learned a very hard lesson, b
ut learned it well, and if he had the chance of speaking to Juliet, he would . . . what? Convince her? Win her forgiveness? Sweep her into his arms once more? He doubted it. More likely he’d be obliged to creep away again with a monstrous flea in his presumptuous ear.
At last the postilion persuaded the gatekeeper to relent, and quickly hauled himself back onto the nearside of the two horses before the fellow changed his mind. His whistle pierced the racket of the storm and the chaise jolted forward again. Charles heard the groan and clang of the opening gates, and glimpsed the gatekeeper’s startled face on realizing that Lord Melville was in fact Sir Charles Neville. The black sheep had returned, ensuring the resurrection of a scandal that had dominated society’s gossip at the end of 1813.
That winter’s abominable weather had paled to insignificance beside the shocking and very public failure of the Neville marriage. A terrible scene had been conducted in full view of Lady M’s multitudinous Christmas guests, and soon the entire monde had gossiped about it. Before long society’s servants had the juicy tale as well, and for all he knew Lady M’s odious one-eyed pet magpie, Jack, being the most impudent, inquisitive, iniquitous, invariably inebriated member of the feathered tribe he’d ever come across, had also broadcast the story over the treetops. The whole of creation had condemned Sir Charles Neville, not his lovely spouse. “And with good reason, you fool, with good reason,” he chided himself sadly.
To this day he didn’t really know why he had strayed from the wife who meant the world to him. There was no excuse, no mitigating factor to grant him even a morsel of justification. It wasn’t that he had fallen out of love with Juliet, quite the opposite in fact, for he adored her more each day. Simply because his friends were still enjoying their wild, unattached youth, he had begun to resent a marriage that had hitherto brought him happiness. He became convinced that because he and Juliet had married so very young—at their 1811 wedding they had been eighteen and twenty respectively—he had been unjustly denied the wild oats that was every young man’s right. Taking it into his puerile head to sow those oats anyway, he had not merely indulged in some fleeting meaningless amours, but had taken a mistress.
The first infidelity with the actress Sally Monckton might possibly have been pardoned, for it had been the result of too much champagne, and too much greenroom revelry with his old comrades from Oxford days. With her flirtatious smiles, comely charms, and saucy brown eyes, she made it very plain that she was his for the asking. His resistance had been abysmally conspicuous by its absence. He recalled feeling deeply ashamed when next he faced Juliet, but she sensed nothing and their life continued as before.
Then, quite by accident, he met Sally again. He’d been in a sulk because he and Juliet had a stupid quarrel over nothing. His male vanity being a little bruised, he petulantly chose to be unfaithful again. His arrogant, immature reasoning had been simple; he’d done it once without discovery, so he could do it again. And he did, for almost the whole of 1813.
He made excuse after excuse to explain his absences from his and Juliet’s Grosvenor Square home, and like so many husbands before him he had been so sure of his wife, so certain that she would always be there for him, so convinced that she would never find out anyway, that he deemed himself above suspicion.
How wrong could he have been? Due to that thrice-cursed magpie—aptly named after Jack Sheppard, the infamous thief hanged at Tyburn in 1724—his sins had been uncovered. Juliet had not been able to accept such deliberately prolonged unfaithfulness, and in the six years since she rejected him he had yearned over and over to repair the damage to his marriage. Also during that time he had devised many a novel way of disposing of the diminutive plumed Cyclops responsible for his downfall.
He lowered his glance, knowing full well that it was wrong to blame the magpie. Juliet had not been as unaware of her husband’s misdeeds as he imagined, for his inner guilt had been displayed in his outward manner. Increasingly Juliet had known that something was wrong, and her suspicions could not help but center upon the likelihood of another woman in his life. To then discover that he had gone to the length of actually keeping a mistress was too much betrayal by far. So he’d lost the only thing that really mattered to him. And it served him right.
Charles sighed as the chaise rattled along the wide gravel drive toward the brilliantly illuminated Thames-side mansion. Overhead there was a barely discernible lacework of naked branches that in summer provided a cool bower of leaves; he and Juliet had driven here through sun-dappled shadows on their June wedding day. They had laughed and held hands, and the air had been sweet with the fragrance of the rose garlands on the open landau and the lilies-of-the-valley in Juliet’s bridal posy. The memory stung tears to his dark blue eyes. Just to be here at Marchwell Park again was sufficient to unman him. Suddenly he was assailed with doubts. He should have stayed away and begun a new life in some remote corner of the realm . . . yet even in India the yearning for Juliet had remained fresh and poignant. There wasn’t a place in the entire universe that was far enough away to free him from her spell.
He drew himself up sharply. It was Christmas, the season of goodwill and hope, and he would never forgive himself if he didn’t strive to mend his marriage. Maybe it would never be possible, maybe Juliet had given her heart to someone else now; maybe so many things . . . But they were still wed, and he desperately wanted to be her husband again. In every way.
Lady Marchwell’s sixteenth-century mansion drew nearer by the second. It was a modest but beautiful imitation of Hampton Court, with the same red Tudor brickwork, courtyards, towers and cupolas, but it was only a third the size of its palatial forerunner. All of a sudden he felt that the hopes he’d nursed for so long were about to be dashed. He looked away from the mansion, and in doing so turned his attention in the direction of the Thames. There weren’t any lights glimmering between the great willows that grew along the riverbank. Wasn’t anyone staying at the Retreat? A shadow fell softly over his hopes, for a light would definitely have signified Juliet’s presence.
Other memories now rushed back. During the four years he and Juliet had been together as a married couple they had always spent Christmas at Lady Marchwell’s delightful fishing lodge, which stood on a four-acre island that divided the river into two channels. The Retreat was a thatched cottage orné that had been built in 1790, and the island was called Magpie Eyot because of the flocks of the handsome birds that were always to be found in its tall trees.
“Oh, Charles, it is pronounced ‘eight.’ Eeyots are Bedlamites!” he murmured, remembering Juliet’s infectious laughter as she teased him for mispronouncing the old Anglo-Saxon word for island. Her deliberate corruption of idiot into eeyot had become one of their silly sayings after that. Anyone whose common sense was called into question was always an eeyot. “As I was an eeyot for destroying my marriage,” he said to himself.
The postilion’s shout wrenched him from his reverie as the chaise drew to a halt beneath the porte cochere at the front of the house. Sprays of festive conifer shuddered on the porch pillars, and a woven circle of ivy shook against an arched door that would not have looked out of place on a church. The stone griffins guarding the steps had red ribbon necklets, but the bright splashes of color looked forlorn as the wind moaned and whined past the chaise.
Through the windows of the nearby great parlor, which blazed with candlelight, Charles could see Lady Marchwell’s many guests dancing Christmas Eve away beneath festoons of holly, mistletoe, bay, myrtle, and ivy. Gold and silver apples shone amid evergreen arrangements on walls and mantels, and ribbons moved gently in the heat from the roaring fire in the immense stone fireplace. Everyone wore Tudor costume, and he could just hear that the tune they danced to was “Greensleeves.” Hopefully he raked the scene for Juliet, but she wasn’t there.
Another beam of bright light struck suddenly into the darkness as two of Lady Marchwell’s footmen hastened out to attend the new arrival. “Now to face up to things,” Charles breathed, steeling hi
mself for the coming minutes.
The footmen descended the shallow flight of steps, and the senior of the two opened the chaise door and lowered the iron rung. Only when he straightened and saw the gentleman who climbed down did his manner change to one of dismayed uncertainty. Would her ladyship wish Sir Charles Neville to be readmitted after all this time?
Charles gave a wry smile. “Don’t fret, James. Should there be a problem I will assume full responsibility.”
The man was taken aback. “You remember me, sir?”
“As you remember me, for as I recall you were among those who bundled me unceremoniously into my carriage when I last departed these hallowed walls.”
The man went red. “Er, yes, sir, I fear so. I also fear that her ladyship may not wish you to—”
“Indeed she may not, but there is only one way to find out, is there not?” Charles interrupted. Shivering in the cold, he flexed his hands in his gloves as he began to ascend the shallow flight of steps toward the open door.
James stood there indecisively, then ran after the awkward arrival, which prompted the postilion to quickly shout, “Hey! What about the rest of my fare?”
Charles halted and turned, shoving a fat purse into James’s hand. “I agreed to pay the fellow half the fare on leaving Portsmouth and the remainder on arrival, but I may yet need the chaise if Lady Marchwell sends me packing. Take this and inform the fellow that he will be paid when my fate is known, otherwise he will be obliged to take me on to Windsor before he sees another farthing. Do not unload so much as a single valise in the meantime.”
Again James hesitated, feeling uncomfortably sure that Lady Marchwell would indeed send Sir Charles packing. Maybe, in the interest of staying in employment at Marchwell Park, the wisest thing for any footman to do would be to send him off without her ladyship even knowing he’d been here . . .
Charles guessed the man’s thoughts. “Don’t even entertain the thought of manhandling me, James, for this time I’d have the better of you in seconds. I learned a trick or two in the East which would leave you turned inside out, and no mistake.”
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