Regency Christmas Wishes (9781101220030)

by Layton, Edith; Jensen, Emma

  “You ask every year, Godfrey,” another man said. “And no one ever knows. Did you fancy her yourself?”

  “Why, so I did. Who wouldn’t?”

  “There’s truth in that, she was a pippin. But then what happened to the bar wench Nick fought over?”

  “She went to London by herself,” the harlequin said. “What happened after that, I don’t know, but that I do remember.”

  “I remember that you fancied her too,” the Roman said slyly.

  That evening Jonathan also learned, yet again, that it was possible for a man to sleep standing up, with his eyes open, and without falling down.

  He opened his eyes. Now that he was finally in bed, Jonathan couldn’t sleep.

  “Can’t sleep?” his wife asked from the next pillow.

  “How did you know?”

  “I can’t either,” she said.

  “Well, as it happens, you lucky lady, I happen to have a cure for that,” he said softly, and reached for her.

  She scooted back and sat up against her pillow.

  “What’s this?” he asked on a laugh, drawing back. “I bathed and cleaned my teeth.” He raised his arm and pretended to sniff at his underarm. “I’m fragrant as a rose.”

  She said nothing.

  His voice became tender. “I’m sorry. Are you unwell?”

  “No,” she said tersely.

  He was still for a moment. He’d been pleased to find her awake in the deep of this lonely night and had looked forward to her intimate company. He’d been willing to settle for good conversation. But though he’d only been married three months, he wasn’t slow at recognizing storm signals flying.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “So, what is it then?”

  “You,” she said deliberately. “I believe you are the one who can tell me what it is.”

  “I can?”

  “You ought to,” she said. Like steam escaping from a kettle her words rushed out. “You should! I mean to say, why else would a man stand mute as a clam all night, if he didn’t have some issue or another that was bedeviling him?”

  He was honestly perplexed.

  “You did not say two words together to anyone tonight!” she cried. “Not to my mother or father, or any of my sisters or brothers. You stood like some . . . icy paragon, looking down your long nose at my family!”

  He tried to remember just whom he had conversation with. “I wasn’t looking down at anyone,” he said defensively. “There was just nothing for me to say.”

  “Nothing to say!” she echoed with vast frustration in her voice. “You, who reads every news sheet and magazine, and keeps up on politics and literature, theater and . . . and everything going on around you, had nothing to say to my family? I think not, and I tell you that I take it badly. If I could go to those frightful Fanshawes and pretend to be enchanted by their dissolute and vulgar company, the least you could do was to pretend to be entertained by my family. But I suppose they are too decent for you.”

  His head went up, and now he did look down his long nose at her. It was just too bad, he thought, that she probably couldn’t see it in the darkness. “My friends let you speak,” he said icily. “I, on the other hand, had no chance to say anything. My friends included you in their conversations and their games . . .”

  He belatedly realized his misstatement. He almost heard her mute satisfaction with his poor choice of words, and hurried on the attack. “But no one here pays the least attention to me,” he said. “Since I did not have the same wet nurse as anyone present, or the same nursery maid, nor shared in any of those interminable convoluted escapades your family never tires of repeating, they had no interest in anything I had to say.”

  His voice, she noted with interest, was growing loud. That was something she hadn’t heard before. It pleased her. “I don’t believe you tried, my lord,” she said with haughty disdain. “You didn’t even speak with Laughton and he is the most congenial chap. Nor can you accuse him of rehashing old tales. He couldn’t. He’s only been married to my sister for a year.”

  “He collects beetles,” Jonathan said with weary patience. “He earnestly collects them. There is not much else I can bring to a conversation that might interest him.”

  “I do not believe you tried,” she said again.

  “I see,” he said. “And you know because you were at my side every moment? How very odd that I didn’t see you there. Dear me, can I be growing shortsighted?” he asked with a curling lip. “But how is that possible? I clearly saw you across the room, giggling with your sisters and friends; I saw you dandling every infant in the county on your knee at one time or another during the interminable evening, I saw you swapping those same shared tales with your brothers and cousins. I did not see you with your husband, though. In fact, if one were a visitor here, one would be hard-pressed to realize you were married. I remind you that I never left your side when we were at Fanshawe Manor.”

  She was still, because she was stung. What he said was true, and the realization hurt. She had neglected him. She opened her lips to murmur an apology. But he sensed his victory, and spoke too soon.

  “A very jolly Christmas this is turning out to be for me,” he said loftily. “I might as well have stayed at home by myself with a good book, and shared a toast to the season with the butler. He, at least, knows who his master is.”

  “His master!” she cried, pouncing on the word.

  He realized his error, and winced.

  “Well, I take leave to tell you that you are not my master,” she raged. “You are my husband, and I also tell you that I have never so regretted it!” She rose from the bed, and stepped down to the floor. “Nor will I sleep next to either my master or my husband tonight! After all, a master does not wish his servant in his bed and I do not believe a husband who deems himself my master deserves me at his side!”

  Once again he realized her predicament before she did, and watched with interest.

  She understood a second later, and stood irresolute. If she left the room, her family would be scandalized. They’d want to know the reason for any discord. They’d take sides and the quarrel would become everyone’s entertainment, and the bane of her existence however it turned out. She knew this house like the back of her hand and yet knew she could not step out the door. And this bedchamber did not have a dressing room.

  It did, however, have a chaise in the corner, against the wall. She stormed over to a chest under the window, flung it open, pulled out a blanket, flung herself on the chaise, and dragged the blanket over herself.

  The room was still.

  She heard a sigh, and saw his outline as he rose from bed. He walked over to her. She froze, and held her breath. She doubted he meant to do her an injury. But what would she do if he dared embrace her? Could she return his kisses? No, she thought with a kind of thrilled panic, she didn’t think she could. So, what should she do?

  He leaned over her and her breath caught in her chest. He reached down, picked her up, and carried her to the bed in a few swift strides. He deposited her there and in one swift movement stripped the blanket from her, causing her to roll right out of it. Then, as she lay tumbled, watching him in newborn fear and vast surprise, he marched back to the chaise, lay down, and covered himself with the blanket he had taken.

  “Good night,” he said, and turned his back to her.

  He’d won, she realized. Being a gentleman had utterly trumped her. That rankled. But that wasn’t what kept her up half the night. What did, was the slow dawning realization that he’d had a point.

  He stayed awake awhile, feeling very ill-used. But he knew he’d won, and also that whatever else his wife was, she was fair-minded. And so he finally fell asleep with a smile on his lips, wondering what the devil she’d do in the morning. His bride might not be reasonable, he thought as he drifted off, but by God, she was interesting! He hadn’t felt so alive in years.

  “I apologize,” Pamela said.

  Jonathan opened his eyes all the way, and saw
her seated at the dressing table.

  “I should not have left your side last night,” she said, looking at his reflection in her mirror. She’d been waiting for him to wake up and had spoken the minute she’d seen those thick eyelashes of his flutter and open. “I suppose I was just so pleased to be with my family again that I forgot it was my duty to make sure you were as comfortable as I was. Forgive me for that.”

  He sat up. Holding his blanket over his naked body, he rose and came to stand beside her. “I do,” he said, gazing down at her. “And I earnestly ask you to forgive me for my poor choice of words. I never want to be your master. But I do wish I could have you as my partner in this new life of ours.”

  His blanket was not very securely held. They were late for breakfast.

  They came down the stairs to see the manor had been transformed in the night. Evergreen branches were swagged over every mantel, and were twined around the chandeliers. The staircase was decorated with ropes of rosemary and pine, enlivened by strings of nuts and bright winter berries.

  “Greetings!” her father called when they entered the dining room. “We’ve been at work for hours, sleepy heads.”

  There were a few murmured comments about newlyweds from among the others in the room that made Pamela’s cheeks grow as rosy as her much kissed lips.

  “Did you forget, puss?” her father asked.

  She frowned in incomprehension as she took a seat at the table.

  “Marriage has addled your wits.” Her brother Kit laughed. “We always get up at dawn to start decorating the old place on Christmas Eve. Remember?”

  “Oh!” she said, round-eyed. “Is it the twenty-fourth today?”

  “Aye. But don’t worry, we haven’t hauled in the Yule log yet.”

  “Not that we haven’t picked it out,” her sister Rosemary said. “Father has had his eye on it for months. And the children are on tenterhooks, waiting for us to finish breakfast so we can go out with them and help them bring in the rest of the bunting. We still have yards of holly and ivy, to say nothing of mistletoe, to harvest.”

  “Not that those two need any mistletoe,” a cousin called out, and made everyone laugh.

  “We can’t put any holly, ivy, or mistletoe up until tonight,” her mother cautioned them, unnecessarily, because they all knew it so well. “Bad luck to set so much as a pinch of any of them inside until dark. But we can and will collect it today. First, we’ll go watch you gents cut the Yule log. Then, while you haul it home, we’ll get our holly and ivy. You men can come help us pull down the mistletoe. We’re all ready to go, so finish your breakfast and we can get started,” she told Pamela. “But be sure to eat enough to keep you warm, it’s very cold today. We can have another cup of tea while we wait. We didn’t want to start out without you. It would be a hard thing to have you to come all this way and miss all our fun.”

  “I’ll say!” Pamela’s brother Harry exclaimed. “Remember how vexed Charles got that year when he overslept and missed dragging the Yule log back?”

  “Didn’t I just?” Charles declared. “I still get hot when I think about it. How could you let me sleep past that? I was looking forward to it, and only overslept because I was so overactive the day before. Remember? We had that horse race and a foot race, and I was so tired I couldn’t wait to fall into bed. I still believe it was because I was the one who found the log that year, and not Kit, that he deliberately let me oversleep.”

  “Hardly,” Kit said. “You were overactive at the punch bowl the night before, if you remember.”

  “Me?” Charles laughed. “And what about you and your friend Wilson? Didn’t I hear something about the flask he enlivened the punch bowl with that night? Or don’t you remember?”

  There was much laughter, and soon others at the crowded table began to offer other versions of the reason why Charles had missed dragging home the Yule log that year. Then they started to talk about the year before, when they’d chopped the chosen log only to find it rotted at the heart and how they’d had to scurry to find a new one.

  Pamela laughed as she remembered. Wanting to share the fun, she looked at her husband, at her side. He sat with a faint, agreeable smile on his lips. But his eyes were glazing over. She shot a glance at Laughton, her sister’s husband, and saw a similar expression in his mild brown eyes. Her own widened as she realized every second word she was hearing was “remember?”

  “Come now!” she said into the first moment of silence that presented itself. “This is hardly fair! Neither Rexford nor Laughton was here then, and they can’t help but be bored to flinders by our reminiscences.”

  Her sister shot her a grateful look. But her brothers jeered.

  “What?” Harry asked, incredulous. “Speak for yourself, sweetings. Who could resist that tale?”

  “And we tell it so well they’d have to see the point. Don’t you, my lord?” George asked. “And you, Laughton?”

  “Indeed,” Jonathan said as Laughton also hastily agreed.

  “You just don’t want us telling them about that time you ate the mistletoe berries instead of chucking them over your shoulder when you made a wish, as you were supposed to do, Pam. Gad!” Kit said with a shudder. “I’ll never forget how sick you were. Not from the berries, I doubt they had time to sit in your stomach long enough. But from that brew Mama kept pouring into you to get you to relinquish them.”

  “Now, now,” his father admonished him, “no more of that, sir, if you please. Some of us are still eating breakfast.”

  “What?” Kit cried. “And you with an iron stomach? Taking her part, are you, Father? Don’t you want Rexford to hear what Pam said to Mama—when she could speak again, that is. Well, I remember. She said she never knew she was supposed to pluck them after a kiss, she thought it was after a wish!”

  “Worse than that,” Harry said with a grin, “she thought she was supposed to eat them, not toss them over her shoulder.”

  “She never could resist a berry,” Kit laughingly agreed. “We told her they were poisonous, but would she listen? Never. Remember?”

  “I remembered,” his mother said, shaking her head. “That’s why I told Dr. Foster to check her ears as well as her stomach when he got here.”

  The company roared at the old familiar story and Pamela smiled at the memory in spite of herself. She was relieved to see that her husband seemed genuinely amused as well. She was grateful, though she felt uncomfortable now. Her unease wasn’t about any embarrassing tales her loving family could tell him, but because she finally realized what a dead bore he must find them all.

  Now that she was aware of the problem, her joy in the day was ruined. The situation didn’t improve as the day went on.

  The trip in the sleigh to get the Yule log was enlivened by stories of every other such trip they’d ever taken, back to the first Arthur ancestor who ever strode over English soil, or so Pamela thought in despair. The ho ho ho’s were louder than the thuds of the axe as the Yule log was cut, as the merry company remembered the time Grandfather almost lost his thumb at the same task, and what he said in his own defense.

  She and her sisters and the children went on to cut mistletoe, and she had to hear the story of her unfortunate taste in berries again. She was sure someone was telling it to Jonathan too. Then, when the men rejoined them, after they’d hauled the log into the front hall and wrestled it into the hearth in the main salon, she had to watch him endure the stories about how Percival had fallen out of the oak that year when he’d reached for an elusive strand of mistletoe. Then he was regaled with tales of little Cousin Orwell and the mishap in the holly bush, young Mary and her strange reaction to the ivy crown she’d insisted on wearing, and yet again, the story of how her mama and father had met under a ball of mistletoe at a local dance. The story still brought a fond smile to her lips, but she couldn’t help realizing it might not be as fascinating to her husband.

  How tedious and unsophisticated he must think her family, she thought sadly as she watched her husband s
mile at a story her father was telling. Jonathan was so urbane that her father would have no idea that his listener was being bored to flinders. She herself would not have known if he hadn’t told her. She might get angry when her husband responded to anger with that insufferable icy calm, but now she realized concealing his emotions was a gift as well as a powerful weapon. She felt hopelessly outclassed. How could she ever measure up to him?

  How unfair he must believe her to be as well, she thought. And with good cause. She resented his highhandedness in forcing her to share the holiday with a previous lover. But here she was, insisting that he pass the holiday with her family, being regaled with stories of family and simple country folk he didn’t have a thing in common with. She’d trimmed his hair because she’d had to endure those nights with the Fanshawes, even before they behaved so badly. He hadn’t said a word of criticism of her family, except in his own defense.

  Pamela was subdued as she dressed for dinner that night. Her maid had been given the night off to celebrate with the other servants, and so Pamela frowned as she tried to anchor a rosy camellia in her curls, to top off her holiday garb.

  “Why are you scowling?” Jonathan asked as he came into the room. “You look lovely. No, better than that. You look like the very spirit of Christmas.”

  She wore a simple green silk gown with a golden stole, and looked so fresh and lovely, so innocent and yet desirable that he caught his breath. But they had such problems of late that he was reluctant to drop a kiss on her bare shoulder as he longed to do—as he would once have done without thinking.

  She shrugged, causing her breasts to rise and fall, along with his pulse. “I always wear green and gold at Christmas,” she said diffidently.

  She glanced at him from under her lashes. He looked elegant tonight, as always. He wore a gray jacket and slate unmentionables, both matching his cool steady eyes. His waistcoat was a symphony of burgundy and green. He looked so handsome, yet so immaculate and untouchable, that she wanted to weep.