Regency Christmas Wishes (9781101220030)

by Layton, Edith; Jensen, Emma

“What?” he said quickly, and took her in his arms.

  She shook her head, unable to speak. It suddenly was too much. She couldn’t go on like this. He was so near and yet so far, and growing further away from her every hour. Bad as it would be at any time, the comparison of all her past happy Christmas memories and the awful reality of this sudden impasse with the man she loved most was simply unendurable. She needed joy now, at this important time of year. She needed closeness, and love, and him. The only thing left to do was to offer him the only thing she could give him: truth.

  “Oh, Jonathan,” she sighed against his chest. “I feel so . . . I have to apologize to you,” she said, pushing him away, and holding him literally at arm’s length. “I carried on like a shrew because you took me to the Fanshawes’.”

  “You were right to do so,” he said, frowning because of the tears he saw starting in her eyes.

  “Well, yes, and no,” she said. “Later, in retrospect, I suppose I was. But not at first. At first, they couldn’t be nicer to me. And yet I carried on like a madwoman before I even found out what they were like, without giving them a chance. But you! Here you are, in the heart of nowhere, bored to bits by my family, and you haven’t said a word. Not one word of complaint, not once wished to go home.”

  “Yes, I have,” he said. “And yes I did.”

  “Well, yes,” she conceded. “But only after I attacked you. In retaliation, I’m sure. I think you’d have borne it all in silence, otherwise. I’m glad you didn’t, because otherwise I wouldn’t have seen it. I’m so sorry I didn’t pay attention to you. But the truth is that when you’re so polite when I get angry, it only makes me madder.”

  “In future, I’ll try to bluster, shout, and scream,” he said humbly.

  “Would you?” she asked.

  “If you wish.”

  “I do!” she said. “When you’re so quiet it just makes me want to stick you with a pin. I’m not used to silence.”

  “I grew up with nothing else. I promise I will shout the house down the next time you vex me,” he vowed.

  She giggled. “I can’t imagine that! But I wish you’d try. Then I’d know where I stand. Please, let me get on with my apology. Because if carrying on is necessary for me to clear the air, and it is, you must understand that a total apology is as important to me in order to make amends. It’s what I’m accustomed to. We are a very dramatic family, you see.”

  “I begin to understand,” he said with an admirably straight face. “Carry on. Literally or figuratively. I am at your command.”

  “Well,” she said, “only today did I allow myself to see what you have suffered since you got here. You’re far too polite! I let you know how I hated being at the Fanshawes’ immediately, even before I got there.”

  “I should have listened to you, and we would never have gone there.”

  She shook that off. “It doesn’t signify. At least, maybe it does, but that’s not what I’m speaking about now. You see, it was only after we were here that you showed me your discontent with being here at all.”

  “No, that’s not true. I didn’t want to come here.”

  “Well, yes,” she admitted. “And I do think that was wrong of you. Even so, we are here, and you suffer. I know that’s so,” she added before he could speak. “My family means well, but we don’t consider what it is to be an outsider, and I suspect that even though we’re married it will take some time before you’re part of our inner circle. That is, if you even wish to be.”

  “I do,” he said, as solemnly as any bridegroom.

  “Thank you. I don’t know why you should! Now I see that whenever we get together, and at Christmas, especially, the same stories get told, the same things are done. It’s comforting for us, but you must be at wits’ end! I know we couldn’t have stayed at the Fanshawes’, but surely, this isn’t much better for you than their house was for me. Well, safer, of course,” she said thoughtfully. “But not better. My family forgets everything and everyone but their own history, and if you weren’t there when it happened, hearing it retold cannot be a treat. And that is mostly what we do. You must have felt so alone. Even when I was so misused by the Fanshawes, I had you as my ally. Your only ally here has been my beetle-loving brother-in-law. Perhaps as the others marry it will get better, but as for now? I do apologize.”

  He smiled. “Don’t,” he said. “It was churlish of me to complain. I think I only did so in order to have my own back at you. Because you were so very right, and it’s hard for me to admit I was wrong. Listen, my love,” he said, his hands on her shoulders as he looked down into her eyes. “There’s not a thing wrong with your family. I didn’t really have one, not as such, and so I didn’t understand. I wasn’t hatched from an egg, but what I grew up with was nothing like this! I had nurses and governesses, and then I was sent to school. When I came home for the holidays—if I came home for the holidays—it was to be left by myself in the nursery.

  “Your family is a tightly knit group of people who dearly love each other,” he said. His gray eyes warmed to the color of a summer’s fog as he smiled. “That’s both wonderful and remarkable to me. I can only hope that in time I do something foolish enough, or downright stupid enough, to be included in your family’s ongoing chronicles.”

  His voice became slow and serious, and his eyes searched hers. “You wouldn’t be as bright and open as you are if you’d come from a family like mine. I thank your mother and father for nurturing you the way they have done. You screeched at me the other day, and I admit, I was appalled. At least I was until I realized it was because I never learned to love loudly enough. Don’t apologize for your family, be proud of them. I wish we could create the same sort of family together, you and I. I think we only need time enough to do so. Time and love and caring enough. Then, eventually, we will have our own myths and legends and lore to bore our children’s spouses with. If, that is, you’ll bear with me long enough?”

  “Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, and went into his opened arms. She hugged him, hard. “I so wish I hadn’t been such a fool.”

  “I’m so glad you were,” he said against her hair.

  She reared back and glowered at him. “You don’t have to agree!”

  He laughed. “Yes, I do. Shall we have another fight? Where will you sleep tonight? You’re running out of sanctuaries, you know, and December is such a cold month. Now, there’s the stuff of stories to keep telling our descendants!”

  She smiled. “Yes. True. Jonathan?”

  “Mmm,” he said as he dragged her close again and inhaled the camellia she’d pinned in her hair.

  “I wish we hadn’t argued.”

  “If we had not, how would we have come to this?”

  “What have we come to?”

  “A beginning,” he said. “I now understand that I must roar at you when I am cross with you, which I imagine I shall be again, in due time. You now know that I freeze solid when I am most upset. Fire and ice. We are a perfect December match, you and I, the very spirit of a wonderful Christmas night—if we can just remember to always add faith and love and joy. We can learn to live with each other, my love. We will.” He bent his head to see her expression. “What do you think?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “We must. For I do love you so much that I cannot bear it when we are at odds.”

  “So we shall,” he said. “And as for now? We’ll spend this Christmas with your family, and then, next year, we’ll have them all come and start a new tradition with ours. What do you think?”

  She nodded. “I think that’s a grand idea. But it will take more than one new baby to make them give up their traditions. I think we’ll have to come here next year and add to their tradition. All three of us.”

  She felt his breath catch.

  “It’s so?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, keeping her head down so he couldn’t see her smile. “It might be. It could be. I do wish it would be.”

  They were late to dinner.

  B
ut they didn’t waste the mistletoe. And this time she used it just as she should, for kisses and wishes. He was delighted to share them with her.

  They were both smiling when they finally went to dinner. But Pamela found her spirits sinking as she came down the stairs. It was one thing to say she understood her husband’s feelings, because now she did. It was quite another to actually have to watch her family ignoring him, as well as to see how he bore up under it, however stoically.

  “Here they are!” one of her cousins trumpeted as they went into the salon.

  “Now we can get on with it!” her father said.

  “Oh, sorry we’re late,” Pamela said, feeling her color rise. “But you didn’t have to wait for us. Though it was kind, because I did want Jonathan to see how we light the Yule log.”

  “Couldn’t start without you,” her brother Kit answered. “We need the newest member of our family to help light it, remember?”

  “What?” Pamela asked. “But why us? Little Gwyneth is our latest addition, she’s only been with us for two months,” she added, smiling at Gwyneth’s proud new mama.

  “They refused to wake her for our pyrotechnics,” Kit’s twin, Harry, explained, laughing. “That leaves Rexford.”

  “Surely not,” Pamela said in confusion. “That leaves Laughton.”

  “Not I,” that gentleman said quickly. “I had the honor last year, remember?”

  She hadn’t. But that wasn’t why she looked distressed. It was because that was still another “remember” that her husband did not.

  “And weren’t you wary of doing it?” Charles asked Laughton.

  “Aye!” Cousin Godfrey agreed merrily. “I think it was because he was afraid he’d set fire to one of his little friends. But so he did. Remember how many of the little beasties came scurrying out of that log as soon as it started blazing?”

  Laughton smiled as everyone laughed, even Jonathan. Though he hadn’t been there, he knew his brother-in-law’s penchant for beetles.

  “I didn’t see one rare specimen in the scramble,” Laughton said good-naturedly. “And so I didn’t mind the mad fandango you did on the escapees when they came near you either, Godfrey.”

  “Yes, it’s Rexford’s turn,” his father-in-law said over the laughter that filled the room. “And high time he had a turn at something. Sad stuff this Christmas must be for you, my lord,” he told Jonathan. “We all go through our paces every year like trained ponies, doing what we always do, and enjoying it for just that reason. It has to be a dead bore for you, though. I know, you’re far too polite to agree. But now you get a chance to add your own bit and become part of our pageant. Then next year, you can share your experiences with the next in line.”

  His voice became solemn. “Lighting the Yule log is very important for good luck in the new year,” he told Jonathan. “Now. I shall light the last bit of last year’s log that I saved for this year. And then you start us off anew.”

  He took a thick charred stick of wood from where it had been propped at the side of the hearth, and ceremoniously lit it. Once he got it burning like a taper, he held it high to show the assembled company, and then solemnly handed it to his new son-in-law.

  Jonathan took the glowing brand and bent to the hearth. He knelt, and set the blazing stick to the tinder surrounding the new Yule log, touching it in several places so that it would catch evenly all round the log. He blew on the tiny flames, fanning them until the tinder was burning brightly.

  But the log wasn’t. It was huge, dark, and sullen-looking, a great brown lump surrounded by masses of easily leaping flames that were quickly consuming the tinder. Jonathan thought he’d never seen a less combustible piece of wood. It looked like it would never catch. The watching company seemed to hold their breath just as he was doing. Fine thing, he thought nervously, if the damned thing didn’t catch fire. What would that mean to his wife’s family? That he’d ruined their luck in the new year? Would he be the first new addition to their family in all its long history to be unable to light their new Yule log? Gads! What would poor Pamela think of him? It was a greater responsibility than he’d guessed. Was it a test? He reached for the bellows . . .

  And then he saw a single sheet of flame flare up on the right side of the log. Then another erupted from the middle of the log, along with a thin plume of smoke that went straight up the flue. The log was suddenly surrounded by a flickering transparent blue aura. Then, with a loud snap, blue and orange flames began licking up and down the length and width of the great log. It popped, it hissed, it flared. The log was definitely on fire.

  A crackling blaze roared in the hearth, and Jonathan’s face, illuminated by its ruddy light, showed a relieved smile. When he finally straightened he felt that he’d accomplished something, and grinned as he bowed to the company’s loud cheers and applause.

  “That’s a relief. Your face when it just sat there smoldering, Rexford!” Cousin William said. “A study in frustration. Can’t blame you, indeed I felt for you. You did far better than I did. Remember the night I tried to light it?” he asked the company.

  There was much laughter. “Not your fault, old fellow,” Kit said, clapping William on the back. “Don’t you remember? No one realized the log had been sitting in the damp for weeks. Couldn’t have lit that blasted thing with a torch!”

  “Well, how was I to know the window the log had been stored under had been broken and the rain the night before had got in and made the thing damp as a moat?” Pamela’s father asked. “We were lucky. We used another and no harm befell us. This year we have nothing to worry about. It was touch and go there for a while, but the log is lit, and burning brightly.”

  Jonathan felt relief and amusement as he realized his own story was now doubtless part of the family chronicles.

  “Yes!” His wife suggested, “The Yule log is lit. Come, let’s move on!”

  Jonathan’s new relatives burst into song. He went to stand by his wife, put his arm around her, and joined in. He knew the tune. It was a traditional one. Pamela looked up at him and smiled as he added his deep, true baritone harmony to her clear soprano.

  The front door was opened and the neighbors who had been waiting on the steps trooped in, singing the same song, as they did every year.

  The wassail was brought in by a pair of beaming servants, straining under the weight of the great basin filled with hot punch that they carried. It was carefully placed on an ancient trundle table. Cups were dipped in and toasts were raised to good health, good luck, and happiness. The house smelled of fresh pine and wood smoke, candle tallow, rum, cinnamon, and the various heady scents of roasting meat, poultry, and pies, the whole laced with gusts of cold clean air from the opened door. Then the door was closed and more toasts made, more food brought in, and more carols sung.

  His father-in-law introduced Jonathan to the neighbors. Pamela’s brothers whispered the latest, as well as the oldest gossip about each one of them to Jonathan after each passed along to greet other guests. Jonathan soon knew that Mrs. Tansy liked the rum punch a jot too much, or at least she had last year. Mr. Fairbanks liked his dinner too much too, because he was at least a stone heavier than he’d ever been. And his wife liked that too little, just get her started on the subject—or rather, don’t, Jonathan was warned.

  Jonathan learned that the vicar was afraid of dogs and the baker’s wife, of thunderstorms. He heard stories about every member of the increasingly merry party, and by the time the neighbors and townsfolk trooped out again, he felt as though he’d known them for years and, moreover, was interested in them and their future as well as their past.

  Jonathan realized he was actually enjoying himself.

  Was it that he was now ready to meet his new family? he wondered. Or was it that they realized it was time to truly admit him to their ranks?

  He never knew.

  He only knew that the dinner was sumptuous and the company warm, welcoming, and delightful. When he finally went to bed, and at last was able to hold his dear
wife close in his arms, he went to sleep with only one wish in his heart for the holiday: that every one from now on would be as merry and bright as this one had been.

  Pamela smiled in her sleep, and curled closer to him with a sigh. She’d made the same wish, and believed it would come true.

  It did. For them, at least.

  The story of their first Christmas, when suitably edited, made a wonderful story with which they regaled their increasingly enormous family on every Christmas Day. Of course they were to fight again on each and every one of those holidays, but always with as much joy and zest as love and laughter. Which was to say, a very great deal of it, for all their happy Christmases ever after.

  Let Nothing You Dismay

  by Carla Kelly

  It was obvious to Lord Trevor Chase, his solicitor, and their clerk that all the other legal minds at Lincoln’s Inn had been celebrating the approach of Christmas for some hours. The early closing of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery Court, and Magistrate’s Court until the break of the new year was the signal for general merrymaking among the legal houses lining Chancery Lane. He had already sent his clerk home with a hefty bonus and a bottle of brandy from his stash.

  Trevor had never felt inclined to celebrate the year’s cases, won or lost. He seldom triumphed at court because his clients were generally all guilty. True, their crimes were among the more petty in English law, but English law always came down hard against miscreants who meddled with another’s property, be it land, gold bullion, a loaf of bread, or a pot of porridge. A good day for Lord Trevor was one where he wheedled a reprieve from the drop and saw his client transported to Australia instead. He knew that most Englishmen in 1810 would not consider enforced passage to the Antipodes any sort of victory. Because of this, a celebration, even for the birth of Christ, always felt vaguely hypocritical to him. Besides that, he knew his solicitor was in a hurry to be on his way to Tunbridge Wells.

  But not without a protestation, because the solicitor, an earnest young man, name of George Dawkins, was almost as devoted to his young charges as he was. “Trevor, you know it is my turn to take that deposition,” the good man said, even as he pulled on his coat and looked about for his hat. “And when was the last time you spent more than a day or two home at Chase Hall?”