Mistletoe Magic
Page 21
Mummers had serenaded them earlier and been shown to the wassail bowl below stairs, along with the poor, who were given boxes of food and practical items like blankets and candles. Since the war ended, many went cold and hungry. During the Christmas season, Seabury gave generously to the locals as well as those who farmed their lands. All of them were provided for on Boxing Day as well as Twelfth Night. Perhaps he would institute such a tradition once he took Chary to his home.
The thought warmed him. Their own home, their own traditions. She would be there with him, and that would make it home. Perhaps he didn’t have to explore the world after all. Not alone, anyway. There were always the penguins to lure her to adventure.
“Are you searching for your betrothed?” asked a familiar voice, and he turned to the duke with a nod.
“I am, Duke.”
A faint smile touched the corner of his father’s mouth. “We are always so formal. She just danced a reel with Lord Howard, I believe. Miss St. John reminds me very much of her mother, although only her eyes are like Cecelia’s.”
“I was unaware you knew her mother,” he said, surprised.
“Yes. We were once promised to each other, but my parents would not hear of it. I did not see her for two years, and then I heard that she had eloped with her banker.”
His tone did not change, but there was a glitter in his eyes, as if he was seeing his lost lady. Nick was silent. Avonhurst murmured, as if thinking aloud, “I loved her until she died.”
Still silent, Nick thought that one often didn’t really know their parents. Not even years of interaction could close the gap that separated them, it seemed. He had been at odds with the duke for as long as he could remember.
Then, as quickly as the mask had slipped, it righted, and the duke looked at him with a lifted brow. “You will no doubt be pleased by the news that Huntingdon is to provide an heir this summer.”
“I am gratified to hear it. Your dynasty will continue.”
“One can never be too certain. I trust you will do your part to ensure it, however.”
At that moment Nick saw Chary returned by Lord Howard to where her aunt sat, and he said, “With the greatest of pleasure.”
When he reached Chary, she looked up at him, eyes gleaming, and he smiled down at her. Bowing, he said, “May I have this dance, Miss St. John?”
“Lord Nicholas, you may have all the rest of my dances if you dare.”
“I accept that challenge.”
She took the hand he held out and he swept her onto the floor, admiring her grace as she fit perfectly in the dancer’s embrace. As they waltzed across the chalked star, he said, “I brought you a gift for Twelfth Night.”
“Did you?” She smiled up at him.
“Sapphire earrings to match your blue eyes. They belonged to my mother.”
“Then I will cherish them the more for it. I have a gift for you as well, although I have not been to London so can only give you what I hold dear to my heart.”
“And what is that?”
“Dance me closer to the alcove, if you please. As you must know, we are already the talk of the evening, so do not be too obvious. I do hope Laurentia or Julia or someone transgresses so the gossips have new fodder. Right here is good.”
He paused in the curtained alcove still trimmed in Christmas greenery that would be taken down the next day and burned. “All the mistletoe is gone,” he said. “I think young Richard had a hand in its disappearance.”
“No doubt of that. But—” She slipped a hand into a fold of her gold and blue gown and drew out something small. When she held it up, he recognized it. Her tone was soft, voice husky and low, reaching inside him. “I saved this. It was sent to me as a message that you would return, and I have carried it with me ever since.”
Touched that she would cherish the mistletoe sprig he had sent, he lifted it from her palm and held it over her head. “‘To love is to burn, to be on fire’,” he quoted, and kissed her.
The End
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(Please continue reading for and excerpt of Under a Christmas Sky and
more information about the author)
Wait! The Christmas antics
aren’t over yet!
Be sure to check out Sharon Sobel’s
Under a Christmas Sky
For the other side of the story.
Here’s a sneak peek . . .
Under a Christmas Sky
By Sharon Sobel
Prologue
THE WINTER STORM raging relentlessly for two days
surely had the final say on any speculation that warm weather would arrive before the year’s end. Optimists—and the merely deluded—argued that because 1816 was a year without a summer, there was reason to hope that warm weather and sunny skies would simply be postponed to late December. They would most likely be proven wrong, for winter had arrived in these few weeks before Christmas with a ferocity unknown to memory.
Lady Leighton Kingswood was terrified.
Usually, the vagaries of weather had little interest for her, unless she needed to consider if the roads might be too muddy for a walk into Lowerwood, or if she ought to carry an umbrella to protect her fair complexion from the sun. The freckles across her nose were a daily reminder of the indiscretions of her childhood and summer days playing with her sisters in the fields close to Gainsmeadow.
But those days were long gone and she now knew better than most about the fragility of life and the futility of promise.
“I don’t know what is to become of us. Will we need to shovel the snow ourselves?”
Julia, Lady Leighton, turned from the isinglass window of her borrowed coach, somewhat surprised that her—also borrowed—maid now worried so. The young woman had been hired along with the coach and driver to accompany Julia on this journey. She seemed a flighty thing, unable to engage in any conversation or interest herself in the needlework she abandoned on the seat cushion. But she did seem to trust the driver, especially when he cheerfully assured them not an hour ago that he was quite accustomed to being out in such storms and more than capable of navigating them from posting inn to posting inn until they arrived in Rye.
Inasmuch as there had never been such a storm, Julia was doubtful about his claim. The young maid, however, had looked adoringly at him. Though, indeed, she might have looked the same if he promised to steer the poor horses right off a cliff. Julia had the sense that there was some sort of understanding between these two.
However, young Mimma now seemed more concerned for her life than confident in the abilities of Mr. Hedges.
“I am certain Mr. Hedges knows what he is doing; though he is quite young, he seems a sturdy and experienced sort, Mimma,” Julia said, attempting to keep her voice steady and calm. “And have we not progressed many miles today? We should arrive at Seabury well before Christmas—oh!”
Julia caught the strap on the door, trying to steady herself as the great coach lurched to the left. She cleared her throat and tried to look as if the unusually rough ride was perfectly normal.
Mimma was still not convinced and looked like a caged animal, shifting from side to side and scratching at the windows, as if she could wipe away the snow falling outside from the inside. Exhausting herself, with nothing to show for it, she put her hands to her face and shook her head.
“It will not work,” she said quietly, and then louder. “It will not work!”
Julia did not know what ought to work, in a year when everything seemed all topsy turvy, but scarcely knew what else she could say. It certainly would be vastly inconsiderate to complain about anything when poor Mr. Hedges was out there in the storm, attempting to deliver them safely to the home of her late husband’s sister and brother-in-law.
“Oh, it will work out just fine, Mimma. So you needn’t worry at all,” she chattered on, hardly convinced of her own words. “We will soon be at Seabury. Lord and Lady Howard have invited a great many estimable guests, including Princess Charlotte herself, and Lord and Lady Jersey. I understand a gentleman recently returned from Java will also be there, as well as a famous violinist from Vienna. Even I am expected to contribute my own poor singing talents to the party, though if we arrive a bit late, my absence may not even be noted. Indeed, my reputation might be saved if this cold air renders me unable to sing at all.”
Julia attempted to laugh, but her voice sounded frail and reedy. She coughed and cleared her throat.
Mimma placed her hand on the door latch, looking to steady herself.
“But I shall enjoy hot tea in abundance when we arrive at the inn in Southford. And you must do the same, for it would do us both a world of good. Did Mr. Hedges not say that we should arrive there by nightfall?” Julia spoke quickly, with an increasing sense of urgency. She glanced at the window, seeing nothing but the driving snow, and smiled cheerfully as she smoothed her heavy wool blanket around her. “It looks very nearly so.”
Mimma frowned, not at all convinced. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but it looks like . . .”
Whatever Mimma intended to say was lost as the door suddenly opened, and she flew out into the storm. There came a crack as loud as thunder, and a great groaning of the wooden coach as it seemed to come apart. Julia thought the scream she heard was her own as she was flung out of the nest of warmth in which she sat, and her shoulders hit the front wall of the vehicle. She slumped onto the seat only a moment before the roof came down on her, and left her boxed into a space no larger than a coffin, where she could no longer feel her legs. She called for Mimma once, and then again, before she slipped down an endless tunnel, into darkness.
Chapter 1
LORD WILLEM WAKEFIELD wondered why anyone in his right mind would wish to leave a tropical island in the middle of the bright blue Indian Ocean to endure an English winter. True, the island of Java was in near ruin as a result of the eruption of Tambora a year and a half before. And the amount of debris thrown up by that volcano had created a cloud so vast and thick, it was near impossible to find a clean surface, even within one’s own home. But linen was infinitely more comfortable on one’s flesh than thick Scottish woolens, and daily life was a far more casual affair than he could expect in England, even at the home of one of his oldest friends.
And yet, it was precisely because he was well-regarded as being in his right mind, and having a very fine one, that he was asked to depart from that exotic, warm island on a diplomatic mission many months before. Now, he not only had to negotiate with men who might not be amiable to his suit, but had to negotiate his journey through the unrelenting snow that had buried England and the Netherlands since October. This too arrived from Java, for Tambora’s great volcanic cloud spread over much of the globe, influencing temperatures and causing great irregularities for fauna and flora. No one still living could recall anything quite like it.
But people persisted in their habits, no matter the climate, and Christmas festivities were not to be denied.
He would have been perfectly content to remain in his warm home on Edgware Road and raise a glass of rum to the portraits of his Wakefield ancestors over the mantle. After all, he had already survived several years without a Christmas, much as his family and friends had endured this year without a summer. The holiday was barely noted in the Dutch East Indies, except by those emissaries from Europe determined to replicate the traditions they had always known. And in London and The Hague, people spent the cold and dark days of July and August alternating complaints with measures of pride at their own hardiness. But life did go on.
Will circled the fingers on his left hand on the carved ring he wore on his right, noting that it fit loosely in the cold air. He pulled on his gloves to hold it in place. Yes, life did go on.
As did his tenacious driver. The snow must be brutally assaulting any man who rode aloft and into the wind, but Milton was a stubborn fool.
Geoff Howard, his old friend, was just as stubborn, but had the advantage of not having to travel at all this season. Lord and Lady Howard were determined to end the year with a Christmas gathering, to celebrate their endurance through this cold and sunless year and to introduce their new heir, born on a frosty morning in early September. But for Geoff and Will, and a few others, there was business to be done, best accomplished far from the clubs of London or in the dark halls of the Ridderzaal in Holland.
Some of that business concerned Lt. Governor Thomas Raffles’s expected elevation to the knighthood, and the various means by which the
process could be hastened. Raffles was quite capable of achieving his own ends, but it was not expedient for an official of the British government to abandon his devastated colony while its people were still recovering from injury and assessing their losses. Therefore, Raffles asked Will if he would precede him to London and campaign on his behalf. Will, who lived all his life in diplomatic circles, now knew enough of tragedy and despair that went well beyond the marble halls where the fate of individuals was often discussed and decided. He, himself, experienced great loss in the great eruption of Tambora. It was time to return to Europe.
And so he seized both the opportunity and the large manuscript Raffles presented to him, believing that having a purpose and mission would cure him of his current despair. Though Raffles’s manuscript proved to be a weighty travel companion, as it was the man’s memoir of his heroic deeds in the days and months since that devastating morning a year and a half ago, it would soon be out of Will’s hands. He’d promised to present it to Princess Charlotte as a gift from a loyal servant of the Crown, with the hope that the generous lady would urge her father to reward Thomas Raffles with the knighthood he very much desired.
Will knew that the princess would be a guest at the Christmas party at Seabury, which provided an excellent opportunity to make the presentation, for all men and women of influence were likely to be most generous—and perhaps not entirely sober—during the holiday and at the start of a New Year.
The task should not prove difficult, as a man who was Lt. Governor of an English colony was not without his own influential connections. Raffles considered himself a confidante of the princess, who already promised to speak to her father on his behalf. He wisely dedicated his memoirs to her, though apparently cautioned that she might be fearful to read his vivid descriptions of molten lava raining down upon villages and their inhabitants.