'Tis the Season: Regency Yuletide Short Stories

by Christi Caldwell

  Reality intruded, cold, unwelcome, and the thief of joy it always was.

  Reluctantly, Martha sank back on her heels.

  Graham moved his attentions to her neck.

  “Behave,” she chided, giving his forearm a little pinch. “This isn’t why I’ve c-come.”

  “You’re certain?” he asked, lightly suckling the skin where her pulse pounded.

  “Q-quite.” Her voice was breathless and unconvincing to her own ears.

  With a sigh, her husband straightened. “Very well, madam.” He swept his arm out in invitation toward the broad, mahogany Chippendale desk. Ledgers and books lay open, along with several notes, on the usually immaculate surface.

  Martha swept forward, taking the chair closest to his desk, closest to those documents.

  “You are busy,” she noted needlessly.

  An agent for a secret division of the Crown, called the Brethren, her husband would always be… busy.

  “Never too busy for you, love,” he vowed. His silken baritone contained a promise within it that sent heat stealing to her heart.

  That devotion should be enough. Mayhap it was selfishness. Nay… it was not that. Her coming here to speak with Graham was because the realization that she’d finally come to—with the help of this man before her—was that she was deserving of happiness. And so was he.

  “You’re…” She started to speak when her gaze snagged on a note on his desk.

  My dearest son…

  Martha’s stomach muscles contracted as Graham deftly folded that missive and slid it under his diary.

  His family. That was what this… detachment… was about. “You’re not yourself, Graham,” she said quietly. Holding his stare, she dared him with her eyes to speak the truth. Demanded that he not require her to put questions to him, pulling forth the reason for his distractedness since dinner.

  He scrubbed a hand down his sharp jawline, dark from a day’s growth of beard. “My family… My mother wrote me.”

  There it was. He’d given her the truth when he could have prevaricated or sidestepped with false assurances. Her heart swelled with her love for this man. Perfect. Pure. And yet, that love was offset by his revelation. “Did she?” Martha managed the question in even tones.

  Wordlessly, he slipped the note from its hiding place and came around the desk to sit beside her.

  He held out the hated missive.

  Martha stared between the note and Graham, before taking it with reluctant fingers, not wanting to know the words there, but at the same time needing to know. She unfolded the page, noting the officious gold wax seal. Even broken it revealed the stamp of power. And then she read the neat, elegant scrawl.

  My dearest son…

  I’m never too proud to recognize and admit my own flaws and mistakes, Sheldon. I’m a flawed being… and I can acknowledge openly to you, that I was wrong…

  Her hands convulsed reflexively upon the page, crinkling it at the corners, and she forced herself to loosen her grip as she stared transfixed at those several lines. Ones she’d have wagered her very life that a duchess could never, and would never, cede to anyone.

  And they painted Graham’s mother… in an altogether different light. It had been far easier to resent his family when they’d been the ones who’d interfered and sought to keep Martha and Graham apart.

  This, however? This very real woman who admitted that she’d made a mistake? And about Graham’s relationship with Martha, no less? It didn’t fit with what she’d come to believe or expect of his ducal parents.

  She continued reading and then stumbled over the next paragraph.

  It is my greatest hope that you and your family will join us this holiday season.

  Oh, blast and damn. Her husband’s family, the Duke and Duchess of Sutton, were inviting them to visit.

  In the time Graham had known his wife, he’d come to appreciate that silence was not something Martha shied away from.

  Where previous women of his acquaintance had prattled and trilled misplaced laughter before ever surrendering to any silence, Martha always comfortably owned it.

  Being both pensive and measured had become two of the many qualities he appreciated and admired in his wife.

  This stretch of quiet, however, was different, because he knew where this quiet came from—his family’s treatment of her.

  The familiar rage that had consumed him when he’d discovered his father had sent round his loyal man-of-affairs to pay off Martha had since receded, to be replaced with… a deep, aching hurt that nagged.

  He’d expected such interference from his father. The Duke of Sutton had never had a high opinion of Graham and had little faith in his judgment. His brother hadn’t given a jot what he did with his life. But Graham’s mother? He’d expected more from her.

  Martha finished reading before folding the note along the crease and turning it back over.

  “We’re not going,” he said when his wife made no attempt to speak.

  There was the slightest, most infinitesimal stiffening of her slender frame that, had he not been seated a pace away, he would have missed. “Beg pardon?”

  “I’ve no intention of us journeying to visit,” he repeated. Coming to his feet, he tossed the missive atop his notes from the Brethren.

  “Not for the holidays?” she put forward hesitantly.

  Not ever, if he had his way. “No.” He perched his hip on the edge of his desk.

  Except, there was no tangible hint of her joy at that announcement. “Your family wishes to see you, Graham.”

  “Correction. My mother wishes to see me.” And by the contents of the note, she also wished to meet Martha and see Frederick again. Ever the peacemaker in the fractured Whitworth family, she’d not be content until Graham and his family were reunited. Alas, too much injury had been done. An affront against himself he could forgive—he’d been recipient enough through the years. An affront against Martha and her children he could not. “I have altogether different plans for us, love.” Plans that did not include placing her before the ducal father who’d rip apart her worth.

  “What manner of plans?”

  Graham shoved lazily to his feet and strolled before her. “Curious, are you?”

  A smile teased at her lips. “You don’t have plans. You’re inventing them as reasons why you can’t, or won’t, travel to your family for the holidays.”

  He slammed a hand to his chest, and in a mock display of outrage, Graham stumbled to his knees. “You’ve wounded me, love.”

  Martha laughed, those rich, husky tones wrapping around him, enveloping him in a warmth that had him joining her in laughter. “Very well, then,” she said with a flick of her hand. “Let us hear of these grand plans preventing you from traveling.”

  “The grand plans I have that prevent us from traveling…” he murmured, leaning forward to take her lips in a too brief kiss. “Return to Hyde Park with you and Frederick, and this time bring your daughters, to skate together.” The one and only time they’d journeyed to Hyde Park, that place his artist wife had longed to sketch, had been with Frederick… and—his throat moved—he’d not allow himself to think of how close he’d come to losing her that afternoon, just days ago.

  Martha’s lips parted on a breathless sigh. “Oh.”

  “Shall I continue?”

  “Please.”

  “Then, I thought we should honor that peculiar, but fascinating tradition Frederick shared with me.”

  “The tree-cutting and decorating?”

  He winked. “The very one. Fascinating stuff, and it all sounds like a very good time.”

  His wife rested her palms against his chest, and she smoothed her callused digits, stained with charcoal, along the front of his lapels. “It all sounds… perfect.”

  Graham leaned up to kiss her again, but she drew away. “But we’ll have a lifetime to do those things as a family.”

  God, she was tenacious. She’d been so from their first meeting at the White Stag Inn. �
��And there will be a lifetime of miserable winter house parties.”

  His wife folded her hands on her lap and tipped her chin up at a defiant angle. “You need to go, Graham.”

  His brows came together.

  “We need to g-go,” she substituted, that slight telling tremble indicating she’d even less of a desire to visit his family—as she should.

  “We do not need to do anything.” And he’d certainly not do anything or take his new family any place where they’d be uncomfortable or treated poorly.

  Her chin came up another notch. “Are you ashamed of us?”

  He reeled. “That is what you believe?” Despite his training with the Home Office and the work he did, he was unable to mask his hurt. “You could think so ill of me?” Restless, Graham quit his place at her feet and strode over to the windows. Outside, snow had begun to fall, tiny flakes floating down to the quiet streets below. How could she doubt his love for her?

  The leather groaned, and the floorboards creaked as she moved just beyond his shoulder. “No,” she said quietly. “I-I…” Graham glanced over his shoulder. Martha sighed. “Very well… I… This is all still new.”

  “Us?” he supplied.

  A sound of frustration escaped her. “This happiness, and I don’t want it to end.”

  Graham caught her lightly by the shoulders. Drawing her close, he rested his forehead against hers. “This,” he whispered, “will never end, Martha. Our life together—mine and yours, and Creda and Iris and Frederick—it is only beginning. Your happiness… you and your children… our children, that is what matters most to me. And so a summons from my family, after they tried to separate us? They don’t merit a response or a visit.”

  Tears glazed her eyes, and he caught the first errant drop to fall with the pad of his thumb, stroking it away. “You’d sacrifice seeing your family for me?”

  “In a heartbeat.” Gathering her tightly balled fists, he brought them to his mouth and kissed them slowly. “There is no sacrifice in being with you and rejecting those who’d hurt you.”

  Martha stepped out of his arms. “But this isn’t your mother and father hurting or rejecting me. This is them attempting to bring you back into their fold.”

  “This is my mother’s usual effort following any row I’ve had with my father,” he said dryly. Martha was making more of the missive than there was. “She doesn’t appreciate any discord.”

  “You’re wrong, Graham,” she said with her usual confidence. Martha rushed over to his desk. The hint of lavender that clung to her skin wafted past, filling his senses. She brandished the duchess’ note. “This is not a letter from a duchess. This is a letter from your mother.”

  He puzzled his brow. “Aren’t they quite the same?”

  “They are not at all the same. This is not a formal summons. This is simply her asking you to come home.”

  “I am home,” he said automatically. “Where you are is home.”

  The heart-shaped planes of Martha’s face melted. “Oh, Graham,” she breathed, and walking over, Martha went up on tiptoes and kissed him once more.

  Their mouths met in another tender meeting that ended too quickly.

  Martha stepped away. “I love you, and I’m grateful that you’d make that sacrifice for me.”

  “It is no sacr—”

  “But I’ll not be the one that holds you… or us back from visiting your family.” With that, she pressed the note into his fingers and swept off.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  Martha continued on without so much as a glance back. “To see our belongings packed. We leave on the morn.” She drew the door shut behind her.

  Graham reread the already familiar lines in his mother’s hand, seeing the words as Martha had indicated they’d been written.

  This is them attempting to bring you back into their fold.

  It had been settled. He and Martha would return to Graham’s family’s home and face the beasts of Polite Society who’d come for his parents’ latest house party—whether he wished it or not.

  Chapter 2

  The prospect of meeting a duke would be daunting for any woman. It was even more so for a woman who’d gone and married a duke’s son… after that same duke had attempted to pay her to leave his son alone.

  As such, when they were forced to stop at a quiet inn because of snow, Martha could only feel secretly relieved that their journey to Graham’s family was delayed.

  “The sun is out!” Frederick piped in happily.

  Or their journey had been delayed.

  Martha’s stomach muscles twisted in knots, vicious, unrelenting knots that made it impossible to break her fast at their corner table of the Fox and Hare Inn. Martha spared the dubious contents of her plate a glance. Though, in fairness, even if she hadn’t sat there dreading her impending meeting with her in-laws and their host of societal guests, the ivory-colored slop atop what might or might not be charred potatoes was enough to give any person pause. Sighing, she set down her fork and abandoned all pretense of eating.

  “I preferred the snow,” her eldest twin daughter, Creda, was saying, long contrary to both her siblings. She spoke around an alarmingly large bite of the suspect morning meal.

  Iris snorted.

  Creda swallowed another spoonful down and then dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “What? I dooooo,” she said for her younger-by-eight-minutes sister. “It’s ever more interesting than the sun,” she groused, leaning down and rubbing at her shin.

  “I prefer the sun, too.” Frederick glanced back and forth from between his bickering sisters. His smile stretched from ear to ear in a way it hadn’t since his sisters had been sent away and he and Martha had remained on alone. “But I also like the snow.” Nay, he’d smiled again. But it hadn’t been because of Martha. It had been because of Graham. The man who’d slipped into her life, pretending to be a stable master, and stolen her heart, and given her and her children his name in the process.

  Creda beamed. “See?” She preened. “There’s nothing wrong with loving the snow.”

  “Graham enjoys it, too,” Frederick chattered, excitement dripping from the words as they tumbled from his lips.

  Iris rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say there was anything wrooong with liking snow, just that we should be respectful that as long as it is snowing, Lord Whitworth will not be able to continue on to visit his family for the holidays.”

  “Just Graham,” Frederick put forward. “He’s married to Mother, and therefore, Graham will do.”

  “You’re just excited about meeting a duke,” Creda shot at her sister.

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  Frederick looked helplessly at Martha.

  “That will be all,” she said quietly, and apparently, despite the time apart, that cease-bickering-immediately-tone still had power behind it. Martha, who’d never allowed bickering to go on and always ended it with a hug, was, however, finding her way again.

  Her three children looked to her. The girls were near-identical images of each other, their brother dark-haired while they were light.

  Pushing aside her untouched plate, Martha drew in a slow breath. “I know… this… is unusual to each of you.”

  They stared back in silence, revealing nothing about what they were thinking in their usually expressive features.

  “Creda and Iris, you’ve been… a-away.” Emotion garbled the words, making a mess of them. Learning her husband had been married to another and her father responsible for coordinating the murder of the man who’d deceived her, Martha’s entire family had been shattered. Of all she’d lost, these two more mature versions of the little girls she’d sent off to finishing school had been the greatest. “And so… this…” Martha made herself speak again and motioned around the table. “Behaving with one another, or acting with one another…”

  Creda cocked her head. “What are you saying?” God love her eldest twin. She’d always been direct when Martha had
herself only just discovered that skill.

  “She’s saying it’s awkward to be around one another,” Iris said flatly.

  For the first time since Martha had shared with her son Graham’s offer to marry her, the perpetual smile Frederick wore slipped. “It’s not awkward.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “We’re family. We always are and always will be… Now, we have Graham, too.”

  They looked as one to the window where Graham stood outside, speaking to the drivers of the two carriages. All the while, the pair of footmen who’d accompanied them arranged the trunks atop the conveyances. He was saying something. Periodically, the drivers would nod.

  Whatever Graham said just then earned laughter from both men.

  As if he felt their collective stares, Graham looked over.

  Martha’s heart did a little somersault in her chest.

  Graham smiled, a lazy half grin that had captivated her from the moment he’d turned it on her, before then shifting his attention to her daughters. Doffing his beaver-fur-lined top hat, he bowed his head for Creda and Iris.

  Both girls giggled, and it was the first time the contrary twins had shown a like response to anyone or anything, ever.

  Yes, Graham had that effect on… any woman of any age. He could charm a lady out of her good name if he so sought. And even with that magnetizing pull, he still was and had only ever been honorable. To her, when the world had called her “whore” and “bigamist” and her son a “bastard”… he’d defended them at every slight.

  “I like him,” Creda said when Graham had gone back to coordinating the details of their departure.

  Iris pointed her eyes skyward. “You don’t even know him.”

  Frederick surged to the edge of his seat, but Creda was already ticking off her defense on her fingers. “He answered four nonstop hours of questions from Frederick on how to care for horses in the snow—”