'Tis the Season: Regency Yuletide Short Stories

by Christi Caldwell

  It had both inspired and impressed.

  Now it terrified.

  Bloody impressive.

  “Are you smiling, Samuel Whitworth?”

  “I’d never dare dream of it,” he said, smoothing his lips into an even line.

  “Your display thus far? Has not been friendly.”

  Samuel scoffed. “I don’t know what you mean.” He grabbed his pen from the inkwell and tapped the tip against the edge, setting the crystal to tinkling.

  “No,” his wife said, as if speaking to a stubborn child. “I don’t believe you do. Friend-ly.” She enunciated each of those two syllables. “Smiling. Happy. Kind. How you have been to our new daughter-in-law and our son?” She slapped her gloved palms on his desk. “That was not even polite, Samuel.”

  This slip of a woman, more than a foot shorter than his own height and slender as a wisp, managed to make him feel small.

  Or mayhap you’ve made yourself feel small.

  Samuel’s ears went hot… with something unpleasant—shame.

  Oh, it wasn’t a foreign sentiment. It was, however, a sentiment he’d masked the world from seeing. He’d done such a convincing job, he’d even managed to convince himself. Most times.

  “Well?” Caroline persisted. “What do you have to say for yourself, Samuel Sheldon Constantine?”

  “I treated them no different than any other of your guests,” he mumbled. Caroline, his wife, was the only person who could make him mutter, mumble, or blush.

  “Precisely, Samuel,” she said, her voice as chilled as the winter grounds below.

  “I’ll…” He struggled within himself and then tried again. “I’ll…”

  “Try?” she supplied for him.

  “Precisely.” Jumping to his feet, Samuel waved his hand at the air. “I’ll try.”

  Her lovely golden brows dipped. “That is incorrect.”

  What? “But that was your answer, Caroline,” he whined. How in blazes could it have been the wrong reply?

  “Because you will do better than try.” Ah, so he’d stepped into a trap. She stalked around the desk, and he retreated from that advance. “You will be kind to them. You will speak to Martha and Graham, and you’ll do it all with a smile on your face.” Samuel’s legs knocked into the French walnut corner library, rattling the ledgers neatly lining the shelf. “Are we clear, dear husband?” she asked in deathly quiet tones, even as she had to go on tiptoe to hold his gaze.

  How did he say to this woman who owned his heart that he didn’t know how to be what he needed to be in this regard? He’d always sought to be the man she deserved. They’d been matched by their parents when she’d been a babe, and he’d once seen her only as a duty… an obligation, and then she turned out to be a woman so much greater than the man he could or ever would be. Where their children were concerned, he’d always failed her. Worse, he’d failed his children. “We are… clear.”

  Her lips softened into the alluring smile that always enthralled him. “Splendid, Samuel.” Caroline ran her palms over his immaculate lapels, smoothing them. “That makes me very happy.”

  Samuel leaned down to claim her mouth in a kiss.

  She turned her head, so that his lips missed their mark and found another. “Uh-uh, Your Grace. I’m still angry with you.”

  “You’re certain?” He kissed the soft shell of her ear, rousing a breathless laugh.

  “Quite certain,” she said, less convincing than she’d been moments ago. Nonetheless, she stepped out of his arms. “Mayhap if we did not have a house full of guests no doubt wondering after me, I might consider your roguish advances.”

  “Might consider?” he whispered, reaching for her once more.

  Caroline swatted at his hand. “Do behave,” she said without inflection, the desire and tenderness in her pretty blue eyes belying that order.

  Samuel sighed. “Oh, very well.” He stared regretfully after her retreating figure, her hips lightly swaying in pale silver skirts that molded her body, her waist not as trim as it had been when she’d made her Come Out and her hips wider, but tenfold more beautiful with every passing year. “Caroline?” he called when she reached the door.

  His wife cast a glance back.

  “I love you, dearest,” he said gruffly.

  Her lips trembled. “I love you, too, Samuel.” She blew a kiss from her fingertips, and Samuel made a show of catching it and pressing it to his heart. “Now, make it right with Martha and Graham, Samuel.”

  With that, she left.

  Make it right. What in hell did that even mean? His damaged relationship with his youngest son went back to when Graham had been a young boy taking reading lessons, and the damned instructor, after noting Graham’s inability to focus, had raised questions about a history of familial madness. Samuel had sacked the bastard and sought to find others who could teach his son, seeking to protect him from that dangerous charge leveled against him.

  Or were you more worried about how it would reflect on you?

  Shame brought his eyes closed.

  For, at this point in his life, at nearly sixty years, he acknowledged that it had been… a bit of both—a need to protect his name, but also to protect his son.

  When it should have only ever been about Graham.

  Laughter reached his ears, juxtaposing his tortured musings. Drawn to the clear, unfettered mirth, he wandered to the window.

  Squinting, he searched the grounds below for the owners of that merriment and found the pair. Graham… and his wife, Martha. Playing like children on the terrace. An interloper watching their joy, Samuel at the same time could not look away from it.

  Were their guests to see the couple, they would be scandalized.

  And a scandal was something he never tolerated.

  Another peal of laughter echoed from below.

  The sound sprang him into movement, and with a quickened pace, he started down toward the cacophony of noise.

  Chapter 8

  Graham had remembered how it felt to really laugh.

  Not the affected, roguish chuckle he’d perfected for ladies who hadn’t mattered, but rather, the pure, unadulterated sound that came from a place deep inside, born of joy and love.

  And all because of the love of a young woman.

  A young woman he now hunted around his father and mother’s terrace.

  He scanned the area, touching his gaze on the pillars and stone statues he’d hidden behind countless times as a boy while playing hide-and-seek with his brothers.

  There was a faint scurry of footsteps, and he caught a flash of dark skirts from the corner of his eye as Martha went rushing off.

  And then silence fell once more.

  “Surrender, Lady Whitworth,” Graham called. “You’re caught. Come and face… your fate.”

  “Never,” she cried, darting out just as a door creaked open behind him, distracting him.

  He glanced back toward the tread belonging to a heavier footfall.

  Martha’s snowball found its mark at the back of his head, knocking his hat loose.

  “Graham?” she called out, her voice ringing with a hesitancy.

  “Playing child’s games, I see.” And just like that, the ducal tones, as austere and as cool as the winter landscape, slashed across the earlier merriment, stealing it away like the frigid winter breeze did the air from one’s lungs.

  Graham stiffened as his father stepped from the shadows. Except, the Duke of Sutton was not the only one who’d mastered such stony greetings. “Your Grace.”

  Martha slid close to Graham. Winding her fingers through his, she lightly squeezed, giving him strength, reminding him that, for the first time, he was not alone. Not as long as she and her children were in his life.

  “You always did like to play games,” his father noted, coming to a stop two paces away. He ran his aloof stare over Graham and his wife, his gaze lingering a moment on the interlinked hands. No doubt he disapproved of the show of affection and love. “And now I see you’ve fo
und a woman who enjoys those same… pleasures.” The clouds parted for the full moon at that moment, revealing the duke’s slight wince.

  After years of his father’s indifference—and worse, loathing—Graham felt his patience snap. “By God, say what you would about me. I long ago grew accustomed to your coldness. I accepted that you hold me to blame for Lawrence’s death, but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow you to speak ill of my wife,” Graham gritted out.

  Confusion glazed his father’s eyes. “I don’t…” The duke shook his head as if clearing it. “I was speaking the truth, Sheldon Graham Malin Whitworth,” the duke shot back. “I—”

  “You wish to speak about the truth?” Martha interjected, and both Graham and his father were knocked into silence. “Your son is a man of honor and courage and convictions. Is he also one who knows how to smile and laugh? Yes. He is.” She took a step toward the duke. “But he’s also wise enough to know that there is only joy to be had in those emotions. And only good to come from being kind and letting love rule his heart. Unlike you.”

  Graham’s heart nearly burst with his love for her. She would go toe-to-toe with his father for him? Against the Duke of Sutton, when Graham hadn’t even managed over the years to launch his own defense?

  Red blotches of color slapped the duke’s cheeks. “I—”

  “I am not done with you, Your Grace.” Martha seethed, breathtaking in her fury. “You are a father. Your son deserves kindness and love from you.”

  The duke recoiled.

  “Martha,” Graham said softly. “It is enough.”

  “It is not,” she gritted, not taking her gaze from the duke, who for surely the first time in his life had been effectively silenced. “You are his father. He was and still is and will always be deserving of your support and not your disdain. Of your love and not your shame. Of—”

  The duke’s agonized whisper at last managed to cut through Martha’s diatribe. “I never blamed you for Lawrence’s death, Sheldon.” Pain was an emotion Graham had seen only once before in his father’s eyes, in the days after Lawrence’s death. And he had not seen it since. “Is that what you believe?”

  Emotion wadded in Graham’s throat, and he forced words past it. “It is what I know. You blamed me, but no more than I blamed myself.”

  Martha’s fingers found his once more, and he clung to them, taking the support she offered. She made him stronger.

  His father searched his eyes over Graham’s face. “Never, Sheldon. I never blamed you.” His face crumpled. “I blamed myself.”

  The admission came so faintly that Graham struggled to make sense of it. He…? “What?” Graham whispered.

  Martha glanced between father and son and then took a step aside, allowing them slight space, but standing close enough to Graham that he knew she was there at his shoulder.

  The duke turned his wrinkled palms up, hands that showed his advancing years. “I was the one to blame, Graham. Never you. I was… always rot at being a father, but after Lawrence?” His face contorted into a paroxysm of grief. “I realized that I couldn’t protect any of you. I failed Lawrence just as I failed to help you.”

  Just as I failed to help you.

  “That is what you thought you were doing by setting me in competition against my brother?” he asked incredulously. “Helping me?”

  “It’s what I knew, Sheldon… Graham,” his father amended, at last acknowledging and honoring the address Graham had sought. “My father and his father before taught me everything about how to conduct myself… in all matters. I didn’t know any other way.” He continued on a rush, “I am not seeking forgiveness, but rather, I’m trying to explain how a father fails so.” Graham’s father shifted his focus to his daughter-in-law. “You are right, Martha.” He clarified. “In what you said earlier.” He looked at his son once more. “I have not been the father you deserve. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to be with my children… or the world, but you, and Heath and Lawrence… You were the ones who mattered.”

  It took a moment for those words to penetrate Graham’s mind. He shook his head dumbly.

  “I hated that you struggled.” His father moved closer. “I hated it because I saw how it tore you apart inside, and I didn’t know how to make it better. It was the one thing beyond my control.” A pained chuckle rumbled past the duke’s lips. “Or, that is what I believed. In my old age, I’ve come to appreciate my fallibility. I love you, Graham. I have just never known how to show it.”

  The wind gusted around them, whipping Martha’s and Graham’s cloaks about, the only sound in the wake of those admissions.

  All his life, he’d sought his father’s approval. He’d wished his father was someone different—a loving father, a proud one.

  Graham stared at his father. With his shoulders stooped and his head bent, the Duke of Sutton was reduced to a man Graham didn’t recognize. The Duke of Sutton wasn’t one who admitted any weakness or forgave vulnerability in others. And yet…

  His mind in tumult, needing some distance, needing to try to make sense of everything his father had revealed, Graham wandered over to the balustrade. He gripped the snow-covered edge and gazed out unseeingly. How easy it had been to hate his father for how he’d treated him. Graham had taken his father’s lectures and chastisements as an indictment against his own failings. Never before had he considered that buried within that gruff directness had been a father who’d just wanted to take away his son’s suffering.

  Now, having Martha’s son in his life and loving the child as if he’d sired him, Graham understood what it was like to want to protect someone at all costs.

  And his father had attempted to… in his own way.

  He felt Martha’s presence at his side. Borrowing from her strength, Graham faced his father.

  “I spent my life resenting you,” Graham said quietly, the wind carrying the admission around the terrace so that it echoed damningly in the winter quiet. “I wanted to know why you couldn’t love me. All I wanted was your approval, all the while knowing those efforts were futile.”

  His father took long, lurching steps over to him. “I do love you, Graham. I—”

  Graham held up a hand. “I know that now.” His father loved him… He just hadn’t known how to show it. “I love you, too.” He loved him, and yet, he could not simply forgive him for interfering in Graham’s relationship with Martha. “Martha is my wife.”

  “I know that,” his father said.

  “No, I’d have you hear this.” He caught Martha’s hand in his and drew her close. “You sought to separate us… not even knowing anything about her. Not even caring that I love her with all my heart. And I might forgive you for how you treated me as a child, but I cannot pardon what you did to my wife.”

  “I’m not asking for forgiveness, son.”

  Graham stiffened.

  His father spoke on a rush. “Not because I don’t believe I was right in my actions towards Martha, but rather, because I do not expect you or Martha to forgive me.” Turning to Martha, the duke pressed a hand to his chest. “I will forever regret having attempted to separate you and my son. Just as I will be eternally grateful to you for bringing my son home to me this holiday season.”

  Martha’s lips quivered. “I love your son. And it is my hope that all of us can begin again.” She glanced quickly at Graham. “If my husband so wishes that.”

  All of this was foreign, and yet, what Martha spoke of, a new beginning, filled him with a lightness. “I would like that very much,” he said hoarsely.

  His father spread his arms and then let them fall immediately to his sides. He straightened an already flawlessly folded cravat. “As would I,” he said in more composed tones. Of course, this expression of emotion would be new to all of them. “I will leave you both to your amusements. I trust the guests have already long wondered where I’ve gone off to. Before I do…”

  Graham stared questioningly on as, with a hand that trembled, his father fished a small stack of notes from
inside his jacket and held them out.

  “Here,” he said with his usual gruffness. “This is for you…” He glanced over at Martha. “For the both of you.”

  Not allowing so much as a question to be asked, Graham’s father left.

  Neither Martha nor Graham spoke a long while after. She was the first to break the silence.

  “As parents, we do the best we can, Graham. We try to be the best for our children and give them the world. Until it’s too late, and we realize we don’t always know what is best. We realize mistakes were made and”—her gaze drifted beyond his shoulder—“there can be no undoing them.” She spoke as one who commiserated with the duke.

  Graham closed the handful of steps between them. “You’d forgive him, Martha?” She’d been wronged so many times by so many men. And how he despised that his father had been another one to hurt her.

  Martha lifted her palms. “Graham, my daughters should by rights hate me for sending them away when I did,” she said softly. “And if it hadn’t been for you, I would have never allowed myself to see them again. They’d even now be at Mrs. Munroe’s for the holidays.”

  He palmed her right cheek. “You are a remarkable woman, Martha Whitworth. You make me a better man.”

  She matched his movement, cupping his cheek in her smaller hand. “We make one another better people, Graham.”

  “How I love you, Martha,” he whispered against her lips. They kissed each other in an exchange that teased the promise of the new beginning they would embark on together.

  After they parted, he held her close against his chest, his cheek resting against the satiny softness of her crimson curls. The packet given to him by his father crinkled, and they looked at it.

  Tugging at the black velvet ribbon, Graham proceeded to read the pages, and then he went absolutely motionless.

  Martha had come to appreciate that any time a missive arrived for Graham, it never portended anything good. The first time had been a letter written by his father in a bid to separate them. And then, there was the fear—the one that had prevented her from truly being happy these past days as a new wife—that an assignment had been sent for him.