“The servants?”
Charlotte’s face fell. “You will attend, won’t you? Mrs Henson is roasting a goose.”
Ralph tried to picture the Christmases she must have passed at Bessington. A confused impression of ribbons, apples, roast goose, and smiling dimpled faces in frilly dresses came to mind. A warm time. A time of good cheer.
The exact opposite of the grey, cold welcome he’d suffered every year on his return from Eton.
“I will try,” he said. The notion of dining with the servants was not entirely unheard of, after all. He knew several families who kept up the tradition on Christmas Day. Families he avoided at all costs.
He was beginning to realise that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t endure to keep Charlotte smiling.
By the time their carriage arrived, the snow was falling heavily. Ralph gave Charlotte a hand down from the carriage, watching in fascination as she turned her head up to the sky and caught a snowflake on the end of her pretty nose.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” she gasped, throwing her arms wide and whirling through the snow.
“Ravishing,” he murmured, wondering what she could possibly find beautiful in his miserable grey house rising starkly against a cold white sky.
He turned to the building and tried to look with Charlotte’s eyes.
Tiny snowflakes spiralled through the air, each one meandering playfully on its mission earthwards like a child distracted on its way to school. Beyond them, half-muffled by layers of snow, Langdon Manor’s windows spilled out pools of golden light. The old house’s edges were softened by a layer of soft whiteness. Ralph had never seen the place looking so…
“Beautiful indeed,” he said. Charlotte laughed and pulled him towards the front door.
“Come along! I can almost smell Mrs Henson’s roast goose!”
The servants had gone on ahead as soon as the service ended, so it was no surprise to see Withers in the doorway ready to take their coats.
What was unusual was the number of footmen waiting with him
“Is something amiss?” asked Ralph, helping Charlotte off with her shawl. Withers cleared his throat.
“We are not quite sure, Your Grace. Are young Tilly and Peter not with you and the duchess?”
“No,” said Charlotte. “I saw them wander off together after church. They should be home by now.”
“It’s as I feared,” said Withers. He looked at the snowdrifts piling up outside with a mournful expression. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Your Grace. We’ll send a few footmen out to find them. In this weather it’s best not to take any chances.”
“You think something’s happened to Tilly?” gasped Charlotte. Ralph knew how much she relied on her lady’s maid. Tilly had been in Charlotte’s service since they were both teenagers. There was no question in his mind that he should take personal responsibility for the search. He thought of the icy wind outside and rubbed his hands together in anticipation of facing it again.
“I’ll go too,” he said. “The sooner they’re safely back in the warm, the better.”
“And me,” said Charlotte, taking back her shawl with an air of determination. Ralph put his hand on her shoulder.
“Certainly not. The weather has taken a turn for the worse – you’re not dressed to go traipsing around through drifts of snow. Wait here. I’ll take care of it.”
He was hoping she’d be grateful to see that he had matters in hand. Instead, she wrinkled her nose and flounced off without a word. Ralph sighed. Apparently a few moments of affection were not enough to make his headstrong little wife easy to manage.
He couldn’t help admiring her for it.
“I’ll check the stables,” he said to the waiting footmen. “You and you, go back up the road to church. You others, make a round of the estate down to the river and back. Make sure you check all the ditches – one of them may have taken a fall. Take care, now. The roads are icy. Withers, you stay here to coordinate our efforts. I want everyone back within half an hour.”
The footmen pulled on their gloves and fastened their heavy overcoats. “Not to worry, Your Grace,” said the tallest man, with a smile. “A little snow won’t give us any trouble.”
The moment they stepped outside it became clear they were now facing more than a little snow. The wind had whipped the snowflakes into a blinding frenzy and frozen the ground in patches of perilous black ice.
“Half an hour,” Ralph reminded the six footmen, as they peeled off to follow his orders for the search. Within a few moments, the whirling snow had all but obscured them from his sight.
It was not a good day to be caught out in the cold. Ralph could only pray that the missing pair were found before any harm befell them.
8
The warmth of the stables was a blessed relief from the biting wind. Ralph tugged the muffler from his face as he shut the door behind him. The air was muggy with the thick, animal scent of horses, but he breathed it gratefully nonetheless. At least it did not burn his throat on the way down like the frosty air outside.
It was dark and quiet save for the whickering of a mare as he passed her stable. Ralph was beginning to think it a fool’s errand – what would a pair of young house servants be doing in the stables, after all? – when he heard it.
The faintest crackle of a body stirring in the hayloft, trying not to make a sound.
“Hello?” he called. No reply. Perhaps he’d imagined it.
He took a step towards the ladder and was rewarded with a stifled giggle. Ah.
“Come out at once!” he snapped, giving the ladder an angry shake. “This is no joke! There are six men out in the snow searching for you!”
Peter’s astonished face appeared at the entrance to the hayloft. His hair was sticking up as though someone’s hands had lately been ruffling through it. When he saw Ralph, his voice shrank to a squeak of horror. “Your Grace!”
“Get down from there,” Ralph snapped, caught between anger and amusement. “I suppose Miss Tilly is with you?”
Peter’s face fell. “Your Grace, we weren’t doing anything – that is, Tilly and I – well, we just thought…”
“Thought you could sneak off for a few moments without anyone missing you,” Ralph surmised, as Peter descended the ladder and Tilly’s embarrassed smile appeared above him. “You ought to know what a close eye Withers keeps on the household. For all we knew, you’d slipped on the ice and broken your necks!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Your Grace,” said Tilly, combing hay from her hair with her fingers. She dropped a hasty curtsy. “We didn’t mean any harm.”
The two made such a picture of contrition that Ralph couldn’t help laughing. “Well, I’m sure everyone will be home again shortly. Let’s get you two into the house and warm you up. Not that it appears you need much warming.”
Tilly raised a hand to her mouth in shock. Peter looked ready for the earth to swallow him up. It was most gratifying.
Ralph lent Tilly his overcoat and shepherded them both back towards the house. The storm was really raging now. He was looking forward to a hot dinner and a warm fire, even if it did mean socialising with his household. Peter stayed at his side, accepting Ralph’s steady stream of censure with good grace.
“Tilly does not know the dangers of a Yorkshire winter,” said Ralph, raising his voice against the wind, “but you have no excuse. Christmas Day does not give you a licence to act so recklessly! To say nothing of the damage to her reputation.”
“Oh, please, Your Grace, don’t say where you found us,” pleaded Peter. “I couldn’t bear it if any harm came to Tilly over a few…”
Ralph raised an eyebrow. “A few kisses?”
“That’s right, Your Grace.” Peter hung his head.
“There’s an easy remedy for your situation, you know,” said Ralph, rapping on the door to the servant’s entrance.
“I’d do anything to protect her, Your Grace!”
Ralph let the corner of his mouth twist into a
smile. “You ought to marry her, then, and quickly, before the pair of you are caught in another hayloft by someone less forgiving.”
“Do what, Your Grace?” Peter’s mouth fell open. Ralph laughed and shooed him onwards into the cares of Mrs Henson, who was wielding a floury rolling-pin as though she’d very much like to crack someone round the head with it.
“What do the pair of you have to say for yourselves, then? I’m on the point of serving His Grace a cold dinner! On Christmas Day! The shame of it!”
“No harm done, Mrs Henson,” said Ralph merrily. He miscalculated how little used she was to hearing him speak in good cheer. She backed away from him, holding up the rolling pin as though to ward off evil spirits.
“Your Grace?”
“They were caught out in the storm and decided to take shelter until the snow cleared, that’s all. Nobody’s fault, and nothing to worry about at all.” He gave Tilly a wink as he took the overcoat back from around her shoulders. “Now, let’s go upstairs and let Withers know the good news so we can all get on with Christmas dinner!”
“But surely you won’t be wanting to eat without the duchess, Your Grace?” Mrs Henson blurted out.
Ralph froze. “Charlotte?”
“She followed you out to search for Tilly and Peter. Half the footmen are back, but not her.”
Ralph cursed and slung on his overcoat again. The thought of Charlotte’s dainty satin shoes negotiating the treacherous roads through his estate made him shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Do you know which way she went?” he demanded. Mrs Henson shook her head. “Blast that foolish girl! She’ll freeze to death out there.”
“I know where she might be,” Tilly ventured nervously. Ralph had lost all his previous amusement.
“Out with it, out with it!”
“Well, a few days ago we were walking down by the lake, Her Grace and me, and I happened to mention that Peter invited me to go and walk around it one day. She might have gone to look for us there.”
The path to the lake was steep and exposed. Nausea clawed at Ralph’s throat. It was worse than the carol-singers. Worse than the echoes of his father’s voice. He knew that route was too difficult to negotiate in a storm.
To his surprise, for once, his terror did not paralyse him. It spurred him into action.
He would find Charlotte. He would bring her home safe. The alternative was unthinkable.
“This is what comes of caring too much for others,” he growled, and strode back out into the howling wind.
9
It was no good. Charlotte tried to navigate the slippery path again, clutching at a tree branch to help herself along.
Her feet skidded on a patch of ice and she slid to her knees, bending the thin branch with her and dumping a fresh helping of snow onto her head.
Her little satin shoes simply didn’t have the grip to get her back up the steep hill from the lake. She wondered briefly whether bare feet would be a better option. At least then she could dig her toes into the ground. But her shawl was already soaked through and she was violently shivering. Removing another item of clothing seemed like the worst kind of folly.
Still worse, there had been no sign of Tilly or Peter anywhere along the lakeshore. Charlotte was beginning to think it had been a foolish idea to come out at all.
Ralph had warned her. She couldn’t deny that. She was dressed for the part of the glittering duchess, not a tramp through the snow.
Charlotte flexed her fingers. They were stiff and awkward in her thin silk gloves. The gloves were ruined now, of course, along with her shoes. It would all have been worth it if only she’d found Tilly…
Goodness, but her fingers were trembling. Charlotte couldn’t feel her hands below the wrist or her feet below the knees. She raised her sodden gloves to her mouth and huffed warm air over them in an attempt to bring sensation back.
“Think, you silly girl,” she told herself sternly. It simply wasn’t possible that she was trapped here until the ice thawed. She would have to give up her dress as a lost cause and scramble back up on her hands and knees.
Determined not to let the weather beat her, she wrapped her fingers around the tree branch as best she could and sank to her knees, gasping as her legs hit the snow. She pushed herself along with one hand, churning the freshly-fallen snow into the mud, and shuffled her legs up the icy slope. There. She was making progress.
An enormous shiver racked Charlotte from head to toe and almost caused her to lose her grip and go sliding back down towards the lake. A small flicker of panic niggled at the back of her mind, waiting for its chance to take hold.
She was only fifteen minutes from the house, but those were fifteen long minutes in this weather. The wind was picking up. And she was shivering more than she’d ever shivered in her life.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she listened to Ralph?
Charlotte tried to push herself up again, ashamed of the stains on her dress and the sight she made on her hands and knees, but found she lacked the strength to stand. Instead, she slid a little way down the slope and sat there, knees drawn up to her chest for warmth, teeth chattering.
What next, clever girl? she asked herself bitterly, lips too numb to form the words aloud. No-one knew where she was. Only Tilly could possibly guess at her location, and Tilly might be lost herself, in an even worse state.
A fine Christmas this was turning out to be.
Charlotte closed her eyes and listened to the sighing whisper of the wind. It sounded like a mix between a startled cat and a child crying. Imagine poor Ralph, unloved child, coming home each Christmas to a wind like this.
A hot tear ran down Charlotte’s cheek. She did not know whether she was crying for Ralph or for herself, for her distant sisters, for the lost life at Bessington she’d loved so much. She’d tried so hard to make Langdon Manor compare, and look what had happened.
Were her Christmases with Ralph all doomed to misery?
“Charlotte!”
At first, madly, she thought it was the wind.
“Charlotte! My word!”
“D-d-don’t –” she sputtered out, through numb lips, before a dark figure came careening down the icy slope towards her. She knew those wide shoulders, that steady, unrelenting step.
Ralph.
Before she could summon the energy to warn him, he slipped on a patch of ice, fell heavily to the ground, and went sliding down the slope.
“Drat and blast!” he cursed, as he finally came to a halt at her feet.
Charlotte was gladder to see him than she could possibly have said, even if her teeth weren’t at that moment trying to chatter themselves to pieces.
Ralph tore the overcoat from his shoulders and put it around her. She supposed it must be deliciously warm. She couldn’t feel a thing.
“Is this your idea of a pleasant Christmas?” he asked her roughly, rubbing his hands up and down over her arms.
Charlotte’s heart sank. “N-no.”
To her astonishment, Ralph leaned forwards and kissed the tip of her nose. “Good. It isn’t mine, either. Tilly and Peter are quite safe. They had better sense than you. Come along, let’s get you home.”
Charlotte was astonished to find herself lifted off the ground with as much ceremony as if she were a log for the fire. “P-p-pardon me!”
“You can be as indignant as you like when you’re warm. Until then, don’t wriggle.” Ralph dug one foot into the icy ground, crunching through the surface with his heavy boot. “All this fuss over a silly servant girl. I’ve a mind to have Tilly dismissed, and Peter too.”
Charlotte let out a squeak of dismay. Ralph looked amused.
“Perhaps, when we get to know each other better, you’ll learn to tell when I’m joking, my poor, frozen little wife. Until then, you’ll have to forgive me. I think I shall rather enjoy teasing you.”
Charlotte’s hands were beginning to come to life again under his greatcoat, and the pain was enough to bring tears t
o her eyes.
“There, there,” said Ralph, his voice softened by an unfamiliar concern. “Just rest your head against my shoulder and be still. I have you now. You’re safe.”
Charlotte did as he asked. She found something unexpectedly soothing in the feeling of his broad shoulder against her cheek and the rhythm of his long strides back towards the manor house.
Only think what her sisters would say, to see her lying in the arms of her own handsome duke! It was like something out of a fairy-tale.
Charlotte nuzzled her face against her husband’s chest and let him carry her home. She almost dared to hope that, against all the odds, the most important of all her Christmas dreams was coming true.
10
Charlotte opened her eyes slowly and blinked twice, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Her head felt horribly fuzzy and there was a pain in her throat, but she was warm and surrounded by somewhat excessive piles of blankets and pillows. It was all she could do to push herself to sitting under the weight of them.
The light streaming through the window told her in an instant that she was rising much, much too late. It was Boxing Day, and she had business to attend to that couldn’t wait.
“Oh, no!” she cried. At least, she meant it to be a good, strong, loud exclamation, but what came out of her throat was more akin to a rasp. She reached for the glass of water beside the bed and collapsed against the pillows in astonishment when a large, male hand picked it up and passed it to her.
What man could rightfully be in Charlotte’s bedroom before she’d even got up? Unless…
“Ralph?” she whispered. A rough hand pressed against her forehead.
“You are not to move,” he said. Was it really him? She hadn’t imagined he was capable of such tenderness. “I knew you’d fall ill after that frightful time you had yesterday.”
Yesterday. Ha! He had some nerve to speak of yesterday. Why, the moment he carried her through the door he’d sent her straight upstairs, to have a hot bath and be sent to bed like a child! She’d missed all the Christmas fun.
The Duke, the Earl and the Captain Page 4
