Winter Wishes: A Regency Christmas Anthology

by Cheryl Bolen

  “Your graces, Lady Maude, may I present Miss Mary Gray of Cambridge. Mary is joining us for Christmas and Hogmanay,” he said.

  The matching smiles which appeared on their faces had Mary suddenly feeling like she was the cream and they were a pounce of cats.

  “Mary. A pleasure to meet you. I am Caroline, Duchess of Strathmore. This is Lady Alison, the Dowager Duchess of Strathmore, and Lady Maude, her sister-in-law.”

  Mary looked down at Caroline’s offered hand. She had never met a duchess before, let alone two. She dipped into another deep curtesy, holding tightly onto Hugh’s hand, and prayed that her legs would not fail her this time.

  “Hugh, you made it,” said Lady Alison.

  Hugh placed a dutiful kiss on his mother’s cheek. “Mama.”

  She snorted. “A whole year away from home and all I get is a peck on the cheek. Unhand your lady friend and give your mother a proper greeting.”

  Mary caught the blush on Hugh’s cheeks as he released her hand and embraced his mother. Lady Maude then stepped up for her hug, followed by Caroline. If he had thought he was going to make an understated return home, the womenfolk of the castle clearly had other ideas.

  Her own soft chortle ended as soon as she saw Lady Alison’s arms held out in greeting to her. “Come now. If you are a friend of my son, you shall also be greeted properly.”

  With no choice but to accept the welcome hugs from Hugh’s female relatives, Mary submitted. Lady Alison’s embrace was a little longer than the others, and the smile which sat on the dowager duchess’s face when they finally parted was enough to give Mary pause.

  Her unwed son had brought a young woman home for Christmas, and Lady Alison had drawn an obvious conclusion.

  As Mary took Hugh’s offered arm once more, and they followed the rest of the Radley family into the castle keep, Mary pondered the prudency of having come to Strathmore Castle. Hugh might be blind to her love for him, but having now met his mother, she doubted that Lady Alison was cursed with the same affliction.

  As Lady Alison glanced back over her shoulder at her son and then to her, Mary wondered how long it would be before the dowager duchess took her aside and began to ask probing questions. From the glint in Lady Alison’s eyes, she deduced it would not be long.

  Chapter 9

  Mary’s first encounter with having her own maid was a touch awkward. Having gone back to the coach to retrieve her travel bag, she was politely informed that all her things had been brought inside and were waiting for her in her room.

  Her room within the castle, it transpired, was more of a small apartment than a simple bedroom. It had a separate sitting room as well as two bedrooms. The walls were decorated with wallpaper in the Strathmore tartan. Mary was grateful that the imposing theme did not carry to the plush blue carpet on the floor.

  A maid was busy unwrapping the parcels of clothes that Hugh had bought for Mary in Edinburgh. As soon as she saw the maid untying the string which held the parcels together, Mary hurried over.

  “Oh, please, let me do that. You don’t need to,” she said.

  The maid frowned. “It’s nae bother, miss; this is ma job. I won’t take long. I will hang your things up in the wardrobe and then be leavin’. If you need anything else after that, either pull on the bell here or find a footman. There is always someone about the castle who can help.”

  Mary’s hopes to unwrap the new clothes herself and spend time admiring them were scuttled by her unexpected social status of being an honored guest of the house.

  Making short work of unpacking Mary’s things, the maid hung everything in the oversized oak wardrobe, she then gave a quick bob of a curtsey before leaving.

  With the maid finally gone, a slightly frazzled Mary sat down on the well-appointed sofa which graced her sitting room. The furnishings of the room spoke of an opulent lifestyle she could only imagine living. After pulling off her gloves, she let her fingers touch the soft black leather. With her fingertips barely skimming the surface of the sofa, she lay back and closed her eyes.

  “This is bliss,” she whispered to herself

  A soft tap on the door roused her some time later. Blinking, and wiping sleep from her eyes, she opened it. Hugh was standing on the threshold.

  “Do you have everything you need? Has your maid been in to attend to your garments?” he asked.

  “Yes, I have everything, thank you. But I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with the maid, do I pay her?” she replied. Her greatest fear was that she would somehow put a foot wrong and have the castle staff think her rude. Was she supposed to tip the staff like porters at a hotel? She had heard that was the proper thing to do. She would leave a coin for the maid next time just to be sure.

  “Just let them go about their work; they are here to help you. You only have to ask. And no, you don’t need to pay her,” he said.

  It was nice to have a maid, but she was not comfortable with the idea. A few weeks in Scotland would spoil her for the life she had waiting for her back in Cambridge. No one would be pressing her gowns for her once she returned to England. The furniture in her cramped bedsit would consist of a small bed and a single chair.

  Hugh’s gaze went to her hair, and the hint of a shy smile appeared on his face. “I was waiting in the great hall for you to make an appearance, but when you didn’t, I thought I should come and find you. You look like you took the opportunity for a nap.”

  She put a hand to her hair. The soft chignon she had fashioned that morning had fallen, and badly needed repair. “I sat to rest my eyes and must have fallen asleep.”

  Hugh stopped a passing footman and murmured instructions. The footman nodded, then hurried away.

  “I have asked that your maid attend to you and fix your hair. I thought you might like to take a stroll around the castle once you are ready. Make sure you dress warm.”

  Mary frowned. She had been managing her hair since she was a little girl; the thought of sitting while a maid attended to it struck her as odd.

  Hugh leaned in and took hold of her hand. “Enjoy your time here and let the castle servants assist you. If you don’t, then they will think they have done something wrong. And then we shall have Master Crowdie having a word with my brother, and eventually I will be taken aside and spoken to. So please, let your maid, whose name is Heather, fix your hair.”

  After Hugh made the proper introductions, he left Mary and Heather to overcome their initial awkward start. While Heather set Mary’s hair, they discussed a daily routine which would suit them both. Once Mary’s chignon had been set to right, she retrieved her new fur hat from the cupboard.

  “Do you have any hatpins, miss?” asked Heather

  “No. I forgot them.” Her only good hatpin had recently broken, and she had decided replacing it could wait until she had more money.

  “I shall see if I can find you some, but in the meantime, you will have tae watch out for the wind. It does loves tae steal the hat from your head,” said Heather.

  Heather left the room singing a happy little ditty, leaving Mary to finish dressing for her walk with Hugh. With her new thick coat buttoned to the neck, Mary was as warm as toast. She stuffed her gloves into her pockets, then stood back and looked at herself in the mirror.

  She cut a fine figure in her new, expensive clothes. Perhaps now Hugh would notice her. His efforts in Edinburgh had given her the first real glimmer of hope that he did see the Mary beyond the girl who brought him coffee and toast.

  The clothes were wonderful. But it was the attention Hugh had given her all that afternoon, the words of encouragement for every item she tried on, and the small affectionate touches of his hand that had set her heart racing.

  “Don’t be silly, and don’t get your hopes up. This is Hugh,” she cautioned herself.

  At some point, he would break her heart and, knowing the sweet and often baffle-headed man that he was, Hugh would likely have no idea what he had done.

  She met him downstairs a short time later.
The great hall reminded her of the dining halls at St John’s College, though the long dining tables were missing. The hall itself was divided up into several living areas, with large tapestries hanging from the roof to create the illusion of separate rooms.

  Hugh nodded at the tapestries. “My father had them installed. He decided that the castle no longer needed to be a great meeting place, but rather somewhere that his family could live. We move all the furniture out of the way and replace it with tables for events such as Hogmanay,” he explained.

  “And Christmas?”

  He shook his head. “Not in Scotland. Christmas is not celebrated widely here. The Church of Scotland doesn’t hold with the holy day, so the Radley family celebrates it privately, and then hosts the big celebration over New Year’s.”

  Hugh had never struck her as being a typical Scotsman. He didn’t have much of a lilt in his voice, and only the use of the occasional Scottish word indicated that he was anything other than a full-blooded Englishman.

  “Come. Let me show you the castle. The weather is still fine, but Master Crowdie tells me we will be in for a major frost overnight, and possibly snow.”

  Mary followed him out of the great hall, expecting to turn right and venture into the courtyard, but Hugh turned left and headed for a set of nearby stone steps.

  “You will want your gloves and hat held on tight where we are going,” he said.

  “And where is that?”

  “The ramparts.”

  He put one foot on the bottom stone step, then held out his hand to her. Mary took it. If she had thought he was being a little overprotective about her climbing the steps, she soon understood his reasoning.

  The steps wound tightly around the staircase, hugging close to the wall. In some places the stones had been worn away so badly that she had to avoid the step and take two at a time. She was hot and huffing by the time they finally reached the top of the castle.

  Hugh stopped at a huge door made from hard elm and looked back the way they had come. When he let go of her hand, Mary sensed the loss. His strong grip as he led her up the stairs had been an interesting revelation. The quiet, bookish Hugh Radley was a man of unknown physical strength.

  “Ewan is going to get a stonemason over from Glasgow to look at rebuilding the steps. They may have served their purpose when this was a fortified castle, but now they just make it difficult to carry things up and down,” said Hugh.

  He pushed on the door and stepped through it. Mary followed him out into bright sunshine. She held her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. At the same time, a sudden blast of chill wind tore at her hat. It flew from her head and landed on the stone rampart, where the wind quickly picked it up once more and skipped it out of reach.

  “Oh!” She went to step past Hugh to rescue her hat, but he moved in front of her.

  Bent low, he chased after it. His sure-footed leaps from one side of the narrow ramparts to the next showed how much at home he was on top of the castle.

  With a deftly timed sweep of his hand, he finally caught Mary’s hat. She applauded his success as he spun around on one foot and held it up, a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Well done, Hugh.”

  He trotted back to her and with a flourish, returned the hat to its rightful owner. A familiar flash of heat raced down her spine as their gazes met. Mary held the tight smile she had perfected for such moments with him; she dared not reveal the full smile her heart so desperately craved to give him. A heart not risked is a heart not broken.

  She held the hat firmly in her hand, not wanting to add its loss to the cost of replacing her hatpin.

  The wind on the ramparts was fierce and unrelenting, but Hugh did not seem to mind. While Mary was busy trying to keep her hair out of her face and protect her ears from the stinging cold, he went about with only a coat and scarf to keep the elements at bay.

  When they finally managed to find a spot out of the wind, it took her a good minute or so to pin her hair back. Heather’s earlier efforts at fixing Mary’s hairstyle had been blown away.

  “If you look over there, you can see Castle Hill. On top of it is Stirling Castle. That’s where a number of the kings and queens of Scotland were crowned,” he said, pointing to a tall crag in the distance.

  “Including Mary Queen of Scots,” replied Mary. She may not have travelled much in her life, but she knew her history. Access to the extensive library was one of the privileges of having grown up at Cambridge University.

  “Now that I have a better understanding of where Strathmore Castle is situated, I realize there are a number of significant historical sites around here. Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce defeated the English, must be only a few miles away,” she added.

  “That’s it there. It’s about fifteen miles as the crow flies,” Hugh replied, pointing to a flat area toward one side of another hill. “The Bruce used Strathmore Castle as a staging ground for his troops before the battle of Bannockburn, though it was not as complete a castle then as it is now.”

  Mary heard the fierce pride in Hugh’s voice as he spoke. Every moment that she spent with him in this place showed him in a different light. And every moment, her love for him grew.

  She turned away from the view over the battlements and forced herself to take several long deep breaths.

  “I am glad you came. I hadn’t realized how much it would mean to me to show you my home,” said Hugh.

  Mary nodded, incapable of speech. The next few weeks here with him at the castle were going to be a trial for her heart. The way he made her feel, she feared she may not survive it.

  Chapter 10

  Hugh had initially thought to simply show Mary around the castle and introduce her to a few of the castle stalwarts—people he trusted and loved—but by the time they returned to the keep, he sensed something else was at play. From the moment he had taken her by the hand and led her up the castle steps, his perception of her had begun to change.

  Several times over the past days he had caught her staring at him, an odd expression on her face, as if she was studying him. And then at other times when he looked, she seemed distant and closed off from him, as if lost in herself.

  He recognized himself in that behavior, knowing that he often retreated into his own thoughts to escape from the world. And what is it that you seek to escape from Miss Mary Gray?

  “Ah, there you are. We were speculating as to where you had got to,” said Ewan.

  As Hugh and Mary entered the great hall, he saw the rest of the Radley family members all gathered near one of the castle fireplaces. A fire was burning in the huge iron grate, but even at ten feet from one side of the hearth to the other, it struggled to create much warmth in the cavernous space.

  “I was just showing Mary the view from the ramparts,” Hugh replied. He ignored the small shared looks that he saw exchanged between Adelaide and Charles, but the look that passed between Lady Alison and Aunt Maude gave him pause.

  Not you as well. Please don’t meddle.

  He had expected his sister and brother-in-law to try and play cupid—Adelaide was never one for subtly—but he was more concerned by his mother and aunt’s apparent interest in Mary and himself.

  When he looked to Ewan, he was greeted with a raised eyebrow. He sighed, relieved that at least his brother and Lady Caroline were being sensible about things. Mary was his friend, and a guest at the castle. Whatever else developed between them from her stay in Scotland, he wanted it to be fresh and unencumbered. He had not brought her all this way simply to use the time alone with her as a means to seduce her into marriage.

  He pushed his tongue against the back of his teeth, but a little voice in his brain told him it would take more than that to believe the lie he had just told himself. He wanted Mary; the question was, did she want him?

  “We are heading to the village to buy some tablet if the two of you would like to come,” said Adelaide.

  Hugh noted the use of the term “the two of you? and suspected i
t would not be the last time he heard it over the Christmas period.

  He looked to Mary. She blinked, then put a hand to her face and wiped something away from her eye. Was that a tear?

  His family were making more of the relationship between him and Mary than currently existed. A quiet word or two might need to be had to calm the matchmakers down. He did not need his family interfering with his plans, or making Mary feel uncomfortable.

  “The road to the village is icy, so you will all require your tackety boots today,” said Ewan.

  Hugh could have hugged his brother for the delicate change of subject.

  “Well then, it is fortunate that Hugh procured Mary a pair of boots along with a number of other items of clothing while we were in Edinburgh,” said Adelaide.

  Hugh could have swatted his sister for the not-so-delicate remark.

  “Right then. So, if everyone who needs to change their boots can go and do so, the rest of us will wait here and then we can all walk to the village together,” said Aunt Maude.

  Hugh watched with interest as Mary made her first tentative steps in her new boots. “How do they feel on your feet?” he asked.

  “A little strange when I place my feet on the road, but they are comfortable. I never thought to actually wear boots with metal plates and nails in them,” replied Mary.

  “That’s because you have never been to Scotland and had to walk on black ice,” said Aunt Maude.

  The party of six, Caroline and Ewan having stayed behind at the castle, were making their way down the road to Strathmore village. The walk, if it could be described as such, was a constant game of sidestepping hazards. The road surface was covered with icy patches, interspersed with frozen puddles of muddy water. Every step held the promise of a hard and wet landing for an unsure foot.

  Hugh had offered Mary his arm, but she told him she needed to learn to walk in her new boots. He accepted her reasons with good grace, but still walked close enough so that he could rescue her if she did slip.