Mistletoe Moment

by Bancroft, Blair

  Now that the grass around Mottram Manor had been scythed—and a veritable army of men it had taken to do it!—a path was visible, leading toward a stand of trees at the edge of the park. Will turned his stallion in that direction.

  A sudden chill enveloped him as he entered the copse, but in spite of the density of the fir trees, dappled sunshine shown through the few leaves still clinging to the birch, sycamore, chestnuts, and oaks. An almost forgotten sense of peace settled over him. Here among the trees, he felt . . . sheltered. As if the horrors that haunted him could not find their way in.

  A short ride, that’s all he should do this first day. He’d promised Tubs he wouldn’t be a complete idiot, but something about this place lured him on. Almost as if some magic mist surrounded him, drawing him forward to . . . what? Perhaps he simply wished to linger in the woods where the bogeymen couldn’t get him.

  Will swore. Pungently, in English and Spanish. He was twenty-nine years old. He’d cast childish nonsense aside years ago. And yet . . .

  He kept riding, following the path deeper into the woods.

  After ten minutes or so, he saw a strong patch of sunshine gleaming some fifty yards ahead. Drawing Ajax to a halt, Will fixed his gaze on the edge of the woods. Did he want to ride out of the shelter of the trees, abandoning the first inkling of well-being he’d felt in months? Did he wish to lay himself open to yet another scold from Joseph Tubs for pushing himself beyond his limits?

  Will narrowed his eyes at the brilliant sunshine ahead. He’d been sent off to military school when he was nine and quickly gotten into trouble for his innate curiosity in a culture where soldiers, even aspiring officers of noble lineage, were expected to do as they were told. Heaven forbid young men should think for themselves. Or question an order.

  But he’d put the army behind him now, and if he remembered rightly from his last visit to Mottram when he was twelve, there was a glade ahead, a clearing in the woods, where a stream bubbled over granite rocks and the fishing was superb. And, yes, a large flat rock for a fisherman to sit upon. Slowly, as if fearing to break the spell of the woods, Will moved Ajax forward.

  His breath whooshed out. He brought the bay to an abrupt halt at the edge of the copse. A sprite—what else could she be?—sat on the great flat rock, knees drawn up to her chin.

  Not a sprite, Will corrected, wincing at his descent into fantasy. Sprites wore flowing gowns, with unbound hair dangling down their backs. At least they did in the drawings he’d seen in childhood picture books. A sprite most certainly did not wear a dark green riding habit, setting off a well-endowed figure to perfection. After all, everyone knew sprites were, well, sprites—endowed with little more than the figure of a boy. This one was about as far from that image . . .

  Hastily, Will forced his gaze upward, taking in the vision’s perky riding hat with two jaunty white feathers, a glimpse of golden brown hair, held carefully in check by whatever system of combs and pins females used. And lastly, though reluctant to look away from his vision, he took in the entire clearing, finding a gray mare, just lifting her head from cropping grass to greet Ajax with a whinny.

  He should go home. He’d come to Mottram determined to be a recluse. Yet the peace of the woods seemed to have settled over him, drawing him back toward humanity. Willing him forward. Will clicked his tongue, and Ajax ambled into the clearing.

  “Good morning.”

  Lost in a world long-avoided memories of her mother and sister shrilling a chaotic duet of her unworthiness to be an Ashburton, Pamela gasped at the baritone intrusion on her solitude. Her body jerked, swaying perilously close to a tumble into the pool beneath the flat rock.

  “I beg your pardon, I did not mean to startle you. Are you all right?”

  Drat! She must be blushing as red as a holly berry. Pamela stiffened her back, straightened her shoulders, and gazed up at the rider on the far side of the stream. “Quite all right, sir. It is merely that in all the times I’ve come here, no one has ever passed this way before.”

  “A nicely worded way of saying I have intruded.”

  “Oh, no, indeed not!” Pamela scrambled to her feet. “I am quite certain you have as much right to be here as I have, for I suspect you are the gentleman who is newly come to Mottram Manor, and you are on Mottram land as surely as I am on property belonging to my Aunt Honoria Whitehurst. The stream is the boundary, you see.” Pamela, realizing she was babbling, trailed into silence.

  “Ah.” The young man with the scar slashing catty-corner across his forehead nodded solemnly. “And though I seem to remember from the long-ago days when I learned my manners that I should immediately beg your pardon for speaking to a young lady to whom I have not been introduced and return forthwith to my den in the gatehouse, I wonder if we might ignore the niceties this once, considering we are neighbors.”

  Oh. My. Too flustered to take him in at first, Pamela took a second look. Evidently out for a private, casual ride, the gentleman wore no hat, revealing tousled dark hair with a touch of curl, falling well past his ears. Even before the scar, he could not have been called handsome. His face was too angular, his nose too prominent, lips too thin. She could not see the color of his eyes, but she felt their sharp intelligence, almost as if he could see not only across the stream but into her soul.

  Clasping her hands tightly in front of her, she declared, “I am Miss Pamela Ashburton. I live with my aunt, Mrs. Whitehurst, who owns Appledown Farm.”

  The rider sketched a bow. “And I am William Forsythe, now living in the gatehouse at Mottram Manor. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ashburton.”

  Pamela flashed a conspirator’s grin. “You realize, of course, that if we should be properly introduced at some later date, we must never acknowledge that we have already met.”

  “There is little likelihood of that,” the stranger countered, his countenance darkening. “I do not go about in society.”

  “To our small society’s great sorrow,” Pamela returned, her eyes lighting with amusement. “The entire village, from the vicar to the lowliest tweeny, has waited with baited breath for your appearance in church these past two Sundays. A great disappointment, I assure you, for the vicar has three daughters of marriageable age.” Merciful heavens, she was teasing a perfect stranger. A young, male stranger. She must have gone mad.

  Mr. Forsythe shifted his weight in his saddle. He glared across the space between them, his darkling look gradually lightening—much to Pamela’s relief—from gargoyle to almost human. “I fear,” he said at last, “that I came to Mottram for a bit of privacy, even from God, if you will forgive the profanity.”

  “I am quite sure God understands, Mr. Forsythe, though I fear the vicar’s wife and some of the parishioners will not.” Pamela softened her words with a broad smile. “For myself, I welcome you to Little Heigham and hope that here you will find the peace you seek. And now I fear I have indulged in more than my share of shocking conduct for one morning, and I should be on my way.”

  Pamela stepped carefully off the flat rock, marched the ten yards to her mare and boosted herself into the sidesaddle with the aid of tree stump. As she was arranging her voluminous green skirts, she heard, “Tell me, Miss Ashburton, what is your mare’s name?”

  He was still sitting there, watching her every move. She should feel uneasy, perhaps even a tad fearful, but those emotions had nothing at all to do with the pounding of her heart, the butterflies in her stomach, or the whirlwind in her mind.

  “She is Boudicca,” Pamela told him. At Mr. Forsythe’s blank look, she added, head high, defying him to take offense, “Some say, ‘Boadicea,’ but I prefer Boudicca.”

  “The warrior queen who took on the Romans. And lost,” he added softly.

  “She is an eternal symbol for women who wish to be known for something besides breeding and embroidery.”

  He laughed. The dastard dared laugh at her!

  “A follower of Mary Wollstonecraft, are you?” he challenged.

  Pamela, incensed, t
urned Boudicca in a complete circle, finally stilling the horse so she faced the arrogant William Forsythe directly across the narrow stream. “Laugh if you will, but my aunt and I believe in the independence of females. And someday, I vow, the world will catch up to our beliefs.”

  The annoying Mr. Forsythe raised a hand, palm out. “Cry peace, little minx. I have been at war for seven years. I did not come to Mottram to start a new one.” He dropped his hand, leaned forward in the saddle, “Tell me, fair sprite, do you come this way often?”

  The heat of another blush tore through her, rushing from her toes straight to the top of her head. No doubt even her scalp was blushing. Not another word. Not one. She would not tell him this was her favorite spot in the whole wide world. Her special place for savoring her joys . . . and thinking on past disasters. For allowing her fancies to dream of something more . . .

  Until the something more rode right into her fantasies and shattered her ephemeral girlish dreams forever.

  Pamela turned Boudicca toward Appledown Farm. Every foot of the way she felt William Forsythe’s gaze penetrating the green boiled wool of her jacket.

  Chapter Five

  “A shocking disappointment, did I not tell you so, Mrs. Whitehurst?” The ostrich feathers on Eulalia Chillworth’s bonnet shook with their wearer’s outrage, as the ladies paused for conversation after Sunday services. “Not so much as a glimpse of hide nor hair since that one night at the inn. Major Forsythe—if he is a major, and who, pray tell, has seen proof of that?—may as well be invisible. Three Sundays now, and he’s not set foot in church. Nor bought so much as a tin of snuff or a pint from the publican—”

  “Surely after so many years of war,” Pamela ventured, “he has come to the country for privacy.”

  “Merciful heavens, Miss Ashburton, what would you know of the man?” Mrs. Chillworth demanded.

  “Appledown marches with Mottram,” Honoria inserted in her most conciliatory tone. “And as you well know, servants’ gossip tends to drift rather freely from one house to the other. Not that one should take heed of everything one hears, of course, but I am inclined to believe that Major Forsythe truly had the distinguished military career Mottram’s servants claim. And that he has come to the country to rusticate.”

  “Rusticate, indeed,” declared Mrs. Chillworth with a sniff. “He may rusticate all he wishes, but if he has claim to being a gentleman, he will attend Sunday services.”

  “I am sure he will, ma’am,” Pamela inserted hastily, “as soon as he feels able. He has injuries, you know.”

  “Miss Ashburton.” The vicar’s wife swept a glance from Pamela’s dark blue velvet bonnet and pelisse trimmed in black braid down to her kid half-boots, peeping out from under a fine woolen gown of a lighter shade of blue. “I cannot help but question your defense of this man. Is it possible you have met him?”

  Stricken, Pamela looked past Mrs. Chillworth’s sharp gaze, only to encounter three sets of accusing eyes on the faces of her daughters, Cressida, Henrietta, and Matilda.

  “Nonsense!” Pamela’s aunt spoke briskly. “How could she meet a man determined to be a recluse? Though, from what we’ve heard, I must agree with my niece. Mr. Forsythe will join us when he is ready. Returning from a war, I surmise, is much like enduring a period of mourning. We must grant him his privacy.”

  “Come, girls.” With a barely perceptible nod, Mrs. Chillworth swept off toward another cluster of parishioners, her daughters trailing after her.

  “Thank you,” Pamela murmured.

  Honoria heaved a sigh. “She is right, you know. I should not allow you to meet any man on your morning rides, let alone a man just returned from the violence of seven years of war.”

  “But we have met solely by chance, dear aunt. We exchange a few words, then continue, each on our own path.”

  “I have been shockingly remiss,” Honoria continued, as if she heard not a word of Pamela’s protest. “And now you have made a liar of me.”

  “Only a very small lie, dear aunt,” Pamela coaxed. “Indeed, you were quite truthful. It is not easy to meet a recluse. Fate must have had a hand in it, and if that is so, surely a slight obfuscation is not so heinous?”

  They had reached their carriage, and no more was said until they were seated side by side on the burgundy velvet squabs. Honoria frowned. “The pitfalls of raising a young lady to be independent now yawn before me,” she declared in dramatic accents. “Smoke rises from the dark abyss I myself have created.”

  Pamela applauded. “Indeed, aunt, you should write that down and send it off to Drury Lane. Perhaps some playwright shall choose to use it.”

  Honoria’s shoulders slumped. She shook her head. “I’m well aware you’re only a few months short of your majority, Pamela. And I know you to be a young woman of good sense. Nonetheless, I fear you mistake your sympathy for Mr. Forsythe for something more.”

  “No, I assure you—”

  “Pamela Eleanor,” Honoria interrupted in a stern tone rarely used when speaking to her niece, “I have not forgotten what it is to be young. The blood sings, and we are not always wise. And yet”—she paused, searching for the right words—“this is the first time I have known you to show an interest in a gentleman, and I am loathe to put a stop to it. Though your mama will pluck my hair from my head if you throw yourself away on a half-pay officer.”

  Pamela opened her mouth to declare hotly that she did not care a whit if Will Forsythe lived on no more than his half-pay from the army, but realized that was exactly the kind of emotional outburst her aunt feared. She settled for a more judicious, “But did you not say the Forsythe family owns Mottram Manor?”

  “It is certainly part of the Earl of Poynings’s holdings, and, yes, the family name is Forsythe, but I have no idea where the major stands on the family tree. He could be a direct relative or merely a fourth cousin, once removed, by whom Poynings is doing his duty.”

  William Forsythe. Pamela had spoken with him only three times—well, possibly it was four or five—but his solemn face, his struggles to speak lightly when his experiences weighed so heavily on him, tugged at her heart. And, most significantly, in spite of his alleged desire to be alone, he had not avoided the clearing in the wood. Like herself, William Forsythe seemed to have decided their meetings were the exception that proved the rule. After all, even recluses occasionally needed someone to talk to.

  “I shall ask him,” Pamela declared.

  “Indeed not!” Honoria cried. “You will not be so forward.”

  “Not his family background, aunt, but if he has plans for when he returns to the world. Surely that is not impertinent.”

  “My dear,” Honoria said faintly, “your conversations with Mr. Forsythe seem to have gone beyond the usual exchanges between a young man and woman.”

  “But neither of us is usual, is that not so, dear aunt? I shun the world only slightly less than he.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Honoria swept her arms around her niece, hugging her tight. “Just remember,” she whispered in Pamela’s ear, “that riding crops and hat pins have other uses.”

  Pamela gasped, then began to laugh. The two ladies finished the drive back to Appledown Farm well pleased with one another.

  Without a second glance at the precise handwriting on the letter in his hand, Will rose from the breakfast table, crossed to the fireplace, his limp more pronounced than usual, and dropped the heavy parchment onto the flames.

  “I coulda done that for you, Major. No need to trouble yourself,” said Joseph Tubs, pulling out his employer’s chair as Will returned to the table. When no answer was forthcoming, Tubs ventured, “You’ll not go to Poynings for the holiday then, sir?”

  “You know I cannot stand nattering before breakfast, Tubs. Perhaps you’d care to return to the kitchen and leave me in peace.”

  “Yes, sir, right away, sir.” Joseph Tubs snapped off a salute, and fled.

  Will slumped in his chair. How his mother could think he would return to Poynings for the h
olidays when he had escaped from there but a month since . . .? He did not wish to cause her pain, but the thought of the eternal cosseting, the constant concern for his well-being, the smothering . . .

  Devil it! He knew quite well the fault was his, not the family’s. He wanted to drop down a deep, dark well and pull a lid over himself, while his friends and family only wished him to be the man he once was, when the only certainty in his life at the moment was that the resurrection of his old self was not going to happen.

  And yet . . . Christmas called to him. The heart-warming sense of hope. The ancient traditions Wellington’s soldiers had tried so hard to imitate during the long days of winter quarters on the Peninsula. But this year, his mother would have to forgive him. Like a wounded animal, he wanted only to lie low and lick his wounds.

  If Miss Pamela Ashburton would allow him to do so. Will’s lips curved into something close to a smile as he gazed down at the beefsteak he had not yet cut into. He’d spent an entire day sitting before the fire, nearly immobilized by lingering too long in the saddle the day he met the little sprite from Appledown Farm. But as soon as he’d recovered, the flat rock above the stream had become a necessary part of his daily ride. Why, in Miss Ashburton’s case, he could not stick to his determination to lead a solitary life Will did not care to examine too closely.

  For some reason he did not mind talking with her. In fact, he actually enjoyed it. Perhaps because she did not fix anxious eyes on him, demanding to know how he was feeling or how he got the scar on his forehead. And so far his little sprite had not seen his limp, for he never descended from Ajax’s back.

  Idiot! He had insisted on isolating himself from the world, yet something stirred inside him when he saw her sitting on the rock, or guiding her mare down the slope toward the stream. Boudicca. Absurd name for a horse, but it suited her; Miss Ashburton, that is. The independent, charming, but very proper Miss Ashburton, who never failed to keep him guessing, riding to the stream on a highly irregular schedule.