by Regina Scott
“Uh, uh, uh,” Alan tsked with a shake of his finger. “He won a wager, fair and square, as I intend to do. And if I win, Miss Munroe has agreed to become my bride.”
William looked back and forth between Alan’s confident smile and Gen’s equally determined scowl. “I see. And what is it exactly you expect me to do?”
“Set the rules of this contest,” Alan explained, “and act as judge to ensure that each of us follows them.”
“Fairly,” Gen amended.
“I see,” William said again. “And you are willing to marry Miss Munroe in full ceremony and treat her as any other wife, Squire?”
Alan nodded. “I so swear.”
“And you’re willing to marry the Squire and be his obedient wife, Miss Munroe?” he continued.
Gen glared at Alan. “Perhaps not completely obedient. But, yes, I so swear as well.”
William glanced between them again. “Very well. Here are your rules, then. The gifts are fairly well specified in the poem, I believe. They shall be delivered through no direct use of money to Miss Munroe before the last stroke of midnight on each of the days specified. If the Squire succeeds in this undertaking, I shall be more than happy to read the banns myself.”
Gen turned her glare on him.
“And of course should the Squire fail,” he quickly added, shrinking back from her, “I will be just as happy to count the harvest tithes.”
Alan nodded. “Done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I had best see to my mother before the vicar quite turns her head with his flattery.” He moved off to stand beside his mother’s chair.
“I must say, William, that I am a bit surprised at you,” Gen chided.
He raised an eyebrow. “Why, Miss Gen? I’ve thought you and the Squire were well matched for years. If this is what it takes to win you, I wish the man well.” He hurried off to rejoin the game as she stared after him open-mouthed.
Chapter Two
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
T
he Pentercasts left at ten, and all agreed they had had a marvelous time. The Reverends York and Wellfordhouse left shortly thereafter, William promising to return the next day for their traditional private Christmas service in the Abbey chapel.
As Chimes closed the door behind them, Allison sighed. “What a lovely evening.”
Gen burst out laughing.
Her mother managed a smile. “You may well laugh, Genevieve. You did quite nicely tonight. I believe Allison and I owe you an apology.”
Allison nodded, ringlets bouncing. “Yes, indeed. The Pentercasts aren’t nearly as bad as I had feared.”
“No, they don’t breathe fire or eat small children,” Gen teased. All except one particular Pentercast.
“One might actually find them tolerable,” her mother agreed, “in very limited circumstances, of course.”
Chimes snorted on his way toward the back of the house. Her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m very glad to hear you say that,” Gen put in quickly to divert her. In truth it was a relief to know that most of the members of the two families might coexist on easier terms because of tonight.
Allison turned away, wandering toward the family wing with another deep-felt sigh. “I’m just sorry to see it end so soon.”
“And who says it has to end?” Gen challenged, putting her hands on her hips. She had worked too hard to put them in a good mood to see it spoiled now. “We have the twelve days of Christmas before us.”
Allison glanced back with a grin. “Yes, I know. But tonight is over.”
Gen shook her head, determined to keep their spirits up. Soon enough, they’d be back in mourning, this time for their lost hopes. “I thought we were going to see the Thorn.”
Her mother’s eyes glowed. “Why, Genevieve, I believe that’s a lovely idea. It will be cold, mind you. Best we change into warmer clothes.”
It took them nearly an hour to change. Bryce, their mother’s abigail, bustled between the three rooms fastening wool gowns and smoothing coiffures into bonnets. Gen barely had a moment to think. By a little after eleven, they were bundled in their woolen cloaks and fur muffs and trudging down to the end of the drive to view the Wenwood Thorn.
As they had done when they were children, they let Chimes, wrapped in a dark wool hooded cloak, go before them, lantern held high in one gloved hand to light the way. Mrs. Chimes, tiny figure dwarfed by her own dark cloak, came behind with another lantern. It might have been easier to bring the carriage, but, by Wenwood tradition, each family came to the Thorn on foot. The trees on either side loomed up as they approached, bare branches raking the stars, only to retreat behind them into the darkness. The woods were quiet; the sound of their voices seemed to hang in the cold air like icicles on the wind. It was almost as if they were alone in the world.
As they neared the foot of the drive, other lights began to glow, and other voices pushed back the cold. They broke out of the wood into a little clearing and found the village already there, clustered in groups of friends and families in a rough semicircle around the Wenwood Thorn.
The tree was much as Gen remembered it, standing amongst a host of smaller trees like the matriarch of the family, a single bud on a twisted branch like a flower of celebration in her hair. She remembered her father’s pride in the tree, a legacy the Munroes had left the village of Wenwood.
His great-great-grandfather had managed to get a slip from the famed thorn that grew at Glastonbury Abbey. Legend had it that when St. Joseph of Arimathaea had first reached England in those early years after the Lord’s crucifixion, he had climbed the hill at Glastonbury, and where he planted his staff the Thorn had sprung. Her ancestor had planted the cutting just off the foot of the drive to the Abbey and had cared for it until it grew large enough to sustain itself.
Now, each Christmas, like its own famous forefather, it budded on Christmas Eve and bloomed on Christmas Day. Everyone in the village and farms for miles around traveled to witness the miracle. She had made the trip to view it every Christmas until they had moved to London. The last time she had seen it had been with her father.
Moving into the clearing now, it was as if she had never left. Mrs. Smitters and the elderly Widow Tate nodded in recognition of her mother, and Mrs. Gurney and her husband Henry made a place for them near the front of the semicircle. The voices around her were hushed but happy, murmuring of Christmas memories, of hopes for Christmases to come.
The dozens of torches and lanterns brightened the little clearing with their glow. Tom Harvey had started a fire near the back of the crowd, and the people were taking turns warming themselves by it. Mary Delacourte started a song, and others joined her in rough harmony, voices rising through the trees. Children laughed, chased each other around their parents’ and grandparents’ legs. Lovers held hands. Despite the chilled night air, Gen felt warm all over.
“Couldn’t resist, could you?” Alan asked, appearing at her side from the crowd. She couldn’t help but stare in surprise. His handsome face was flushed with excitement, his fashionable top hat was askew, and all at once he was the good-natured young man she remembered. If he’d have looked like this when he’d proposed, she realized, she’d probably have accepted.
Her heart started pounding unaccountably loud, and she raised her hand to her chest. Before she could say a word, a laugh rang out from behind them, and, looking past him, she saw Geoffrey clapping Dutch Mattison on the shoulder, tankard in one gloved hand. Closer to the front, Mrs. Pentercast shivered with a smile of welcome. Beside her, her mother nodded in reply.
“It wouldn’t be Christmas without the Thorn,” Alan murmured beside her. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I’m very glad you did.”
“I couldn’t have missed this,” Gen managed, feeling her spirits rise. “It’s the very heart of Christmas to me: The hope that something wonderful can happen, even in the midst of darkness.”
As soon as she said it, she regretted sharing such an intimate part of herself. But one look at
the warmth in his gaze and the regret evaporated.
“Miracles do happen, Miss Munroe,” he murmured. “If we believe in them.”
As if on cue, the bells from the village church at Wenwood began chiming midnight, their peals echoing across hill and dale. The children froze in their games, eyes wide. Voices died on the wind. The village youths set down their tankards. As one, the crowd leaned forward, watching. Lanterns raised as eyes peered through the night. Gen caught her breath as the bud slowly opened to the light.
“Happy Christmas, Miss Munroe,” Alan murmured beside her.
“Happy Christmas, Mr. Pentercast,” she murmured back, believing for the first time that it might be just that. Around her, other voices took up the chant, until the wish was a thunder of sound across the clearing, pushing back the darkness, climbing to heaven. The children laughed again. The village youths toasted the day. Lovers embraced.
Then, in families and pairs, the villagers and farmers moved off toward the village for services. Geoffrey Pentercast stamped out the fire. With one last smile to Gen, Alan returned to escort his mother.
Gen watched him for a moment, bemused. Was this kind gentleman the same man who had arrogantly demanded her hand? She shook her head. It must have been the sense of celebration the tree inspired, the atmosphere all at once peaceful and invigorating. Surely it was only a momentary aberration.
Having only half convinced herself, she turned to go, then saw her mother still standing before the tree. She touched her cloak, and her mother turned, wiping tears from her eyes. “Your father always loved this.”
Gen squeezed her gloved hand, feeling tears coming to her own eyes. “I know he did, Mother. And I’m sure he knows we’re here.”
“He’s probably watching us right now,” Allison agreed, glancing up at the cloudless sky where a million stars twinkled. “I think he’d be pleased that we’re here at the Abbey.”
Gen closed her eyes for a moment, pushing back the tears. Allison was right. Her father would be proud of what she was trying to do. If she could just hold out a few more days, perhaps her sister and mother would come to see that the Abbey was the best place for them as well. She had been right in bringing them here.
As if to prove the notion, her mother reached out and drew them into an embrace. The gesture was so rare that Gen refused to spoil it with words. Together, they turned and walked back to their home.
She thought at first she might have trouble falling asleep that night. All the events of the day seemed to crowd in on her as she lay in the large four-poster bed she had known as a child. All in all, she told herself, she should be pleased with what she had accomplished. Her mother and sister were safely ensconced at the Abbey. True, she hadn’t managed to tell them the truth about their situation, but she was going to give them one last happy Christmas and that counted for something. She had also managed to prove that the Pentercast/Munroe feud was no longer necessary. True, she had her own private feud to continue with Alan Pentercast, but that would likely come out all right as well.
One of her biggest worries in retreating to the Abbey had been food. They had plenty of clothes to wear, and the elaborate furniture crowded into the many rooms would keep them for years to come. The small clearing could hold a garden, she thought, and the woods abounded with game. Yet one couldn’t count on either of those as a steady source. When Alan lost his wager, that problem would be solved.
That left only one difficulty to surmount: Allison’s come out. She had to be properly presented if she was to have a chance in the marriage mart. Surely Gen owed her that. Lord knows, she had already resigned herself to the fact that she herself was unlikely to find a suitable husband, despite Mr. Carstairs kind words to the contrary. Like Allison, she had once looked forward to her London Season, expecting that she would have dozens of men as dashing as Alan Pentercast vying for her hand.
Instead, she had found the gentlemen who pursued her sadly disappointing. Each one cared more for wardrobe and stables than family and friends. Heaven forbid that any of them read more than The Times or converse about anything more daring than the weather. And none possessed her father’s wit or good humor.
She had hoped that here in the country at least Allison might meet men of greater substance. Alan’s face came to mind—hair falling over his forehead and curling around his ears, brown eyes sparkling with laughter, generous mouth turned up in a grin. She blinked the vision away. His ridiculous wager ought to prove how little substance he had, yet she could not forget his obvious enjoyment of the Thorn. Sad to admit, but a part of her still hoped the Alan she remembered had not disappeared. She told that part of her to be silent.
She had barely slept five hours when Chimes tapped on her door the next morning. She crawled out of bed and donned her riding habit, pulling on the boots with a yawn. By eight, she was out in the forest, searching for their Christmas dinner.
Her mother disapproved that her father had taught her to shoot, but now Gen had to own it was a useful skill. This morning, however, the animals seemed to have decided to sleep in on Christmas as well, for they found none of their usual grouse, partridge, or quail. She saw a deer, which froze with one tiny hoof in mid-air at the sight of her, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot the delicate little thing. Chimes, coming up behind her too late to get a shot, chided her on her sensibilities.
“Yer father bought you that Lepage for a reason, gel.” He clamped his felt hat more firmly in place against the cold. “Now’s the time to use it if ever there was.”
Gen nodded, fingering the inlaid stock of the French flintlock. She remembered her squeal of delight and her mother’s pressed lips when her father had given it to her on her fourteenth birthday. Now she wondered at the expense to have the rifle specially made to her slender frame, let alone the firing of the metal to a blue that matched her eyes. Still, it was one of the few of her father’s gifts that she could use in this new life she was creating. She planted the stock back into the boot by her stirrup and nodded to Chimes to continue looking for game.
They saw nothing more that morning, and she was on foot ready to settle for a plump, hardy pigeon when she heard the sound of an approaching horse and sent Chimes to investigate. A moment later, he returned with the Reverend Wellfordhouse.
“Happy Christmas, William,” she hailed, and he smiled in agreement. “Is it time for services already?”
“Very nearly. And may I say it seems a bit odd to find you hunting on such a day.” He regarded Chimes with a frown, and the older man bustled off to bring their own horses forward from hiding.
“We aren’t poaching on the Pentercast lands, if that’s what’s worrying you, William,” she assured him. “I know when I reach the wall, unlike some others.”
“A rather obvious landmark, to be sure,” William agreed. “But perhaps I ought to ride with you toward the house, just to be sure you arrive in time.”
Chimes snorted, but he helped Gen to mount and pulled his horse obligingly behind them as she and William rode side by side down the little track through the woods. The air was cool and crisp; frost shone on the few leaves left on the trees. Gen was thankful once again for her father’s foresight. The forest green wool hunting outfit he had insisted on buying her last winter was warm and well-fitted, with a full skirt that afforded her ample movement on foot or on horseback and a cunning hooded caplet that shielded her eyes from the bright winter sunlight. Beside her, William shivered in his shabby wool jacket and breeches. For his sake, she urged the horses forward.
They rode along the track in companionable silence, making their way out of the wood and traveling a short distance along the low stone wall that divided the Pentercast’s property from the Munroe’s. Through the bare trees of the old orchard on the other side, she could make out the solid golden block of the Manor. Round paler circles on the dark trunks showed where Alan had had them pruned recently. The grass beneath them was neatly cropped. He appeared to be taking his ownership duties more seriously than
his forefathers, who had largely let the land run wild, as she remembered. Even as she admired the rows across the wall, Chimes shouted and a flock of birds rose from the nearby shrubs.
She grasped her rifle and leveled it at the cloud of feathers. William ducked. The flintlock roared, and she heard the echo from Chime’s gun. Two of the birds fell. One landed back in the shrubbery ahead of them. The other landed near the top of one of the trees.
On the Pentercast side of the wall.
William’s horse snorted in alarm, prancing in circles as the reverend sought to calm it. Gen’s horse, more used to hunting, only shied. When he got his mount under control, William shook his head. “What a shame. You almost had that one.”
Chimes dismounted even as Gen reined in. “I did have that one,” she told him. “You saw it, William. It was on my side of the wall, wherever it chose to land.”
“That’s right, miss,” Chimes agreed, going to retrieve his own bird, which he shoved into a game bag at his hip. “I’ll fetch it for you.” He swung himself over the wall and hurried to the tree. His swift movements and constant glances about him belied his confident words.
Gen watched him from the saddle as her horse lowered its head to graze. Atop his own horse, William frowned.
“This seems a lot of trouble for a bird,” he murmured.
Gen kept her gaze on Chimes, who had begun to climb the tree. “You won’t say that when you eat it this afternoon, William. It will be a poor Christmas dinner without it.”
His frown deepened. “I find it hard to believe the Munroe hospitality depends on that one bird.”
“Believe it.” She pushed back her hood, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hands, and tried to focus on Chimes’ craggy form struggling up through the gnarled old branches. She grimaced and slid to the ground. “He’s too big. I’ll have to get it.”
“Oh, I say,” William protested, starting to dismount. “I can’t have you climbing trees. What would your mother think?”
