Christmas Bequest

by Barbara Miller

  “I cannot accept something like this.” Her voice was a desperate whisper.

  “She’s too small for any man to ride and you are the only woman I know who does ride. It would be a mercy if you accepted her. She’s had a very hard life up until now. Let her convince you.”

  Alita nuzzled against Patience’s cloak and rubbed gray hairs all over the black wool. Patience leaned her face against the horse’s forehead and whispered endearments to the mare. “Would you keep her here for a while until this awful Christmas is over?”

  Stuart had counted on Alita charming her. Patience always had a soft spot for horses. “Yes, but I was hoping she would cheer you a little. Why put off enjoying her?”

  “Lucinda’s brother is coming and he will mount Alita no matter what I say and break her knees.”

  “She’ll be safe here with the others. Do you hear that, men?” Stuart raised his voice to command level. “Do not let young Mr. Thurston anywhere near any of the horses. I have it on good authority he’s a clodpoll.”

  The grooms all gave a knowing chuckle. Stuart turned to Patience and caught the hint of a smile.

  “Right, sir,” Knox said. He approached so he could whisper, “We have your trunk on the wagon. Also Captain Mayhew’s. Here is the key to his. What shall we do with it, sir?”

  “Put it in the back of the carriage,” Stuart answered. Knox had been with him in the Peninsula and had kept all his gear in order without ever losing so much as a spur. But he found himself wishing he had mislaid Jack’s trunk.

  The slight joy Patience felt at meeting Alita and contemplating riding her drained away at the site of her brother’s war trunk. On the short drive back to Heatherfield, she kept wanting to turn and look at it but resisted. It was bad enough, spending the holidays in mourning and trying to wring some crumb of joy out of them for little James. Did this reminder have to arrive just now?

  “What shall we do with it?” Stuart asked. “Give it to Lucinda now or later?”

  She was startled that Stuart saw the trunk in the same light. “Oh, I had thought it was my responsibility or Mother’s but you are right. We should at least tell Lucinda about it. I just wish we could put it off ’til after the holidays.”

  Her sister-in-law must have been in the drawing room watching for her parents when Patience and Stuart arrived. For she came into the hall and saw the servants bring in the trunk. Lucinda looked startled. The black shawl gathered around her shoulders contrasted with her blonde hair carelessly gathered into a topknot. She looked both young and old at the same time.

  “Where shall we put it?” Patience asked. “You don’t have to deal with this now.”

  At first Lucinda looked at it as though it were a coffin, then she took a breath and said, “My room.”

  “Do you want the key?” Stuart asked as he reached into his coat pocket. “Perhaps you should wait until—”

  “I will deal with it.” She snatched the key from his hand and went upstairs in the wake of the servants bearing the trunk.

  Stuart told the groom he had left at Heatherfield to take the team home and that he would walk back later. “Will she be all right?” he asked Patience.

  “I don’t know. Before, Jack’s death didn’t seem real. Somehow that trunk brings it home. Her parents are looked for tonight yet. Once they get here they will distract her from thoughts of death. But the roads are so bad what with the mud and the fog, perhaps they will delay a day.”

  “Her brother comes with them?”

  “Separately tomorrow. Uncle Percy will be here tomorrow as well but Uncle William not ’til noon Christmas Day. He likes to do his service Christmas Eve and depart for here early Christmas Morning.”

  “My servants will be here at first light, polishing and scrubbing. I’m sure they have spent the day laying up cakes and meat pies to bring. It will be all right.”

  “Will it? It all seems so broken. Will Christmas ever be the same?”

  He didn’t answer her right away, probably recalling all the promises he had made to her in the past about being home for Christmas. And she doubted he would have been here this holiday if Jack had not been killed.

  “I cannot say. It will never be the same again but we will get past this hard place. That, I know.”

  “I wish I was so certain. All I know is that Christmas will be shadowed forever with this loss. I shall never enjoy it again.” She looked up at his face and it was still full of hope even though she had done her best to crush it.

  “Let us try for some peace at least.”

  He took her hand and at first she thought he meant to kiss it, but she still wore the gloves he had given her. They were from the country where Stuart and Jack had fought so bravely and the beautiful leather presented as much a barrier between her and Stuart as the war had. She treasured them because they came from Stuart but they would always be a reminder of Jack’s loss.

  She did not know if she could ever let Stuart inside her thoughts again, though she had prayed hard enough for his survival. It was as though the white-hot passion she once felt for him had been quenched by the cold rains of Spain, and now England. She did not think all the sunshine in the world could ever revive that love. She was past it, and Stuart would have to accept that their future was gone.

  Chapter Three

  Though the Greenways’ servants had delivered as promised, in baked goods and spit and polish, the house still suffered the disapproving gaze of Mrs. Thurston when she entered the hall the next day. She frowned as she scrutinized the walls, and the savage dents between her eyes and at the corners of her mouth made her look fearsome.

  Since Lucinda had stayed in her chamber, Patience had come out of the morning room to welcome them, and the old woman fastened on her as the culprit.

  “Holly and ivy? Really now, Patience. With my son-in-law not cold in his grave?”

  Patience swayed on her feet at such an attack. Jack was very cold wherever he was and he certainly didn’t have a grave. She thought of all they had been through without any aid and composed a scathing reply. But she cared so little for the woman’s opinion that she said nothing. “There are no ribbons or candles. Just some greenery. There’s no harm in that.” To argue would only prolong the unpleasant exchange.

  “You don’t want to be thought frivolous.”

  “Seeing that only family are coming, how can it matter what they think?”

  “Where is my daughter?”

  “In her room. She took breakfast there this morning.”

  “Poor child. And my grandson?”

  “In the nursery with the maid.”

  “I must see them. Have our trunks brought up. What rooms are we in?”

  Patience didn’t bother to answer since the woman was already trudging up the stairs. The servants knew where to put them.

  Mr. Thurston came in then and shook the rain off his coat. “Lucky this isn’t all snow. Where is Captain Marsh?”

  “In the office with his agent and ours.”

  “Yours—what do you mean? Has he gone and hired an agent already? Of all the nerve.”

  Patience followed Thurston toward the office with some notion of softening the blow for Stuart. But she stopped herself in the drawing room and sat on the sofa. She always did that—threw herself into the breach and got trampled for her pains. Besides, she admitted to some curiosity as to how Stuart would handle Lucinda’s father, a large man who bellowed at the best of times. Would he be able to shout Stuart down?

  The voice that raised in the adjoining room was not Thurston’s but Stuart’s and he sounded very commanding. “Lucinda’s brother Samuel? An agent? Your son is the least competent person on earth to be put in charge of this estate. In a word, he is a wastrel.”

  “I should call you out for that.”

  “Be my guest. I am no longer in the army so can’t be court-martialed for putting bullets in well-meaning but misguided relatives. I wonder what your daughter would say if I shot you.”

  “I meant it
as a figure of speech,” Thurston yelled. “You insulted my son.”

  “How so? He is a wastrel and he will never get his hands on the running of Jack’s estate.”

  “It’s not Jack’s any longer but belongs to my grandson James. Either I or my son should have the managing of it. I have a solicitor in my pocket just as I’m sure you do.”

  “If he’s in your pocket, he can’t be much of a solicitor. Bring him out.”

  Patience clapped her hand over her mouth just as Thurston exited the room. He must have interpreted her expression as one of shock. She held her giggles until he was up the stairs and out of hearing. The Whartons came out smiling, as well as Stuart. He regarded her suspiciously as she tried to hold in her laughter.

  “That’s routed him,” the elder Wharton said.

  “Unfortunately, he will be with us some few days so we may have to hold our discussions at Greenways.” Stuart stared at Patience and tilted his head in inquiry.

  “Hold firm, captain,” the younger Wharton said on the way out.

  “You heard that?” Stuart asked her.

  She nodded. “War has changed you. You’ve become much more assertive.”

  “It teaches you not to waste time but I will pay for that remark.”

  “No doubt.” She wiped the corner of her eye.

  “Are those tears of joy?” He came to scrutinize her more closely. “If all it took to get a laugh from you is that buffoon Thurston, I would have invited him myself.”

  “You surprised them out of me. I had forgotten how you are never at a loss for a reply.”

  “He’s an easy man to outwit but his stupidity makes him obdurate. I shall need endurance to deal with him.”

  “You are staying for luncheon, I hope? I don’t want to be alone with so much animosity. Plus I admit to some curiosity as to how you will handle it.”

  “Of course I am staying. I would not abandon you now. Has Lady Heatherfield come down yet?”

  “No, and it has me worried. I spoke to her maid and she said Lucy is still going through that awful trunk. If you asked me any time these three years, I would have said Lucinda didn’t care a fig for Jack. Now that he is dead, she really misses him.”

  “We all deal with grief in our own way but sorting through a dead man’s trunk strikes me as a very lonely task. I didn’t have the heart to do it and I have faced the French guns. Perhaps she will be down for luncheon.”

  Patience felt a sharp pain of remembered fear. “It could have been you who died.”

  He knelt beside her and grasped her hands. “Don’t think about it.”

  “I have thought of nothing else all this time. You both could have been killed.”

  “The world is such an uncertain place. Any of us could be gone at any moment.”

  She choked out a laugh. “Is that supposed to console me, that we are all at risk?”

  “I’m not much good at comforting people.” He rubbed his rough palm over her hands. “What we have to do is be grateful for what we have.”

  “You mean the time we have left? But we have lost too much. I can’t make myself go back to how it was then.” She did want to turn the clock back but she had endured much these last three years, and learned much. She was a stronger person now.

  Stuart leaned toward her. “Then don’t look back. Think only about going forward.”

  “To what? I see nothing in the future but a blank wall.”

  “A life for the two of us.” He raised his hands to cradle her face and wipe the last of her tears away. “I have been up against this blank wall you speak of many times in the last three years. It will not last. You will come back from this and be your old self again.”

  She was amazed that tears came for joy and despair. She did not want to dash his hopes again but she could not think of herself right now when Lucinda was in such a crisis. “Stuart, how can I even consider the future until we are finished with this mess of a holiday? And we are still in mourning.”

  “If no one married who had lost someone, there would be precious few weddings in all of England.”

  She shook her head and escaped his hands. “I don’t care how others deal with it. I can take no joy from anything right now, perhaps never.”

  “And yet you were laughing just a moment ago.”

  “I know. Even that feels like a betrayal. I’m sorry, Stuart. Don’t speak of this again.” She got up and left him kneeling by the sofa.

  * * * * *

  Patience was doubly worried when Lucinda requested a tray in her room rather than joining the family for luncheon. Perhaps she had really loved Jack. If so she must be in agony.

  When Stuart seated Patience at the table, Thurston rounded on him. “See what you have caused by taking over here?” the man accused. “Lucinda is pining and won’t even let my wife in to see her.”

  “Lucinda is grieving as befits a widow,” Stuart said. “I suggest you give her the peace to do it.”

  “This isn’t like her,” Mr. Thurston said.

  “She has never been a widow before,” Patience replied.

  “It’s no use,” his wife said as she swept into the room. “She wants to be alone. She promised to join us for dinner.”

  “And where is my son Samuel?” Mr. Thurston demanded, pounding the table.

  Stuart must have assumed it was a rhetorical question and just stared at him.

  “He promised to be here.”

  Patience’s mother looked helplessly around the table as though someone must answer his ridiculous demand. “Perhaps the roads and this terrible fog and rain could explain his delay. I know my poor brother Percy does not travel well in this weather.”

  Patience nodded and applied herself to the leek soup, which was their cook’s recipe. But the bread and butter were from Greenways. It was pleasant for once to not worry over every detail of a meal. If she was to marry Stuart someday, would her life be so carefree?

  She dared not even think about that now. She was unhappy and must stay unhappy to be faithful to Jack’s memory. Such awful things she had said to him before he left. She would never forgive herself. She only hoped Jack had forgiven her at some point in the years he was gone.

  His letters to her had been busy and jocund, with no hint of resentment. Hers had been dutiful and forlorn in spite of her efforts to enliven them.

  “I say, Miss Mayhew, why do you think Lucinda has locked herself away from us?” Mr. Thurston stared at her, his intense gaze bringing her back to the reality of their situation.

  “You may as well tell them,” Stuart said.

  “Jack’s trunk arrived from the Peninsula. She wants to go through his things.”

  “Oh, that is just terrible.” Mrs. Thurston clapped her spoon down on the white tablecloth, leaving a stain. “You left her alone with that?”

  “It was her choice,” Stuart said, “and her right as his wife.”

  “But she might fall into a decline,” her mother said.

  “Would you please stop treating her like a child?” Patience pleaded. “Lucinda is a person of strength. She is a woman and a mother. She has every right to be alone with her grief. That’s how I would want it.”

  “Well, really, such an outburst,” Thurston said. “What do you know about it?”

  Stuart grabbed the man’s hand as he reached for the wine decanter. “You seem to have forgotten that Patience is Jack’s sister.”

  “I think I need to go to my chamber.” Mrs. Thurston waited for someone to try to stop her and when they did not, she rose and huffed her way out of the room.

  Stuart released the subdued Thurston and looked across at Patience. She could not help but smile sadly at him. Between them they had defeated the Thurstons. They made a great team.

  * * * * *

  After luncheon, Stuart met Patience in the succession house to count the number of glass panes they needed to order. “I’m glad you stood up to them,” he said as he craned his neck to count his side.

  The succession house w
as attached to the main house via a passage coming out the back door, but the large glass-paned room had fallen into such disrepair the last few years that it was little used for either growing vegetables out of season or sitting for pleasure.

  “Better that than have them destroy my composure at every meal.”

  “What you said, that you would rather be alone with your grief. Were you talking about Jack?”

  She wrote something down with the stub of a pencil and looked at him. “No, I was speaking of you. I gave you up for dead when you left and mourned you for all this time.”

  He froze and gaped at her. “But I wrote to you. You knew I was alive.”

  “Yes, each letter resurrected you for a few moments but well I knew you could have died as soon as you’d penned it and I might not get any more.”

  “I never thought of it that way. I’m so sorry. I should have written more often.”

  “It would not have helped.” She closed her eyes and he thought he saw a tear.

  Had she mourned for him as though she were his wife? Then why did the idea of marriage to him now seem so foreign to her?

  “Is that what this is all about? You think of me as dead?”

  “I’m not sure. I think of who we were then as dead. I think of our love as dead.” Her voice was pregnant with tears. He was still staring at her in disbelief when she finally said, “I make it forty-two.”

  He blinked and swallowed. “Forty-five on my side. Let’s order an even hundred. We’ll start some of the men working on them when it gets a little warmer. We’ll also bring a load of coal from the small mine on the hill at Greenways so you can start growing things in here again.”

  “I can recall winters when we barely needed a fire. Now it seems as though we are locked in perpetual winter, never to see the sun again.” She pulled her pelisse closer about herself and stared at the leaden sky.

  He took her hand in his. “It will warm up again. Crops will grow. The sun will come back. Christmas is a promise of that. The days will get longer by minutes each time the sun rises and it will be spring before you know it.”