by Edith Layton
“The mistress’ll see y’ now, yer grace.”
It was a late winter’s afternoon, but the bedchamber was dim as dawn; he could just make out Clarissa’s rounded form in the center of her bed. As he approached, she turned on her side, reached out, and pulled a cord to draw the heavy draperies away from the windows. Then she lay back again, grinning. He stopped in his tracks, just as she’d wished.
She was completely bare, save for the huge, wide green riband which was wrapped criss-cross around her, tied up beneath her bottom, and resolved in a huge bow beneath her breasts.
“Happy Christmas!” she caroled.
But then she frowned, because he didn’t roar with laughter, he simply stood and looked at her, without so much as a glint of humor in those light gray eyes. A moment later there was amusement there, but it was rueful, not riotous. She pouted—every observable bit of her. There must have been, he thought, a chill in the room.
“I didn’t think you’d be so prim, your grace,” she complained. “I thought you’d like my Christmas present to you.”
“Original,” he said wryly.
She had the grace to blush, everywhere.
“Oh, so you’ve heard,” she said. “But it’s all the rage. Eva Prentice thought it up, or so she says, and it sounded so amusing…everyone’s doing it.”
“How nice to be in the vanguard,” the duke commented. “There’ll be a shortage of ribands before you know it,” he observed dryly, while nevertheless he began to shrug out of his tight-fitting jacket.
“There’s truth!” she said, stroking her bow pridefully. “I had to fight like the devil to get this much! Now there’s only black left anywhere in the shops, and that’s hardly Christmasy, is it?”
“Hardly,” he agreed, as he took the drapery pull and dragged the curtains back across the windows, so it would appear he couldn’t see as well as he did, before he bent to her where she lay, plump, rosy, blushing, very like the other plaything he’d lately bought—except, he noted with scrupulous fairness, her eyes opened and closed.
He gave her what she’d thought he wanted, and after, gave her what she wanted more, and to her credit, she exclaimed as prettily over the bracelet as she did over his attentions. If he thought there was more honesty in her gasps over the second gift, he was courteous enough not to mention it—or the fact that her gift to him had been an insult to him. Because she’d never understand that it was the conceit that their arrangement was different that had made it bearable to him. And he was gracious enough not to tell her he wouldn’t be back when he left her, soon after. Because though he’d be generous in his farewell gift, it would be no kindness to tell her he’d decided this was to be his last farewell to her. At least, he reckoned wryly, not now, at this joyous season.
*
The town house was filled, so stuffed with guests that if another was admitted, the duke thought, someone present would have to climb out the windows to make room. The thought entertained him, and it was as well, because little else about the affair did.
“My mistake,” he admitted to Lord Beverly as they stood at the sidelines and sipped punch as the other guests prodded and inched their way into the thicket of guests thronging the salon. “Our hostess, the Incomparable, asked me to a small ‘do’ here tonight, and like an ass, I believed her.”
Lord Beverly looked puzzled, as he often did.
“What mistake?” he asked, “It’s small enough, only four musicians, they haven’t opened the ballroom, I suppose there’s not even a dinner on tap.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there isn’t any air, either,” the duke commented. Looking for his hostess and not seeing her, he asked, “Bev, do me a favor. If you ever see her tonight, pay my respects, and say that like a good wife, I’d a headache and had to say good night before the fun began.”
But no sooner had the duke begun to edge his way to the door than he heard a clear and merry voice call to him, and turning, found the Incomparable herself at his elbow, her eyes twinkling up at him almost as much as all the brilliants that were sewn on her white gown did in the candlelight.
“Fie, sir!” she cried, “stealing away so soon? Why you haven’t had a dance with me yet!”
“Not surprising,” he answered, looking down into her clear blue eyes with amusement, “since I could scarcely ask you to twirl on a tabletop with me.”
She tapped him with her fan. It was a bold gesture for so young a chit, but she was Society’s darling this Season and could do anything, within reason, and be forgiven it. It was just that impudent air that had attracted him when he’d first seen her a few weeks ago. It was that insouciance that made him call on her again, and accounted for his presence yet again tonight. Blue-eyed blond little ladies with engaging dimples were delightful stuff, but fairly commonplace. Most maidens her age interested him about as much as his niece did in conversation, and if they were socially correct maidens, had little else to offer him. He was only a decade older than the misses making their debuts, but in the common run of things, felt it as a century. But so far, at least, he’d found this Incomparable to be uncommon.
Still, he was nine-and-twenty, and unwed, because he was as careful of where he gave his heart as where he gave his word. And that, unfashionably enough, was his goal: to marry where his heart lay, and he was wealthy enough to be that eccentric. He knew he was considered a great catch, but didn’t care to be caught so much as enticed, or want to be captured so much as captivated. He’d many women friends, and many lovers, but never any who’d been enough of both. He sought a kindred spirit, a matching wit, a companion as much as a coquette. Most of all, he wished to be cared for as deeply as he was prepared to care. He’d always thought he’d know at once if he met the right female, but he hadn’t, not even a long while after “at once.” For some reason, it had never happened. The Incomparable had certainly caught his attention, though. He’d seen the charming little rogue a total of six times, never entirely alone, or even partially alone for longer than the correct half hour call or interminable country dance. He was intrigued, and his bachelorhood weighed heavily upon him, especially tonight. But it was early days, he reminded himself as he smiled down at her, although the rest of the days he could foresee looked bright.
“Papa’s going to open the ballroom in a moment,” she said merrily. “The decorations are so fine we wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Ah, drama,” the duke said, nodding, as greatly bold, his hostess asked, tossing her fair head back to look him in the eyes, “And shall you have the first waltz with me?”
He didn’t hesitate. His training as a foreign agent stood him in good stead, as ever.
“Ah, too much drama for me,” he said with mirth he didn’t feel. “Your other suitors would be at me with challenges to appear at dawn. And I’m such a late sleeper. Not to mention what Papa would say. My dear, only your papa, or your fiancé, should have that honor.”
“I know,” she said.
Not so uncommon, after all, he thought, with as much sorrow as shock. But he did cast aside his intention of leaving and engage to have the second waltz with her.
When the ballroom doors were flung open, the company could see the boughs of holly and sheafs of pine draped everywhere about the room. Mistletoe hung from the great chandelier and huge yule logs blazed in both fireplaces. The tables were garnished with evergreens and weighted with punchbowls hissing with hot crabapples.
As the duke bowed before his hostess before the second waltz, she, saucy to the last, said with only a trace of chagrin to belie her twinkling eyes, “We rushed the season a little, I suppose, but isn’t it delightful?”
“Delightful,” he agreed.
They spun about the room gracefully, the tall, serene, gray-haired gentleman and the lovely, lively little blond lady, and not a few romantics sighed, even as some of the unwed young ladies and ardent young gentlemen hissed as much as the crabapples did at the sight of them together.
But, “In another moment it would h
ave looked like wrestling, not waltzing,” the duke murmured when Lord Beverly trailed after him to the anteroom after the dance was done to ask why he was leaving so early.
“You’ve no idea how exhausting it is to waltz around a room avoiding the chandelier as if it dripped henbane, not mistletoe,” the duke said softly. “Especially when your partner is determined to steer you beneath it,” he added as he put on his hat.
And muttering something about “Papa’s with rings and preachers at the ready,” he marched off into the night, less in love with the season than ever, and slightly bilious from the scent of pine.
*
The Duke of Austell’s study was stocked with such esoteric treasures it looked like an Aladdin’s cave only to a connoisseur. The faded rose color, intricately designed carpet beneath his slippers was comfortable enough to the feet, but would catch the eye, and then the breath, only of someone able to recognize its age and rarity. Similarly, the bit of statue on his mantel—the athlete sadly lacking a nose—would look as no-account as Lord Beverly once proclaimed it to anyone who didn’t know how greatly daring it was for the duke to have it out in plain sight, not covered by glass or protected by a museum guard. Just as the jolly Dutch gent in the painting over the mantel, the landscape mounted by the window, the etchings near the door, the various knickknacks, the vase atop the bookcase, not to mention the contents of the overflowing bookshelves, would help present a picture of a comfortable well-lived-in library to most; a glittering hoard only to a select few astute others.
But now, as he sat in his favorite chair and sipped brandy, the Duke of Austell looked at the room filled with accumulated treasures and felt like a dragon he’d once read about in an old nursery tale: like an ancient and antiquated hermit creature gloating over his solitary treasure, which was actually useless to him because he’d love for nothing else in his scaly and hardened old heart.
All the objects were things he’d badly wanted in his time. Now that he had them, they did give him pleasure. Yet now, too, it seemed not half enough pleasure to show for his almost thirty years on the planet. Reasonable, he thought on a sigh, staring into the fire—and inevitable, he realized at length. It was the season, of course. A new year was approaching, and no matter how caricaturists delighted in personifying them, they were never innocent infants. No, new years were accountants: dry and demanding, bustling in armed with ledgers and papers, sums and statements of losses, projected earnings, and reminders of accounts long past due. Just as Christmas, he thought, rising and going to his desk, arrived with nursery rhymes in its mouth and childhood in its eyes.
That must have been why he found himself searching for his oldest, chiefest treasure in his desk drawer. Finding it immediately, although he hadn’t brought it to light in years, he carried it to the firelight and inspected it as he turned it round and round in his long, slim fingers. It wasn’t worth much really—only more to him, he realized suddenly, than any other object in the room.
Randall. It was that—the recent thought of his best and boyhood companion—that had made him unearth it. For it was Randall’s grandfather who’d brought it back from his travels on the Continent that long-ago season. One for each boy, for such faithful companions should have identical gifts for Christmas, Randall’s grandfather had said. It had been a wondrous thing then, not the least wonder of it was that he still had it, almost four-and-twenty Christmases later.
It was an apple-sized thick glass globe mounted on a stout wood pedestal, and in it, a scene of Christmas. Within its glass walls it housed a minute winding road that ran through a tiny, perfect town, where a team of little horses pulled a miniature sleigh peopled by a man, a woman, and two even more infinitesimally detailed children. And when he turned the globe upside down, a swirling blizzard was created in the glass.
When he’d been young, he’d gazed into the globe for hours—then he could almost hear the sleighbells, the shushing of the runners rushing over the snow, and the laughter—he could have sworn he’d heard the laughter then. Because the little figures wore such jolly smiles it was hard to remember they were painted on to last through their eternal winter. The tiny gentleman was fair as ice, the little smiling lady had honey-brown tresses beneath her gay bonnet, the merry children were swathed in winter clothing. When he’d been a boy he’d imagined himself one of the children. Now, as the snow fell again, settling on the driver’s hat and hair, he saw that it was the gentleman who was very like him.
Everything else was changed too, the years had seen to that. The globe had a chip in the heavy glass at the top to show where a careless maid had dropped it, and myriad scratches drew a fine veil over all the scene. Well, after all, he thought, it had been packed and moved so many times since it and he were young—traveling with him from home to school to university and back. Somehow, though so much else had been lost, it had made the journey to his adulthood. Now, too, it could be seen that the snow floated in water, because the liquid had gotten cloudy—perhaps the chunks of snow had bled into it, perhaps it was all decomposing with age. The wooden mounting was nicked and scraped; it was a wonder he could still see the scene in all its detail, and now he wondered how much was real and how much was memory that he saw.
He’d studied it often enough in his youth. It had been his talisman when he’d been sent away to school: better to stare into it than to give way to shameful tears beneath the covers on those first sleepless nights. And when his father had died, and again, so soon after, when his mama had married that oaf… Nevertheless, he thought, shaking off those memories, even in placid times it had always exerted a powerful hold on him, even when he’d grown old enough to not be able to forget the thick glass walls holding the perfect scene within, and himself, without.
As the duke watched the grayish snow tumble over the tiny, silent scene in the clouded globe, he decided that it was more than the fact that it had reminded him of home, his friend Randall, and other comforting things. It was that then, and always after, it seemed to signify everything he wanted and would never have again: security, a family, more than that—a kind of joyous love that was Christmas itself personified. Or so, at least, he’d thought of it then, when he’d been, after all, so very young.
Which was odd, because he’d never had what this globe always seemed to tell him he’d lost. His father and mother had never been so casual with each other as this tiny couple were, he’d no such commonality with either sister, nor ever seen exactly such a quaint little Tudor-styled town or driven such a sleigh—or actually, wanted to except in his imagination in those long lost lonely days.
Before that void in which he’d grown to manhood, it had been Randall and Maryellen Tanner and himself, three neighbor children with a world to explore together whenever they could steal away from the enemy—the adults who tried to bind them to propriety, to lessons, and to manners. Then, Christmas had been a pleasure almost beyond that which a child could hold, with all of them sharing all their bounty, as they did in summer, autumn, and spring. Perhaps if Maryellen had survived until adulthood, he thought…before he buried the thought firmly and with almost as much sorrow as he’d felt when she’d been interred, those many years ago, so long before he’d neared his majority.
He’d survived it all, all these years, just as the globe had done, only perhaps not even so well, he thought wryly: separation, schooling, the losses—of his father and so, in a sense, of his mother, and perhaps most keenly, since it was the most recent, that of his friend, Randall. But really, it was almost beyond comprehension, how such a quicksilver boy could grow so quickly into a clever young man, marry a bright-eyed girl, produce a son, and then perish so suddenly, falling in battle as swiftly as he’d raced through his bright young life. And even so, for all it still stung, Randall had had the greater losses in his brief life, even before he’d lost his own. For his devoted grandfather had gone before him, his parents long before that, his wife had gone to childbirth…
The duke shook his head, carried the globe back to the de
sk, and put it back deep in the drawer. Christmas was no time for ghosts.
Now only the boy was left. And to him. The legalities had finally ground to a halt. The distant maternal aunt had capitulated, the cousin in the colonies had signed the papers. As Randall’s will stipulated: young Randall junior had been left to the Duke of Austell. He’d recently been appointed the child’s guardian. And so the child, at almost eight years old, almost the same age his father had been when he’d met Cyril Hampton, later to become Duke of Austell, would finally meet him.
The boy lived somewhere in Kent, in his late maternal grandparents’ house, with a full staff of servants and a governess. He’d go to boarding school as soon as his fragile health permitted, but that wouldn’t be until his guardian was entirely convinced that he was sound, because the governess had written of a fragile constitution. There was no chance the duke would jeopardize this last mortal scrap of evidence that his friend had existed. The boy was to be seen by a panel of physicians when he arrived in London. That would be this very week. It would be, in fact, tomorrow. Then, if the child’s health permitted, he’d escort the boy on a round of pleasure in London before he sent him home again, to be sure of his hardihood, until the autumn term began.
And then, of course, the duke thought on a grimace as he settled back in his chair, he’d be free to pursue his own round of pleasure. He’d been invited to fetes in town and at the country homes of all his peers, all his good friends: Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay, the Baron Daventry, the Marquess Severne, and a great many others. He’d been asked to grace noble piles as well as simple country estates this season, for if ever a man could be said to have friends, he did. But those fellows were all married, and some had children. Although he enjoyed their company and that of their wives, and was sure he’d dote on their children, he was, after all, not really the elderly gent he felt he was tonight, and would prefer a livelier holiday.
