It's a Wonderful Regency Christmas

by Edith Layton

  “Come, cub,” the duke said a moment later, “what is it?”

  “It’s only,” Randall began, and flushed darkly before he said, in a rush, “that I’d thought I could go home.”

  “Oh,” the duke said softly as Miss Greer drew in a hissed breath at the boy’s presumption.

  That, of course, settled it.

  “Why, certainly, if you wish it,” the duke said.

  But Randall’s eyes were as clear-seeing as they were vulnerable, or else it was that he was especially sensitive to pain, his own and others’, just as his father had been.

  “I’d love to spend the holidays with you, sir,” Randall said, sincerity in his voice and face, “but Betsy and Molly, you see, we’d plans…and I don’t want to disappoint them….”

  “Those girls have got above themselves,” Miss Greer put in. “Of course, your guardian’s wishes come first.”

  “A gentleman’s word is his oath,” the duke said coldly. “If you’ve made plans, lad, they must be honored. A gentleman’s honor comes before all else,” he added as Miss Greer subsided, as much from his words and the tone of them as from the cutting glance she got from those steel-gray eyes. She was suddenly very glad she’d soon be leaving the duke’s employ.

  “I think it best you get to bed, lad,” the duke said more softly. “You’ll have to make the long ride to Kent in the morning, since Christmas is almost upon us.”

  “Would you like to come home with me?” Randall asked suddenly.

  “No thank you,” the duke said, more sharply than he’d intended, the thought of the boy’s pity staggeringly painful to him. “Never fear, I’ll hold holiday for you as well as myself.”

  “But you’ll come visit with me sometime?” Randall asked, his voice wavering a little.

  “Of course I shall,” his guardian answered, wishing the boy would get to bed.

  “I thought you would,” Randall answered with relief. “On one of your Progresses at least.

  The duke raised a slender silver brow. “One of my…‘progresses’?” he asked.

  “Yes. Molly was telling us how Queen Elizabeth used to make Progresses through the countryside, staying at one house and then the other as she traveled. She said the Queen fair beggared the Simpsons then, they had to entertain her so well. It was over three hundred years ago, and they still haven’t recovered, which is why Melissa Simpson had to marry the squire.… Anyway,” Randall said confidently, “I knew you’d find time when you made one of yours.”

  “Undoubtedly. Only, never fear, I don’t expect such lavish treatment,” the duke replied, smiling at the idea of his making a modern ducal “Progress,” even as his thoughts turned to the tutor, obviously sorely needed, that he’d get for the boy.

  He walked with Randall to his room, and intercepted a signal Miss Greer gave to the boy as they said good night.

  “Oh,” Randall said quietly, blushing. “I’d almost forgot.”

  He burrowed into a carpetbag by his bed and brought out a tissue-wrapped square, which he then presented to the duke with a bow.

  “Happy Christmas, sir,” he murmured.

  The duke unwrapped the package as Miss Greer nodded approval. He unearthed a leather shape, something like a square. Opening it, he discovered the interior to be red felt, boldly and very badly stitched to the leather.

  “Ah!” he said, “just what I wanted. Thank you, Randall.”

  “It’s a pen wiper,” Randall muttered, red-faced. “I made it.”

  “Remarkably fine,” the duke said, perjuring himself with ease. “Thank you. I’ll be sending your present ahead so you’ll have it at Christmas,” he invented rapidly, because he’d originally planned to buy the boy his gift after taking him to a few more shops so as to gauge what he wanted most. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning, before you leave.”

  He left Randall’s room, the pen wiper in his hand, wondering if he ought to go to his mistress’s, his flirt’s, or a friend’s house for the rest of the evening. Then he remembered his last encounter with his mistress, and why it was to have been his last one, and that his flirt had gone to the country for the holiday, just as all his best friends had done. Or were going to do.

  But he could go gaming at any one of a number of amusing hells, or go to the theater, or the Opera, or to his club, or to any number of parties, or to a house of pleasure, or he could please himself by just staying at home. The world was his, he was entirely free, and as ever, there were no end of delicious choices available to him. He settled himself in his chair in his study as he debated the matter. Instead he found himself making an entirely different decision.

  It would be the Incomparable’s house party for Christmas, then. He’d be damned if he’d sit alone like this every night of Christmas week, picking and choosing between pleasures. Yes, he’d take the Incomparable’s house, and then maybe her hand, and then perhaps in time he’d have a houseful of young fellows like Randall, but ones who’d wish to pass the holiday with him….

  Bedamned to the holiday! Bedamned to Christmas, anyway, he thought, rising in agitation and going to stand in front of the fireplace. He put his arm on the mantel, and his face on his arm, and the heat from the fire matched that in his usually cool face. He’d been a fool, a great fool, and that was the worst sin his world acknowledged. And although no one but himself knew it, any more than they ever guessed at any of the emotions the fastidious, untouchable fellow most of them believed him to be experienced, he was as shamed as chagrined to realize what an idiot he’d been.

  He’d pranced and capered like an organ-grinder’s monkey, cavorting gracelessly to the music played: knuckles to the ground, a silly smile on his grinning face, dancing to the mad music of carols and hymns. And then he’d held out his hat and received rubbish for his efforts, or cruel rewards like heated pennies that burned his fingers when he touched them. All because he’d not missed a waltz to the music the world played at this holiday season.

  A present for the butler, and one for the housekeeper, oh and never forget the second footman, he mocked himself, or the kitchen skivvy, every last undermaid, and every maid underneath you in other ways too, your grace, for your mistress is decked with holly as well, although, as usual, it’s her palms that you’ll see stretched out to you. And be sure to give to every charity at this holy time, too, as well as to every niece and nephew and ward, and all in the spirit of the sacred season. And smile as you do.

  No, he wasn’t really the monkey, he thought bitterly, he’d only looked like one. It was the organ-grinder he resembled, working at some great, cumbersome, creaking machine that squealed and croaked as he kept turning the crank alone—he, the Duke of Austell, and his great useless Christmas machine. He gave and gave, until he didn’t know what else he could give; it seemed he’d given everything he owned, in time and money, heart and purse, and see what difference it made, and what he got from it.

  But what had he expected, after all? Some Christmas miracle, as in children’s stories? Some of the impossible peace and love they sang of endlessly at this passing season? A place in a perfect world under glass that never existed?

  He’d had such hopes…but they were no one’s fault but his own. It was the same every season, only this year he’d finally seen beneath the sham, because this year he’d had more, and different, higher hopes as well. He smiled sadly, admitting it at last. Those hopes had turned out to be like the wicked brother’s jewels in an old fairy tale he and Randall had once heard: jewels that had turned to water in a day. Because he’d won a boon that had come to nothing, after all. As few men before him had done, he had recaptured the past. He’d looked for his friend, and found him again, just as he’d been. The jest was that he himself was no longer the same. All the joy he’d anticipated had been watered down to fatherly affection. And that, not even returned. Time had come, and gone. And be damned to it, he thought.

  No more, never again, he decided with determination. He would become exactly what his face implied: cold, aloo
f, alone—he’d give nothing away…no, he thought wearily, no, not likely. Or necessary, or intelligent. There were too many people and causes he knew and admired, and it was never their fault that it wasn’t enough for him. Humanity amused rather than infuriated him. He might look like a cold, old miser, he thought, but he’d too much self-knowledge and not enough spite to portray one. And he knew, all too well, that he’d a spendthrift heart, for all it had not bought him anything to comfort him tonight.

  He’d been too preoccupied with his thoughts to hear the scratching at the door, but when it slowly swung open, he turned from the fire to see what disturbed his wretched reveries. The fire had dazzled his eyes, and so at first he saw the little figure in a nimbus of light, pure and blurred and blindingly bright as some heavenly visitation. Until the vision resolved itself into Randall, in a long white nightshirt, barefoot and hesitant, standing at the threshold, holding something in his hands before him.

  “Please,” Randall whispered, “may I come in? Before she discovers that I’ve come?”

  The appeal to thwart authority tickled him as much as it might have done all those years ago, and the duke moved swiftly, before he thought. He went across the room, scooped up the boy in his arms, and closed the door, before he carried him to a chair near the fire.

  “Your feet are ice,” he grumbled. “Little gamecock,” he added, as he swung into the chair and sat Randall on his lap and looked about for something to warm the boy’s blue-tinged toes with, before he discovered he could hold both icy cold feet in one large warm hand.

  “Slippers would have made more noise on the stair,” Randall explained.

  “Just so,” the duke admitted.

  “The pen wiper was dreadful,” Randall said ruefully. “No, you see I knew it was. She made me make it. I can’t sew,” he said.

  “I’d never have guessed,” the duke said.

  There was a silence…before they both snorted, and giggled, and then laughed together, before they stopped and looked up guiltily. The duke didn’t have to answer to any woman on the earth, much less Miss Greer; he was of age, titled, and richer than he knew. But he seemed to have forgotten that as they sat close and spoke quietly as conspirators. It felt very right, and much better than he’d felt alone, a moment before.

  “I’d have hated to get such a Christmas present,” Randall finally went on, “and so I told her. But she insisted,” he said glumly.

  “Betsy said I ought to buy you another gift, a secret gift, in the village,” Randall said softly, “but it’s a very little village, you see, and I couldn’t find anything a duke wouldn’t have at least two of, and so Betsy agreed, too. Then Molly said I might give you something I already owned. Something I loved, because that would be the greatest gift anyone could get from another, after all. In that case, Betsy thought it should be Ruffles. But I didn’t think you’d want a dog like him in London, would you?” he asked a trifle anxiously. “He’s very large, and not very well-trained, but he’s very handsome, if you enjoy fur,” he added fairly.

  It was difficult to remain straight-faced at such close quarters, but the Duke of Austell was not known as a cool customer for no reason. Once he’d told a certain famously clever lady at even closer quarters that he did, indeed, admire her mind as much as her body. It was even more difficult to dissemble now, but he contrived.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think I would want Ruffles. I like dogs very well, but—London, after all.” He felt the sigh of relief as it vibrated through the thin frame perched on his lap.

  “Sometimes,” the duke said thoughtfully, “what one most loves can be something someone else mightn’t value as much. Next to most can do in such cases.”

  “Just what Molly said,” Randall breathed with pleasure. “So, here, please, sir,” he said, proffering the burden he carried. “This is really what I’d like you to have for this Christmas. I thought about it a great deal. My father’s letters spoke of you a great deal, too. It isn’t new, but it’s very valuable—at least to me. Happy Christmas, sir,” he said shyly as the duke took the parcel held between them both and unwrapped it. And then sat silent, staring at what he held.

  “Ah, no, lad,” he said, in a strangely muffled voice. “It’s too valuable to give away, I think.”

  “No, please,” Randall said seriously, as the duke’s slender hand shook and some of the snow began to drift down in the scene in the globe. “It was my father’s, and I know he’d want you to have it now too. It’s great fun to look in, and dream on, he said, and so it is. It’s very wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” the duke agreed before he lifted Randall from his lap, only to replace him in the chair as he arose and went to his desk.

  “But see,” he said when he came back to the chair and held out the other globe, twin to the one he’d been given, “your great-grandfather gave each of us one. Yours is in better condition,” he said ruefully, looking from his battered, chipped, cloudy scene to the clear one in the pristine glass globe Randall held, “but mine went with me on all of my travels. And yours has a dark-haired gentleman and a red-headed lady, very like your own parents were, my boy. Otherwise, they are the same. And as I loved to gaze into mine, so I think you ought to keep yours. So that you can always revisit that happy scene, in that altogether miraculously pretty place.”

  “But sir,” Randall said, smiling charmingly as he gazed up at the duke, whose eyes glittered silver as the falling snow in the globe in the rising and falling firelight, “I don’t need the globe to revisit that scene. I’ve a portrait of my mother and my father. And the village in the globe—why, aside from the smith’s, whose shop burned down and was rebuilt before I was born, it’s my own town, where I live. Exactly.”

  The duke stood still as the night around him and stared down at the boy and the glass globe.

  “Exactly?” he asked.

  *

  The driver, a fashionable gent, sawed at his reins and pulled his horses to a skidding stop as the sleigh flew by in front of him, crossing before him before it left the main road for a lane to the side.

  “Dashed—damned old fool!” he sputtered as he rose from his seat and shook his fist at the leaden sky.

  “Coming it too strong,” his friend, another exquisitely fashionable gentleman, said. “You was going too fast in all this snow, Jeremy, and you know it. Fellow’s got a sleigh, with bells all over it. We heard them a mile back, he was going like the wind, and you should have given way long since. Quite a dasher he was with, too,” he added, staring out longingly at the departing sleigh as it disappeared on the downside of the long hill.

  “How could you tell, if he was going so fast?” the driver asked, grumbling as he sat down again.

  “Never miss a stunner like that, ’less I was blind,” his friend vowed as he adjusted his gloves.

  “Old fool’s got her,” the driver mumbled as he sought to sort out the various reins clenched in his own left glove.

  “May be her grandfather,” his friend commented fairly.

  “Maybe you’re blind. He’d his arm around her. Money bags always gets fair lady, town and country,” he said angrily, remembering a certain ladybird of his who’d once flown away with a certain highly placed lord.

  “Mightn’t be so old,” his friend said fairly. “Look at Austell. Gray as a goose and he can go ten rounds with the Gentleman any day without puffing.”

  “Austell! Did you get a look at him?” the driver asked, wondering if that dashing lord had been the one to cut him off. If so, then it wouldn’t be such an insult to his driving.

  “Didn’t have a glance for the gent, think I’m dicked in the nob? What, look at him when she was there?” his friend asked wonderingly. “Anyway, no one knows where Austell is. The Incomparable’s mad as fire that he didn’t turn up at her house. Word has it she’s ready to accept anyone, for spite.”

  There was a silence. The two young exquisites looked at each other.

  “Right,” the driver said. “Dickie won’t
mind if we don’t show up at his place, will he? The Incomparable lives in Buckinghamshire, don’t she?”

  “Still,” his friend commented as the driver pulled a map from his greatcoat and perused it, “could have been Austell, couldn’t it?”

  “Here? In Nowhere? Be serious, will you, old chap?” the driver sneered. “With a parcel of kiddies in the sleigh, too?”

  “Kiddies?” his friend asked blankly.

  “Didn’t you hear them laughing?”

  *

  Their laughter rang out over the sound of the runners shushing as the sleigh traveled over the hard-packed snow.

  “I never knew what a treat this could be,” the driver cried, “but I always suspected it. Good Lord!” he said when he turned to see his companion’s reaction, “I’m a beast! You must be freezing! Here, I’ll slow down, the wind’s beginning to cut sharply, no sense in my adding to matters. We’re a ways from the village yet.”

  “I’m not cold,” the lady protested.

  “No, you always wear a red nose to go with your scarf,” the gentleman said, slowing the horses to a subdued trot as the children behind them wailed their disapproval.

  “Those who complain can always walk,” the gentleman offered casually, and the complaints quieted to mutters of disapproval, until the sounds of the bells on the harness drowned them out entirely.

  “And your hair is coming down, too,” the driver added as the lady giggled.

  “Very complimentary, your grace,” the lady said as she tried to tuck a strand of her honey-brown hair up under her bonnet.

  “Come, let’s have some fairness. You said my compliments were making you uneasy,” the Duke of Austell complained. “But nothing can dim your loveliness,” he said more gently, before, seeing her wind-blushed cheeks blush even more as she glanced away from his light, searching eyes, he relented, adding, “and that’s nothing but plain truth, Molly, my dear, so don’t nag at me for it.”

  The lady fell silent. She’d never met anyone like the duke in all of her twenty years, although she’d dreamed of him for almost every moment of them. As witty as he was kind, and as handsome as he was clever, she knew very well that he’d come for a visit like a Christmas angel, or any of the other miracles that supposedly could occur at this season. If country folk said that animals could talk on a Christmas eve, as on such a special evening as last night, why then, she thought, a gentleman like the duke could appear in their midst at this time of the long and rolling year as well. But the season would pass, he was all too real, and so he’d be gone soon. And so she’d enjoy every moment of this visit, and store it up to keep in her heart like a scene under glass, to warm her through each returning season. Because he’d leave soon, and she remembered it even as she reveled in his company. For there is no pleasure without the awareness of pain, she reminded herself sadly.