A Regency Yuletide

by Sharon Sobel

  Certainly, the outdoors seemed to be safe from their influence. Though a fine layer of snow covered the estate, the last day of the year dawned splendid and bright. Icicles broke off the window ledges and a great avalanche of ice tumbled off the roof and into the kitchen garden. Uncle Michael, fearing for the safety of his glass orangery and his guests, spent much of the day outdoors, calling out orders to his gardeners and anyone else who offered help. One man slipped on the ice and hurt his wrist. Another was struck by an icicle, which missed doing any serious harm by lodging in the collar of his coat. Nathaniel, not wanting to add any credence to Emma’s reputation, stayed safely within doors.

  And yet, had he not heard that one of her suitors was killed in the very church of which he was vicar? She would likely tell him that he was not safe anywhere and he might as well be with his uncle, barking directions as to the disposition of fallen branches and cleared snow.

  But he had other reasons for staying within and not overly exerting himself this day. He was not truly confident about his ability to deport himself with any degree of grace at a ball. In fact, if Miss Cartwell had not pressed the point, he would not have agreed to dance at all this night.

  But then, when Emma returned to his side and spoke to him of appropriate behavior, and seduced him with nothing more than a few words and a glimpse of her lovely breasts, he was incapable of speaking anything but nonsense. He could recall nothing of what he had said, but he was fairly certain he uttered something about a new year and a promise to dance with her this eve.

  It was a bad business. But, in truth, he did not know how else she might be delivered into his embrace without excuses or arguments.

  EMMA HAD BEEN kept in seclusion on this last day of the year, as if she were a bride and ought not allow her groom to catch a glimpse of her. Now she sat patiently on her low chair as a maid managed to work each hair on her head into an artfully arranged crown of curls, but her hands revealed how nervous she actually felt. There was no groom, and most likely would never be one, but tonight she would be with her own Nathaniel. Surely she had every right to claim him—as her oldest friend, her dearest friend. And tonight they would dance.

  She hoped they would dance. She did not misunderstood his words to Miss Cartwell, nor was she blind to the silent struggle he endured each time he walked too rigorously or went up or down the stairs. He was not the helpless cripple she feared he might be, but neither was he in full health. He might very well falter on the twists and turns of a reel, though he might do fine with her support in a waltz.

  She would very much enjoy a waltz with him.

  “You need not worry yourself about the ball, Miss Partrick,” said the maid. “His lordship and ladyship have not rested all day, and the great hall is a piece of perfection.”

  “Whyever do you suppose I am worried, Jane? My aunt is in her element, planning all sorts of things and ordering people about. I believe Lord Michael is very much the same.”

  “Then perhaps you doubt my ability to dress you hair, Miss Partrick?” She met Emma’s eyes in the small mirror of the dressing table. “You have nearly shredded your handkerchief to bits.”

  Emma looked down into her lap, feeling the pull of Jane’s fingers on her hair, and seeing the bit of lace that she had worried into a damp rag. Really, it was just a ball, and Nathaniel was just an old friend.

  But it was not, and he was not. He risked everything by dancing with her tonight, and she could not bear the thought of causing him pain. He already suffered too much.

  And she loved him too much.

  “Will you allow me to braid a sprig of greenery in with the pearls? It will suit your green gown to perfection.” Jane held up a feathery twig of pine, crushing the needles to release the sweet aromatic oils.

  “I hope I will not attract small birds and squirrels.”

  “I think you will attract many dance partners, Miss Partrick,” Jane said sagely.

  “I only wish to attract one,” Emma murmured to herself.

  But Jane heard, and nodded. “And he has been roaming the house all day, waiting for you.”

  Emma would have liked to hear who “he” was, hoping it was not the vicar’s homely nephew, but knew better than to ask.

  “And the musicians have already started to play, so we ought not keep him waiting,” said Jane, as she tucked up the last stray hairs. She went to the bed, where Emma’s lovely velvet gown was laid out, and arranged it on the rug so that Emma might step into its soft folds.

  No, she was certainly not a bride this night, she thought as the gown was pulled up the length of her body, and fastened along the back. There was nothing demure about green velvet shot through with threads of gold. And there was nothing virginal about the way in which the fabric clung to her curves.

  She pulled at the lace-edged bodice. “I have changed my mind, for this will not do. I chose to wear velvet to keep myself warm on this winter night. I fear too much skin is revealed here.”

  Jane pulled her hand away and smoothed down the lace. “You will be warm enough, particularly under the gaze of every man in the ballroom. It is not too much with a complexion such as yours.”

  Emma flushed right down to her toes and knew Jane was correct; just now she thought she would incinerate.

  The journey through the cool corridors did little to soothe her nerves or her flesh, as she walked unaccompanied down the stairs and into the main foyer, where the guests were assembling. Though the master’s betrothal was to be announced to the company this night, she doubted there would be any surprise, as Aunt Daisy stood at Lord Michael’s side, welcoming everyone in out of the cold. The music had already begun, but the foyer remained a crush, as well-wishers greeted each other and introduced family and friends who had joined them for the holidays. Everyone seemed connected to another, but for Emma, who stood like an island in this sea of congeniality.

  Suddenly, the sea parted, and there was Nathaniel. He saw her at once—indeed, he might have been watching her all the while—and then he pushed himself off the column against which he leaned and started towards her. He stood tall and straight, and moved easily through the crowd, though he did not have his cane. On the lapel of his black wool jacket, he wore a sprig of pine.

  “Emma,” was all he said, but it was enough to make her feel there was no one else in the crowded hall.

  “Nathaniel.”

  She accepted his arm as she turned to walk wordlessly with him to the ballroom, moving into the brighter light and musical harmonies.

  “In a gown such as this, you will put the tree sprites to shame,” he said. “They will be utterly disarmed, as am I.”

  She looked up at him. “That is a very odd choice of words, Nathaniel. Certainly, you are not planning any mischief this night.”

  And yet, judging by his expression, he did indeed intend mischief. She was not so naïve as to be unaware of what he was thinking. Nor was she so missish to not think it might be mischief of a most pleasurable sort.

  “Ah, here are our aunt and uncle,” he said evasively. “I believe the ball is about to formally begin.”

  Lord Michael found his place in the center of the ballroom and beckoned the servants to deliver glasses of champagne to all the guests. Aunt Daisy stood close, her bright eyes glistening and her smile radiant. If there was anyone present who doubted what Lord Michael was about to announce, the expression on her aunt’s face would reveal all.

  “Welcome, friends, to Pencliff . It has been many years . . .”

  It had been many years. She had known Nathaniel nearly all her life, and the recent years of separation did little to make them strangers to each other. She knew what pleased him, what bored him, what he might be thinking to be on display at his uncle’s ball. But there were parts of him yet to discover, the changes inflicted by nature and happenstance that made him the man he now was. Though t
he room was crowded and quite warm, she shivered.

  “. . . and the new year shall be additionally blessed because a most excellent lady has consented . . .”

  Nathaniel’s arm tightened as he drew Emma closer.

  “. . . we wish you to join us at our marriage . . .”

  Nathaniel was the first to raise the cheer, though possibly the last to drink the toast. Instead, he turned Emma in his arms and kissed her.

  She pulled away, though very gently. “Nathaniel! What will people think?”

  “They will think we are to be cousins, just as they will when we take our places next to Uncle Michael and Aunt Daisy on the dance floor. Drink your sherry, my dear, for the music has already begun.” He started to draw her through the crowd.

  “Are you quite sure?” she asked, thinking only of his knee.

  “That we are to be cousins? No. I actually do not know what will be the formal state of our relations, but I doubt anyone else cares overmuch.” He took Emma’s untouched glass from her hand and delivered it and his own to a servant. “They did not seem concerned about it when we swam together in the river, or looked for fossils on the cliffs.”

  Emma laughed, wondering how she had forgotten those things.

  “But we are not children anymore and ought not do those things,” she reminded him, after greeting a few of the guests who opened a path for them. They stood at the edge of the floor, watching their aunt and uncle dance until Lord Michael beckoned they join them.

  “It is just as well,” Nathaniel said, putting his large hand on her waist and marking the very moment in the melody when it was time to join in. “Because I have learned about other things in the years since I saw you last, and would enjoy teaching them to you.”

  HE WAS A FOOL to allow himself to believe his damned knee would follow his inclinations, simply because he willed it to be so. He was scarcely into the third dance when he felt himself falter, though he managed to remain upright and not disgrace himself. Miss Eveline Porter, the very young granddaughter of the local squire, seemed oblivious or indifferent, or just too pleased with herself for snagging the heir to Pencliff to partner her in a contra dance. She was a pretty little thing, just the sort of lady someone like Peter Milton would finally decide to marry.

  But she had nothing to say to him, either before the dance or as they now departed the dance floor, and a woman who lacked conversation was not for him.

  “Dear Miss Porter,” said Emma, who suddenly appeared at their side. “It is so good to see you. Is your brother returned from India?”

  Miss Porter murmured something as she patted down her hair.

  “And Mr. Evander. I hope you have not forgotten your promise to dance this reel with me,” Emma said and smiled so broadly that for the first time he noticed a small twist in one of her lower teeth. He wondered if he was responsible, for he remembered something about a ball thrown too hard and smashing into her jaw, and much blood and tears. Emma turned her gaze on Miss Porter, who looked like a child next to her.

  But she was clearly a child with some attractions, for a young man quickly asked to partner her for the reel. She did not hesitate to accept, and seemed happy to escape.

  “Did I indeed promise such a thing?” Nathaniel asked Emma when they were alone.

  “Of course you did not. We already shared two dances, and to do more would invite speculation, despite your insistence that we are happily related as cousins.” Her smile vanished. “You looked positively green out there, and I thought I should rescue you.”

  He needed rescuing, to be sure, but he hated the fact it was so obvious to her.

  “Perhaps it is because of this bit of greenery on my jacket. My man seemed quite insistent about it, but I am sure it does not suit me.”

  Emma put up her hand to her dark curls and he saw she wore a similar sprig. “It does suit you,” she said. “It suits you a good deal more than dancing for a full hour without rest.”

  “My dear, you are being overly solicitous. Are you perhaps concerned that the rumors about your deadly powers will be renewed if something should happen to me tonight?”

  It was a stupid thing to say; he saw that at once. Emma turned very pale before turning away from him altogether.

  “Emma,” he began, but she was through the crowd, ignoring those who greeted her on her way. “Emma.”

  He did not, could not, catch up with her, until she was out of the ballroom and leaning against one of the carved columns in the foyer. Her breast rose and fell, and she seemed to be gasping for air.

  “Emma,” he said, fairly breathless as well. “I thought we already settled this business between us. I only teased you. Do we not know each other well enough for that? Can we not put it to rest?”

  “But I cannot think of it with any good humor, nor could I ever. It is not my reputation, for I had little enough to lose, but what of the lives of three men? Beaconstone was healthy and hardy before he met me, and then died of influenza. Sir Dennis perished under the fallen ceiling of his own church.”

  “And Fitzhugh drank himself into a stupor and fell into the Thames,” Nathaniel said impatiently. “Did Beaconstone catch his illness from you?”

  “I do not see what it has to do with anything, but his mother was ill the week before him.” Emma sniffed and used the handkerchief he handed her.

  “Then I fail to see how you can be accused of anything other than the coincidence of bad luck.”

  She looked up at him, her face lovely even with a red nose and teary eyes. “And what about you?”

  “Surely you don’t think a two thousand year old Greek temple collapsed on me just because we knew each other once. I can scarcely claim to have been thinking about you before the accident, since we had not seen each other for years.”

  “And what now? Do you really think people will not notice every time you cough, or limp, or put your hand to your head?”

  “I rather think they will instead notice you at my side, instead of my normal human frailties.”

  He saw the slightest glimmer of a smile. “I cannot be at your side all the while, Nate.”

  “I do not see why not, Poppet.”

  The foyer was nearly empty, but there was no privacy while his uncle’s ball surged just footsteps away. Dinner would soon be served, and it was possible they would not be missed in the crush. It was also possible they would be missed. But nothing mattered except Emma and this moment and making her believe that what had befallen those other men had nothing to do with him and her.

  He took her hand and led her along the shadowed perimeter of the foyer, beyond the wooden columns, to the library. She followed him in silence, her hand trembling with either fear or excitement.

  The room was theirs, as it always was. The boughs of greenery looked a bit weary, but otherwise the library welcomed them with the scents of leather and smoke and the comfort of being surrounded by the wisdom of every generation that came before them. Nathaniel turned the key in the lock, and brought her to the ancient chaise, now covered with the oversized scarf she had made for him. It was large enough to use as a blanket and kept him warm when he read late into the night.

  He sat down upon it, and pulled off his dancing slippers.

  “What on earth are you doing, Nathaniel?” Emma asked.

  “You have bared your injuries to me. In fairness, I believe I should do the same.”

  “Nathaniel, please. It is not necessary.” She held her hands out to him. “I do not need to see them to know they are there. I believe you.”

  “Why, what is this? Surely you have seen me undressed before?”

  “You were ten years old. It is quite a different thing.”

  He studied her face and knew another moment of reckoning was upon them. “And you have been betrothed to three men. Surely you saw one or all of them undress
ed?”

  A log cracked in the fireplace, sending out a spray of sparks. Emma’s face appeared half in darkness, half in light, but her reluctance was plainly visible.

  “Then we will stop right now. I do not wish to do anything you will regret for the new year.”

  Something changed in her expression just then. “You said you would teach me things this night,” she insisted, sounding like the little girl he remembered.

  “I thought to build on what you already knew,’ he said, feeling his resolution faltering.

  She kneeled on the chaise beside him. “But that is just the point, Nathaniel. I only know what I read in books. I look at the statues you have sent home from Greece and Italy. But I want more than that, and I live with regret that I will never know the real thing. Now I do not know what I fear more—hurting you by loving you, or never knowing what it is to love you.”

  He pulled her down onto his lap and caressed the smooth skin of her throat. She raised her hand, making him think she would do the same to him, but instead she started to tug on the complicated series of knots that made up his necktie. His heart leaped in his chest and he knew this night would prove the answer to all his Christmas prayers.

  Chapter Four

  A COLLECTIVE shout and the chiming of the church bell awakened Emma from her sleep, but it was several moments before she realized where she was and with whom. She opened her eyes to see row after row of books, and she wondered if she might be in heaven. But then something sweet and pungent scratched her cheek and she reached beneath her face to pluck a sprig of pine needles. She remembered everything; indeed, she was in heaven, and it was Cornwall, and she was with Nathaniel. And after the things they did last night, she believed there could be no finer world than this one.

  Her lover, the man she knew all her life, faced her, his eyes shuttered closed, his breathing steady and strong. His bare chest was tanned, though she could see the V at his neck where his shirt was probably open in the hot Mediterranean sun. A jagged scar near one shoulder attested to acts of recklessness in his past. It had not healed cleanly but did not seem to threaten his health. Unless he was bothered by ladies who wished to follow its path with an inquisitive finger. She tried this and, indeed, it did not seem to bother him at all.