“Papa, you’ll recall I mentioned finding grounds for further discussion of Miss Blackshear’s prospects as a falconer.” Miss Sharp piped up with this before Andrew could quite get his cutting remark in order. “I learned a bit more from Mr. Blackshear on our trip to the mews. His sister’s husband-to-be doesn’t keep a bird, true enough, but the gentleman has hunted sometimes with friends. In particular, with a neighbor in their district who has his own mews.”
Andrew stared, and fought to keep from gaping outright. None of what she’d just said was true. Not the neighbor, not the husband-to-be’s hunting experience, and certainly not her having heard any such thing from him on their trip to the mews.
She sent him a quick smile and then returned her attention to her father. “I wonder if it wouldn’t be sufficient for Miss Blackshear to rely upon her husband for elementary knowledge, and to apply to this neighbor if any more challenging situations should arise.”
“Well, that does put a different complexion on things, though I must say I’m disappointed to hear that Miss Blackshear’s betrothed should have tried the sport and not become an aficionado.” The baron shoveled up a new forkful of peas. “A dog man, I suppose.”
Andrew cleared his throat. “I believe he keeps some gun dogs, yes, and also rides out with the local hunt.” He busied himself with his own peas, to avoid crossing glances with Lord Sharp and Miss Sharp both. This appeared to suit them, as they fell into a discussion of what situations might call for the expertise of this mythical neighbor, and also which bird Mr. Blackshear ought to take away.
He ate peas without tasting them. What the deuce was she about? Couldn’t she have given him some warning, when they were speaking outside, that her plan was to reassure her father with flagrant falsehoods? For that matter, why had she made him stay to dinner? Surely this tactic would have been just as effective without waiting for the baron to consume his several glasses of wine, particularly considering what little effect those glasses appeared to have had.
The mantelpiece clock chimed, adding a musical underscore to his discontent, as well as inciting the first stirrings of alarm. Curse this strong wine and the distracting girl opposite; he’d lost track of the hour and he had a long drive home. “Forgive my very poor manners.” He set down his silverware. “I was so engrossed in the conversation that I fear I neglected to notice the passage of time. I must take my leave within the next fifteen or twenty minutes if I’m to be home tonight.” He’d have to stop halfway along for a change of horses, and he might have a considerable wait at that time of night. “Is there a servant who can be sent to put the bird into whatever sort of carrier is appropriate?”
“Oh, there can be no question of your traveling all that way tonight.” Lord Sharp delivered this verdict with great good cheer. “It’s begun to be dark already, you see, and the roads will be in poor shape from the rain. Much better you wait until daylight. We keep a room made up for just such occasions, and a place in the grooms’ quarters, as well, that ought to suit your driver. Everyone will be fresher in the morning, horses included.”
No, fresher was precisely what he would not be in the morning, dressed in yesterday’s clothes and possibly unshaven. “I appreciate your hospitality, but I’m simply not provisioned to spend the night away from home. I never planned on it. I haven’t—” He caught himself. He wasn’t going to say a change of clothing in front of a lady.
“Haven’t got a nightshirt?” Sharp spat the word like a Shakespearean actor aiming for the hindmost rows. “Never fear; you may wear one of mine. We’re of a similar stature; wouldn’t you say so, Lucy?”
He could feel the blood draining from his face. Good holy God. He couldn’t stay here. He had to get back among civilized people. Why had he drunk that damned wine? “It’s the twenty-third, though.” He spoke as slowly and calmly as he could, to negate the rising tide of panic. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. It’s very important I be at home.”
“And so you shall, in plenty of time for your Christmas Eve dinner and with all the days until Twelfth Night stretching out before you.” The baron, apparently deciding it was all resolved, went back to his peas. “We’ll be sure to make an early night of it, that you can rise with the roosters and be on your way. No more than two pieces on the piano, eh, Lucy?”
No. No pieces on the piano. He had to go home tonight. Who would get up at daybreak and go out to gather holly and evergreen boughs, if he wasn’t there to do it? Maybe the roads weren’t as bad as Lord Sharp thought. Maybe the wait for a change of horses would prove a short one after all. Maybe—
“Ah, you see? It’s raining again.” The baron nodded at the nearest window, where indeed rain had begun pattering on the glass. “I daresay your coachman will be glad to be hear you’ve decided to stay. So will the horses, at that.”
The last remnants of hope slipped from his grasp. Whatever the condition of the roads, the rain would make it worse. And navigating muddy roads was unpleasant enough by daylight—he couldn’t subject these horses, which were not even his property but the property of a posting inn a dozen miles distant, to the hazards of traveling poor roads in the dark.
He had to stay. But he didn’t have to pretend he was pleased at the fact.
“If you’ll excuse me, then, I’d better go have a word with my coachman.” He’d never done anything so rude in his life as to leave a table mid-meal. Though from what he’d observed already of the Sharps’ mealtime etiquette, his transgression would probably be lost upon them.
“Very well. We’ll hold the pudding for you.” The baron nodded, looking indeed as if people regularly got up and went on errands during dinner in this house. Miss Sharp, who’d fallen rather silent in the past few minutes, frowned at her plate. Even frowning, her mouth had a way of—
Never mind. Observations like that were what had got him in this trouble in the first place, lulling him into all the idle enjoyment of the wine and the meal, and distracting him from the passage of time. Shame on him for his callow susceptibility. He was paying a fit price for it now.
He pushed up from his chair and, with a cursory bow, made the exit he really ought to have made two hours before.
* * *
Lying hadn’t come to quite the fruition she’d envisioned—or rather, the fruition she might have envisioned if she’d taken the time to actually form any clear vision of a desirable outcome. If she’d paused half a minute to consider, indeed, then she might also have foreseen a less agreeable ending to her scheme. It would have looked very much like this.
Lucy perched on the edge of her bed, not quite ready to ring for her maid. Her stomach felt queer and heavy, still, when she remembered the trusting credulity with which Papa had received her fabrications. And everything under her skin squirmed at the recollection of Mr. Blackshear’s startled dismay. Whatever satisfaction he’d felt at being approved to buy a falcon was plainly no match for his unhappiness at being made an unwitting party to her duplicity. Also his unhappiness at being detained.
She hadn’t meant to detain him quite so long as to make him miss part of his Christmas Eve. Four or five times during dinner she’d been on the verge of broaching the falcon topic… and four or five times she’d told herself the topic could wait.
She caught up one sleeve of the nightgown laid out on the bed, and ran her thumbnail idly over the gathers. She and Papa must have become very dull between themselves, if even Mr. Blackshear’s starched politeness could enliven their dinner table so.
And enliven the meal he had, not only by being interesting to look at. How very pleasant it had been to watch Papa hold forth before a fresh listener! For her part, she’d long since heard and said everything of interest there was to hear and say about Mr. Hume and his letter and his ideas on moral scaffolding.
Not that they weren’t worthy topics. Of course they were. But a young lady of one and twenty naturally began to occupy herself with other, more immediate questions, such as how she was to find a suitable husband when her father had no int
erest in hosting a ball or even attending the local assemblies, never mind journeying all the way to London for a season.
Well, she knew how not to find a husband: by detaining men under false pretenses and subjecting them to such conversation as clearly offended all their sensibilities. Really, what had she supposed could ever come of this? That Mr. Blackshear would lean close, under cover of turning a page for her at the pianoforte, and ask whether she might welcome another visit from him after the holidays? That his sleeve would brush hers once too often for the contact to be accidental, and when she risked a questioning glance at him, she’d see her very future in his confidential, dimple-deepened, blush-warmed smile?
None of that had happened. He’d stood behind her, turning pages from as far away as the length of his arm permitted, even though she’d moved over to make a place for him on the bench. The few smiles she’d ventured—and awkward ventures they were, given that she’d had to twist away from the music and look over one shoulder—had met with the grave, distracted looks of someone who heartily wished himself elsewhere. The last note of her second piece had barely sunk away to silence before he was excusing himself, reminding her and Papa of the early start he must make tomorrow.
And now here she was, retired to her room too early, alone with the uncomfortable suspicion that she’d altogether made a fool of herself.
Well, she wasn’t going to do it again. Make a fool of herself or tell lies.
Lucy put aside the nightgown sleeve and jumped up to ring for her maid. Better to forget this whole misbegotten episode as soon as she could, and turn her thoughts to tomorrow and the days to follow, in which she’d be savoring all the novel pleasures of a Christmas house party. There, she would follow her more worldly cousins’ example and behave with decorum, giving her aunt no reason to regret the kind and generous invitation. And if all went well, she’d make the right sort of impression on a gentleman or two, and perhaps have calls and courtship to look forward to after she’d come back home.
This, after all, had been the focus of her hopes and agreeable apprehensions these past few days, the leading topic in her thoughts before Mr. Blackshear had temporarily knocked her off course. Now all those hopes and apprehensions came rushing obligingly back to fill the minute or so before her maid arrived.
The expression on the girl’s face, as she hurried into the room, yanked Lucy straight out of her pleasant fancies. “Perkins, what’s the matter?” The maid’s mouth made a grim straight line, giving her the look of a soldier steeling himself to recite a list of men missing. “Did something go wrong in mending my blue gown?” But no, clearly it was graver news than that.
“I’m so sorry to tell it, Miss.” Perkins held her gaze, staunch soldier that she was. “It’s Mr. Polk. Mr. Coachman, as he is to you.” Lucy’s heart began a slow downward slide. “He hurt his wrist, doing something with the carriage. Mrs. Williams thinks it’s a sprain. He hoped it might be well enough to drive by tomorrow, but Mrs. Williams says a sprain won’t heal so quick.”
“Should I send for a surgeon, do you suppose? Is he sure it’s not broken?” That was the important thing, really, and if she was to be agitated, she should be agitated over the difficulty of procuring a surgeon so near to Christmas. Not over the disruption to her holiday plans.
Perkins shook her head. “Mrs. Williams says she’s seen broken wrists and sprained wrists in her own brothers, and she can tell the difference.”
“Ah. Good. We’re lucky to have so knowledgeable a housekeeper. I’ll be sure to thank her.” Her whole body wanted to sit down of a sudden, so she sank to a seat on the traveling trunk she and Perkins had finished packing that morning. “Poor Mr. Coachman. Perhaps there’s some cordial in the stillroom that might benefit him.” There wasn’t, though. Cordials did nothing for a sprained wrist. Only time, and inactivity, could be of use.
“He’s so very sorry, Miss. Mrs. Williams as well.” Perkins’ voice bordered on the tremulous. “They know how you were looking forward to the party.”
Yes, no doubt they did. No doubt every last member of the staff had taken note of Miss Sharp’s long-awaited opportunity to mix with people her age, and no doubt they’d noticed her enthusiasm at the prospect. Likely they could guess at some of the hopes she’d formed around the party, and now they must all pity her, every servant from the butler down to the scullery maid, at the extinguishing of those hopes.
She put a fist to her chin. “I wonder if one of the grooms couldn’t…” But the thought didn’t bear finishing. It wasn’t a groom’s duty to drive the mistress to and from Hatfield Hall in south Norfolk; besides, one of the men was going to see his elderly mother for the holidays, and they couldn’t spare the other in his absence. Nor could Papa drive her, as he had two more people coming to see about falcons tomorrow.
“Well.” She let her fist fall, and brushed her palms over her skirts. “There are worse ways a young lady can spend the holidays than with her own father.” At least she assumed there were. But she hadn’t any way to know for certain, had she? Her every Christmastide had been spent right here at Mosscroft, and it was not at all difficult to imagine that her every succeeding holiday would be spent here too. That she would never have another party invitation, never meet suitable men, never marry. That she’d grow into an ever-more-eccentric spinster, an aged Miranda to Papa’s Prospero, losing her head and embarrassing herself every time a halfway handsome man came to look at the birds.
Mr. Blackshear was more than halfway handsome. But that was neither here nor there.
“That’s the right way to think of it, surely.” Perkins sidled toward the dressing table, where Lucy ought to have seated herself by now. “Lord Sharp will be pleased to have your company after all.” The tone in which she delivered this, though, and the woeful cast of her countenance, could convince any onlooker that she, not the mistress, was the one who’d been—
“Perkins!” Lucy shot to her feet. “Oh, Perkins, your family! Your presents! We were supposed to stop and visit on the way to Hatfield Hall!” How could she have been so preoccupied with her own disappointment as to forget what the coachman’s injury meant to the other young woman in the room?
The maid pressed her lips tight and blinked twice before speaking, a show of distress that wrung Lucy’s heart. “I suppose my little brothers and sisters will be just as pleased to have their presents the next time I visit.” She bent her head, rearranging the comb and brush atop the dressing table to no purpose. “Maybe even more so, because presents in the spring might come as a surprise.”
“But your Navy brother won’t be ashore then.” Oh, it was too awful. Perkins hadn’t seen her brother in a great while. If she missed seeing him now, it could be years before she had another chance. Was there really no way, no way at all, for them to—
Her breath caught, half in and half out of her lungs. Of course there was a way. Maybe.
She stepped to the near window and put her forehead to the glass, letting the idea take shape.
He wouldn’t like it. She could picture already the dark disapproval that would sit opposite her, if she was clever enough to gain her end.
She would be clever enough. She had to be. For the sake of the party, and the sake of her maid. And she would worry about the disapproval when it came, not before.
“Perkins, I’ve had an idea.” She lifted her forehead from the glass and turned. “I won’t be able to give it a trial until breakfast. But I think we needn’t give up hope, just yet, of having the holidays we’d planned.”
* * *
He woke at dawn, as he’d planned to do and indeed as he usually did on a Christmas Eve, but had to lie abed for some time waiting for his habitual morning condition to subside.
That his thoughts should drift to Miss Sharp… to Lucy Sharp; in private he might take the liberty of thinking of her by Christian name… that his thoughts should roam to her was only natural. She’d worked so hard to make herself agreeable to him last night. He’d had to compensate by doublin
g his cool reserve in order to keep even a semblance of proper distance between them.
Now, though, with no witnesses but his own conscience, he could think of her unreservedly.
Somewhere under this same roof she too lay abed, asleep or awake, clad in nothing but a nightgown and perhaps with her hair undone. An unscrupulous sort of man might have prowled the corridors last night in search of her room.
He wasn’t that sort of man, not even nearly. But one heard of the mischief that went on at house parties and the like, and it did provide fuel for the imagination. He could imagine, for example, stealing along the wall, to avoid the creaky parts of the floorboards, while counting his way to the door with a telltale ribbon of candlelight underneath. Then swinging the door inward to find her lying atop the covers, propped to face him, her breath-stopping smile telling him plainer than words that she’d hoped he would come.
Maybe she didn’t wear a nightgown after all, in this scenario. Maybe she’d dispensed with it, instead arranging her hair to conceal her most particularly naked regions the way women in coy paintings always seemed to do.
His fingers had wandered to his own particularly naked region and taken up a light, un-purposeful sort of stroking. Even this much was a sin, to be sure, and a failure of his self-command. But for all his conscientious efforts, he’d never quite been able to conquer his fleshly appetites. The best he could manage was to keep all the sin to himself. He didn’t, at least, jeopardize any woman’s soul—or body—with the exercise of his passions.
It was all very well for men like the ones he’d known at school, who took their pleasure, paid their coin, and never thought of the woman again. He couldn’t do that; not when he knew what might be the cost. Not when he’d seen for the first eighteen years of his life how even in a respectable, affectionate, church-consecrated union, a man’s attentions could reduce a lady to a sad, worn-out sort of brood mare. Not after living with Father’s bottomless grief and self-blame for seven years now, ever since Mother had died along with what would have been child number ten. He didn’t ever want such a thing on his conscience.
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) Page 3
