Admittedly, too, his improving opinion of her might owe something to the general lightening of his spirits, as he drew steadily closer to home. And perhaps there was an edge of pity as well, for a girl who’d grown up with such a paucity of family and no notion of proper holiday pleasures.
She’d seen the inside of a church, at least, he was relieved to learn—dinner-table blasphemy notwithstanding, Lord Sharp apparently did recognize that it was a gentleman landowner’s duty to occasionally put in an appearance at the church that sat on his land—and she seemed earnest in her determination to acquit herself well at the party. In particular she showed an admirable desire to be a credit to the aunt who’d invited her, and to make such an impression on the people she met as might lead to further intercourse and perhaps even friendship.
She must have great need of friendship, with no society besides her father and whoever might come seeking a falcon.
“I’ve always been at home, you see.” Her hands lay idle in her lap. She’d fidgeted with them the first few miles, he’d noticed, pinching the edge of her cloak or twisting her reticule strings round one finger and then two. “Aunt Symond would have had Papa send me away to school, but he feared a girls’ school wouldn’t give me a proper education.”
“My sisters were taught at home as well. I think that’s generally the case with young ladies of good family.” Privately he thought an exception really ought to have been made for Miss Sharp, who would undoubtedly have benefited from the routines and regulations of a school. This Aunt Symond sounded a sensible sort of woman, and with any luck would exert a deal of influence over the next twelve days.
“How did your sister meet the man she’s to marry, then? If it’s not improper to ask.”
“In London. We have an aunt who lives there. Kitty went to stay with her for the season, went to what I gather is the customary round of balls and parties, and had introductions to a number of gentlemen, one of whom was her Mr. Bridgeman.”
“I see. I suppose that’s the usual way, for those ladies of good family who have their education at home.” She looked grave. He knew, without her saying so, that Lord Sharp was unlikely to ever think of giving her a London season.
“Many ladies do make matches in that way. But many others meet their husbands through family connections, or perhaps at house parties.” Why should he feel, let alone act upon, this impulse to reassure and encourage her? She wasn’t his responsibility, aside from this temporary commission to deliver her safely to Hatfield Hall. Whether she made a good marriage or spent her days a spinster was of no consequence to him—indeed, for him to be entering into the topic of marriage at all, with an unchaperoned lady to whose virtues of face and form he’d already devoted too much thought, was probably injudicious.
She smiled at his words, though, a brilliant warm acknowledgment of the kindness he was already regretting, and he forced his gaze to her hands, that he might not be dazzled into further imprudence.
“Well.” She lifted her hands and began counting off on the fingers. “Church, you said. Possibly a play or other entertainment. Bobbing apples. The game in which you set raisins on fire and try to eat them.”
“Snapdragon. Not recommended, remember.”
“I do remember. You ended with two holes in the carpet and nearly set the house on fire.” Her eyes—he had to look up from her hands, didn’t he, to see that she was taking in his admonition—sparkled with the same unbridled glee she’d shown on his first telling of the tale. It was remarkably similar to the expressions Nick and Will had worn from start to near-disastrous finish of the game, the one year they’d prevailed on him to allow it.
Probably his brothers would rank that as one of their best Christmases ever, to this day. He’d never quite been able to smother the stubborn spark of pride he felt at having afforded them that memory.
“And I expect we’ll have a Twelfth Cake.” She counted this pleasure on her thumb, flexing all her fingers and then curling them in, a fistful of holiday diversions in her grasp.
“To be sure. With a pea and a bean baked inside, to determine who will be king and queen of Twelfth Night.”
“I suppose you’ve been king once or twice, in your celebrations.” It ought to have been an innocuous comment, but Lord, the way she looked at him. As though she were picturing him in royal robes and a crown, and relishing the picture. What was an honorable man supposed to do with such blatant feminine appreciation?
“No.” Once more he threw a pointed glance at the maid, who was keeping her face to the window and pretending to hear none of what passed. “No, we observe an older tradition in my house. There’s but a single bean in the cake, and whoever finds it in his piece is crowned Lord of Misrule for the night.”
“Lord of Misrule!” Her mouth curved and stretched into a smile of truly extravagant dimension. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, it’s an archaic tradition, as I said.” He oughtn’t to have told her. There was a deal too much misrule in her life already; he needn’t be introducing notions of more. “There’s very little to it. In a great house of old, where perhaps one of the lower servants might have been crowned, it was a chance to upend hundreds of years of social order, if only for a night. In my house, it’s chiefly given the younger children an occasion to be pert and capricious without consequence.”
“What about you?” There she went, looking at him again. “What form does the misrule take when you’re the one to find the bean?”
It was his own prurient mind, not anything in her face or intonation, that wove a ribbon of innuendo through her words. His own mind, too, that lost no time in conjuring eight or nine kinds of misrule with which he might answer. If the maid weren’t here, and if Miss Sharp was willing, and if he were a man of fewer scruples, he could put into action some thoughts that had brewed in the back of his brain since their departure from Mosscroft, on the matter of how two long-limbed people could best arrange themselves for mutual enjoyment in the confines of a carriage.
“No. That doesn’t happen.” He spoke with a little more vehemence than he’d intended, warmth stealing from under his poor wilted cravat up into his cheeks. “That is to say, I see to it that one of the younger children always finds the bean. It’s a game more suited to them, really.”
“But the youngest is fifteen, you said. None of your siblings is truly a child anymore.”
“Indeed.” He inclined his head, to steal a short respite from her too-keen curiosity. “I exempted myself when they were small, and I suppose it simply became habit, as these things do.” Not that he owed her any accounting. “At all events, I sincerely doubt anyone’s the poorer for it. I haven’t much taste for mischief and disarray. I’m sure my reign would be a disappointing one.” Though now he thought of it, Martha was every bit as sober and mindful of rules as he, and nobody ever seemed to find Twelfth Night lacking when the bean turned up in her piece of cake.
“That’s mere conjecture.” She spoke like the Miss Sharp who’d vexed him at the breakfast table, quick with an argument on topics that were really none of her concern. “You cannot know what your reign would be like if you’ve never even given it a try. Perhaps you’d find misrule suits you after all.”
“Perhaps.” The words came quickly. “But I was brought up to believe there’s more to consider, in choosing my behavior, than whether or not something suits me.” Even if he hadn’t heard the sudden frost in his voice, he would have known of it from Miss Sharp’s reaction. She blinked, and said nothing, and abruptly averted her eyes to the window.
A fine thread of guilt went unspooling deep in his stomach. He hadn’t meant to be uncivil, or to cast aspersions aloud on her upbringing. But maybe she’d take a lesson about presuming to tell people how they ought to live their lives.
No doubt she’d thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn’t heard such urgings before, from every
feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was the vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames.
And how was he to have known his curt words would sting her, when his cool silence over the first few miles had not dampened her spirits in the least? Indeed he’d delivered a number of similarly pointed remarks over breakfast, hadn’t he, and only inspired her to more dogged and devious argument.
Things changed, though, once a lady and gentleman got to exchanging family stories and confiding hopes of social success. She’d probably supposed they’d be friends of a sort for the duration of the drive. Admittedly, he’d given her some grounds to think so.
Still she kept her face to the window, the muted winter daylight bathing her lips, her cheek, the slope of her nose. She looked somber and alone and untouchable as an angel statue in a graveyard.
I’m sorry, Miss Sharp. I didn’t mean…
That wasn’t true. He’d meant it.
Forgive me. I don’t know how to speak to high-spirited people, and I sometimes say the wrong thing.
That was true. Why couldn’t he get the words out?
He rubbed his thumb in the opposite palm, the kid of his gloves squeaking in counterpoint to the ceaseless clopping of horse-hooves and the rumble of wheels on the road. And before he could manage to speak, or even decide if he really ought to, Miss Sharp’s shoulders rose with an inhalation. “I suppose we must be nearing Downham Market by now.” She leaned nearer the window to look up the road. “Does any of this scenery look familiar, Perkins?”
That quickly, her elegiac air was gone. She gave every appearance of having crumpled his incivility in one hand and tossed it over her shoulder, along with whatever cordiality might have grown up between them. Her mind was entirely on the horizon and all the novel enjoyments ahead.
That was for the best. He needn’t worry over making an apology now. And the changeability of her mood only confirmed everything he’d already known about how little suited they were to be friends, even for the length of a drive.
“Will half an hour be sufficient for your business here?” he said, once the maid had confirmed they were approaching her town. “That will give me time to change the horses and stretch my legs a bit.” His spirits, too, lifted at the prospect of this stop. They’d made good time on the first leg of the journey. If the road to Welney was equally smooth, and the weather stayed clear as it had been, he could deliver his passengers to Hatfield Hall by early afternoon. Then he’d bid Miss Sharp goodbye, sincerely wishing her well, and he’d hurry home, equipped with a tale to tell Kitty and the rest about the unexpected adventures into which one could fall when attempting the simple purchase of a falcon.
* * *
She’d never met the entire Perkins family before. Mr. Perkins had come to fetch his daughter home for a holiday on occasion, and she was almost sure one of these elder brothers had done so, too. But there proved to be a good many Perkinses beyond those ones, and now, in a dining room of the inn that Mr. and Mrs. Perkins ran, with siblings great and small showing such joy at the presence of their lady’s-maid sister, she felt herself turning melancholy.
She oughtn’t to be. She was on her way to a party and it was going to be perfectly splendid. There would be Twelfth Cake, and wassail, and engaging young men, easy to talk to, not requiring a lady to weigh all her words before speaking for fear of giving some obscure offense. It would be the jolliest Christmastide she’d ever known.
Though not, perhaps, the jolliest Perkins had ever known. Whatever festivities they provided for servants at Hatfield Hall could hardly compare to the joy and easy warmth before her here. She’d always supposed the holidays must be sweeter in the company of brothers and sisters, but she’d supposed it in vague terms. It was different now that she could picture a roomful of young men and women, all tall and handsome and dark-eyed, laughing together over the time they’d almost set fire to the house through careless handling of raisins. Now that she could think of boisterous small children throwing their arms about her and demanding to be given their presents, as a rosy-cheeked girl was doing to Perkins at this moment.
The maid’s glance crossed with Lucy’s. Laughter shone in her eyes. She looked different among her own family, in the way all servants probably did. A bit more assured, a bit less deferential. Quite pretty, really, with an auburn curl tumbling loose at her temple as she fished presents one by one from the valise in which she’d packed all her things. On the other side of the room a young man, friend to one of the elder brothers if she recalled correctly, now and again adjusted his position so he could see past whoever he was conversing with for a view of her. He probably thought no one had taken notice, but Lucy had.
She wished she’d told Mr. Blackshear to come up the road to this inn after he’d finished arranging the horses at the posting inn where he’d stopped. He could have drawn up a chair next to hers, and told her how this scene of revelry and misrule compared to what went on at his house. Or, if he was still disinclined to speak to her, they could simply have sat here on the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the fire. They might even have lingered a bit, allowing Perkins more than a mere half-hour of Christmas merriment.
It was too bad, really, that this should be all the family Christmas the girl got. The reunion with the Navy brother had been everything a sentimental watcher could wish: he’d lifted her off her feet and whirled her round like one of her smaller sisters while she laughed with utterly un-servantlike abandon. That they should be parted again so soon—not to mention that Perkins must miss Christmas Day and Twelfth Night altogether, as well as being taken from the view of that admiring young man, loosed a guilty undercurrent in the melancholy that already flowed through Lucy’s veins.
By the time Perkins—Sarah, her name was among her family; Lucy had known that but thought of it so seldom as to have almost forgot—passed out all her presents and came to stand by the fire, the melancholy had begun to re-shape itself into questions. Questions that began What if and Why not; questions for which she was hard pressed to raise a good answer.
“Thank you, Miss Sharp, for finding a way to stop here today after all. I admit I’d be dreadfully sorry to have missed it.” The girl pushed her fallen curl back behind her ear. Her cheeks were flushed from laughter and what must be Christmas spirit. She really was very pretty.
“It’s been my pleasure.” Lucy cleared her throat. “I’m afraid I’ve forgot: who is the young man talking to your brother on the far side of the table? The one who’s looking at you?”
“Lieutenant Fletcher?” She cast a glance to that side of the room. Interesting, that she hadn’t had to look all about, or wonder which man Miss Sharp meant. “He serves with Tom aboard the Cygnet. He hasn’t any family to visit when he’s ashore, so Tom thought to bring him here for the holiday. Tom thinks he might captain his own ship in time.”
That, too, was interesting, particularly as it was more than she’d asked to know. “He’s rather handsome, isn’t he?”
“Is he? I don’t know. I suppose he is. I hadn’t really thought of it. Yes, I suppose he is. Tom speaks highly of him.” She flushed pinker and put up a hand to tuck back her curl, apparently forgetting she’d already tucked it a moment before. Her eyes darted once more to Lieutenant Fletcher, who’d moved several subtle steps to the left to gain an unobstructed view of the fireplace. He dropped his own gaze to the tabletop, color rising in his cheeks.
Well, then. There was only one thing a sensible person could do. “Perkins.” Lucy got to her feet. “Will you step into the next room with me for a moment? I need to apprise you of a change in our plans.”
* * *
“Please have the goodness to repeat yourself, because I know I cannot have heard you correctly.” Mr. Blackshear turned, slowly, to face her. He’d pivoted away, as soon as she’d first said her piece,
to take off his hat and drag a hand over his face and stare at the inn’s stone wall for several seconds, during which he’d presumably composed himself. Though even now, with his hat restored, his composure felt fragile as pond-ice in March.
It was all rather stirring.
“My maid won’t be going the rest of the way with us.” She clutched her cloak together as December air gusted through the inn-yard. “I’ve decided she’s spending Christmastide with her family this year.”
He stared at her, his eyes dark as the rubble of a house burned down. His chest rose and fell with some number of breaths he must need in order to keep himself calm. “No,” he said at last.
“No, she is. I’ve left her with them already. It’s decided and done. There’s really nothing to discuss, unless you’re interested in hearing my reasons.”
“No, Miss Sharp.” He took a step nearer and loomed over her, which was quite the feat considering he only topped her by an inch or two. “Indeed there’s nothing to discuss, because whatever your reasons, they will not persuade me. You coerced me already into going against my principles and allowing you into my carriage. And the argument you clung to in that discussion, as I recall, was that the presence of your maid would make everything respectable. So don’t dare pretend to not understand what’s wrong with leaving her behind.”
“Mr. Blackshear.” She folded her arms and met his gaze, to let him know his looming didn’t cow her. She would be perfectly plain. “I know you’re not going to take liberties with me. You know you’re not going to take liberties with me. And no one else even knows we’ll be alone together. For us to concern ourselves with the judgment of society, when no representative of society will ever be in possession of the facts on which they could judge us, can be nothing but a frivolous indulgence.”
He spun away again, muttering something under his breath. His greatcoat whirled out behind him to interesting effect, and whirled again when he spun back to face her. “Miss Sharp.” He braced his fingertips against his temple, in the manner of someone fighting off a headache. “I understand your education in these matters has been lacking. But propriety is no true propriety at all if we adhere to it only when others are watching. It is a matter of my personal honor that I observe all the rules of decorum rather than picking and choosing the ones that suit me. And a gentleman’s honor, let me assure you, is no frivolous indulgence. If he’s any sort of worthwhile man it’s his very backbone.”
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) Page 5
