ONCE UPON A REGENCY CHRISTMAS

by Various

  ‘You will be glad to be on your way.’

  He was getting to know Miss Chalcott and the sweet smile and calm façade hid a more complex character than met the eye. One with bite. ‘And you’ll be glad to see the back of me, no doubt.’

  She coloured a little at that, but she met his gaze frankly. ‘Yes. I have enjoyed meeting you, Captain. I had fun with the snowmen and I’m grateful for your help with the house. But Julia deserves peace and time to recover herself, decide what it is she wants.’

  ‘To complete her mourning?’

  ‘To recover from everything that has happened to her since she was sixteen, Captain. Don’t hurt her.’

  ‘Well, that’s frank.’ His sense of humour was faltering in the face of the attack.

  ‘It was meant to be.’

  ‘I have no intention of hurting her.’

  ‘Good. I hope you are not offended.’ She smiled again and left the stables, her cloak swinging around her heels, leaving him torn between amusement and irritation.

  ‘Offended? Certainly not. Why should I be offended by having my amorous intentions questioned by a pretty chit?’ he muttered, climbing the ladder.

  ‘Captain?’ Thomas, the coachman, looked round the door of the snug room he and the groom occupied. ‘Thought I heard someone talking. Anything amiss?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Can any of the coach horses take a rider? I must retrieve my own mount and you’ll not want to send out the carriage and team.’

  ‘They can all be ridden, no problem. Come into the warm, sir.’ He closed the door behind Giles and put down the harness he had been mending. Beside the stove Paul, the groom, got to his feet and nodded respectfully. ‘We train them so they can be ridden to the farrier. Not the smoothest ride you’ll ever have, but any of them will do you for a few miles. I’ll get some short reins on a bridle for you this evening. You’ll be bareback, though.’

  ‘I’m a cavalryman, Thomas. I’ll ride most things with or without a saddle.’ The room was warm and smelled not unpleasantly of horse, leather, tobacco and hard-working men. It was simple and reassuringly familiar from years spent in billets, in tumbledown cottages, in tents, all made into homes for professional soldiers.

  ‘Have you far to go, Captain? If you don’t mind me asking.’ Thomas nudged a chair forward and Paul produced a stone bottle that sloshed cheerfully.

  ‘Under a day, unless any bridges are down or roads blocked. Thanks.’ Giles took the bottle and tipped his head back to take a swallow, then lost the power to breathe. ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he managed after several seconds. ‘What is this?’

  ‘My old mother’s winter tonic.’ Thomas accepted the jug and took a hefty swig. ‘Secret recipe handed down for generations. Here you are, Paul, keep it moving, lad.’

  Ah, well, there are worse ways to spend a snowbound afternoon than blind drunk, that time-honoured way to deal with the pain of a woman on your mind.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Oh! Are you sickening for something?’

  Giles came through the door into the dining room and stared at the food on the table as though he were not quite certain what it was for.

  Julia stood up, took his arm and pushed him into the nearest chair. ‘You are the most ghastly colour. Let me feel your forehead. Have you a fever?’ No, his skin was cool. ‘I’ll see if Mrs Smithers has any tonics or medicines in stock.’ Under her hand she felt him shudder.

  ‘The last thing I need is a tonic. Thank you. Coffee. Please.’

  ‘No coffee, remember? It will have to be strong tea.’ Miri, smiling wickedly, lifted the pot.

  ‘Very strong. Sugar.’ He took the first cup, appeared to inhale it and took the second, which she had already pushed across to him. ‘More.’

  Light dawned. ‘You are drunk.’

  He finished the third cup. ‘Hungover.’

  ‘So that is where you were yesterday afternoon! Have you drunk the cellar dry?’

  ‘Some sort of tonic your coachman swears by. Probably one needs several years’ training to get the full benefit.’ Giles regarded the bacon with a jaundiced eye, carved two thick slices of bread off the loaf, buttered it liberally, slapped four rashers between them and began to demolish the resulting sandwich. ‘That’s better. I think,’ he remarked when all that was left were crumbs.

  ‘You should go back to bed and sleep it off.’

  ‘Bed is very tempting.’ The slightly bloodshot grey eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement and she felt herself blushing. ‘My dear Lady Julia, if every officer who woke up after a night spent with a bottle of dubious liqueur was unfit to function we would have been rolled up by Bonaparte within weeks.’

  That wicked almost-smile convened layers of meaning about bed and his ability to function and the wretched man knew it. Julia pursed her lips rather than run her tongue along them. ‘I am delighted to hear it. I had been looking forward to the ride.’

  ‘You?’ The smile vanished. ‘There are no saddles. I don’t know how bad the roads will be or how long it will take. You should stay safely here.’

  ‘Captain Markham, I have ridden over Indian deserts, through jungles, across plains on just about everything there is to ride in the country—horses, mules, elephants and camels. I can assure you I did not do so side-saddle wearing a fashionable riding habit and only venturing out when it was entirely safe to do so.’ The look on Giles’s face as she stood and walked to the door, the divided skirt swishing against her tall leather boots, was worth braving any depths of snowdrift for.

  ‘And your husband permitted this?’

  ‘In India such travel is a matter of routine. If my husband wanted me to be about his business, he had no choice. I hope for your future wife’s sake that you will not be the kind of husband who keeps an English version of a zenana. I will be over at the stables when you have finished your breakfast and calmed your poor, aching head.’

  ‘You would say harem, I imagine, Captain.’ Miri’s earnest explanation followed Julia into the hall as she shrugged into a heavy greatcoat borrowed from Smithers. Her riding skirt had been made to withstand thorns and blown sand, but not an English winter, and beneath her outer clothes she was layered like an onion with silk undergarments.

  Thomas was walking one of the carriage horses up and down, a rug over its back. ‘Morning, my lady.’

  ‘Good morning. I am riding, too, if you can shorten another set of reins for me.’ He stared at her, looking remarkably like Giles for a second. Man confused by woman, she thought with an inward grin and took the reins, led the horse to the mounting block and pushed back the rug over its rump before she swung a leg over the broad back. It was a stretch after her own little mare, but it was no more uncomfortable than a camel.

  Thomas was muttering under his breath as she shook out her skirts on either side. Perfectly decent and perfectly practical whether one was on an elephant or a large carriage horse. ‘The Captain will be out directly.’ Once he has his head on the right way round.

  Giles emerged a few moments later, buttoning his greatcoat as he stood on the threshold and looked at her. For a moment she wondered if he was going to be difficult, then he shook his head and walked across to Thomas, who was leading out another horse. He might not approve, but the Captain had the tact not to lecture her in front of her servants.

  He vaulted on to the back of the big bay. Oh, my goodness. Yes, well, don’t stare. Just because he moves like a god, just because he looks like one sitting there as though he is part of the animal... She fussed with the reins, brought her own horse up alongside his and had her mouth firmly shut before she looked at him again.

  He was a cavalry officer. Of course he can ride. There had been fine horsemen everywhere she travelled in India, but she had never seen a rider who took her breath as this man did, sitting relaxed bareback. She was aware of his body
now, aware of what they both wanted, and that was decidedly uncomfortable.

  Miri came out carrying saddlebags. ‘Food and drink,’ she said as she handed them up to Giles who slung them over his horse’s withers. ‘Don’t get lost.’

  ‘We won’t. Ready, Lady Julia?’ At her nod he moved his horse forward and she followed on a loose rein, letting the animal find its own footing in the snow.

  They rode silently in single file, their breath forming clouds in front of them, their track stark and lonely in the white perfection. The sky was an exquisite pale blue, the sunlight sparkled on the snow-fringed branches, every twig encased in crystal.

  * * *

  After perhaps a mile Giles turned, one hand on his horse’s rump, and looked back. ‘All right? Come alongside if you want, the hedges are far apart, so there must be wide verges. We should be safe from ditches.’

  He waited until she was almost knee to knee with him. ‘I offended you this morning, I apologise.’

  ‘And I was rude in return. I am sure you will make a most amiable husband and not be over-protective at all.’ She had her tongue in her cheek, just a little, and Giles’s sharp glance told her he knew it.

  ‘A man’s instinct is to protect a woman. You must forgive me if that becomes patronising.’

  ‘And you must forgive me for attempting to mollycoddle your hangover. A woman’s instinct is to wrap sufferers up in blankets and administer beef tea,’ Julia said sweetly.

  That provoked the snort of amusement it deserved. ‘I find it difficult to imagine you doing any such thing.’

  ‘Certainly not the beef tea. The cow is a sacred animal in India. I found it a shock when I was served it in England again.’

  ‘One gets accustomed to anything.’ Giles shaded his eyes to scan the surrounding fields. ‘I ate rook and squirrel stew once, in the mountains. There might have been the odd rat added for extra body.’

  ‘Was it delicious?’

  ‘Anything is if you are starving. Although if you boiled a brick and a rook together, I suspect the brick might be the more tender.’

  ‘I had thought battles must be the worst part of soldiering. It sounds as though simply surviving day to day was horrible.’

  ‘The battles are merely the punctuation.’ Giles rode on in silence until she thought that was all he had to say. ‘I have never tried to explain it to someone before. Or to myself, come to that. The tactics, the organisation, the detail and the wider picture are all fascinating. Learning to lead men, learning the craft of warfare or how to light a fire when everything is wet and the enemy are so close you can almost hear them breathing or how to communicate with a Spanish partisan who is half-inclined to cut your throat are all interesting. The camaraderie is...important.’

  The most important thing, she guessed. ‘And you gave it all up.’

  ‘I inherited land, and debts and people who relied on that land. And a woman with twin baby daughters into the bargain.’

  ‘So, duty?’ Giles nodded. ‘And are you expected to marry the woman with the daughters?’

  ‘I hope not!’ He glanced at her sharply. ‘I have no intention of doing so. I’ve never met her.’

  ‘Do you know about land?’

  ‘I’ll learn.’

  ‘And the debts?’ He shrugged, but the horse, on its loose rein, sidled sharply as though his thigh muscles had clamped tight on its sides. ‘You need a rich wife,’ she suggested, her tone careful, somewhere between teasing and helpful.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. The horse tossed its head at the sudden jerk on the bit. ‘And what are your plans?’

  ‘Oh, to find a rich, titled husband and enjoy the cream of London society, or take a lover and settle for a life on my own terms on the fringes of that society. Or perhaps go back to India and be a disreputable widow. So much choice.’

  Giles laughed, not knowing her well enough to hear the truth when she spoke it.

  ‘Money is a very depressing subject. If one has it, one no doubt worries about it. If one doesn’t have it, then one thinks about it all the time.’ Which was how she ended up married to Humphrey Chalcott. Sheer panic at being destitute when she was too weak, too disorientated, to realise that she had another choice, that of being poor. But she hadn’t realised her own potential then, hadn’t seen anything but the terror of ending up earning her living on her back in some Calcutta brothel. Once she discovered what she was capable of she had sworn never to be in a man’s power, under his control, again.

  ‘This is where you picked me up,’ Giles said. ‘See that dead oak tree?’

  She was becoming stiff now, the inside muscles of her thighs aching with the unaccustomed breadth of the horse under her, her shoulders tight as she concentrated on balancing. Giles seemed to have no problem, she thought, torn between resentment and admiration of the relaxed back, the strength of the supple spine.

  I want him. Not just his kisses. I want to take my courage in both hands and make love with him. I need his strength and his gentleness and the raw masculine power that lurks beneath. This isn’t sensible, it isn’t rational...but for once in my life I don’t care. When Giles was gone she could go back to planning, to listening to her head and not her heart, to finding a husband who would not need her money. The thought of seeing calculation come into this man’s eyes was hateful.

  * * *

  If they did not find the barn in another half-hour he was turning back. The sky was still clear, but the temperature would drop once the sun began its shallow winter slide towards the horizon and Julia had been out far too long for someone used to the heat of India. He should have refused to let her come. Good luck with that, Markham. Try reasoning with her then, he suggested to the mocking inner voice. But she went her own way, did Julia Chalcott. Stimulating, the insidious little whisper suggested. That independence was not the only stimulating thing about Julia, he thought, grimly attempting to ignore the one warm part of his anatomy which wanted to join in the conversation.

  She was intelligent, capable, had a sense of humour, loyalty. And, yes, he snarled silently at the other parties in the discussion, I want her. In his bed, under him, around him. He knew how she tasted, how she felt between his hands. He knew her skin carried traces of jasmine and bergamot and some spice new to him. He knew she was as full of passion and curiosity as a champagne bottle was of bubbles. And he wanted to shake that bottle and be damned to the consequences. It was a few days, that was all. This wasn’t like before, he wasn’t losing his heart, or his head, over a scheming little minx who was using him to make his best friend jealous.

  ‘Is this it?’ Her call jerked him out of his introspection. How long had he been riding blind, brooding? They were almost level with the cluster of sheds and the small barn. A row of brown heads poked out and stared and a thin line of footprints snaked away up the lane ahead of them. Giles whistled and the cows parted as Trojan came out, dwarfing them. He neighed piercingly and trotted through the snow, throwing it up from his great hooves like spray on the bow wave of a frigate.

  Giles talked to him as he dealt with the carriage horse who wasn’t used to helping open gates. ‘Missed me, did you? Have you learned to speak cow? Sideways, you stupid lummox, and push. Someone’s brought you all hay, I see. No, back off, damn you. What?’ he demanded.

  Julia was bent double over her horse’s neck, breathless with laughter. ‘You. Give me the reins otherwise we’ll be here all week before that dim animal works out what he’s supposed to do.’ She rode up alongside him as he slid down, then got the giggles again when he landed thigh-deep in the snow. ‘Your horse is enormous and very handsome. What is his name?’

  ‘Trojan. Yes, we’re talking about you.’ He managed to drag the gate open while the big chestnut butted him with his nose, slobbered into his ear and generally checked that he was in one piece.

  ‘Why?’

&nbs
p; ‘Because he’s a horse.’

  ‘Trojan Horse. That’s dreadful.’ She urged the two carriage horses through and rode on to the barn while he shut the gate and led Trojan, now investigating his pockets, back into the shelter.

  Someone had definitely been there. The thin ice had been cleared from the water troughs and the hay was more or less in heaps. The note he had left on a nail beside the door had been opened and something added in shaky capital letters. Ten shillings livery. F. Hoskins.

  ‘Cheap at the price,’ Giles observed. He dug through his clothing to an inner pocket, took out a banknote and rolled it up in the paper, then spiked that on the nail. ‘Come inside where it’s warmer and I’ll get my gear from where I stowed it.’

  She looked at him, then dropped her lashes so that he could not read her eyes. But the colour on her cheeks was due to more than the cold and the hard pulse in his throat was not exertion.

  The hayloft was shadowed and gloomy, but there was just enough light filtering in to guide him as he reached up and lifted down his sabre from the high beam, then dug the saddle and bridle out from behind a feed bin.

  ‘It is positively snug in here.’ Julia had climbed up behind him.

  ‘The cattle below are as good as a stove.’ And we are alone.

  She moved closer and he could smell the rinse she used on her hair, herbs and something sweet and fresh. He could smell the cold on her skin and the scent of the hay and she met his gaze as the sabre dropped from his fingers. He was vaguely aware of setting down the saddle. ‘Julia?’

  ‘Giles.’ And she was in his arms.

  Chapter Seven

  A question had been asked and answered in the chilly, dusty gloom. Giles’s arms around her were familiar now. His taste, the scent of his skin, the plain soap he used, the warm male muskiness, stirred her senses and steadied the trembling in her limbs. Between their bodies their hands tangled as they struggled with buttons, as she pushed the greatcoat from his shoulders. He spread it over the piled hay before taking hers.