Carla Kelly's Christmas Collection

by Carla Kelly

  “Gadfreys, man, did you trip over your feet?” Pete was asking him.

  He would liked to have answered, but all he could do was wheeze and wish for his air to return.

  Olivia hurried down the steps and threw herself beside him. “James! Can you breathe?”

  All he could do was shake his head and look behind her at Lord D’Urst, who was grinning now.

  She helped him into a sitting position and called for the footman.

  “It’s my ankle,” he managed to say. “I think it’s broken.”

  “Lord D’Urst, do help the footman get him inside,” Olivia pleaded.

  “I have a better idea,” D’Urst said. “Since my traveling carriage is right here, the footman and I can pop him into it, and take him home. You’d prefer that, wouldn’t you, James? I mean, just look at you!”

  “You’re so kind to think of that,” Olivia said.

  “It’s nothing, my dear,” Lord D’Urst replied. “Give us a hand now, lad.”

  Lord D’Urst helped him into the carriage, but not without crowding his ankle hard against the carriage door, which made James yelp in pain. He was almost too embarrassed to look out the window, but at least he was rewarded by the anxious look on Olivia’s face when he did.

  “I’ll be over first thing tomorrow,” she told him. “Pray your ankle is not broken!”

  “We’ll be over first thing,” Lord D’Urst amended. “In fact, I will come along with you now, Jemmy. Miss Hannaford, he has always required looking after, but perhaps you don’t know that. Buck up, Jemmy. This shouldn’t slow you down beyond a month or two.”

  They made the short trip in silence. James shut his eyes against the pain, and breathed as shallowly as he could at every jar of the carriage. Lord D’Urst reached out to steady him several times, but he only managed to shove his hand against the offending ankle.

  “That is really swelling prodigiously,” he said.

  “Well, don’t sound too happy about it,” James said, gritting his teeth. He waited for the wave of pain to subside. “Why do I have the feeling that you pushed me?”

  “I would never!” Lord D’Urst declared, his eyes wide. He laughed and gave James’s ankle a squeeze. “Jemmy, dear boy, I would never have to resort to low tactics. You’re just clumsy.”

  Perhaps he was. It was not a calming reflection, he decided. Lord D’Urst, all sympathy and concern to Lord Waverly, deposited James in his chamber and left after promising to come tomorrow with Olivia Hannaford. He sweated and suffered through a visit from the surgeon, who poked and prodded, and pronounced the ankle unbroken. Mr. Walton was kind enough to wipe off his face and then peer at him with the sympathy of ten.

  “Lord Crandall, an actual fracture would feel better than this nasty wrench.” He pointed his finger at James. “You are to stay entirely off that leg for at least two weeks. I will even insist that two footmen carry you to the commode when nature calls.”

  “Oh, goodness! Not that!”

  Mr. Walton only smiled at his anguish. “Now, now, Lord Crandall! Your own father tells me how you long for solitude to work on dissertations. Now you will have solitude to your heart’s content! Good night now, Lord Crandall. Take these powders every four hours, keep the ankle elevated and cool, and let me know if anything changes.”

  Nothing will change, James thought wearily as his father walked the surgeon downstairs. I will eat my Christmas pudding with a book propped open beside me, as I usually do. Olivia will drop by until Lord D’Urst becomes more interesting. My ankle will heal eventually, and I will return to Oxford without my Christmas ornament.

  After a sleepless night that the powders did nothing to improve, he felt no better in the morning. He waved away food; the pain in his leg only added to the queasiness in his stomach. He lay in bed completely frustrated and hardly able to bear the agony of even a light coverlet on his ankle.

  Olivia arrived early as she had promised, with Lord D’Urst in tow, wearing his sympathy like a pose. The portrait of boredom, he stared out the window on the falling snow while Olivia sat beside James. He was too gone with pain to say anything. And what good would it do? he asked himself in perfect misery. Pete will overhear everything I try to say to this wonderful creature, and I have no clever repartee, even in the best of times, which this is definitely not. He could only gaze at Olivia in mute appeal.

  She surprised him by lifting the cover off the end of his bed to look at his wounded ankle. When she put her hand near to touch it, he flinched.

  “Poor dear,” she murmured. “I have not touched it, and you cannot even bear the thought.”

  “Jemmy, have a little heart!” Lord D’Urst admonished in a most rallying tone. If he had felt better, James would have relished the glare Olivia gave the man.

  “James, you need some help,” she told him.

  He could not deny it. “My father has sent for Mr. Walter again.”

  She nodded and looked around the room. “That is what I need,” she said.

  He tried to follow her gaze, but he was lying flat on his back. He heard her by his desk, and then Lord D’Urst laughing. She returned with his woven waste basket, empty now, and folded a towel inside it.

  “I don’t mean to hurt you,” she told him as she carefully raised his leg, then rested his foot and ankle inside the basket. “There now.” She felt his other leg. “You’re cold, but with the weight gone now, I can add a blanket or two.”

  “Foot of the bed,” he said, shivering from the pain she had caused, even as he appreciated her care. She opened the chest and extracted two blankets, covering him and tucking them in on all sides. He closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth and the relief of pressure on his ankle.

  “Now I will wait for the doctor,” she said, seating herself beside him again.

  “Not necessary,” he managed to say. “Perfectly all right.”

  “See there, my dear, even Jemmy says we can leave,” Lord D’Urst said. “Jemmy, does your butler have a key to the attic?”

  “I am waiting for the doctor,” she repeated.

  “My dear Olivia! You take too much upon yourself!” Lord D’Urst protested. “Surely the surgeon knows best.”

  “I am not convinced,” she said quietly. “You may leave if you wish, my lord; James is no trouble to me.”

  Yes, leave, by all means, James thought. It hurt too much to turn his head, but he could hear Pete Winston huffing off to sit in the window seat. Olivia continued to hold his hand, stroking his wrist. I am three parts dead and she moves me, he thought simply. I astound myself.

  When the doctor came, she took him immediately to task, mincing no words, overriding all his protests until the man appealed to James.

  “Do what she says,” he told the surgeon. “I trust her.”

  “Over my own judgment?” exclaimed the doctor.

  “Over your own judgment.”

  With a great sigh, the doctor mixed more powders and left the room without a word. When Olivia followed him into the hall to continue her argument, James couldn’t help but think of a mother wren, fluttering and chattering at foes twenty times her size.

  “She’s certainly a managing little baggage,” Lord D’Urst said from the window seat. “Charles never told me that about her.”

  “New to me, too,” James said.

  She returned to the room and quickly prepared another dose of powders. She put her arm under his head to raise him and whispered, “This is much stronger and will put you under for a while. James, Lord D’Urst can help me locate the furniture in the attic.”

  He groaned, but not from pain this time. He closed his eyes and yielded himself without a murmur into the arms of Morpheus.

  There he stayed, through several days that had no meaning to him. He was dimly aware of assistance to the commode from his footmen, along with his father’s presence now and then. Olivia came, he thought, because at least once there was a rustling of skirts and the faintest fragrance of almond extract. And then one morning he woke to see
snow falling.

  He lay as still as he could, unwilling to invite the stab of pain so familiar to him now. He lay on his back and watched the snow fall, feeling at peace with his body for the first time in days. On experiment, he moved his foot slightly and was rewarded with a dull throb instead of shooting agony.

  “Well, that is better,” he said out loud.

  “Eh?” Charles sat by his bed this time, his eyes on the book in his lap. “Are you in the land of the living again, Jemmy?”

  “I could be,” he said. “Give me a hand, Charlie, and help me sit up.”

  His friend obliged, and in a moment he was upright again, propped against the headboard with many pillows. He raised his knee slowly, anticipating the pain, and then relaxed when he discovered that pressure on his leg actually felt good now from that angle.

  “I may live,” he announced. He ran his hand over his chin. “Another week and I’ll have a beard,” he commented, pleased that he felt well enough to joke. “Charlie, did you get nominated to keep this morning’s death watch?”

  “Something like,” he teased in turn. “We’ve all been drawing straws. The short straw loses and gets you.” He patted James’s shoulder. “Don’t despair about the refurbishing you were attempting with Livy. She and Pete have been careening about the countryside from warehouse to warehouse, accumulating paint and wallpaper enough to redo Prinny’s palace at Brighton.”

  “I’m delighted,” he said with what he hoped resembled gratitude, even though he felt none.

  “Knew you would be pleased, lad,” Charles said. He leaned closer. “And I am pleased as well. Your accident may have turned out to be just the thing to guarantee Olivia’s attachment to Lord D’Urst, a thing I have been plotting for some time now. I suspected they were suited for each other. How gratifying to have one’s efforts borne out.”

  James sighed. Charles looked at him in some consternation. “Are you certain you are feeling better?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” he lied.

  “I knew you would be pleased, considering how you and Tim—God bless his memory—used to practically share Livy as a little sister.” Charles stood up. “Let me summon the watch from below stairs, Jemmy. You’d probably like a trip to the necessary, and maybe a shave. Some gruel or barley water?” he joked.

  Slip some strychnine in my morning broth while you’re at it, James thought. “Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate your ministrations. I leave you at perfect liberty to return to Hannaford!”

  “Not so fast, James!” Charles said. He tugged on the bell pull and sat down again. “Louisa showed up two nights ago—I suppose it was the day after your accident—and who should she have in tow besides children and husband?”

  “I can’t imagine,” James said.

  “Her stupid brother-in-law!” Charles declared. He made a face. “I think Papa has been telling the world of his concerns for Livy, and Louisa communicated them to Felix, who has somehow convinced himself that he will be the answer to Livy’s prayers! You remember him, don’t you? I’m quite happy to sit over here at Enderfield from Christmas Eve until Twelfth Night with that lunatic loose at Hannaford, don’t you know.”

  James nodded, feeling weaker by the moment. “Certainly Felix is my favorite man milliner and Bond Street beau! Charles, could you help me to lie down again? Perhaps I am hasty in sitting up.”

  Charles did help, smoothing down the covers with some of that same touch that Olivia possessed. “The worst of it is watching Pete and Felix glare at each other and dog poor Livy from room to room,” he said as the footman came into the room. “If she can escape, I’ll send her your way.”

  That vague promise was his only consolation as the day wore on. I can understand Olivia’s desperation to avoid Felix at all cost, James told himself when she did not materialize. He will make Peter seem all the more palatable. And what female would not be impressed by a diplomatist who has been everywhere from glittering St. Petersburg to backwater Washington, D.C.? He wearily waved away his father’s efforts to administer more powders. I have an entire new wardrobe on order in London, but it would never impress Olivia, he told himself. The moment I hang clothes on my frame, they wrinkle. Dust balls see me coming and climb aboard for the ride. I look in the mirror, and my hair tangles. And now I am too clumsy to negotiate stairs I know as well as the ones here at Enderfield. I am probably even a threat to national security.

  If he could not walk at present, James discovered how effortless it was to spend a day pacing up and down in his mind, wondering if a cloister in the French Alps would take a Protestant, or if only felons were allowed to go to Sydney or Melbourne. His heart bruised more surely than his ankle, he knew he could not bear to be the recipient of a wedding invitation from Olivia Hannaford.

  He drifted in and out of sleep as the afternoon waned, not caring much whether he lived or died. He told himself that he was cured of love, until he woke when someone lighted the branch of candles by his bed. He opened his eyes to look upon Olivia.

  “James,” was all she said as she took his hand and held it. After a long moment in which he was certain he was holding his breath, she brushed the hair from his forehead and leaned her cheek against his for the smallest moment. “It is so blissfully peaceful here.”

  “How did you manage to escape?” he asked, wishing that she would stay close to him, even as she returned to her chair.

  “Felix exhausted himself playing jackstraws with my nephew David and had to lie down.” She looked beyond him to some blank space on the wall. “Lord D’Urst has closeted himself with my father and mother.” She sighed, and with visible effort returned her gaze to him. “He has declared himself, James. He promises me exotic locales and libraries galore and tutors.”

  “For geometry?” he asked, not trusting himself to say more.

  She shook her head. “I mentioned geometry to him, and he laughed.” Olivia was careful to avoid his eyes. “He says it is wonderful that I am so smart, but he thinks that a female should be more interested in poetry and Shakespeare. I do like them,” she added hastily. “Don’t think me ungrateful.” She ran her finger along the stripe in the blanket. “He wants to shape my learning. He says that he wants his children to be raised by an intelligent woman. Not our children, but his children. Mama tells me that Lord D’Urst is all a woman could wish for and that it is a good offer.”

  “Your father? What does he think?”

  She hesitated. “I cannot tell. He became so quiet when I told him of Lord D’Urst’s offer. Mama says he’s just melancholy because I am his youngest child. What do you think?”

  “It probably is a good offer,” he said after excruciating thought. He gritted his teeth and raised himself up on his elbow. “You know how much you enjoy scholarship. Here is a grand opportunity, even if it must be Shakespeare instead of Euclid.” What puny words, he thought. I love her beyond all measure, but what could she possibly see in me? Sir Waldo, you were wrong.

  She said nothing for a long while, returning his gaze to the distance. Her wordless indictment smote his heart. He wanted to reach for her hand, to tell her of his love and beg her patience with the foolishness of the male sex in general, and him in particular. He closed his eyes instead. When he opened them, she was on her feet and looking down at him with an expression of real sorrow.

  “Lord D’Urst says he even knows of a maison de coiffure where they will tame my hair.” She fingered a curl that had declared its independence from the bun low on her neck. “Right up until he said it, I thought I wanted that, too.”

  To his total misery, she kissed his forehead and went to the door. “Lord D’Urst says that I am a work in progress. Do you see that when you look at me?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “I must be honest.”

  “Do you know what I see when I think of you?” she asked suddenly, the words coming out with some force.

  He shook his head, almost afraid of the intensity in her voice.

  “I see a good man. Not a brain or
a title or a double first. Just a good man. ’Night, James.”

  He cried himself to sleep, something he had not done since the death of his mother. He was sick to his soul, and the pain far exceeded the throb in his ankle. Just what is any man after in a wife? he asked himself. As he lay still finally, exhausted by his tears, it occurred to him that he could pinpoint the moment he fell in love with Olivia Hannaford. He closed his eyes to see the moment again, to watch her striding along the lane between the two houses, her topknot bouncing about, the picture of energy and endless fun. It had nothing to do with her scholarship or whatever potential she represented, he decided, but only the breadth and depth of her. Olivia just is, he knew now, and when she is, I am. He roused from melancholy long enough to share dinner with his father, who ate from a tray in the sickroom.

  “I trust you will not mind, son, but Lord Nuttall has invited me to play whist tonight.”

  “On Christmas Eve, Papa?” James asked, amused, in spite of himself.

  Lord Waverly laughed. “It is the proclivity of two old widowers to entertain each other as we choose, son! I am only an estate away should any crisis strike.”

  It already has, James thought. “Very well, sir. Let me wish you Happy Christmas now, for I plan to be asleep before you return.”

  He had asked the footman to gather up his treatise from the book room and bring it to him when he heard a firm knock on the front door. When his heart leaped into his throat, he reminded himself that Olivia never knocked with such firmness. All the same, he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. The door opened.

  “Oh, it is you, Peter,” he said, unable to hide his disappointment.

  Dressed in his overcoat and wearing a natty beaver hat that just shrieked continental good taste, Lord D’Urst made himself at home—except that to James’s eyes, he did not look comfortable. When he did not say anything, James spoke. “Are you on your way to Christmas services with the Hannafords?”