One Candlelit Christmas

by Julia Justiss

  His hair felt soft and fuzzy under her fingers. It must have been shaved off not so very long ago. He would have hated that, she thought, remembering the carefully arranged, silky dark locks of the handsome young buck he had once been. Of their own volition, it seemed to her, Nell’s fingers swept the crown of his head one last time before she eased herself out from under his body. Then she carefully lowered his head to the flagged floor and knelt up beside him.

  What should she do next? She had got him out of the snow, but he could not stay here on her kitchen floor for ever. Though the closed stove kept the room warm, she was certain his body heat would only seep away again through the stone flags on which he lay.

  If only he would wake up, get up and walk out!

  She reached out on a spurt of annoyance to shake his shoulder, then as quickly drew it back, mocking herself. If hauling him along the garden path and up over the back step had not roused him, shaking him was not going to do it.

  If she only had some spirits in the house! She could tip some into his mouth, and perhaps that would revive him. Moodily, she began to chew at her already bitten fingernails. There was not even any tea to offer him. She had rather hoped the Vicar might bring her a quarter-pound as a Christmas gift, but by then she was sure Carleton would be long gone.

  She had done all she was capable of doing for him. She had brought him in out of the cold, at least—which was more than he would have done for her, were their situations reversed.

  On that sobering thought she got to her feet and pushed the back door closed. For several minutes she leaned against it, simply looking at Carleton and chewing her fingernails.

  She had been so naïve to have hoped for anything from the handsome devil she had married. With hindsight, she should have known that no true gentleman would pass out drunk on a sofa during the course of a house party whose guests included several young ladies of gentle birth. Nor would a decent man, upon waking, have vented his wrath in such an intemperate fashion upon a girl he had just discovered was not only not a servant, but barely out of the schoolroom to boot.

  It was the sound of footsteps pounding up the garden path that eventually jerked her out of her reverie.

  Harry came bursting into the kitchen with the desperate air of a criminal seeking sanctuary, and would have tripped over Carleton’s body had she not caught fast hold of his arm.

  An extra weight descended on Nell’s shoulders with the arrival of her son. Through the dirt that caked his face she could just discern a reddening along one cheekbone that presaged a black eye. The snowflakes peppering his silky black hair announced the fact he had lost his cap somewhere. In short, it was obvious he had been in a fight.

  Again.

  In spite of all she could do, there was no denying that he was beginning to grow wild. She knew she was too soft with him, but she could never bring herself to beat him—even though Squire Jeffers insisted such strict discipline was the only way to stop him from becoming gallows-bait.

  And even though she knew she ought to at least be reprimanding him for coming home in such a disreputable state, she simply did not have the energy right now. Someone would beat a path to her door soon enough, telling her exactly what he had been up to and demanding recompense.

  ‘Cor!’ he said now, his guilty expression transforming to one of awe as he wriggled out of her hold, making straight for Carleton’s inert body. ‘Ain’t he big?’

  Then, inexplicably, he whirled round to look over his shoulder through their little kitchen window towards the church, the spire of which was just visible over the tops of the yew trees bordering the churchyard.

  ‘Is he just, though?’

  ‘Just?’ She frowned. She could not keep up with the strange words he picked up from the village boys. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that, but he’s certainly big.’ She ached all over from the effort of getting him indoors. Then she eyed her son’s small but sturdy frame. ‘Do you think you could help me make him more comfortable?’

  ‘’Course, Mama,’ he said, puffing out his chest. ‘We got to look after him, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ she blinked, somewhat taken aback by his enthusiasm. ‘Though as a rule one should not really bring beggars into the house. But he fainted in our garden, and I could hardly leave him lying out there in the cold…’

  ‘’Course you couldn’t,’ he beamed. ‘Not at Christmas.’

  She supposed the Reverend Byatt had been teaching them about charity in his Sunday school. She was a little surprised that the lesson appeared to have made such an impression on Harry, but nonetheless she was pleased.

  ‘Exactly,’ she smiled, proud that he was showing, at last, some signs that he was not going to grow up to be as self-centred as his father. ‘Between us,’ she said with determination, ‘I should think we could get him onto the sofa in the parlour. And then I want you to run to Squire Jeffers with a letter about him, so that someone can come and take him away.’

  ‘Take him away?’ Harry’s face fell.

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. She could not very well have left him out to die in the cold, but nor did she want him staying one moment longer than he had to. ‘This man may look like a beggar, but he comes from a wealthy family. He does not belong here, with the likes of us.’

  For a moment it looked as though Harry was going to argue with her. He was doing that more and more lately. Answering her back, asking awkward questions and never being satisfied with her answers. So it was a relief when, albeit with a mulish expression on his face, he obeyed her prompting to take Carleton by the feet and help her manoeuvre his dead weight through the kitchen and into the front parlour, where, with a little ingenuity and a great deal of effort, they managed to get him onto the sofa.

  ‘Run and fetch him a pillow for his head, and another blanket,’ she said, with a sinking feeling as she realised she was going to have to dig into her precious reserves of fuel by lighting a fire for him.

  While Harry clattered up the stairs to her bedroom, Nell bent to undo the buttons of Carleton’s coat, which had rucked up round his neck. As the backs of her fingers brushed his throat she flinched at the searing heat that was pouring off him. His face, which she had avoided looking at since Harry had come home, for fear she would reveal her feelings, was beaded with sweat.

  No wonder he had collapsed in her garden. He was running a very high fever.

  Forgetting just who and what the man was for a few minutes, she began to strip him of his clothing. Years of experience in nursing her son through his various ailments had taught her that sponging a body did as much good as anything a doctor might suggest, had she ever been able to afford to send for one.

  It was not very hard to get him out of his clothes. They slid off him as easily as if they had been made for a very much larger man.

  But when she rolled him to one side, to ease off his sweat-stained shirt, she reeled back, gasping. Carleton’s back was ridged and furrowed with old scar tissue. It looked as though some considerable time ago he had been flogged!

  Her hands shook as she went back to the task of stripping him, her eyes filling with tears. She hated to think of anyone suffering such brutal treatment, but for Carleton it must have been particularly devastating. Not only had he been the only son of extremely indulgent parents, and heir to a venerable title, but he had been blessed with great wealth too. Wherever he went he had expected, and generally received, unqualified admiration.

  Thankfully, she had managed to remove his shirt and roll him onto his back before Harry returned with his arms full of bedlinen. She did not feel up to answering a barrage of questions about how a man’s back could end up looking like a ploughed field. She felt sick enough just imagining cruel men stripping Carleton, tying him to a whipping post, then beating him until his skin tore to bloodied shreds, without having to talk about it.

  ‘Go to the pump and fetch me some water and a cloth,’ she said in a tremulous voice, ‘while I pen that note for you to take to the Squire.’

/>   Though disapproving heartily of her, the Squire would make sure a letter got through to Viscount Lambourne, her landlord. Especially if she marked it ‘urgent’. For it was urgent that someone should come and collect Carleton, give him the care she was so ill-equipped to provide, and restore him to his proper sphere.

  Where neither she nor her son belonged.

  Chapter Two

  Carleton yawned, stretched, and opened his eyes. And wondered why he was looking in a mirror at a reflection of himself at about seven or eight years old.

  He squeezed his eyes shut again. The marsh fever must still have him in its grip. Though for once the waking visions that assailed him were of a benign nature. He had even conjured up an angel this time, who had silently ministered to him with soothing hands and compassionate eyes.

  Brown eyes, they’d been, set beneath a smooth brow framed by dusky curls.

  He sighed. Angels ought to have blue eyes, and hair like flame. So whatever the creature was who had tended to him she was no angel. Even though she had left such a sense of well-being in her wake.

  And as for imagining himself a boy again, proudly examining the black eye he had got fighting with the stable lad…He shook his head impatiently, as though doing so might clear it.

  It was because he had dreamed for so long of coming home. And when someone had nursed him so gently it had sent his mind back to a time when he had been safe and life had been full of promise. That must be it. As to where he really was…He gave an involuntary shiver.

  ‘Want another blanket, mister?’ the child with his hazel eyes, straight black brows and pugnacious jaw piped up.

  Warily he opened his eyes again—to see that the image of himself as a scrubby schoolboy was still hovering over him.

  When he came into his right mind this person would probably turn out to be a strapping farm worker, and not a boy of any sort. The last time he had fallen this ill he had mistaken his fellow prisoners for a troupe of demons who had been tormenting him with pitchforks. He had fought their every attempt to care for him, they had later told him, and he’d had to beg their pardon.

  He had not fought the angel, though, not once. On the contrary, he remembered being pathetically grateful for her every act of kindness. During one period of relative lucidity he seemed to recall babbling profuse thanks, and being answered by a shake of the head and an expression so sad it had made him feel unaccountably guilty.

  ‘How about a drink, then?’ the imp with the black eye persisted.

  In English.

  A sense of well-being hatched within Carleton’s breast and emerged as a fully-fledged smile. He’d made it. He was back in England.

  ‘How about fetching me that angel instead?’ he countered. She would bathe his face and body in deliciously cool water. Then, if he could keep his eyes open, she would hold his head against her bosom while she spooned ambrosia into his mouth. He would feel strength returning with each spoonful and lie down at last, knowing he was safe for she was watching over him.

  ‘Mama can’t come just now,’ the imp replied. ‘Viscount Lambourne is with her. On account of you. She says he has come to take you away, but he don’t look too pleased. If he don’t want you, though, it don’t matter. You can stay here with us and be my pa.’

  Nothing anyone said when he was in the grip of his fever ever made much sense, so he brushed aside the contradictory elements in what the imp was saying. And as for being this boy’s father…He grimaced as the old pain slashed into him with a force that took him by surprise.

  Grimly, he pushed himself to a sitting position and tried to examine his surroundings through the fog that pervaded his mind. All he felt certain of was that his guardian angel was presently busy elsewhere. But when the room stopped spinning he perceived it bore a remarkable resemblance to the best parlour of Mrs Green’s cottage. Though he had only ever visited the old lady once, when he’d first come into his title, she had clearly remembered him and given him shelter. A weight seemed to tumble from his shoulders.

  It had only been after he had disembarked that it had occurred to him that he had neither the funds nor the strength to make it as far as Lambourne. For a moment or two he had been crestfallen. He’d had no acquaintance in Portsmouth to whom he might apply for help. Nor had his experience thus far encouraged him to expect any practical assistance might be forthcoming from the local authorities.

  But he had not survived so much only to lie down and give up on the quayside!

  And that was when he had recalled Mrs Green. She had been a great beauty in her youth, and his grandfather’s sole mistress throughout the course of his married life. When they had parted company she had told him she had no heart for the bustle of London without him, and asked him to settle her somewhere in the country. The snug little property he’d subsequently bought her lay—providentially—close enough to the bustling harbour to make walking there a feasible option.

  Even so, it had been a close-run thing! He swung his legs to the floor and bowed his head over his hands. He had used up the last of his physical reserves before he had even reached the outskirts of Barstow. Will-power alone had kept him putting one foot in front of the other—until that moment when he had lifted the latch of the garden gate and seen the woman digging, and known he could finally let go…

  He ran his hand over his face and round the back of his neck. The stubble on his chin felt almost as long as the fuzz that was growing on his scalp. Soft enough to represent a few days’ growth. But then he was distracted from his musings on the passage of time by another, increasingly urgent sensation.

  ‘I need,’ he said, feeling somewhat discomfited by the discovery, ‘to relieve myself.’

  The imp, who had been hanging over the arm of the sofa, his keen eyes following Carleton’s every move, promptly dived under a nearby table and produced a chamber pot.

  ‘Here you go, sir.’

  Carleton regarded the receptacle with distaste. His nostrils were already full of the unmistakable odour of the sickroom.

  ‘Or you could try to get to the midden, if you like. It ain’t snowing today.’ He sobered, regarding Carleton’s frame a little dubiously. ‘It is a bit blowy, though.’

  Sensing a challenge, Carleton pushed himself to his feet, and waited to see if his legs would hold him. It would be well worth taking a calculated risk for the pleasure of being able to get outside, and taking care of his personal needs for himself.

  ‘The wind won’t blow me over, I shouldn’t think, if I could lean on you,’ he said. The boy was probably older than he looked, and must in any case be quite strong. For somebody must have carried him in out of the garden, where he had collapsed, and installed him on that sofa. He did not think the angel could have done so alone. And, from his hazy recollection of the time he had so far spent here, this imp was her only attendant.

  The imp had in any case decided he was up to the task, for he skipped to Carleton’s side with a grin.

  Returning that infectious smile, Carleton laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder.

  ‘Not that way,’ the imp said, when Carleton instinctively made for the passage that led to the back of the house. ‘Don’t want to go by the kitchen—not with the Viscount in there. Always best to keep out of his way when he comes calling, but he’s in a meaner mood than ever today.’

  ‘We shall go out through the front door, then, and round the side of the house,’ said Carleton, though he was not sure how far he would get before his legs gave out. No matter, he shrugged. He would crawl back if necessary. He wanted to breathe fresh air for at least a minute or two. Real, crisp English winter air, that would scour his mind and his lungs clean.

  It was only after he had relieved himself, and done up his breeches, that he realised what had felt so different from the moment he had woken on the sofa this time. He was no longer sweating. Shaking, yes, but he rather thought he could attribute that to his weakened condition now.

  Even before this latest bout of fever he had not been in top
form. They had urged him to wait longer before attempting the voyage home, but all he’d been able to think of was getting to Lambourne Hall in time for Christmas. Images of roaring fires, soft beds, and sideboards groaning with food had kept him marching doggedly on. All the things he had taken so much for granted during his privileged youth had taken on something of the allure of the Garden of Eden from which he had been so summarily exiled.

  He blinked, looking round at the neat but productive garden in which he was standing, then down at the boy. And he frowned.

  If his mind was clear, and he was not still in the grip of a fever-induced hallucination, then this was a real boy, not a phantom. He had not known Mrs Green had any children, but if the woman who had been digging up vegetables was her daughter, and this boy her grandson, it would explain why he had thought they looked vaguely familiar.

  Well, he could soon find out.

  ‘What is your name, boy?’

  ‘Harry Tillotson, sir,’ said the imp, sending him floundering back into the substance of his worst nightmare.

  The lad must truly be a demon, to be spouting that name of all names. Dear God, was he still, after all, lying in some filthy hut in France? Would he wake in a few more moments to find that he was still waiting for the British troops to reach his hamlet? Did he have that debilitating voyage to endure all over again?

  No, it could not be! This all felt so real!

  Besides, if he was only imagining he was back in England, why was he picturing himself here, when it had always been visions of Lambourne Hall that had fuelled his imagination?

  Though even this cottage, he reflected, looking back over his shoulder along the neat little flagged path, was a palace compared to what he had become used to. Mrs Green’s cottage might be small and out of the way, but it had solid walls and a thick, weatherproof thatch. She even had a patch of land big enough to keep her kitchen well stocked with a variety of produce, and—most importantly—the freedom to come and go as she pleased.