One Candlelit Christmas

by Julia Justiss

  ‘So tell me now.’

  She blinked at him again, trying to judge his mood. He had been really angry with her earlier, but now he just looked…well, troubled was the only way to describe the expression on his face.

  She sighed.

  ‘It was all a dreadful mistake. My aunt wanted you to marry Lucinda. She had been out for three years, and nobody had come up to scratch, and you were so…’ She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she sought for the words to describe what Carleton had been like in those days.

  ‘Green?’ he supplied for her.

  She looked at him apologetically. ‘Well, yes, I suppose you were. You certainly fell into her trap like a ripe plum. She plied you with drink all night, and then watched to see where you passed out.’

  ‘Passed out?’ The woman had expected him to pass out? Since he had never, before that particular week, drunk to the point where that had happened, he could only draw one conclusion. ‘She drugged me!’

  Nell looked at him reproachfully. ‘Carleton, you did drink an awful lot.’

  ‘No more than many other young men of my acquaintance. And I was never so incapacitated as I was that night. Not before nor since.’

  She tilted her head to one side, examining him. ‘You were never quite sober. Not during any of our encounters.’

  ‘During our few encounters I probably was not,’ he acknowledged. ‘But inebriation was not my normal condition.’

  She considered his claim for a moment or two. It was not easy to let go of her opinion of him…but then it struck her that it would be equally hard for him to revise his opinion of her. Perhaps if she expected him to believe what she had to tell him she must be prepared to accept his version of events too.

  Clearing her throat, she said, ‘Well, in that case I apologise for calling you a drunkard.’

  He did seem to relax a little. Encouraged, she went on, ‘Anyway, after establishing that you were out cold, she came up to Lucinda’s room and told her to take some books back to the library.’

  ‘Knowing I was already in place?’

  ‘Yes. Only it was rather a cold night, and Lucinda did not want to leave her room to traipse all the way downstairs to perform a task she thought better suited to one of the servants. So she sent me.’

  ‘Why you? Why not a servant, if that was who she thought should have done the traipsing?’

  ‘Because she loved ordering me about as though I was a servant.’ Her shoulders hunched a little as she recalled her days of being at everyone’s beck and call, made fully aware of her position of dependence every minute of each day of her dreary life.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I took the books and went to the library, and put them all back on the shelves. When I tried to leave, I found the door was locked.’

  He frowned. ‘Your aunt was careless enough, after setting the trap, to lock the wrong girl in the library with her victim?’

  ‘I was wearing Lucinda’s shawl,’ she sighed. It had been a gaudy thing, made up in Spitalfields. ‘She had singed it on her candle that very evening, so she said I might as well wear it.’

  He nodded again. In the unlit corridors of that Jacobean house, one dark-haired girl in a nightgown with a distinctive shawl about her shoulders might very well pass for another.

  ‘And then, of course, I noticed you on the sofa. At first I thought you might be able to help me get out, but I could not wake you.’

  ‘Drugged, then,’ he nodded. And then said reflectively, ‘The fuss your aunt made the next morning did seem extremely odd, considering she had obviously made sure several of the other house guests were there to witness our discovery. At the time I thought it was because you had abused her trust by entrapping me. That opinion,’ he said, his eyes boring into her, ‘was reinforced by the way your uncle later spoke of your behaviour. He seemed not to care whether I married you or not. He did ask me to leave, citing concern for the reputation of his own daughters should it be known what a rakehell he had invited into his home. But he said of you only that you were past praying for, and that he washed his hands of you entirely.’

  Nell sucked in a sharp breath as her perception of her past shifted into a completely different pattern. She had heard raised voices coming from her uncle’s study the morning after she’d been discovered in the library with Carleton. But she had always assumed her uncle had been insisting he marry her. Not that Carleton had…She frowned. Carleton had done the honourable thing! Much as he had despised her, he had given her the protection of his name. And even though he’d stayed well away from her for the next two years, until it was supposed he had died, he had housed her in considerable comfort. He had been perplexed to find her in this cottage too, mentioning a jointure…

  ‘I understood,’ he was saying now, ‘his comments to mean that you had tried his patience to the limit already, with similarly wanton behaviour.’

  ‘No!’ For years she had been telling herself she did not care what he thought of her. But in the light of what she had just discovered it felt imperative she now seized the chance to clear her name.

  ‘It was not my behaviour he objected to but my very existence! You see, he had not approved of the man my mother married. And was downright angry that when both my parents died he had no choice but to take me in. My aunt reconciled him to my presence by pointing out that I was old enough to do the work of a servant, and thus save him one set of wages. But he always made it very clear I was only there on sufferance.’

  Carleton frowned as he imagined what her childhood must have been like. For the first time he could understand that she might have been overwhelmed by the desire to escape such miserable drudgery. Then he shook his head as he checked that line of thought. She was not offering him excuses for why she had trapped him into marriage. She was maintaining she had done no such thing.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ she wailed. ‘I am telling you I did not plan any of it. I was as much a victim of my aunt’s scheming as you were.’

  And if that were true—he shuddered—she had more cause to hate him than he had ever supposed. His subsequent actions must have seemed like the most appalling cruelty.

  Seeing his shudder, Nell felt as though he had struck her. Sweeping the tray off the table, she darted out of the room before Carleton had a chance to say another word.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he groaned. No wonder he had not heard her argue with Peregrine for long. If all she had said was true, and somehow it all fell so neatly into place he just knew it was, then he fully deserved her hatred.

  He had comprehensively ruined her life.

  A sheen of sweat broke out on his brow.

  Peregrine would be back in a few days with the means to poison him. And all of a sudden he could understand why she might feel completely justified in giving it to him.

  Chapter Four

  Nell dunked the scrubbing brush into the bucket and slapped it down on the kitchen table.

  Ever since the discussion they’d had the night before, when she had learned that Carleton had not deliberately ruined her reputation, she had been more determined than ever that somehow she must find a way to thwart Peregrine.

  Just as she was now working the brush round and round, to scour the table clean, so she had gone over all the elements of the argument they’d had. She had quickly perceived how a confidence shared with just one person could have been taken up to become fodder for the gossip which had subsequently destroyed her. And, knowing her aunt’s sly, scheming ways, she found it easier, somehow, to accept she had drugged Carleton than to keep on believing he had been a habitual drunkard.

  And now that she’d learned Peregrine would stop at nothing to keep hold of Carleton’s title, not even murder, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised if much of what he had told her had not happened in the way he portrayed it.

  Carleton certainly refused to believe his family would have treated her as Peregrine has assured her they would.

  Would they really have welcomed her into their mi
dst, though, and raised Harry as Carleton’s heir believing him to be illegitimate?

  She had not made up her mind about that, but one thing had struck her quite forcefully.

  Peregrine’s plot relied for its success on the fact that only she and he knew Carleton was alive.

  So all she had to do to ensure her husband’s safety was to broadcast the fact that he had returned.

  To that end she had sent Harry to fetch Squire Jeffers. As the local magistrate, he would know how to go about reinstating Carleton to his rightful place.

  Running the back of her hand over her brow, she lugged the bucket to the scullery so she could tip the soapy water down the sink. She had just upended it to dry when she heard Harry come banging though the kitchen door.

  ‘He’s coming up the path now, Ma,’ he panted, only a split second before Nell heard a fist pounding on her front door.

  Hastily tugging off her apron, she went down the passage, tucking stray wisps of hair into the bun that was fastened neatly at the back of her neck as she did so.

  ‘Well, Mrs Tillotson?’ Squire Jeffers barked as soon as she opened the door. ‘What is so urgent that I must drop everything and come to your cottage without delay? Or is this just another of your brat’s ill-judged pranks?’

  ‘N-no…it is not! I mean of course it is,’ Nell stammered as the Squire barged in, forcing her to shrink back. He had taken off his hat and gloves, and was vainly looking round for a side-table on which to deposit them before she managed to quash her indignation at his attitude towards Harry sufficiently to say, ‘That is, it is an urgent matter, sir.’

  He glared at her as she squeezed past him in the narrow hallway to push the door closed, shutting out the cold air that had come gusting in behind him.

  ‘I have to report a crime,’ she explained. ‘At least, there will be a crime…’ She faltered. ‘That is, there might be a crime if…’

  ‘Ha!’ he said, dropping his gloves into his hat. ‘Knew it would turn out to be a wild goose chase. Do you think I have not better things to do on a cold winter’s afternoon than—’

  ‘Indeed, sir, it is not a wild goose chase,’ she replied. ‘Won’t you please go into the parlour, where it is warm, so that I might explain?’

  ‘May as well, now I’m here,’ he conceded, thrusting his hat into her hands as she made to open the parlour door.

  Carleton appeared to have been dozing, but his eyes snapped open at the sight of the portly, pompous man strutting in as if he owned the place. As the Squire examined him from head to toe with a critical eye, he pushed himself upright and lowered his stockinged feet to the floor.

  The Squire’s eyes rested for a moment on the darns at his toes, before flicking up to the coarsely woven shirt that was hanging from his slender frame.

  ‘Caught yourself a criminal, have you, Mrs Tillotson?’ he said. ‘Damn fool thing to take a vagrant into your home, though, even if he does look as though a puff of wind would blow him over.’

  ‘No, no—you mistake the matter. This man is no criminal. He is my husband…’

  Both Carleton and the Squire looked at her sharply.

  ‘Thought you claimed to be a widow?’ said Squire Jeffers.

  ‘Y-yes, I thought I was a widow. But apparently the news of my husband’s death was a false report…’

  ‘Hanged, was he not, your husband? For spying? ’Bout the only admirable thing I ever heard of that rakehell, if we really are talking about the late Viscount Lambourne.’

  ‘I regret to have to inform you,’ said Carleton, with such hauteur it was clear he found the Squire’s manners as offensive as Nell always did, ‘that I was never a spy. Nor was I hanged, as the French authorities intended.’

  ‘But you do claim to be this woman’s husband?’ said the Squire, taking a snuffbox from a waistcoat pocket and helping himself to a generous pinch.

  ‘I am Helena’s husband. Carleton William Tillotson, Viscount Lambourne,’ he declared icily.

  ‘I suppose you have some explanation for how you come not to be dead, then?’ returned the Squire with sarcasm, snapping shut the snuffbox and returning it to his pocket. ‘And why you have decided to stage your resurrection here, in the home of a woman everybody knows you were about to divorce for her infidelities?’

  He sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and eyed Carleton with scorn.

  Nell held her breath. Carleton was not used to having his word questioned. Nor, in her experience, did he have much of a hold over his temper. She should have warned him that she was bringing the magistrate here. But then that would have meant discussing Peregrine’s plot against him. She had not wanted to worry him with the knowledge that his life was in danger. Had he not been through enough?

  Yet now she saw her attempt to protect him from further anxiety had been a grave mistake. He should know how important it was to get this man’s sympathy and support.

  She dropped onto the only remaining chair in the room, clutching the Squire’s hat between tense fingers as she braced herself to witness Carleton’s explosive temper blow her rescue plan out of the water.

  But, in a voice that was as icily calm as Squire Jeffers’s had just been, Carleton said, ‘I did not part with my wife on the best of terms, no. There had been a series of misunderstandings, which were no doubt exacerbated by my youthful arrogance.’

  Nell’s breath went out in a great whoosh. It was not just hearing him speak in such measured tones that brought her such relief. It was the fact that those particular words indicated he believed her. He had finally accepted she had not deliberately trapped him into marriage. And, judging from the somewhat contrite look he shot her, he might actually be feeling some remorse for his own behaviour back then.

  She settled back in her chair, feeling remarkably inclined to smile.

  ‘I had been running with rather a wild crowd,’ Carleton continued, as she ducked her head to hide the rising tide of pleasure she was sure must be written all over her face. ‘And, deciding I needed to break with them before they dragged me down too far, I went over to Portugal with an old schoolfriend of mine. He had some interest in one of the regiments over there…But that is beside the point. You want details of my arrest, and how I managed to escape execution.’

  Nell’s head flew up. She longed to hear what had happened to Carleton during his long years of absence, but had never quite dared to ask him. The scars she had seen on his body were evidence he had been on the receiving end of some brutal treatment, but she could not imagine what sort of person would think they could get away with flogging a British peer.

  ‘We were staying in Bilbao, which we believed was completely safe, when suddenly the French army appeared outside the city walls. The citizens panicked, and began to flee towards Portugalete. When I woke—for I was not in the habit of rising early, you understand—the streets were already choked with every kind of conveyance. And it was raining heavily.’

  Nell could guess what was coming next.

  Carleton had been far too concerned about his image in those days to have wished to give the impression he was panicking. The weather would have given him the perfect excuse. She could just imagine him saying, in that languid voice she had heard him use when addressing the other members of her aunt’s house party, Go out there? In this weather? And risk getting mud on these boots? Absolutely not!

  ‘I had no intention of joining that desperate throng in such inclement weather,’ he continued, confirming her image of the always gorgeously apparelled young man she remembered. ‘Besides, as a civilian I fully believed that whatever the soldiers were up to was nothing to do with me. I assumed that whoever was in charge of the French army would leave civilians out of things. And for a while, at least, that was true. There was some little inconvenience, but nothing to remark—until the Spanish mistress of one of the French generals was suspected of giving away information to a British spy she had taken as her lover. Rather than give him up, the woman named me as her partner in crime. Nothing I could
say would persuade the General I was not the guilty party. And so, since I was not an officer of His Majesty’s army, he decided to hang me.’

  ‘Without a trial?’ Nell asked, outraged. It was monstrous that a man could be sentenced to death without being given a chance to defend himself.

  ‘Justice tends to be somewhat arbitrary when the military is in charge of a town,’ he replied with a wry smile. ‘Although in this case…’ his eyes hardened, as though he were seeing something quite other than the shocked features of an English woman ‘…the General was in no hurry to bring a swift conclusion to his punishment of the man he believed was the cause of Juanita’s double betrayal.’

  Nell felt her stomach lurch. He did not need to spell out what form his punishment had taken. She had seen the scars on his wrists and ankles and torso. He had been manacled and flogged, as though he were a common criminal.

  He blinked, as though dragging himself back with an effort from a very dark place. ‘Eventually I got tangled up with a batch of Portuguese prisoners of war from the garrison of Saragossa. One of them, a private by the name of José Tortuga, changed places with me on the eve of my long-delayed execution. Thus saving my life.’

  The Squire harrumphed. ‘Why should any man do a damn fool thing like that?’

  ‘Have you ever seen a man with a case of gangrene?’ Carleton enquired politely. ‘Believe me, hanging is a preferable option to suffering a lingering death from putrefaction of the limbs. It is swift, and in this case gave a man who had been insignificant all his life an opportunity to achieve a magnificent end. José swaggered to the gallows wearing the clothes of an English aristocrat, knowing that everyone who watched his execution would believe him capable of not only stealing military secrets but of having done so by seducing a beautiful woman who belonged to a wealthy and powerful man. And, perhaps more importantly, he died knowing he had outwitted the French, whom he hated.’