Christmas Delights

by Heather Hiestand

  Surely the man knew he was about to propose; why put his daughter in such a position? It defied logic. But he had done it, and the baron had announced the engagement, and either way, Lewis’s happiness had been destroyed. Rupert Courtnay now had himself another titled son-in-law.

  At least he now understood why Victoria had made her decision, and this knowledge made him even more certain that he had done the right thing in refusing her. Being under Rupert Courtnay’s thumb would be intolerable.

  “I need another cup,” he muttered and stalked back toward the punch bowl. Penelope’s mouth dropped open. Surely she didn’t think he was going to congratulate her on her good fortune? He was happy she was spared the apparently dreadful school, but he’d lost something precious in the bargain. Enough lovers littered his past for him to know how rare Victoria’s passion had been, how sweet. Even if he hadn’t fallen in love with her.

  If he even had. How could he love her when he’d never stopped loving Alys? Either way, his love seemed doomed to only bring him unhappiness.

  He heard a sniff behind him and turned to see Penelope, her good mood quite gone, sniffling back tears. Swearing to himself, he moved back to her just as she bent to pick up his broken cup.

  “Don’t touch that; you’ll cut yourself,” he barked. He took her arm to pull her away from the shards.

  A footman rushed up and cleared the mess away with an apology.

  “I didn’t want someone to step in it.” The girl sniffled again.

  “It isn’t your problem,” Lewis said.

  “Have you been to Edinburgh?” she asked tremulously. “Is it nice?”

  “I believe it is rainy.”

  “And everyone talks with a different accent. What if I don’t understand them?” Penelope’s voice rose, and Lewis was suddenly chilled with the knowledge that she was going to fly into one of her rages.

  He glanced toward the bonfire, toward Victoria, who could calm the girl like no one else. Penelope broke into loud, ringing sobs and tucked her eyes into her sleeve. At least they seemed desperately loud to him, but no one in the crowd around the bonfire even looked away. He patted Penelope’s shoulder, trying to soothe her.

  “Come, Penelope. Change is always hard, but it isn’t as if you aren’t far better off than you might have been. You need to look forward with hope, not fear.”

  She rubbed her nose and did a nervous jig. “What if she has a baby and forgets about me? She might send me to the school after all.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t send you to that school,” Lewis said. “Don’t waste your time worrying about the distant future. Just think about now. A jolly time planning weddings, then moving to an exciting new city. New friends, new adventures.”

  “Why didn’t you propose to my cousin? I thought you liked her.” Penelope’s tears stopped and she looked at him sharply.

  Too sharply for a nine-year-old. What had she seen? They had never been as careful as they should have been. “I wasn’t for her, Penelope. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Do you like the baron?”

  “I do. He’s a good man. He will treat your cousin well.”

  She frowned. “I’d rather it was you.”

  He wanted to tell her that he felt the same way, but that would have been childish, and he was anything but a child. “Your uncle is marrying my cousin, so I’m sure we’ll see each other again someday. Until then, I wish you the very best.”

  She stared at him, her lower lip pursed into a pout.

  “Give me your hand,” he said.

  She held one tiny mittened hand out to him and he took it in his own, then kissed the back of it. “Fare-thee-well, Miss Courtnay, and happy travels. You are a strong girl and you are going to be fine.” He smiled at her, then added, “Go back to your family now.”

  She turned away obediently. The momentary urge to get very drunk had passed. Instead, Lewis decided to pack. He was leaving very early the next morning, well before breakfast. It was best to be gone before anyone else was awake. He didn’t want to see Victoria again.

  It seemed they were the last to leave the next afternoon. All the horses had been engaged in transporting the house party to various way stations, homes, and train stations in the area, and they had managed to be just a little too behind to catch any of them.

  When Victoria entered a sitting room to wait for a footman to appear with news that a carriage was available, she was surprised to find John sitting near the fire with a letter. Having not seen him at all that morning, she’d thought he had already departed. Which would have been odd, of course, now that she had time to reflect. Although Rose had returned to Redcake Manor, her family seat, for the time being. But she was planning a trip to London soon to purchase her trousseau, and they had made plans to shop together. Her father was in the library, discussing something with the earl, who was leaving for London in a couple of days, after he’d helped his mother order the rest of the repairs that were needed at the Fort.

  “You look very serious,” she said to John as she unraveled her muffler.

  “It’s just luck that this letter reached me,” he said. “I had thought we’d be gone by now.”

  “I couldn’t find my favorite boots. The boot boy had left them somewhere. The entire day has gone like that.”

  “Ah.” His eyes flashed back to the paper.

  “We’re just waiting for a carriage now.”

  He nodded, not looking up. “Ye will not mind if I stay here until tomorrow?”

  She tilted her head. Something about his demeanor had changed since the previous night. She tried to peek at the letter, but by accident or design, he had his hand over the majority of the writing. Still, she thought it was female handwriting. “Of course not, John. If you have business . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she hoped he would explain.

  He scratched his chin. “Thank ye, my dear. Your father will be going with ye, so ye ladies will not have tae travel alone.”

  “We would be fine alone. We came down here ourselves. Though Rose was with us, but that was a mere accident.”

  He nodded again, even more absently. A footman poked his head into the doorway.

  “The carriage is here, Lady Allen-Hill.”

  Victoria wondered how long it would be until she was referred to as Baroness Alix. Or if it would even happen, given John’s sudden change in behavior. However, the engagement had been announced, and if he cried off, there would be a scandal, at least in this corner of Sussex.

  “Well.” She forced a smile. “We will see you in London in a few days.”

  “Of course, my dear.” John stood and kissed her cheek, a dutiful peck that felt as dry as sawdust.

  She sighed. “Good-bye for now.” She followed the footman out the door, leaving John to his letter.

  Lewis left the Fort on horseback, a mode of transportation that had become highly unusual for him. Eddy, a former London newsboy, had ridden even less, but he exulted in the experience, riding his horse so recklessly that Lewis was afraid the lad would provoke his horse into rearing.

  He urged his horse into a canter and flew down the muddy lane after the boy. Eddy crowed that reckless laugh of youth, and Lewis, getting into the spirit of things, whooped as they raced. It felt good to have the wind in his face and blowing in his ears. For a time, all through their ride to Heathfield, he didn’t have a care in the world. He could have been a boy again, back before his parents died, when his Grandmother Noble still lived in the country and kept horses. How long ago it had been, and how thoroughly everything had changed.

  They did manage to make Hatbrook Farm in one piece. By the time Lewis left his horse at the stable, he was quite sober again: the inventor, the thinker, the loner. He sent Eddy on ahead, wanting to take a quick look around to make sure the earthquake hadn’t done any damage to his tool shed on the property.

  He had agreed to take dinner with the Shield family before going to Battersea in the morning. The marquess had some business to discuss with him reg
arding improvements to his winery. After Lewis checked his equipment, he drove the marquess’s horseless carriage to the vineyard outbuildings and acquainted himself with the layout, so that Hatbrook wouldn’t have to explain the basics. He spent an hour with the manager, grateful he’d cleared his head with the ride so that he could focus on business and put Victoria behind him.

  By the time he’d driven back to the carriage house, he felt his usual self. Lewis Noble, inventor and satellite member of the Marquess of Hatbrook’s family, had returned. He’d left his dream world behind along with Christmas.

  Lewis changed in the room Hatbrook had told him to call his own, feeling melancholy. He left off the frivolous waistcoats and ties in the tartans, rubies, and greens of the holiday season and dressed soberly in black. Why had he even packed such items when he’d gone to the Fort mostly to work? He supposed he’d felt some need to get use out of the clothing, handmade gifts from his cousins the year before.

  Until he had left the Fort today, there had been a slight sensation of magic buzzing in the back of his brain, some sense of life not being lived quite normally. It had begun on the side of the road, when he had seen Victoria before Christmas, and had stayed ever since. Would he forget her now, in an effortless fashion born of lack of proximity? Could he throw himself back into his inventions, his overabundance of work? He had his horseless carriage business, the submarine, the winery project. Work was always available with the Redcake factories and bakeries. He had no time to ruminate over the lover he’d lost to the Baron of Alix.

  No doubt his thoughts would drift back into their usual channels, the occasional melancholy thought of Alys, lost to him forever, followed by a gradual increase in sexual thoughts, which would be laid to rest by some casual encounter among his acquaintances, usually some widow as lonely as he.

  Eddy came in without knocking, his hair dripping, smelling of soap. “I like the smell of oil better than horse,” he complained, wrinkling his nose.

  “We’ll drive up to London tomorrow. No need to ride again. I want to check the gears on Hatbrook’s new vehicle.”

  “It’s ready?”

  “It will be. I’m going to work on it tonight. I drove it today for a while and pinpointed what wasn’t operating properly.” Lewis knotted his tie and peered at himself in the mirror. Should he have bathed, too? He didn’t smell of horse, but then, he’d learned to block odors, working in the conditions he did. He checked his watch and undid his tie. Coming to Alys’s table smelling of horse would not be a good start to this brief visit.

  An hour later, he was bathed and redressed. Downstairs in the drawing room, the resident adult family members had assembled. When he arrived in the doorway, he steadied himself, awaiting the usual heart pangs that occurred whenever he saw Alys for the first time after a few days. When he didn’t spot her, he wandered through the drawing room, accepting a glass of port from a footman and saying hello to Hatbrook’s Aunt Mary, who had never married after her fiancé died and still lived in the same rooms she had inhabited all her life.

  She wore a curious, old-fashioned cap with a black ribbon that was intricately folded and pinned just above the lacy edging. The folds reminded him of the wings of the birds that so fascinated Penelope, and he thought of Eddy’s suggestion that he use a bird design project to work on the submarine’s outer casing. While he’d designed bird automatons in the past, he’d never thought much about the reason birds had feathers.

  “Do you know much about birds, Aunt Mary?”

  “I’m no scientist, boy,” the old lady said with a grimace, exposing her aged teeth.

  “I was wondering how they stay dry.”

  “And you a scientist? They rub oil over their feathers, you see, something they make with their own bodies. Even I know that.” Her gaze sharpened. “Hatbrook has some books somewhere. His grandfather fancied himself a naturalist.”

  A woman in his peripheral vision turned, and he realized with a jolt that it was Alys. She’d been standing not two feet from him all along, and he hadn’t even noticed her. No heart pangs, not even recognition. What was wrong with him?

  Aunt Mary caught his startled expression and smirked. “Just cannot find a way to move on, can you, Lewis? Don’t be like me, with your heart forever promised to someone who doesn’t want it.”

  “I’d always heard you told your fiancé on his deathbed you’d never marry.”

  She shrugged. “As if he would care once he’d gone to heaven. But back then, you know, so many men had died in the wars. I never met another man worth having.”

  He knew that wasn’t the case for him. He had indeed met another woman worth having. Her father had been what stopped him, not her. “You know?” he said. “I have moved on. I even think I fell in love. It wasn’t meant to be, but I did feel something new.”

  “Then why did you stare at Alys?”

  He patted her arm. “Because it didn’t hurt, and that surprised me.”

  She nodded slowly. “Who is the lucky lady? I understand Alys’s sister Rose has found a husband at last. Are you engaged? I don’t hear too well anymore, unless the speaker is close to me. I might have missed the news.”

  “No, I’m not engaged. Her father wants her to marry someone he can groom to run his businesses, and I’m not about to do that.”

  “Ah, the lady isn’t worth it? That’s a paltry love. You spend a few hours a day with the father, then your nights with the lady.” She smiled again. “Her charms must not be excessive.”

  He remembered those lush, generous curves, her thighs spread wide to receive him, the way her mouth felt against his. “Her charms are . . . well, everything.”

  “Clearly they are not,” Lady Mary enunciated, “or the father would not trouble you.”

  “Perhaps you are correct. I have been unhappy for so long, I don’t know how to permit myself to indulge in happiness.”

  “At least you have time to remedy things.”

  He grimaced. “No. She accepted another proposal of marriage.”

  Lady Mary lifted her scant eyebrows. “That is a pity, but if she is still unwed, you might be able to persuade her.”

  “That wouldn’t be honorable.” He drained his glass, wishing the port had been something stronger.

  “Honor versus happiness,” she mused. “At least you have your work. That is a consolation.”

  “It does keep me busy.” But his thoughts went to that sad little girl, and what Victoria had sacrificed to keep her out of that horrible school. Could he not sacrifice his time to build her a bird? “Do you have any feathers, Lady Mary? I’d like to take a look at some.”

  “I know my great-niece left headdresses here,” she said. “There were feathers in some of them. Her rooms are vacant.”

  Lady Elizabeth had no need for headdresses now, since she had married the Baron of Alix’s younger brother, a man with an actual career as a private inquiry agent, and had gone to live in Edinburgh. How odd to think of his Victoria as a close family connection to Alys. Lady Elizabeth was Alys’s sister-in-law, and now she would be Victoria’s as well.

  The thought made his stomach turn. The port sloshed around. “I believe I will forgo dinner and have a look at those feathers.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “It is the final commission the lady I lost asked of me, one I turned down. But out of love, I should make a bird for her cousin, don’t you think? It is the only thing she asked of me. And she gave me everything.”

  Lady Mary narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were to spend the evening in conference with Hatbrook, discussing winery issues.”

  “He will wait.” Lewis patted her arm. “Make my apologies, will you? I’m going to steal the feathers and then spend the evening in my toolshed.”

  “Inventors.” Lady Mary sighed. “Go on, boy. I will make your apologies, if you promise me this.”

  “What?”

  “That you deliver this bird you are going to make in person, to the lady you lost. Give her a cha
nce to see you. If she loves you, not the other man, you owe her that.”

  “I’m still not willing to marry her and take on the position of her father’s apprentice,” he countered.

  “Ruminate on what the lady is worth to you while you make the bird,” she said. “If you think this was a mere passing affair, then move on to the next lady. But if you see her and still feel that sweet pain in your heart, then pray reconsider, for the sake of all my long, lonely years.”

  He stared at the lined face, the look of sorrow in her gaze, and knew that someday Alys and Rose’s children might look at him with that sensation of pity for the loneliness of his life. “At least we had love.”

  “You don’t have to lose it.” She patted his arm. “Think hard, Lewis.”

  He nodded. “Thank you, Lady Mary. You have been a great help.”

  Without a backward glance at Alys—or, indeed, any of her happy family circle—he went up the stairs and found the abandoned rooms of the former Lady Elizabeth Shield, now Beth Alexander. A small dressing room was behind one of the doors in the bedroom. Still stuffed with clothing, the wardrobes daunted him at first, but he found an array of plumage poking out of an old Chinese vase to the side of the wardrobe containing woolens. He blew dust off the feathers and examined them closely, not sure what such inanimate objects could tell him that he didn’t already know. But he wanted the bird to be as perfect as possible. It would be the last one he’d ever make.

  After a few minutes, he took the feathers and went to the first floor of the Farm, where the library was located, and looked for the section on natural history. Soon, he was ensconced in an armchair, reading about feathers. Since he would need a microscope to see some of the features described, in this case a book was of more value than a feather itself. He read about the shingling effect of feathers, and about the tiny barbs that helped keep feathers together. Also inspiring was the idea of a shaft down the middle with more flexible material on the outside. When he’d exhausted the information about feathers, he found a watercolor reproduction of a white stork in one of the books and tucked it under his arm.