by Ingrid Hahn
This year was entirely different. He wasn’t any closer to winning Grace than when he’d made his resolution to do so.
The feast was… Dear God, was it tomorrow?
No, it couldn’t be. How could he have been unaware of the day coming so close? He counted again. Yes, yes the feast was very much tomorrow.
Perhaps he should have bedded Lady Grace when he’d had the chance.
No. He wasn’t going to win her by going that far. He didn’t want her to feel coerced or manipulated. Circumstance had done enough damage on that score.
The best thing now would be a small recess from his thoughts before turning back to look with new eyes at the issue at hand.
Instead he was staring at a hand of cards without having followed any of the previous plays. Very little help that was.
If only the estate needed attention.
The problem with hiring upstanding servants and land managers was the risk of being left with nothing to do when a distraction would be most welcome. Corbeau drew the line at inventing work for those he employed or delving too far into trivial matters. The way the hours were unfolding, the high point of the day would likely be his morning in the stables. Thank goodness he always assumed the task himself during the days surrounding the Christmas Feast.
Downstairs earlier there’d been some upset about who’d found their way into the strawberries, a matter he’d brought to a quick conclusion. The speed was unfortunate for him, though good for the servants who didn’t want to be under suspicion of having stolen.
He became aware of Max having spoken. “Yes?”
His friend gave him a disgusted look. “Your turn, old friend.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Corbeau threw a card down on the table. His friend cursed, threw his own down in defeat, and gathered the deck to shuffle again.
Max dealt their hands. “It looked like you and Lady Grace were in a rather tense conversation earlier.”
For a horrible moment, Corbeau’s mind went to the interlude in the storeroom, and he flashed with burning hot anger that his friend could know about their meeting, much less dare to mention it. But rationality, or the last tatters remaining, returned swiftly. Max hadn’t been referring to last night.
“I loaned her a book.”
“Ah. So not tense at all, then?”
“No. Not tense at all.”
“Right.”
Silence.
Max spoke again. “She gave me a dashed odd look.”
“And there must be a good hundred reasons why you could have deserved it.”
“I did not deserve it.”
“No, of course not.”
“What was it?”
Corbeau grimaced. “What was what?”
“The book.”
“Ah. A History of Egypt.”
“A History of Egypt?”
The look accompanying Max’s skeptical tone unsheathed the inner swords of Corbeau’s defensiveness. Conspicuously absent from what he needed was his friend’s perspective on yet another blunder in a long line of blunders. “That’s right.”
“Do you think—?”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t matter to you, but it matters to me, and that makes it much less simple than your usual endeavors with females.”
Max was, as usual, without hesitation. “I rather think you ought to kiss her and have done with it.”
Corbeau picked up his new cards, glancing them over. “I rather think you should mind the fact that your opinions have been utterly unsolicited at this time.”
The first play went to Max. “As you say.”
It was going to be a long afternoon.
…
With no indication of a second chance at a private interlude with Corbeau, Grace had retired early in the evening with every intention of sleeping as late into the following morning as she pleased.
The serving woman, however, a bright-faced girl with a sort of eagerness suggestive of wanting to prove herself as fit for the post of lady’s maid to a countess, came early—and not only with the steaming cup of chocolate from which unholy fixations were born.
She also brought a plain but sturdy dress of hearty gray wool, a pair of half-boots, and a set of pattens should Grace want them, a kind of protective overshoe that had serviced the last few centuries of English feet. Pattens kept slippers from becoming muddy in damp conditions. That is to say, year round.
They were all fine things, but eminently serviceable—made for use, not for leisure.
The maid was pointed about what she said when she presented the items. “They’re from Hetty, of course.” She gave a decided nod. Apparently not all had forgotten that she and the earl were not yet wed, and were not willing to overlook the impropriety of a man giving clothing to a woman to whom he was not related.
Grace held the wood of the overshoe in her hands. They were unremarkable. Just like any other pair, the wood sole was to be held on by a leather band resting approximately around the instep. These, though—how many generations of the Corbeau feet had this particular pair seen?
The scene was rather like those boots Corbeau had found for her to wear that first morning when he took her to the stables.
She set the pair down and the maid began the work of dressing her. “And why precisely am I to wear all these things?”
The maid had rattled off an explanation when she first arrived, but the matter hadn’t yet formed a cohesive whole in Grace’s mind. If she thought it odd to be asked a second time, she made no indication. “It’s for tonight’s Christmas feast, my lady. Every year, the earl takes a turn of the park to see his tenants and them in the village, and makes the exchange.”
This was an improvement on the first muddle the maid had spouted, but still left out several points of key information, assuming, it seemed, that Grace was as versed in the ways of Corbeau Park as she. A turn about the park with the earl to visit those who called the Corbeau lands their home.
It wasn’t right, her going for a drive with him for such a purpose.
She wasn’t his lady. Her heart constricted at the thought.
But there was nobody in her room with whom to argue the point. She could have refused, but doing so before the servant would have been unseemly. The small grouping of society members watching and speculating about her and Corbeau’s every move was stifling enough. She didn’t need to offer fodder for the below-stairs speculations.
About the rest of it, though, Grace would have to be content with that for now, and leave the whys to answer themselves when she descended.
The earl lit from within when he caught sight of her at the top of the stairway. She was still chasing away the sticky webs of sleep and dressed in garments as humble as they were practical. It was she who made him look as he did. Awareness penetrated down to the center of her being.
The woolen layers were suddenly far too warm. She might as well have been standing a foot away from a raging pyre for the warmth his gaze elicited.
She returned his morning’s greeting, the uncommonly weighty fabric of the dress heavy about her feet as she descended.
“You came.”
She gave a nod, both of them going silent with the approach of a servant bearing the necessary outer garments.
While the servant helped her into a heavy wrap, the earl gave her the sort of smile one gives another when they share a secret. This only made the flames within her fan higher.
Her heart was beating. Quickly. Too quickly.
She should have been accustomed to the nearness of him. She wasn’t. She kept reliving that moment his lips had first touched hers, the way the world had whirled around her and set her body aflame.
He offered his arm. She took it. He led her out.
Heaven help her, but she was hungry for more of this man. The way he looked upon her. The reverence with which he touched her. The way she felt near him.
The pattens, as it turned out, were entirely unnecessary. The snow was frozen over and in no danger of mel
ting upon the frigid morning. Servants had cleared the walkways, leaving a dry path to a waiting sleigh, gleaming with polish, piled high.
The bright slanting sun upon icicles dangling from the house and beginning to drip would refute Grace on the melting issue, but she ignored their subtle foray into her internal conversation.
A bit of the wind she’d expected that first still day of their arrival was cutting through the land.
What a morning it was upon the park, cloaked in the silvery blue shadows of the snowy white of the flooding dawn, the sky open and enormous above them. It was incredible how snow first contracted the world, made it so small, and yet, under the right sky, could open it so wide.
The gentle hills, the cottages, the buried gardens, the woodland—all had been transformed from their ordinary natural beauty into a strange and magical land. With one gloved hand on the earl and the other buried in a fur muff, she had none free to shield her eyes from the glare. Grace squinted, taking in what she could of the vision from her current vantage.
She inhaled the unmistakable scent of a bright winter’s morning.
Could this place be her home? Once upon a time, she’d had dreams of the sort of existence she’d wanted. In many ways, a life here with the earl was wildly beyond anything she could have imagined, even before the dire change of circumstances had robbed her of girlish hopes.
She sent a sidelong glance to the man next to her whose arm she held. Could Corbeau Park be the answer to those dreams packed away in the hidden chambers of her heart? Could he?
If only marrying the man wouldn’t cost him so very much.
Agony wrenched her heart, followed quickly by a burst of noxious anger.
Damn her father. Damn him for all his promises, for all the times he claimed he was about to reverse their fortunes. Damn him for being blind to his downfall—and for being blind to what his disgrace would cost his daughters, even all these many years later.
Grace drew a long breath and let it out again at a slowly measured pace. She would not let her father’s memory ruin this morning with Corbeau. She would not.
Chapter Seventeen
It was ultimately a calculated move, but one Corbeau couldn’t be sorry about. Late last night, it’d struck him that Lady Grace might like to accompany him on the one tradition associated with the Christmas Feast he enjoyed. Naturally, it followed that doing so might be the strongest play yet in the quest to win her, but that point he worked to strike from his mind.
All he wanted for the morning, he repeated to himself, was for her to enjoy the time with him. Nothing more.
Truthfully, after his blunders, he needed a respite.
He’d had his morning in the stables to think over the idea. Such a decision couldn’t be made in the dark of night, and certainly couldn’t be made before he’d cleared his head with a measure of exertion, however small, and the feeling of accomplishment accompanying imposing some order in the world.
Afterward, it still felt like the right thing to do, and he’d made the arrangements.
The rest was up to her.
The last hour had felt like three, so excruciating was the agony of worry that she might not come.
But she had.
When Corbeau caught sight of her at the top of the stairs, the rumple of sleep not quite yet worn away, the world became a different place.
A sort of lightness floated in Corbeau’s being—a schoolboy giddiness akin to mastering the first Classical Greek declensions and realizing he knew enough to begin to decipher the meaning of those strangely twisting and turning words himself. Only this was a hundred times more powerful—the force enough to send a better man reeling.
The sleigh was piled high, the morning was beautiful and bracing, and Lady Grace was upon his arm.
Could a man be happier?
“Thank you for joining me, Lady Grace.”
“Indeed. I don’t know what this is about yet, my lord.”
“I believe— There are hot stones under the blankets to keep your feet warm.” He helped her into the sleigh before ascending to take the reins.
Settling on the unpadded bench beside her, his whole body tensed with yearning to press his thigh into hers. The space was but a few inches, but felt the width of a chasm. He’d held her, kissed her, and tasted her. But one such interlude did not mean their physical intimacy was well enough established to allow him the ease of close comforts. Quite the contrary. He would take her lead on the matter—within reason. “I believe you have surmised by now that the Christmas Feast is a spot of difficulty in my year.”
“Yes.”
The footman boarded the back. Given their load, his weight would be unnecessary in helping keep the front runners pointed upward, but an extra set of hands never went amiss for this task. Moreover, Corbeau suspected Lady Grace would be far more comfortable with a chaperone than without.
He signaled the horses through the leathers. They were off.
“This tradition is the exception to the rule. It’s the one thing I look forward to.” And the one thing about it he cherished. “I promised my mother to carry on the feast in her memory, and in truth it’s this that makes me keep the tradition.”
“Odd it doesn’t last until Twelfth Night.”
“It used to. In my father’s day, the grand meal signaled the opening to festivities.” He gave her a sidelong grin. “I’ve bent the rules a bit, I must own.”
A few of the servants stood outside to see them off with a wave. About half who worked in the house or on the grounds had been born and raised in the village, and it was fairly common for one to take the liberty of sharing with him how much the day of the feast had meant to them as children.
“Your mother loved the feast?”
“Oh, yes. Looked forward to it for months beforehand. I wish you could have known her, you would have liked each other, you two.” He smiled. “She was very like Hetty, but with calm decorum and completely without a penchant for absurdity.”
“Even after all these years you can still feel it, can’t you?”
“Feel what?”
“How much she loved you.”
He stiffened. “She was my mother. It’s expected of the natural order.” His chest tightened. He didn’t believe a word of his own blathering. Natural order or not, she’d been special, his mother. She’d filled their lives to overflowing with light, laughter, and love.
“It might be what we’re taught to expect, but it is in no way a certainty.” Grace went quiet a minute. “I think your mother loved you very much.”
Someday he would like to love a child of his own in that same all-encompassing way.
Corbeau kept his thoughts directed away from any remembrances and his internal self painstakingly apart from what memories forced their way in. She’d lived a year after her husband died. Until his late father’s passing, Corbeau hadn’t understood the full depths of the meaning their life together had given her. He’d known they’d been attached, very much so. But they’d kept their true feelings between themselves. If he’d known Grace while they were alive, maybe he’d have seen his parents more completely for what they had been.
“Did she call you John?”
“My mother? No. I’ve been called Corbeau since the nursery. Well, I was called ‘young master’ or ‘the young master’ by and large, but there was never a time when I didn’t think of myself as Corbeau. I even managed to carve it into the table one afternoon when my tutor was negligent. Uncharacteristically negligent, now that I pause to consider it.”
“I can’t imagine you as a child.”
“Take me as I am, remove some height, and you’ll have a complete picture.”
“I can almost hear Hetty saying the very same thing.”
“Oh, she’ll support me, I’m sure.”
Grace smiled. “But you wouldn’t carve your name into furniture now, I daresay.”
“Not for lack of wanting to I assure you.”
When she laughed, he was the tallest man in the
world.
…
Whatever Grace had or hadn’t expected about what the morning would bring, it wasn’t this. The tradition brought the earl to the door of each of his dependents to dole cuts of meat and pots of jam. More surprising was the fact that at each and every thatched-roof cottage, the inhabitants gave him something back. It truly was an exchange.
The family would emerge in what had to be their Sunday best and Corbeau would invariably begin by complimenting the wife, and always meaningfully. Never by rote. More than a few went rosy-cheeked under his praise.
He would speak directly to the older children, making them puff up with pride at the distinguished compliment of his notice as they felt the importance of their years. He’d pat the heads of the younger children, admire how quickly they’d grown, and whirl the smallest ones in the air, making them squeal with delight.
All the young faces glowed from a fresh scrubbing, though nails were invariably ringed with dirt.
The visit concluded when he took a parcel from the back of the sleigh and offered it to the woman of the house. The family would offer him a parcel in return.
At each interaction, Grace kept close watch on the earl for any signs of discomfiture.
There were none.
This was a man in his element, doing what he was meant to do—showing the example of all he was and all an earl should be. He cared for these people. That’s why the tradition meant so much to him.
Seeing this side of Corbeau waylaid any doubt that this was a man she could respect. She had no right to feel proud of him, but the sensation soaked her insides nonetheless.
It did something more, though, seeing him like this—it revealed that she’d already started to think of him with a measure of fondness. Perhaps even attachment.
Corbeau was taking root in her heart.
What would he be like with his own children?
Grace wouldn’t allow herself to imagine it. Not now. She packed the thoughts away and threw herself completely into the present.
She settled back in her seat as they departed from a small croft abounding with an especially rambunctious lot of little ones. She’d quietly tried to guess the ages and then had stopped, the implications of how often their mother must have had to lie-in not a calculation for the faint of heart. “How far back does this tradition date?”
