A Case for Christmas (The Lords of Bucknall Club Book 2)

by J. A. Rock

  There was a moment of perfect silence. Ah, Gale could have lived in that silence forever.

  But it did not last.

  Elise, instead of appreciating his forthrightness and his call for her assistance, dropped like a stone to the floor—as intractable as the one she’d lobbed unerringly at his head—and began to wail like a small, grubby banshee.

  Chapter 3

  “Damn you, Gale!” Chant exclaimed as he strode outside, his boots crunching on the dirt and rubble underfoot. If he hadn’t had his arms full of a small, wailing girl, he rather thought he might have punched Christmas Gale.

  Gale followed after him, a sour-faced praying mantis. He rubbed his temple. “Could you please tell her to be quiet before she attracts the attention of every criminal in a mile’s radius?”

  “You bloody fool,” Chant snapped, not even sorry for his tone. “What on earth is wrong with you, man? Have you no decency?”

  Elise continued to wail, and Chant rubbed her back.

  “No.” Gale looked away. “If by decency, you mean fellow feeling, then you’ll find my lack of it is much remarked upon, both by my family and acquaintances, and by the news sheets.”

  Chant felt an odd stab of sympathy for the man, but it wasn’t sharp enough to pierce his anger, not when Elise was weeping so violently that her small body shuddered in his arms. He strode up the street, wishing he’d thought to ask the cab to stay and wait for them. He had never heard of Jacob’s Island before tonight, and why would he? He could think of no reason ever to come here—except to follow some heartless madman on a midnight quest, apparently. The street was dark and narrow, and Chant imagined danger lurking in every inky shadow. But he was too angry to be frightened anymore of thieves and murderers. He walked rapidly in what he hoped was the direction they had come.

  He didn’t glance back to see if Gale was following him; he was certain he was.

  Good Lord. He’d been almost enamoured with Gale earlier tonight on the terrace. He’d certainly been charmed enough by the cold, sharp exterior that he’d been so certain was hiding such vulnerability. Well, he’d been disabused of that notion, hadn’t he? Gale was a pure misanthrope, just as everyone said.

  The narrow street met a wider one, and Chant turned down it, heading for the river. He felt furious enough to march all the way to the Gale family home in St. James’s Square, and yet his arms were already beginning to ache. Another few hundred feet brought him to a busier road still—the gin shop was doing a roaring trade despite the late hour, and Chant was both surprised and relieved to see a cabbie tending his horses at the side of the road.

  The cabbie looked as startled to see a customer as Chant was to see him.

  Chant gave him Gale’s address, and climbed awkwardly into the cab with Elise. He thought about pulling the door shut in Gale’s face but relented. Even Gale didn’t deserve to be stranded alone in this neighbourhood after dark.

  Gale folded his long limbs into the cab and stared at nothing as they got underway.

  Elise’s wails had subsided into quiet sobs as Chant rubbed her back.

  “I don’t know how to speak to children,” Gale said at last, still staring straight ahead. “Or to adults.”

  If it was meant as self-deprecation, Chant wasn’t amused.

  “I play at it,” Gale said, his voice softer. “My sisters believe it is an amusing affectation, or perhaps that’s just what they tell themselves in consolation for having so cold a brother. It is a deficiency of character that I am more than aware of, sir. It’s why I asked you to accompany me. At the Harringdons’ ball, you seemed…” His brows tugged together, as though he was searching for the right word, although when he settled on one at last he didn’t appear satisfied. “You seemed kind.”

  The word had a faint whiff of bewildered disapproval around it when Gale said it.

  Chant’s ribs felt tight. “You seemed as though you needed kindness. Now, Gale, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what exactly you need.”

  Gale looked at him sharply, and then looked away again.

  They whole way back to Westminster, they sat in silence punctuated only by the girl’s small, pathetic sobs.

  After leaving a sniffling Elise and a stony-faced Gale at Gale’s house in St. James’s Square, and extracting a promise that Gale wouldn’t simply stash the child in the coal cellar, Chant was too full of restless energy to sleep. He instructed the cabbie to take him to the Bucknall Club, which was never closed, and where he would at least be able to get a drink in company slightly better than his own.

  Chant had only recently become a member of the club; he had a cousin who had sponsored his membership. Chant had thought it a ridiculous waste of money until he’d set foot inside and had been swept into a warm fire-lit sanctuary with good food, fine drinks, and a library that, although small, was rarefied. The Bucknall Club was a grand building in the Italian Renaissance style, its proud facade looking out onto Pall Mall. The brass sign above the door was discreet but unnecessary—everyone knew the Bucknall Club, and those who didn’t were soon alerted to its purpose by the constant stream of cabs coming and going from the front.

  The club was three floors of dining, reading, and gaming. The fourth-floor attic was where the footmen lived, and it was not the sort of club where one saw the servants’ bedding, although Chant had noticed quite a few of the footmen were more than pleasingly fair—and several had a sparkle in their eyes that said they were very much aware of that fact. But the Bucknall Club was no brothel. It was barely scandalous at all. And, at this ungodly hour, it was almost empty.

  “Good evening, sir,” the doorman said, holding the door open. He had the good manners not to widen his eyes at Chant’s borrowed overcoat.

  Chant nodded at him and slipped inside, tugging off his gloves.

  A boy scurried forward to take his gloves and overcoat, bright-eyed despite the late hour.

  Chant headed for the stairs.

  A low murmur of conversation came from the Blue Room, and Chant smelled the rich scent of cigar smoke and heard the clink of glasses as he passed the doorway. He had always favoured the Green Room over the Blue, for no particular reason at all, except, he supposed, that Christmas Gale and his friends—Hartwell, Soulden, Crauford, and Lightholder, amongst others—always sat in the Blue Room and, up until tonight, Chant had avoided them. They were the haut of the haut ton, and Chant had only just begun to feel his way back into Society. He wasn’t ready to dive back into the thick of it quite yet.

  He stepped into the Green Room. There was another man sitting in one of the wingback chairs. Chant had seen him around before. Stratford, he thought the fellow’s name was. He seemed quiet and shy, and could usually be found reading or, as now, writing in the leather-bound journal open at the small table in front of him where the book jostled for space with what appeared to be a glass of claret. He looked up as Chant entered, a lock of dark hair falling over his unremarkable face.

  “Good evening,” Chant said.

  Stratford mumbled the same and went back to his writing.

  Chant took a seat on the other side of the room, and a footman appeared to take his drink order, and to offer him a selection of last evening’s news sheets. Chant browsed the news sheets while he waited for his drink. He was completely uninterested in the goings-on of Parliament, or what the French or the Prussians were up to. He was even less interested in what the ton was up to, although there were plenty of pages devoted to that. Still, with little else to do, he turned back to the news from the Continent and read a few paragraphs. The Dutch were unhappy with the French over the murder at sea of Claude de Brouckère, brother of the Governor of Limburg. Meanwhile, the Prussians were unhappy with the Austrians, despite both of them being in the German Confederation, and everyone was unhappy that the Russian tsar was apparently getting a little too chummy with Metternich.

  Chant sighed and set the news sheet aside.

  He didn’t care for politics, and he especially didn’t care when though
ts of Christmas Gale swirled in his brain like the dregs of some bitter drink he’d been forced to swallow. He wanted to write Gale off. He ought to write Gale off. It had been foolish to think he cared for the fellow in the first place. Yet, in the cab, Gale had shown himself to be painfully aware of what he called his deficiency of character, and suddenly Chant had found himself caring again. Just as he had on the terrace at the ball earlier when Gale had seemed anxious to the point of distress.

  He ought to be wary of caring too much—had he learned nothing from his courtship of Reid? But no, a man did himself a disservice when he feigned aloofness out of a misguided desire to protect his heart. He wondered if Gale could ever be convinced of that. His drink arrived, and Chant took a long sip, turning his thoughts from Reid and from the guilt that followed him as faithfully as a hound.

  Speaking of hounds…

  Ah, he should have liked to turn his thoughts away from Gale, and yet he could not help but wonder if Elise was sleeping now, well fed and warm in a proper bed. And if she would ever be reunited with her dog. She ought to at least have that comfort. Gale meant to ask the child about her father’s associations. Did he intend to look for the killer? And would he also work to find Flum? Chant stared into his drink, then rapped lightly on the table, having made a decision. The prospect of returning to Jacob’s Island alone was not a pleasant one, but surely in the light of day, the place would not seem quite so terrifying. He would travel there in the morning and look for Flum. A dog could nearly always find his way back home. If Flum wasn’t back already, he would be soon. And Chant was quite fond of dogs.

  He pushed his chair back. It would not be a terrible idea to go back to his “creaky testament to bachelorhood” and get some sleep. He smiled in spite of himself, remembering Gale’s voice as he’d spoken of Chant’s home—not so much derisive as matter-of-fact. Gale’s mind seemed like one that was never still—speeding along through possibilities before good sense and common courtesy could catch up. It was not an admirable trait, yet Chant admired it anyway. That was, perhaps, his own deficiency of character: that he quite admired people, and the way they carried on through joy and grief and bitterness and hope, unable to be anyone but themselves. So much did he admire them that he fell in love more frequently than he ought—and with entirely the wrong sort of people.

  Chapter 4

  The Gale dining room, when Gale arrived early from Russell Street, was a scene straight out of a nightmare: Every single sister of Gale’s, including at least one of whose existence he had not previously been aware, sat at the table, interrogating Elise about life in Jacob’s Island. They all spoke over top of each other, their eggs and toast all but abandoned, and if Gale had been Elise, he’d have run screaming from the madhouse. But Elise seemed pleased by the attention, answering the questions with a sort of sly demureness that reminded Gale in some obscure way of her father.

  In the light of day, he could see that she was a strange looking child. Her hair was an ashy blond and hung in tangles around a face that seemed wider than it was long. Her eyes were set rather far apart, and were a mix of dark blue and brown. Her smile showed tiny, peg-like teeth that made her look a bit like some mischievous fiend from a fairy tale. She’d been cleaned up, but her skin had faint grey and yellow tones, likely from exhaustion and malnourishment.

  It had taken a long time to quiet her last night—a task Gale had left to his mother and Clarissa. But this morning, the child seemed in surprisingly good spirits. Howe had said she was seven years of age. Young enough, he hoped, to be possessed of the resiliency she would require on the path ahead. She shovelled eggs and bacon into her mouth as though she hadn’t had a hot meal in weeks. And she probably hadn’t. Good God, to imagine a child this small sent to work at a carpet factory… Gale was attempting to feel more charitably toward her as Chant’s harsh words still weighed heavily on him. Although his first instinct was to continue to behave precisely as he liked in defiance of the fellow, there was something truly dreadful about being thought a “bloody fool”—and worse—by someone like Mr. Benjamin Chant.

  “Enough!” Gale said as his sisters each fought to be the one who would lend Elise clothes for the afternoon. Only Eugenie’s wardrobe would have even come close to fitting the girl, so he wasn’t sure what they were all on about. “Let Elise eat. You’re giving me a headache.” In truth, he already had a headache—most likely the result of being nailed behind the ear with a rock. But his sisters were not helping.

  “Remember, you promised to get me sweets today!” Anne-Marie cried over the din, giving him an imploring look.

  “Listen to you!” Clarissa lectured. “Elise has just suffered a terrible tragedy, and you are talking of sweets!”

  “Well, Christmas can get her some too! It will cheer her up.”

  “If you do not be quiet, there will be no sweets at all. In fact,” Gale said, “if you all have quite finished—and it looks as if you have with the exception of Cordelia”—Cordelia looked up from filling her mouth with more seed cake—“I would request that you leave the room so I might talk with Elise.”

  He was unsure where his mother was. She usually took breakfast with at least a few of her daughters. It was rare for all of them to be in the dining room together, as Clarissa often took a breakfast tray in her room so that she might read, rather than listen to the others talk of gowns and routs, and Helene did the same in imitation of her oldest sister.

  “Have you driven our mother from the room?” he inquired.

  “She is talking to Cook about meals for the coming week,” Eugenie replied, “if Elise is to stay with us.”

  “Who said anything about all week?” Gale tried to hide his alarm.

  “Her father is dead!” Anne-Marie looked appalled by his insensitivity, which Gale felt was a bit rich for someone who had just suggested cakes might cure the grief one felt for a murdered father. “Where else is she going to go?”

  He glanced at Elise to see if she was affected by this reminder of her father’s untimely demise, but the girl was busy with her eggs.

  Gale had not the heart to say she would go to the parish. “Mother did not seem upset by the idea of her staying?”

  Anne-Marie shook her head vigorously, making her coppery ringlets fly. “No! She wants Elise to stay.”

  Elise beamed around the table, her little mouth glistening with bacon grease. “I like it here,” she announced. “You got some fine furniture.” She glanced at a lacquered end table with painted Grecian figures, a piece Gale particularly loathed.

  He held back a sigh. “All of you, go. Clarissa, you may stay.”

  There came an immediate chorus of “Why Clarissa?”, though the others did, thankfully, begin to push their chairs back and rise.

  When the room was at last empty of all but himself, the girl, and Clarissa, Gale took a seat. Elise chewed a few more times, eyeing him, then swallowed and stared silently.

  “Elise,” he began. “I feel we may have started off on the wrong foot. It is entirely understandable that you are distraught over the loss of your father, and I was quite insensitive last night. Would you consider forgiving me?”

  “Oh, Christmas,” Clarissa whispered. “What did you say to her last night?”

  “Clarissa, please.” He kept his attention on the little girl. “I’m sorry, Elise.”

  He wished there was a way to tell Chant he had apologised to the child. He did not understand his own weakness in wanting Chant’s approval, but it would quell a certain amount of agitation within him to know Chant did not think him heartless.

  Elise said nothing, but without taking her eyes from him, she slowly extended one arm and snatched another piece of bacon from the tray.

  “All right,” Gale continued. “Well—”

  “Do you think it was the captain what killed Pa?” the girl asked before opening her mouth in a way that reminded Gale of a snake unhinging its jaw and stuffing the bacon in.

  “Captain?”

  “Yeah,” El
ise said around a mouthful. “I didn’t like the look of ’im.”

  “Can you tell me more about this fellow?”

  The girl chewed and swallowed. “It was two days past. I know, ’cause I spoke to him on my way to the fact’ry and it made me late. The foreman were—was furious.” The girl’s speech was an odd mix of her father’s broad vowels and dropped h’s, and what seemed to be her own conscious efforts at elocution. “Did you send word like the other fellow said? Does the foreman know I’m helping you?”

  “He does,” Gale assured her. He had sent a note before the break of dawn. “Who was this captain, Elise?”

  “A tall fellow. Taller ’n you, even. He was a giant. And he had horrible, pale, dry looking hair. Like twine. He’s the captain of one of the ships at the docks.”

  “Do you know his name? Or perhaps the name of the ship?”

  She shook her head. “He told me he was looking for a dog. Said his ship had rats, and he’d heard Pa and me had the best dog in town for catching rats. He’s got himself a torn sail, so he’s stuck ’ere for a bit, and says it’s the perfect time to get rid of the rats. He wanted to buy Flum off us.”

  “Did you agree to that?”

  Elise looked scandalised. “Course not! I told him I didn’t have a dog, ’cause I didn’t want him to get the idea of talking to Pa and offering him money. Pa prob’ly would’ve sold Flum to him. I don’t think he believed me.” She hunched slightly. “I told you, I didn’t like his look.”