It Happened At Christmas (Anthology)

by Penny Jordan

  ‘It was worse than that one room and you all slowly starving?’ he asked quietly. ‘Because that is what was happening.’

  She had lowered her eyes, but now she looked straight into the rugged handsome face, her own expressing far more than she was aware of. ‘It was hell on earth.’

  ‘I see.’ He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘I’ve interrupted you working,’ as he gestured to the potatoes she had been scraping. ‘Please don’t let me hold you up.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got all day to get the evening meal ready.’ She hesitated, and then said very quickly, ‘I’ve never thanked you properly for all you’ve done, sir. I know I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you. The doctor’s made that plain. And bringing us all to this cottage, and the furniture and food and fuel…’ She didn’t know how to adequately express what it meant.

  There followed a silence during which their eyes met and held. Hers were the first to drop away, and she felt a shiver trickle down her spine. She didn’t know how to explain the effect he had on her except, as she put it to herself, he was the most masculine man she had ever met. It wasn’t just the height of him, or the breadth and strength in his shoulders and arms which she had been conscious of that first night, when he had carried her so effortlessly, it was something else. Something powerful and potent and altogether disturbing. Rose had told her he had been married and his wife and son had died of the fever. After that, Rose had said, he’d become a different man. It must have been wonderful for his wife to be loved so much by a man like Luke Hudson. Even if their time together had been so short.

  Her thoughts made her flush, and now her voice was even more rushed when she said, ‘I’ll be ready to start work after Christmas, sir. And in the spring and summer, when Flora and the lads can work in the fields till late, we’ll start to pay you back some of what we owe you.’

  ‘Owe?’ His brow wrinkled. ‘You owe me nothing, Connie.’

  It was the first time she could remember him saying her name, and the intimacy, slight though it was, made her cheeks flush warmer still. ‘But we do,’ she stammered. ‘It’s been weeks now, and you’ve provided food and fuel and—’

  ‘You owe me nothing,’ he repeated firmly. ‘My mother will appreciate the help in the farmhouse once you’re fit enough. She won’t admit it, but she tires more easily these days. Rose and Bess assist in the dairy, and Seth’s wife looks after the pigs and chickens, but there’s still far too much for her to do now she’s getting older. Of course she still thinks she has the energy she did when she was twenty,’ he added with a smile.

  ‘I’ll do anything she wants, sir. And I’m stronger than I look. Well, normally, that is,’ she finished awkwardly.

  His smile widened at this. ‘I doubt it, but you are improving and that’s the main thing. Don’t rush things at this stage.’

  She hadn’t seen him smile, really smile before. She knew he was attempting to ease her obvious embarrassment, but the difference it made to his normal stern persona was riveting. Her own smile a little shaky, she said again, ‘I’ll be ready to start in the house after Christmas for sure.’

  ‘We’ll see. Perhaps the New Year. And it will ring in a new century this time—hopefully the beginning of a better time for you and your sister and brothers.’

  ‘Oh, I know it will, now we’re here,’ she said warmly.

  Again they stood regarding one another, and for no reason that she could fathom she felt a kind of breathlessness in the air. This time she couldn’t pull her eyes from his.

  After the merest hesitation he nodded, turning towards the door as he said over his shoulder, ‘It’s a tradition on Christmas Eve that everyone comes up to the house before sunset for their Christmas boxes.’ He opened the door before facing her and adding, ‘My mother makes all the ladies a hamper, and the men are given a more liquid gift. The children also receive a little something. I’m sure your sister and brothers will enjoy it.’

  Her eyes widened. She knew from the labourers’ wives’ gossip when they popped in to see her now and again that every single one of them considered themselves lucky to be part of this farm. It had been in the Hudson family for generations, and each successive master had apparently been strict but fair, and progressive in his views. The present master, like his father before him and his father before him, demanded unquestioning loyalty and hard work, Rose had told her on one of her visits, but they weren’t mean and crabby, like some farmers she could name.

  ‘But we’ve only been here a short time,’ Connie said awkwardly, ‘and you’ve been so generous as it is. We don’t expect to be treated like the others, sir. You’ve given us more than enough.’

  There was a pause, and then he said, ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’ And it was a statement, not a question. Nevertheless she nodded. He was frowning slightly, as though her words had displeased him, but for the life of her she couldn’t think why. ‘I want you and your sister and brothers to come to the house,’ he repeated quietly. ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She wondered how his eyes could look so hard and cold and yet sad too. He was a complex individual.

  They stared at each other for another moment and then he stepped outside into the crisp air, shutting the door behind him.

  Luke stood for some moments outside the cottage, his frown deepening. He didn’t know why he made these visits to see how she was. They never did him any good. He always felt disturbed and unsettled afterwards. Ramming his hat on his head, he strode towards the stables. A damn good gallop on Ebony, his black stallion, would sort him out, he told himself irritably. Blow away the cobwebs. It was a beautiful day; it’d be a crime to waste it. And staying around the farm wasn’t an option somehow.

  Once in the stables, little Charlie Todd—the youngest son of one of his labourers, whose eldest two sons took care of the huge shire horses, truly gentle giants, along with Ebony and also his mother’s brown mare—came running up to him. The lad was only seven years old, but liked nothing better than to be in the stables with the animals and his big brothers once he was home from school and in the holidays.

  ‘Ebony let me feed him an apple this morning, master,’ he said excitedly. ‘Took it out of me hand, he did. An’ he was as quiet as a mouse an’ all.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, you watch him nevertheless, Charlie.’ Ebony was a high-spirited, temperamental animal, inclined to moodiness, and had been known to bite.

  ‘I do, master. If he looks at me like this—’ the small boy snarled, wrinkling his nose ‘—I know he don’t want company. But if he snorts and snuffles and bobs his head he’s all right.’

  Luke smiled down at the boy. ‘I can see you’ll follow your brothers into the stables when you’re old enough,’ he said, nodding to one of the older lads who had entered Ebony’s stall and brought him out into the main building, where he deftly saddled him. Charlie was watching, eyes agog, the whole time.

  Once he had left the stables, Luke’s smile faded. Charlie was an engaging little lad, always smiling and as bright as a button—much as he would have expected his own son to be if he had lived. Even at three months Jack’s toothless smile had lit up his face.

  He dug his heels into Ebony’s sleek sides, encouraging the horse into a gallop and letting him have his head. It was some time before they stopped at the crest of a hill, the horse’s snorting breath white in the icy air.

  Why was it that since Connie’s arrival at the farm the ache in his heart for his son had got worse? He didn’t understand it. And he wasn’t sleeping well. Umpteen times a night he woke, hard as a rock in spite of having scourged his body into submission with hard physical work during the day. More than once he had been tempted to do what many of his contemporaries did and go into Sunderland or Newcastle and visit one of the brothels for release, but somehow the thought of paying for it was repugnant.

  He smiled bitterly. He was a fool. He knew he was a fool. There were several women of his own standing in society who had made it plain they would wel
come his attentions, and one—a dark-eyed beauty whose husband had a mistress or two—had let him know a relationship between them would be without strings. He should take what was on offer and ease himself. Live for the day, the moment. No one would blame him, and there was no reason not to.

  In spite of himself the picture of a heart-shaped face with deep blue eyes and a mass of chestnut hair came on to the screen of his mind. Today her hair had been drawn back, as usual, into a decorous bun at the back of her head, but once or twice when she had still been bedridden it had fanned out on the pillows in a glorious blaze of colour, silky and soft and as seductive as hell.

  ‘None of that.’ He spoke out loud, his voice deep and guttural. Not on his own doorstep. And she was little more than a child—not so much in age as in the way she was. Innocence shone out of her. It was clear she was sexually unawakened. Whatever went on in some of those dwelling places in the town, where humanity was crammed in together to the point where life was obscene, she had been brought up by parents who had maintained moral decency. When she gave herself to a man it would be with a wedding ring on her finger, and that was something he would never contemplate again. Even if she had been from the same social strata as himself. So the thing was impossible all ways.

  He scowled into the distance, his countenance thunderous, before turning the reins and riding the horse down the incline stretching out white and glistening before them.

  When she started to work for his mother in the house she would become just another of their employees. It was this unreal situation due to her illness which had made things…He couldn’t find a word to describe what he felt and made a harsh sound of irritation in his throat.

  ‘To hell with it.’ He nodded at the words. After Christmas things would return to normal, and it couldn’t be soon enough as far as he was concerned. One thing was for sure, it was the last time he’d play the Good Samaritan. Didn’t the good book say one was rewarded for such things? If this, the way he’d been feeling of late, was a reward, he hated to think what a punishment would feel like.

  He grinned darkly. And it was like that, with the twist to his lips giving his face a cynical broodiness, that he rode slowly home in the crystal and white world surrounding him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS now the end of May, but only three weeks since the snow had finally disappeared. The winter had been hard and long, and everyone on the farm—apart from its newest inhabitants—had been bemoaning the fact. For Connie and Flora and the boys, however, each day in their snug cottage had been a continuing delight. There might be cold and slush and bitter winds to deal with, but what were these if you could come home to your own cosy fireside and a laden table?

  Connie had seen her sister and brothers gain weight and develop bright eyes and rosy cheeks and it thrilled her. They all worked hard: she in the farmhouse and Flora and the boys at the hundred and one jobs there were to do round the farm once they were home from school. The days were long; Connie rose at six o’clock to get the porridge for breakfast on the go and the packed lunches for the children ready before they left at seven-thirty for the long walk to school. Once Flora and the lads were home in the evening they all rarely finished work before seven o’clock in the evening. Then it was eating their evening meal and getting ready for bed for the children, whereupon Connie would sit by the fire, sewing and mending their clothes or darning the boys’ socks or working at clippy mats for the bedrooms, until gone eleven o’clock, the wind moaning round the cottage and rattling the windows.

  Tommy, David and Ronnie had loved preparing and feeding the cows their pulped turnips, hay or crushed corn during the winter months, when the cattle had been kept indoors at night, and since Seth’s wife had fallen on the ice and broken her leg Flora had taken on the task of seeing to the pigs’ bran and feeding the chickens. The children had risen to their responsibilities with a single-minded fortitude that made Connie proud of them.

  But the sun was shining at last, and suddenly there was even more work to do. Connie glanced at the other women on the farm as they laboured in the hop garden. During the winter months nothing had been seen of the plants but the slightly rounded mounds stretching away in symmetrical rows, but now the warmth of the sun had brought up the shoots, and the bines had to be trained to the strings that were stretched criss-cross from pole to pole. It was a delicate procedure to twiddle the bines into place, and unlike the rest of the women Connie was new to the task, but within a little while she’d got the hang of it. It was a break from her normal work in the farmhouse, and she was enjoying being in the clean fresh air for a few days. As though to make up for lost time spring had arrived with a vengeance, and the sun was hot enough to burn noses and turn skin rosy pink, even under the bonnets they wore.

  ‘So? You fell out of favour with the mistress or something?’

  Connie glanced at the girl who had spoken to her. Of all the folk on the farm this was the only person she didn’t like. Alice Todd was the eldest daughter of Hannah and Walter Todd, and she had already made it clear she resented Connie working in the farmhouse—a job she believed should have gone to her, considering she’d been born and bred here. Tall at eighteen, and with corn-coloured hair and large green eyes, Alice was very pretty and she knew it. It was common knowledge she liked the master. Rumour had it Walter had taken the whip to her last summer, when he’d caught her lying in wait on the road leading to the farm for Luke Hudson to return from town one afternoon.

  ‘No, I haven’t fallen out of favour,’ Connie said shortly.

  ‘Why you out here with the rest of us, then, instead of inside?’ Alice said tartly. ‘Bit queer that, if you ask me.’

  Connie stared at the smooth-skinned face. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the other girl to mind her own business, but for the sake of harmony she bit back the hot words hovering on her tongue. ‘Mrs Hudson thought I ought to learn what went on.’ She turned back to the bine in her hands. ‘See how different things work all over the farm.’

  What Luke’s mother had actually said was, ‘Time for you to get out of doors for a few days and get some colour in your cheeks, lass. I’ll miss you, but I’ll manage fine for a bit.’

  ‘Huh.’ Alice tossed her head in the pert way she favoured.

  The exclamation was loud, but Connie didn’t rise to it.

  A few minutes later, after checking the other women were out of earshot, Alice sidled close enough to murmur, ‘Think you’re in with the door shut with the mistress, don’t you? But you won’t get his eye like that. Not with a red-blooded man like him.’

  ‘What?’ Connie looked into the green gaze and it was seething with jealousy. Coldly, she said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You might fool the others with your butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth air, but not me. Well, let me tell you the master would never look the side you’re on. Not in a month of Sundays.’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t,’ Connie agreed, with a cool disregard which clearly took the other girl aback. But not for long.

  There was a moment of silence, and then Alice whispered, ‘You trying to tell me you’re not after warming his bed?’

  She’d had enough of this. Connie faced the other girl and didn’t lower her voice as she said clearly, ‘Don’t judge others by your own questionable standards, Alice. And I don’t have to tell you anything, by the way. Now, I suggest you do what you’re paid to do and work, and leave me to do the same.’

  One or two of the other women had raised their heads and narrowed their eyes, clearly wondering what was going on. Alice flushed hotly and then flounced off, but not before the green eyes had shot daggers. Connie knew from things Flora had said that more than once Alice had referred to her as an upstart when she wasn’t within earshot, and this latest wouldn’t exactly help matters. Still, she wasn’t going to allow the other girl to think she could walk all over her and say whatever she liked.

  She continued to work on quietly, but Alice’s words niggled at her—no
t least because they’d brought to mind the dreams she’d been having of late. It made her blush to think of them, and every one had featured her employer, Mr Hudson. But she hadn’t called him Mr Hudson or sir in the dreams; it had been Luke…

  Had Alice guessed how she felt?

  Almost immediately she answered her own question with no. Alice was jealous because she didn’t have the same access to the farmhouse and therefore their employer as she did. Not that it would have done Alice any good if she had, of course. If he ever decided to marry again it would be someone like his late wife, without a doubt—a wealthy farmer’s daughter or someone of the same social standing. But then Alice wasn’t necessarily looking for marriage, if half of what Connie had heard about her was true.

  She had to stop thinking about him all the time.

  Connie nodded mentally to the thought, irritated with herself. Her heart raced every time she saw him these days, and it made working with his mother in the house more difficult than it should be. She was always on tenterhooks in case he’d appear.

  It was only an hour or so later that Rose came hurrying into the hop garden, calling her name. ‘Quick,’ she called as Connie met her halfway. ‘It’s the mistress. We were in the dairy and she came over bad. The master’s gone for the doctor, and he said for you to come and sit with her while he’s gone.’

  As the two of them hurried back to the house Connie’s stomach was churning. Mrs Hudson must be bad if Luke had gone for the doctor himself, rather than sending one of the men in the horse and trap. Ebony would cover the distance in half the time, and he must have thought that important.

  Luke had apparently carried his mother upstairs, and Rose and Bess had helped her undress and get into bed. When Connie went into the bedroom she was shocked at the change in the plump, rosy-cheeked woman, although Mrs Hudson was still giving orders right, left and centre.