Lady Rostend agreed that one’s old family retainers were to be pampered—hadn’t she given them each a new handkerchief for Boxing Day?—but demanded they hurry through the courses before the vicar’s tongue froze to his fork. “It grows late, anyway, nearly time to leave,” she added.
The anguish in Amelia’s eyes was met by a gust of wind through the dining room. Nick called for the cake.
Salter came in, regally bearing the dessert on a silver platter. His muttering did take something away from his stately manner, though. “Curl for Miss Charlotte, Holly for Miss Henrietta. The raisin must be for Lady Rostend. Pineapple for the parson, or does he get the peach preserves? Berries for the baron?” It was something like that, the butler thought. But which section had the ring for Mrs. Merriot? The candlelight was too dim, his eyesight was too poor, and his memory was too faulty for him to get the right slice to the right person anyway. “Dammed foolish superstition, just like the ghosts,” he mumbled, placing pieces of cake on the waiting plates, willy-nilly, and serving them to the diners.
Old Salter must be feeling the cold, Nick thought as he watched the man stumble, nearly spilling the two plates he held. Then someone must have jostled his arm, but Salter nimbly saved the next two plates from landing on the carpet, so Nick stopped worrying about pensioning the old butler off. Three candles went out just when Salter was about to place the last dishes in front of Nick and Amelia. Lud knew if the old man had managed to get the right piece to Mrs. Merriot. Nick could only pray.
The vicar was the first to find a token in his cake, the key. “How perfect, my lord, for the new house, and the new opportunities your residence at the castle will bring to the community.” He lifted his glass in a toast to the baron.
Miss Charlotte and Miss Henrietta both found gold coins in their cake, and both wept tears of joy. Lady Rostend found her own farthing, and quietly tucked it away down her bodice.
“I say,” Squire Morris bellowed, “a little horseshoe! Just the thing. Must mean my filly is going to win the Classic this year, what?”
Taking careful bites now that he realized Mrs. Salter had gone whole hog with this silly tradition, Nick discovered a ring in his cake. The dancing candles were enough for him to recognize Gregory’s ring, and he knew who had placed it there for him. He put it on his finger and raised his glass to Lady Rostend, too overcome with emotion to express his gratitude for her gift and her forgiveness. He found his voice, however, when Mrs. Tothy uncovered her token, a gold ring, set with a pearl.
“That’s not—” he began, only to be silenced by the vicar’s wife’s tears.
“It is the loveliest thing I have ever owned, my lord,” she said between sobs.
“But—”
“We could never have afforded such a beautiful thing. Thank you, my lord, and may God forgive me for thinking you some kind of demon.”
What could he say to that except, “Wear it in good health, as a symbol of your blessed marriage.” Everyone looked to Mrs. Merriot. The candles stopped flickering and the draft ceased altogether, as if the very air was holding its breath. Amelia self-consciously dug about in the slice of cake with her fork, not knowing what to expect. At last she uncovered a slender band, and held it up. The others had gathered closer to see, and Lady Rostend, disappointed, glared at Nick and said, “Looks like something the dog dragged in.”
Amelia wiped the ring off on her serviette and held it closer. “No, I think it is white gold, or something very old. And there is an inscription inside.”
“Let me see,” Nick said, taking the ring from her hand so he could step closer to the candelabrum on the sideboard. “It is Latin. I think… Yes, it says, ‘’Til Death do us part.’”
“A wedding ring!” Miss Charlotte cooed, and her sister clapped. “That means a happy marriage, my dear Mrs. Merriot, within the year.”
Lady Rostend muttered, “A month would be better to quiet the gossip,” but everyone pretended they hadn’t heard.
Since they were all out of their chairs, they decided to adjourn to the parlor, the three gentlemen joining the ladies in the warmer room rather than stay for brandy and cigars. The vicar’s wife took a seat at the pianoforte, and the others gathered around to sing the last of the year’s Christmas carols. They had to sing without Lord Worth and Mrs. Merriot, however, for Nick steered Amelia toward a secluded corner, in sight of the others, but out of earshot.
He held up the ring. “Will you wear this, my dear?”
“Of course. It is my Twelfth Night token. Unless it is too valuable an heirloom, and you need it here for the family coffers?”
“I need it here, Amy. I need it on your finger. And it is much more than a charm. I do not pretend to know where it came from, or how it got into your cake, but if it is a token, my dear, it is a token of my love.”
Amelia’s heart was in her throat. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
Nick laughed. “I am trying to ask you to marry me, Mrs. Merriot.”
“Marriage? But you cannot—”
“Of course I can, and that ring proves it. At first I thought to offer you a marriage of convenience, since we rubbed along well together and your situation begged to be improved.”
“And then?” she asked, hoping for the words she’d been wanting to hear for so long.
“And then I found I could not bear the thought of living without you, without winning one of your glorious smiles at least every hour, like a clock’s chime, reminding me that joy and love and springtime still exist. I did not think I could love anyone, but you have proved me wrong, my dearest. Do you think that you could come to have some affection for me in return? Enough to make me the happiest of men?”
“Silly Nick, I have loved you since you walked into the church on Christmas Day, so brave and strong. Nay, I loved you when I was a girl, when you brought me a ribbon from the fair. I can think of nothing I would rather do than become your wife, but only if you are sure you don’t merely want a mistress you can discard when you grow weary of her.”
He gently kissed her, removing all doubt from Amelia’s mind—and from the minds of the others, who were surreptitiously watching from the room’s other end, and the ether. “I want you, the only mistress of my heart, today and tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that,” he said, slipping the ring on her finger, where it fit as though made for her, “’til Death do us part.”
Chapter Ten
Hand in hand at last, Sir Olnic and Lady Edryth ascended a stairwell of sunbeams, just as the clock in the Great Hall struck midnight. As they climbed higher, their outlines blurred, the knight’s shining armor blending into the lady’s flowing gown. Just before they faded into the golden light, Sir Olnic turned back to look at his heir, and the future of his house.
“’Til Death do you part, lad?” he said with a smile and a wink for his own beloved. “That’s not the half of it.”
A Home for Hannah
Chapter One
Hannah was in trouble. This was not the “stand in the corner until you learn your place” kind of trouble, nor the “going without supper” kind of trouble. This was worse even than the birching Hannah would get if she were caught listening outside Matron’s office door at the Chiswell London Academy for Girls. Miss Eudora Chiswell was speaking to her brother, Mr. Malcolm Chiswell, about Hannah. How could Hannah not listen, especially when the door was open a crack? Hannah clutched her doll closer to her chest.
“So what are you going to do now that the payments for the chit’s upkeep have stopped?” Mr. Chiswell was asking. He was the mathematics instructor at the school and kept the ledgers. He also kept track of every piece of paper, every slice of bread, and every torn stocking. Outside the door, Hannah rubbed one foot against the other, feeling the stitches of her unskilled darning against her toes.
“What do you think I am going to do with the brat?” Miss Chiswell asked with a raspy cackle, almost as untried as Hannah’s sewing. “Keep her on for free? This is no charity home, you kno
w.”
The school was maintained by donations and tuitions. The girls were mostly orphans or simply unwanted, with the occasional boarder whose parents were traveling. Most often, like Hannah, they were unwelcome encumbrances of one sort or another, with families willing to pay to see them schooled and fed, without actually seeing them. Hannah’s mother, a woman of great beauty and little virtue, according to the Chiswells, had run off to Russia with her latest foreign lover last year. The money for Hannah’s keep had run out last month.
Hannah did not miss the mother she’d never met. In fact, the first she’d heard of the woman was when a farewell note was delivered, saying “Always in my heart,” along with the doll Hannah held so close. She did miss the dream of being claimed by a loving family of her own, though. Now she was going to miss the only home she had ever known, cold and uncaring as the Chiswell London Academy was.
“So what will you do with the girl?” Mr. Chiswell asked again, and Hannah held her breath waiting for the answer.
“Well, she’s too young to go into service, and too old for adopting out, even if folks were willing to overlook the bad blood in her, from that mother. Couples with money want a sweet little infant. Them without blunt want a strong gal to help with the housework or the farm.”
“That Hannah’s a scrawny thing,” Mr. Chiswell agreed, as if the girls were ever fed enough to grow plump and sturdy. “She would not last a week in the mills.”
“Or the mines. The foremen will never pay us for a puny runt like her.”
“What about the bawdy houses? I hear Sukey Johnson is always looking for young girls.”
“Hannah is six years old, you old lecher. Besides, she is too homely with that impossible hair.” Hannah’s hair was, as usual, out of its ribbon, out of its braid, and in her eyes. She pushed a long, thick, straight lock aside so she could peek through the opening of the door. Mr. Chiswell was licking his thin lips, about to disagree with his sister, it seemed to Hannah.
Before he could say anything, however, Miss Chiswell added, “And how will it look for our reputation if one of our girls lands in a brothel? No, it will have to be one of the city orphanages.”
Hannah had to stuff her hand in her mouth to keep from crying out. Everyone knew the foundling homes were filled with disease, crime, and vermin—and hopelessness. Wasn’t Miss Chiswell always telling the girls how terrible the institutions were, to make her charges behave?
“That or the streets,” Mr. Chiswell suggested, “so no one has to know where she came from.”
The streets were worse than the orphanages, worse than anything Hannah could think of, in fact. Boys out on their own became beggars or thieves, or got stolen to be chimney sweeps. Girls— Well, all Hannah knew was that girls suffered Dyer Fates, worse than having to clean the chamber pots. She might not understand what Dyer Fates entailed, unless they were like the time she tried to color her pale hair with ink, but they played a major part in Matron’s lectures, so they had to be bad. Hannah did understand cold and hunger, and being all alone in the dark. Her thin shoulders began to shake in fear and in sorrow, but she could not cry. Not yet. She had to keep listening.
“When?” Mr. Chiswell wanted to know, running his fingers over the columns he was adding, estimating, perhaps, how much they could save in Hannah’s half-full bowls of gruel. It was all Hannah could do not to shout out a promise to eat less, or to work harder at her lessons, so someone might hire her when she learned to sew or read better.
Miss Chiswell was thinking. Hannah could tell by the way her nostrils twitched. “At the new year, I think. After all, Christmas is not quite a month away. The season of good-will, and all that fustian. We have to show what devout souls we are, to set a proper example for the girls, you know.”
And to impress the wealthy patrons, Hannah knew. She wondered how impressed they’d be to see Mr. Malcolm Chiswell use his penknife to clean under his fingernails. He put the knife down and smiled, sending shivers down Hannah’s back. “Right,” he said. “Then come January, we can toss the brat out in the snow?”
“Exactly.”
*
Gregory Bellington, Viscount Bryson, was wishing he had his own cattle in front of him instead of these hired horses. How could he hope to impress his passenger with such slugs? His own highbred pair were long gone, though, to pay his family’s debts, his deceased father and older brother having been singularly unlucky gamblers. He also wished he was in the country instead of Hyde Park, where everyone kept an eye on everyone else, and made note of such financial embarrassments. While he was wishing, Lord Bryson would have chosen weather that was not so cold and raw. If the dull-coated nags from the livery stable did not give Gregory’s companion a disgust of him, the annoying drip of moisture he could feel forming at the end of his nose surely would. He pretended to brush back the lock of straight hair that kept falling across his brow while he surreptitiously swiped at his nose with his glove. He knew his blasted hair was too long, dash it, but the services of a valet had gone the way of his prime cattle.
The horses, the weather, the crowds, and his pecuniary problems all might have combined to give Lord Bryson the blue devils, except for the angel sitting beside him in her ermine-lined blue cape. With the fur-lined hood up, and her dainty hands in a white muff, Lady Susannah Fitzjohn was the picture of a Frost Princess. The cold brought roses to her porcelain skin, instead of a revolting runny nose, and perfectly placed golden curls framed her beautiful face. Lady Susannah was a Diamond, a Toast, the Incomparable of the Season. She was wellborn, well educated and, most importantly, well dowered. But what a fortunate fortune hunter Gregory was—he actually liked the young woman. They had shared only a handful of dances, true, and the occasional conversation during morning calls or intermission at the opera, but she seemed everything a fellow could want in a wife. Better yet, she seemed to favor him among her hordes of suitors, and her father had not frowned too severely when the viscount asked permission to pay his addresses. Gregory might not precisely wish to marry any female at all right now, but proposing to the earl’s daughter would be no hardship. Nor would kissing her to seal their engagement—once he’d wiped his nose.
Lord Bryson thought to get the deed done today, possibly his last chance to be private with the closely guarded heiress, or as private as one could be in the park, with a hired groom riding behind them.
Otherwise, if he missed today’s opportunity, both he and Lady Susannah would soon be off to the Duke of Ravencroft’s house party. The annual Christmas affair was a huge gathering, where Lady Susannah would be surrounded by her bosom bows and busybody chaperons—and every eligible bachelor who could scrape up an invite the way Viscount Bryson had, by listening to the duke’s tales of his days in India.
Gregory might be able to steal a few mistletoe kisses at Ravencroft, but he would have a deuced difficult time getting the young woman alone long enough for a proposal. A gentleman could not put his luck to the test amid the inevitable dances and carol singing and greens gathering, not without a herd of old tabbies hanging on his every word. Besides, if he could claim her as his own before leaving London, an announcement in the newspapers would keep the other chaps—and Lord Bryson’s creditors—at bay.
The viscount had planned on inviting his would-be wife to step down for a short stroll along a less popular pathway, leaving the groom with the horses, except then he would have to get down on one knee on the cold, muddy ground. A fellow without a valet had to consider such matters. No, Gregory decided, he’d do better to stay in the curricle and send the groom off. He started to look for a likely side path to turn the horses.
He dabbed once more at his nose with his whip hand while Lady Susannah turned to wave to an acquaintance on horseback. When he glanced ahead, Gregory noticed a little girl on the edge of the riding track. He’d seen her before, he thought, a tiny scrap of a moppet in a red cloak and a plain straw bonnet, clutching a doll. He remembered thinking, the first time he’d seen her, that the chit was far too
young to be out and about on her own. Her governess or nanny or whatever must be having a tryst, he’d decided, for the child was too clean and too well dressed to be a street urchin or a flower seller, despite the cloak being too big for her, and the bonnet almost hiding her face entirely. All the viscount could see were big eyes in a pale, solemn face, staring at the passing carriages. The poor little puss must be cold and bored, waiting while her nursemaid had a cuddle in some secluded corner of the park. He wondered where and how far away that corner might be, and if he could find it before he had to return Lady Susannah to her home.
Feeling sorry for the child, Gregory raised his hat in greeting, the same as he did when he passed Lady Cowper or Princess Lieven, or any of the other Almack’s lady patronesses. That lock of hair fell in his eyes again, pale blond hair almost as colorless as the weak winter sun. He tossed his head back and replaced his high-crowned beaver hat, then started to look again for a more secluded path.
To Lord Bryson’s disbelief, dismay, and downright horror, the little girl stepped dangerously close to the carriageway. She raised her head and called out in a high, clear voice that could be heard by everyone around. “Papa,” she cried, looking straight at Gregory. “Papa.”
Chapter Two
“What is the meaning of this, Bryson?” The rosebud at Gregory’s side was sprouting thorns. Lady Susannah did not appear half as lovely with her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed. She looked like a dried currant, in fact.
“I have no idea,” the viscount said in absolute honesty. “Someone’s idea of a prank, perhaps.”
“Then move on, do,” she told him, as one might address a hackney driver. “I am not amused. People are staring.”
She was no more eager to get out of the public eye than Gregory, so he flicked his whip over the horses’ ears. Then all hell broke loose.
Actually, the viscount thought with the one tiny corner of his mind that remained coherent, that was an exaggeration. There were no floods or famines, frogs or flying locusts. He could only pray for a plague to strike him dead. No such luck, only another knife through his heart, another plaintive “Papa.”
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