A Yuletide Treasure

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Camilla hoped she was not so shallow as to revel in the mere physical luxuries of the Manor. Servants and fine furnishings were all very well, but if they were going to corrupt her essential nature, she’d be better off without them. Examining her soul closely, Camilla decided that she was in no danger from an eiderdown coverlet and a fine carpet. Her happiness this morning must spring from a different source.

  Pressing her pillows into a bolster shape behind her neck, Camilla recalled her interrupted night. Sir Philip’s slow revelation of his different facets made him much more interesting than the surface word “charming” that she’d first applied to him. Last night, there’d been true emotion in his voice several times as he expressed his thoughts. He had treated her throughout their acquaintance as a friend; even more so, as an equal.

  “Heady stuff,” she told herself, making it a warning. She’d never had a man treat her as if he valued her for the reason, common sense, and gift of observation that were her dearest possessions. These three counselors joined now to tell her that though her observations of Sir Philip promised that he was as honest and forthright as he appeared, her reason reminded her that no person could ever be less than complex, while her common sense warned against any impulsive emotional tie. Even friendship came with dangers. Far wiser to hold back from furthering this friendship until she knew whether they’d ever meet again.

  Camilla promised herself that she would be wise and cautious, yet even if they never met again from this day until the passing away of the world, she would feel that she’d made a friend.

  Someone had laid out on the end of the bed one of Camilla’s own dresses, the wrinkles caused by packing having been pressed smooth. Looking around, she saw her own hairbrush and comb on the dressing table, her own bottle of apple-water beside them, even the book she’d packed by mistake. Camilla reproached herself for having slept so soundly that a maid had been able to do all this, like: a fairy at morning light, without disturbing her in the slightest. In something of a fuss, she began to dress.

  Once attired in her lilac sarsenet, the fashionable white trimming at the neckline and sleeves never betraying that it had been sewn on at home, she made sure her hair was neatly dressed in its usual smooth knot. There was no point in attempting anything that would betray her desire to be as elegant as her surroundings.

  As she had been dressing, she noticed strange noises in the hall outside her door. They had passed away after a little while, sometime between her drawing on her stockings and sitting down before the mirror, and she’d thought no more about them. Now they returned, rustlings, whisperings, running footsteps. She wondered if these were the fairies who had worked so many wonders while she slept. In this curious house, she wouldn’t be surprised to find some young maids lurking in the hallways when they should be working. Yet, it didn’t sound exactly like that.

  Tiptoeing herself, Camilla approached the door. Placing her ear against the white panels, she listened intently. When she judged the sounds to be nearest, she suddenly twisted the knob. Opening the door, she surprised two very young maidens, indeed.

  “Oh!” said the oldest, grasping her sister by the hand. ‘You shouldn’t do that; it might make her scream.”

  “Who?” Camilla asked, smiling at them. Dressed alike in tight red pelisses covering them from neck to waist, the two youngest daughters of the Manor gazed up at her from very similar dark blue eyes. They looked like a pair of kittens, unsure whether to hiss or to purr.

  “Her,” the girl said with a nod toward her smaller sister. “She has the loudest scream in the world. It shakes the windows. Uncle said that if she screams today, it might cause a navalanche.”

  “An avalanche?”

  ‘Yes. Do you know what that is?”

  “I think so. Do you?”

  Two similar dark heads were shaken.

  “Oh,” said Camilla, who had been offering the little girl a chance to show off her superior knowledge. “Well, I believe it’s a large fall of snow, very dangerous.”

  “Oh, then, we had one last night.”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of snowfall. More like, all at once ... down a mountainside? Quite destructive.”

  “Hmm,” said the elder, whose name Camilla could not recall. She remembered Tinarose saying something about how her sister’s names were simpler than her own. She felt sure the littlest one’s name was Grace. She’d thought at the time that it sounded too adult for so small a person.

  Now she grabbed Camilla’s hand and pulled. “Come and see,” she said. Her small hand was slightly sticky and surprisingly strong. Towed along, the other sister coming behind, Camilla didn’t want to seem petulant by demanding to know where they were taking her. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, as they went downstairs, they are taking me to breakfast.

  “Look!” said Grace as they reached the ground floor.

  “At what?” Camilla asked, after looking about her obediently.

  “At the window,” the older one said impatiently.

  Camilla looked and, at first glance, saw nothing but the faint grayish light of a snowy morning. It must be earlier than she’d thought. The clock in her room could not have been set properly, though it had been wound so that its cheerful ticking could be heard. It had said eight-forty-five when she’d awakened, but it must be closer to dawn.

  Then she looked again and yet once more. No gray light of early morning this—it was snow, piled as high as the second row of mullions that divided the windows into neat squares. Whatever sunlight there was came in filtered through the pressing weight of the snow.

  “We’re going to sled later,” the older sister said. “Mr. Samson has promised us two big trays.”

  “How thrilling,” Camilla commented, unable to take her eyes from the window.

  “I see they’ve shown you,” Sir Philip said from behind her. “Merridew says it’s the most snow he’s seen since he was a boy, though I think the winter of 1814 was colder.”

  “I remember that very well,” Camilla said. “We had to sacrifice an old card table when the wood gave out.”

  “Fortunately, we won’t have to go to that extreme,” he said, solemnly giving a hand to each of his clamoring nieces. “Though, frankly, I can think of several pieces that could be spared,” he added, his undertone further masked by the little girls’ demands that he venture into the snow with them.

  “Not until the stable lads and the gardeners have dug out all the doorways,” he said. “And Cook is making gingerbread dollies and seems to be at rather a loss on how to decorate them properly. She seems to want to use sultanas for their vest buttons.”

  This, it seemed, was some kind of offense. The two children ran off, protesting. Sir Philip turned back to Camilla, who, suddenly, felt shy. “It is a good thing that Dr. March left last night,” she said, choosing a neutral subject. “It would be too bad if someone needed him and he could not get out.”

  “He’s more likely to be needed here. My sister-in-law is quite near her time.” He looked at her curiously. “You’re smiling. Why?”

  “Oh, merely...” She remembered with what openness they’d spoken last night and could not bring herself to retreat entirely into the common usage of a pair of strangers. “It’s only that my mother sent me away so I should not be present at the birth of my niece. And here I am....”

  “Awaiting another birth? Fate must have made it so, Miss Twainsbury.”

  “I’m not sure I believe in fate, Sir Philip.”

  “Ah, but does it believe in you?”

  Chapter Nine

  Camilla felt that her first duty, even before breakfast, was to visit Nanny Mallow. Assured by Mavis that the patient was awake and eager for visitors, Camilla knocked, wishing she had some flowers or calf’s foot jelly to bring to a sufferer. Her mother made wonderfully clear jellies.

  “You’re looking very well,” Camilla said, smiling on the wrinkled face turned up to hers. Nanny seemed to expect more, so Camilla bent down and kissed her surprisingly soft
cheek. She felt a little off balance about it; she’d not been raised to expect or to give easy kisses.

  “It’s like a miracle to be so safe and comfortable after so hard a time.”

  “Well, you look blooming,” Camilla said stoutly. “If I thought it would improve my looks at all, I’d do the same as you. Only with my fortune, I should be more likely to sprain my nose rather than a knee.”

  “Oh, I know just the right treatment for a sprained nose,” Nanny Mallow said with her young-old laughter. Camilla didn’t know whether to take her seriously or not.

  “I hope you are feeling much better this morning,” Camilla said.

  Nanny grasped Camilla’s sleeve, and leaning forward, she turned a sly glance toward the nurse. “She pretends to be so stern and unfeeling, but she’s as gentle as a mother.”

  Mrs. Duke growled a little, like a dog making sure no one makes off with her special bone. Then she whisked away to stand by the fireplace, poking at some aromatic mixture in a pot set down among the ashes.

  Nanny Mallow laughed and settled back again against her mounded pillows and cushions. A twinge of pain crossed her face. “I never would have believed so many bits of ourselves are strung through the knee,” she said. “Even if I don’t use it or go anywhere near it, it starts aching all over again. Mind you, I’m glad to be clean and warm— two I thought I’d never see anymore—but I wish this clever doctor’d explain how come when I wiggle m’left thumb, m’right knee starts giving me three kinds of gyp.”

  “I know it must be hard to find the patience to wait for yourself to heal.”

  “I know, I know,” she said irritably. “That’s the same advice I give m’self. Can’t say I pay much attention.”

  “None at all,” Mrs. Duke muttered under her breath but clear enough to be heard.

  “Never mind her. How are you getting on, Miss Camilla?”

  “Everyone is treating me like an old friend already.”

  “Hmmm, could be good that, or could be bad. Which is it?”

  “Oh, good, very good. I feel quite one of the family already. Sir Philip—” She began and then hesitated. These fearsome old women could build a whole tragic fairy tale out of two chance-fallen words. “Sir Philip has been more than gracious,” she said quickly.

  The two women exchanged glances. Mrs. Duke twitched her shoulder and turned again to the mixture on the hearth. “He’s a very pleasant gentleman,” Nanny Mallow allowed. “Very good to his dependents. Sent me down a venison pasty last time he shot a deer in the park.”

  “I’m sure he takes his position very seriously,” Camilla agreed, thinking that last night he’d seemed almost reluctant to take on his brother’s fallen burden.

  Nanny Mallow tried to adjust her position on the pillows, sucking in her breath through her teeth at the twinge of pain that accompanied her every movement.

  “Let me help you, Nanny,” Camilla said, straightening a fallen cushion.

  “It passes me,” Nanny said. “Would you say I so much as moved that knee?”

  “If you would lay still, nothing would hurt,” Mrs. Duke said.

  “If I’m going to lie that still,” Nanny Mallow retorted, “I might as well have died.”

  Camilla tried to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels. “Have you heard about the snow?”

  “She claims ‘tis higher than m’head,” Nanny said, scornful of such exaggerated claims.

  “That’s more or less true. Sir Philip says you and I will be his guests while it lasts. The stable lads are trying to clear paths, but he says the drive is too long to be attempted just yet.”

  Nanny Mallow nodded portentously. “There. That’s what I mean about him. Kind, generous to a fault, and quite good-looking if you like that kind. I always preferred ‘em dark and brooding with a smile that could turn a girl’s heart inside out. That’s not the sort to marry, though.” She sighed at the thought with reminiscent pleasure. “You could do worse, Miss Camilla.”

  The older woman took hold of her hand. “Now, don’t be shy ‘bout this sort of thing. If a girl can’t talk to her elders about love, she’s left on her own, and that’s a bad place to be when you’re young ‘n’ foolish.”

  “No fool like an old fool,” Mrs. Duke said from her corner. She’d brought out a skein of gray wool and was knitting along at great speed.

  “Hush, Portia Duke. You could go farther and fare worse for a mistress than any girl raised by my Miss Lolly.”

  Camilla balked at the thought of anyone calling her mother “Lolly.” As a matter of fact, she couldn’t think of anyone anymore who called her mother anything save “Mrs. Twainsbury.” Thus she lost her moment to declare that nothing would make her think of marrying Sir Philip.

  “My Miss Lolly was a bit wild when she was a girl, maybe so, but she soon learned the error of her ways. Life’s been more than a little hard on her, but she soon learned that being down-to-earth and no-nonsense was the way to get on.”

  “Wild?” Camilla coughed, “My mother?”

  “Oh, not a hurly-burly girl by any means, just a bit... neither to lead nor to drive. The more she was told she couldn’t nor shouldn’t, the more headstrong she grew. I knew how to handle her, but those parents of hers ...” She clicked her tongue in derision. “She never would have run off with your father if they’d let him come calling at the house like a Christian ‘stead of forcing ‘em into meeting behind hedges and in the church on Monday mornings.”

  Camilla pressed her fingers hard to her temple, feeling as if the top of her head was about to spin off. She’d never heard a word of this before. Her parents—a runaway marriage?

  “I hadn’t realized,” she began carefully, “that my Feldon grandparents were opposed to my father.”

  “Oh, they came around by the time Linnet was born, but for the first year or two, not a word passed between ‘em. My Miss Lolly didn’t care a twig. She wasn’t the sort to come crawling back on her hands ‘n’ knees, no, not if she were starving, which they pretty near did that first year. They lived in lodgings not far from where I was employed at the time, so I’d see ‘em now and again with the hind end of a loaf or a few scones in my basket. Not a shred had she but the clothes she’d gone away in, and a few things she’d bundled into a bandbox, but she was just as gay and merry as any bride should be.”

  Gay? Merry? It was hard to imagine her stern, proper mother as a spoiled, ardent girl determined to throw her heart over the windmill. Perhaps Nanny was confusing her mother with some other young girl she’d attended. “This was in Portsmouth, Nanny?”

  “No. No, Canterbury. My employer lived in the shadow of the cathedral, or so his wife liked to say. Proud, stuck-up piece she was, no better than she ought to be, as I learned later.”

  Camilla breathed a sigh of relief. “My sister was born in Portsmouth, not Canterbury. You must be thinking of someone else, Nanny, not my mother.”

  “Not your mother? Pshaw! Little Lolly was my first charge as a sole nursery maid. I’d worked under Nanny Langton as undernursery maid at Viscount D’Arby’s town house—coo, she was a tartar if ever there was one. Regular Attila the Hun in petticoats.” She shook her head. “Finicky, my heavens! Always turned out neat as a cat in pattens, and that’s not such a simple matter when you’re in charge of five holy terrors all under the age of six. I stayed out my year, but that was quite enough.”

  “So you went to my grandparents?”

  “That’s it. Came to them just after the month. Tiny thing she was. First baby I ever saw with curls, sausage curls, and she hardly born. I remember ‘em curling up again, spry as springs, after the parson wet her little head. She never cried a tear either, just smiled up and tried to catch the parson’s linen. I remember brushing those curls round ‘n’ round m’finger. She kept them all her life, too. Why, I couldn’t forget my first baby.”

  “No, of course not,” Camilla said soothingly, more confident yet that Nanny had grown confused. Though she’d but rarely seen her mother
without the stern widow’s caps she affected, she knew that there was not now, nor could there ever have been, curls in her hair. She wore it in smooth bands without even a fringe to soften it. Camilla well recalled how gravely her mother had read her a lecture on vanity when she had, several years ago, wantonly cut her hair so that it curled softly on her cheeks as she’d seen in a ladies’ magazine. It had been rather flattering, or so Camilla had thought, but when her hair grew out, she did not cut it again.

  Once more seeking to change the subject, Camilla brought up something that she knew would interest Nanny Mallow. “I wanted to tell you that Rex is doing very well.”

  “You saw him today?”

  “No, last night. He was lying by the fire, looking happy as the king he was named for. Chasing rabbits in his sleep, if I’m any judge.”

  “In the house? Oh, ho, her la’ship won’t care for that!”

  “He was there by Sir Philip’s invitation.”

  “That’s all right, then,” Nanny said, ignoring the snort from the corner. “You see how kind he is. And so good with the children, though well I know what a nuisance little girls can be to the gentlemen. But he always takes time to speak to them, and I know he had one of little Grace’s daubs framed and hung up in his dressing room. She said it was him on his favorite horse, but bless her little heart, it looked no more like that than a plate of cold vermicelli.”

  “Aye, he’s fond enough of them,” Mrs. Duke said. She sat knitting like a chorus out of some Greek play. “Considerin’ how he never came nigh ‘em ‘til the master died. Off gallivanting t’ the four corners of the world, he was, and her la’ship here on her own with three little ‘uns to raise up in the way they should go. Not so much as a penny whistle at Christmastide either.”

  “Gallivanting? Gallivanting? When you’ve heard with your own ears Dr. Marsh say how he saw him wounded in that sink o’ sin, Paris, France.” The amount of venom infused into the name of the French capital could have poisoned the whole city.