A Yuletide Treasure

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “And whose ears would I use, Mrs. Mallow? I heard him, right enough, but who’s to say how he came by that wound? He weren’t in no regiment I ever heard of,” she said with the air of one who studied the Army List regularly for her light entertainment.

  Though it undoubtedly fell under the heading of the strictly banned “gossiping with the servants,” Camilla added her might to the conversation. “Oh, Dr. March told that story at dinner last night.”

  She suddenly felt like an innocent fishing boat facing the open gunports of an enemy, so attentive did the two ladies become.

  “Did he, now? You never told me that, Portia Duke,” Nanny Mallow accused.

  “I didn’t know. If my Eunice has been keeping secrets from her ma ...”

  “Oh, only Mr. Samson was in the room at the time,” Camilla said, not wishing to cause the maid difficulties.

  “He won’t gossip,” Nanny Mallow said. “That’s the worst of him. So what did Dr. March say?”

  Camilla told them the tale simply, without any of the flourishes the doctor had added. The two women nodded at each other like wise Mandarins. “ ‘Them what lives by the sword dies by the sword,’ “ Mrs. Duke proclaimed. “That’s in the Bible an’ true as the day it was handed down.”

  “Well, he didn’t die by any sword,” Nanny shot back with incontrovertible logic. “ ‘Twas most likely a knife, and he didn’t die anyway. Probably was robbed by one of them nasty, murdering French. Use a knife as soon as look at you if not sooner. Poor lamb’s lucky not to be buried in a pauper’s grave with a foreign priest a-mumbling over him an’ all his bits and bobs handed over to the French king.”

  “What would he want with Sir Philip’s old clothes?” Mrs. Duke scoffed. “Besides, it’s more’n likely he had a fallin’ out with some of those artist fellows. Geniuses, ha! Low’s what I call ‘em. D’you remember the time he brought those friends of his here? Poor as church mice, the lot of ‘em, and not a vail did they hand out while they were here.”

  “Oh, come. You told me that was more ‘n fifteen years ago. Boys at school never have any pocket money that doesn’t go for sweeties and other such truck.”

  “I don’t care; I can’t stand meanness in the gentry.”

  “Never mind her,” Nanny Mallow said with a wise nod toward Camilla. “I know a good man when I sees one. Look for the kind eyes, that’s what I say. If a man has kind eyes, then he’s good all the way through. You can’t falsify that. I’ve known a few who acted like they had the milk o’ human kindness flowing through ‘em like the Thames but had mean piggy eyes. Every time, that meanness came out in one way or another. Maybe it’s turning out your only child; maybe it’s not giving more ‘n bread and skilly when you promised to help the starving.”

  “You’re right there, Mrs. Mallow,” Mrs. Duke said. “Why, I even knew a woman once who would rap a guinea against the poorbox, making everyone think she’d dropped it in, when she never gave more than a shilling if so much. The way everyone used to praise her for being so large hearted would shame the devil. Cheat the poor now, I told her when I left her service, but you’ll wish you’d given all them guineas twice over when you’re gone to your reward.”

  “And did she have mean little eyes?” Nanny asked, eager to hear her sometimes rival agree with her.

  “Not so you’d notice. Everyone said she was a pretty little thing. But I knew better. Handsome is as handsome does.”

  “I’m hardly concerned that Sir Philip will prove to be mean,” Camilla said when it seemed the argument would continue. “Not when he has already been so very kind and more than kind to you and me.”

  “I’m glad you recognized his good qualities. Dwell on them and maybe you’ll see what a fine husband he’d make for you,” Mrs. Duke began to cough halfway through this speech. Nanny Mallow didn’t let it stop her.

  “You’re just the right age to be thinking of marriage, not so young that you’re a fool, and not so old that you’ll be turned into one. Don’t let foolish fancies of some knight on a white horse blind you to your true interest. Sir Philip is a fine man and... Portia Duke, are you dying? Then do it quiet-like,” she added, turning her head to seek out her friend.

  There she paused, such an odd look of arrest on her face, that Camilla could not choose but turn also. Even before she did so, however, she had a sudden premonition as to who she would see.

  Lady LaCorte still had her hand on the doorknob, so Camilla knew a flicker of hope that she’d not heard Nanny Mallow’s advice. The elderly woman had been speaking softly and rapidly, so that even Camilla, who sat so close, had occasionally lost a word. Even her ladyship’s expression, being cold and impassive, gave no hint of whether she’d heard Nanny Mallow setting out Sir Philip’s qualifications for Camilla’s husband.

  Yet, some other sense told Camilla that Lady LaCorte had heard every word. Some barely screened expression of distaste had passed over that aristocratic, if slightly swollen, face when she glanced at Camilla.

  “I stopped by to see if you have all you require, Mrs. Mallow.”

  “ ‘Tis very good of your la’ship. I’m tolerable comfortable now.”

  “You relieve my mind. And yourself, Miss Twainsbury? I trust you had a peaceful night.”

  Did she know about her midnight meeting with Sir Philip? Camilla tried to squelch a guilty conscience, reminding herself that the meeting was by chance and not by the calculation Lady LaCorte seemed intent on suspecting. “Exceedingly peaceful, Lady LaCorte.”

  “I believe you have not yet taken the time to eat breakfast. If you would care to go down for it now, I could accompany you.”

  Camilla recalled, with a truly guilty start, that her mother had often told her that in country houses, breakfast is served in the breakfast room between the hours of eight o’clock and ten-thirty. Camilla, very young, had commented that it never took her two and a half hours to eat her breakfast. Her mother had then explained that these extended hours were for the benefit of both late-rising and early-rising guests, so that neither might be inconvenienced by the other’s queer hours.

  It must be nearly ten-thirty now, and Lady LaCorte had come in search of her so that she might eat without discommoding the servants who must be waiting to clear up in order to prepare for the noon collation.

  She kissed Nanny Mallow because the woman seemed to expect it, gave her duty to Mrs. Duke, and followed the silent mistress of the household down the steps. She was framing in her mind various ways of assuring her ladyship that she would never consider marrying Sir Philip when the arrival of the gentleman himself forestalled her.

  “Would you believe it, Beulah? Though I awoke hungry as a hunter, I completely forgot to take any breakfast until just now. I hope there are some sausages left. Mrs. Lamsard,” he said to Camilla, “makes the sort of sausages they must eat in heaven.”

  “What have you been doing, Philip?” his sister-in-law asked gravely.

  “Trying to keep those damn-fool stable lads from burying themselves and me under six feet of snow. I had to tell them I’d discharge the next one who threw a snowball while on duty.”

  “Did that dissuade them?” Camilla asked.

  He grinned. “Considering I just shook half a ton of snow from my collar, on the whole, I’d say not.”

  “Then, you should discharge them,” his sister-in-law said.

  “Where are they to go in weather like this? If I discharge them, I still have to feed them, and they don’t have to work. If I keep them on, at least they earn their bread.” He uncovered a silver toast rack and offered it to Camilla. “Will you come sledding with the children and me? Tinarose thinks she’s too old for such children’s games, but if you go, I’ll wager she will.”

  With a sudden nostalgic mellowing, Lady LaCorte looked interested. “Are the girls sledding on those big silver trays?”

  “Samson said he’d lend them. Do you mind?”

  Lady LaCorte gave her half laugh and shook her head. “I remember doing that, oh, quite tw
enty years ago. My mother was horrified to see us all, hoydens and shy buds alike, go screaming down the hill on her best silver trays. I don’t recall whether she was more afraid for us or for the plate.”

  She turned toward Camilla. “Do go, Miss Twainsbury. It’s an experience you will long delight in.”

  ‘Thank you. I can’t remember ever trying it. But then, we have no trays large enough to hold me. My mother does not entertain very much and never on a grand scale.”

  “Nor do we, anymore,” Lady LaCorte said with a return to her melancholy. “I’m confident, however, that no harm will come to the trays, or to the girls.”

  “Their poor uncle, however...” Sir Philip began. Catching Camilla’s eye, he groaned a little, artistically. “The girls may ride down, but old Uncle Philip is the one who hauls them back up the hill. Not just once, mind, but dozens of times, almost every one of which is the precursor to ‘just one more.’ ”

  * * * *

  Camilla instinctively shielded her eyes with her hand as she stepped out into the Manor’s kitchen yard. The stable boys had slaved away to clear a path from the stables, so that they could get something to eat, while the house servants, two footmen that Camilla hadn’t seen before, had worked down from the house. As usual with such endeavors, the two paths had missed each other by a good margin so that the paths snaked around the yard before joining up. To the two younger girls, it was like a snow maze made just for them.

  Cheeks wildly abloom with roses, little noses wiped frequently on balled-up handkerchiefs, Grace and Nelly romped around the yard, apparently enjoying running across unblemished crust in order to admire their tracks. The sight of their uncle brought them running.

  “Are you ready yet?” Grace asked, fairly dancing with impatience.

  “What do you suppose?” he asked in return, pointing to a slat-sided box stacked with five silver trays.

  A chorus of cheering broke out, seemingly from more than two little throats, as echoes broke back from the bricks that enclosed half the yard. “Let’s go,” Nelly commanded, tugging at his hand.

  “Now, wait a moment,” he said, crouching down to their level, the skirts of his greatcoat spreading around him. “We have to make a few things plain first. Are you listening, Nelly? Grace?” They nodded gravely. “What about you, Miss Twainsbury?” he asked, looking up at her.

  “Oh, certainly, Sir Philip.” She arranged her expression to be most closely attentive.

  “You’re to stay with me; no running off to look at things, even if you see the world’s most admirable rabbit. Understood?” He gave an extra stern look at little Grace. This seemed to have some relevance to her, for she hung her head and looked guilty. “The snow is very deep in some places, so please walk only where I tell you. The fastest are to walk with the slowest, and we leave as soon as one of us is tired. No whinging or begging to stay.”

  “I never whinge,” Camilla said proudly in answer to his questioning glance. “And I shouldn’t dream of begging.”

  “Furthermore,” he added, “I’m the captain of this little expedition so no mutiny. Orders are orders. Understood?”

  Two small heads nodded in their heavy winter caps, noses glowing brightly as coals. “Aye, aye, sir,” Camilla said with an imitation salute.

  “Remind me to show you how to do that properly,” he said.

  Camilla laughed. “Am I under orders already?”

  “You are. Forward, march!”

  With Sir Philip in the lead, a stout stick in his hand to feel for soft spots, followed by Camilla helping the little girls over the difficult terrain, and the stoutest of the two footmen trudging behind with the box of five trays, they were a strange little procession heading out for adventure.

  Camilla spared a smile for her own appearance in the parade. She’d surely qualify as the clown. This time, instead of Mavis Duke’s oversized boots, she wore a pair of her hostess’s riding boots which, rising to her calf, kept the snow out but which would never be restored to the proper gloss after this treatment. Lady LaCorte had claimed not to care, saying her feet had grown too large with this last pregnancy to ever allow her to wear the boots again. Over her quilted spenser, Camilla wore an old multicaped coat which Sir Philip had hailed on first glimpse as having formerly belonged to himself.

  “I was the proudest buck in three counties when the tailor delivered that monstrosity to my door. I fancied myself a Nonpareil, a veritable down-the-road man. Oh, well, everyone is entitled to some youthful folly, and that poor coat was one of my finest hours.”

  “It’s certainly warm,” Camilla said, holding up her arms. The sleeves draped over her knuckles so that she looked as if she had arms a mile long.

  “It looks more becoming on you, Miss Twains-bury, than it ever did on me,” he said gallantly. Raising his hands, he twitched the collar, so upstanding that the points all but groomed her eyebrows, so that it lay flat between her shoulder blades like a falling lace collar in one of the portraits of Charles the First. “Better. You might start a fashion.”

  “Not for bonnets, I’m afraid,” Camilla said with another laugh. Her hostess had kindly lent her the loudest Scotch bonnet Camilla had ever seen. Of screaming orange and lime green, it bore a cockade of scarlet ribbon but had the merit of being exceedingly warm. Camilla felt sure Lady LaCorte had never worn the thing.

  “It looks a bit familiar. I seem to recall a fancy dress party which my brother attended as Goliath whom, for some reason, he envisioned as a Scotsman.”

  “Captain LaCorte was a tall gentleman?”

  “Shorter than myself by some inches, yet it was I who went as David and he as Goliath. He had the whole party roaring with laughter. Of course, we were only lads then.”

  Outside the yard, the clean white snow wore a sparkle of diamond dust everywhere except deep in the blue shadows. Any breeze sent a fine powder swirling up into the fresh, nose-prickling air. They had gone only a very little distance, Camilla’s hem sweeping brush marks in the snow, when a shout of “Wait for me” made them all turn.

  Still tying the flyaway strings of her bonnet under her chin, Tinarose came running toward them. “Please, Uncle Philip. May I come, too?”

  “Of course,” he said, pleased. Camilla noticed that he did not tease his niece by referring to her earlier pronouncement that sledding was for the children.

  When they reached the sledding hill at last, Camilla taxed Sir Philip with his real reason for bringing the footman. After all three girls had gone sailing down the hill, their hands gripping the chased silver handles tightly, screams of terrorized delight shredding the wooded calm, she noticed that it was not the uncle who stood waiting at the bottom of the hill.

  “Well,” he said without a trace of remorse, “who has better calf muscles, a man whose career it is to walk up and down stairs and be willing for any labor, or a poor writerly fellow who scribbles all day in an easy chair?”

  “Considering that you haven’t even the decency to be out of breath after a mile-long tramp through deep snow...”

  “Come, come. You exaggerate. Besides which—” He broke off and began gasping like an extremely old man attempting to climb a mountain. “My reaction is merely somewhat delayed due to ... due to not being wishful to distress the children.”

  “You are all consideration,” Camilla said, gliding one, two steps behind him, just out of his eyesight. By the time he turned to address another remark to her, she’d stooped and gathered together an enormous snowball. She stood there, weighing it in her hand, calculating whether she should throw it or not.

  “Miss Twainsbury ... Camilla ... pray ...”

  “Does a man with such an excellent line of humbug as your uncle deserve a faceful of snow?” she asked as the two youngest girls reappeared over the crest of the hill, their silver sleds tied together and the ropes over the footman’s shoulder. Tinarose appeared an instant later, having brought up her own sled.

  Instantly appraising the situation, they with one voice shouted, “yes
!” and, gathering more ammunition, fired a fast and furious volley at a defenseless Sir Philip. His hat flew down the slope. He growled, paddling clear his face, then made alarming feints and attempts to grab each of his little nieces. Grace and Nelly screamed, laughed, and, seizing their sleds again from the footman, made off down the hill. Grace tumbled out of her sled at the bottom. Her surprised cry reached them faintly.

  “I’ll go,” Tinarose said. Forgetting her dignity, she threw herself stomach-down on the largest sled and raced down the hill to her sister’s succor.

  “Yes, sir,” the footman said in answer to his master’s nod. But judging by the whoop he let go as he schussed away, he did not begrudge his orders too greatly.

  Sir Philip turned slowly toward Camilla after seeing Tinarose wave to show that Grace, now up and apparently eager for another go, was perfectly well. “As the ringleader of this act of mutiny,” he said with a quarter-deck rasp in his throat, as he shook off the snow from his shoulders, “what sentence d’you deserve, Able Seaman Twainsbury?”

  “Able Seaman? I should be at least an officer.”

  “B’God, you should. Very well. For bravery in the field, as of last night, I hearby promote you to Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a curtsey.

  “Very well, Lieutenant. What sentence shall I pronounce for the high crime of throwing snowballs at your superior officer?”

  “I don’t know; let me think.” She glanced around at sky, snow-burdened trees, and the stamp marks of feet and sleds all around. At the bottom of the hill, the riders were sorting themselves out.

  With a laughing smile, she turned her gaze again to him and surprised an intense, studying expression in his eyes as he looked at her. He seemed to be asking her a question without words. He stood somehow much closer than she’d thought.

  Camilla felt slightly out of breath, as if she’d run a long way and come to a sudden stop. They had been bantering so lightly, enjoying each other’s company, and then, like the first sea breeze that gives notice of the tide’s turning, this change.