A Regency Christmas Carol

by Christine Merrill

Barbara warmed instantly—from the contact with his body and the embarrassment accompanying it. It was a practical solution, of course. But she would be the talk of the town if anyone heard of it. And by the smug smile on his face Joseph Stratford knew it, and was enjoying her discomfiture.

  Then he signalled the driver and they set off, with barely a sway to tell her of the moment. It was by far the richest and most comfortable trip she’d taken, and she had to struggle not to enjoy it. Her subdued pleasure turned to suspicion, for at another signal to the driver they proceeded through the unlocked gates down the road towards Clairemont Manor.

  ‘This is not the way to our home,’ she said, stating the obvious.

  ‘My house is nearer. You can both come for tea. I will send you home once I am assured that you are warmed and refreshed, and that no harm has come to you while on my property.’

  ‘That is most kind of you,’ her father said.

  It was not at all kind. It was annoying. And she was sure that there must be some sort of ulterior motive to his sudden solicitousness.

  But when she opened her mouth to say so, her father went on. ‘There are not many who are such good neighbours. And are you new here, Mr…?’ He struggled for a name. ‘I am sorry. My memory is not what it once was.’

  Barbara coloured, part relieved and part ashamed. She needn’t worry that her father was likely to turn violent again, for it was clear that he had lost the thread of things and forgotten all about Mr Stratford while concerned for her ankle. But what was she to do now? Should she remind him that his host was the same man who, according to her father’s own words, treated his workers ‘like chattel to be cast off in pursuit of Mammon’? Or should she continue to let him display his mental confusion in front of his enemy and become an object of scorn and pity?

  Stratford seemed unbothered, and responded with the barest of pauses. ‘We have met only briefly, and I do not fault you for not recalling. I am Joseph Stratford, and I have taken residence of Clairemont Manor now that the family has relocated closer to the village.’

  Her father gave a nod in response, still not associating the man across from them with the evil mill owner he despised.

  ‘Would you do me the honour of an introduction to your daughter, sir?’

  As her father presented her to this supposed stranger with all necessary formality, she thought she detected a slight twitch at the corners of Stratford’s mouth. If he meant to make sport at the expense of her father’s failed memory she would find a way to pay him out. But, after the briefest lapse, he was straight-faced and respectful again, enquiring after her father’s work and commiserating with him on the closing of the little school where he had taught, and his recent difficulties in finding another occupation.

  Mr Stratford had changed much since the last time she’d seen him brandishing a pistol and taunting the crowd. Though she could not say she liked him, she’d felt an illogical thrill at the power of him then, and the masterful way he had come to her aid. Now she was left with time to admire him as he conversed with her father, displaying intelligence and a thoughtful nature that had not been in evidence before. She found herself wishing that things could be different from the way they were and that this might be their first meeting. If she could look on him with fresh eyes, knowing none of his behaviour in the recent past, it might be possible to trust him. But she could not help thinking that this display of good manners was as false as her sprained ankle.

  He had let the groom help him on with his coat again before they had taken off, and she could see that it was the height of London fashion, tailored to perfection and designed to give a gentlemanly outline to the work-broadened shoulders she had felt as he carried her. He was clean-shaven. But his hair was a trifle too long, as though he could not be bothered to spare the few extra minutes that the cutting of it would take. A lock of it fell into his eyes as he nodded at something her father had said, and he brushed it out of his face with an impatient flick of his hand. Though she could not call them graceful, his movements were precise. She could imagine that these were hands better at tending machinery than creating art, more efficient than gentle.

  He made conversation with her father in an accent carefully smoothed to remind the listener of London, though she doubted that his tongue had been born to it. He spoke nothing of himself or his own past. But in the questions that drew her father to conversation Barbara heard the occasional lilt or drawl that was the true Joseph Stratford. He was a Northerner. But for some reason he did not like to show it.

  She looked away before he could catch her staring. Even if he was nothing more than a tradesman masquerading as gentry, he deserved more courtesy than she was giving him. They were drawing up the long drive towards the great house where she had played as a child. That was before Mary had died, of course, and before her sister Anne had grown into such a great and unapproachable lady. Had the manor changed as well? she wondered. Were the places she’d hidden under chairs and behind statues the same or different? Although she wished the circumstances had been different, she very much wanted to see the place—just once more.

  She could feel the eyes of the other man on her, watching her reaction to the house. So she worked to relax her posture and not stare so, or appear eager for a visit to it. It was little better than staring directly at him to admire his property as though she coveted or desired the luxury he took for granted.

  ‘I had a friend who lived here once,’ she blurted, to explain her interest.

  ‘And perhaps you will again,’ he replied easily.

  She looked up sharply into a face that was all bland innocence. The carriage pulled up before the great front entry, and as it stopped he signalled for the door to be opened, allowing her father to exit first so that he might help her on the steps.

  For a moment they were alone again, and he touched her hand and smiled. ‘There is no reason for us to be enemies,’ he said.

  ‘Nor any particular reason for friendship,’ she reminded him, drawing her hand away.

  ‘I think it is too soon for either of us to tell,’ he announced, ignoring her animosity.

  The process of entering the house was much the same as their setting off from the mill had been, with him carrying her while she protested, her shoeless foot waving in the air. There was a flurry of alarm amongst the servants, many of whom recognised her and her father.

  ‘Put me down now,’ she insisted. ‘Talk of this will reach the village. It will be the ruin of me.’

  ‘If it is, your father is right here to set them straight.’ He was smiling again, as though he knew how likely it was that her father would have no real memory of the event, for good or ill.

  ‘I would prefer that no explanation be needed,’ she said.

  ‘And I would prefer that people think me less of an ogre,’ Stratford replied. ‘I will not have you limping about my house while I offer no assistance. Then it will get round that I let you suffer as a punishment to your father.’

  For her own sake, and to preserve her reputation, he explained in a loud voice for the benefit of the staff that Miss Lampett had fallen, and he did not wish to risk further injury until she had rested her foot. But as he did so his hands tightened on her body, to prove to Barbara that he was enjoying the experience at her expense.

  ‘You may put me down, and I will take my chances,’ she said, glancing at a parlour maid who stood, wide-eyed, taking in the sight. ‘I feel quite all right now.’

  He pretended that he had not heard, and called for tea to be brought to the library, carrying her down the wide hall and depositing her on a couch by the fire.

  How had Mr Stratford known, she wondered, the calming effect that the presence of books had on her father? Though he seemed to have more difficulty with people since the accident, the printed word still gave him great comfort. The Clairemont Manor library was the largest in the area and the best possible place to cement her father’s recovery.

  As the servants prepared tea, her father stood and ran a
hand along the rows of leather-bound volumes. Stratford studied the behaviour and then invited him to help himself to whatever he liked, lamenting that business gave him little time to enjoy the books there.

  Her father gave a grateful nod and fell quickly to silence, ignoring the cup that had been poured for him, and the plate of sandwiches, in favour of the Roman history in his hand.

  Stratford gave her a wry smile. ‘While your father is preoccupied, would you enjoy a brief walk down the corridor? If your ankle is better, as you claim, a spot of exercise will assure me that it is safe to send you home.’

  She wanted to snap that she did not need him seeing to her safety. She had not wanted to come here at all. And now that she was here she would go home when she was ready, and not at his bidding. But it would be shaming to discuss her father’s rude behaviour while she shared a room with him, so it was best that she allow herself to be drawn away.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she lied.

  He went to fetch her boot and helped her with the lacing of it, commenting that the lack of swelling was an encouraging sign. Behind a placid smile, she gritted her teeth against the contact of his fingers against her foot and ankle. He was very gentle, as though he cared enough not to cause injury to a weakened joint. But she suspected the occasional fleeting touches she felt against her stocking were not the least bit accidental.

  He was touching her for his own pleasure. Much as she did not wish to, she found it wickedly exciting.

  Then he rose and went ahead to open the door for her, standing respectfully to the side so that she might pass. She forced herself to stifle the unquiet feeling that it gave her to have him at her back—even for a moment.

  It was possible that this latest offer masked something much darker. Perhaps he had designs upon her virtue. For, this close, she could not deny the virile air that he seemed to carry about with him, and the sense that he had a man’s needs and would not scruple to act upon them. She gave a small shudder, barely enough to be noticeable.

  ‘Is the house too cold for you?’ he prompted. ‘If so, I could have a servant build up the fire, or perhaps bring you a wrap…’

  ‘No, I am fine. I suspect that I took a slight chill on the moors.’

  ‘Your clothing is still damp from the fall. And I took you away from the tea I had promised.’ He frowned. ‘But I wished to speak alone with you for a moment, so that you might know I bear you no ill will because of recent events.’ He rubbed his brow, as though tired. ‘One can hardly be held responsible for the actions of one’s parent. I myself have a troublesome father.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Had,’ he corrected. ‘I had a difficult father. He is dead now. For a moment I had quite forgotten.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she said politely. ‘I assume the passing is a recent one, if you still forget it?’

  He looked away, as though embarrassed. ‘Almost seven years, actually. It is just that he has been on my mind of late. He was a weaver, you see.’

  ‘You are the son of a weaver?’ she said.

  ‘Is that so surprising?’ There was a cant to his head, a jutting of the chin as though he were ready to respond to a challenge. ‘With all your father’s fine talk of supporting the workers, I did not think to find you snobbish, Miss Lampett.’

  ‘I am not snobbish,’ she retorted. ‘It merely surprises me that my father would need to tell a weaver’s son the damage automation does to the livelihoods of the men here.’

  ‘What you call damage, Miss Lampett, I call freedom. The ability to do more work in less time means the workers do not need to toil from first light to last. Perhaps they will have time for education, and those books your father finds so precious.’

  ‘The workers who are put from their places by these machines will have more time as well. And no money. Time is no blessing when there is no food on the table.’

  He snorted. ‘The reason they are without work this Christmas has nothing to do with me. Was it not they and their like who burned the last mill to the ground and ran off the mill owner and his family? Now they complain that they have no source of income.’

  ‘When men are desperate enough, they resort to desperate actions,’ she said. ‘The owner, Mr Mackay, was a harsh man who cared little for those he employed, taking them on and casting them off like chattel. It is little wonder that their spirits broke.’

  ‘And I am sure that it did not help to have your father raising the rabble and inciting them to mischief.’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  ‘That is a lie,’ she snapped. ‘He had nothing to do with that argument. He did not support either side, and worked to moderate the cruelty of the one with the need of the other.’

  Stratford scoffed. ‘He saves his rage for me, then, who has not been here long enough to prove myself cruel or kind?’

  ‘He was not always as you see him,’ she argued. ‘A recent accident has addled his wits. Until that night he was the mildest of gentlemen, much as you see him now. But of late, when he takes an idea into his head, he can become quite agitated.’ When he recalled the scene she had come upon at the mill, just a short time ago, he must know that ‘agitated’ was an understatement. ‘Mother and I do not know what to do about it.’

  ‘You had best do something,’ Stratford said. ‘He appears to be getting worse and not better. If you had not come along today…’ He paused. ‘Your arrival prevented anyone from coming to harm, at least for now.’

  From his tone, it did not seem that he feared for his own life. ‘Are you threatening my father, Mr Stratford?’

  ‘Not without cause, I assure you. He is a violent man. If necessary I will call in the law to stop him. That would be a shame if it is as you say—that the rage in him is a thing which he cannot control. But you must see that the results are likely to be all the same whether they proceed from malice, madness or politics.’

  ‘Just what do you propose we do? Lock him up?’

  ‘If necessary,’ Stratford said, with no real feeling. ‘At least that will prevent me from having him transported.’

  ‘You would do that, wouldn’t you?’ With his understanding behaviour, and his offers of tea and books, she had allowed herself to believe—just for a moment—that he was capable of understanding. And that if she confided in him he might use his ingenuity to come up with a solution to her family’s problems. But he was proving to be just as hard as she’d thought him when she’d seen him taunting the mob of weavers. ‘You have no heart at all to make such threats at Christmas.’

  Joseph Stratford shrugged. ‘I fail to see what the date on the calendar has to do with it. The mill will open in January, whether your father likes it or not. But there is much work I must do, and plans that must be secured between then and now. I will not allow him to ruin the schemes already in progress with his wild accusations and threats of violence. Is that understood, Miss Lampett?’

  ‘You do not wish our coarseness and our poverty to offend the fancy guests you are inviting from London,’ she said with scorn. Everyone in the village had heard the rumours of strangers coming to the manor for the holiday, and would be speculating about their feasting and dancing while eating their meagre dinners in Fiddleton. ‘And you have the nerve to request that I chain my father in our cottage like a mad dog, so that he will not trouble you and your friends with the discomfort of your workers?’ She was sounding like her father at the beginning of some rabble-rousing rant. And she was foolish enough to be doing it while alone with a man who solved his problems with a loaded pistol.

  ‘There was a time when I was little better than they are now,’ he snapped.

  ‘Then you must have forgotten it, to let the people suffer so.’

  ‘Forgotten?’ He stepped closer, his eyes hard and angry. ‘There is nothing romantic about the life of a labourer. Only a woman who has known no real work would struggle so hard to preserve the rights of others to die young from overwork.’ He reached out suddenly and seized her hands, turning them ov
er to rub his fingers over the palms. ‘As I thought. Soft and smooth. A lady’s hands.’

  ‘There is no shame in being a lady,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could manage. She did not try to pull away. He could easily manage to hold her if he wanted to. And if he did not respond to her struggle the slight fear she felt at the nearness of him would turn into panic.

  His fingers closed on hers, and his eyes seemed to go dark. ‘But neither is there any pride in being poor. It is nice, is it not, to go to a soft bed with a full belly? To have hands as smooth as silk?’ His thumbs were stroking her, and the little roughness of them seemed to remind her just how soft she was. There was something both soothing and exciting about the feel of his fingers moving against hers, the way they twined, untwined and twined again.

  ‘That does not mean that we should not feel sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves.’ He was standing a little too close to be proper, and her protest sounded breathless and excited.

  ‘Less fortunate, eh? Less in some ways, more in others. Without the machines they are fighting I would be no different than they are now—scrabbling to make a living instead of holding the hands of a beautiful lady in my own great house.’

  It was not his house at all. He had taken it—just as he had taken her hands. ‘I did not give you leave to do so,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You gave me no leave to carry you before either,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to, and so I did. You felt very good in my arms.’ He pulled her even closer, until her skirts were brushing against the legs of his trousers. She did not move, even though he had freed her hands. ‘It is fortunate for me that you are prone to pity a poor working man. Perhaps you will share some of that sweet sympathy with me.’ He ran a finger down her cheek, as though to measure its softness.

  She stood very still indeed, not wishing him to see how near she was to trembling. If she cried out it would draw the house down upon them and bring this meeting to a sudden end. But her words had failed her, and she could manage no clever quip that would make him think her sophisticated. Nor could she raise a maidenly insistence that he revolted her. He did not. His touch was gentle, and it made her forget all that had come before.