One would think they’d light more lamps for the scavenger hunt, she thought as she nearly missed colliding with another armoire. She was sure she’d show bruises on her shins in the morning, and wondered how the other guests, who didn’t have the help of a resident of the manor, would ever get back to the main salon when they were done.
“Here!” Lord Fanshawe finally chortled, and abruptly stopped.
Pamela looked around. They stood in a dimly lit room filled with massive pieces of furniture. Most notably, an enormous canopied bed.
“The housekeeper lives here?” she asked in confusion.
“Hee hee,” her host chortled, tugging on her hand. “We can forget that air of innocence now, what?” He grabbed her and tried to drag her closer to his portly little person.
Pamela was as furious as appalled by her host’s sudden display of grappling arms, and soon made even angrier by the wet kiss that slid along her chin as she struggled with him. But she didn’t struggle long. She was country bred, and came from a large family with protective brothers eager to share their knowledge of self-defense with an adored little sister.
“Stop that!” Pamela puffed, and shoved him hard. It was like trying to shove one of the armoires she’d careened into earlier in their journey through the manor. He was old and fat and short, but sturdy as a tree trunk. She didn’t want to kill the old fellow, but she did mean to disable him. So she stomped on his foot and hooked an ankle around the other one that he immediately hopped to, and then she pushed him hard again. This time, he toppled.
“Outrageous!” she huffed. Leaving him sitting on the floor, she turned on her own heel to find her way back from what she now realized must be her host’s bedchamber.
She stormed out into the hall, and straight into another pair of arms and a hard chest.
“I thought you’d give him the slip,” Lord Ipcress said on a laugh as he wrapped her in an embrace. “Old fool, to think a prize like you would dally with him. I saw where you were really looking.”
This gentleman was wearing boots instead of evening slippers, so he didn’t even notice a foot slammed down on top of his. He was too close for a raised knee to do anything but encourage him, and not only was he able to catch her flailing hands, but he stood some inches taller than Pamela and had impressive muscles. So she resorted to throwing back her head and letting out a fearsome screech. It made Lord Ipcress wince, which made him close his eyes, which also meant that he didn’t see the fist that connected with his jaw.
“Get up so I can knock you down again,” Jonathan said through clenched teeth.
Lord Ipcress either didn’t hear him or decided to let things literally lay where they were for the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan told Pamela as he drew her close. “I didn’t know and didn’t believe what I thought I began to see. We’ll leave at first light. Pamela, I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be,” she said breathlessly.
“Of course I need be,” he said impatiently. “I wish I’d listened to your fears and given them more credence, instead of assuming I knew best. By God!” he said with an angry look at the man who lay at their feet. “I’d no idea of what passed for amusement in this set; my experience of these people was out of date. When I saw the way the guests were being paired off, and how they reacted, I remembered your suspicions, and followed. Where’s that wretched Fanshawe?”
“I knocked him down,” she said.
“Too bad. I’d have liked to do it.”
“Where’s . . . Marianna?” she asked.
“God knows,” he said bitterly, “and only He cares.”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said again. He stared out the coach window as they drove down the frosty country lane toward the main highway again. “What a ghastly way to start a Christmas holiday. Forgive me.”
“They all weren’t awful,” Pamela said generously. “I quite liked some of them. The Whitleys and the Gordons, and Mr. Ames and Lord Montrose also left this morning, you know.”
“Yes, and Sam Gregory as well,” he said. “But that only means we weren’t the only ones foolish enough not to look before we leaped.” He avoided her eyes and cleared his throat, very glad that he’d sent her maid with his valet ahead in another coach.
“I spoke to Lady Fanshawe this morning,” he said. “We’ll never see them again. I can only think that losing her looks made her also lose her good sense. Although, now in retrospect, I have to admit that a grown woman who found it amusing to seduce a green lad never really had good sense. What could I have been thinking? There was gossip, but I discounted it in my eagerness to see you established in the social whirl. I’ve been away at the wars too long, Pamela. I’d forgot not only who was important in the social world, but also my own good sense. Forgive me. We’ll make new friends, decent friends, together. I’ll not impose my preferences on you either.”
She nodded, and smiled widely. He was anxious to win her over, but he was only human. She was drinking in every penitent word, and he supposed she had the right. But he was tired of apologizing.
“Do you think our arriving days early will upset your family’s plans?” he suddenly asked.
“I think they will be ecstatic,” she said.
She thought she heard him sigh. So she moved close to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “We’ll have a happy Christmas,” she said. “You’ll see.”
He took her hand. “I hope we shall. I only wish my part of it had turned out differently.”
She didn’t like her new husband when he was arrogant. But she discovered she didn’t like him when he was this repentant, either. So she kissed him, and they forgot sadness and apologies, and Christmas itself, for a while.
Jonathan smiled. His wife had her nose pressed to the carriage window, like a child at a sweet shop.
“It looks just the same!” she caroled as she stared out at the old farmhouse they were approaching. “Oh! But I’ve so missed this place.”
Her husband’s smile slipped.
“London is wonderful,” she went on, “but this is home!”
“Indeed,” he said. He had a home in the Cotswolds as well as the one in London, an ancient manor house that his wife had said was lovely, the one and only time they’d visited it. His estate was older, more beautiful and historic than the house they approached. But she’d never greeted it with half so much pleasure as she now showed as they neared her parents’ rambling country home.
“Oh—there’s Papa!” she cried as the coach slowed in the front drive. “And Mama! And Bobby and Elizabeth—and Cousin George! That means that Mary must have had the baby. And that little love with the basket of holly must be Harriet’s youngest, only look at her curls. Oh, my, how lovely, all the children standing waiting for us, isn’t that sweet? They’ve grown so much I vow I can’t tell whose child is which. Look! There’s Kit and Harry with different hairstyles! Oh, good, they must have finally grown up and decided being the terrible Arthur twins is passé. And could that be Cecil? No! But it is! He’s home from the sea at last. Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, turning to give him a quick hug, “we’re here! I’m home!”
There was nothing he could say. No one would have heard him anyway. The coach slowed, and the door was pulled open, and his wife flew into the many welcoming arms of her enormous family.
“Rexford,” a tall, thin, dour gentleman said when he saw Jonathan descending from the carriage.
“Laughton,” Jonathan said, acknowledging his wife’s brother-in-law with a nod. He watched as her adoring relatives engulfed his wife. “Been here long?”
“A week,” Laughton said glumly. “You’re just in time. You missed the traditional family musicale, where the children show off their progress on the flute, pianoforte, and harp. Tonight they’re holding the traditional charades party. The costumed pantomime’s tomorrow night. Got an evening of dancing set for after that. Parties every night until Christmas, and then there’s the round of visiting to be done.”
“Yes,
I see. So Pamela said it would be.” Jonathan didn’t have time to say more. His wife flew out of the pack of her relatives, grabbed his hand, and dragged him to them in order to reintroduce him to everyone he hadn’t seen since his wedding. With her six siblings and their spouses, their children, a covey of cousins, aunts and uncles, and old family friends to be greeted, it was snowing heavily by the time the introductions were done. No one but Jonathan seemed to notice.
“And you’ll be my king,” Pamela said as she adjusted her paste tiara.
“I should rather not,” Jonathan said, picking up his pasteboard crown and staring at it. “That is to say, I’m really not very good at pantomimes.”
“You must,” she said firmly. “Everyone will be in costume . . .” Her eyes grew wide. “I mean, I wish you would try. Please do put it on. You don’t have to act in the pantomime but you do have to look as though you’d take part.” She raised the crown and set it lightly on his head, then tilted it so it sat rakishly on his close-cropped curls. “Oh, don’t you look regal! Far better than any of the Hanovers.”
He smiled. “That’s not much of a compliment.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “It means so much to Mama. If you don’t, she’ll take it as further evidence that you don’t like her. Try as I might, I can’t convince her that is just your way.”
“What is just my way?”
“You know,” she said, twitching a shoulder, making the filmy gauze of her princess’s costume seem to float around her, “your reserved manner. We’re a convivial group, and she thinks anyone who doesn’t talk sixteen to the dozen is disapproving.” She glanced up at his reflection in the mirror before her. “You don’t disapprove, do you?”
He put his hands on her shoulders and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “No, I do not. What is there to disapprove of? All right, I’ll be a king. And I’ll try to talk more. Are you happy?”
She spun around and hugged him. “Oh, so very happy now, my dear! Isn’t this the best Christmas?”
He didn’t answer. It was not. It was very far from it, at least for him. But she was ecstatic, and that actually made him even less happy. This was their second day at her parents’ home, and she’d been busy from morning to evening, visiting with her family. There was room for all of them, and it was a huge family. The manor was a rambling old house, made up of rooms that had been cobbled together by her ancestors as the spirit moved them and their family increased. They had been fruitful and so the house had multiplied, until now it was a welter of styles. It was not, Jonathan supposed, uncomfortable. But neither was it the sort of place that he had ever called home, or wanted to. It lacked grace and style, both of which were things he always sought.
Though his wife was clearly thrilled to be there, Jonathan felt severely out of place. He often found himself wondering how such a bright and lovely person as his bride could have sprung from such beginnings. This made him feel guilty, because he didn’t like to think of himself as stiff, or cold, or an elitist, and everything in this house made him feel more like one.
Viscount Rexford knew he was a man of consequence, but also knew that it was a damnable thing to be aware of that consequence. So he tried to fit in, but the longer he stayed at his in-laws’ home, the more of a stranger he felt. He didn’t mind the myriad sticky-fingered infants, and actually enjoyed the time he passed with the older children. But there were so many of them, and they had so many activities and friends present, that he didn’t see them that often or for that long. Which was too bad, because they were the only ones here he could have a good conversation with, or at least conversations that didn’t involve something that had happened the last time Christmas had come to the squire’s home. And his wife had no time for him at all.
He didn’t even have the solace of her company. When they chanced to be in the same room, she was lost in conversations with this brother or that sister, or was busily trading stories with one old friend or another. When he didn’t see her surrounded by laughing men, he saw her giggling with women, or cuddling a baby, or kneeling to have earnest discussion with a toddler. And not one of those conversations was one he could share.
He hated to be selfish, or at least to be aware that he was, but he sometimes wondered if she remembered he was there at all. Then he reminded himself that he’d brought her to the Fanshawes’ over her objections, hadn’t he? And she’d been molested there. He owed her more than courtesy in this. After all, the most dire thing that could happen to him here was to be bored to death.
And it was only three more days. He paused. Damnation! No, it would be five more days, because they’d come early when they’d escaped from the blasted Fanshawes. He picked up the ancient moth-eaten robes that a generation of his wife’s ancestors had worn at their Christmas pantomime, repressed a shudder, and prepared to be king for a night.
“She was the sweetest babe,” the old woman dressed up as a fortune teller told Jonathan. “Never a cry out of her. Why, didn’t Betty, she who was wet nurse for both Pamela and Eugene, didn’t she say that sweet Pamela could be stuck with a pin and she wouldn’t cry?”
“No, I don’t think so,” the other wizened old woman she was sitting with said. This one was dressed in so many shawls Jonathan couldn’t tell if she was supposed to be a mummy, or was actually an invalid. “It wasn’t Betty who nursed Eugene, Elizabeth,” she said thoughtfully. “It was that Tolliver woman from Frick’s farm.”
“I think not!” the fortune teller said on a laugh. “I’d forget my own name before I’d forget that. It wasn’t that Tolliver woman. She had a wart on her chin. Remember, it frightened young Arthur and made him cry? He said she was a witch, and wasn’t there a fuss when Mary found out about that! She never was one to let the children be impudent to the servants. No, I believe it was Betty. Here, Mary?” she called, snatching out at a nearby shepherdess’s gown. “Wasn’t it Betty who nursed Eugene?”
Pamela’s mother left off talking to one of her daughters. She went over to where her two old aunts were entertaining her new son-in-law.
“Why no,” she said. “It was Mrs. Fairchild, from Hilde-brandt’s farm.”
“So it was!” the fortune teller exclaimed. “She was the one with the mole. Mrs. Tolliver had the crooked teeth. Where is my head? So, she was the one who was Pamela’s nurse too.”
“Oh, no,” Pamela’s mother said. “That was Betty. She nursed Pamela.”
“How fascinating for Rexford,” a slender young gentleman dressed as a devil said with a laugh. “Regaling him with wet-nurse tales. Fie, Mama! Trying to bore your new son-in-law to extinction? Come along, my lord, we’ve some hot punch and a few warm tales for you.”
“Very well,” Pamela’s mama said. “Take him and entertain him royally. But be back for the pantomime, if you please.”
“You must think we’re a pack of regular country bumpkins, a pack of Johnny Raws,” the young man said as he bore Jonathan off to join a group of costumed men standing by a punch bowl in the corner of the room. “I’ll wager they’ve filled your head with baby stories until you’re ready to howl like a babe yourself. Here, gents, I’ve rescued our new relative.”
Jonathan was handed a cup of punch. “More in this than a stick of cinnamon,” Pamela’s father, dressed as a Roman senator, said with a wink. “So, tell us, Rexford. What’s new in London?”
“Town was pretty thin of company with Christmas coming,” Jonathan said, searching for a subject that would interest his host. He scarcely knew the man, but remembered Pamela said he was an ardent sportsman. He himself didn’t hunt, and only fished in order to find solitude. Although he had plans to raise horses now that he was married and ready to live at his country estate, he didn’t wager on them. He cudgeled his brain to think of something that might interest his father-in-law. He did fence, but didn’t think that would fascinate a country squire. He did spar at Gentleman Jackson’s salon! “Ah, yes,” he said, “the latest rumor is that Cribb is going to fight Molyneaux again in the new year.”
“I doubt it!” his father-in-law exclaimed. “Twice was enough, I’d think. At any rate, Molyneaux had his jaw broken by the Champion in September, and I daresay that will take a while to heal. Don’t know if the Moor would care for another taste of that kind of punishment, either.”
“Were you there?” Jonathan asked.
“No, but I’d have given a pretty penny to have been! I did see Molyneaux destroy Rimmer, though, earlier in the year. Now, there was a match to remember.”
“Aye,” another noble Roman said, “so you said. And you told me that I had something of the Champion’s style when Nick and I went at it that time after I thought he’d insulted that barmaid in town, you remember, the one I fancied.”
“Ho!” Pamela’s father said. “But you fancied every barmaid, Charles.”
The men laughed. Charles smiled. “So I did. Wasn’t she the wench though? Lord! She had half the boys in the district sniffing after her. When they weren’t fighting over her, they were planning on how they could snare her. She finally ran off with young Fairchild, didn’t she?”
“Her? No,” a fellow clad as a Gypsy put in. “She ran off with a tinker, I heard.”
“Heard wrong,” another gentleman, this one in motley pirate’s garb, protested. “She never. Harry here had the right of it. She run off with young Fairchild, and his father had to pay a pretty penny to be rid of her. Almost got to Gretna too.”
“No, that was Fairchild and Dylan’s daughter who got intercepted on the road to Gretna,” Pamela’s brother Kit said.
“Aye, that’s right,” a man got up as a harlequin in patches said. “And then they up and ran to Scotland, and never looked back. Anyone hear what happened to them?”
Regency Christmas Wishes (9781101220030) Page 23
