A Matchmaker's Christmas

by Donna Lea Simpson

  • • •

  In one of the pleasant rituals that had become a part of their day, the company met for tea in the late afternoon in the gold saloon. Lady Bournaud sometimes took part and sometimes not, but this day she sat in regal splendor, her icy blue gown spread over her withered legs and her snowy hair piled in an elegant new style, fixed with ivory hair combs. The younger people trooped in, followed by the footmen with laden trays.

  Tidwell directed the operation, commanding a table be brought to Lady Bournaud so she could pour tea for her guests. Beatrice watched it all from her chair at her employer’s side.

  Chappell, the first to arrive, stood by the window looking out over the familiar countryside. It had started raining sometime during the night and continued for the better part of the morning, and all of the snow had disappeared, so the countryside was painted in a palette of drab browns, grays and greens once more. Afternoon had brought the sun out, and so the pathways and road were drying.

  He looked back over the company, the chattering, lively young people, the quiet, smiling Miss Copland, and the watchful Lady Bournaud. It was clear to him what his former mentor had in mind. Matchmaking. Lady Silvia and Lord Vaughan, Miss Allen and Mr. Rowland, and, yes, himself and Miss Copland. In some ways that was the most unlikely match of all, for he never got beyond her cool façade, her icy wall of composure, and he was too old to make a fool of himself as he might have if he were younger.

  And yet she drew him like iron filings to a magnet. He had seen innumerable examples of kindness to not only her employer but also the guests and even the serving staff. He was attracted by that, and by her soft voice, aura of gentleness, her intelligence, grace, loveliness of face and body, and yet . . . and yet . . . who was she? It nagged at him as he watched her pass the teacups that Lady Bournaud was filling.

  It was likely just a general impression from having met her in her London Season so many years ago. That had to be it, and yet she had never owned meeting him. He shook his head at the self-centeredness that would have her remember him, when he was not particularly memorable then, just a minor bureaucrat in the government, too tired most of the time to join his wife in social evenings.

  She shrank away from him, though, whenever he brushed her arm, any time he came too close, and every day she seemed more haggard and worried. Every morning found her more reticent and silent in his presence. For her sake, it was worrying him.

  At a signal from Lady Bournaud, he joined the cheerful company.

  “Davey, here is your tea. I remember that unlike many men who say they abominate tea, you admit to enjoying it.”

  He took his cup. “I remember many a time, my lady, when you allowed a young boy to partake with you, and what a great honor he knew it was even then.”

  “Pish-tush.” Lady Bournaud waved off the compliment but looked pleased.

  “I spent the morning with Miss Copland learning the art of blending tea leaves,” Lady Silvia, elegant in a pale green cashmere half-dress of deceptively simple lines, spoke up, her voice betraying a nervousness that Chappell could not figure a source for.

  Miss Copland said, “And a very apt pupil she is, too.”

  “What the devil . . . oh, pardon,” Lord Vaughan said, bowing hastily to the ladies. “Why would you want to be mucking about with a bunch of leaves?” He came to stand by Lady Silvia.

  “It is a household accomplishment every wife should have familiarity with,” Miss Copland said. “Even if it is not necessary for a lady to do it herself, she should know the mechanics, for one never knows when a housekeeper will quit or fall ill. And every lady should know what constitutes good tea and what is bad.”

  “Seems a waste of time for someone of Lady Silvia’s status. I mean to say, there will always be someone in the kitchen who can do that sort of thing, won’t there?” Vaughan’s brow furrowed and he looked around the company.

  “We often did not have tea when I was young,” Miss Allen said from her post near the fire. She gave the largest log a poke with a fire iron. “We harvested dandelion leaves and made tea out of that.”

  “Dandelion leaves?” That was Vaughan again.

  “Useful things, dandelions. We couldn’t afford coffee, either, so mama roasted the roots of the dandelion and then ground it. Didn’t make a bad brew. And in summer, the leaves are good as a salad.”

  Vaughan snorted. “Sounds like you were a self-sufficient lot, living off weeds.”

  “We had to be self-sufficient,” Verity said, her eyes serious for once. “And resourceful. The first winter we almost starved. I was only three the year we emigrated. Papa was a half-pay officer; he was wounded and couldn’t go back to his commission, so we emigrated, but we timed it poorly, getting to our plot of land in August of that year. Papa barely had time to build us a shelter before the cold weather, and we didn’t have enough time to grow a crop, nor any money to buy food. Our nearest neighbors were three miles away, but if it hadn’t been for their kindness, we would have starved.”

  There was silence in the warm saloon, and every person there eyed the warm fire, the heavily laden tray of cakes and tiny sandwiches, the elegant gilt furnishing and thick rugs. Firelight glinted off the silver teapot and a beam of light from the window shone on the crystal chandelier.

  “It is only when you do not have enough—enough heat, enough food—that you truly learn to appreciate simple things like good bread, milk, a piece of chicken,” Miss Copland said feelingly, breaking the silence. “A cup of good tea is a miracle,” she said, holding her patterned china cup with reverence.

  Chappell felt Lady Bournaud’s significant glance. Yes, Miss Copland had suffered, and at that moment he determined, by fair means or foul, to find out her history.

  “We are accustomed to so much. You would not believe what some people say when I must ask for money for food and shelter for the poor,” Rowland said, staring into the hearth. “Some people have managed to vilify the poor in their own minds. Religion—our religion, anyway—has, for too long, taught that each person was put into their place on this earth for a reason, and that it is a sin to want to rise out of that position. Some use that to justify not helping the poor advance, and sometimes even to deny them basic comforts. They have come to the conclusion that the poor feel deprivation less. One woman of my acquaintance even concluded that her desire for a new hat and a poor person’s desire for adequate food caused the same degree of pain to the sufferer.”

  “Women,” Vaughan snorted. “Silly creatures.” Realizing he was outnumbered by the breed he denigrated so freely, he looked around with alarm, but the only one to take him up on it immediately was Verity Allen.

  “And the fops and dandies of London society are not silly creatures, more vain and superficial than even the silliest woman of your acquaintance?” she cried, giving a last vicious poke to the wood in the fire before hanging the fire iron back in its place by the hearth.

  “Very true,” Lady Silvia said. “And at least women do not do such idiotic things as . . . as bet on which raindrop will trickle down the window first, or which drunk will fall in his place at the gaming table first. Or other things.”

  “I surrender,” Vaughan said, laughing. “Men can be just as silly, vain and careless as women.”

  The general conversation broke up, then, with Verity taxing Lord Vaughan about his own activities in London, and Lady Silvia softly asking Mr. Rowland about his parish work. Lady Bournaud had dozed off for a few minutes, and so had not heard the spirited debate, but awake again, and seeing Chappell standing alone, she signaled him to come closer to her. He pulled a low stool to her knee and took her hand in his own, feeling the knotted joints with alarm. He had not realized her arthritis was so far advanced as to make her fingers so stiff. It made him understand the increasingly erratic writing in her monthly letter to him, and appreciate it that much more. What effort it must cost her!

  He and Lady Bournaud and Miss Copland made a tight, cozy circle by the hearth as the sunlight faded from the
room and the shadows lengthened. Tidwell removed the tea table and Lady Silvia sat down at the piano, providing the company with a light, tinkling tune as Mr. Rowland turned the pages for her, leaning over occasionally and whispering as she glowed, her eyes sparkling.

  “Children,” Lady Bournaud said, picking up Beatrice’s hand, too, with her free one. “I want this Christmas to be one that François will smile down upon from heaven. I want music and laughter and good food and wine. I want presents for everyone, even the servants, and boxes for the parish families. I want the village supplies of bonbons and fruit jellies decimated, and every child smiling queasily on Christmas morning. Can we manage it?”

  Beatrice, her eyes shining, squeezed her employer’s hand. “We can, my lady.”

  Chappell laughed out loud. “We can.”

  “But to that end, I need your help. Christmas is less than one week away. Davey, will you accompany Miss Copland into the village tomorrow morning? I have a rather long list, and it will take two of you to accomplish everything on it. And I don’t trust those flibbertigibbets,” she said, indicating the young folk, “to do anything serious.”

  “My lady,” Miss Copland protested, her eyes wide with alarm. “I can do it all myself. We need not bother Sir David with such menial labor, surely.”

  “Miss Copland,” Chappell said. “Please, think nothing of it. Lady Bournaud knows she can call on me to even haul coal if need be.” The comtesse chuckled and Chappell squeezed her hand at this private joke between them. “And I have business in the village myself. I would be delighted to accompany you, and may I ask you to partake of luncheon with me at the Dove and Partridge?”

  “Done,” Lady Bournaud crowed. “I will feel easier getting all of these tasks accomplished, for one never knows when the weather will close in again.”

  Beatrice, clearly nonplused by being routed so effectively, could do nothing but agree or look terribly ungracious, and she could never do a thing in her life ungracious or mean, Chappell was convinced. She was the one lady in the world he would bet had nothing in her life to be ashamed of, nothing to look back upon with regret. He would stake his entire wealth on that.

  “We will go early,” he said. “Is ten o’clock all right, Miss Copland?”

  She nodded. “I suppose it will have to be.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Beatrice sat in her bedchamber, staring sightlessly at the mirror in front of her, the mirror that told her that though she was no longer the girl she once was, pretty and thoughtless, flirtatious and self-absorbed, the years had not been terribly unkind to her. She had stopped caring long ago, though, about looks and other surface attributes. Time and earnest reflection had made her value the internal accomplishments of a good heart much more.

  If only she could believe that the penance she had done in all those years had made up for the havoc her thoughtlessness had wrought a lifetime ago. But it did not feel like it had. Would it ever? Or was she overcompensating for something that was understandable in a young and frivolous girl?

  She sighed deeply. And now she was just stalling, keeping Sir David waiting down in the great hall. She rose, brushed a strand of thread from her neat gray spencer, and prepared to spend the day with a man she had wronged so deeply he had never recovered.

  • • •

  Chappell checked again the pocket watch in his vest. He looked up the stairs, convinced that Miss Copland would send down some excuse for not going, but no, there she was. He looked up the long staircase as her slight, gray-clad figure moved like a ghost along the gallery to the head of the stairs and then down, swiftly, silently, her gloved hand resting lightly on the carved oak balustrade, adorned now with evergreen garlands. The day stretched ahead of him, a day with Miss Copland, one day in which to sort out the reasons behind her reticence and aversion to him. They were two adults; surely they could come to some understanding between them.

  “I apologize, Sir David, for keeping you waiting,” she said breathlessly.

  “Not at all,” he replied, offering her his arm. “If we are ready now, the carriage awaits us.”

  Hesitantly, she laid her hand on his arm and he felt triumphant at such a small gesture.

  The ride into the village was not a long one, but it was complicated on this day by slippery roads, wet still from the melted snow. Chateau Bournaud nestled halfway up the moorside above the village of Harnthwaite. Below them stretched the long gray-green stretch of Harn Moor, named for some ancient Viking settler who owned enough land to make him the premiere citizen and worthy of a valley named in his honor. Or so went local legend.

  All of this history Chappell had absorbed as a motherless youngster, wandering the hills and then coming back to Chateau Bournaud with eager questions for the elegant French comte and his unlikely English wife. He began to speak of those days, and the traveling time sped by. To his pleasure, he found that Miss Copland enjoyed the stories of his life as a child and what Lady Bournaud was like at forty and forty-five, active and athletic, striding over the hills, walking staff in hand with little Davey in tow.

  He glanced over at her as she still chuckled over a story of Lady Bournaud’s inflexible iron will and how it brought her into conflict with an equally stubborn Yorkshire farmer. Her oval face glowed and she eagerly watched out the window as the first sight of Harnthwaite came into view. As isolated as the chateau was, a visit to Harnthwaite was, he knew, infrequent enough that it counted as a rare treat. The carriage rattled over the low-sided stone bridge into the commercial section of town, which comprised one row of stone shops facing an expansive village green.

  “Where shall we go first, Miss Copland?” he asked as the carriage slowed.

  “I need a sizable order from the drapers first,” she replied, “and I would like to give him some time to make it up. Lady Bournaud is ordering dress lengths for all the female servants—they are not to know about it until Christmas morn, you know—and matching ribbons. I need to obtain a miscellany of buttons and pins and needles and thread, too . . . oh, a whole list. I do not expect you to wait for me, you know. If you have tasks of your own to accomplish I will be just fine going about my business. Everyone in Harnthwaite is a friend.”

  “My business can wait,” he said, opening the carriage door and jumping down. He gave her a hand down onto the cobbled street of the main road. “I know it is not necessary, but it will be my pleasure to escort you and carry your parcels.”

  Her cheeks burnished like apples and she nodded, looking awkward but pleased. A good start, Chappell thought.

  He tossed a couple of coins up to the driver. “This is for you and the lad,” he said, indicating the groom, a young man of not more than teen years. “Take the team to the inn’s livery and have a pint on me.”

  “Thank ’e, sir,” the driver said, touching his cap. He turned the team to go around to the livery stable.

  “Now, you said the draper. Is it still Mr. Ford’s for quality dry goods?” He took her arm as she nodded, and headed, by memory, toward the shop.

  Beatrice found that a gentleman escort was a great help, for she did have parcels, even though she had not yet even begun her shopping in earnest. Lady Bournaud’s list was long and detailed, for her intentions seemed to have blossomed from merely celebrating Christmas in a grand style within the walls of the manse to a wish to ensure that every child and every family in the valley had an equally merry Yule, not excepting the most ancient of widowers, a gentleman known to all only as Old Merrick. Even he was to have a cord of firewood, delivered split, and a bottle of rum from the tavern. And all of this Beatrice must effect in one day.

  Sir David’s aid and advice was invaluable, but she found it was garnering her much more attention than she had ever had in Harnthwaite. The elderly “church ladies,” as she thought of the parish mainstays, stopped her on the street and she was forced to introduce Sir David Chappell, and then he would smile and bow and wish them the bounty of the season, all while holding her arm close to him and smiling ov
er at her as she spoke until her cheeks were cherry red, she was sure. As they learned of his connection to the chateau, the ladies exchanged significant looks, and she knew they stood in a tight knot after she and her escort moved on. She could hear their hissed chatter and excited gabble, even many shops away.

  It was embarrassing. And thrilling. For a while she could enjoy the illusion that with this gentleman at her side there could be something more in the future, some sweet dream of love, even though she knew it to be impossible. Sir David had changed over the years, she found, after all, but for the better. His temper had mellowed, his voice deepened. His eyes were kinder. But his touch was still just as thrilling as it was to the silly young girl she had been. Thank the Lord he did not remember.

  “Shall we stop for luncheon now?” he said, indicating the tavern, the Dove and Partridge just a step or two away.

  She was tired, she admitted. “I would enjoy a cup of tea and some of Mrs. Gould’s pigeon pie. It is truly remarkable, with a crust that melts in your mouth.”

  “Then pigeon pie it shall be.”

  In a trice they were seated at the window in Mrs. Gould’s best parlor, reserved for those she considered gentry, or at the very least genteel. Mrs. Gould herself insisted on waiting on them. She had known Beatrice since her very first day in the valley, when Lady Bournaud’s future companion had been set down by the stage at the Dove and Partridge, and, shabbily clothed, had declined hiring a carriage but had walked the entire way to the chateau, even though Mrs. Gould had protested that it was at least five miles, and up moor, too.