by Martha Keyes
“I know of one house,” he said, “that is particularly ill-equipped to guard against cold like this. Unless improvements have been made since I was here last?” He looked to Alfred who shook his head.
“We were planning various adjustments and renovations for the spring.”
Hugh grimaced. “We must hope that this cold is short-lived.”
“Is there not something we could do,” Emma said, slight hesitation in her voice, “to ensure their well-being, if only temporarily?”
Hugh and the others looked to her, and her eyes flitted around to each of theirs. “The necessary repairs might be impossible for the time being,” she reasoned, “but might we not provide other means of protection against this unbearable chill?”
Of course. It was an idea that should have occurred to him. If he was to inherit Norfield, he would have to think of such things.
“What a wonderful idea, my dear,” said Lady Dayton. “Perhaps we can gather any spare clothing and linens.”
“Yes,” Alfred chimed in, “but how shall we ever transport it? The roads are as icy as I've ever seen them, besides this thick fog. I shouldn't care to drive ten feet in such conditions!”
Hugh pursed his lips for a moment then looked to his mother, a small smile forming on his face. “Do we still have the sleds?” He glanced at Alfred, confident that his brother would appreciate the reference.
The corner of Alfred’s mouth pulled up in a half-smile, and he narrowed his eyes. “I saw them a few weeks ago in the stables. Why?”
Hugh wagged his eyebrows. “We can transport everything ourselves using the sleds, of course.”
Alfred’s fork hung in the air on the way to his mouth. “In that?” He indicated the windows with his raised brows.
Hugh shrugged, pouring milk into his tea. “If you’re afraid of a little chill, then you might stay here, I suppose.” He looked up at Alfred with a mischievous smile trembling on his lips.
Alfred narrowed his eyes in response. “Of course I’m not afraid of the cold.”
Lady Dayton interjected. “It is a very kind thought, Hugh. But Alfred is right to hesitate. Unless you bundle up sufficiently, it will be dangerous. Besides, what of your arm?” She glanced at his shoulder.
Hugh nodded, swallowing his tea. “I learned well how to keep out the cold during my winters on campaign, Mama. And I have also learned how to make do with one good shoulder. You needn’t worry.”
Miss Bolton reached her hand over to Alfred’s, grasping it. “You shan’t stay out long, shall you?”
How in the world could Alfred worry about Miss Bolton wishing to be released from their engagement when she looked at him like that? He was a fool.
What Hugh wouldn’t give to see the same caring and concern in Emma’s eyes.
“Well,” the prosaic voice of Emma broke in on the conversation, “I don’t see why the men should have all the adventure. What do you say we join them, Miss Bolton?”
Hugh’s head came up from spreading preserves on his toast, and Emma sent him an impish, challenging look before looking back to Miss Bolton for a response.
Miss Bolton sputtered slightly, and Alfred intervened, shaking his head. “There is no need to subject yourself to such discomfort. And frankly, there is no need for us to do it, either.” He looked to Hugh. “It’s something the servants could do, surely.”
Hugh shrugged. “If you prefer to leave the fun to them, certainly. But I think it would mean much more to the tenants coming from us, besides being much more of an adventure, as Miss Caldwell pointed out.”
Alfred pursed his lips. “Fine,” he said, turning to Miss Bolton. “But there is no obligation at all for you, Alice.”
Miss Bolton’s eyes traveled to the windows and then to the fireplace which housed a fading fire. Her jaw seemed to set, and she smiled at Alfred. “It is only for a short time, though, isn’t it? And I should very much like to spend the day with you.”
With such a flattering reason provided, Hugh was unsurprised to see Alfred’s eyes warm as he returned Miss Bolton’s suddenly shy regard.
Hugh didn’t know whether to feel anticipation or apprehension, though, at the thought of carrying out their plan in the company of Emma. He was glad for an opportunity to spend more time with her, but he knew he shouldn’t be.
The next two hours were spent gathering supplies from around the house to take to the villagers. Firewood was loaded onto the sleds as a base, then covered with baskets of loaves of bread, fruit, and preserves with carefully rolled spare coats, hats, and blankets surrounding. Emma offered suggestions of other items that might be of use and then took it upon herself to beautify the baskets, tying ribbons around the handles and then writing cards with sprigs of holly inside to place with the baskets.
Hugh and the three others parted ways to change into their warmest attire—of which Miss Bolton’s and Emma’s was supplemented by the Warrilows—meeting in the entrance hall twenty minutes later, where the servants had transported the baskets.
Hugh smiled upon seeing the others bundled up with wool scarves and mittens, extra coats and hats. Emma looked adorably plump, with only a fraction of her face visible above the scarf and below the hat she wore.
“I would suggest that we stay in the warmth as long as possible,” he said, “but the truth is that we would all begin to sweat, and then we should be all the colder when we did venture outside. So”— he motioned to the door which a servant moved to open —“let us brave the wilderness without further delay.”
The door opened, and Hugh breathed in, feeling the cold air as it moved down his throat and into his lungs. Miss Bolton gasped slightly, and Alfred asked whether she hadn’t perhaps changed her mind.
“For I shouldn’t blame you in the least,” he said. “Hugh always has the most preposterous ideas.”
Assured by Miss Bolton that she had no intention of staying indoors while the others went out and about, Alfred nodded with a grimace and began assisting with the loading of baskets onto the two wooden sleds. Both sleds had a seat inside, big enough for two small children, giving them the appearance of miniature sleighs. One was carved in the design of a horse, while the second was slightly smaller and plainer.
“Naturally, that one was Hugh’s,” Alfred said, laughing and pointing to the one carved like a horse. “He was never content with anything but the best.”
Hugh glanced at Emma, who smiled perfunctorily at Alfred’s comment and then turned to pick up a basket. Hugh had no difficulty in guessing what Alfred’s comment had brought to her mind: that Lucy hadn’t been considered “the best.”
He let out a small sigh. She would never understand him, and there would always be someone’s offhand comment to bring Hugh’s faults to the forefront of her mind.
With the baskets loaded onto the sleds, the servants returned to the house, blowing into their hands to warm them, while Hugh, Alfred, Miss Bolton, and Emma turned to the path ahead: an untrodden expanse of snow, bathed in fog.
The servants had attached rope to the sleds, winding it around the front of the runners so that Hugh and Alfred could pull the loaded sleds without too much effort, though Hugh was obliged to use his weaker, uninjured arm. The snow crunched under their feet and sparkled slightly in the diffuse light of the cloudy day.
“Miss Bolton and I are placing our well-being in your hands, you know,” Emma said in a playful voice as she glanced at Hugh and Alfred. “For I haven’t the slightest idea in which direction the village lies and shouldn’t know up from down if it weren’t for gravity holding me to the ground. Everything looks the same under this snow.”
Hugh smiled back at her. “Be at ease. Happily for you, Alfred and I could both traverse this path blindfolded.”
Alfred and Miss Bolton naturally gravitated together, leaving Hugh and Emma to walk side by side. With the dense fog, even the short distance between the two pairs made for a hazy view of Alfred and Miss Bolton.
Hugh saw Emma rearrange her bonnet and the cap und
erneath out of the corner of his eye, covering her ears for a moment with her gloves.
“Regretting your decision already, Miss Caldwell?” said Hugh, tugging the sled over a mound of snow which had dropped from the tall oak branches above.
“Not a bit of it!” she said, marching with added vigor. “I have always wished for a snowy Christmas, and I intend to take full advantage now that my wish has been granted.”
“Surely the enjoyment lies in the picturesque view the snow creates rather than in firsthand experience with it?”
“What preposterous ideas you have, Mr. Warri”— she paused and inclined her head —“Lieutenant Warrilow. Lucy would chastise me if she heard me refer to you without your rank.”
Hugh’s brows flicked upward. “She would?” So, Lucy didn’t despise him, after all.
Emma nodded and brushed a patch of snow off her redingote. “Decidedly she would. Does that surprise you?”
Hugh nodded slowly. “I had been wondering if she hated me. And not without reason.” He said the last words in a low voice, more to himself than to Emma.
“Well,” Emma said matter-of-factly, “you are quite wrong. She won’t hear a word against you and is forever reminding me of all your laudable traits.”
Hugh frowned. What laudable traits did she attribute to him? “I rather thought she would never forgive me,” Hugh said, his eyes staring ahead, unfocused.
“She forgave you almost instantly, I believe,” Emma said, her voice softer than before. “Lucy couldn’t hold a grudge if she tried. You shouldn’t confuse my behavior for hers. She is a much better person than I.”
Her expression was grave and thoughtful, her gaze trained on the tracks of the sled ahead of them. The only sound was the sliding of the runners on the hard snow and the crunching of their feet with each step.
“I don’t fault you, you know,” he said gently. “Your hostility toward me is evidence of your love and concern for your sister.”
She swallowed and looked at him, as if trying to see whether he was in earnest. “I wish I could forgive the way she does, but...” she trailed off, biting her lip. “I think she might let you hurt her all over again if given the chance, you know.”
Hugh blew a puff of air through his nose, and the warm cloud it created expanded in front of him. “I never wished to hurt her. I did what I thought would cause the least amount of pain.”
“The least amount of pain?” Emma said incredulously. She scoffed lightly and looked at him with a measuring gaze, the same upward tilt to her chin which he had seen so often since his return home. It was obstinacy. “Why did you do it?”
He grimaced. How could he possibly explain it to her satisfaction without betraying his feelings for her? Perhaps he could have done so if those feelings were simply a distant memory—a youthful fancy he had outgrown.
But the truth was that he still loved her. More than ever, perhaps. He loved her despite how much she despised him.
He exhaled, producing another cloud of fog even thicker than what already surrounded them. “I don’t think that my answer would be satisfactory to you. I can only say that it was not purely selfish. There certainly was a selfish element to it, but it was more than that. Unbelievable as it sounds to you, it was for her as much as for any other reason.”
He chanced a glance at her and was surprised to discover that she was still watching him, as if she didn’t know what to make of him. Surely that was an improvement from the unalloyed ire she had felt toward him for the last three years.
But it was what she had promised—to treat him with civility, to stifle her true feelings.
Temporarily.
She slipped on a hard patch of snow, and Hugh reached out to steady her with his free arm, ignoring the way the quick reaction made his shoulder sting.
She thanked him with only a hint of reluctance, her gaze flitting to his hand still holding onto her arm.
He dropped it immediately, and she let out a sigh.
“Whatever it was that led you to behave in such a way, I can only say that you can have no notion of the pain that followed. If my behavior is evidence of how much I care for Lucy, her suffering was evidence of how much she cared for you. I am certain no man could wish for anything more than to be loved as well as Lucy loved you.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Your sister is the best and kindest of women. I have never doubted that. But the truth is that she loved a caricature of me—a man who didn’t exist in the form she believed in.” He looked ahead with a blank stare. “She would have spent the remainder of her life disappointed by reality.”
Emma glanced at him, and her grave expression lingered for a moment before it morphed into a half-smile. “Well, of course, I shan’t pretend that I think Lucy’s admiration for you at all merited.”
She sent him a teasing smile, and he couldn’t resist smiling in return. “Yes, whatever your sister believes me to be, surely no one stands in any doubt that you hold a view quite opposite of Lucy’s when it comes to me. Indeed, your opinion of me couldn’t be more generally understood than if you had shouted it from the housetops.”
Her faced twisted into an expression part-outrage, part-laughter. Picking up a handful of snow, she threw it at him.
He put up his arm to block it, feeling the way his shoulder creaked.
“You are insufferable,” she said without hostility.
His eyebrows went up as he suppressed a smile. “It is true, is it not?”
Her chin came up, but then she laughed softly. “Perhaps I was overzealous in my reaction.”
His arm brushed against hers, and he noted the almost-imperceptible shift she made to create enough distance between them that it wouldn’t happen again.
His smile faded, and he widened the gap between them even more. Emma would have to be the one to close any distance between them. An attempt by him to do so would be distasteful to her.
She wished for the distance, and he would not force proximity upon her. But he couldn’t help hoping that perhaps her hatred toward him was melting.
7
By the time the four of them arrived in the village, Emma could barely feel her toes. The snowy landscape had been as visually enchanting as she had ever hoped it would be, with a thick sheet of pure white fluff covering every surface within eyesight. The fog had only added to the mystique of the scene, and Emma wished that Lucy could have enjoyed it with her.
What would Lucy think to know that Emma was, at this very moment, walking side-by-side with the man whose name she had hardly been able to bear uttering for so long?
Ironically, in the frigid harshness of the winter landscape, Emma had found herself thawing slightly toward Lieutenant Warrilow. Emma disliked the realization of what was transpiring within her.
When Lieutenant Warrilow had teased her for the infamy of her opinion of him, it had given her pause. It was true that anyone who knew both Emma and the lieutenant could hardly be unaware of her enmity toward him.
Emma again found herself confronting the fact that her opinion stood out in its harshness. Even those who had initially decried his behavior as shameful or cowardly had since forgiven him. Lieutenant Warrilow was still well-liked whenever he came up in conversation. People would lament what he had done, but they would invariably counter Emma’s harsh judgments with some qualifying compliment.
The lieutenant’s claim that Lucy had put him on a pedestal—a claim with which Emma was in full agreement—reverberated in her head and heart. Emma certainly didn’t put him on a pedestal. Far from it!
Had she perhaps done the opposite to him? Had she painted him, as Lucy had implied, with too broad a brush?
If Lucy’s forgiveness of the lieutenant spoke to Lucy’s character rather than to Lieutenant Warrilow’s, surely it would follow that Emma’s own stubborn grudge said more about her than it did about the lieutenant?
How could she never have considered that? She cringed to consider what it said about her.
She looked o
ver at Lieutenant Warrilow. He was pulling the sled behind him, rotating his injured shoulder with a tense jaw.
She knew almost nothing about him since he had left to war. How had he been injured? Where had it happened? What was it like to fight in a war?
He must have felt her eyes on him, since he looked over at her. The wrinkled brow and grimace disappeared, and he smiled politely at her.
She turned her head away, suddenly unsure how to act around him.
The four of them pulled their sleds from door to door, greeting the villagers and handing each family a basket. Emma had expected to find herself wishing for an invitation into the warm homes, for a recess from the bitter cold outside.
But there were no roaring fires within the homes they visited. Shivering children with red noses came to stand by their mothers at the door. They seemed to be wearing every scrap of clothing they owned to keep out the cold. One mother burst into tears at the sight of their offering.
They left her door, each of them silent as the bittersweet weight of the woman’s gratitude rested on their minds and shoulders. Emma watched Lieutenant Warrilow shake his head, his brow deeply furrowed. “Some of them are much worse off than I thought. They need more than we have brought. We must send more supplies tomorrow.”
Emma nodded her agreement. “I had the same thought.”
With only two houses left, Alfred glanced at his pocket watch. “It is getting late, Hugh. Perhaps we can divide and conquer for these last two. We can take this house.” He indicated the house to their right with a tip of his scarf-swathed head.
“No,” Hugh replied. “If you don’t mind, I should like to make the visit to that house. An old friend lives there.”
“Oh, right,” Alfred nodded. “Mr. Banks. Go ahead, then.” He pulled the sled behind him, with only one basket remaining inside, as Miss Bolton walked alongside him.
Emma followed Lieutenant Warrilow to the chipped and faded wooden door. Unlike some of the other houses, there was no evidence of footsteps in the snow outside the door. It lay undisturbed.
