A Christmas Brothel: A Set of Canterbury Christmas Tales

by Kate Pearce

  “Bitte, of course, of course. Do come in.” Frau Klaus’s plumed turban nodded in the wind as she waved Charlotte across the threshold. “Come you in from all this bitter weather.”

  “Thank you.” He set the elder Stevenson lady’s feet down on the thick carpet and let the Frau fuss them away from the door, while he stamped the snow from his sea boots. “Frau Klaus, may I have the honor of introducing Mrs. Stevenson, widow of Major General James Stevenson. And her daughter—” He turned toward the object of his thoughts—and hopes and dreams—and sputtered to an awkward stop.

  What if she were married? It was more than likely she was married—had he not tortured himself with the thought of her tucked up in some snug manor house or vicarage?

  But, “Miss Stevenson,” Charlotte answered with a calm, respectful curtsey.

  Miss.

  Not married. Not.

  Daniel had to shake the snow from his hat to clear his head of the roaring in his ears. All these years he had been alone, envying her imaginary husband and a happy mob of children.

  But she was not married. Had no imaginary husband.

  “I don’t think I know this address.” Mrs. Stevenson was still her querulous self.

  “No, madame.” Frau Klaus smiled warmly. “We are a private establishment you understand—a supper club for gentlemen, like we have in my native land,” she explained with a wink at him over the ladies’ heads. “I am Frau Klaus, and as a friend of the dear captain’s, you are most welcome here. We have many new visitors from the storm this evening, travelers caught by the weather like you.” She gestured toward the crowded parlor fitted up with greenery and filled with a number of other guests—only a few of whom might be “gentlemen” members of her supper club.

  But he had no attention for others—he had eyes only for unmarried Miss Charlotte Stevenson—who turned that calmly arch, curious glance of hers back to him. “‘Dear Captain’? Take ‘supper’ here very often, do you, Captain?”

  Daniel knew he went red from the collar of his coat all the way to the top of his flaming ginger hair. “I was young once, Miss Stevenson.” But as there was nothing else he could say that might not condemn him in her eyes—loneliness was no excuse—he let Frau Klaus’s natural gaiety cover over his misdeeds.

  “Should you like to take a warming drink in the parlor before I show you to your room, madame?”

  “Rooms,” Mrs. Stevenson corrected. “Two—if you please. We are not so done in as might need to share. Though I haven’t my maid with me, as I normally might like—”

  “Of course,” Frau Klaus was all buoyant kindness, sparing the widow’s pride. “Of course—it is right that you should let your maid visit with her own family at Christmas time. But I am afraid, madame, with it so late, and many refuge-seekers already come in from the storm, I have only one appropriate room available—my own. But it will be quite comfortable for you ladies to share.”

  “That’s quite all right, ma’am,” Charlotte reassured in her calm way. “We thank you for your hospitality, as I am sure we were growing quite desperate and frozen until the captain happened along to rescue us.”

  “It is we who are fortunate that he brought you to us, yes? It is a fit night nor neither man nor beast, is it not, Captain?” Frau Klaus turned back to him. “Please tell your coachmen there should be room for them in the stable.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” Daniel had no choice but to tear his eyes away from the remarkable sight of Charlotte Stevenson—still so slim and straight and strong, standing so close to him—swallow his near-insatiable curiosity about her, cram his hat back upon his head, and return to the snowy street. There, he led the coachman and his team, along with the postillion and his horses, through the thickening snow to the mews, while the groom and Frau Klaus’s stable lads man-handled the broken chaise from the gutter.

  By the time Daniel could reverse course and return to the house, the object of his determined interest had retreated to a room somewhere above, and he was left to join the strange collection of guests congregating around an elaborate display of tea cakes set around a brimming punch bowl in the dining room.

  “Come warm yourself near the fire, Captain, and have a glass of my punch.” Frau Klaus handed him a brimming cup of German nog.

  Daniel took it gladly, nodding courteously to the other assembled guests and reacquainting himself with the German-style yule greenery the Frau had festooned about the room.

  “Now, who shall be next?” Frau Klaus settled into a comfortable chair next to the illuminated Tannenbaum. “Who will tell us another winter’s tale?”

  There was a little to-do as an older gentleman exchanged seats with a couple, and then proceeded to tell them a story of a man—clearly the older gentleman himself—who had once been in love with a comely shopgirl.

  Daniel listened as politely as possible to the charming cautionary tale, but his attention was concentrated on the thin sliver of the stair he could see from his vantage point, and on willing Miss Charlotte Stevenson to come down those very stairs.

  He forced himself to sit quietly and wait. He would not pace the stair hall like some restless swain. He would not accost her with questions and importune her with his own answers. He would not.

  He would be patient. He would sip the blessedly strong punch and let the citrus-flavored spirits distract him while he rehearsed the words he had kept so long unsaid, lashed down beneath the the battened hatches of his duty. There was always some duty, some problem that needed solving or required him to set away his own needs.

  No longer. Tonight, he would act. He would speak to her by any means necessary.

  And then she was there, her claret-dark skirts filling the doorway in a hush of velvet. Miss Stevenson.

  His Charlotte.

  She looked the same as she had all those years ago—intelligent and interesting and entirely self-possessed. And yet there were differences—the faint traces of a furrow in her brow, the barest etching of lines at the corner of her eyes, as if life had been at pains to try and leave its mark on her.

  But she still warmed the room with the calm persistence of her smile and the straightforward curiosity in her gaze. It seemed impossible that she was "Miss" Stevenson still.

  He would change that.

  Though she had changed into dry slippers, her hems were still damp from the snow. As if she’d come in a rush. As if she might be anxious for company.

  Yet it was some other damned fellow, some golden haired younger gentleman—Daniel hadn’t paid enough attention to remember the damned devil’s name—who offered her his seat and fetched her some of the Frau’s excellent punch while Charlotte nodded and smiled politely at everyone.

  Everyone but him.

  Until she sat, and at last looked up, and her clear blue eyes met his. And stayed.

  Daniel felt his face curve into an answering smile, though he knew he was so out of practice it looked more like a grimace. But he did not want to stop. And he would not willingly take his eyes from hers.

  “And what about you, dear Captain Kent?”

  By force of will alone, Daniel dragged his attention to Frau Klaus’s twinkling gaze. “You are a man of the world—a man who has traveled to many lands, Captain. Surely, you have some winter’s tale to tell?”

  Perhaps he did. Perhaps he could take all his long-hidden love and fear and courage in hand and spread his sail.

  “Aye, ma’am. I do have a tale to tell.” Daniel closed his eyes briefly to settle upon his subject, and then firmed his voice to begin. “I will tell you the sad story of a passenger I once had on my ship.”

  Across the parlor, Charlotte, who had been taking a sip from her cup, brought her gaze up sharply, her cheeks flushed a hectic red.

  “A man,” Daniel quickly clarified. “A prisoner condemned to forever roam the seas, sentenced to move from ship to ship so he would never again set foot on the land. A man without a country.”

  “But he must have come from somewhere?” the too-kind squir
e insisted.

  “He did,” Daniel confirmed. “But he was a traitor, whose actions had forfeited him his birthright. He was anathema—his crime cost him everything, including his name. Indeed, I never knew him by any other than ‘The Prisoner.’”

  “He was transferred aboard my ship, Steadfast, one November morn, rowed across from another ship hidden in the fog off the Grand Banks. He was ten years into his sentence by then and was a pitiful sight to behold—a tall, thin husk of a man, as if the Atlantic gales had blown the will to live out of him. But his eyes—I’ll never forget them. His eyes were fierce with life. A bright blue that glowed with a sort of terrible beauty, as if he had seen something—some spark of loveliness that still sustained his lonely spirit.”

  “He kept to himself that journey. Although we were instructed to offer him every courtesy, we could not speak to him. We could not invite him to dine with the ship’s officers. He ate alone, but often he would walk the length of the deck, back and forth pacing restlessly in the night. And though we were forbidden to speak to him, he would speak to us, telling us his sorry tale. How he had once had everything, every comfort, every blessing, that life could have to offer. How he had risked it all out of false belief and mistaken duty. How he had lost the only thing that might have saved him and kept him from his fate—the love of a steadfast woman.”

  “We pitied him, this man with no name and no country, but we were loyal to ours and did our duty, keeping him aboard from the North Atlantic to the Caribbean, down the long line of South America and around the horn more than once. We sailed the globe from east to west and back over the course of four long years, until one day at Christmastide—it was the tenth day of Christmas, just before Epiphany, if I recall correctly—but all was not snow and illuminated greenery, for we were in the pearl blue waters of the Bank of Lagullus in the Southern Ocean.”

  “Yes, I remember it,” Charlotte murmured, and some of the other guests looked at her—and back at Daniel—with a new and curious regard. But she gave then no attention—she had eyes only for him.

  So, he continued.

  “It was there that we were overtaken by another vessel—a frigate, Lark, on her way eastward toward Malay and Siam and the Gulf of Martabaan.”

  There were murmurs of both dismay and delight at the thought of such far-far-way places.

  He went on. “And as I watched the deck of that ship slowly slide by upon the waves, I spied a woman, her long skirts and dark hair tossed by the wind, standing at the bow, her hand raised like a sentinel in silent greeting.”

  Daniel looked down into the depths of his cup, so he would not look upon Charlotte—he dared not—to see what effect the story had upon her. “I was not alone in spotting her. The prisoner saw this woman as well, and the change in him—the instant transformation of the man—was nearly frightening. He who had only spoken to the wind, let out a moan so deep and so desperate and so awful that every man upon the Steadfast heard it and was chilled to the marrow of his bones.”

  “And then, before anyone of the crew could catch him, he climbed upon the rail and plummeted head first into the cold blue water.”

  There were murmurs and gasps from the other guests. “I hope, dear Captain, that this tale will not turn out to be a tragedy?” Frau Klaus was peering at him as if she feared he would spoil the evening. “It is Christmas Eve.”

  “It is for you to judge, Frau Klaus,” he answered.

  But, “Go on,” said Charlotte, though her grip in her cup hand turned her fingers cold and white.

  So, he did. “You can imagine what I did—the moment the prisoner went over the rail and began to make a ragged swim for the other vessel, I immediately ordered a boat swayed out to retrieve him, as did the other frigate, who came hard about to lower their cutter. But this was the Southern Ocean, hard by the Cape, at False Bay—”

  “Where the dry, high mountains slide down into the sea.” Charlotte encouraged him on.

  “Aye.” He risked a glance at her. “False Bay, where the waters teem with the black fins of the great white-bellied sharks. And indeed, it was no time before a dark fin rose up in the water behind the hapless man as he splashed his slow, laborious way across the gulf. I called out the danger, and my men pulled with all their strength to save him. But they were too late.”

  “No.” Charlotte’s objection was hardly more than a whisper, but he heard her as clearly as if he had been beside her.

  But he could not stop now. “Just as the poor man was in reach of the frigate, the behemoth struck, inflicting a fearsome wound with its rows of razor-sharp teeth.”

  “I say,” the kind squire objected. “There are ladies—”

  “Go on,” Charlotte insisted, though her voice nearly shook.

  He did. “But the prisoner had just enough strength to hold fast to the line the quick-thinking crew of the frigate had thrown him. And just as the fearsome beast was about to circle back to finish him, they pulled him aboard, where he lay upon the deck all but dead.”

  “And what did she do?” Charlotte asked into the stunned silence.

  Daniel felt his breath explain in his lungs. “The woman came to him as if he had drawn her to him, just as she had drawn him across to her. And she laid her hand upon his chest, and kissed him on his salt-wet lips, and said, ‘Do not leave me now, my own true love, when I’ve come all this way to find you.’”

  “Oh. But, of course, she had,” Frau Klaus sighed her relief. “Of course.”

  “Aye, she had. For she had been searching for him for all those years, following ship after ship across the dark ocean, hoping for a glimpse of him.”

  “But why?” someone—one of the girls near the kitchen door—asked. “Wasn’t he a traitor?”

  “Aye. But he had done it all to gain the fortune he thought he needed to win her.”

  “Of course he had,” Frau Klaus cried again. “How wonderfully familiar this sounds to us now.”

  “Does it?” For a moment Daniel wished he had paid greater attention to the others’ stories, but it did not matter—all that mattered was that Charlotte was paying attention to him now. “Then you will understand that despite his wounds, and the pain and suffering he had endured, he opened his eyes, and saw her, his own true love, and smiled. ‘I must be in heaven,’ he said. ‘I must have died, and the Lord has taken pity upon me, for here you are.’”

  “‘You are not dead,’ his true love promised him. ‘But alive and with me, and I will do everything within my power to take care of you and see you restored to me once more.’ And so she did. She took him with her, and healed him with her love and care, and together they lived on to a ripe old age.”

  “But what about the sentence?” the older gentleman queried. “Was he not condemned to stay at sea always?”

  “And so he did—they did. They lived aboard the other ship, the frigate Lark, and then another, and another after that, but it did not matter where they lived as long as they were together always. For love is the thing that keeps men—and women—alive. Truly alive as they should be.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte’s voice was quiet but firm. “Indeed, it is.” And then she stood and moved slightly toward him as if she wanted nothing more than to warm her cold hands by the fire. But she looked at him—a long, searching look full of such open wonder and hope that he stood, and moved to lead her away to a quiet corner where they might be private.

  Once in the cool entryway, Charlotte stepped away from him. “Was that tale for my benefit?” she asked in her low, deceptively calm voice. “A parable for me to learn from?”

  “No.” He took his courage by the throat, though his heart was thrashing away within his chest like cat o’ nine tails. “Rather as the tale of what I have learnt through unforgiving experience.”

  “And what have you learned, Captain Kent?”

  “That life is long, and very often lonely, and that I should like to be called Daniel, instead of Captain Kent.”

  “And what else have you learned”—h
er voice went quieter still—“Daniel?”

  “That I should throw caution to the winds. And tell someone something important. Something vital.” He watched her for some sign, some look that might give him courage

  But she was, as she always had been, far more courageous than he. “That you love them?” she asked in a voice as quiet as a whisper.

  “Aye.” Relief and elation made an incendiary, explosive gunpowder—he had to tamp down his hope to answer her. “Aye,” he said again to convince himself as well as her. “And that I have loved them for some time. For all time, even.”

  Her eyes, those clear blue eyes as fathomless as the sea held his. “Always and forever.”

  “Aye, my dear Charlotte.” He took her hand—her dear, fragile, strong hand—and brought it to his lips. “For forever is a very long time to wait.”

  “Yes.” Her own emotions were swimming in her eyes, as she grasped his hand and smiled up at him. “Yes, it has been. A very, very long time.”

  “The wait is over, sweet Charlotte.” He took the other hand that was already reaching to meet his. “”I love you, my dearest, darling Charlotte Stevenson. I have loved you for a very long time.”

  “And I love you, Daniel Kent. For almost as long.”

  “Almost.” His smile was the whole of his heart. “So, I should like to right the wrong I did by letting you go—by never telling you then—by asking you to marry me and be with me always.”

  “Always and forever.”

  “Marry me, Charlotte. Please God, marry me and put me out of this misery of being without you.”

  “I will. With all my heart, I will.”

  His happiness was a physical thing, as real as the hands he held so carefully between his own. “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because I gave up hope that you would ever ask. That I would ever even find you, though I watched the bay at Ramsgate for your ship, day after lonely day.”

  “Ramsgate?”

  “We settled there, after Papa’s death, upon our return to England. Mama had family in Kent, so we took a house in Pegwell, on the Down Road near the Chalk Hill.”