A Yuletide Treasure (12 page)

Camilla didn’t wish to criticize her hostess, however reluctantly Lady LaCorte might have welcomed her. “She doesn’t approve of your work?”

“In addition to the fact that no gentleman should wish to work, she doesn’t think I’m very good at what I do.”

‘Yet you have had some success, I think? I should be very interested in reading one of your books.”

He bowed graciously. “I gave Myron an inscribed copy of each. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.” He walked to the shelves and scanned them. “Here’s America and here’s the Hebrides. Which one appeals to your taste, Miss Twainsbury?”

“America, please. It is a place that has long held much interest for me. I have an uncle there, I believe.”

“Maternal or paternal?”

“Paternal. My father’s family scattered to the four winds, rather, after some unfortunate political choices.”

“A common fate.” He handed her the book.

Camilla seated herself on the sofa and thumbed through the book, bound in olive green cloth with squares of brown leather at the top and bottom of the spine. The title page was beautifully engraved with what looked like the spillings of a cornucopia of native American vegetables and fruits.
“De Novo Republica,
an account of journeying and residence in the bosom of the sometime friendly offspring of Great Britain.”

Camilla glanced up at Sir Philip. “You must be very proud. It’s a very great accomplishment.”

“Not so great. Any fool can write a book; as proof, I offer you any library.”

“Still... You’re the first author I’ve ever met. Was this your first book?”

“No, I wrote the other one first. This one,” he said, tapping the book, “is better.”

“I shall take your word for it.” Camilla glanced at the rumpled sheets of paper cowering in the pool of light. “What is the trouble with this new one?”

He hitched one shoulder. “The characters, the plot, the setting ... the author.”

“Oh, come. What is the story?”

“Are you certain you want to know?” he asked with one of his sidelong, humorous looks. At her determined nod, he shook his head. “At your request, m’lady. My hero is a young man returning to his ancestral home from whence he’d been unceremoniously booted upon blotting his copybook some years earlier. Oh, I forgot to mention this takes place during the Middle Ages.”

“Oh, chivalry,” she asked.

“Not at first. My hero is something of a rogue and a wastrel as well as a mercenary. He’ll swear loyalty to any man or cause that will pay him. He returns home to find his father dead, his lands heavily taxed by the new landowner, and that his stepmother is the woman he loved before he went away.”

“Gracious,” Camilla said. “Whatever happens next?”

“At first, he throws his lot in with the new landlord, going in disguise,” Sir Philip said, losing much of the speed and flippancy with which he’d begun. “But the suffering of the people he once knew starts to change him. The way the landlord persecutes Genevieve and her patience also begin to soften his heart.”

“Doesn’t she recognize him?”

“She does, but she’s afraid if she reveals his identity, the new landlord will kill him to keep the land.”

“Does Genevieve love him?”

“I think so, but of course, they can never marry. The Tables of Kindred and Affinity forbid it.”

“Kindred and Affinity? What’s that?” Camilla asked with a laugh.

“Rules for marriage so that you don’t accidentally marry your father’s mother’s brother.”

“As
if I would! Go on; what happens next?”

“He leads a revolt against the cruel landlord in which they both die.”

“Wait. He dies?”

“He redeems himself in battle. Of course he dies.”

“Must he really? You couldn’t make him live?”

“He doesn’t have anything to live for. He—”

“Of course he does,” Camilla said abruptly. “There’s always something to live for.”

Sir Philip crossed his arms over his chest, and his expression chided her with laughter. “Are you trying to tell me that I should end this book with a wedding?”

“Better that than a funeral. Couldn’t you make Genevieve somebody else’s wife? A brother’s, perhaps. Couldn’t she be his brother’s widow?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, his tone falling from the bantering they’d been indulging in. “However,” he said, lightening, “nay hero has a best friend, a wise and kind minstrel. What if, with his dying breath, he commends them to each other. They’d marry, the lands would be secure—without a proper heir the king is sure to award them to the widow— and they’d be happy.”

“Wouldn’t the best friend know she didn’t really love him?”

“She could leave him and enter a nunnery.”

“No!” Camilla objected again. “She should be happy. Maybe she stopped loving your hero while he was away; I’ll wager he never wrote a word while he was gone.”

“I doubt it; he can’t write.”

“Well, then,” she said, settling the matter. “It sounds wonderful. I shall order a copy from the bookseller’s as soon as it is printed.”

“Much obliged, ma’am,” he said with a bow. “You can read the first three chapters now, if you like. That is, if you can decipher my scrawl.”

“May I?” she asked breathlessly. It seemed a very great honor. But when she took up the stack of paper and tried to read, she quickly saw that he’d not exaggerated the quality of his handwriting. “Perhaps in the morning,” she said after a struggle. “When the light is better.”

His laughter gave her hope that she’d not offended him. “Whenever and wherever you please, Miss Twainsbury.”

“But I shall take this up with me,” she said, picking up his book. “Though I shouldn’t read it now; it will probably keep me awake until dawn.”

“It’s not so far off,” he put in, glancing toward the gilt and silver clock, the balls of the regulator spinning around under a couple of cupids. “Did you come down only in search of a book?”

‘Yes, I woke up suddenly.” She didn’t want to tell him that she’d been so hungry, though she did not think he’d take offense by assuming she wasn’t satisfied with the meal she’d eaten under his roof.

“May I wish for you that you fall asleep as suddenly as you awoke. I would walk you to your door but...” He hesitated.

“Please don’t trouble,” Camilla said quickly. “I know the way.” She paused, then asked the question that had been troubling her. “Sir Philip, why... I don’t wish to seem ungrateful. You and Lady LaCorte have been more than kind to a stranger and yet... Pardon me, I don’t quite know how to say what I am wondering.”

“Perhaps you are wondering why my sister-in-law seems to have taken you in dislike, when you have done nothing whatever to harm her.” His voice and face had lost all animation, becoming as cold as a bust sculpted from ice.

“I’m sure I’m imagining things,” Camilla went on, reluctantly, sure it was nothing of the kind. “No doubt she is simply tired or out of sorts. Ladies in such condition are often prey to fancies, I believe.”

“No, you are entirely correct and quite observant. My sister-in-law would prefer young ladies not come to this house. Not even friends of Tinarose are welcome here now.”

“Why not?”

He rubbed his neck again, a habit that seemed to come upon him whenever he was at a loss for words. “I’m afraid it has to do with me.”

“You?” she asked. For the first time, she realized what this meeting must look like to any observer. She, dressed in no more than wrapper and night-clothes, however thick and unrevealing, alone with a young and single gentleman who had long since removed coat and shoes. Many forced marriages had been made of less than this. Camilla moved back a little, holding his book against her breast.

“She’s afraid you want to marry me,” Sir Philip said.

“Marry you?” Camilla exclaimed. “We’ve only just met.”

“Without wishing to seem conceited, there are some reasons for her concern.”

Camilla wondered if this could mean he’d considered, even for a moment, the prospect of proposing to her. But that was impossible on such short acquaintance. “You are in the habit of asking strange young women to marry you?”

“No. I can truthfully state that I have never yet asked any woman to give up the joys of spinster-hood for the doubtful pleasure of being my wife. However, since my arrival in Bishop’s Halt, there have been some ... incidents.”

“Incidents,” she echoed. “What kind of incidents?”

“You must understand there are comparatively few single gentlemen in Bishop’s Halt. Myself and Evelyn March are alone in our lack of wife. Naturally, this makes us objects of some interest to the young ladies of the town as well as their mothers.” Though it was difficult to see by candlelight, Camilla could have sworn he was blushing like any maiden.

“You
can’t possibly mean that... Have they been throwing themselves at your head?”

“One feels so embarrassed for the poor things.”

She could tell he was definitely blushing now.

‘Twice I’ve been forced into the position of refusing offers for my hand if not my heart. One young lady, soon after my arrival in this house, attempted a ploy so underhanded that it was considered the best course for her mother to convey her out of the county afterward. You see, her mother was standing outside my door, concealed behind a large Chinese vase, whispering encouragement in no uncertain terms.”

Camilla found herself choking quietly on a laugh.

“And what poor Evelyn has suffered from patients exaggerating their woes hardly bears thinking of. One young person actually pretended to have symptoms of the plague in order to force him into quarantine with her. Fortunately, he saw through the ruse in time.”

Camilla could no longer strangle on a laugh; it burst through. Instantly, she pressed her fingers to her lips, stifling the sound, but could not forbear giggling. “How perfectly absurd,” she said, little gasps and titters escaping despite her best efforts.

“It isn’t actually funny,” Sir Philip said, his own voice breaking with the strain of bottling up his laughter.

“No, no, of course not. How desperate those girls and their mothers must be. Mine would never permit me to act in such an ungenteel fashion.”

“Desperate is the word for it. Since the war, there’s such a surplus of eligible women, twelve for every ten men according to the
Times.
The competition for suitable husbands cannot help but be intensified.”

“You just wish they wouldn’t all focus on you.”

“Exactly. I can have only one wife, according to the common usage of the country.”

“Other nations arrange this sort of thing so much more sensibly,” Camilla said, who had read in snatched private moments a book about the lands where polygamy was rife. Needless to say, she didn’t approve a particle.

“I couldn’t have a harem,” he said. “I’m not so young as once I was.”

“Poor Sir Philip. I had better leave you now and let you get your rest.”

“Stay but one more moment,” he said, touching her lightly on the elbow. ‘You mustn’t think that my sister-in-law doesn’t like you. She does not know you.”

“I may prove to be a fortune hunter yet, Sir Philip.”

“Not you,” he said with such a warm, admiring look that Camilla found herself the one with reddened cheeks. “You never could have brought yourself all the way to my door in this snow if you cared only for yourself and for personal fortune. If I can draw upon your compassion for my sister-in-law and myself, I should consider myself highly fortunate.”

“I am, of course, willing to do whatever lies in my poor power in order to make some recompense for your hospitality.” Besides, she enjoyed talking to him openly like this. It was so unusually liberating to speak her mind without weighing every word on a scale of respectability.

“Then, do your best to befriend Beulah. She needs someone to listen to her and move her thoughts into a more cheerful frame. Between the burdens of her condition and the loss of my brother, she broods upon her woes. It was bad enough earlier in the year, but the death of poor Princess Charlotte has darkened her outlook further yet.”

“I can see how that might happen.” The tragic loss of the Heiress of England in childbed but three weeks before had been the leading topic at every gathering, and every detail of the funeral had been written over and discussed until they were as familiar as the details of one’s own family life.

“If only Myron were here,” Sir Philip said under his breath.

“But why?” she asked. “Surely as the wife of a naval officer, Lady LaCorte must be accustomed to ... unless he was present for the births of his other children?”

“Only Tinarose. As is the case for most children of military men, they have scarcely seen him but for a few weeks at a time. This last visit was the longest he’d been home since he’d been beached waiting for his first real command—and that must be all of twenty years ago. Beulah was used to having command of the Manor and of her children.”

“Yet still it must be hard for Lady LaCorte, knowing that this time he’ll not come back.”

“She thought him dead a hundred times before this. But it was the losing of all hope that seemed to depress her spirits the most. As if an invisible prop has been taken away. And then to have me inheriting on top of it all.”

“You seem unobjectionable,” Camilla said.

“Thank you.” He bowed gravely. “But anyone would be objectionable under the circumstances. A husband lost at sea, a child on the way, three daughters to raise, and a none-too-well-loved brother-in-law now in the position of master in her husband’s home. Who knows but that
I
might run mad and turn them all out into the snow.”

“You never would,” Camilla said, certain of it.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he answered with a grave nod of the head like any senior statesman. “My brother left a will quite ten years old, encouraging me to watch over my brother’s family but in no way legally obligating me to do so. My sister-in-law lives with the constant anxiety of being so precariously settled. She knows she may always make her home here at the Manor, which she has decorated so lovingly, but knows also that if I marry, it may be to someone who will not honor his wishes. I hope I have more courage of character than to be swayed against Beulah, but more men have been fools than were ever wise.”