Regency Christmas Gifts (16 page)

Do you?
Lucy wanted to ask, but had the
wisdom to remain silent. Clotilde was older and wiser in the ways
of courtship. She had been through a successful London Season,
flirted with any number of beaus, both foreign and domestic, and
settled on Lord Masterton, a marquess with a Yorkshire estate and a
London house. He was older, but Papa had been older than Mama, so
that didn’t amount to much for an argument.
Still ….

“
Cleo, do you call him by his first
name? Is that allowed?”

Clotilde shook her head, and her face turned
pink. “He says we will only do that in the privacy of my
bedchamber.”

Lucy felt her face go red, and not in that
adorable way that Clotilde pinked up, but bright red. The color
would make her cousin Miles hoot and point if he saw
her.

“
What
is
his name?” she
asked, determined to soldier on.

“
It is Phillip,” Clotilde answered,
with some dignity.

“
I don’t suppose you would ever dare
call him Phil.”

“
I would never consider
it.”

“
So it is to be my lord and my
lady?” Lucy asked. She had another question, one more personal.
“You say
your
bedchamber. Aren’t you going to, well, you
know,
share
a bed?”

How did Clotilde manage to rosy up so pink and
look so ladylike? Lucy felt her own face go from mere red to
really
red.

Clotilde’s sigh was heartfelt. “I suppose that
is how people in great houses live.”

Lucy thought of the mornings that she and
Clotilde had bounded into their parents’ bedroom and snuggled down
between the two people who loved them best in the world.
I want
more than solitary residence in a bed when I marry
, she
thought. If that was how great people lived, it was a wonder any of
them reproduced.

There wasn’t anything else to say. Lucy
finished hemming the nightgown after Clotilde left the room for a
consultation with Honoré about dinner. She hemmed mostly for
penance, because she really wanted to give her sister a good shake,
stare at her nose to nose, and order her to find a different
fellow.

Even more, she wanted to back out of her own
upcoming season—provided for her, like Clotilde’s, at the
invitation of Papa’s sister Willa, who had married an earl with
pots of money and had access to a London Season.

“
My dratted Season is three months
away,” she told herself, after looking around to make sure no one
was listening. “Perhaps something will happen before
then.”

Lucy chose the time-honored, familiar path her
father would take and decided not to think about it. She started
down the stairs, but changed her mind when she heard an awful
wailing from the kitchen far below. Aunt Aurelia and Clotilde must
have made yet another unreasonable demand to set off Honoré. She
chose discretion over valor and retreated upstairs to her
bedchamber.

As much as she adored her father, inviting Aunt
Aurelia to preside in his late wife’s place had been a tactical
blunder. She still blushed to think about yesterday’s drill in the
sitting room, when Aunt Aurelia made her march up and down with a
book on her head, simply because she had found Lucy slouched in the
library, her legs over the arm of a chair, reading
Emma
.

“
How will you ever nab a husband of
your own?” Aurelia had scolded, which made Lucy want to scream. The
contrast of militant Aunt Aurelia with her own gentle mother was
too great. Mama would have scolded her, to be sure, but then she
would have sat down with a book of her own, the matter
concluded.

And that only led to a bittersweet memory of
Mama supervising a parade of dresses for Lucy’s spring come out.
The modiste from nearby Winchester had been kind enough to bring
the dresses to Tidwell, since Mama was unable to travel by early
spring.

Even then, the exertion of approving this
sleeve, or that shade of yellow, or any number of tiny details had
worn Mama to a nub.

“
You don’t need to supervise so many
details, Mama,” Lucy pleaded with her that evening, when Mama could
barely breathe.

Mama took her hand—such a delicate touch
now—and looked deep into Lucy’s eyes. “I intend to savor every
moment with you, my dearest,” she replied. She closed her eyes
then. Lucy sat there, sorrowing, until Mama opened her eyes. “I
doubt I will live to your wedding. Sh, sh, Lucy! I will oversee
your London Season wardrobe. Don’t deny me this
pleasure.”

And so Lucy put a bright face on the dread
London Season proceedings, an event that only struck terror in her
heart. Mama was putting so much store by the come out. Lucy would
have shaved her head bald before she would have denied her mother
this last simple pleasure.

She knew she should rescue their chef Honoré
from Aunt Aurelia, but she hadn’t the heart just then. A faint glow
still flickered from her fireplace, so she pulled her favorite
chair closer and huddled there, wanting her mother, but grateful at
the same time that Mama no longer suffered. Papa had been firm
about forbidding deepest mourning after six months, or even
semi-mourning, reminding his daughters of one of Mama’s final
injunctions.

You said
we were not to mope about in
black, Mama
, Lucy thought, pulling her legs close to her chest.
In a way, Mama had been right. Black was depressing and a constant
reminder of her passing. On the other hand, everyday clothes made
Lucy wonder if she would forget Mama faster, when there was no
visible sign of their great loss.

Not that she could forget Mama. She thought of
Miles’s kind encouragement for her to cry, and wished she could
return to the bookroom just to sit in silence and know that someone
cared. She had already cried all over him once that day; even
someone as good-natured as her cousin would probably draw the line
at more.

Besides, Miles was busy straightening out
Papa’s tangled accounts and moving the whole wedding forward. She
could sit by herself and think through Christmas.

She knew there would be greenery, because
Clotilde had decreed it. The Christmas wreath was already in place.
There wasn’t Christmas pudding to stir and wish on, because the
kitchen staff had to cook and store food for the wedding. Maybe
next year.

Caroling was out, as well, because Lord
Masterton thought it childish, according to Clotilde. He had
specifically stated in a recent letter to his beloved that nothing
set his teeth on edge faster than off-key singing, and he wouldn’t
have it. Presents for each other were a trifling matter and could
likely be eliminated. The formal dining room was quickly filling up
with presents for the happy couple. Who had time to think of the
little gifts of Christmas?

“
I do,” Lucy said softly.

She couldn’t force her London Season far enough
away from her mind. The nasty thing kept resurfacing like the
bloated carcass of a feral cat she had seen last summer in the
fishpond. She wondered if Mama would have forced her to stand still
for fittings and practice for too many hours with a dancing master
who spent most of his time ogling Clotilde’s extravagant
beauty.

She glanced at the pier glass in the corner of
her room. There was nothing wrong with her looks. She had even
received a badly spelled sonnet last summer from a neighboring
landowner’s son, extolling her general, all-purpose loveliness by
rhyming “beauty fair” with “curly hair,” and “dulcet tones” with
“sturdy bones.” She and Miles had laughed about it until she had to
slap the side of his head for delivering her a box in person,
wrapped in white paper tied with gold filigree string. When she
removed the lid, a soup bone labeled “Now
this
is a sturdy
bone,” lay there, cushioned with more exquisite paper.

Even now, she laughed to think of it, grateful
to her cousin for brightening a particularly gloomy day two weeks
after Mama’s funeral when she was failing miserably to send notes
to distant friends because Papa couldn’t. Together she and Miles
had finished the lot of them, once the bone was returned to the
kitchen.

She saw no need to peacock about London in the
hopes of finding someone to marry her. She knew her marriage
portion was healthy enough to sweeten any proposal, yet not so huge
as to make her a target for vulgar Captain Sharps and swindlers.
There were enough young men in the district to choose from. Only
next door were the two eligible, if shy, sons of Lawrence and
Adabell Petry—one a physician and the other a solicitor.

Clotilde had been a different case altogether,
so beautiful and even tempered that Papa agreed with his sister
Aurelia—for once—and his more sensible sister Willa that only an
earl, a marquess or perhaps a duke would suffice. To her way of
thinking, Lucy didn’t have that problem. Why go to the bother and
expense?

Eyes closed, she thought through the rest of
Mama’s Christmas duties. After a lengthy time considering the
matter, she realized what she should do. She knew she needed an
ally, and Miles was the only one.

M
iles recognized the knock
immediately—two knocks, pause, two knocks. He put down his pen and
closed the ledger, grateful for diversion and even more grateful
that Lucy was the source of it. She was far more fun than Aunt
Aurelia and pathetic Clotilde, who probably should have her brains
removed and scrubbed clean for agreeing to marry Lord Masterton.
But no one had asked his opinion.

“
You again?” he called out. “Have
you laundered my handkerchief yet?”

She opened the door and gave him that
squinty-eyed look that always made the soreness in his neck go
away, or the ache in his head, caused by staring overlong at
ledgers and receipts. Funny how a visit from his cousin could make
him smile inside. She used to drive him to distraction when she was
five and he was twelve.

She held out a dry cloth. “I purloined it from
Papa’s drawer. He will never miss it.”

He pocketed the handkerchief and gestured to a
chair. To his amusement, she perched on the edge of the desk
instead, her foot swinging.
What can it hurt
, he thought, as
he sat on the desk next to her. To his delight, she leaned toward
him until their shoulders touched.

“
We are too late for a Christmas
pudding,” she began, counting off on her fingers. “Greenery will
do, as long as there are no bugs peeking out.” She made a face.
“That is Lord Masterton’s stipulation.”

“
No bugs, on my honor as a … a
third son.” He tugged the curly hair that rhymed so handily with
beauty fair to get her attention. “Do you know what is nice about
being the third son? Matthew must set a good example for us and
manage Father’s estates; Roger gets to bivouac in the rain and
fight.”

“
And you?”

“
I have no idea what I want to be
yet, except not a nuisance, and no one is pushing me about it.
Well, you know I am considering the diplomatic corps.” He laughed.
“Whitehall doesn’t even know
that
yet. What do you think I
should be?”

He loved the way the tip her tongue came out as
she thought. She had done that since she was a baby.

“
You’re not devious enough to be a
diplomatist,” she said, “but you do have excellent manners and vast
skill in calming troubled waters. Only consider how well you
convinced Aunt Aurelia to let Clotilde make green rosettes for each
pew in the church, instead of the white ones
she
wanted.”

Since she sat next to him on the desk, she gave
his shoulder a nudge. “You even convinced my aunt that green was
her idea all along. I withdraw my assessment. You
are
devious enough to be an ambassador.”

“
Thank you, I think,” he teased,
nudging her in return.

She sighed then. “I wish I were a
man.”

Not I
, Miles thought. “Now why would you
say that?”

“
No one is pitchforking you into a
London Season. You get to suit yourself.”

“
I rather think I do,” he said.
“Don’t tell Matthew. Number two brother and I are both receiving a
healthy inheritance, with none of the headaches of brother number
one. No one seems particularly concerned with what I end up
doing.”

“
Now that you mention it, being a
second daughter has roughly the same advantage: a nice marriage
portion, and no one clamoring for me to marry a title.”

They looked at each other in complete harmony.
“What can I do for you, Lucinda?” he asked.

“
I have decided to give myself a
Christmas gift,” his cousin announced. He saw the tenderness in her
blue eyes, and wondered, not for the first time, why everyone
thought Clotilde was the Danforth beauty.

“
And what will that be,
scamp?”

“
I want to do what Mama would have
done for Christmas.”

She said the words in a rush, as though
lingering over them would be too painful. Miles understood.
Marrying gentle Penelope Brewster had been the smartest thing
Cousin Roscoe ever did.

“
Which is ….”

“
Mama always did something kind for
a poor family at Christmas. Usually that amounted to a basket for
Christmas dinner, some toys and clothes for the children, and
perhaps some money. Let us go to the village school.”