Snowed in for Christmas Page 4
Around noon he stepped into the clearing in which the hut stood. To his amazement, a high-perch phaeton shadowed the doorway to the hut.
From that building emerged Augusta, clutching the arm of his father’s neighbor, Captain Sir James Falstaf of the Foot Guards.
Of a height made tall only by the huge bearskin he usually wore, he was well known to Robert—an indifferent neighbor, a backseat officer, and an inveterate blowhard. His presence here, and with Augusta on his arm, made Robert’s top lip curl in distaste. Birds of a feather did indeed flock together, even on crisp, cold winter days.
Robert strode to meet the blackguard. He managed to make his voice sound calm and with a degree of warmth he couldn’t feel. “Sir James. You’re here. Welcome and thanks.”
“Yes, Landers, someone had to rescue the lady in distress, as you obviously couldn’t. Your father sent a message over to Oakdown House yesterday asking for my assistance.” He couldn’t have looked further down his aquiline nose in contempt at Robert than he did.
Robert struggled to express the gratitude he knew he should feel because Sir James had roused himself to find them, and appeared willing and happy to take Robert’s difficult fiancée under his metaphorical wing of safety. Instead, he bowed in recognition of the favor but remained mutely fuming at the man’s words.
“So I cut along the main road between our estates to reach you that way. And I can see, I’m here not a moment too soon to take Miss Crawshaw back to Oakdown House, to lodgings appropriate to her station.” He smiled down at Augusta like the Vauxhall Gardens beau he was, and patted her hand in the most solicitous way.
Augusta looked up at him with gratitude, admiration, and longing. She betrayed no sign of the missish, petulant brat with whom Eleanor and he had spent two days.
When she spared Robert a glance, it held no embarrassment, no consciousness of any poor behavior.
Sir James broke into their wordless exchange. “Afraid I can’t take all of you up in my vehicle.” The words were spoken not with regret but with a chuckle of pleasure. “My coachman is following. He will transport you and Miss Carlisle and any baggage you have.”
Sir James was about to hand Augusta up onto the bench of his phaeton when Robert said, “Augusta, might I have a private word with you before you leave?”
Augusta made moue of annoyance then gave a small nod. “Yes, Landers. There is something I must say to you. Now is as good a time as there can be.”
Robert gave a brief bow and offered his arm. Augusta stepped away from Sir James, sending him a smile and flutter of her eyelashes over her widened eyes, then allowed herself to be guided away by Robert as he took several steps backward.
Shrouded in the gloom just inside the doorway of the hut stood Eleanor, watching the tableau before her. What did she make of this strange scene?
Augusta’s breathy words broke into his thoughts. “You wished to speak with me, Landers?” she asked impatiently.
He shifted his gaze to her. “Have you considered further whether you still wish to marry me, as you are so dissatisfied with my ability to care for you?”
She directed a look of clear calculation toward Sir James as he stood fiddling with his carriage whip, setting the horses’ eyes to white-rimmed fear. His uniformed groom held their heads and murmured soothing words in their ears. “Yes, I have,” she said.
“And?” Robert prompted.
She returned her attention to him. “I no longer believe we should suit, Landers.”
“You wish to break off our engagement? Irretrievably dissolve it?” Please say yes.
She straightened her slight form to its tallest and replied in her haughtiest tone. “Yes. I shall inform my father by the earliest post.”
Multiple emotions warred within him—elation, relief, and regret that he had been foolish enough to propose to her, to name three. There was nothing more to say. He bowed over her hand.
She continued, “You must not fall into melancholia about your failure to continue my affection for you. There are many suitable debutants who would be only too happy and honored to become your wife. I am not one of them, but don’t hesitate to enlist my help with introductions. I’m sure I will be able to assist you.” She gave an insincere smirk.
“You are too kind.” I’m as likely to consult you about such a thing as to eat cheese on the moon. All he wanted now was to get rid of the pair of them and speak with Eleanor. His heart beat double time in anticipation.
He restored Augusta to Sir James’s care with scarcely suppressed eagerness and relief.
Sir James settled Augusta onto the phaeton’s bench and leaped up beside her. Augusta shuffled closer and looked up at her hero in a cloying manner. He gave the horses their off, and the vehicle surged forward, with the groom only just mounting his perch at the rear in time.
Robert looked down. A slew of muddy snow remained where the phaeton had stood, with foot-deep tracks leading from the spot.
Robert turned on his heel and plunged into the darkness of the hut calling, “Eleanor.”
“Yes, my lord,” she answered from the bedroom.
He strode into the bare room.
She stood beside the bed folding clothes into two portmanteaux. Of course, Augusta had not taken hers but left it for Eleanor to pack and transport. A surge of annoyance at the featherhead who had been his fiancée pulsed through him.
“Leave that now, Eleanor. Please. I wish to talk with you.”
“May I not listen and pack at the same time?”
“I’m sure you can, you’re a capable woman, but I wish to have your full attention. There is something I very much wish to ask you.”
Eleanor’s hands stopped their restless tidying, and she clasped them at her waist.
Robert leaned forward and gently tugged one hand from its place to hold in his brown fist. “Eleanor. I think you have felt what I have over the last few days.”
No answer.
“Augusta has released me from our engagement. I am a free man again. Free to give my heart and hand wherever I please.” He squeezed her fingers.
“I am happy for you, Lord Landers.” She didn’t raise her head.
“You could be happier for me if you agreed to marry me, Eleanor.”
She looked up with widened eyes and tugged her hand from his. “You cannot be serious?” Her high-pitched, clipped words betrayed shock and incredulity.
“Do you not feel the same? Do you not wish to spend your life with me? I feel as though I have finally found my future. Tell me you feel the same. Surely?”
“What I may feel today and yesterday and the day before is not important. You are a member of the aristocracy who must marry well.”
“I may marry whom I wish!”
“And have you learned nothing from making hasty marriage proposals after so little acquaintance? Must I remind you that you almost married Augusta?” she gently chided him, her smile rueful.
“That was a dynastic matter.” He had been too stunned by his brother’s death, too overawed by his change of circumstances, and too willing to please his grief-stricken father, to demand time for such a decision.
“And your marriage should not be so?”
“It doesn’t have to be. And after all, you are Augusta’s cousin.”
“Her poor relation. There are no titles on my side of the family, nor wealth. Just a long line of clergymen and military men.” Her hand waved away their standing as though they were nothing.
“That alone makes me more confident that our match would be perfect. I have no need of more relatives interested only in titles and wealth.”
“I cannot marry you after so little acquaintance.”
“I believe we know each other very well, that knowledge gained through adversity.”
Eleanor shook her head, making her bright curls bounce around her downbent face. “I can’t.”
“Can you tell me that you don’t feel what I feel?”
“No.” The word emerged, forced through pu
rsed, reluctant lips.
Hallelujah! “If you won’t accept my proposal, then will you allow me to court you?”
“No.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Have you stopped to think to whom I might be related? Does not my name mean anything to you? Make you recall any incident on the Peninsula that you would wish never to be reminded of again?”
He shook his head. “The only Carlisle I came across under Wellington was drunken old Captain Carlisle.”
Eleanor hung her head.
He stared down at her. “You can’t possibly be related to him?” He had been a proper wastrel of a man. Brutal to his men. And always half drunk.
“But I am. I’m his daughter.”
Surely not! “He was never married, was he?”
“To my mother. They lived together for only a short while. He fell out of love with her very quickly and began to treat her badly. She left him, returning to her parents when I was an infant. We never saw him again. He was serving overseas most of the time I was growing up. He’s dead now.”
He lifted her chin. “I know. I was there when he took a ball at the Battle of Albuera in ’11.”
“You were?” She stared into his eyes, seemed about to say something, but didn’t, then blurted out, “Did he say anything at the last?”
Should he lie to her? Robert shook his head. “No. He died quickly. There wasn’t time for words. He felt no pain. I can assure you of that.”
Tears seeped from her reddened eyes.
“I do not care who your father was. It is only you I love.”
“Can you see why I hesitate after the behavior of my father and of Augusta?”
He couldn’t let her go, not now he had found her. “Will you at least allow me to court you? For however long it takes for you to be sure my love will last.”
Her head lifted, her eyes sparkling through the tears. “Yes,” she breathed.
Robert released Eleanor’s hand and pulled her into his arms in a crushing hug of hope, relief and sparkling, fresh, new love. “Thank God.”
They kissed with the sense of a having a future together. Although Eleanor had spoken of restraint in his headlong charge to make her his wife, he believed he would soon succeed in winning her hand in matrimony. He knew they were suited. That they were soul mates who had found each other and would be together forever.
Sounds of an approaching vehicle churning through the rutted snow, the jiggling of harness and shout of a driver urging his team onward carried through the still air. Robert and Eleanor stepped apart as though caught in a misdemeanor.
Eleanor let Robert’s fingers slip through hers as she turned from him with a lingering look, then continued to push clothes into a portmanteau.
Robert hurried to stand at the doorway, watching the arrival of Sir James’s closed carriage and wishing they’d had longer to explore their feelings.
Then they were hurrying to collect their belongings and clear the signs of their habitation from the hut.
Robert doused the fire, cast a look around the room to ensure all was tidy, and left a gold coin on the table for the gamekeeper by way of thanks for his well-stocked shelter.
Robert handed the portmanteaux to the coachman and his offsider, then strode back inside. He pulled the last of the berries from the mistletoe sprig and headed into the bedroom, where he found Eleanor making a last-minute search for Augusta’s belongings.
“You are done here.”
“I need to make sure that Augusta has left nothing.”
“No more.” A teasing smile creased his face. “I think you should return to your mother so you may be at leisure for our courtship.”
He held the mistletoe high. “And then I can do this more often.” He caught Eleanor to him with his free hand and kissed her with all his heart and hope.
Their moment of privacy lasted until the coachman knocked on the hut’s door and called, “Make haste, m’lord the weather’s on the turn again.”
Eleanor snatched a sprig of holly hanging from the door lintel and gasped. She rolled her hand over to see a fleck of blood where the holly leaf had pricked her finger through a hole in her glove.
Robert brought her slim hand to his lips, then turned it to kiss her wrist. He wanted more than anything to ensure she never had to wear such worn-out clothing again. Never to face unprotected the barbs of nature or of tongues. Never to doubt his love.
Robert helped Eleanor into the carriage and kept hold of her hand. Warm bricks heated the plush interior. They were returning to the comforts and luxuries of normal life.
The driver cracked his whip, and the vehicle jerked into motion, thrusting Eleanor into Robert’s arms. “You will be mine, Eleanor Carlisle,” he whispered in her ear.
“Oh, I hope so. I do hope so,” she murmured.
“Before this time next year, or I’ll have to arrange for us to be snowed in for Christmas once again.”
She kissed him openmouthed as though to seal the promise.
Historical Note
Robert, Viscount Landers’s opening quotation “tidings of comfort and joy” comes from the 1775 version of the traditional English Christmas carol, “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” Many of the carols we sing today have a much more recent origin, but this one dates back to the sixteenth century or earlier.
When Viscount Landers and Eleanor Carlisle decide to burn a Yule log and decorate the humble gamekeeper’s hut with holly, they were harking back to earlier Christmas celebrations. Traditionally, the Yule log and greenery were brought into the home on Christmas Eve and remained until Twelfth Night, Epiphany, on 6 January (which celebrates the revelation of the baby Jesus to the three wise men). These practices were not common in Regency Christmas celebrations, when there was little fuss about Christmas apart from attending church on the day.
The winter of 1813 was exceptionally cold, while most other winters in the Regency period were not. One can well imagine travelers being caught out by the sudden onset of snow that didn’t abate, when they were used to milder winters.
Viscount Landers, who had been out of the country for a number of years serving with the then Viscount Wellington, commander of the British Army on the Iberian Peninsula between 1809 and 1813, could be forgiven for underestimating the English weather and road conditions.
I hope you’ve enjoyed Snowed in for Christmas. May your own Christmas be full of love, happiness, and hope.
Isabella Hargreaves, 7 October 2016.
References
Beverley, Jo. ‘Christmas in the Regency’,
Fauvell, D and I Simpson, ‘The History of British Winters’,
n.a. ‘Meterology at West Moors: 1800-1849’
n.a., The Beauties of the Magazines, and Other Periodical Works, Selected for a Series of Years, vol. 2 (1775), printed for Gottlob Emanuel Richter, 87f cited by Wikipedia, ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen’,
Scott, Regina. ‘Christmas, Regency Style’,
UK Safari, ‘Holly Trees’,
http://www. instafreebie .com/free/LZUvF
Other publications by Isabella Hargreaves
Enthralled
Charity’s Cavalier
Forbidden Valentines: Three Short Regency Romances
Wanton Widows: Three Short Regency Romps
The Persuasion of Miss Jane Brody
All Quiet on the Western Plains
Journey’s End on the Western Plains
About the Author
Isabella Hargreaves has been reading historical stories since she was growing up in Brisbane, Australia. She spends every work day resear
ching and writing about people, places and events from the past.
It seemed the perfect match to combine her love of romance and history by writing historical romances. She writes about strong, determined heroines and heroes who aren’t afraid to match them.
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http://www.isabellahargreaves.com/
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