A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe (The Lord Julian Mysteries #7)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

At the bottom of the tower of mail, I found a letter addressed to me. Correspondence was a rarity in my life, in part because my years in uniform meant many of the fellows I might have written to were no longer extant. Many others would disdain any association with me whatsoever.

While I had served honorably, even dragging myself to Brussels for the fighting at Waterloo, military gossip painted me in a poor light. I had been taken captive by the French when I’d followed Harry from camp one night by the light of a quarter moon.

Like me, Harry had been a reconnaissance officer. Unlike me, he’d preferred gathering his intelligence in the towns and cities and working his way into relationships with Portuguese aristos and Spanish gentry. I’d thus been curious when Harry had violated several standing orders and quit camp without leave and without notice to me.

Curious, and more than a little worried.

I’d trailed him at a careful distance, hoping his objective was yet another romantic assignation, but an appallingly short distance from camp, he’d been picked up by a French patrol. Harry hadn’t resisted, and thus I had felt duty-bound to fall in with whatever scheme he was hatching and make myself known to the same patrol.

I’d had other options, any one of which made more sense in hindsight. Create a distraction and trust Harry to take advantage of the disturbance. Maintain surveillance and report back to my superiors once I knew where Harry was being held. Offer myself in trade for Harry’s freedom.

Instead, I’d reasoned that Harry and I could win free more easily together than either one of us could if taken prisoner alone, and with all the confidence of a new recruit strutting about the village green in his parade dress uniform, I’d embarked on a nightmare that had ended in Harry’s death.

I still wasn’t sure about the pertinent details of my own ordeal. Between deprivation and interrogation, my wits had gone begging, though the French commandant himself had informed me of Harry’s demise. The ruddy blighter had been all dignified condolences at the time—I recalled that much very clearly—but commandant himself had subsequently denied knowledge of relevant particulars.

And yes, I had confronted him when the opportunity had arisen.

As Wellington had advanced into France, the enemy had abandoned the garrison where I’d been held, and I had been given the freedom to starve or freeze in the mountain wilderness. I had wandered for weeks in a state I can only describe as unhinged. I survived purely because I’d learned to live off the land, and spring came blessedly early. By the time I stumbled into a British military camp, Paris had been liberated, Napoleon had surrendered, and I—formerly presumed dead—was demoted from the status of officer fallen in the line of duty to suspected traitor.

Surely I had traded my brother’s life for my freedom? Why else had I survived when Harry had not? Why else would my tale be so dodgy in the specifics? Why else had I been so slow to rejoin my regiment after my so-called escape ?

And yet, with the Corsican vanquished and the Congress of Vienna looming, I had never faced a court-martial or even a board of inquiry. More puzzling to me still, when Napoleon had broken free of his island prison, the British military had welcomed me back for the Hundred Days. True, most seasoned officers had sold up or shipped out for Canada or the East, but still…

“I suppose one doesn’t lightly accuse a ducal heir of treason,” I murmured, slitting the seal on the lone piece of mail addressed to me personally. The wax was of a rose hue and lightly scented with gardenia.

My godmother, Lady Ophelia Oliphant, sent greetings and felicitations. She followed up with predictable platitudes and warned me that she’d arranged for a present for Leander, which would arrive in due course. In the event that she was unavoidably detained, I was to make the lad wait until Christmas Eve before conferring his gift upon him.

“Yes, my lady.” Though I saw the order for what it was—a warning that she might take French leave over the holidays and ignore her invitation to visit at the Hall. Perhaps she’d had word that Uncle Terrence had grumbled his way onto the guest list. Her ladyship had a network of informants that Wellington would, and probably did, envy.

A scrap of paper fluttered from her ladyship’s epistle, and my spirits rose. I recognized Hyperia’s handwriting, which would ever be cause for joy. My beloved was discreetly corresponding with me, and that meant she was thinking of me.

My lord,

Dearest Healy is being a complete gudgeon. I will pry him loose from Town at the first opportunity, but the matter requires patience. More patience. Mind Mrs. G’s toddies and remember to rest your eyes.

H.W.

Healy was Hyperia’s brother and thus her escort from Town. He was a gudgeon by nature, and he and I were not in greatest charity with each other. I would make sure the housekeeper put Healy in the rooms adjacent to wherever Uncle Terrence was housed.

“The matter requires patience,” I muttered. “ More patience.”

I rubbed my tired eyes and rooted about mentally for some sense of satisfaction at having vanquished the epistolary dragon for the day. None came to hand, though I was slightly bilious, and my eyes stung.

“Ruddy coal smoke.” I rose stiffly, intent on finding a sober footman who could grasp that I wanted peat rather than coal burned in the study henceforth.

My hand was on the door latch when the door flew open.

“Greetin’s, guv! I brung the afternoon mail!” Atticus, my tiger and self-appointed aide-de-camp, grinned up at me. He was dark-haired, wiry, and struggling to conquer the written word. Good food was inspiring him to outgrow everything but his hat every other fortnight, and what he lacked in polish, he made up for in canny good sense—usually. The boy’s age was a mystery and his patrimony equally shrouded in uncertainty.

What was very clear was that somebody—somebody who would pay a high price indeed—had allowed this mere child to overimbibe.

“Thank you for the mail,” I said. “You will please go to the kitchen. You will tell Mrs. Gwinnett to ply you with hot tea and toast. You will swear off toddies for the rest of the week, and that is a direct order, Atticus.”

He blinked at me, and his bibulous good cheer dissolved into confusion. “I ain’t done nuffing wrong. Why you got to go all sniffy on me?”

“In future, you may give the mail to a footman, who will convey it abovestairs without tracking half the shire’s mud onto the carpets.”

Atticus glanced down at his exceedingly damp footwear. “Sorry. Snow on the lane.” He burped dejectedly. “Feet are cold too.”

I was angry not with the boy—he was a child, relatively new to service, and very new to a ducal household—but with the general laxness that had resulted in his inebriation and attendant breaches of protocol.

“Atticus, you are tipsy, a state of affairs a gentleman avoids in daylight hours. You have neglected to address me correctly when we’ve agreed that inside the Hall, proper decorum will prevail. I am not ‘guv,’ I am ‘my lord’ or ‘your lordship’ under this roof. You have abused Mrs. Henderson’s carpets, and you have imperiled your health. I am not best pleased with you.”

I was being a bit hard on the lad, but he needed to know that taking spirits irresponsibly had consequences.

“I ain’t best pleased with you neither, your guvship. Lordship. Lord Guv. I like that.”

My ire became laced with concern. “Atticus, how much have you had to drink?”

He burped again, and the fumes would have knocked my horse onto his handsome tail. “I do enjoy a toddy, guv, and nobody notices if you just help yourself to a sip here and a sip there. Goes down ever so kind. Best toddies in Merry Olde, Jamison says. He lets me have a sip of his too.”

My father would have offered Atticus a full serving for his very own and allowed the lad to deal with the aftermath—the pounding head, body aches, fuzzy thinking, parched mouth, and profound remorse. I could not do that to the boy.

“I will overlook your various transgressions on this occasion, but your deportment requires amending. Moderation is imperative when it comes to Mrs. Gwinnett’s holiday toddies, else next time you might come to real harm or give significant offense. A gentleman would not want that on his conscience, my boy.”

Atticus shoved the woefully heavy mailbag at me. “I ain’t a gentleman, ’case you forgot. I am a tiger.” Enunciated with the unassailable dignity of the inebriate.

He spun about, righted himself on the doorjamb, and strutted off down the corridor, his little nose in the air. I closed the door after him, dumped the mail onto the desk blotter, and settled back onto Arthur’s lumpy chair.

I had worked my way through about half the stack when a quiet tap on the door halted my progress.

“Come in.”

The butler stepped inside and closed the door. “Vicar to see you, my lord. He said he hadn’t an appointment, but he has joyous news and thought you should be the first to know.”

Arthur had been sparing with advice, but he’d warned me about vicars bearing good news. After announcing that some parishioner’s prize sow had safely presented the world with twelve new piglets, Mr. Humboldt would bend the conversation around to the need for a new roof over the nave, new hymnals, or a new bell.

Arthur had told him two years ago to give up on the bell. Backward we might be out in the shires, but we knew that divine services commenced at ten of the clock on the morning of the Sabbath, the same as they had for hundreds of years.

“Show him in,” I said, moving aside the dozen epistles I had yet to read. “And send along the requisite tray, please. Did he walk the distance?”

“Afraid so, my lord.”

“Give us twenty minutes and then have a sleigh brought around. I’ll take him home myself.”

Seeing Vicar safely back to his manse qualified as a good deed, and playing truant for the sake of a good deed counted as only half a truancy.

Arthur would doubtless have agreed with me on that point.

Vicar was still bouncing about on the seat of the sleigh beside me when I drew the horse up to the front door of the vicarage. After the jingling of the harness bells and Vicar’s endless chatter, the ensuing silence came as a benediction to the ears.

The vicarage itself was spacious, some clergy being prone to large families, though our house of worship was a humble exponent of the species.

Gray granite construction, the foundation dating back to at least Norman times, and possibly the Viking days before that. The same stone used to encircle the oldest part of the graveyard, and more used for walkways. In winter, the whole was rather depressing, but in temperate weather, climbing roses, irises, and assorted other posies lent the churchyard a rustic charm.

The bell tower rose to a modest height, a gray sentinel against a lighter gray sky.

“All the way from London,” Vicar was saying for the dozenth time. “And in time for Christmas! Come, my lord, you must see this splendid wonder for yourself!”

I had seen my share of church bells. As a boy, I’d sneaked up the tower along with Harry and played royal archer on market days. When I’d turned ten, the old bell had cracked and been retired. On reconnaissance in Spain, I’d climbed many a church tower for observation purposes, and once, I’d hidden in a bell tower for the duration of a freezing, spectacularly starry night.

Fear for one’s life made keeping warm doubly difficult.

Vicar fairly leaped to the ground and held the gate for me. “Did you know, my lord, that this bell contains gold?”

Also silver, arsenic, lead, zinc, and tin, though the bulk of the metal was copper. “Does it really?” I secured the reins and climbed down more decorously.

“A mere dash, of course, but gold… In olden times, good souls would toss their gold and silver coins into the foundry as a church bell was made to sweeten the tone.”

I’d heard the same from Mr. Mears himself, master founder at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. For a sum certain, he’d included the appropriate tokens in this bell as well.

“What an interesting notion.”

“Gold and silver. If we are to have only the tolling bell, we can be proud that it’s of the best construction.”

Mears had tried to talk me into a proper ring of bells, such as sizable establishments boasted, but that would have required a new and larger tower. Then too, change ringing was an art, and to my knowledge, nobody in our humble surrounds was acquainted with it.

“We haven’t had a proper death knell for nearly twenty years,” Vicar said, bustling up the walkway. “Vicar Winthrop was most distressed to retire from his post without having the bell replaced, but times have been challenging, have they not, my lord?”

For most of that twenty years, times had been bellicose, and Britain had the staggering debt to show for her martial enthusiasms.

“We hope for better days,” I said, preceding Vicar into the church.

The bell sat upon a wooden trestle in the vestibule, looking like a great, drab bonnet. If Mears had cast it to agreed-upon specifications, our bell was a little over two-and-a-half feet across at the rim and weighed something less than a quarter ton.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Vicar said, beaming. “If only we knew who our benefactor was.”

“That is a puzzle. We’ll let subsequent generations rack their brains over it, shall we? I am more concerned with how we get the thing hung.” Mears had explained to me the art and science involved, but executing same required carpenters and joiners expert in the craft.

“The fellows who delivered the bell said they will send us the bell-hanging crew for that miracle next week. One can hardly contain one’s joy.”

To see Humboldt in such transports was satisfying, but I hadn’t procured the bell for him. I’d started the process nearly a year ago, when Arthur had muttered about being unable to ring a proper death knell upon our father’s passing. Papa had been gone for some time, but this failure to uphold tradition had apparently bothered his successor.

And yet, in the greater order of needs and priorities, Arthur had been unable to justify the expense of a church bell. Not when tens of thousands of soldiers were returning from war to beg in the streets, and more thousands would never return at all and leave entire families destitute.

For their sakes, for the sake of all who would never have a proper funeral toll, I’d engaged Mears and company. By happenstance, my order had been completed in time for Yuletide. I had notified Vicar anonymously that a bell was in the offing, and he’d brought news of our impending good fortune straight to Caldicott Hall.

“I do believe,” he said, tracing a reverent hand around the bell’s shoulder, “this is the most perfect bell I ever did see. Mrs. Humboldt agrees.”

“Well, it’s our bell, and thus it must be a very fine bell indeed. You still have no idea whose largesse is responsible?”

“One suspects the duke, and it would be just like him to make such a magnanimous gesture when he’s not on hand to hear our thanks, but I cannot be certain. Squire Pettigrew certainly has the means and is overdue for a display of beneficence, if I might say so without attracting any celestial lightning bolts. Lady Dorcas is devout and one to observe the niceties.”

That I was not among the suspects should have pleased me. “The author of our good fortune wished to act anonymously. We must respect their preferences. We have the bell. Its peal will summon the faithful, celebrate their nuptials, and commend them to eternity’s embrace. Life in the village will regain one gesture of the grace it enjoyed in former times.”

“Just so, my lord, just so. Mrs. Humboldt would agree. Gift horses and so forth. I cannot wait to hear this bell. What do you suppose we should name it?”

Now that was going a bit too far. Bells had names, of course. Bells that hung in rounds and were rung in proper peals.

“Perhaps Mrs. Humboldt will have some ideas,” I said. “I’d really rather not make the horse stand for too long in this weather, Vicar. I am overjoyed to see the bell has safely arrived and will look forward to the day when it’s hung in its tower.”

“Of course, my lord, of course. And may that day come soon. My thanks again for seeing me home. Are you sure you won’t come to the vicarage for a cup of tea?”

Darkness was already encroaching, so early did the sun set in deep midwinter. “Thank you, no. The hour grows late, and I must be on my way.” The Report of the Committee for the Investigation of Wages for Masons, Apprentices, and Hod Carriers Engaged in the Construction of Enclosure Walls in the West Riding waited for no man.

Arthur had declared that the art of proper leave-taking lay in knowing when to physically step away. Hovering turned parting into an endless exercise in good wishes and small talk. I took my brother’s advice, replaced my hat upon my head, and left Humboldt beaming at the bell like a papa making the acquaintance of his newly hatched firstborn son.

I climbed into the sleigh, arranged the lap robe for maximum protection from the elements, and took up the reins.

“Walk on, Ladon.”

The horse, only too happy to move in the direction of home, struck out on the lane that circled the green. He was an older specimen, one I’d drafted for teaching Atticus the rudiments of riding and driving. What Ladon lacked in elegance, he made up for in sturdiness and patience.

Once we cleared the arched bridge that marked the western entrance to the green, I let Ladon pick up the trot. I could have fallen asleep at the ribbons, and he would have seen me safely home, trusty soul that he was.

I wasn’t asleep. I was annoyed.

The shape of a bell was simple, its parts from widest to narrowest being mouth, lip, waist, shoulder, and crown. The structure atop the whole, the part where the bell was secured to its headstock, was the canon. The canon was cast with the bell itself for the sake of greater strength. It provided one aspect of the bell founder’s art where embellishment was permitted regardless of the pitch at which the bell was intended to ring.

I had specified that the canon embellishments on our bell were to resemble angels. The bell sitting in the church vestibule had boasted embellishments, but they’d been shaped like lilies.

Either the foremost bell founder in the realm had failed to follow directions, or he’d sent us the wrong ruddy bell.

If I called Mears’s attention to his error, my attempt at anonymous generosity would degenerate into endless correspondence, talk in the churchyard, and an absence of joyous pealing on Christmas morning.

“So we have the wrong bell,” I muttered as Ladon trotted between the Caldicott Hall gateposts. “Nobody will know.” The sound of the bell was supposed to summon the faithful, chase away demons, and repel violent storms. Angels or lilies were immaterial to those jobs.

I handed Ladon off to the stable lads and faced the facade of my home, a dark shape looming against the coming winter night. My completed errand should have left me pleased with life and with myself. I was playing at being Father Christmas, though the timing of the bell’s arrival was purely fortuitous.

“I asked for angels,” I said to nobody in particular, my breath clouding before my half-frozen nose and chin. “A few little angels on the bell, and Mears even showed me sketches.”

A voice in my head that sounded very like dear, departed Harry warned me that I was becoming Uncle Terrence well before I’d earned my curmudgeonly allotment of years.

But then, Harry was sporting about with his harp and wings. He wasn’t inundated daily with the most soporific flood of correspondence ever to cross the desk of man. He wasn’t missing his beloved to the depths of his soul. Harry wasn’t facing weeks of Uncle Terrence’s dubious company, nor was he regretting that he’d ever encouraged Arthur to travel.

As I made my way to the house’s north portico, I chided myself for whining rather a lot for a fellow who had reasonable health, considerable wealth, and a loving family. A fellow whose country was more or less at peace. A fellow who was, for better or for worse, heir to a dukedom.

I was whining a very great lot indeed. Worse yet, my dolorous turn of thought could become a step on the road to the dangerous terrain known as melancholia.

I’d been captive to the blue devils for months both times when I’d mustered out. The stretch after Waterloo had been hellish. I’d been unable to concentrate on anything longer than a sonnet, uninterested in food, unable to sleep soundly. Overwhelmingly sad about everything and nothing, seeking solitude even when suffocatingly lonely.

Godmama had hauled me by the ear back into the literal sunlight, and a series of investigations since then had kept me preoccupied with other people’s troubles. No investigations beckoned to me now, and for all I knew, I might never again involve myself with missing heirs, errant wives, or purloined pups.

Never again. An altogether gloomy thought.

“Please not at Yuletide,” I muttered, though the black moods were notorious for coming and going on no discernible schedule. “I will brood and sulk and wander the night at length in the New Year if I must, but please no blue devils at Yuletide.”

I let myself into the relative warmth of the Hall and had barely got my hat, coat, and scarf off when Her Grace came upon me.

“Waylaid by Vicar, were you? What was his great news? Let me guess. Mercy Holderness’s nanny goat had triplets again.”

“Unlikely at this time of year. Somebody has gifted St. Scholastica’s with a new bell.”

A footman lighting sconces—Young Jamison, in fact—stopped between candles. “A new bell, for our little church?”

Truly, discipline among the domestics was slipping. “A tolling bell. Lovely in its way. Not very large as these things go, but Vicar was in transports.”

The duchess sent me a curious look. “What do you know of church bells, my lord?”

“A bit.” Mears had spent the better part of a day lecturing, sketching, and waxing poetical about them. “I found myself in many a bell tower in Spain because they provide a good vantage point for reconnoitering unknown territory.”

Her Grace’s expression became carefully blank, as it did every time I mentioned my years in uniform.

“Well, that’s just grand,” Jamison said, moving on to the next sconce. “A new bell, and at Yuletide. Did Vicar say who’d done us this good turn?”

“An anonymous benefactor. Vicar claims not to know.”

“Squire Petty-Grump, likely,” Jamison said, replacing the glass over the flame. “Has a lot to atone for, you ask me. Didn’t want us to plant him without a proper tolling.”

“Now, Jamison,” Her Grace said, “no disparaging the neighbors unless you want Father Christmas to bring you a lump of coal.” She softened her reprimand with a smile and took a few steps up the corridor.

I was prepared to be less charitable with Jamison on the topic of encouraging Atticus to imbibe, but the duchess turned and addressed me again.

“Oh, Julian. More good news. I’ve had word that Aunt Bertha will also be joining us for the holidays. I’ll put her in the Rose Suite, and it will be just like old times.”

Her Grace swanned off after firing that salvo, and I nearly ran howling back out into the night.

“I’ll warn the staff,” Jamison muttered. “We’ve been spared the past few years—winters lately have been too blasted cold for much travel—but Mrs. G and Mrs. H will want to know.”

“Raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, man the arrow slits, and bar the postern gate,” I said. Uncle Terrible and Aunt Bother. “Jamison, I’ll have a toddy in the study.”

“In the study, my lord?”

I thought of the half pile of correspondence waiting for me there, soon to be joined by full piles and deluges and inundations. The masons and their apprentices and hod carriers …

“Hang the correspondence. I will enjoy my toddy in my apartment, and in future, please let the staff know to heat the study exclusively with peat.”

“Aye, my lord. Peat for the study, a toddy for your nerves. Just so.”

He scampered off, likely to personally sample the spices blended with my restorative, and I did not begrudge him his tipple—this time. Aunt Bertha was a terror, plain and simple, and she was invading at the same time Uncle Terry would be underfoot.

The Battle of Nations would be a mere skirmish compared to the hostilities those two could engage in a weekday breakfast table.

“Make it a double,” I called after Jamison, though in my present mood, I could have done justice to the whole pot.