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

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Arthur’s study was positioned in a corner of the Hall’s first floor. The windows provided a fine view of the front drive and its lime alley and of the path that led to the stable and assorted other outbuildings. Another venerable stand of lime trees kept the working parts of the estate visually separate from the Hall’s domestic splendor, and the blending of the park with the home wood gave the whole surrounds a peaceful sense of unity.

I loved those lime trees, the stately alley, the gently undulating hedgerow, the occasional specimens gracing the park or edging the wood. They took on a particularly luminous green when the foliage was bathed in sunshine. In autumn, they glowed a mellow gold before carpeting the grass in yellow leaves. Most had passed the four-century mark of their earthly span.

The trees were a sylvan reminder that winters came and went, centuries came and went, and so did visits from the family experts in peevishness and truculence.

As if to test the mettle of my conclusion, a sizable coach and four came trotting from the lime alley and rattled halfway around the circular drive. I did not recognize the equipage or the matched grays pulling it, nor was I expecting callers.

“Not yet,” I said, setting aside the hungry masons of the West Riding. “Please don’t let the hordes descend yet.” Though neither Terrence nor Bertha could tolerate extravagance, and the coach rocking to a halt at the foot of the steps was splendid indeed.

To my immense relief, a fellow in a kilt emerged, followed by a lady in a green plaid cloak and a small boy. Somebody passed a trussed-up little bundle into the lady’s arms, and my day became leavened with joy.

Two minutes later, I was surrounded by the noise, rumpus, and general mayhem occasioned by the return of any one of my sisters to the family seat.

“Jules, Jules, you are looking marvelous,” Ginny said, alternately hugging me around the bundle of baby she carried and inspecting me with sororal thoroughness. “My brother has turned Viking on us, and they were such an interesting lot. Declan hasn’t gone through his Viking phase yet, but I’m told it’s unavoidable. Declan, make your bow to your Uncle Julian.”

Declan, a dark-eyed copy of his strapping Scottish papa, flopped over at the waist. “Good day, Uncle Julian.”

“Declan, welcome to Caldicott Hall. What an impressive set of lungs you have.”

“Aye, he does,” Lachlan, Earl of Kerrick, said. “Gets that from his mother, and just wait until you hear the wean. Puts banshees to shame.” He was clearly proud of his little banshee and clearly in good health himself.

Kerrick was a throwback to the days when the Highlanders had been the tallest and brawniest men in Europe, part Viking, part Celt, and all fierceness. Ginny had met him at a cousin’s wedding and promptly taken him captive. Declan had arrived a mere six months after the vows had been spoken, which my father had declared a fine example of upholding Caldicott family tradition.

“I look forward to making my niece’s acquaintance,” I said, “but might we move the introductions into the Hall?”

As I spoke, a second carriage drew up behind the first. This one was a humbler conveyance, doubtless housing the lady’s maid, valet, and perhaps Declan’s governess. In the usual course, those good souls would have been taken around to the side entrance, while the baggage piled on the roof and the boot would have been unloaded at the porte cochere.

A lone female passenger climbed down the steps, and my heart rose.

“Excuse me.” I dodged around Declan and between Ginny and her spouse and took the latest visitor’s hand in my own. “By God, you escaped. Never have I been so glad to see a familiar face.”

Hyperia West looked a bit fatigued, but nearly as happy to see me as I was to see her.

“Jules.” She treated me to a quick hug. “Ginny offered. Healy did not want to offend the earl by refusing the countess’s generosity. At the first change, I graciously gave the nursemaid my seat in the traveling coach. Baby Orla in a taking can be quite the challenge to the ears.”

I tucked Hyperia’s hand around my arm. “I am never letting you out of my sight again. My delight in your presence is limitless, and my fondest hope has been granted.” Wages in the West Riding, tippling staff, and a bell with the wrong canon design all faded to passing details.

To have Hyperia at my side put right every discontent, frustration, and woe, to a slightly unnerving extent.

“I’ve missed you too,” she said as we joined Ginny’s entourage climbing the steps to the terrace and passing into the Hall’s drafty foyer. “Healy will follow soon. He promised. I am not sure what inspires him to tarry in Town when most of Society has removed to the shires, but he isn’t frequenting the gaming hells that I know of.”

“He had better not be.” Wagering, drink, and rash accusations had nearly seen Healy West ruined. He was putting his finances to rights, but the process would take time.

I stood arm in arm with Hyperia as Her Grace welcomed Ginny, Kerrick, and the children to the Hall. My mother had been a beauty in her day, a stately redhead in an age where delicate blondes had been all the rage. She was beautiful still, though gold threaded her russet locks at the temple, and she needed spectacles when tending to her correspondence.

Watching her tear up at the sight of Ginny holding Orla, I was struck anew by the fact that Dorothea, Duchess of Waltham, was a grandmama many times over. While her three sons had produced no legitimate offspring, her four daughters were populating their respective nurseries with regular additions.

Mother and daughter embraced carefully around the baby, then the duchess drew back to peer more closely at Orla.

“She has Claudius’s eyes,” the duchess pronounced, referring to her late spouse. “Oh, she has his eyes to the life. She’ll have the world wrapped around her little finger by her second birthday, see if she doesn’t.”

“Babies,” Hyperia murmured. “They turn us into watering pots.”

To my shock, Hyperia’s eyes were shining too. “I thought you didn’t care for babies?”

She professed a mortal fear of parturition, for which I had no argument. Women died in childbirth at about the same rate Wellington’s men had died in battle, and those were bad odds. Hyperia and I were unofficially engaged—that was, we had more than an understanding and less than a public commitment—but we were taking our time with the whole business.

Of necessity.

“Do hush,” Hyperia said, accepting my handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. “I’m tired, and Christmas approaches, and I am so very glad to see you.”

“I suspect you are in need of a toddy, but mind you go carefully. Mrs. Gwinnett is already in fine holiday form.”

“Julian, might you take care of introductions in the nursery?” Mama asked. “I will see our adult guests settled.”

I bowed over Hyperia’s hand. “I will find you before supper. Depend upon it.”

I left her in possession of both my handkerchief and my heart and snatched young Declan up for a piggyback ride.

“You have a cousin in the nursery,” I said as the boy waved a grinning farewell to his parents. “His name is Leander, your late Uncle Harry’s only begotten son.” As best we could gather, anyway. “He’s been looking very much forward to making your acquaintance.”

Declan was no sprite. I’d put his height at just under four feet and his weight at about six stone. Robust for his age, but then, Kerrick topped my own six feet, two inches by at least an inch, and Ginny was tallish and sturdy as well.

By the time we reached the nursery suite, I was puffing a bit and happy to set the boy on his own two feet.

“Does Leander have a baby sister?” Declan asked.

“He has not been so blessed, to the best of my knowledge. Why?”

“Because Orla is loud and stinky, and she only says ‘thank you’ and ‘shoe’ and ‘bye-bye’ and baby words. She will stay with Mama and Papa at night, but if Leander had a baby sister, she might be in the nursery all night.”

“No worries. You two fellows will have the nursery suite to yourselves, save for a few armies, some doting nursemaids, an occasional visit from myself or Her Grace, and frequent interruptions from the staff.”

We reached the door to the playroom, where Leander spent much of his time. The footmen took the boy out to see the horses in the morning, the maids let him tag after them down to the kitchen, and I paid my avuncular visits.

Not an isolated life, but hardly the rollicking mischief Harry and I had got up to regularly.

“Why is your hair like that?” Declan asked.

“Like?”

“White at the ends, but blondish in the middle, and reddish near your head? Mama didn’t say you’d have odd hair.”

What had Ginny led him to expect? What sort of answer would she want me to give this innocently rude nephew?

I stuck to facts. “My hair turned white when I was taken prisoner by the French. I’m regaining my natural color gradually, or most of it. My locks were a shade darker than your papa’s before I was captured.” Except I hadn’t been captured. I’d surrendered to the enemy without a fight, which was a violation of every military ethic in every army from every age.

“Mama says you’ll marry Miss West.”

“I hope to, eventually, but enough prevarication. Time to meet your cousin.” Kerrick was at heart a shy man, despite trotting out a convincing rendition of the boisterous kilted laddie on public occasions. Declan appeared to have a bit of his father’s retiring nature, with which I sympathized.

I rapped on the door, waited long enough for a boy to put away whatever forbidden toy he was playing with, and then proceeded into the warmth of the playroom.

“Leander Caldicott, you have a guest.” I was in the process of changing Leander’s name by deed poll, with the consent of his mother and Arthur’s emphatic support. “Declan, greet your cousin.”

The two boys eyed each other warily. Leander was shorter by two inches, though hardly diminutive for his age. He had Harry’s brownish hair and a chin that could jut like Harry’s too.

“I know all the battles,” Leander said, chin much in evidence. “I have tons of armies.”

“I know all the battles too,” Declan said. “Let’s do Bannockburn. You can be King Edward’s men, and I’ll be the Bruce.”

“Bannock what?”

Both boys looked at me. “Bannockburn,” I said. “A decisive battle in the fight to regain Scottish independence. Robert the Bruce prevailed with his smaller army over King Edward’s larger forces. Edward’s army had been weakened by extended forced marches, and Robert chose his terrain and tactics shrewdly.”

“I can show you,” Declan said. “We need a castle and a marsh and a burn and some woods.”

“Do I get any cavalry soldiers?” Leander asked.

“Hundreds and hundreds, but they can’t save you because of the marsh, the woods, and the burn. You also have longbowmen, but they can’t save you because once the battle is joined, you’d kill your own men as well as mine with your archers.”

“You lose the battle,” I said, “but Scotland eventually loses its independence as well, or most of it.”

Declan scowled. “Not in a battle. Not in a fair fight. Papa says a parcel of merchants and nobles sold Scotland for a mess of pottage.”

“And yet,” I said, “Scotland kept her laws, her schools, and her church, didn’t she? She also gained access to every British port in the world and is on her way to becoming a world-renowned shipbuilding center.”

Leander apparently had no interest in the history lesson. He’d gone to a toy chest and begun setting boxes on the carpet.

“We do Bannockburn,” he said, “and then Salamanca. I get to be Wellington, and you can be the French.”

“What’s Salamanca?”

Salamanca had been a bloodbath, but because casualties had been better than two-to-one in Wellington’s favor, it was the sort of bloodbath characterized as a British victory. Madrid had been liberated (albeit temporarily) within weeks.

I left them to it, the nurserymaid embroidering a glove in the corner nearest the hearth. Boys played with soldiers. I certainly had, as did countless lads across the realm.

And yet, I didn’t care to see the enthusiasm my nephews showed for reenacting death and violence. Didn’t care for it at all. Leander had been playing with soldiers since he’d arrived at the Hall, and I’d reluctantly run through a few battles with him.

As I made my way to Hyperia’s assigned apartment, I asked myself why hadn’t I read to him instead? Sketched with him? Taught him a verse or two?

With an effort that reminded me of carrying Declan up three flights of steps, I pushed the doubts and questions away, because they, too, could be symptomatic of a mind flirting with melancholia. Every answer could point in the direction of failure and inadequacy, and I had already spent far too much time staring into that abyss.

I rapped on Hyperia’s door and found my beloved poking air into the fire. Her sitting room was chilly, doubtless owing to her unexpected arrival, and the fireplace opened on two sides—the bedroom and sitting room, both—which meant neither space was heated as effectively.

“I wasn’t quite honest with you,” Hyperia said, replacing the poker on the stand. “In fact, I might have fibbed.”

My heart nigh stopped beating. “About?”

“Healy,” she said. “He’s up to something, Jules. Something he’s trying to keep from me, and I had to get away from him, lest he involve me in some stupid scheme again.”

“A scheme such as marrying you off for money?” He’d tried that once before, the varlet.

“I don’t know, and I don’t trust him.”

“And he worries you.”

She nodded, and when I took her into my arms, she came willingly, though I could feel the distraction in her.

“Then I am worried too, my dear. Tell me what you’ve observed,” I said, “and we’ll tackle the puzzle together.”

I made the offer with a shameless sense of relief. I thrived on a good puzzle, and the daily conundrum of how to win the battle with Arthur’s stultifying correspondence didn’t qualify.

“I don’t want to burden you,” Hyperia said, slipping her arms about my waist.

“Please, dear lady. Burden me. If I cannot sink my teeth into a good investigation soon, I will lose what few wits I still claim.”

She must have heard the sincerity of my plea, because she led me to the sofa and began an interesting recitation.

“My lady is napping,” Kerrick said, pouring libation from a flask into a glass. “She does that a lot. What of yours?”

“The same.” I’d left Hyperia snuggled up in bed, the most tempting picture imaginable on a chilly winter afternoon. “She’s worried about her brother, who should join us in the next week or so.”

“An occupational hazard of sisterhood. My wife frets about her brothers too.” Kerrick lifted his glass in my direction. “To children who are through with the infernal teething and to the parents who survive it with them.”

I saluted with my brandy. “Why would Ginny worry about me and Arthur?”

Kerrick settled onto the sofa before the library’s largest hearth. For a big man, he moved quietly, and he also spoke quietly in the normal course.

“Arthur, for the obvious reasons and also because the poor lad doesn’t have much enjoyment in life, save for, again, the obvious. To send him off frolicking with Banter was inspired.”

I came down on the same sofa—the warmest perch in the whole room—a few feet away. “I thought so, too, at the time. Now… If Arthur has any sense, he won’t come home, Kerrick. He’ll find a comfortable little chateau whose previous owners expired at the hands of French Republicanism, and he’ll set up housekeeping with Banter. We’ll be lucky to see him for a few weeks in summer every five years.”

“If you think His Grace of Waltham could stay away from his own patch that long, you’re daft.”

“The estate is lovely, I grant you, but the responsibilities that come with it, and with the title…”

Kerrick held his glass up to the light. “Aye, you feel like you can’t breathe. Like a wanted man. Serve on this delegation, sit on that committee, call upon the occasional ambassador, and prance around at Court twice a year. When is a man allowed to take his son out for a wee hack or read a bit of poetry to his wife? You want my earldom? You may have it, provided I can keep the croft behind the lea rig, a good team, and my family.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Some days, laddie, I do.”

Arthur had no wife, and he and Banter would for the most part have to content themselves with the appearance of being good friends and neighbors. Banter’s son was a cuckoo in another’s nest, though being raised along with all the other nestlings at the Banter family seat. As for Arthur, he’d chosen me to serve as Leander’s guardian simply because I planned to bide at the family seat in the duke’s absence.

“How does His Grace manage, Kerrick? How does he get up every day and tilt at a pile of correspondence as voluminous as it is inane? How does he pretend to care about menus that offer far fancier delicacies than he prefers—year after year—and do the pretty with the legions of neighbors who all want to claim a close acquaintance with the ranking title?”

Kerrick sent me an unreadable glance. “Arthur was raised to be that duke, for one thing, and our Arthur is a plodder, for another. Unlike you, who enjoyed the challenge of learning new terrain and new dialects, Arthur is comforted by routine and predictability. He reserves all his adventurousness for the personal aspects of his life, or so Ginny has explained to me. Canny woman, my Ginny. Witness, she married me.”

He finished his drink and rose to set the glass on the sideboard, then commenced inspecting the decanters.

“The amontillado is excellent,” I said. “One of Harry’s favorites.”

“Sherry doesn’t agree with me.” Kerrick poured a serving of Armagnac into a clean glass. “This will do nicely. You are not to invoke the Ghost of Saint Harry to ruin your holiday. You did that last year, and your family was too timorous to interfere with that nonsense. You are fortunate that Orla’s arrival kept me in the north, or I’d have sorted you out properly.”

“I removed myself to London, the better to continue convalescing after my various ordeals.” And once in London, I’d sunk into a misery so profound that fear for my own existence had burned down to a mere ember of honor.

Kerrick snorted and resumed his seat in the corner of the sofa. “Convalescence. Aye, of course. Tell it to your horse. You went off to brood and grieve. No shame in it, but Ginny fretted over you something abominable, and her dealing with childbed at the time. You’re to be jolly this Yuletide.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll beat the English stuffing right out of you. Nothing like a good bout of fisticuffs to restore the humors.”

“Said the man trying to space his children.”

Kerrick sipped his drink. “Mind your tongue, though I do concede you have a point. Ginny wants more children, rather insistently. I’ve withstood temptation thus far because my countess is tired and cross much of the time, and we have years and years to grow our family. Besides, I have four younger brothers, and they’re a healthy lot. The earldom won’t go begging.”

“The dukedom might.” The brandy was working its dubious magic, as was too long a span of time without any man save Harry’s ghost to confide in.

If Harry had been my companion, he would have been smoking a cheroot, despite Her Grace’s prohibition against smoking in the library, and he would have been the one complaining about the burden of being a ducal heir.

“The dukedom is secure,” Kerrick replied. “Miss Hyperia has plans for you, laddie. Depend upon it. Ginny agrees with me, as do her sisters. York is betting you’ll hold out for a bit, but he’s in the minority.”

York was Kerrick’s nickname for Meggie’s husband, another earl, who hailed from Yorkshire rather than Scotland.

“You’ve placed bets?”

“Aye. We can’t be moaning about our teething bairns all the time. I like your Miss Hyperia, by the way. She’s sensible and noticing. Didn’t let the dancing dandies turn her head, though, of course, they weren’t wearing kilts. Much harder to resist a kilted laddie.”

“You’ve clearly been at your flask the whole way down from Town.”

“Laddie mine, I’ve been at my flask the whole way down from Scotland. Fatherhood imbues a man with fortitude of necessity. So what’s your plan?”

Kerrick was not sozzled. He was coaxing me to believe we’d achieved a slightly tipsy sort of coziness, such as men frequently enjoyed at later hours and in exclusively masculine venues.

And bless him and his kilt, he was family, he was a good sort, and he was inviting me to enlist his aid. For form’s sake, I stalled a bit. “Plan for what?”

“How will you go about being the Christmas duke? The job would be easier in Scotland. We don’t make a great fuss over Christmas, as you do down here. We focus on the New Year, the proper celebration of which we take seriously. You lot turn Christmas into days and days of nonsense, and for that, a man needs a wee plan.”

His diction was growing more Scottish, and outside the tall library windows, darkness encroached.

“I have a plan,” realizing that I spoke the truth, only as I said the words. “I will be an anonymous Father Christmas.”

“A ghost? We have enough of those already. My grandmother has been gone twenty years, and I still hear her voice threatening me with a lump of coal. She was half English.” Said in tones that implied allowances must be made.

“I won’t be a ghost, but I will put in train events without attribution.”

“In secret, ye mean. Like a reiver, then.”

“Like a stranger who passes through without anybody much noticing, until flowers bloom around the fountain the next spring.” Holland bulbs Meggie had sent me, of all the whimsical notions. I’d planted them around a poor village’s well in hopes somebody would water them, should they decide to grow and blossom in Spanish soil.

Also because the nuns in that village had been kind and generous in a time of war.

“Why the stealth?”

“Because a supposed drover on his way back to the hills had no business carrying Dutch bulbs in his kit. Those bulbs could have seen me killed, or worse, if I’d been taken by the Bonapartists.”

Kerrick ran a hand through dark auburn hair. “No, lad. Not ‘why creep about the booshes in Spain?’ You’re done with that. This is England, God help me. Why sneak about your own Hall at Yuletide?”

“You said I needed a plan, and I agree. The anonymous part has evolved organically.”

He squinted at me. “Next, you’ll be quoting Tacitus. Never could stand that sort of cleverness.”

“No more spirits for you, Kerrick. We’ve supper to get through.”

“And the night. The nights can be the worst. Little blighter slept most of the way down from Town—the rocking of the coach works a treat between changes—and she’ll be in good form tonight. Tell me about your plan to steal Christmas.”

I judged him sober enough to hold a confidence, only just, though few confidences should be safe from the intimacy of a healthy marriage.

“Last year,” I began, “when I was in such low spirits, I decided that our dear departed deserved their death knells. Our village church hasn’t had a bell since my childhood, and I took it upon myself to rectify the situation. Arranging to replace the cracked bell was one thing I could take off Arthur’s endless list of charitable duties.” At the time, I’d also reasoned that my own demise should be marked by the traditional tolling, for the comfort of what mourners I would have.

Even when profoundly morose, I’d assumed I would have a few, in deference to the family’s standing if nothing else.

“A church bell matters,” Kerrick said. “Cowbells matter too.”

“You aren’t fooling me, Kerrick. Orla is your second child, and Ginny intends that you have more. You are not foxed.”

“Not yet,” he said sanctimoniously. “The Scots are noted for their tenacity. And cowbells do matter.”

“The church bell has arrived in the village, and Vicar Humboldt is determined that we should have it hung before Christmas. A crew will be on hand shortly to see it done, but I’ve kept my connection to the bell to myself.”

“Without attribution,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “One applauds your modesty.”

“It isn’t modesty. Somebody had to see to the matter, and I was in a position to do so. I’ve also found a good pony for my nephew. The boy will be presented with his steed on Christmas morning, again without attribution. The little equine will appear in a previously vacant stall, with a note on the halter declaring him the property of Leander Caldicott.”

“Giving the lad the name, are ye?”

“He’s Harry’s son, and Arthur and I would not have it any other way for our nephew.”

Kerrick finished his drink. “He’s my nephew, too, mind, and cousin to my children. I’ll enjoy another wee nip, I do believe. What else have you planned in the way of unattributed gifts?”

“That is my secret.” My plan was far from complete and rather lacking in details. I’d enjoyed organizing the purchase of the bell, though, and enjoyed the Great Pony Search. “What is not secret is that Uncle Terrence and Aunt Bertha have recently been added to the guest list.”

Kerrick ambled over to the sideboard and filled his flask from the decanter of Armagnac. “I knew we should have stayed in Scotland. Both of the old besoms at once? Perhaps you could have Father Christmas anonymously kidnap me? A fine old holiday tradition in the Borders, kidnapping earls and such.”

“Her Grace feels a sense of duty, and this is her home, and she is our holiday hostess. The guest list has been largely up to her.”

“Shall I lend you one of my spare flasks?” Kerrick hadn’t spilled a drop of the Armagnac.

“I have my own collection, thank you. You’d best go wake your wife if she’s to have time to change for dinner.”

“Good thought. We might be a bit late. Travel wears a body out.”

“Orla is not yet a year old. Be strong, Kerrick, or you will get that bout of fisticuffs you mentioned so fondly.”

“If so, you’ll have to wait in line behind the duchess and Arthur. The Caldicotts don’t mince words when it comes to the proper care of my countess. I’ve always liked that about them. You’d think there was some Scot not too far back on the family tree.”

He sauntered off, kilt swinging, and left me to contemplate ghosts, plans, and possibilities.