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

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Theodoric Pettigrew was a grouch and a miser. He’d been infamous for his penny-pinching even in my boyhood, though it was said he’d applied a lavish hand to his daughter’s settlements. She, for reasons a gentleman did not speculate on, had declined to visit at Pettigrew Manor since marrying her East Anglian baronet.

One did not like Pettigrew. He would have been appalled at the very thought of such neighborly presumption. One tolerated him to a greater or lesser degree, and I, oddly enough, fell into the greater category.

When I’d come home from the war the second time, Pettigrew had made it a point to shake my hand in the churchyard. He had looked me in the eye and offered unexpected consolation.

“You made it home, boy. Many did not. Endure for their sakes, if not for your mother’s.”

He hadn’t spoken to me in the intervening year, but his admonition had been timely and helpful. I hadn’t the right to throw my life away, not in despair, pique, shame, or for any other reason.

I had needed the reminder.

Seeing Pettigrew climb down from his ancient sleigh in the livery stable yard and totter into the barn, I silently thanked him for his wisdom. I left Atlas dozing at a hitching rack in the sun, though the air was positively frigid.

“Come to see the gift horse?” Mr. Blentlinger asked, touching a finger to a wool cap. Blentlinger was bald, skinny, and had the honed musculature of a former jockey. He’d ridden over fences—long, grueling, dangerous races—and always seemed to be slightly hunched forward, as if some part of his awareness remained ever in the saddle.

“Gift pony,” I replied, “and yes. You still have no idea who left him here?” That had taken a bit of work, leading the creature in the small hours along the shadows and wrangling gates without alerting the livery’s night watch.

“Beast is in great good health,” Blentlinger said, bustling up the barn aisle. “I don’t like to turn the ponies out with the horses. Too much squabbling, don’t you know, and the horses often get the worst of it. Now that we have another pony, your little friend is a happier fellow.”

“Is somebody else to receive a first mount for Christmas?” We stopped before a stall with a short rope lattice across the door at pony-chest height. Two winter-shaggy equines shared the space, both munching hay from the manger along the outside wall. The window had been closed, doubtless to keep in some warmth, a testament to just how bitter the day was.

“I thought maybe your lordship had had a change of heart,” Blentlinger said.

The larger of the two animals— my pony—came over to sniff Blentlinger’s hand and earned a thorough scratch behind the ears for his good manners. He was a sturdy bay and tall enough that Leander would be able to ride him for several years. The other specimen was dapple gray with a cream mane and tail and was of a more delicate build.

Fancier, one might say.

Further along the aisle, I could hear Pettigrew in discussion with a groom, the topic some recipe for a foot poultice to draw an abscess.

“The little one is quite pretty,” I said, offering a gloved hand for the bay to sniff. “Is he for a girl?”

Blentlinger straightened to the extent he ever stood completely erect. “That ’un’s bound for the Hall, too, my lord. Came with a note, tied to the tail rather than the mane, but much like the other beast.”

Well, of course. Three coincidences. “Might I see the note?”

“Aye. Come along.”

I was in Blentlinger’s stable, and whether a visitor was a lordship or a groom, Blentlinger was king here. I came along to what passed for his office, a stall made over into a human space by virtue of solid walls and a door. The window had glass, and a potbellied stove standing on a bed of bricks made the place blessedly warm.

Blentlinger passed over a vellum card pierced through one corner and trailing a red ribbon.

I am to be delivered to Caldicott Hall on Christmas Eve and given to young Leander for naming on Christmas Day.

The capital D in Day appeared the same as the letter D that had been written in Do enjoy Philadelphia . Tidy, legible, with only a hint of a flourish at the bottom. The hand appeared neither masculine nor feminine and might have been learned anywhere from a dame school to a select academy or from tutors or governesses.

“When did he arrive?”

“Two nights ago. Afore this wretched cold settled in. M’wife says we’re for it all week.”

“Nobody saw the pony delivered?” I knew the answer, but I had to ask.

“Darts night, my lord. We saw the bottom of many a tankard. To be honest, we didn’t notice him until morning. Good thing they get along.”

Somebody had known when darts night was, which again weighed in favor of a local hand. “What’s Pettigrew doing here?”

“Has a mare tending to thrush. MacNeil is a proper scientist when it comes to feet, and even the squire listens to him.”

Plausible. When it came to Atlas’s welfare, I was fussier than a biddy hen with one chick. “I favor apple cider vinegar, myself.”

“The very thing, but squire says the smell puts the mare off, so she won’t hold still for soaking. A lady of particulars, and he do set great store by her. Was his daughter’s horse. What shall we do with the bay, my lord? Or shall we bring two ponies up to the Hall on Christmas Eve?”

Three coincidences. Two ponies. A partridge and a pear tree were doubtless to cross my path at any moment.

“Bring both, I suppose. That’s what their anonymous benefactors directed.” Leander did not need two ponies, for pity’s sake. A guest pony would be one more equine who needed exercise, hay, oats, and pasture, and I well knew that Leander would choose the fancy little gray over the bay, if the decision was left to him.

My bay pony would make a fine—a very fine—guest pony.

Blentlinger opened the door of the stove, tossed in a square of peat, and rose. “We’ll take them both along, then. Was there anything else, my lord?”

Horses didn’t stop making manure just because the local courtesy lord dropped by for his daily dose of coincidence—rather like the Royal Mail and the mound of correspondence I’d left sitting on Arthur’s desk.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Did anybody from your stable take a guest by cart up to the Hall last evening?”

Blentlinger rubbed his chin. “Wouldn’t know, sir. I was home with me missus stringing together pine roping. Wasn’t no money in the pot this morning, but I don’t begrudge the lads the after-hours fares. The Hall is barely a hop, skip, and a jump. Wouldn’t have been but tuppence.”

“Might you inquire as to fares last evening—fares to the Hall?”

“I can ask. I’d best see how Squire and MacNeil are getting on, if your lordship will excuse me. MacNeil saves all his manners for the horses, and we know how the squire is.”

We parted in the stable yard, where I collected Atlas and swung into an exceedingly cold saddle. The sensation—unique in all the world—reminded me of winters in Spain, which for all its sun also boasted a lot of high, cold mountains.

And then there were the Pyrenees, which had tried to finish the job of killing me that the French had started.

Don’t think of that. The voice was Harry’s, and his advice was sound. Two years ago, I’d spent Christmas as a prisoner of the French. One year ago, I’d been a prisoner of melancholia, guilt, shame, ill health, and overwrought nerves.

This year, I was losing a battle of generosity with an unseen opponent, and the weapons of choice were bells, bank drafts, and ponies.

An improvement, of course. Though, as I turned Atlas in the direction of the Hall and the morning mail, I was unhappy to find myself in any sort of contest at all.

“Miss West, good day.” I rose from behind Arthur’s desk, very much on my best behavior because three small boys—the sternest judges of adult male deportment to roam the earth—had crowded into the office with her.

“My lord, we have come to kidnap you. Resistance is futile. Boys, seize him!”

Leander had me by one wrist and Declan by the other in the next instant. Atticus, older, of the servant class, and quite particular about who touched whom and how, hung back.

“Where are you taking me, you brigands?” I put up a minor struggle while Declan made growling noises and Leander trod on the toe of my boot. “I won’t go without a fight.”

“Will too,” Atticus called. “We’re going ice-skating, and Miss says you’re good at it.”

“Ice-skating is not on my calendar.” I was only half teasing. While the morning mail had been light, the contents were mostly reports, which required reading and replies . Both.

“Ice-skating is on your calendar this minute,” Hyperia said, sashaying out the door. “Don’t worry, so is picnicking. We have the basket all packed.”

“And a rope,” Atticus said, closing the study door as I was towed into the corridor. “In case the ice is too thin to hold you. Miss says we must always bring a rope.”

The relatively high quality of Atticus’s diction suggested he participated in this outing willingly. He’d be dropping aitches and blaspheming if he were at all uncomfortable.

After a stop to bundle up in several layers of good English footpad-quality wool, we trooped across the back terrace and headed for the trout pond. The outing should have been a lovely break from office drudgery, but the worst challenge my weakened eyes faced—the very, very worst—was bright sunshine on fresh snow.

I had my spectacles on and pulled my hat brim down, but as I descended into the garden, a thousand tiny hammers slammed away in my eyeballs. The pain would subside, eventually, but the residual sensitivity would linger.

My captors had run ahead, Atticus demonstrating the proper way to slide down the stair railing and nearly landing on his backside on the snow. Declan gave it a try, while Leander pointed and laughed.

“Jules? Were you truly willing to be kidnapped?” Hyperia asked, linking her arm through mine. “Despite the cold, it’s a beautiful day.”

My eyes throbbed, my mind was stuffed with reports, and my heart harbored resentment against a fetching little dappled pony.

“Any day when I can behold my beloved is gorgeous. How did you convince Atticus to play truant from his duties?”

“He hasn’t many duties at the moment, thanks to the snow. The stable is quiet when nobody goes visiting or to market, and Mrs. Gwinnett has the holiday preparations down to a well-rehearsed parade drill. What did you learn at the livery stable?”

A snowball fight commenced, as of course it must. Every boy for himself, and none of them blessed with good enough aim to be much of a threat.

“Blentlinger was home last night. He will make inquiries among his grooms, but I could not be very specific, lest—here they come.”

The lads had taken it into their heads to gang up on me, and from close range, I was pelted with three snowballs at once.

“Villains!” I bellowed. “Halt in the king’s name!”

They scampered off to the trout pond, shrieking with glee.

“Harry and I would go after Papa the same way,” I said, brushing at my sleeves, chest, and thighs. “Papa got even.”

“Washed your little faces with snow?”

“Thoroughly, and made sure we got it in our hair and down our backs.” What had Arthur made of that nonsense? Had Papa missed our foolishness when we’d grown older and more dignified?

“You can’t be too rough with them, Jules. These are boys without brothers. Bring them along slowly in the manly art of horseplay.”

“Interesting observation. I miss Arthur.” I had not meant to say that. In fact, I hadn’t even properly thought it, for all I’d spoken the absolute truth.

“I wish I could say I miss Healy, but I’m merely worried about him. What could be keeping him in Town?”

We arrived at the trout pond, which some obliging footmen—doubtless between snowball fights—had scraped clean of snow on the shallower half. Any adult who fell through the ice should have been able to stand up in that end of the pond.

“Perhaps Healy is loath to risk being kidnapped,” I said. “Town is quiet over the holidays, while the shires perk up a bit socially. Why isn’t Healy at the family seat?”

“Good question. The picnic basket and skates are in the gazebo. Jules, is something wrong?”

She knew me better than I knew myself. “Mr. Blentlinger is to deliver two ponies to the Hall on Christmas Eve, both for Leander.”

“Two?”

“Somebody procured a dainty dapple gray for him. He’ll outgrow the pony in a year, two at most, but it’s a very fine beast.”

“Finer than yours?”

“Arguably. That’s not the point. Who is doing this, Hyperia, and why?”

We tromped up into the gazebo while I silently lectured myself about the stupidity of indulging in unjustified low spirits and the ridiculousness of a grown man pouting because somebody else had been generous.

Absolute nonsense, and yet…

“Two bells, two bank drafts, two ponies,” Hyperia muttered, taking a seat on a bench along the side of the gazebo facing the pond. “Odd, I grant you. Have you more good deeds planned?”

“I do now. Let’s find our skates.”

We sorted through a box full of skates, got them strapped on little feet and on our own. The boys clomped down the steps and awkwardly across the snow.

“You lot wait here,” I said. “Where is the rope?”

Hyperia hefted a stout length of hemp. “Be careful, Julian.”

“Be careful,” Declan mimicked. “You might fall and break your bum.”

“Don’t say bum,” Leander countered, shoving his cousin. “It isn’t polite.”

“What should I say? Don’t break your ruddy arse?”

Hyperia pretended to admire the view of the Hall, while Atticus looked equally horrified and fascinated.

“Language, gentlemen,” I snapped, more forcefully than I’d meant to.

“Well, he’s a flatus-faced Scot,” Leander muttered.

“And you’re a—”

Hyperia put her hand over Declan’s mouth. “His lordship will strike out across the ice. This could be a dangerous moment.”

She exaggerated, of course. As cold as it had been, as still as the pond was, the ice ought to hold me, Atlas, and Beowulf, Arthur’s grand gelding.

I started off on a circuit near the bank, and the skill came back to me instantly. Harry and I had skated almost as much as we’d gone fishing and climbed trees, and this pond had been our favorite patch for winter fun.

A few moments later, I was executing a pirouette in the center of the pond, then on one skate a la arabesque in a curving line back to the bank. I stopped with a sidewise scrape of blades over ice and bowed.

“Miss West, if you’d care to join me?”

“I want to do that,” Atticus said. “What you just did. That spinning thing.”

Declan returned fire immediately. “You’ll get dizzy and fall on your—”

“One watches a fixed spot while whirling around,” I said. “One does not get dizzy, though it takes practice. Miss West, I am at your service.”

Hyperia and I had skated together previously, just as we’d ridden horseback together, danced, and even on one memorable occasion, fenced. Any excuse to hold her hand was cause for joy, and we were soon cutting a dash en promenade .

“Who is my next partner?” Hyperia asked when I returned her to the bank.

We introduced the boys to the rudiments of skating, each child starting off holding two adult hands, then one, then wobbling carefully on his own and sometimes coming to grief.

“They’ll have bruises,” Hyperia said as the activity shifted to emptying the picnic basket.

“They had fun, and bruises are sometimes part of it.” I passed her a cheese tart, the boys having chosen to eat sitting on a wool blanket spread over the ice. Hyperia and I enjoyed the relatively civilized comfort of the gazebo.

“You are not having fun.” She took a bite of tart and passed it back. “Perhaps you need a toddy.”

That way lay ruin. “Sorry. I am prone to the blue devils this time of year.”

“Why?” Hyperia asked, fishing a cinnamon biscuit out of the basket. “Why now?”

“Because it’s cold and dark?” Very cold and very dark, some years, but Hyperia’s question— why now? —caught my attention. “Because I miss loved ones more at the holidays?”

She passed me a biscuit, though I wasn’t done with my cheese tart. “When did it start, Jules? How old were you when you took the holidays into dislike?”

I thought back as the boys, now skateless, went running and sliding across the ice. “I wasn’t keen on Christmas even before I went to Oxford.” Sixteen and full of myself. As a scholar, I was the equal of most, but as a man of the world, I’d had much to learn. Harry had done what he could to educate me, but some things a fellow had to sort out for himself.

“Have you always disliked Yuletide?”

I didn’t dislike the holidays, exactly. I dreaded them and endured with a sort of bewildered wistfulness most years.

“When I was very young, I looked forward to the whole business. From Stirring Up Sunday to Twelfth Night. As an adult, I don’t see how anybody can sustain a sense of celebration for five straight weeks. The Scots probably have the right of it. A roast at Christmas, a couple days of merriment over the New Year’s bonfires, and onward we march.”

Sensible and far less subject to the judgmental eye of any religious authority.

“Tell me your first Christmas memory, Jules.”

My eyes still hurt, but I wanted to watch the boys. The center of the pond might not be as safe as the parts the footmen had scraped clean, and little boys had a positive instinct for getting into mischief. The game now was for one boy to run as fast he could, then collapse onto the ice and slide into the other two fellows, who tried to stay on their feet when impacted by a human cannonball.

The result, every time, was a heap of laughing, yelling boys on the ice, then an argument over whose turn it was to slide next.

“I was given my first pony at Christmas,” I said slowly. “I’d been in the saddle enough to have a decent seat, but I rode one of Arthur’s old castoffs or one of the docile little mares kept to pull the trap. I loved them all and was happy just to have a mount.”

“But then you had your very own steed.”

“Gilgamesh, hero of a thousand epics. Gray, fat, but surprisingly game over a fence. He lived to be eight-and-twenty. Took a nap out in the paddock one day and simply did not wake up. I had theoretically embarked on early manhood at that point, but I sat beside him and cried like an orphan. The grooms left me to it, and then I helped bury him where he lay.”

The memory should have been sad—would Leander one day cry for his first pony?—but instead provided an odd comfort. The grief had been crushing at the time, the true end of my childhood and the loss of a friend who’d shared many of childhood’s best hours with me.

In the intervening years, I’d shed most of that grief and kept the memories. I could get through another Yuletide too.

“Tell me about the day you met your Gilgamesh,” Hyperia said, “and eat that cheese tart. Being held hostage by brigands is hungry work.”

I kissed her cheek and finished my tart, then told her about one of the most joyous days of my life.

My mood was better for having spent time with Hyperia and for having recounted some happy boyhood memories of the holidays.

The Christmas morning I’d first beheld Gilgamesh peering at me placidly with wisps of hay adorning his forelock, I had been the happiest lad in creation. That had been the finest Christmas ever.

The next year, Mama had organized a scavenger hunt, boys against the girls, and the competition had gone on for days. Harry took a notion to leave our sisters false clues in his best imitation of Her Grace’s handwriting, the ladies retaliated in kind, and we boys fell for it. Mama’s hints became increasingly arcane—and in verse too—and the terrain covered by the hunt expanded to include the entire Hall.

Another delightful Christmas, though I recalled Aunt Crosby muttering endlessly that year about why must children run everywhere and why can’t they play out of doors if they must be so loud.

I was capable of enjoying the holidays. I’d just misplaced the knack somewhere along the way, and what had been misplaced could be found.

Despite throbbing eyes, I tackled the climb to the summit of Mount Morning Mail with renewed vigor and, for the first time, subdued the lot before the midday meal. Partly in deference to my vision, and partly out of improved spirits, I skimmed the reports and dashed off replies noteworthy for their brevity.

Excellent work. Carry on, and I will look forward to next month’s totals.

“Julian, might I have a moment of your time?”

My mother had probably knocked, but I’d been so engrossed in shirking my duty that I hadn’t heard her.

“Your Grace.” I started to rise, but she waved me back into my seat.

“Must we be so formal even when private?” She sank into a wing chair by the hearth, and I took the one opposite her.

“Of course not, and yes, you can have all the moments of my time you like. The correspondence has been subdued for the nonce.”

Her Grace stuffed a pillow at her back. “One sometimes wonders if the invention of the written word was a good thing. Maybe we were better off when we had to express ourselves to one another directly. No dispatches from the battlefield. No pigeons just trying to get safely home despite the weight of a message about their necks.”

“You are feeling fanciful.”

“My besetting sin as a young lady was too much imagination. I have come to ask a favor.”

Never in my entire life had my mother asked a favor of me. She had recently ordered me to join her at a house party, where I had been tasked with finding some missing letters, but a favor? We were breaking new and encouraging ground—I hoped.

“Ask. If it is within my power to give, it’s yours.”

“Does it feel grand to say that?”

She was in a fanciful, contrary mood. “Not grand, honorable.” Then too, all my attempts to be magnanimous thus far had been foiled by the anonymous benefactor.

“I’d like to invite Theodoric Pettigrew to join us for Christmas and as much of the Twelve Days as he pleases to spare us.”

Of all the unlikely requests… “Certainly, but might I ask why?” We had oodles of room, and one more curmudgeon in the collection couldn’t be that much more of a bother.

“His daughter has written to me. She’s approaching another lying-in, and her holidays will be subdued, or she would invite her papa to East Anglia. He doesn’t accept her invitations, says he cannot abandon his acres at the darkest time of year, and she worries about him.”

And Pettigrew, whatever his faults, doubtless worried about his daughter. “Will he accept your invitation?”

“No, but he might accept yours. He was a soldier, and you aren’t the duke, and I’m sure you’ll think of some way to appeal to his vanity.”

“Pettigrew is dignified, not vain.” Also gruff, grouchy, and miserly.

“Invite him in person, Julian. Don’t just send a scribbled note. Use your imagination and be gracious.”

I could not lie to Pettigrew, nor would he be susceptible to flattery. Mama had handed me a puzzle, and I did enjoy puzzles in the normal course. I gathered my courage in one hand and my improved spirits in the other and put a question to my mother.

“I will be the soul of diplomacy, and in return perhaps you might answer a question for me: When did I come to dislike the Yuletide?” If I could figure out the when, I might gain greater insight into the why and thus into how to remedy the situation.

Her Grace rearranged the pillow at her back in the same manner I’d seen Aunt Crosby fuss. “Dislike Yuletide?”

“Or Yuletide dislikes me. The blue devils are trying to take up residence where all should be merry and bright. This has become an annual misery, predating my time in uniform and even my time at university. I don’t care for it.”

Her Grace nodded. “When all around you are in high spirits, your own doldrums are a special penance. One sympathizes, but I would have to give the matter some thought and consult a diary or two. You have never indulged in willful unpleasantness, Julian, but you are given to seriousness, sometimes excessively so.”

Did I get that from my father—my biological father? Claudius, Duke of Waltham, had been conscious of his rank, but not prone to undue gravity. He’d been downright silly on many occasions.

The moment was unusual, in that Her Grace and I were private, and she had just asked me for a favor—for two favors, in truth. I was not only to entice Pettigrew to join the household for a visit, I was to endure his dour company among our rogues gallery of elders.

Instead of a scavenger hunt, we could hold a contest for best holiday grouch honors.

Except that I might win.

“I have wonderful memories of the holidays in childhood,” I said. “The day I met Gilgamesh, skating with Harry on the trout pond, sitting on Papa’s lap when we took the sleigh to divine services, that glorious scavenger hunt you organized…”

“Your father wrote half the clues,” the duchess replied. “He declared the whole notion ingenious and tried to take control of it, but as he was the neutral referee of record, I scotched that notion.”

My father… Except the duke hadn’t been my father. Ask her . “Your Grace…”

“I thought we had agreed that formality need not constrain us in private, my lord. ”

“Very well, then. I have a somewhat delicate question to put to you.”

She waved a hand. “What you and Miss West get up to discreetly is not my business. You know I think the two of you would suit. You already are suiting , or do I miss my guess?”

Did the duchess know about that little passage between dressing closets? Not the question of the moment.

“I have been wondering lately about—”

A tap sounded on the door, followed by Hyperia poking her head into the room. “Luncheon is—excuse me. I wasn’t aware you had company, Jules. In any case, you two, time to eat. If you leave me and Kerrick to contend with the elders alone, we will run all the way to Scotland before suppertime. Ginny was up half the night and is pleading a nap. Please do not desert me in my hour of need.”

She drew the door closed, and the duchess was on her feet. “Such a dear person, your Miss West. Doesn’t miss much either. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

Ask her . Except then we’d be late for luncheon, because I needed more than a name. I needed an explanation for that name, context, a recounting of how matters stood between the parties now, assuming my father was extant, though he probably wasn’t.

“The query will keep for another time,” I said, holding the door for Her Grace. “Nothing of any moment, and we must not leave Kerrick and Hyperia to manage without reinforcements.”

“Perish the thought. Will you ride over to call on old Pettigrew today?”

I didn’t want to. The sun was as bright as ever, and I had for once pulled even in the race to deal with Arthur’s mail.

I offered Her Grace my arm as we moved down the chilly corridor. “Tomorrow won’t do?”

“Mrs. Swinburne was very certain we’re in for more snow before the end of the week. She was in great high spirits this morning. Trudged to the manor in this weather and asked for a word with me. She’s all of a sudden making plans to travel in the spring. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

I knew a bit too much about that and not enough. “Who doesn’t long to see some of the world? I assume she’s setting a course for Philadelphia?”

“Directly, and hasn’t said if it’s a visit or a remove. I doubt we’ll see her again, Julian.”

“We will be loyal correspondents, then, and wish her the best.”

“I will miss her. She was a staunch ally. Stood with me even against your father. He wanted to have a shooting party right here at the Hall, and between us we convinced him otherwise. Swinnie threatened to give notice, and the matter was decided for the distaff.”

Your father . “You need not fear the near occasion of any shooting parties, at least not while I’m in residence.”

She paused outside the breakfast parlor. “Gunfire bothers you?”

“Not as badly as it used to, but yes. I expect it always will.”

My mother hugged me, and I was glad I hadn’t opened the awkward topic of my paternity. Her Grace and I hadn’t been on hugging terms. We’d exchanged embraces since I’d sold my commission, but with a few notable exceptions, those had been mostly gestures.

This was a mama hugging her son. “If I haven’t said it before, Julian, I am saying it now: I am grateful every day, to the depths of my soul, that you came home to us.”

She preceded me into the breakfast parlor, from whence emanated warmth and the smell of a cloved ham.

I lingered in the corridor for a moment, grateful to the depths of my own soul. I might not know who my father was, but I was damned sure who had brought me into this world and had loved me every day since.