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

Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I plowed through the next morning’s correspondence, eager to tear into Harry’s journals. The hour had nonetheless advanced past noon before I moved to a wing chair in front of the fire and embarked on my literary search. Harry had been ahead of me at university, and his observations made for interesting, occasionally insightful, and often slyly hilarious reading.

A certain future duke had all the charm of a gouty mother superior. A marquess’s darling nephew was a wizard at chess but a dunce about his tutor’s pretty daughters. A friendly barmaid dubbed Amadea was mentioned in terms both wistful and worshipful. When Harry had occasion to refer to me, I was always “old Julian” or “old Jules” or, rarely, “dear old Jules.”

By Harry’s standards, I was a dreary soul indeed. My scholarship was thorough but plodding, my literary tastes staid, and my appreciation for solitude positively backward. Old Jules was doomed to wear a bishop’s miter, in Harry’s opinion. The next term, Harry predicted that old Jules would end up teaching classics to spotty university boys.

As I read through these pages, I sensed both my brother’s affection for me—he lamented the tedium of my looming fate—even as I also sensed a creeping disdain. At least when he’d written this journal, Harry had found me boring and something of an embarrassment.

And yet, he noted my accomplishments too. “Old Jules took another first. His Grace will be pleased.” Toward the end of the first volume: “Jules has the respect of the dons, heaven help him. A rigorous mind according to Plumley and a scholar’s academic integrity, whatever that is. One can hardly credit that we are related.”

In truth, I’d been shy. The boisterous confidence of the typical Oxford scholar had eluded me, and that same scholar’s usual entertainments hadn’t interested me. I’d kept to myself and my studies by default, there being little else to do at university if a course in debauchery held no appeal.

Could Harry have been jealous of my bookishness? The mind boggled, and yet, the evidence—

A tap on the door had me closing Harry’s tome. “Enter.”

“Beg pardon, my lord.” Young Jamison half bowed and set a tray on the raised hearth. “Miss West said you would need some sustenance.”

A glance at the clock confirmed that the hour for the midday meal had come and gone. “Miss West is right as usual. What’s on offer?”

“Lentil soup, beef-and-cheddar sandwiches, and a request from the stable for your lordship to pay a call on the horses, if you can spare a moment.”

“Do we know who sent that request?”

“’Tweren’t the lad, sir. He’s in the kitchen learning to knit. Undercook says idle hands are the devil’s workshop, not that I see the lad idling much. Knitting does keep the knees warm.”

Jamison was cheerful, hardworking, and well-liked, but he was also a complacent soul. “Jamison, is Atlas colicking ?”

“I certainly hope not, my lord. Gracious, you do set store by that horse, as is known to all. Colic can be serious of a certainty.”

The food was hot, I was hungry, and yet… if Atlas was in distress, I wanted to know the particulars. If he was looking at all peaked or off, if he was listless…

In my mind, he was “just” a horse. A convenient, if expensive, means of covering ground or transporting goods.

In my heart, he was a friend, a fellow soldier who’d known me in my darkest hours and guarded all my confidences. I had taken care, in my last will and testament, to ensure Atlas became Arthur’s responsibility, just as Arthur had specifically charged me with looking after Beowulf in Arthur’s absence.

“Bank the fire please, Jamison. I’m for the stable.”

“Yes, sir. Mind you bundle up. Wind is fierce today, and Mrs. Gwinnett says we’ll have more snow before Christmas.”

“Won’t that be jolly.” More hauling sled-loads of children up hills, more bright sunshine on sparkling white landscapes.

Stop it, old Jules. I lectured myself all the way to the stable, about gratitude and humility and borrowing trouble, but with every step, I also prayed.

Don’t put my Atlas through this. Don’t make me shoot my horse. Not at Christmas. Not ever. I will climb four mountains of mail per day for the next year, but please… not Atlas.

My dear horse was lipping hay contentedly when I reached his stall. He looked at me as if to inquire what foolishness had sent me out into the bitter elements and then sidled over to his half door. I rewarded his overture with a chin scratch followed by some ear scratches.

“We had him out for a few hours this morning,” the head lad said, eyeing the disappearing pile of hay. “Before the wind picked up. Days like this, the saddle horses are all happy to come in for their nooning. Plow stock likes it cold.”

Daughtery was lanky, ageless, and possessed of the softest hint of a brogue. Horses loved him, and his grooms sang his praises even while they grumbled about horses being cosseted like royalty.

“Atlas seems quite content. Did you send for me, Daughtery?”

“Aye, milord. We have a new arrival, and none of the lads seem to know where he comes from. I thought perhaps this was another one of your lordship’s Christmas gifts.”

“ Another pony?” Blentlinger had promised me discretion about the pony, but among the shire’s ranking equestrian professionals, discretion was apparently not the same as secrecy.

“Not a pony. Come have a look.” He led me between parallel rows of loose-boxes, each one housing a contented equine. The stable was warm enough, thanks to those horses, some of whom wore blankets and all of whom had full water buckets and ample fodder.

“We put him here,” Daughtery said, “the weather being so frigid.” He opened the door to a space off the saddle room that served as both a workroom and a place to pass an idle hour. One of the junior grooms was oiling a pile of harness in the corner farthest from the parlor stove. Two others were playing cribbage on the warmer side of the room.

The aroma would have done a cavalry officer’s heart good. Peat, leather, horse, and hay, blended in a fragrance as delicate and comforting as the nose on well-aged brandy. The brick floor was swept, braided rugs added a homey touch, and the worktable held day-old newspapers as well as some pamphlets on equine care and feeding.

Even here, a kissing bough hung from the main crossbeam. The mistletoe sported not a single white berry, suggesting various maids, laundresses, dairymaids, and village ladies had visited the Hall’s stables.

I needed a moment to realize why Daughtery had brought to me a space usually reserved for the staff. A puppy was curled up on an old horse blanket folded before the parlor stove, a Spaniel from the looks of it. White with brown spots and some flecking.

A puppy. Ballocks. “There was a note.” I was not asking a question.

Daughtery withdrew a folded piece of paper from an interior pocket.

For Leander Caldicott, to be presented to him for naming on Christmas Day.

Complete with the telltale flourish on the capital D in Day.

“A puppy.” The little beast was thumping his tail against the horse blanket before even properly opening his eyes. Once he’d yawned, stretched tail-high, and settled back on his haunches, he faced me with the requisite adorable pink tongue and bright, happy expression. “That is a damned puppy.”

“I dunno as the creature is damned, my lord,” Daughtery said. “Seems rather friendly to me.”

Play at the cribbage board paused, and the lad with his pile of harness was watching me curiously.

“I cannot compete with a ruddy, wretched puppy .” A Spaniel puppy, all silky ears and wagging tail. A cute, warm, wiggly, sweet puppy. I thought of mature, dignified, well-trained Lucky and wanted to throw every kissing bough at the Hall into the flames.

Old Jules was once again the loser in the Christmas token sweepstakes.

“Keep him fed and warm,” I said, passing the note back to Daughtery. “If he’s not keen on exploring the snow, give him an empty stall to use for his latrine. Be sure to keep him out of sight if Leander comes down to pay a call on the horses.”

“Of course, my lord.” Daughtery let the puppy lick his fingers. “It’s a lucky little boy who gets his own puppy for Christmas. They’ll grow up together, the pup and the child. The lad will delight in teaching the pup a few tricks, and the pup will delight in playing with the lad. Can’t do better than a puppy for making a child smile.”

“Delight on every hand,” I muttered, collecting an apple from a half barrel by the door. “If anybody sees Father Christmas, please tell him I’d like a word in private.” All three men regarded me as if I’d been at the toddies. “Happy Christmas, gentlemen.”

I quit the workroom and returned to Atlas’s stall.

“I need a good gallop,” I said, taking a bite out of the apple and passing the rest to my horse. “A hard, fast gallop to someplace with no bells that magically show up the day before mine, no generous bank drafts from mysterious benefactors, no dainty gray ponies, and most assuredly no rubbishing puppies.”

Atlas ate his treat, dropping juice and apple bits into the straw. When he’d demolished my offering and realized no more would be forthcoming, he returned to his pile of hay.

I readjusted my scarf and headed back into the stinging wind. Nobody save Blentlinger and the gamekeeper knew of Lucky, and Blentlinger had been exhorted not merely to discretion, but to silence. Given the weather, I doubted the gamekeeper had stirred from his cottage since Sunday.

“Rubbishing puppy.”

I returned to the Hall and to Harry’s journals. Old Jules wasn’t taking any firsts as Head Elf, but perhaps I could still find some hints of family history lurking between the pages of my late brother’s journal.

I was skimming Harry’s recounting of his first summer house party—his first understanding of the origins of the term merry widow —when it occurred to me that I’d overlooked evidence already in hand.

The anonymous benefactor was one person, based on the consistency of the penmanship in the notes and letter. I hadn’t tried to match that penmanship to anybody at the Hall, but as Top Mail Wrangler, I could do just that.

I contented myself with that brilliant, if belated, insight and went back to Harry’s assessment of the virtues and drawbacks of trysting in linen closets.

Christmas, with its feasting, caroling, and greenery adorning the inside of the Hall, would come on a Wednesday. The greatest benefit to me of the approaching holiday was that no mail would be delivered. Twice the usual load would doubtless arrive on Boxing Day, but on Wednesday, I would be faced with no epistolary straw to spin into gold.

I focused on that boon when Mr. Sigafoose exhorted the congregation to keep gratitude foremost in the mind in the midst of the season’s busyness.

“Be grateful,” he said from the pulpit, “for what warmth and shelter we have, for what health we have, for what time we have with loved ones. Be grateful that soon the days will grow longer and the bitter cold will be behind us. Bestir yourselves to gratitude, and the season truly will be merry and bright.”

“There endeth the true lesson,” Hyperia whispered beside me. “He’s a dear, Jules, though he must be the oldest curate in a cassock.”

“He claims the humbler calling suits him.” Sigafoose presided over services fairly often, Vicar being prone to calls upon his bishop in London, his daughter in Portsmouth, his other daughter in Brighton, and his three sons scattered about the Home Counties, two vicars and a curate.

The service concluded, and Sigafoose took up the traditional post at the foot of the church steps. The day was neither too bright nor too cold, merely wintry, and thus Hyperia and I had taken the sleigh to services. Her Grace, along with Terrence, Pettigrew, and Bertha, had chosen the warmer confines of the coach.

Kerrick and Ginny had pleaded a sleepless night—another sleepless night—and Healy West was enduring the most prolonged head cold in the annals of modern medicine. Aunt Crosby had signaled her intent to enjoy a quiet morning at the Hall by avoiding the breakfast parlor altogether.

“Would you like to drive us home?” I asked Hyperia as we waited for Bertha to finish instructing Sigafoose on the scriptural references that would have enhanced his homily.

“Yes, but I might get us lost.”

“Lost all the way to Town?”

Hyperia smiled graciously at Mrs. Blentlinger, who’d waved to her across the churchyard. “All the way to Paris. I vow our elders bring such tremendous stamina to their bickering. How do they do it, Jules?”

“Why do they do it? There’s Sigafoose, with his tiny cottage and his tiny salary, and he exudes contentment and good cheer most of the time. I grumble more in a day than that man has likely grumbled in his whole life.”

“You are merely vexed because you have been bested by a puppy.”

And by a pony, a bank draft, and a bell. “You must admit, I have been bested by an excessively adorable puppy, not just any stray canine.” Though what was I to do with Lucky? A gamekeeper did not need a herding dog, and the sheep pastures on the home farm were such modest acreage, Lucky would be wasted there too.

For that matter, what was I to do with the bay pony?

“Let’s sneak away,” Hyperia said, pitching her voice low. “If we leave before the coaches, we’ll have better going.”

Mrs. Blentlinger foiled our attempted escape, prosing on at impressive length about the cake raffle—up to nine cakes!—and Mr. Blentlinger’s new fiddle, a holiday gift given early so that he might practice before the Boxing Day fete, don’t you know?

We did know, having been regaled with the same recitation the previous Sunday and the Sunday before that. We knew. We smiled. We nodded. We sank so low as to plead that Atticus was likely getting chilled, though the boy sat in perfect good cheer on the bench of the sleigh, swaddled to the ears in three lap robes. One coach after another departed, until eventually Mr. Blentlinger took pity on us and demanded his wife’s escort back to their home.

“Jules,” Hyperia said, gesturing with her chin, “what do you make of that?”

The churchyard was once again a deserted expanse of trampled slush. The church doors were closed, but around the side of the building, away from the green and the shops and the livery, Sigafoose stood in close conversation with a lady whose face was hidden by her bonnet.

“That’s Miss Winters,” I said. “I recognize the blue cloak.”

Sigafoose and Aunt Crosby’s lady’s maid appeared impervious to the cold and were standing quite close.

“Good heavens.”

While we watched, Sigafoose hugged Winters, and she hugged him back. The embrace wasn’t quick enough to be a mere holiday gesture, but neither was it furtive. They had hugged before, those two. Had apparently been hugging for quite some time.

“We might be seeing the reason Conrad Sigafoose has been content with a curate’s post long after he was qualified for his own vicarage.”

“Oh, Jules.” Hyperia laced her arm through mine and leaned on me ever so gently. “That is sweet and sad. My heart would break if I could see you only a few times a year and then have only moments with you.”

Good to know. As we watched, the embrace ended, and Sigafoose and Winters proceeded arm in arm toward the lych-gate.

“I have an idea, Perry. Might you circle the green a time or two with Atticus? If you pass Miss Winters on the lane, offer her a lift to the Hall. I won’t be but a moment.”

“What is this idea?”

“I intend to abet the course of true love.” I kissed her cheek. “You know, happily ever after, love, and laughter. That sort of thing?” One small step in the direction of holiday generosity that I could take without fear of being bested by the unseen purveyor of puppies, ponies, bells, and bank drafts.

“Don’t tarry in the cold, Jules, or Healy won’t be the only one under the weather.”

I did not tarry. I took up a post at the corner of the church, and after Sigafoose bid farewell to Miss Winters, I waited for him to see me. I expected he’d be nonplussed, if not embarrassed, to know his embrace had been witnessed, but he was all smiles.

“Sigafoose, do I mistake the matter, or have you just parted from a lady of whom you are more than passingly fond?”

“Very fond indeed, my lord. Profoundly fond, and I am pleased to note that she returns my sentiments.” He rocked on his toes like a giddy boy. “Miss Winters and I have been great friends for many years.”

Such great friends that Sigafoose had denied himself advancement in the church in the hopes that Aunt Crosby would continue to impose on the Hall’s hospitality from time to time. Miss Winters had probably been loyal to her employer for the same reason.

An awe-inspiring example of true devotion. “Sigafoose, would your prospects brighten if I offered to pension you in the New Year?” I named a sum that would allow the man to take a wife, at the very least. He and his love would not live like royalty, but they could be snug and happy.

His jovial demeanor faltered. “A pension? My lord, what would I do with a pension?”

Did he not want to marry his great friend? “Enjoy security in your sunset years.”

“A pension? Well, that is most unexpected and, as it turns out, unnecessary. My dearest friend has just had the best news. The very, very best. Might you keep a confidence, my lord?”

Not if it involves rubbishing puppies or perishing ponies. “Of course.”

“Miss Winters is soon to come into an inheritance. Not a vast fortune, but a tidy sum. A tidy sum indeed. The solicitors have been crossing all the t’s and dotting the i’s, and when they finally looked over the family tree from top to bottom and branch to branch, dear Ann was the only heir still extant. I call that a miracle, my lord. A third cousin at some remove, a complete stranger, and my Ann—Miss Winters, rather—becomes an heiress. My happiness on her behalf is without limit.”

He meant this. He was overjoyed, ebullient, and beaming. “Do you plan to court her?” Forward of me to ask, but I would hate to see such devotion thwarted by a misguided excess of humility.

Sigafoose’s gaze went to the bell tower. “One must not be too hasty.”

“Sigafoose, you are not the shepherd boy pining for his goose girl. Make hay while the sun shines and all that.”

He rose up on his toes again and rocked back. “My lord has a point, and thus I tell you, again in strictest confidence, that when certain obligations have been tended to, my Ann has agreed to make me the happiest man in creation. We might well be the first couple to put that glorious new bell to a nuptial use.”

That other glorious new bell. “I won’t offer congratulations prematurely, but I will be the first to do so when matters have been formalized. If you’re to take a wife, though, you will need more coin than a curate commands.”

The sleigh had gone around the green twice with Miss Winters now ensconced beside Hyperia, and one wasn’t to discuss finances on the Sabbath, and my feet were cold, and yet, I had my doubts about this third cousin/stranger. Miss Winters’s inheritance might truly be a well-timed coincidence of the happiest sort.

My faith in coincidences was at low ebb.

“My lord is very generous, though I must refuse on the grounds that I have no need of coin. I’ve been careful, my expenses are modest, and Ann’s good fortune will be ample for our needs. We’ll have the legal fellows set up the trust so her money remains under her control, but funds will not be an issue.”

What a wonderful, humble, nigh saintly man. Why did I want to plant him a facer? “Will you at least let me gift the happy couple with a year rent-free at the cottage Mrs. Swinburne now uses? She’ll be vacating in the spring, and the new curate will want quarters close to the church.”

Take the damned cottage, please.

“I suppose he will, and I cannot expect Ann to dwell in a made-over summer kitchen, can I? She would, though, bless her, and we’d be happy.”

He was happy, deliriously so. Virtue-rewarded, dreams-come-true, patience-of-Job-vindicated happy .

“We’re agreed, then,” I said. “You’ll have the use of the Swinburne cottage for a year without rent. If the bride has no one else to escort her up the aisle, I will happily appropriate that honor.”

“Would you, my lord? Would you truly? Ann would appreciate that. I appreciate that. My cup runneth over, to a degree even the psalmist could not fathom. Happy Christmas, my lord, and I hope to see you on Boxing Day.”

He all but danced off, the wind whipping his cassock around his ankles, a man in transports.

I was not in transports. On the one hand, I was delighted for him and agog at the strength of a love equal to such patience and fortitude as he and his Ann had shown. On the other hand…

I was dogged by the nagging suspicion that on this occasion, the mysterious benefactor had galloped past the post before I’d left the starting line. As an aspiring assistant to Father Christmas, I was an utter failure.

Again.

I climbed into the sleigh when it made its next pass around the green. With Atticus fidgeting beside me on the bench, I smiled politely while Hyperia recounted Miss Winters’s tale of extraordinary Yuletide good fortune.