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

Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For reasons known only to Father Christmas himself, Christmas Eve saw the delivery of a mere dozen bits of mail. Two brief reports—first paragraph/last paragraph affairs—a few invoices, holiday greetings from Lady Ophelia, some parliamentary whatnot, and a small package sent by express from Town to my attention.

A month earlier, I would have needed an entire morning to win even so paltry a skirmish. I considered using my unexpected liberty for a jaunt to the stable, but the grooms had insisted on taking over the puppy’s exercise sessions.

I wished them the joy of that task. More interesting work awaited me in Hyperia’s sitting room, and there I did go. On the way, I had to dodge a dozen footmen and maids intent on bringing long ropes of pine boughs into the house, replacing the kissing boughs that had been denuded of all of their berries, and exchanging shriveled cloved oranges for fresh.

As I reached the landing on the main staircase, a pair of underfootmen nearly smacked me in the face with the top of a six-foot-long fir tree.

“Beg pardon, milord,” one of them said. “Not used to hauling trees about.”

“The custom is German.” I dodged around waving boughs. “Our dear queen has taken to setting up holiday trees in the royal residences.” The smell was quite pleasant, though the mess and bother were considerable.

“We’re being fashionable, then?” the second footman asked. “Setting the trends?”

“Or indulging the duchess’s whims.” Which might have been in honor of Arthur, who was deep in the heart of Christmas tree territory. “Carry on, and mind you try not to knock over anything valuable.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, milord, assuming you don’t consider Young Jamison valuable.” They went grinning on their way, and I, in good enough spirits, went upon mine. To my delight, Hyperia was alone in her cozy parlor, though the room had never struck me as cozy when Harry had been in residence.

“Jules, greetings. Are you fleeing the Royal Mail again?” She sat by the reading table at the window, the late morning light finding fiery highlights in her hair. The table beside her held a tea service for one. I kissed her crown and poured out, steam curling from the cup.

“I was given a light sentence in mail jail for once, though I assume I’ll pay for that boon come Boxing Day. Share a cup with me?”

She gestured to the opposite chair. “Of course. The elves are very much in evidence this morning, and I retreated in defense of my wits. The duchess took Aunt Bertha into the village to meet with the Boxing Day Committee, and Aunt Crosby pleaded the need to see to her own correspondence. Healy is pacing about the library and muttering, and Kerrick took a breakfast tray up to Ginny and hasn’t been seen since.”

“You have been gathering intelligence.” I added a dollop of honey to the jasmine green tea and passed cup and saucer across the table.

“One must,” she said, “though I haven’t any notion what Squire Pettigrew and Uncle Terrence are about. The squire flew down the drive in the sleigh, Terrence beside him, and they were arguing about some horse race.”

“Off to root through old Jockey Club form books, would be my guess. Only holy Scripture will do when debating who came in second in the 1797 Witless and Wanton Stakes.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Not that I know of, and unless you consider the whole of a London Season. How is it you’ve made this room less Harry’s and more yours?”

“I changed the curtains. Harry preferred forest green to my burgundy, and I moved this table closer to the window.”

She’d done more than that. The table was graced by a pea green lace runner in the middle of which sat a bouquet of pink camellias. The sideboard had a matching lace runner and bouquet, and the candles on the mantel—unlit at present—were also green and set straight into shining brass holders.

The escritoire was tidy, the pillows on the sofa arranged just so in shades of cream, pink, and emerald. A pretty cloisonné music box that I’d last seen in the music room of Healy’s London residence added another touch of brightness to the mantel.

“Harry would approve of the changes, even the pink flowers.” He would grumble about fripperies and fussing, but Harry had genuinely liked women and appreciated the grace and beauty they’d brought to his life.

“He’s on your mind today?” Hyperia took a sip of the tea and passed the cup back to me. “Finish it. I’ve already had two cups.”

“I came up here hoping to read to the end of the next to last journal. The rest of the week will be busy, what with the usual feast, then the Boxing Day nonsense in the village, and calls, and the big market on Saturday… It doesn’t seem right that we’ll have no reception at the Hall, but I suppose that’s for the best.” Traditions were merely that, rather than immutable laws handed down from heaven.

That I would miss having the entire shire larking about the ballroom, miss the noise and revelry, was to be expected.

Hyperia rose and retrieved Harry’s journal from the sideboard and her workbasket from beside the sofa. “You liked all the nonsense and riot when the Boxing reception was here.”

“I was a boy the last time the Hall hosted such festivities. The memories are happy, albeit characterized by headaches and dyspepsia. Harry was always trying to goad me into outlandish behaviors—shooting peas through a straw from the minstrel’s gallery to see who could pot Mrs. Vicar’s bonnet—and nobody was punished for high spirits. Mayhem was his native element, and Yuletide was allowable mayhem.”

“While his journals are not exactly merry?”

“Not generally.” Though Harry had offered humorous commentary in many places. “Nor have they shed any light on my paternity.”

Hyperia kissed my cheek, patted my shoulder, set the journal beside me, and took up her embroidery. The whole sequence took her less than thirty seconds, but conveyed support, a touch of command, encouragement, and a gracious yielding to my need for privacy.

I had read in silence for the better part of an hour—Harry was both eager to leave for Spain and sorry to quit his Town indulgences—when I turned a page, and Papa’s letter once again fluttered free. I picked it up this time and, after a moment’s hesitation, decided that by right of the Lord of the Mail, I was permitted to read such a brief epistle.

The missive turned out to be addressed not to Harry, but to Her Grace, and that was just the first of the surprises it contained.

My darling duchess,

This letter is by way of apology first and overture second. You must believe me when I say that I blame myself for our current contretemps. Had I been a better husband, a faithful, dependable, considerate husband, you would not have been so easily tempted. I am most unhappy with my brother, and he with me, but he was only able to prey upon your loneliness and discontent because I had so bitterly disappointed you.

I apologize for my transgressions, dearest Dot. I have the great good fortune to be married to the only woman in England who was willing to consider a union with me despite my title, rather than because of it. I have been lamentably slow to realize how blessed I am in my wife, and Thomas was lamentably quick to take advantage of my stupidity.

Thomas has convincingly apologized. He told me that you were reluctant, that you both regret the whole business, but you could not regret your actions, my darling, as deeply as I regret mine. If it is your wish to live apart, I will bide up in Town, and you and the children can remain at the Hall. I would ask for the sake of appearances, that we occasionally manufacture displays of public cordiality. On my part, they will be expressions of genuine and abiding regard.

In the alternative, I offer you this: My assurances as a gentleman (I can hear you growling, my dearest), a peer, and a man who knows he has bungled badly that the child will be loved and raised as my own. That I will be as doting a papa upon this next addition to the nursery as I have ever been to our other offspring, and that nobody—not the buffoons in the Lords or the spite-mongers in Mayfair—will ever know that this child is anything but the beloved fruit of a contented and devoted union.

I am asking you to put the past behind us, to give me another chance, Dot, and to let me show you that I can be not a perfect husband, but appreciably better than I have been.

All my love,

Claudius

I read the letter from start to finish, stared hard at the signature, then read it again, and still the significance was hard to grasp. When in doubt…

“Perry, might you look at something for me?”

“Of course.” She set aside her hoop and took the letter. As I watched from across the table, her expression shifted from dismay to puzzlement. “His late Grace is all but groveling.”

“For Papa, that is abject terror barely concealed behind abject remorse. The villain of the piece appears to be Uncle Thomas.” My father.

She set aside the letter. “You do resemble him. You have the Fennington nose, but about the eyes and chin, you are a Caldicott.”

Which meant I resembled the late duke, too, but more nearly… Uncle Thomas? “Tommie was never particularly interested in me, not that I could sense. I was a child to impress with his jokes and card tricks and otherwise too serious for his tastes. He was avuncularly affectionate, but he and Harry were more temperamentally alike. Both spares, both fond of the ladies, both up for any mischief.”

“If Thomas is your father, then you are absolutely a Caldicott, Jules. You would qualify for the succession had Thomas been married to your mother.”

This observation, while true, brought no joy. Uncle Thomas had poached on his brother’s preserves. The duke had cast his own sibling as a predator, taking advantage of the young duchess’s fury and broken heart to lure her into infidelity.

“Jules, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that when we are dispirited in a certain regard, any distraction can entice us. Drink, danger, debauchery… Those follies might have some appeal in the usual course, but when they promise to hold demons at bay, they gain an insidious allure.”

Hyperia came around the table and climbed into my lap. “The duchess was young, and she’d already presented Claudius with his much-vaunted heir and spare. He was clearly playing by rules that hurt her, and she decided to hurt him back. Her strategy apparently worked. Claudius did not grow a halo, but he stopped taking her for granted.”

Interesting analysis. “Not quite as she intended it to work, because here I am, a very great complication when viewed from a certain perspective.” I carried Hyperia to the sofa and settled into what I thought of as our cuddling corner. “I thought Uncle Tommie a capital old thing when I was young, but as I went off to school, he became tedious. Not in the same league as the aunties or Uncle Terrence, but somebody I did not want to sit next to at supper.”

“The same stories, the same jokes?” Hyperia suggested.

“And they weren’t that amusing the first time.”

We remained on the sofa for some while, until Hyperia retrieved her needlework, and resumed working while sitting beside me.

I rummaged around in my mind and sorted through reactions.

I had an answer. I was the son of Dorothea, Her Grace of Waltham, and Lord Thomas Caldicott. Uncle Tommie hadn’t felt like a father, but then, Claudius had fulfilled that role in my life. In every regard, the late duke had been a loving, devoted, interested, and caring parent to me.

He and my mother had clearly settled into some sort of truce, and by the time I was old enough to assess their marriage with any detachment, even I could see that Claudius and Dorothea were fond allies. They’d come through their war and made peace with each other, if not with Uncle Tommie.

“Poor Aunt Crosby,” I said slowly. “She was doubtless married to Thomas before she realized that her sister-by-marriage had sampled his dubious charms first.” Distasteful didn’t begin to describe…

“And Crosby had no children,” Hyperia pointed out, holding her hoop at arm’s length. “Her son or grandson might well have become the duke.”

Hyperia, who did not want children, would notice that. “What a ruddy muddle. What a ruddy, rubbishing… I am all at sea, Hyperia, and I suspect I will be for some time.”

Uncle Tommie had not set the sort of example to inspire filial admiration. I hadn’t even truly liked him and had not sensed any particular liking on his part for me. Perhaps I’d been an embarrassment to him. I should have been a walking reproach.

I and my Fennington nose.

“You want to go for a gallop,” Hyperia said. “The lanes should be safe enough.”

“I either go for a gallop, or I fear you will find me swimming laps in Mrs. Gwinnett’s holiday punchbowl. I cannot credit… Uncle Tommie. Of all the possibilities, he wasn’t on the list.”

“ Nor should he have been . Give Atlas a kiss on the nose for me.”

I got to my feet, abruptly craving cold, fresh air. “You don’t mind that I’m abandoning you?”

“You are not abandoning me, Jules.” Hyperia rose as well and took my hand. “First, you have to know I don’t care who your father was. Second, the old duke loved you and raised you, and you doubtless loved him. That’s a blessing, Jules. Think of all the times he took you up before him in the saddle, all the times he admired your schoolwork or scolded you for being naughty. You had at least one good father, and that’s more than many boys with a regular provenance have.”

Hyperia’s pragmatic, logical sentiments comforted me. She was right: I had much to be grateful for. “Is there a third?”

“Third, I love you, and this letter doesn’t change who you are. The sole result might be that we can look upon Aunt Crosby more compassionately.”

“True.” We could. The two of us, a pair united in love and mutual support. I had very, very much to be grateful for.

Hyperia kissed me on the mouth, turned me by the shoulders, and gave me a friendly shove toward the door. “Gallop safely.”

A contradiction in terms, given the footing. “I’ll see you at luncheon.”

“Mind the elves, and no swimming in punchbowls.”

I crossed the few steps back to her, hugged her hard, kissed her fiercely, and left the ruddy, rubbishing letter sitting beside the pink camellias on the pea green lace runner.

Despite the bright sunshine, despite the lanes being slushy and muddy between frozen shady patches, despite all the tumult of recent weeks, the magic of time on horseback fortified me. Atlas and I held ourselves to extended canters rather than true galloping, and the sensation of mud flying behind us, the stinging wind whistling past our ears blew away a considerable quantity of cobwebs.

The mail, the grumbling elders, the uncertainty of Atticus’s future, and even the bittersweet nature of Yuletide memories all receded to more manageable proportions.

“Grumbling over the dratted mail is how I fret that Arthur won’t come home,” I informed my horse as we turned up the path that led to the stable yard. “If I become too adept at mucking through that pile of straw, then Arthur might abandon us for good. Not logical, but the theory lurks in my mind anyway.”

Atlas paused to paw messily at a slush puddle, flinging mud and wet snow all over the lane.

“Spring will come. I take your point. Walk on, naughty beast.”

After a few more splashes with the other front hoof, Atlas deigned to comply.

“My tokens arrived from London,” I told him, simply because I enjoyed talking to my horse. “I did not get you a particular gift, my friend, but I hope good care and ample fodder will suffice.” He’d have a bran mash tonight with plenty of apples and a generous tot of molasses. Feasting at Yuletide wasn’t only for the formal dining room.

We slopped into the stable yard, and I patted him soundly on the neck before swinging down.

“He was overdue for an outing,” Daughtery said, taking the reins over Atlas’s head. “Mrs. Swinburne says more snow tonight, and those clouds to the west agree with her.”

High, wispy mare’s tails. “I vote tomorrow,” I said, having acquired in Spain some ability to predict weather. “Before noon, but tomorrow.”

“Don’t tell the lads. They’ll start placing bets. More bets. Happy Christmas, my lord.”

“Happy Christmas.” I patted Atlas’s rump as Daughtery led him off and promised myself, even if we had to trot sedately along the fence lines, I would not go so long between rides again. In the same spirit of renewed determination, I paid a call on Beowulf, Arthur’s personal mount. He was a grand, dignified gelding who would shame the puppy with his eagerness where apples were concerned.

I had initially been religious about taking Bey out along the usual bridle paths at the same early hour Arthur had favored, but I soon realized the grooms envied me that privilege. In their way, looking after Bey was a means of demonstrating loyalty to the absent duke, whom they held in the very highest regard.

My availability to ride Beowulf had strategically ebbed, less mail had piled up, and the stable yard was happier for my sacrifice. I collected two apples and found Beowulf dozing, hip cocked, in his capacious corner stall. His quarters had two windows and an attached run, the equivalent of the ducal suite for equines.

“I come from the east bearing gifts,” I said, paring the apple into quarters. “The least you can do is look interested.”

I was not the right purveyor of sweets, but Beowulf was a gentleman. He ambled over to his half door and took a treat from my hand.

“You miss him too,” I said, scratching a hairy equine ear. “We’ll continue to guard the castle in his absence, but it’s not the same without him, is it?”

Beowulf butted my chest with his nose. I fed him the rest of the apples and got my fingernails thoroughly dirty scratching him in several favored locations while he ignored my sentimental nonsense.

On this chilly, bright Christmas Eve, I missed both of my brothers, and the old duke, who’d been banned from appointing himself Lord of Misrule when I’d turned ten. Mama, the staff, and my siblings had all rebelled against ceding that much authority to so dodgy a character as His Grace of Waltham, and Papa had good-naturedly handed his scepter over to wee Ginny, who’d declared sweets mandatory at every meal.

Though Harry had likely whispered that suggestion into her ear.

I gave Beowulf a final pat on the neck and had just emerged into the nigh blinding sunshine when I realized what detail about Papa’s epistolary olive branch had been bothering me since my first reading of it.

Why had that letter fallen into Harry’s hands? The document was ancient, the ink fading, the paper yellow with age. The contents did not in any way affect Harry’s standing in the ducal succession. Why had Harry known more about my paternity than I had? Why had he kept that knowledge from me? Out of kindness, out of his compulsive need to hoard secrets, or perhaps because the old duke had entrusted him with the knowledge?

I would never know, because Harry was no longer extant.

I had an answer to my original query—Lord Thomas Caldicott was my biological progenitor. That information was, upon reflection, more disappointment than relief. Yes, I was a Caldicott, as Hyperia had pointed out, but only by means most unfortunate.

And that revelation had left me with more questions. Why? Why hadn’t either parent enlightened me? Why hadn’t Arthur, or had the truth been kept from him too?

Be careful what you wish for, old Jules.

A happy yapping in the yearling paddock distracted me from what could easily become brooding. Atticus and another figure were tossing the ball for the Spaniel, who gamboled after his prize with more exuberance than grace.

I had to squint and shade my eyes and approach the paddock to make out the fact that Atticus’s companion was Aunt Crosby. She clapped her hands and called to the puppy and made a great fuss over the little beast when he dropped the ball at her feet.

More fussing ensued and praise and patting.

Good for the old girl to get some fresh air and sunshine, good for Atticus to see her as something other than Aunt Crosspatch. I left them to their noise and activity, determined to reread Claudius’s letter until I had it memorized. Somewhere in the old duke’s words lay more answers, or hints, or something that would settle my sense of having stumbled into a thicket of misperceptions rather than onto the truth.

Uncle Thomas. I could not credit it, but the tale made sense, given the actors in question.

Aunt Crosby passed Atticus the ball and stroked the puppy’s head, until Atticus hurled the prize again and the puppy streaked after it. Aunt called encouragement in a surprisingly loud voice. I turned my steps for the Hall, sure of at least one thing: Aunt might detest dogs in the theoretical sense. She was nonetheless putting on a fine show of enjoying the puppy’s company, though that might be for Atticus’s sake rather than the dog’s.

Luncheon was a quiet, enjoyable affair, what with Pettigrew and Terrence off to consult Pettigrew’s library of racing forms, Mama and Aunt Bertha in the village, and Healy deep in the throes of his denouement.

Aunt Crosby had pleaded a need to rest in anticipation of the evening feast, leaving me with Hyperia, Kerrick, and Ginny.

Ginny sat back from an empty plate. “I feel as if we four should play whist now strictly to reacquaint ourselves with the game as a pleasant pastime rather than a pitched battle at the card table.”

“Let the old dears bicker among themselves,” Kerrick said. “The day may come when even that is lost to them.” He exchanged a look with Ginny that spoke volumes about passing decades, love, and family.

“If I haven’t said it before,”—I raised my wineglass in their direction—“I’m saying it now. I am delighted that you and the children joined us at the Hall for the holidays. You make the whole company brighter, and you remind us that family, even squalling and squabbling, is a gift.” I gestured in Hyperia’s direction. “As are dear, dear friends who can be counted on in times of adversity as well as times of celebration.”

“The two occasions,” Kerrick murmured, “often bearing a close resemblance.” He and the ladies joined my toast, and we lapsed into a contentment that might have put Kerrick and Ginny in mind of the moments when a crying infant dropped off to blessed, quiet, peaceful sleep.

We put period to a platter of ginger biscuits and shortbread with a concluding pot of tea, the meal having been light in deference to coming attractions.

“I’m for a nap,” Ginny said. “You lot must think I am the most napping adult ever to stumble forth at midday in my dressing gown, but I vow to you, I sleep little and badly at night.”

Kerrick rose and held her chair. “Was the same when Declan was a baby. Days and nights mixed up, the nursery coming to feel like our natural habitat. That’s partly why we made the journey—to get a needed change of scene—and also to dodge the rigors of a Scottish winter, of course.”

“Oh, right,” Hyperia said. “This balmy English weather is nigh boring to one of your Viking standards.”

Ginny kissed her husband’s cheek. “Miss West knows a fraud when he struts about in his kilt. You take a chill so easily, my love, that—”

He kissed her back on the mouth. “Don’t be tellin’ tales, darlin’ wife, or you’ll not have your Christmas token of me.”

They took themselves off, still flirting and bantering, and Hyperia watched them go. “I envy those two, but their situation also exhausts me vicariously.”

“One takes your meaning. I think the whole parenting marathon steals up gradually, with the baby sleeping a great deal at first and then less and less, and besides, Kerrick and Ginny could turn a lot of the baby’s care over to a wet nurse and staff. They choose to man the nursery oars to the point of exhaustion.”

Hyperia smiled at the plate of biscuits. “They do seem to nap at all hours, don’t they?”

“Shamelessly devoted to their rest.” I helped myself to another ginger biscuit. “Perry, why did Claudius’s letter end up in Harry’s possession?”

She took another sweet for herself. “That question crossed my mind. Your paternity was none of Harry’s business. Arthur, as heir and then duke, should have been put wise, I suppose, but Harry…? And he never said anything to you, never hinted or dropped confusing allusions into late-night conversations?”

“He could be cryptic,” I said, thinking back, “but he was cryptic about his own affairs, his trysts and informants and obligations. I can’t think of any occasion when he alluded to my irregular circumstances. I consoled myself with the hope that he didn’t know.”

And yet, Harry had clearly resented me from time to time, though I’d also resented him.

Still did. I castigated myself over those mixed feelings less and less of late.

Hyperia broke her shortbread in two and dipped half into her tea cup. “Harry continues to confound and vex from the grave. It isn’t fair, but I suppose that’s part of death’s bad reputation. The whole of a person’s life cannot be put in order, try as we might. I miss my mother terribly, and I know Healy does, too, but what’s to be done about it? Not one thing.”

I patted her hand. “You don’t miss your father?”

She munched the soggy half of her treat. “Papa was around longer, and older when he expired. He was ill and in pain, and if we allowed him enough laudanum to dull the pain, he was asleep. Death became his friend, as the saying goes. This is gloomy talk for Christmas Eve, Jules.”

Honest talk. “Maybe if we express the gloomy thoughts, they don’t plague as badly.”

She studied me over her tea cup. “I wonder what gloomy thoughts Aunt Bertha hasn’t been able to express. If somebody said to her, ‘You should have had a doting husband, six robust children, a thriving reputation as an herbal expert, and the ear of the king’s physician on all matters of botanical medicine,’ would she stop her incessant fault-finding?”

“She might, at least for a time.” We pondered the possibility in silence. “Or maybe she needed a napping partner.”

Hyperia, with whom I had passed some very agreeable hours in slumber, beamed at me. “Perhaps she did. Does the knowledge of Uncle Tommie’s role in your life leave you feeling gloomy, Jules?”

I rose, because even the modest meal had left me feeling sluggish, and more tea and sweets would not improve my mood.

“Not gloomy so much as bewildered. I’m put in mind of a particular summer when Wellington was beginning to angle into northern Spain. That’s when the French should have come for us, should have commandeered every able-bodied mercenary and mule and put us to rout once and for all. They dithered. They moved camp. The regional generals corresponded among themselves, and they moved camp again. Every British officer was confounded by a sense of missing the whole picture.”

Hyperia finished her biscuit and stood. “Missing the whole picture how?”

“Were the French waiting for reinforcements? Was Napoleon himself preparing to take matters in hand? Were the Spanish royalists turning up fractious and frustrated with their French overlords? What in blazes was afoot? The generals were merely squabbling among themselves, each protecting his own fiefdom, but we had no idea the business was that easily explained.”

“And you feel the same befuddlement now? I can explain what in blazes it took for the duchess to conceive you, if that would be helpful.”

“Please do,” I said, offering my arm when we reached the corridor. “I’m vague on the details.”

Hyperia kept her powder dry until we were beneath the kissing bough in the main foyer. This octagonal entrance space qualified as a thoroughly decked hall. Swags of pine, red and gold ribbons, dashes of holly, wreaths, cloved oranges—the whole lot was deployed in fragrant, chilly abundance.

When Hyperia had maneuvered me beneath the fresh mistletoe, she unleashed a volley of kisses that nigh knocked me flat.

“I thought I was supposed to ambush you , Miss West.” I smoothed my hair down where she had disarranged it and straightened my cravat. The lady, by contrast, was still tidily composed but for a becoming flush to her cheeks.

“That was to remind you of my earlier point, my lord.”

“One’s memory has gone frolicking in the snow. What earlier point?”

“I don’t care if your father was Dick Turpin. I love you .”

“Thank you. Thank you for that impressive declaration, for being here, for reminding me that I am not my antecedents. I love you, too, madly.”

She slipped her arm through mine and escorted me up the stairs. “You want to read that letter again, don’t you?”

“Of course. I’m missing something, Perry. I know that feeling well, and I ignore it at my peril.”

“You don’t want Uncle Thomas to be your papa. I can understand that.”

“I don’t want him to have been my father, I don’t want Harry to have kept the secret from me, and I don’t want to have been kept in ignorance of my own situation by people who claimed to care for me… I cannot believe that Harry, much less the old duke, would do that to me.” I could not believe that Uncle Thomas, who had been neither shy nor discreet, would never have acknowledged me in some regard.

As for Mama, her pride came into it, and also, perhaps, a conviction that I was better off learning the details of my situation from His Grace or his lordship.

As we reached Hyperia’s suite, the questions hopped about in my mind like March hares, as if I were at the beginning of an investigation rather than at the end.

“Here.” She handed me the letter and sat on the sofa. She did not perch in my lap or take my hand.

I brought the letter over to the window and reread it, though the contents had not changed. “I can’t see it,” I muttered. “Whatever it is that still bothers me about these words, I cannot see it.”

“Then read Harry’s last journal,” Hyperia said. “You often solve a riddle by looking at it sideways, Jules, and there might not be a riddle to solve.”

“This letter should have been mine to keep, Hyperia, not Harry’s.” That fact alone would drive me to Bedlam, and yet, Hyperia was right: The most irksome conundrums usually had to marinate in my brainbox for a time, until some seemingly random fact or connection jostled loose an insight that put an answer within reach.

“Take your mind off the past, Jules,” Hyperia said, patting the cushion. “Tell me about the next week. Do you collect quarterly rents on Christmas Day?”

I knew the answer to that question. “I do not. My grandfather kept to the Lady Day, Michaelmas, and Midsummer quarter days, but he believed that transacting business on Christmas was unseemly. He was similarly of the opinion that attempting to collect rents on Boxing Day would be pointless, because tenants were neither at home nor sober. Our stewards gather up the rents on December thirtieth, which struck Grandpapa as the least riotous of the twelve days.”

“And you agree with him?”

“The late duke,”—who should have been my father, who had felt unquestionably like my father for much of my childhood—“pronounced the twenty-seventh Sore Heads Day, so I suppose the thirtieth makes sense to me. We’ve recovered from Christmas itself by then and aren’t yet in the grip of the New Year nonsense.”

I stared hard at the letter in my hand, scanning it from top to… The date . Dates mattered, and this date mattered very much. An odd fizzing sensation prickled over my nape.

“Perry, I see it.”

“What do you see?”

“The issue is not the words, the problem is the date . Some Lord of the Mail I’ve been. I missed the date.” I did not recall crossing to the sofa nor deciding to sit thereupon, but somehow my backside ended up on the cushions. “Look at the date.”

In his tidy, slashing scrawl, Claudius, His Grace of Husbandly Remorse, had dated his white flag.

Hyperia frowned. “You weren’t born yet, but… ah. Well, then. That does put a very different complexion on the matter.”

“Correct. I was not born yet. More accurately, I hadn’t yet been conceived. That letter is dated nearly a year before I appeared in the earthly realm.”

She folded the epistle and passed it back to me. “You are not the cuckoo. You are proof that the duke and duchess reconciled.”

The feel of the letter in my hands changed, from an old clue to a somewhat distasteful mystery, to my brother’s legacy, his curse, and his truth. A holy thing, also painful, fragile, and poignant.

“No wonder Harry resented me. I was legitimate. He was not.” No wonder the duchess had seemed focused on Harry—he had a burden to bear neither Arthur nor I would ever share. A burden that could have well turned us against him.

“No wonder nobody told you,” Hyperia said. “Harry was ahead of you in line for the succession, and had you been a different sort of fellow, you might well have hated him for that. The duke and duchess doubtless hoped the whole matter would never come up, and their hopes have been sadly justified.”

Because Harry was no more. Even as I had that thought, the logical question crowded in behind it: Had Harry been careless with his life because, in his own mind, he’d never deserved the status of spare? Had he taken himself off the chessboard from some silent sense of guilt?

“I am relieved,” I said, “to know that Claudius was, in fact, my father, but sad—so sad—for Harry and Her Grace.”

“Not for Claudius?”

“Not for Claudius.” He’d been a fool, and made amends, but he’d also admitted to putting the whole sequence of events in train. Marital relationships weren’t that simple, of course, but I was viewing the man as a father, not as a husband.

“You aren’t done fretting over this, are you?”

I tucked an arm around her shoulders, and she cuddled up in blessedly familiar fashion. “I was so certain, Perry. I heard my parents discussing what I knew to be me. The sort of conversation a child should not hear, because he can make sense of the words but not the context. The duke said Her Grace must put the past behind her.

“He didn’t stop there. ‘So the little brat is not my son in the biblical sense. I am fond of him, I am more than passingly fond of you, I understand the motivations of all concerned, and we have agreed to leave the past behind us.’ I was the little brat, the youngest son, Sprat the Brat, and so forth. I wrote down what he said before I forgot it, and I reread the words many times, though initially, all I understood was that I wasn’t Claudius’s son in his own eyes.”

I recalled all too vividly the sick, empty confusion that revelation had caused, the utter shock and the certain knowledge that I must hide my reactions at all costs, especially from the eagle eyes of my own dear mama.

“Claudius alluded to Harry, not you.”

“Apparently so, which is why Harry had that letter and why my mother didn’t reveal the whole of it to me. One must not speak ill of the dead—Harry or his father. The irony is, I do resent Harry, terribly, but for dying, such that I’ve moved up the line of succession. I’m quite clear on that.”

Hyperia hugged me, and I held her with an overwhelming combination of gratitude for her presence and relief. So much came clear… Harry’s reckless nature, driven partly by guilt—he was a bogus spare, but not entirely so—his protectiveness of me, his appetite for other people’s secrets, driven by the secrets he himself carried.

“I hope,” I said, “that wherever he is, Harry is abundantly happy. Surpassingly ecstatically happy.”

I could not say the same for Uncle Thomas.

“Jules, when did you overhear that conversation? The one about the brat who wasn’t you?”

I gazed out the window and saw that the cerulean sky was now streaked with high, thin clouds from the zenith to the western horizon.

“Winter.” But that wasn’t as accurate as I could be. I swallowed around an inconvenient constriction in my throat.

“The occasion was Yuletide, Perry. Their Graces were making a final inspection of the Boxing Day baskets, which were in the library that year. I was lurking among the plays, pretending I didn’t have a raging bellyache, and it was Christmas damned Eve.”

That odd prickling raced over my nape and arms for the second time, cold and unsettling. Then the sensation subsided into a hollow ache, for my mistaken younger self, for my parents with their myriad regrets, for that other boy, who had been my brother in every meaningful sense.

For the heartsore former soldier, who’d come to the Hall last Christmas and had to blow retreat one more time.

“In future, Jules, when you think of Christmas, don’t think of that bewildered little boy struggling under the confusion of overheard secrets. Think of kissing boughs and baskets full to bursting and sledding and toddies and carols in the music room. Think of the love and never let it go.”

Memories and anniversaries being inextricably bound, I would continue to associate Harry with Yuletide, of course, but I would also try to focus most on Hyperia’s list. To that end, our activities on the sofa for the next quarter hour would have denuded every kissing bough in the Hall of its berries.

I added that quarter hour to my treasure trove of holiday memories, placing it atop the mental heap like the golden star placed atop one of the royal Christmas trees, and there it would stay for all the rest of my days.