My Christmas Knight (The Fairplace Family #1)

Chapter Five

D ennis held his breath as he ever-so-slowly cracked the door. So far so good. He opened it further and stepped out.

Immediately the two male servants appeared. Sodding hell. They’d been sitting tucked around a corner at the dining table. One of them was a right bruiser. The other looked like a veteran. They both scowled at him. Damn it all.

Dennis felt Miss Badnarrow’s breath at the nape of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. Her whole body radiated warmth. He pushed the thought aside.

“Hello, gentleman. We, uh, need to use the lavatory.” Maybe he could find a tool in the lavatory to help him escape? He was grasping at loose straws but didn’t know what else to do. Ah, bloody hell, how ridiculous.

They continued to glare, but made no move to stop him. He stepped gingerly to the next door and slipped inside. The amenities were sparse, but it was a bloody miracle they had a chamberpot at all on a train. And this chamberpot was bolted to the floor with a hole at the bottom! Dennis peered down at the blurred track racing by. Well then. He did have to relieve himself. That wasn’t an excuse. But nothing to help him escape. Damn.

When he emerged, the servants stood much closer. One leaned menacingly over Miss Badnarrow.

Anger flared, hot and fast, in his chest at the sight. “Back away from the lady,” he said slowly. “Or you will regret it.”

The bruiser gave Dennis a sardonic look, but took a step back.

Dennis raised his eyebrows at her. “Your turn?” Her big gray eyes lightened at his words. How could she think she wasn’t one of the most attractive young ladies at those balls? It was hard to tell a woman’s shape with these current fashions of huge skirts, but he could guess something both willowy and soft lurked under all those layers and crinoline wires.

She blushed prettily and nodded, gathering those massive skirts. They had to slip by each other to exchange places, and somehow her breasts rubbed against his chest. An electric shock traveled down his spine at the accidental touch. Even with all their clothes between them, his interest spiked.

In the end, they were both pushed back into her bedroom compartment and locked in. Again.

Dennis ground his teeth. “At least I got a piss out of it,” he muttered.

Miss Badnarrow looked at him in surprise.

“Forgive my language,” he told her. “I was in the army until recently.”

Miss Badnarrow scrubbed her face with her hands. Her thick, dark braid rippled over her shoulders and lay in the folds of her skirt. Dennis had never seen hair so long. Breathtaking .

He took a deep breath, clearing his mind of foggy rage. He would get out. He wouldn’t be trapped by a sniveling bishop and his minions. No, he’d survived three fucking years in Crimea, and a few more months settling things with the Turks. He didn’t go through winter, siege, cholera, and influenza to succumb now.

The train jerked, and he reached out instinctively to steady Miss Badnarrow. Apparently, she had the same thought, for they both clasped one another’s forearms. Her slender arm, encased in rough fabric, seemed so delicate. He couldn’t believe her own uncle treated her like this.

She was a pretty girl. She should’ve been beautiful. She would be beautiful if she put a little more meat on her bones and a little more sun on her face. Dennis would refuse this marriage, not only for his sake, but also hers. She deserved better than a forced arrangement. She couldn’t refuse, as the bishop was her guardian. But he could refuse for her.

“Are we stopping?” she whispered.

The train slowed, and the constant vibration at their feet eased up.

“I wonder where we are,” Dennis remarked. “I have a connection in Leicester. I’ve got to make it to Nottingham.”

Miss Badnarrow hummed. “Perhaps Rugby? I’ve been locked in here since Euston, so I have no idea.”

Anger and alarm burned a trail down Dennis’s throat. “The stop after Rugby is Leicester. Your uncle will surely let me go, won’t he?”

Miss Badnarrow bit her lip and shook her head. “Likely not.”

Dennis huffed a disbelieving laugh. He let go of her and ran both hands through his hair. “So I’m a prisoner. On a train. Going to Newcastle whether I want to or not.”

“There’s a long stop in York,” Miss Badnarrow offered. “Perhaps you can escape there.”

Not bloody likely . In cramped quarters with no weapon, Dennis doubted he could take down both men before they seriously hurt him or Miss Badnarrow. “How long is the stop in York?”

She cocked her head, thinking. “A few hours?”

This really was the perfect prison. No windows, the walls were encased in iron. Only one exit into a narrow space with two guards. Even if he could get free, most of the time the train moved too fast to jump.

“Sometimes it can be overnight.”

Dennis’s heart leapt. “I can escape when we go to a hotel.”

She quashed his hope. “We’d spend the night in the car. It has everything we need.” She gave him an apologetic look. “He’s quite smart. And when he has the law on his side, he’s unstoppable.”

Dennis paced in the tiny room, trying to think. Miss Badnarrow settled on the bed again, the only place to sit, and watched him. He began to feel like a tiger in a menagerie. He stopped and stared at her. “I suppose the only thing we can do is wait. The door will open eventually. I can rush the guards and get out of the car.”

Miss Badnarrow nodded, brows furrowed. “If I can help in any way, please tell me. It’s my fault you’re in this mess.”

The train jolted, and Dennis nearly fell onto the bed. He caught himself in time. They were off again. Dennis thought of the solicitor and the house waiting for him. He’d get there. Somehow. “Distract me,” he told the girl. “That’s how you can help right now. Make the time pass, Miss Badnarrow.”

She scooted up the bed, resting her back against the headboard, and patted the empty space beside her. “You’ve heard my life story already. I’m a cautionary tale now.” He could practically taste the bitterness in the air as she spoke. “So tell me about yourself. And please, call me Blanche.”

Dennis crawled up the bed and mimicked her position. “Let’s see. I have a mother, a brother, and a sister. Both younger than me.”

“What about your father?”

He shook his head. “Died two years ago, while I was in Crimea.”

Blanche hummed. “I’m so sorry.”

“His heart weakened as he aged,” Dennis admitted. “After he turned forty-five it was a matter of time.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier to bear,” Blanche murmured.

“He was a barrister. I was supposed to join him, but I ended up in the military. My mother is from Nottingham, and her family is a junior branch of the Huston-Ives.” At Blanche’s blank expression, he added, “The head of the family is the Baron of Erswich. He’s my second cousin once removed, I believe.”

She made an appreciative sound.

“My father went bankrupt due to poor investments when I was younger, but by the time I turned twenty-one we’d gained it and then some. Enough so that when I joined the army, my father purchased a commission. I was a second lieutenant when we shipped off to fight Russia.” His voice trailed away as other memories came to him.

“What was the war like?” Blanche asked quietly. “I read the papers when I could sneak them. It…well, I don’t know how to describe it.”

Dennis snorted. “A bloody mismanaged mess from beginning to end? A shithole full of iced mud? A great way to kill a bunch of men, by sending them out to lay siege without tents, boots, wagons, food, or medicine?”

Blanche fell silent.

Remorse shot through Dennis. He sighed, passing a hand across his face. “Forgive me, I can’t believe I used such vulgarity in front of a lady. I just—it was difficult to see all these problems around you with obvious solutions, and yet no way to make them happen.”

“I heard the winter of ’54 was particularly awful,” Blanche prompted.

She had no fucking idea. No one did, save for the people who survived it. That winter probably killed more British soldiers than Russia ever did. He was surprised he’d survived it. He almost hadn’t. Images of blackened fingers, toes, whole feet piled out in the snow, either sawed off or fallen off from frostbite. Overflowing latrines, for soldiers were too sick to dig new ones, the stench of vomit and diarrhea drifting into camp. Piles of human waste interspersed among the snow, remnants of what cholera did to a body. He shifted on the bed, and could almost hear his medals rattling against his chest. They’re buried in a trunk in London, he reminded himself.

Dennis clasped his hands together so tightly his knuckles whitened. He changed the subject. “I inherited a house. That’s why I’m traveling to Nottingham.”

Her eyebrows rose. “On Christmas Day? You have a family to spend it with. And a sweetheart?”

Dennis paused at the hopeful tone of her voice. Did she hope he was available, so she could marry him, or did she hope he had promised himself to another so she couldn’t marry him? “No,” he said honestly. “No sweetheart. I came home seven months ago, and I’ve been too much of a wretch to consider courting a girl.”

Some of his former soldiers had confided similar sentiments of melancholy, dreams, neurosis, and constant sense of unease. Got the morbs, his army friends said. Irritable Heart, the army doctors called it. It made sense to Dennis. His heart would never beat the same again after everything he’d witnessed. He didn’t know any women who would want an irritable heart.

“What are your plans?” Blanche inquired.

He smiled, grateful for the change in subject again. “I need to see how much my aunt’s stocks are worth, but I may go into business. I respect the law, but I think I need something else than becoming a barrister. I’d have to study at the Inn of Courts for six years, and I don’t have that level of dedication anymore.”

Blanche studied him for a moment. “I think you do,” she murmured. “You’ll succeed at anything you try.”

For the next three stops they entertained one another with stories from their childhood, jokes they knew, and opinions on literature. He even pulled the solicitor’s letter from his pocket and let Blanche read it.

Blanche wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m afraid I’m a poor conversationalist. I wasn’t allowed to read novels. Or hear jokes.”

“When you turn twenty-one, write me in Nottingham and tell me your direction. I’ll mail you a whole crate of my favorite books and then we can correspond about them.”

Blanche laughed, then sighed. “I wonder where I’ll be when I’m twenty-one.”

“Nowhere near your uncle,” Dennis said emphatically. He still couldn’t believe the gall of the man.

She agreed. “I think I’d marry the traveling tinker if it would save me from his godliness. After you leave he’ll choose another man, but I’m afraid he’ll pick someone even worse than him.” She paused. “How long has it been, you think?”

“Three stops?” Dennis tilted his head. “Two hours? So we’re likely past Derby.” Past his connection. Teatime neared. His mind flickered back to something Blanche had said a while ago. “Blanche,” he started, not sure how to say it.

“Hmm?” She unbuttoned her collar, revealing the lovely column of her neck. Dennis suddenly had a desire to kiss it. He blinked away the thought. Where had that come from?

“You wondered why your lover changed his mind about marrying you.”

Hurt flickered through her clear gray eyes. “Yes.”

“He told you that you could run away to Gretna Green and marry immediately?”

She nodded, blushing.

Dennis watched the rosy warmth climb her cheeks. She was so lovely. “You can’t do that.”

She shook her head. “Of course we can elope to Gretna Green.”

Dennis hated to tell her, but she deserved the truth. “Blanche, earlier this year a law passed to make elopements in Scotland much harder.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“They call it the cooling off act. It means that to marry in Scotland, one of you must have resided in the parish for twenty-one days before marrying.”

Blanche blinked. “No, you must be mistaken.”

Dennis turned and gently clasped her hands in his. “Blanche, unless your lover had intended to hide in a Scottish barn with you for three weeks and then marry, he was lying to you the entire time.”

Blanche’s face went white.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should’ve kept his mouth shut. He watched her face. “Blanche? I tell you this because I want you to know. He didn’t change his mind about you. He never intended to follow through.”

Blanche gasped, tears streaming down her eyes. “Why would he do that? Why?” Her upper crust finishing school accent slipped into faint Geordie.

Dennis’s thumbs rubbed soothing circles on the back of her hands. “Men are beasts.”

“He lied the whole time. I suppose I knew that today, deep down.” Her gray eyes swam with tears, and he wanted to kiss each tear away, to force the world to never make her look like this again. She was too young, too sweet, and she’d had such a hard life already.

Dennis couldn’t help it. He cupped her cheek with one hand, brushing tears away with his thumb. “He didn’t change his mind about you. You did nothing wrong. You are nothing wrong. His abandonment is about him and his lack of honor. It reflects nothing on you, do you hear?”

Blanche nodded into his hand.

He needed to make sure she understood. “He planned to betray you from the beginning, which means it didn’t matter how perfect you were, how beautiful, how loving, and kind. Because I’m sure you were all of those things. There is no defect in you. It’s all in him.”

She sniffled. “I’m such a fool.”

“No, you’re not. Loving someone does not make you a fool.”

“Believing their lies does.” She sat back, taking her face from his hand and wiping her tears with her sleeves.

Dennis wished she wasn’t so hard on herself. But then, no one had ever been kind to her. How would she know to be kind to herself? “I think it’s very brave,” he said after a long pause, “to throw your entire heart into something you love.” He met her gaze. “I hope one day you find someone worthy of your love. I’m sure there’s a man out there.”

Blanche laughed bitterly. “My uncle won’t try to find him. He’ll just marry me off to the next one he sees.”

Dennis sighed. “At least I can save you from this arrangement, if not the others to come.”

Blanche yawned. “Crying is exhausting.”

Dennis quirked a smile. “You’re in a bed. Take a nap.”

Blanche eyed him dubiously.

Dennis raised his hands. “I’ll be a gentleman. Would you like me to go sit on a trunk?”

She huffed a breath. “No. That sounds ridiculous. But what are you going to do while I sleep? Stare at the walls?” She began rearranging herself, pulling back the bedlinens, and paused. “Oh, I can’t. My crinolines.”

Dennis shook his head. He’d never understand women’s fashion. “Take them off. I shan’t look.” The few Turkish women he’d met had much more comfortable attire, though he’d never gotten close enough to confirm. Actually, he hadn’t gotten close enough to a woman to confirm anything about her undergarments in quite a while. The nurses he’d interacted with weren’t about to jeopardize their positions by fraternizing with soldiers, and the local women were wary of Englishmen. If he stopped to consider how long it had been since bedding a woman, he’d grow irritable. And his heart didn’t need any more of that.

It took another moment for Blanche to persuade herself, but eventually she got out of bed and began pulling at her skirts. “No peeking,” she warned firmly.

Dennis grinned but obligingly turned his head and shut his eyes. He heard the rustling of skirts, her annoyed huffs, and something hitting the floor. He opened his eyes on reflex—men who kept their eyes shut in war didn’t live long.

“Are you peeking?” Blanche asked.

“No.” But then he caught sight of her reflection in the looking glass. She’d pulled her heavy woolen skirts and linen petticoats up to her waist. Without the crinolines in place, her legs were on display.

She wasn’t naked . Not really. Her pantalettes, thin, white linen, covered the best bits, and her stockings covered her up to her knees. But she had the shapeliest legs he’d ever seen. Tiny ankles, too, now she’d toed off her boots.

Dennis bit back a groan of frustration. His cock twitched at the sight. He quickly shut his eyes before he tortured himself even more.

Blanche sighed as she climbed back into bed. “Much better.”

He grunted. It was not much better. It was fucking terrible. He didn’t know how he’d get through the rest of the afternoon knowing what her legs looked like. Maybe it was a good thing she’d nap. He’d probably break down and kiss her otherwise. Being trapped in a small space with a pretty girl would make a man do foolish things like that.