A Regency Christmas Carol (6 page)

‘You do not wish our coarseness and our poverty to offend the fancy guests you are inviting from London,’ she said with scorn. Everyone in the village had heard the rumours of strangers coming to the manor for the
holiday, and would be speculating about their feasting and dancing while eating their meagre dinners in Fiddleton. ‘And you have the nerve to request that I chain my father in our cottage like a mad dog, so that he will not trouble you and your friends with the discomfort of your workers?’ She was sounding like her father at the beginning of some rabble-rousing rant. And she was foolish enough to be doing it while alone with a man who solved his problems with a loaded pistol.

‘There was a time when I was little better than they are now,’ he snapped.

‘Then you must have forgotten it, to let the people suffer so.’

‘Forgotten?’ He stepped closer, his eyes hard and angry. ‘There is nothing romantic about the life of a labourer. Only a woman who has known no real work would struggle so hard to preserve the rights of others to die young from overwork.’ He reached out suddenly and seized her hands, turning them over to rub his fingers over the palms. ‘As I thought. Soft and smooth. A lady’s hands.’

‘There is no shame in being a lady,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could manage. She did not try to pull away. He could easily manage to hold her if he wanted to. And if he did not respond to her struggle the slight fear she felt at the nearness of him would turn into panic.

His fingers closed on hers, and his eyes seemed to go dark. ‘But neither is there any pride in being poor.
It is nice, is it not, to go to a soft bed with a full belly? To have hands as smooth as silk?’ His thumbs were stroking her, and the little roughness of them seemed to remind her just how soft she was. There was something both soothing and exciting about the feel of his fingers moving against hers, the way they twined, untwined and twined again.

‘That does not mean that we should not feel sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves.’ He was standing a little too close to be proper, and her protest sounded breathless and excited.

‘Less fortunate, eh? Less in some ways, more in others. Without the machines they are fighting I would be no different than they are now—scrabbling to make a living instead of holding the hands of a beautiful lady in my own great house.’

It was not his house at all. He had taken it—just as he had taken her hands. ‘I did not give you leave to do so,’ she reminded him.

‘You gave me no leave to carry you before either,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to, and so I did. You felt very good in my arms.’ He pulled her even closer, until her skirts were brushing against the legs of his trousers. She did not move, even though he had freed her hands. ‘It is fortunate for me that you are prone to pity a poor working man. Perhaps you will share some of that sweet sympathy with me.’ He ran a finger down her cheek, as though to measure its softness.

She stood very still indeed, not wishing him to see
how near she was to trembling. If she cried out it would draw the house down upon them and bring this meeting to a sudden end. But her words had failed her, and she could manage no clever quip that would make him think her sophisticated. Nor could she raise a maidenly insistence that he revolted her. He did not. His touch was gentle, and it made her forget all that had come before.

He seemed to forget as well, for his voice was softer, deeper and slower. ‘Your father broke one of my looms today. But it will be replaced, and I will say nothing of how the destruction happened.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, wetting her lips.

‘If you wish to make a proper apology, I would like something more.’ His head dipped forwards, slowly, and his lips were nearing hers.

Although she knew what was about to happen she stayed still and closed her eyes. His lips were touching hers, moving lightly over them. It was as it had been when he had touched her ankle and held her hands. She could feel everything in the world in that single light touch. Her whole body felt warm and alive. Hairs rose on her arms and neck—not from the chill but as though they were eager to be soothed back to smoothness by roving hands.

She kissed him back, moving her lips on his as he had on hers. His mouth was rough, and imperfect. One corner of his smile was slightly higher than the other, and she touched it with the tip of her tongue, felt the dimple beside it deepen in surprise.

In response, he gave a playful lick against her upper lip, daring her. Her body’s response was an immediate tightening, and she pressed herself against him, opening her mouth. And what had been wonderful became amazing.

He encircled her, and his arms made a warm, safe place for their exploration—just as they had when he’d carried her. The slow stroking of hands and tongue seemed to open her to more sensations, and the tingling of her body assured her of the rightness of it, the perfection and the bliss. Although she knew all the places on her body that he must not touch, she was eager to feel his fingers there, and perhaps his tongue.

Just the idea made her tremble with eagerness, with embarrassment, and the knowledge that had seemed quite innocent was near to blazing out of control. And it was not only his doing. Even now she had taken his tongue into her mouth, and it was she who held it captive there, closing her lips upon it.

She could tell by his sigh of pleasure that he enjoyed what she’d done. But his only other response was to go still against her. His passivity coaxed her to experiment, raking his tongue with her teeth and circling it with her own, urging him to react.

He had trapped her into being the aggressor. At the realisation, she pulled away suddenly. He let her go, staring down at her in mock surprise, touching his own lips gingerly, as though they might be hot enough to burn his fingers.

‘Stop that immediately,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘You have stopped it quickly enough for both of us. And now I suppose you wish me to apologise for the way
you
kissed
me
?’

‘Only if you wish me to think you any sort of gentleman,’ she said, feeling ridiculous.

‘But I am not a gentleman,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Isn’t that half the problem between us? I sit here, a trumped-up worker, in a house that should belong to my betters, had they not lost it through monetary foolishness. My presence in this house upsets the natural order of things. My touching you…’

‘That is not the problem at all,’ she snapped. ‘I do not care who you are.’

‘If you do not care who I am, it was highly indiscriminate of you to allow me the kiss. And even worse that you returned it.’

‘You are twisting my words,’ she said. ‘I meant that it should not have happened at all. Not with any man. But especially not with you.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said with an ironic laugh. ‘I might be the best choice for such dalliance. If you complain to your father, I would be obligated to do right by you. Then my house and my fortune would be yours. You might trap me with your considerable charms and force me to marry you.’

‘But to do that I would have to admit to Father that you had touched me, Mr Stratford. I think we can safely say that such a circumstance will never happen. Not
for all the money in the world, and Clairemont Manor thrown into the mix. Now, please return me to the library.’

He smiled in triumph, as though that had been his end all along. ‘Very well, then. Let us go back to your father, and both of you can be gone. I trust that now we have spoken on the subject I will see no more of you, or be forced to endure any more of your father’s tirades? For, while I can see that there is more than a little madness to them, they cannot be allowed to continue. If arms are raised against me and the opening of the mill disrupted, or my equipment damaged further, I will be forced to take action. While I am sure that neither of us wants it, you must see that I do not intend to be displaced now that I am so near to success.’

He turned and led her back towards the library. As he opened the door he made idle comments about the furnishings and art, as though they had just returned from a tour of his home. It was all the more galling to know that some of the things he said were inaccurate, proving that he knew little more about the things he owned than how to pay for them. He really was no better than he had said: a man ignorant in all but one thing. He had made a fine profit by it. But what did that matter if it had left him coarse and cruel?

As they entered, her father looked up as though he had forgotten how he had come to be there. ‘I think it is time that we were going, Father,’ she said firmly. ‘We
have abused Mr Stratford’s hospitality for quite long enough.’

Her father looked with longing at the book in his hands.

Joseph Stratford responded without missing a beat. ‘I hate to take you from your reading, sir. Please accept the volume as my gift to you. You are welcome to come here whenever you like and avail yourself of these works. It pleases me greatly to see them in the hands of one who enjoys them.’

Because you have no use for them, you illiterate lout
, she thought. She responded with a smile that was almost too bright, ‘How thoughtful of you, Mr Stratford.’

Her father agreed. ‘Books are a precious commodity in the area, and it is rare that we get anything new from London that is not a newspaper or a fashion plate.’ He wrinkled his nose at the inadequacy of such fare to a man of letters.

Stratford nodded in sympathy. ‘Then we will see what can be done to correct the deficiency. If there is anything you desire from my library, send word. I will have it delivered to you. And now it appears that your daughter is properly recovered. If I may offer you a ride back to the village?’

Her father stood, and the men chatted as they walked to the door as though they were old friends. In a scant hour Bernard Lampett had quite recovered from his fit of rage, and Mr Stratford was behaving as though the incidents in the mill and in the hall had not occurred.
If he remembered them at all, he appeared untouched by them.

But in the space of that same hour Barbara felt irrevocably changed, and less sure of herself than she had ever been.

L
ater that evening the guests began to arrive, and Joseph was relieved to have no time to think of Barbara Lampett. Even when he should have focused his energy elsewhere, he could feel the memory of her and her sweet lips always in the background. It had been madness to take her out into the hall. He had known that he could not fully trust himself around her. When they were alone he should have limited himself to urging her to moderate her father’s actions. But he’d had the foolish urge to show her his house, so that she might see the extent of his success. There might even have been some notion of catching her under a kissing bough and stealing one small and quite harmless kiss. He had been eager to impress her, and had behaved in a way that was both foolish and immature.

All of it had got tangled together in an argument, ending with a brief and heated display of shared emo
tion. It had been as pleasant as it had inappropriate. While such little indiscretions happened all the time, ladies like Barbara Lampett did not like to think themselves capable of them. She would not wish to be reminded, nor to risk a repeat display. He would not see her again.

And that was that.

He turned his attention to more important matters. After the rejections in today’s post, it appeared that his house would be barely half-f for Christmas. There had been several frosty refusals to the offer of a trumped-up tradesman’s hospitality. But it would not matter. Even one or two would be plenty—if they were rich enough and could be interested in his plans.

As promised, he let Bob take the lead in introductions and in the planning of activities, doing his best to respond in a way that was not rough or gauche. His casual offer that tomorrow’s skating on the millpond might end with cakes and punch served in the empty warehouse was accepted graciously—once the ladies were assured that it was quite clean and that no actual work was being done. While they were there he would arrange a tour of the tidy rows of machinery. Breton would make mention of the successes they’d shared with the production and sale of such looms to others. The seed would be planted.

Before they returned to London one or two of the men would come to Bob, as they always did after such gatherings, making offhand remarks about risk and
reward. A discreet parlay would be arranged in which no money would change hands. There would be merely a vague promise of it, for such people did not carry chequebooks with them. They carried cards and wrote letters of introduction to bankers, who stayed in the background where they belonged. But if they offered, they would deliver. Honour was involved. A true gentleman’s word was as good as a banknote.

He frowned as the last of his guests took themselves off to bed, leaving him free for a few hours of rest. He was tired tonight, after last night’s uneasy rest. Dinner had tired him as well. It was like speaking another language, dealing with the gentry and their need to seem idle even while doing business. So much easier to deal with the likes of mad Lampett. Though he was of a changeable nature, he would at least speak what was left of his mind.

For plain speaking, Lampett’s lovely daughter was better than ten of the milk-and-water misses he was likely to see this week. Even Anne Clairemont, whose family had put in a brief appearance this evening, had looked puzzled by the conversation, and nervous at the prospect of a little skating on a properly frozen pond. He would not have faulted her if she had politely excused herself from it. But she had looked from her father to him, blinked twice and then forced a smile and declared it a wonderful notion.

Miss Lampett, in a similar situation, would have likely announced to the assembly that the whole trip
was a thinly disguised attempt at business and refused to take any part in it. For some reason the imagined scene did not bother him. He could just as easily imagine drawing her out in the hall to remonstrate with her, only to have the conversation degenerate into another heated kiss.

When his valet had left him for the night he settled back into the pillows and pulled the blankets up to his chin, closing his eyes and thinking of that kiss. He really shouldn’t have taken it. It had been improper and unfair of him to take advantage of her innocence. But he would do it again if he had the chance. That and more…

He awoke hungry. It made no sense. The clock was only striking one, and dinner had been a feast, stretching late into the evening. He had partaken of it with enthusiasm. But it was gone from him now, leaving his guts empty and gnawing on themselves in the darkness.

He had not known want like this since he’d become master of his own life. This was the kind of nagging hunger he’d felt as a child, going to bed with an empty belly and knowing that there would be nothing to fill it again tomorrow. It was a kind of bleak want that existed in the body like an arm or a leg: something that one carried with one from moment to moment, place to place, always there and impossible to cast off.

But it was easily rectified now. He had but to sit up in bed and ring for a footman. He would explain the need and have it filled. It would mean getting some poor maid out of her bed to do for him. But what was the point
of having servants if one could not make unreasonable demands upon them?

When he opened his eyes, the room was strange. Not his own bedroom at all, but a different, emptier room, filled with a strange, directionless golden haze.

From the corner of the room there was a sigh.

Joseph sat bolt upright now, searching for the source of the sound. And with it he found the origin of the glow. A man sat in the corner—a Cavalier, in a long well-curled wig and heavy-skirted coat. The light seemed to rise from the gold braid upon it, diffusing into a corona around him.

This man was a stranger, and yet strangely familiar. He looked around the room and sighed again. He glanced across at Joseph and gave a pitying shake of his head. ‘When I was summoned here, I must admit I expected better. These are not the surroundings to which I am accustomed. But I suppose if there is no problem, then there is no need…’ The Cavalier gave another heavy sigh.

‘Just what do you mean by that?’ snapped Joseph, rubbing his eyes. ‘I grew up in a room not unlike this one, and…’

As a matter of fact he’d grown up in a room exactly like this one. Its appearance was softened somewhat, by the glow of the phantom and by his own fading memories, but it was the same room. It was where he’d felt the hunger that plagued him now, which was still as sharp and real as ever it had been.

‘I belong at the manor and have been sent to fetch you back to it,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Although even that is no treat. For I must tell you the place under your governance is not as nice as it once was.’

‘Now, see here,’ Joseph said, sitting up in his bed only to realise that it was not the thing he’d lain down on but a narrow bunk, with a rush mattress and thin blankets that could not keep the cold from his feet. ‘You need not take me back, for I did not go anywhere. I am still there, fast asleep and dreaming.’ This time he gave himself a hard pinch on the back of the hand, not caring if the spirit before him saw it.

‘I was told that this had been explained to you. Three visitors would come. We would show you your errors. You would learn or not learn, as was your nature…’ He droned in an uninterested way that said he did not care what Joseph learned, so long as he did it quickly and with as little bother as possible.

Joseph glared at the spirit, annoyed that it was still before him. ‘I was told by my father. Who is dead and therefore should not be telling me anything. While he said there would be three, he did not say three of what. If there was any truth in it he might as well have said four, thus counting himself.’

‘Do not think you can reason like a Jesuit to get yourself out of a situation that you yourself have created.’ The Cavalier sighed again, and flicked a lace handkerchief in front of his nose as though offended by the stench of such humble surroundings. ‘Be silent
and I will explain. And then we might be done with this vision and go back to the house.’

‘But you are not real,’ Joseph argued. It was most annoying to be lectured at by one’s own imagination. And then he placed the identity of the thing sitting before him. ‘You are Sir Cedric Clairemont, and nothing more than a portrait hanging in the gallery on the second floor. This room is the place where I was born. I am blending memories in a dream.’

Sir Cedric gave a resigned glare in his direction, and sighed again as though facing a difficult child. ‘Let me put this plainly, so that you might understand it. I would say I am as real as you, but that would lack truth. I was real. Now I am a spirit, as is your father. As are the two that will come after. By the end of it you will know where you were, where you are and what you will become.’

‘I know all these things for myself, without your help. I will not be frightened into a change of plans by some notion created out of a second helping of trifle after a roast pork dinner.’

‘Touch me,’ commanded the spirit.

He did look almost real enough to touch, and just the same as he did in his portrait. But from what memory had Joseph created the man’s voice, which was a slightly nasal tenor? Or his mannerisms as he swaggered forwards with his stick and looked down at Joseph with amused superiority? This man was not some ghost from
a painting, but so real that he felt he could reach out and…

Joseph drew his hand back quickly, suddenly aware of the gesture he’d been making—which had looked almost like supplication.

The ghost stared at him with impatience. Then he brought the swagger stick down upon Joseph’s head with a thud.

‘Ow!’

‘Is that real enough for you, Stratford? Or must I hit you again? Now, get out of the bed and take my hand—or I will give you a thumping you will remember in the morning.’

The idea was ludicrous. It was one thing to have a vivid dream. Quite another for that nightmare to fetch you a knock to the nob then demand that you get out of bed and walk into it.

‘Certainly not.’ Joseph rubbed at the spot where he’d been struck. ‘Raise that stick to me again and, dream or not, I will answer you blow for blow.’

Sir Cedric smiled ironically. ‘Very well, then. If you wish to remain here I can show you images of your childhood. Although why you would wish to see them, I am unsure. They are most unpleasant.’

As though a candle had been lit, a corner of the room brightened and Joseph felt increasing dread. It was the corner that had held the loom.

‘Tighten the warp.’ He heard the slap and felt the impact of it on the side of his head, even though it had
landed some many years before on the ear of the young boy who sat there.

‘S…sorry, Father.’ The young Joseph fumbled with the shuttle.

The man who stood over him could barely contain his impatience. ‘Sorry will not do when there is an order as big as this one. I cannot work the night through to finish it. You must do your share. Sloppy work that must be unravelled again the next day is no help at all. It is worse than useless. Not only must I do my own part, I must stand over you and see to it that you do yours. You are worse than useless.’

‘I was too small,’ Joseph retorted, springing from the bed and flexing his muscles with a longing to strike back. ‘My arms were too short to do the job. All the bullying in the world would have made no difference.’

‘He cannot hear you,’ the ghost said calmly. ‘For the moment you live in my world, as much a spectre to him as he is to you.’

‘It was Christmas. And it was not fair,’ Joseph said, trying to keep the childish petulance from his voice.

‘Life seldom is.’

‘I made it fair,’ Joseph argued. ‘My new loom is wider, but so simple that a child can manage it.’ The weavers of Fiddleton and all the other places that employed a Stratford loom would not be beating their children at Christmas over unfinished work.

But the ghost at his side said nothing, as though Joseph had done no kindness with the improvement. He
held out his hand again. ‘Do you need further reminders of your past?’

Without thinking, Joseph shook his head. The past was clear enough in his own mind without them. It had been hard and hungry and he was glad to be rid of it. ‘I made my father eat his words before the end,’ Joseph said coldly. ‘He died in warmth and comfort, in a bed I bought for him, and
not
slaving in someone else’s mill.’

‘Take my hand and come away.’ Sir Cedric sounded almost sympathetic, his voice softer, gently prodding Joseph to action.

Joseph turned his back on the vision and reached for the arm of the spectre, laying his hand beside the ghostly white one on the stick he held. The fingers were unearthly cold, and smooth as marble, but very definitely real to him in a way that the man and boy in the corner were not. ‘Very well, then. Whatever you are, take me back to the manor and my own bed.’

There was a feeling of rushing, and of fog upon his face, the sound of the howling winds upon the moors. Then he was back in his own home, walking down the main corridor towards the receiving rooms in bare feet and a nightshirt.

‘What the devil?’ He yanked upon Sir Cedric’s arm, trying to turn him towards the stairs. ‘I said my bedroom, you lunatic. If my guests see me wandering the house in my nightclothes, they will think I’ve gone mad. All my plans will be undone.’

If this was a ghost that escorted him, the least it
could do was to be insubstantial. But Sir Cedric was as cold and immovable as stone. Now that they were joined Joseph could not seem to pull his hand away. He was being forced to follow into the busiest part of the house, which was brightly lit and brimming with activity, though it had been empty when he’d retired.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Stratford. Did I not tell you that I am a spirit of the past, and that you might pass unseen through it?’ The ghost sniffed the air. ‘This is the Christmas of 1800, if I have led us right. It is the same night when we saw you clouted on the ear. Well past my time, but the holiday is much as I remember it from my own days as lord here, and celebrated as it has always been. The doors are open to the people of Fiddleton. Tenants and villagers, noble friends and neighbours mix here to the joy of all.’