A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) (6 page)

“I am.” He gave a nod, and hesitated for only a second this time before continuing. “Kitty, the one who’s marrying, is the eldest after me. Martha is the youngest at fifteen. And I have two brothers, both between the sisters in years.”

“They sound like a perfectly delightful family.”

He looked directly at her, and for the first time in the hour they’d been on the road, a glimmer of good humor lit his eyes. “You’re very generous in your appraisal. Oughtn’t you to require more evidence than an approximate range of ages, an enumeration of boys and girls, and two Christian names, before your pronounce the lot delightful? To say nothing of
perfectly
delightful.”

It was the closest thing to friendliness he’d shown her since he’d last shown his dimple, yesterday in the falcon mews. Surely she was on the right path with this topic. “I suppose I do have a generous definition of
delightful
, where siblings are concerned. Growing up without any of my own, I’m prepared to find all brothers and sisters charming until they force me to find them otherwise. But in this case I contend I do have evidence.”

“Do you?” He arched one eyebrow, arms still crossed, and looked rather like a strict tutor, despite his unshaven jaw and the slight dishevelment of his cravat. A thought flitted by: if she and Perkins were not here, he might have sprawled on the bench, stretching out his long legs—maybe even propping a boot on the opposite seat—instead of folding and cramming himself into that corner. He would have looked like a triumphant highwayman, or perhaps a pirate come ashore. Some dashing disreputable sort, too busy with dashing disreputable doings to shave or starch his linen.

But that wasn’t pertinent to the point at hand.

“Indeed, your manner is my evidence.” She tilted her chin, to answer the arched eyebrow. “Not only did thoughts of your family inspire you to a comparatively lengthy discourse, but you spoke with greater animation than you have on any other topic this past hour.”

His mouth twisted. Not quite a smile. No appearance by the dimple. Probably he was biting back some remark about having good reason to be out of sorts; excellent reason to decline conversation with a passenger who’d played one unscrupulous trick after the next upon him and cost him part of his Christmas Eve. He dropped his gaze to the carriage floor, somewhere between his feet and hers, and then raised it to the window once more. “I don’t claim to be an expert in these matters,” he said sidelong, “but I cannot think such evidence would have passed muster with Mr. Hume and his set.”

“No, I’m sure it wouldn’t. By empirical standards, I don’t suppose I can really know anything at all about your family. Even what you tell me could be a fabrication.”

“It isn’t.” He met her eyes again. “I’ve listed all my siblings, save one who died in infancy and several lost at or before birth. And empirical or not, your surmise was correct. My family is, if not outright delightful, at least every bit as agreeable as a set of brothers and sisters ought to be.”

“Ah.” Never having siblings, she must remember, meant never having to endure the loss of one. She was lucky in that way. “I’m sorry.” It seemed such an insubstantial thing to say in the face of his family’s misfortune, but no better words came to her.

“No need. I took no offense.” He glanced away to the opposite window, the one out which Perkins was directing her resolute attention.

“Sorry for your loss, I mean. For the little brothers and sisters who didn’t grow up. And the loss of your parents as well? You made no mention of them.”

He shook his head, scowling at the passing scenery. “My family is hardly unique in having lost children, or lost their mother. My father is still living, but hasn’t the sort of temperament that would lend itself to holiday merry-making, which I believe is where this discussion began. Or, no.” He looked at her, still with a dent or two between his brows. “You began by asking if I’d been to a Christmas house party. Will this be your first?”

He’d shut the door on the subject of loss, thrown all the bolts, and shoved a heavy table up against it for good measure.

Well, he had every right to do so. She wasn’t his confidante, but a stranger, and a troublesome stranger at that, not to mention that within a few hours he’d leave her at Hatfield Hall and not see her again.

“In fact this will be my first house party of any sort.” She would show him she was civilized enough to respect a shut door. “I had hoped you might give me some idea of what to expect.”

The carriage hit a rut and she grabbed for the strap, as did Perkins at her right. Mr. Blackshear, by contrast, braced a hand on the ceiling, looking so at ease with his environs, with rough travel, with his person and its propensity to take up space, that she could not help thinking again of a pirate or highwayman, and she could not glance away from him quite as soon as would have been perfectly decorous.

“I believe I know enough of house parties, and enough of Christmastide celebration, to be of some assistance.” He was the one to avert his eyes, and in fact to dart a quick look at where Perkins sat, as if to remind Lucy of the need for utmost propriety when servants were present. “To begin with, Miss Sharp, I believe you will be expected to go to church.”

* * *

She wasn’t so very bad, really. At least not as bad as he’d first thought.

Certainly he couldn’t condone the bald machination by which she’d secured her place in his carriage—even now he wasn’t sure whether she truly
would
have applied to this possibly mythical customer-from-somewhere-south for transport, but he couldn’t take the chance, and she’d known that very well, and manipulated him accordingly. There was nothing to approve in that.

Admittedly, too, his improving opinion of her might owe something to the general lightening of his spirits, as he drew steadily closer to home. And perhaps there was an edge of pity as well, for a girl who’d grown up with such a paucity of family and no notion of proper holiday pleasures.

She’d seen the inside of a church, at least, he was relieved to learn—dinner-table blasphemy notwithstanding, Lord Sharp apparently did recognize that it was a gentleman landowner’s duty to occasionally put in an appearance at the church that sat on his land—and she seemed earnest in her determination to acquit herself well at the party. In particular she showed an admirable desire to be a credit to the aunt who’d invited her, and to make such an impression on the people she met as might lead to further intercourse and perhaps even friendship.

She must have great need of friendship, with no society besides her father and whoever might come seeking a falcon.

“I’ve always been at home, you see.” Her hands lay idle in her lap. She’d fidgeted with them the first few miles, he’d noticed, pinching the edge of her cloak or twisting her reticule strings round one finger and then two. “Aunt Symond would have had Papa send me away to school, but he feared a girls’ school wouldn’t give me a proper education.”

“My sisters were taught at home as well. I think that’s generally the case with young ladies of good family.” Privately he thought an exception really ought to have been made for Miss Sharp, who would undoubtedly have benefited from the routines and regulations of a school. This Aunt Symond sounded a sensible sort of woman, and with any luck would exert a deal of influence over the next twelve days.

“How did your sister meet the man she’s to marry, then? If it’s not improper to ask.”

“In London. We have an aunt who lives there. Kitty went to stay with her for the season, went to what I gather is the customary round of balls and parties, and had introductions to a number of gentlemen, one of whom was her Mr. Bridgeman.”

“I see. I suppose that’s the usual way, for those ladies of good family who have their education at home.” She looked grave. He knew, without her saying so, that Lord Sharp was unlikely to ever think of giving her a London season.

“Many ladies do make matches in that way. But many others meet their husbands through family connections, or perhaps at house parties.” Why should he feel, let alone act upon, this impulse to reassure and encourage her? She wasn’t his responsibility, aside from this temporary commission to deliver her safely to Hatfield Hall. Whether she made a good marriage or spent her days a spinster was of no consequence to him—indeed, for him to be entering into the topic of marriage at all, with an unchaperoned lady to whose virtues of face and form he’d already devoted too much thought, was probably injudicious.

She smiled at his words, though, a brilliant warm acknowledgment of the kindness he was already regretting, and he forced his gaze to her hands, that he might not be dazzled into further imprudence.

“Well.” She lifted her hands and began counting off on the fingers. “Church, you said. Possibly a play or other entertainment. Bobbing apples. The game in which you set raisins on fire and try to eat them.”

“Snapdragon. Not recommended, remember.”

“I do remember. You ended with two holes in the carpet and nearly set the house on fire.” Her eyes—he had to look up from her hands, didn’t he, to see that she was taking in his admonition—sparkled with the same unbridled glee she’d shown on his first telling of the tale. It was remarkably similar to the expressions Nick and Will had worn from start to near-disastrous finish of the game, the one year they’d prevailed on him to allow it.

Probably his brothers would rank that as one of their best Christmases ever, to this day. He’d never quite been able to smother the stubborn spark of pride he felt at having afforded them that memory.

“And I expect we’ll have a Twelfth Cake.” She counted this pleasure on her thumb, flexing all her fingers and then curling them in, a fistful of holiday diversions in her grasp.

“To be sure. With a pea and a bean baked inside, to determine who will be king and queen of Twelfth Night.”

“I suppose you’ve been king once or twice, in your celebrations.” It ought to have been an innocuous comment, but Lord, the way she
looked
at him. As though she were picturing him in royal robes and a crown, and relishing the picture. What was an honorable man supposed to do with such blatant feminine appreciation?

“No.” Once more he threw a pointed glance at the maid, who was keeping her face to the window and pretending to hear none of what passed. “No, we observe an older tradition in my house. There’s but a single bean in the cake, and whoever finds it in his piece is crowned Lord of Misrule for the night.”

“Lord of Misrule!” Her mouth curved and stretched into a smile of truly extravagant dimension. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it’s an archaic tradition, as I said.” He oughtn’t to have told her. There was a deal too much misrule in her life already; he needn’t be introducing notions of more. “There’s very little to it. In a great house of old, where perhaps one of the lower servants might have been crowned, it was a chance to upend hundreds of years of social order, if only for a night. In my house, it’s chiefly given the younger children an occasion to be pert and capricious without consequence.”

“What about you?” There she went,
looking
at him again. “What form does the misrule take when you’re the one to find the bean?”

It was his own prurient mind, not anything in her face or intonation, that wove a ribbon of innuendo through her words. His own mind, too, that lost no time in conjuring eight or nine kinds of misrule with which he might answer. If the maid weren’t here, and if Miss Sharp was willing, and if he were a man of fewer scruples, he could put into action some thoughts that had brewed in the back of his brain since their departure from Mosscroft, on the matter of how two long-limbed people could best arrange themselves for mutual enjoyment in the confines of a carriage.

“No. That doesn’t happen.” He spoke with a little more vehemence than he’d intended, warmth stealing from under his poor wilted cravat up into his cheeks. “That is to say, I see to it that one of the younger children always finds the bean. It’s a game more suited to them, really.”

“But the youngest is fifteen, you said. None of your siblings is truly a child anymore.”

“Indeed.” He inclined his head, to steal a short respite from her too-keen curiosity. “I exempted myself when they were small, and I suppose it simply became habit, as these things do.” Not that he owed her any accounting. “At all events, I sincerely doubt anyone’s the poorer for it. I haven’t much taste for mischief and disarray. I’m sure my reign would be a disappointing one.” Though now he thought of it, Martha was every bit as sober and mindful of rules as he, and nobody ever seemed to find Twelfth Night lacking when the bean turned up in her piece of cake.

“That’s mere conjecture.” She spoke like the Miss Sharp who’d vexed him at the breakfast table, quick with an argument on topics that were really none of her concern. “You cannot know what your reign would be like if you’ve never even given it a try. Perhaps you’d find misrule suits you after all.”

“Perhaps.” The words came quickly. “But I was brought up to believe there’s more to consider, in choosing my behavior, than whether or not something
suits
me.” Even if he hadn’t heard the sudden frost in his voice, he would have known of it from Miss Sharp’s reaction. She blinked, and said nothing, and abruptly averted her eyes to the window.

A fine thread of guilt went unspooling deep in his stomach. He hadn’t meant to be uncivil, or to cast aspersions aloud on her upbringing. But maybe she’d take a lesson about presuming to tell people how they ought to live their lives.

No doubt she’d thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn’t heard such urgings before, from every feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was the vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames.

And how was he to have known his curt words would sting her, when his cool silence over the first few miles had not dampened her spirits in the least? Indeed he’d delivered a number of similarly pointed remarks over breakfast, hadn’t he, and only inspired her to more dogged and devious argument.