A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) (10 page)

“Of course.” Mrs. Porter dipped her head, a sort of vestigial curtsey. “I’ll put the kettle on and have hot tea for all of you when you come in.”

“Mr. Blackshear.” She needed to talk to him before they parted. At the very least, she needed to know whether they’d told conflicting stories. “I’d like to bring the bird, if I may. If we’re to be here for a while. I’ll find a place for it in the barn, if Mrs. Porter doesn’t object.”

Mrs. Porter didn’t voice any objection, so she went with Mr. Blackshear to the carriage, where he took down the crate and the bag that held the falcon’s things. They were far enough away from the others that they could speak in low voices and be unheard.

“I told Mrs. Porter that we’ve come from visiting my father, we’re on our way to see my aunt and uncle, and then we’re bound for your family’s house in Cambridgeshire.” She crouched by the crate, tugging the falconer’s glove on as she spoke.

“Good. It’s best we stay as close to the truth as we can.” He knelt at the crate’s other side, that she wouldn’t have to raise her voice. “Did you say how long we’ve been married?”

She shook her head. “I think we ought to say under a year. Any longer and they might wonder why we haven’t any children.” She drew out the tether. “Will you tie this to the loop on my wrist, please?” What other details must they account for and agree upon? “How do we explain your not having a trunk?”

“It went ahead in a second carriage with your maid and my valet.” He tied an excellent knot without her even telling him how. “You and I live in London most of the year. Our house is in Mount Street. May I ask your age?”

“One and twenty. May I ask your name?” She concentrated all her attention on reaching into the open crate and tying the loose end of the tether to the jess hanging from the falcon’s ankle, to avoid looking at his face. Many respectable wives and husbands never called each other by given name at all. He might be offended, and tell her that she need only address him as Mr. Blackshear.

But he knew her name. He’d heard Papa say it a score of times. It was only fair she know his. And she wanted—oh, there was no good reason for it, when they’d stumbled back and forth from awkwardness to antagonism since their first meeting, and when each was in a hurry to get to the place where their paths would permanently diverge—but she wanted to know what name he went by among the people who loved him best.

“Andrew is my Christian name.” His words loosed an exquisite snowfall within her, a hundred times prettier than the one outside. “Andrew James Blackshear. I’m five and twenty years old. And I’ve heard your name, but not from you. I won’t presume to use it without your permission.” He kept his eyes lowered to the crate, and his words were everything proper, but his voice bore faint traces of that mulled-wine essence. This was an intimacy and he knew it.

“Of course you may use it. Lucy. Lucy Anne Sharp. The Honorable Lucy Sharp, if you’re addressing a letter to me.” She spoke quickly, getting the falcon out of the crate and situated on her wrist.

“The Honorable Mrs. Blackshear, rather. Even if you don’t tower over me, you’ve managed to marry beneath you.” His dimple flashed when she looked up at him—he was so near—just as if he really were a husband teasing his wife.

She rose from her crouch, not entirely steady, and his hand came across to support her by the elbow. When she’d gained her feet he let go and stepped back, his eyes roving about to capture the whole picture of her.

She felt the way she had when he’d first looked at her in the lane: like she was something richer and rarer than a mortal woman. Like she might be a warrior princess, with the falcon on her arm, or a witch equipped with her familiar. Snow swirled down between them and she didn’t know what to say.

“You’d better go and get warm.” He was the one to speak. “When I come to the house I’ll contrive to draw you aside so you can tell me all you’ve told Mrs. Porter, and we can square our stories.”

“Very good. Good luck. Keep as warm as you can.” Those seemed like the sorts of things a wife would say. Fitted to the occasion too: they would both need luck in abundant measure if they were to carry off their charade, get the wheel back in working order, and arrive safely at their respective destinations in time for Christmas.

She made a curtsey to her husband—to Mr. Blackshear—to Andrew—and started back to follow Mrs. Porter to indoor warmth and the promise of tea.

“There, now.” Andrew patted the neck of the same horse he’d earlier walked into calm, and looped its lead strap over a peg on the barn wall. “You’ll have a short rest here out of the snow, and then, if luck is with us, we’ll be on the road again.”

If luck wasn’t with them… it didn’t bear thinking of. He had to find a wheelwright; had to accomplish this repair; had to get Miss Sharp delivered to her party and get himself away from her perversely bewitching presence
,
before he compromised them both even further than he’d already done.

Formality,
he’d told himself.
Correctness. Distance.
And still he’d come right out with his name at her asking, and relished the fact that she’d asked. Clearly his better nature and good intentions went scurrying somewhere else when he got within three or four feet of her; therefore it was best he keep his distance and effect as early a parting as possible. Which fortunately aligned with her existing plans as well as his.

He turned away from the horse, threaded his fingers together, and stretched his arms straight before him, palms out. His arms ached. His shoulders ached. His back ached. He’d walked alongside that damned crippled carriage for what felt like five miles, bracing up the broken-wheel corner while the other men took turns leading the horses and helping him support the vehicle’s left side.

“Please allow me to thank you again.” He addressed himself to Mr. Porter and the stableman Ned, who’d managed to get the carriage’s bad corner propped on a barrel while he and John settled the horses in two empty stalls. “I’m sure you must have had to leave a good meal or a pleasant fire to come and help us. I appreciate it deeply.”

Mr. Porter shook his head. “It wasn’t any inconvenience. And I think hospitality to traveling strangers is a suitable thing for Christmas Eve. At least I’ve heard something of it in church, this time of year.” He smiled, somewhat shyly, looking unsure of whether it was appropriate to joke with a gentleman.

Andrew returned the smile, to put the man at ease and also because it was a fair witticism and probably not blasphemous, really. “You set a fine example of Christian feeling for us all. Now, I’ll be much obliged to accept Mrs. Porter’s offer of tea, and then to be directed to the nearest village.”

On the way out of the barn he passed the falcon. Miss Sharp had found it a perch on a stall door, and fastened its tether to a hasp. It eyed the men, its beak agape, as they went by. Several of the birds had gaped in that manner when he’d seen them all in the mews. Maybe it was something they did when hungry? He’d ask Miss Sharp.

Mrs. Blackshear, rather. The words ricocheted inside him, hitting everything from his lungs to his kneecap to the back of his top front teeth as he stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him.

Snow covered the ground now, and still came steadily down. Faint, regular depressions marked where Miss Sharp and Mrs. Porter must have walked a half-hour or so ago, when they’d settled the bird in the barn and made their way to the house. His own footprints, and the other men’s, would be similarly obscured in another half-hour, if the snowfall didn’t ease. He’d better stay in the house only long enough to swallow his tea and get a bit warm before setting out again.

They stomped snow from their boots and brushed it from their coats when they reached the back door, and once they were tolerably fit for indoors, Mr. Porter led them in to what proved to be the kitchen.

It was a humble kitchen indeed compared to the ones in his family home and the London house, which were the only two into which he’d ever set foot. It had a fire, though, and four walls and a roof, and to a man who hadn’t been properly indoors since the posting inn at Downham Market, it might as well have been a palace banqueting hall.

“There you all are. I think we’ve timed this near perfectly.” Past the intervening shapes of Ned and Mr. Porter and an aproned girl, all edging round each other to get to stove or hearth or cupboard, came the voice of his falsified Mrs. Blackshear. “We saw you through the window when you came in off the road. We knew it would take you some time to get everything put away in the barn, so we had to guess when to pour the hot water. But I think we guessed well, don’t you, Mrs. Porter?”

Somewhere around the time she uttered the word
barn,
the kitchen’s traffic rearranged itself to give him a view of her. She stood at the room’s other end, taking cups down from a shelf and handing them to the comparatively diminutive Mrs. Porter. She was smiling already round her stream of good-cheered narration, but when she caught his eye she somehow shaped the smile into a greeting just for him.

And for a moment he had the oddest sensation of homecoming.

There was no rational basis to it, nor empirical basis either. Nothing about the scene bore the slightest resemblance to the domestic life he would one day lead. On those occasions when he did absent himself from home for any length of time, then if his prudently chosen, methodically courted, sensible-natured wife had not accompanied him, she certainly wouldn’t be busying herself in the kitchen in preparation for his return.

Nor would he enter through that room, of course. He’d come in through the front door—not, Lord knows, with arms and back aching from physical labor—and be greeted first by the butler and then perhaps by his valet before he made his way to the parlor where his wife would ring for coffee instead of tea because she’d know him, as he would know her. Because they would have built their marriage on a foundation of such thorough, rich acquaintance as only time could make possible.

And even that sort of homecoming was but a distant prospect. The homecoming that mattered was the one he had still to accomplish today, after he’d warmed himself in this kitchen and solved the problem of the broken wheel.

He shrugged out of his coat and followed the other men’s example in draping it over one of several battered-looking chairs that stood on the hearth. He took off his hat, too, and turned to face the room with an acute consciousness of the sorry state of his clothes and hair—but nobody seemed to take note. Indeed Mrs. Porter was entirely occupied in apologizing for the fact that he must drink his tea in the kitchen, and the fact that she hadn’t had a better room to offer Mrs. Blackshear.

“I’m afraid we hadn’t laid a fire in the drawing room today,” she explained, pouring the tea. “I’ve had the maid start one, though, and I expect the room will be warm by the time you’ve gone on your errand. Mrs. Blackshear will have a comfortable place to wait for you.”

“I’ve enjoyed waiting in the kitchen.” Miss Sharp took the cup and brought it across the few feet of floor to where he still stood on the hearth. “Our cook scarcely allows me over the threshold of our kitchen at home. It’s pleasant to look about and see how things are done.” She stopped directly in front of him, offering both the cup and a private, significant look. “I think this tea will be just the thing for you. We made it the way you prefer, light and refreshing with none of that lingering bitterness.”

Weak,
she meant. The tea was going to be weak, so weak she felt she must warn him. His heart sank at the prospect, and plummeted pell-mell when he raised the cup and took a mouthful.

All that long walk from the place where they’d broken down in the ditch, he’d rallied his flagging spirits with thoughts of something hot to drink. He’d reconciled himself to tea, since that’s what was on offer, but he’d been thinking of hearty, potent tea, the kind that could fortify a man for a miles-long march through cold and snow. This insipid swill wouldn’t fortify him for so much as a stroll across the room. They might as well have served him water straight from the kettle.

He swallowed the mouthful and nodded. “Perfect. Just the thing.” Further praise he could not offer, not if his life depended on it.

Miss Sharp beamed her approval, radiantly as if he’d committed some extraordinary deed of gentlemanly condescension rather than simply acting as common courtesy demanded. She set a bold hand on his forearm. “May I take Mr. Blackshear to see the drawing room?” She didn’t even turn to direct this over her shoulder, but kept her eyes on him, looking altogether like a wife eager to be alone with her husband. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know how comfortably I’ll be situated while he’s gone.”

Distance. Formality.
“Indeed I will. If Mr. and Mrs. Porter will excuse us?” Her arranging so soon a surreptitious conference was commendably pragmatic. His intense awareness of her hand’s soft weight on his arm was no fault of hers.

The Porters raising no objection, she led him from the kitchen and across a hallway to another modest room, where she shut the door and put her back against it, dropping her hold on his arm. “I think they’re poor,” she said in an undertone, urgency taking the place of her former affectionate good cheer. “Mr. Blackshear, I truly believe the Porters haven’t much money at all.”