ONCE UPON A REGENCY CHRISTMAS Page 10

  She blinked then, hard, because sense seemed to have escaped from her. Already they were back on the foot path near Stanhope Gate, a minute from the safety of the crowd. The early snow from last week lay in dirty mounds on each side of them, melting into thick mud.

  ‘Well. Thank you for your help.’ Extracting a coin from her purse, Christine went to pay him, but he merely looked at the money before taking a step back.

  ‘I imagine England is not so different from the land that I hail from and it is a poor place that would insist on payment for the helping of a lady. It was my pleasure.’

  Then he was gone, through the weeping bare branches of the willows, his long stride taking him away from her. She felt a loss that was startling even as her brother and the group she had walked with came into sight.

  ‘Are you quite well, Christine?’ Adelaide Hughes, Lady Wesley, came across to stand next to her and looked around. ‘I could not find you for a good few minutes. Where on earth did you go?’

  ‘I walked towards the Serpentine behind some trees and lost my direction. Then I felt as though a man was following me.’

  ‘What man?’ Adelaide swivelled about. ‘Where?’

  All about them was the quiet of the park and further afield the ruffled grey surface of wind on the water. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps no one was there at all.’

  ‘You do seem rather distracted, Christine. Shall I find your brother? He is talking with Gabriel just over there.’

  ‘No. It was probably all in my imagination and I certainly do not wish for a scene.’ She made a point to peruse other pathways as she spoke. Was the unusual groom still about? She almost dared not look in case she caught his eyes again. A servant on an errand for his master would be most unnerved by the particular notice of a high-born woman like her.

  But still she could not quite help herself, her eyes finding him standing on a slight rise, a horse behind him now and the cheap homespun jacket he wore straining through the thickness of muscle. He watched her, caught in stillness against the tableau of a wide blue winter sky.

  As her world tilted she had the distinct impression of herself beneath him, naked and writhing in the last throes of some passion she had never felt.

  Was she going mad? She hadn’t enjoyed the intimate with Joseph Burnley, her betrothed, all those years ago as they had snatched at opportunity and lain with each other in the barn at Linden Park. He had been rough and they had been young and the stories of lovers, clandestinely read in her room at night, had not matched in any way or form his inexperienced and fumbling promises.

  Her fingers reached for the ruby and diamond brooch Adelaide had given her once as a present. ‘All losses are restored,’ she had said, ‘and sorrows end.’ The quote from Shakespeare had been meant to soften her grief over Joseph’s death on the icy passes of the Cantabrians.

  ‘There is only so much sadness a person is able to sustain,’ she’d added, ‘and you have certainly had your share.’ Rubbing the ruby, Christine breathed out. Marriage might be something she could no longer contemplate, but her love of family and friends, fine cloth and good design more than made up for it.

  When she glanced back again the groom was gone.

  Her brother Lucien joined her a moment later, her sister-in-law Alejandra at his side. ‘You look cold, Christine, so we should make our way back to the town house. Linden Park is gearing up for an unforgettable Christmas this year and I hope you’ll make plans to come down to celebrate it with us?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She tried not to make any promises that caught her within a timeframe or an occasion these days. Her business took up many hours, but it was the series of small seamstress shops that she had founded that was taking a lot more.

  Almost a hundred women depended on her now, a hundred families who needed the work and the money to feed their little ones and their old people. It was as if she was the pebble dropped into a still deepness of water, all the spreading rings about her demanding attention and care, any falter or wrong decision on her behalf bringing other problems, wider worries.

  She had forgotten how to laugh, she thought, remembering the lines around the eyes of the American in the park when he had smiled. Most of the eligible men in London town slathered potions of all manner upon their baby-smooth faces and fashioned ruffles of lace at their necks. The man who had frightened her and followed her had been dressed as a gentleman, too. She tried to recall his features, but failed. All she had known was a sense of menace and she wondered what might have happened had he caught her alone.

  A note had been delivered last week to one of the shops in St Giles. It had warned her to desist with her charitable causes and to leave the business of manufacturing garments to men who knew what they were about. She had shown the letter to no one because Lucien was not happy with her many night-time outings and her mother was making herself ill with worry over her daughter’s business endeavours.

  ‘Your father would turn in his grave, Christine, if he knew what you were doing. Besides, any suitor who might have been interested in pursuing you would hardly be pleased with discovering your shops in the slums with the riff-raff.’

  Christine breathed out firmly. Her mother was a woman from another time when independence had not been possible for a female and all happiness hinged on a good marriage. Further away the sun caught on the limed boughs of a run of deciduous trees, reflecting their paleness on the greying surface of the Serpentine. Like a silk watercolour. She wished she might have been able to go home this instant to try to render such a painterly effect on fabric. A gown of that shade would be magnificent and she had just the client for it.

  Instead she was here caught in the park with layers of emotion breaking inside her: fear, lust and wonderment. Her body was becoming like one of the marionettes on strings she’d seen last month in the Haymarket, pulled this way and that from above and below. Little wonder that she was exhausted.

  He’d worn a ring, she suddenly thought, the groom with the dusty hat, a ring of engraved wrought gold on the fourth finger of his right hand, and it had looked valuable.

  An oddity, that, given the small sum most grooms would earn for their toil. A year’s worth of labour at least and easily lost in the day-to-day workings of a busy city stable. Why would he risk such a treasure?

  She wished they could have spoken for longer or that he might reappear. She wished she’d known his name or the place that he worked, if only to send a thank-you note for the aid he had given her. But perhaps he could not read? Perhaps he was married? Perhaps he had in truth forgotten her, another wealthy London lady with all the time in the world to fritter away, her sights set on the grand and titled lords of the ton.

  * * *

  A ruction sounded through the town house later that afternoon, shouting and banging, the quick run of servants and the closure of doors.

  Christine sat near the window in her room with a tapestry circle in hand, embroidering the last of a series of wildflowers on to a fragile silken bodice. The quiet pastime allowed the commotion downstairs to easily travel upwards. Placing her sewing on the table, she stood. ‘What on earth is happening down there, Anne?’ Her maid sat with her, stitching her own cloth, though she, too, had stopped.

  ‘Sounds like a visitor, my lady, though I don’t think the master is pleased at all.’

  He wasn’t. She could hear her brother Lucien’s voice, loud and plainly angry.

  ‘What the hell is the meaning of this?’

  ‘This man was following your sister, my lord, in Hyde Park and she was frightened. I thought you ought to know of it.’

  Shock tore through Christine’s body as she listened. The foreign tones of the American groom here in her house, here downstairs, and he was talking with her brother. Plucking her thick woollen shawl from the chair, she caught her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was untidy and the deep flush o
f some high emotion was staining her cheeks, but she could not tarry. If he left...

  She saw that a servant had been posted at the library door as she came from the stairwell down the short corridor. ‘His lordship is busy, my lady, and is not to be disturbed.’

  ‘I know he is, Whitby.’ With just a smile she moved past him and unlatched the door, closing it behind her.

  Inside the scene was one straight from the pages of a dreadful novel. Lucien was furious. The American was waiting patiently as he held the scruff of the neck of the same man she had seen following her in the park, his nose now bleeding profusely. My God, why had he brought the man here? As a trophy?

  ‘You cannot just haul anyone off the street and hurt them like this,’ she found herself saying. ‘There are proper channels of law to follow in England and I hardly think—’

  She got no further.

  ‘He had a note for you in his pocket, my lady. I have given the missive to the Earl.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Lucien spoke to her now and he was livid.

  ‘I do. This man kindly helped me in the park to find my way back to the proper pathway when—’

  ‘Not him. The other one. The miscreant? Is he known to you?’

  She shook her head in a daze, the events of her day moving almost beyond comprehension as the shifty dark eyes of her stalker slid across her. He was dressed as a gentleman, but she doubted he was one. His first two front teeth were blackened by dental decay and his face was lined with hardship.

  The blood flow from his nose at least seemed to have stopped though she could see large smears on the homespun of the American’s jacket. He was holding the man up off the ground, but his stance held the look of one who was not even vaguely strained by the weight.

  ‘What did the letter say?’ She asked this of her brother.

  ‘That you were to desist from your industry in the poorer parts of London.’

  Stepping forward, she faced the battered man directly. ‘Why?’

  It was the American who answered her. ‘I have already asked him that question, my lady, and even a considerable sweetener has not jolted his tongue. I think, by all accounts, he intends to remain silent. Perhaps someone else is paying him for such confidence, Lord Ross? It might be wise for you to find out just exactly who he associates with and why.’

  At that Lucien rang a bell and the servant at the door opened it.

  ‘Get Maxwell and Smith to take this man to the cellar and lock the door so that he has no chance of escape, for I shall wish to question him in a little while.’

  Another moment and that order was obeyed leaving the American groom, Lucien and her in the library, an unsettled silence all around them.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her brother sounded as if he was at the very edge of his patience.

  ‘Mr William Miller, my lord, newly come to London.’ Mr Miller used the exact same tone as Lucien. Irritated. Wanting to get on. The arrogance was startling.

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘The Earl of Hampton, my lord.’

  ‘Would he vouch for you or give you reference?’

  The green eyes narrowed. ‘I imagine that he would, my lord.’

  ‘Good. Hellaby is a friend of mine. Have you been working there long?’

  ‘No. Only a few weeks.’

  ‘But he knows your character?’ Her brother was noticeably sizing the stranger up.

  ‘He does, my lord.’

  ‘I want to offer you a job as my sister’s keeper, Mr Miller. She is a stubborn woman and refuses to think her personage might not be safe and that others should try to harm her.’

  Christine had heard enough. ‘I am neither blind, mute nor deaf, Lucien. Should I even wish to have a keeper, as you name it—’

  Astonishingly, the American groom cut her off.

  ‘When should I start, my lord?’

  ‘Tomorrow. At nine. You will accompany Lady Christine to any appointment she may need to keep and make certain that whilst away from the house, she is safe.’

  ‘I shall be here, my lord. Tomorrow at nine.’ Unrolling the dirty felt hat from his pocket, he bowed to them both and was gone. He’d removed his ring, Christine saw and wondered. Each knuckle on the back of his left hand was grazed.

  ‘I do not think...’ But Lucien was in little mind for argument.

  ‘Read this,’ he said quietly and handed her the note.

  It was a missive cut from newspaper, each word torn carefully to make a sentence.

  Close your workshops...or else.

  ‘Or else...what?’ She didn’t like the quiver in her question.

  ‘I think it’s plain enough, Christine, that you have been made into a target.’

  She swallowed at his words, the fright from this morning coming back as a thickening in her throat.

  ‘Mr Miller is strong, direct and dangerous. As such he is a godsend. He also does not stand back and allow blackmailers the space to cause mayhem. He can protect you.’

  ‘He is a man who takes the law into his own hands.’ Her words were not given as a compliment, although Lucien threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘The law of honour and protection has its own tenets and they are ones that all good men should believe in. Unless you accept Mr Miller as your bodyguard at all times when you are away from this house you shall not be leaving it.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  He stooped to ring the bell and his man came in quickly.

  ‘You won’t. Bring a carriage around, Whitby, I shall be going out.’

  ‘And the man in the cellar, my lord?’

  ‘Will be coming with me.’

  A second later he was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Will lay down in the space he’d chosen and watched a spider crawl across the ceiling in the glare of a single candle. The webs on each side of the wooden rafters were thick, attesting to many other inhabitants of the same ilk across the years and when the specimen above faltered, a fragile strand of silk was caught in the light as he used it to return to safety.

  It was cold here and the blankets provided as shelter were thin. Heaping straw on top of the matted wool, he tried to create more warmth with the weight of it as he burrowed into the prickly horsehair mattress.

  He was tired and bone-weary. From the journey, from the worry, from the unexpected encounter today with Lady Christine Howard.

  She was beautiful. He’d never seen another woman like her with her sky-blue eyes and pale golden hair. She had dimples etched into her cheeks and a body that looked like it had been drawn by one of the old Italian masters—Sandro Botticelli, perhaps, or Agnolo di Cosimo.

  He smiled at such grand imaginings here in the stables of Stephen Hellaby. At least there were horses around him and good ones, too. He could hear them quietly whickering below as the moon waned towards the morning. His knuckles hurt. He had sucked the dirt from the grazes, winding the broken skin in a bandage he had made from the hem of his old shirt and fastening it with a knot of frayed ends, pulling it tight with his teeth.

  The noises of London were loud to ears that had known the silence and grandness of nature for so very long. The trees. The land. The white rapids of the Fall Line at Richmond where the river crossed from hard bedrock to soft sediment and then fell down towards the sea.

  He missed it. Missed it all. He swallowed and breathed in deeply, reaching into a pocket for his lucky coin. The Flowing Hair dollar was struck in silver with the bust of Liberty on one face and the American eagle on the other. It had been part of the bounty of his first sale of timber brought to the coast in sweat and courage and he’d kept it safe ever since. His payment for all the backbreaking hours, the bruising and the sheer danger of it. He traced the design in the metal before carefully wrapping it and returnin
g it to his pocket.

  Christine Howard had noticed the ring he’d worn, he was sure of it. He’d have to be more careful. The anger in him made his heart beat faster and he pushed it away for it was no good to think too much. He’d learned that lesson long ago.

  A dog was barking plaintively in the distance and the noise was spooking the horses. With a shove at the straw he pulled himself free from the warmth and went out into the shadowed night to make sure that all was well, his breath caught in icy whiteness as he went.

  * * *

  Christine watched for the American in the morning, part of her hoping he would not come after a long restless night of wondrous dreams.

  Wondrous. The word made her smile and she enunciated it out loud so that it fell in all of its two silky syllables, precisely spoken. She couldn’t remember once before ever using the word, so impossibly theatrical and so pointedly inhabituel.

  Inhabituel. There was another one. In French this time, but no less a companion for the first. She barely recognised herself as she lifted her teacup and looked again at the clock. He was late, the American. And if he did not come...?

  She saw him then, marking out the steps from the roadway to the front door and then to the garden at one edge of the town house. Her brother was beside him and they were talking. She caught their quick laughter as she turned away, the day falling to a new low in her observation of this masculine predilection for control.

  She would soon be twenty-seven and all the good years of her life were running down to her thirties. Not old, she knew that, but older. She had not imagined as a young girl to be this age and left on the shelf so to speak, uninterested in the lords of the ton and unable to simper and flirt.

  She breathed out heavily, noting that even indoors she could see the shadow of it. A frost sat on the windows, fingers of ice across the glass. Four weeks until Christmas, only a few days before the start of Advent. Thirty-five days to the New Year. She frowned at her musing, for it seemed she had been counting down her life for years now in some form or another. She vowed to stop it.