Change of Address (4 page)

Miss Castling would barely look at either his sister or
himself and seemed tense, anxious to leave. Was it only the fatigue of the
journey, as she claimed when they excused themselves just after tea?

Or was there another reason she wished to make her escape?

* * * * *

“Look at that sky!” Honoria’s voice boomed with excitement,
hurting Amanda’s ears. “I believe we shall have snow for Christmas.”

Amanda pulled the sheet tightly over her head. It was crisp
with starch and smelled of pressed lavender, an enchanting summer smell on a
cold winter morning. She tried to pretend they were back home in Holingbroke.

“You must get up, Amanda. It is Christmas eve. We need to
start preparing our dinner for tomorrow.”

“No we do not,” Amanda replied from under her covers,
sliding down under layers of woolen blankets so she could pretend it was still
dark outside. “The sweep has not even cleared the kitchen chimney yet.” Last
night they’d been able to light a fire in the main parlor, but some blockage
prevented the kitchen fire from drawing and the sweep had pledged to return the
next day. She doubted he would. But if they didn’t get up, they wouldn’t have
to cook or eat. She could sleep through Christmas, and the rest of winter
besides.

“When he comes, do you wish to answer the door in your
nightshift?”

“Mama can let him in.”

“She’s gone to the village.”

“Then
you
can let him in.”

“I’m still in my nightshift.”

“So dress yourself.”

“If you don’t have to dress, then I don’t have to.”

“Very well, then don’t.”

The illusion of being back at Holingbroke became more
difficult to maintain with each exchange, since at the family home she and her
sister had separate bedchambers and here they shared not only the same chamber
but also the same bed—an ancient, old-fashioned affair with an elaborately
carved bedhead, massive posts and heavy velvet curtains. She could not imagine
how the Hilliar servants had managed to move the piece, even dismantled, up the
winding stairs. Amanda had hoped to sleep in the small middle bedchamber, but
it was as yet unfurnished, and even when it was would probably need to be given
over for the use of whatever servants they were able to hire. So she would be
stuck with her sister’s company for some time.

She burrowed down so deep into the bedding that she had to
draw her knees up to her chest. But it was no use. Her sister’s voice was still
audible.

“Somebody will have to let him in when he arrives,” Honoria
whined plaintively.

The illusion of being at Holingbroke vanished entirely as
the morning brought the reality of their new situation fully to light. Not only
was there no footman to answer the door, but no maid to light a fire in their
room. There was no maid to hold their clothing before the blaze so that the
garments would not feel like ice stretched over their skin as they dressed. No maid
to lace their stays and tie their petticoats, so they had to help each other
with numb fingers that felt large and clumsy. No maid to bring them tea, and no
fire over which to hang the kettle.

“I’m hungry,” Honoria complained as they struggled to rekindle
the fire in the working fireplace in the parlor. The coal in the bucket was
damp and so their attempts to get it to light from the embers of last night’s
fire met with little success.

Amanda waved toward the kitchen. “We’ve some bread left in
the hamper we brought from Holingbroke. I had some before you came down but I
think there’s half a loaf remaining.”

“No, I just ate it. But I’m still hungry.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled, watching the coals in
the firebox glow with feeble orange light. “Well, you said you wanted to forage
for food. This would be a good time.”

“It’s December.”

“Is it?” Amanda rubbed her hands together to try to regain
feeling in her fingertips. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Why did you insist that we would have to cook our own
dinner?”

“You liked the idea yesterday.”

“No I didn’t. You did. You always get your way with Mama.”

Honoria was plainly trying to pick a quarrel, so Amanda
clamped her mouth shut on the retort that sprang to her lips and blew on the
cinders again, hoping the red glow would spread to the fresh coal she’d added.
It didn’t work. With a sigh, she sat back on her heels.

Her sister rubbed her hands, stood and bounced from side to
side as if to keep warm. “I like young Mr. Hilliar. I wonder if he is a good
dance partner. Elinor said that when men go to university they spend all of
their time gaming and learn none of the dances and are horribly clumsy and
drink too much punch.”

“Elinor is twelve. How would she know?”

“She has an older sister.”

“Who is fourteen.” And just as annoying as her sister and
the two of them were exponentially more annoying than Honoria, who often seemed
to aspire to the limits of the annoyance scale herself. But now Amanda would
give all of her clothes and half her hair to be home in the neighborhood of
Honoria’s annoying friends again instead of here in this cold place.

Honoria twisted her hair as if preparing to pin it up.
“Elinor’s sister says if she was as pretty as you, she would find a rich
husband and buy new bonnets for her friends every week.”

“Hmmn,” Amanda answered as she prodded the weak coals, “she
may not find it so easy as she thinks to procure a rich husband as agreeable as
all that.” Amanda had found her few forays into the world of courtship
extremely unpleasant. Men always seemed to gape in the presence of women and
say stupid things or nothing at all. An evening in the presence of such
oafishness was bad enough. A lifetime in such circumstances was unimaginable.
Unless she could find a man of sense like her father, she would content herself
to remain a spinster.

Honoria took a spin around the room. “Do you think Mr.
Hilliar would be a good dancer?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t like him, do you? Do you like his sister?”

Amanda sighed. “I don’t think I like either of them. They
look at us as if we’re a bunch of poor little orphaned ducklings who need to be
swept up into a pen and cared for.”

“Aww. I love ducklings. They’re so fluffy.”

“You understand my meaning.” Amanda shoveled the wet coal to
the side of the firebox, hoping it would soon dry out. “They see us as a
charitable project. There is a look of pity in their eyes.”

“Everyone looks at us like that now. Is that not the purpose
of mourning clothes?”

Amanda wiped her hands on her apron and stood. “John
Castling never looked at us that way. He treated us as valued members of the
family, as equals.”

Honoria narrowed her eyes. “Hmpf. Maybe he treated you that
way. I don’t think he ever even looked at me at all.”

“Perhaps he found me fairer to look at,” she teased.

“Of
course
he did,” Honoria agreed with a snort of
exasperation. “They
all
do. Oh, I am sick to death of being your
sister.”

Amanda felt a knot develop in her stomach as she realized
her sister was blinking back tears. Setting down the fire shovel, she stepped
over and clasped her sister’s chapped, cold hands. “Sometimes I tire of being
your sister, too,” she said with a gentle smile. “But it is just the three of
us now and we need to rely on one another and so if you will be nice to me then
I will nicer to you and—”

“Oh, you’ll never be
nice
.” Honoria pulled her hands
away and crossed her arms against her chest. “What I look forward to is the day
you turn old and ugly and then I will be the pretty one and people will be
asking you ‘oh, where is that lovely sister of yours’ and then
you
will
know what it feels like.”

So
that
was the issue. Her sister was jealous because
Amanda was older and out and drawing attention while Honoria had to remain in
the shadows. “Your time will come before you know it,” she assured her. “You
will be out and everyone will sing the praises of your beauty.”

“With this nose?” she scoffed. “I think not.”

“There is not a thing wrong with your nose.”

“My teeth protrude at odd angles.”

“I daresay you will grow into them in a few years.”

“No one will write sonnets about my beauty as they do for
you.”

Amanda laughed as she picked up the fireplace shovel again.
“No one writes sonnets about my beauty, either.”

“Oh yes. Elliott Bagmeyer wrote a whole page poem about your
gold spun hair and—”

“Who is Elliott Bagmeyer?” Amanda prodded fruitlessly at the
weak coals.

“Elinor’s cousin Lucinda’s brother—and about your porcelain
skin and rose petal cheeks—”

“I don’t ever remember meeting her brother.”

“He saw you at a dance once—and about your lips as red as a
ripe love apple.”

She wrinkled her nose. “He didn’t really say that, did he?
About the love apple?”

“It’s just a fruit.”

“But it sounds vulgar coming from someone I’ve never even
met.” Amanda gave up on the fire, brushed her hands on her apron and stood.

Honoria shrugged. “That is the price you pay for your
beauty, I suppose.”

“I shouldn’t have to pay any price. Beauty is worth nothing
so I should not have to pay for it. Now is Mama out buying food or exercising
Juno?”

“Both, I think.”

Amanda giggled. “Do you suppose she’ll bring back anything
we can cook?” It was a funny thought, at first. When they lived at Holingbroke,
Mrs. Castling always relied on the housekeeper to order supplies and suggest
menus, freely admitting her ignorance concerning kitchen matters.

But now the woman who cared more about her horse than her
house would be required to manage it all. The thought was suddenly not the
least bit amusing.

“It’s all your fault,” Honoria grumbled.

“Oh no.” Amanda shook her head. “You cannot blame me. I
wanted to stay at Holingbroke.”

“Not that. I meant having to cook.”

“Yes, if we’d stayed at Holingbroke we wouldn’t have to
worry about cooking.”

“And we wouldn’t have had to worry about cooking if we’d
accepted the Hilliar’s invitation to Christmas dinner.”

“That is only one meal. What difference would that make in
our situation?”

“It’s
Christmas
. On Christmas you should be warm and
happy and thankful. But instead we will be hungry and sad because
you didn’t
like the look of pity in their eyes
. Hmpf.” She turned her back to Amanda.

“It is only one meal,” Amanda muttered as she reached for
her cloak. Since the damp coal would not light directly from the embers, she
would collect some kindling to build up enough flame to light the coal.

“It’s Christmas,” Honoria muttered in return. “Our first
without Papa.”

Tears began to sting the corners of Amanda’s eyes as she
pulled her cloak closed and stepped outside into the cold.

Immediately her eyes watered in earnest, though whether the
tears were caused by the memory of her father or just the wind she could not
say. The air was wet and heavy as if filled with invisible snow.

She bent to pick up sticks, having left off her gloves so
she could tell by touch whether they were wet. Most of them were saturated but
the few that were not she tucked into her apron. Her hands soon ached from the
cold.

Honoria’s voice rang in her head.
It’s all your fault.
That
it certainly was not. If they’d listened to her, they’d be comfortably
ensconced at Holingbroke writing letters of appreciation to the servants who
were doing all the work that they now had to do for themselves.

On Christmas you should be warm and happy and thankful.
Well, once Amanda got the fire properly lighted, they would be warm. They could
be thankful for that. And
happy
was something they were going to have to
do without for a while. Forever maybe.

Our first without Papa.

Amanda tucked her hands under her cloak and stared up into
the gray sky. He was up there somewhere, wasn’t he? His soul, the part of him
that would remember being their Papa. Remember being with them reading funny
stories aloud and taking long walks along the stream with his “sun girls”, as
he called them, because he said they were worth more to him than any son.
Remember before the illness made it too difficult for him to walk, to talk, to
read, to even stay awake.

“You remember us, don’t you?” she asked with a lump in her
throat. “You’re not too busy with heavenly things to remember your ‘sun girls’?
We miss you.”

The sky said nothing.

“We’ve never had a Christmas without you.”

The sky remained silent and after another moment, she turned
her gaze back to the earth. Cold, hard, dark and very real. That’s what life
would be from now on, and there was no use trying to pretend otherwise.

It’s all your fault…having to cook.

Well, that was her fault, at least to a degree. Life might
be cold, hard and dark overall, but their Christmas would not have to be, if
Amanda had only swallowed her pride.

Perhaps it was not too late to amend that. For Honoria’s
sake, and her mother’s as well. She could endure the pity of their
elegant—their better—new neighbors. She could accept their charity, for the
sake of her mother and sister.

Amanda emptied her apron of its slightly soggy contents and
started toward the big stone house on the hill.

Chapter Three

Charlie looked up from the illegible account book he had
been attempting to decipher when the butler opened the door to the library.
“Miss Castling is here to see Miss Hilliar, sir.”

He felt a surge of hope until he realized that Jameson had
just told him the young lady of his dreams was here to see his sister, not
him
.

Jameson nevertheless waited expectantly for some sort of
answer.

“If Miss Castling’s here to see my sister,” Charlie
observed, “then I suggest you let her see my sister.”

“Yes, sir.” But he made no move to do so.

Charlie waved him on. “Neither of them have any contagion
that I know of. Can’t think of a reason to keep the girls apart.”

“Yes, sir. But I cannot find Miss Isabel, sir.”

“Oh. Hmnn.” What did women do at this time of day? “Her maid
doesn’t—no, I suppose you already—and Mrs. Curtis—no I’m sure you—” He stopped.
“I have no idea where she might be if no one downstairs does.”

“Very well, sir.” He bowed and made ready to depart.

Closing the book with a determined thud, Charlie pushed back
his chair and stood. “I will talk to Miss Castling in my sister’s stead.”

The raise of the butler’s eyebrow was just barely
perceptible.

“We’ve been introduced. She cannot object overmuch. At the
very least I can relay a message to my sister for her.”

“Very good, sir.”

As Jameson led him to the small parlor where Isabel’s
pianoforte held court in the corner like a queen over her subjects, Charlie
hoped he would not go completely tongue-tied in Miss Castling’s presence.

When they entered, she jumped up from the leather chair in
which she’d been sitting. Her blond hair was windblown and there was a becoming
flush in her cheeks as if she just stepped inside from a brisk walk.

“I’m sorry, Miss Castling,” he explained, “my sister is
indisposed at the moment so I took the liberty of coming to speak with you.” He
nodded for Jameson to step out.

“Oh.” She seemed a bit disappointed by the prospect, but not
frightened. He supposed that was good.

Before closing the door, Jameson looked warily about the
room as if suspicious that intruders might be lurking behind the fire screen or
under the piano. But at last he took his dour presence from the room and left
them alone.

She cleared her throat.

Ah! She was probably thirsty. “Should I have asked for refreshments,”
he wondered aloud, “or will he just know to bring them, do you think?”

Puzzlement, dismay and confusion all flashed across Miss
Castling’s features as she struggled to express that thought that she obviously
had no idea what to say.

“That was a ridiculous question, I realize,” he apologized.
“Usually Isabel is about when we have guests and she manages the business of
tea and whatnot and I just…talk.”

That made her smile, at least for a moment.

He had to focus on something or he would become distracted
with the idea of trying to coax her to smile again. The simple expression
transformed her face from a mask of icy beauty to the visage of a living
goddess, but an approachable goddess, one with a tolerable sense of humor.
Maybe not even a goddess at all, but more of a—

“Perhaps I should return to speak with her at a more
convenient time,” she suggested.

“No, wait. I hope you will forgive the liberty I take in
speaking with you when you came to see my sister.” He focused his gaze on the
edge of a picture frame to the left of Miss Castling’s bonnet string. “But I
feel that our acquaintance began on the wrong footing and I wish to apologize
and see if it might be possible to start afresh.”

She turned to look over her shoulder but quickly turned
back, having correctly ascertained that there was nothing there to see. “I
believe our acquaintance is just as it should be,” she said coolly. “Now if you
will excuse me, I will—”

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, looking her squarely in the
eye. He could manage one eye, at least. It would too much to try for both. “I
am not usually such a dunderhead, I swear. Or if swearing offends you, I avow.
I—I—that is, we live in such proximity, can we not be on friendly terms?”

“Friendly terms?” She frowned behind a mask of ice that was
now about three inches thick around the eyes.

“Yes, friendly.” He would focus on that idea,
friend,
and think of her as someone in whose company he could relax. “You know, I say
friendly things and you look at me as if I’m not such a—a…”

“Dunderhead,” she suggested.

“Yes, exactly.”

She considered for a moment. “I will stop looking at you as
if you were a dunderhead,” she proposed, “if you will stop looking at me as I
am a harebrained damsel without enough sense to leave a burning building.”

“I never once associated you with a hare,” Charlie insisted
quite truthfully, “not even in my mind. And I do apologize for my sudden
intrusion yesterday. Your sister explained that you saw it as rather an insult
to your intelligence. I just thought that Mary might need help.”

“Would not this Mary have enough sense to leave a burning
building either?”

“She would, but I thought…”
Really, what had he thought?
“I suppose I did not
think
at all.”

She nodded. “Yes, I believe men are prone to that. Act first
and think later. They consider it heroic.”

“But,” he said carefully, struggling to put his logic into
words, “if I had taken time to reason and decided not to enter the house and
Mary had been in distress, she might have died. That would not have been
heroic, leaving her to perish.”

Miss Castling looked taken aback. “No,” she said slowly. “I
suppose not.”

“So might,” he suggested carefully, “it be permissible on
occasion to act without conducting a fully reasoned discourse in my head?”

“You mean without thinking?”

“Yes”

“I suppose.” She nodded. “When there is a possibility of
true harm.”

She did not see him as quite such a dunderhead now, that he
could tell. The look she gave him was far from approving, but he no longer had
the sense that she wished to scrape him off the bottom of her shoe. He had now
progressed to being somewhat akin to a slightly dirty handkerchief—possibly
useful, but best exchanged as soon as possible.

He still had no idea why she had come. “Do you have a
message you wish me to convey to Isabel?”

“Oh.” To his tremendous surprise, the cheeks of the icy
beauty began to color, seemingly not from exertion this time but from
embarrassment. She glanced down for a moment before replying. “I, too, have an
apology to make.”

“If you would prefer to commit your thoughts to paper,” he
offered, “I can send for writing implements.”

“No, there really is not sufficient time.” She bit her lip
and it seemed as if she could hardly bring herself to speak. “That is, the
message to be conveyed must be delivered as soon as possible.” Then she
actually hung her head.

“You’re not going to confess to stealing the furniture, are
you?”

“No,” she chuckled, despite herself. As she looked up, the
mortification in her gray eyes nearly took his breath away. “I spoke too
hastily in declining your father’s kind invitation to Christmas dinner. And now
I have the effrontery to ask if we might accept after all.”

“Why of course”

“It is terribly rude on such short notice, and after having
declined once already…”

“That is no matter at all.” It might be for Cook, but he’d
prepare the meal himself if that meant Miss Castling and her family would be
able to share it with them.

“Thank you. My mother and sister will be most grateful.”

Ah, but she did not wish this
herself.
She appeared
only as an emissary for the others.

“It is the least we can do to oblige,” he murmured, trying
not to let disappointment sound in his voice.

She curtsied, clearly signaling that she wished to be away.
“I do thank you for your generous hospitality. We will see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes,” he echoed. At least he had her gratitude.

* * * * *

Her bedtime prayers should have focused on the gift of the
Messiah and giving praise to God and angels singing glory Halleluiah. Instead
she prayed that it had all been a dream. She prayed she would wake Christmas
morning at Holingbroke just as she had for years, they would have buns with
candied fruit for breakfast and then cluster around Papa’s bed to wish him
Happy Christmas. And the village church would fill with the steamy breath of worshippers
grateful to have an extra day’s rest and everyone would be just a bit joyous.

If it was not a dream, if this move was all real, then
tomorrow they would be strangers in a strange church. And they would have to
beg for their dinner and there would be no joy.

She never could have asked, have
begged
at the
Hilliar home in such a shameful manner, if she had not thought of what her Papa
would have wanted for them this Christmas. “Don’t wait,” he’d urged her mother.
“Marry again as soon as you can. I want you to be happy, all of you.” Though
Papa was wrong in thinking that marriage could make anyone happy, he did at
least want them to be happy and that was what was of greatest import.

Amanda could be the dutiful daughter and help make her
mother and sister happy, at least for the day.

She was aware that she was no longer even attempting to pray
but simply replaying the moment of her mortification over and over.

Charles Hilliar was such a ridiculous young man, it seemed
hard to believe she could be mortified by anything she’d said in his presence.
Yet maybe he was not so bad as all that. His argument about the occasional need
to act without thinking held a good deal of merit. And he had this hopeful look
about him that was somehow appealing, as if he were a puppy dog she might pat
on the head or toss a bit of food under the table. Ever hopeful, not seeking
much. He’d suggested they could be friends. There was no harm in that, was
there?

She wondered what time it was. At home, when the house was
still, she could often hear the tall clock ticking in the drawing room below.

They had no clock in this house. Wind gusted outside,
moaning in the eaves. It was not a comforting sound. She pulled the covers
tight over her head and waited for morning.

Chains rattled violently as the wind continued to moan. Had
they told any Christmas ghost stories this year before bed? The pounding of the
ghostly chains had to be part of a dream. As Amanda listened, the sounds became
more distinct—first a rattling, then a pounding noise. Almost as if someone
were trying to open the door downstairs.

“There’s no fire,” she said, half aloud, to Charlie Hilliar
or whoever it was pounding on the door in her dream.

Could he see her in her nightshift?

All at once, she was very much awake.

“Did you hear that?” Honoria asked.

“What?” Surely Charlie Hilliar had not been knocking on the
door and she didn’t want to admit she’d apparently dreamed about him. What had
her sister heard?

“It was like a whimper or a small scream, like a rabbit
makes when it’s very scared.”

They both listened for a moment, the only sound in the still
darkness coming from their breathing.

“Animals are supposed to talk on Christmas eve,” Honoria
whispered.

“Maybe Juno has a shrill voice.”

They listened again but heard nothing. No screams, no doors
rattling.

“We must have been dreaming.” Amanda yawned. “Let’s go back
to—”

She was interrupted by a piercing scream.

“Juno?” Honoria guessed. “Someone is trying to steal her!”

Amanda shook her head, a meaningless gesture her sister could
not see in the darkness. “The stable is on Mama’s end of the house and the
noises we heard came from on our end.” She pulled aside the bed curtains, slid
down to the floor, felt her way over to the window and opened the shutter just
a crack.

“Come down, ye worthless chit,” a man’s voice raged outside.
“Tell me what ye’ve done wi’ it. Ye had no right to take m’ John Barleycorn.”
In the darkness she could just barely make out the shadowed figure of a
heavyset man carrying a stick of some sort, not ten yards from their end of the
house.

“That does not sound like Father Christmas,” Honoria said
decidedly.

“Whst!” Amanda shushed her. “There’s a man outside under one
of the cherry trees.”

Honoria crawled over to join her at the window. “Ah, and the
girl he yells at must be up in the tree near the corner. See how the branches
shake?”

The man circled the tree unsteadily for a moment before
stopping to yell up into its branches. “Probly drank it all yesself, an’ then
sayin’ it ain’ good for nobody. A right li’l liar is what ye are.” He
punctuated the word “liar” by smacking the stick he carried against the trunk
of the tree.”Liar!” he repeated, hitting the tree with much more force.

Amanda winced at the impact.

“What should we do?” Honoria asked.

“I don’t think he can be of much danger to us from out
there,” Amanda pointed out. “The windows are shuttered and the doors locked.
He’s just a drunk carried away with Christmas eve revelry. If we ignore him, he
will go away after a while.”

“I’m dyin’ o’thirst!” the man whined, shaking the lower
branches of the tree.

“What about the girl?” Honoria demanded.

“When he leaves, she can come down. She may be as drunk as
he is.”

Just when Amanda was about to suggest they return to bed,
the man’s tone suddenly turned from complaint to threat. “This time I’m gonna
kill ye, bitch.” The angry man slammed the stick into the tree again and the
girl uttered a heart-wrenching scream.

She sounded young and frightened and suddenly Amanda viewed
the situation in a much different light.