Change of Address (8 page)

“Share? A gallant gentleman would give a lady her own
blanket.”

“That blanket is yours, then, and yours will be the choice
whether to share it.”

She turned away, stifling a smile. Flirting in such a
familiar fashion after such a short acquaintance was really too much. And entirely
inappropriate for Christmas morning.

She thought of Christmas mornings in the past as she spread
around the coal that she had laid out to dry earlier and watched it catch fire.
She thought of the happy anticipation of the days of feasting and revelry to
come, the hope that filled the church as even those who had no thought for
divine providence the remainder of the year had on that morning a sense that
any unexpected miracle might be possible. There was a special joy to the day
that she had thought she might never know again, and certainly not this year.

Here the atmosphere at the church could be different, and
she might be unaware since she would be half asleep by the time they attended
worship. But the sense of hope and thankfulness, that would only be too real.
They would weather the storm of this long night as they’d weathered the storm
of her father’s long illness and the unexpected change of address from
Holingbroke. Good would come of this move, as abrupt as it had been. Good
friendships, if not more.

She blushed again, but maybe this time it was simply the
heat of the fire.

“We will not need the blanket, I do not believe.” Charlie
said softly as he came up behind her. “You’ve built quite an impressive blaze
in a short time.”

She stood. “I’ve had more practice in recent days than I
ever expected to. We always had servants light the fires for us at
Holingbroke.” She no longer felt the urge to refer to that house as her home.
It no longer was.

“After Twelfth Night, we will be able to find you proper
staff, with separate maids to light each fire if you wish.”

She smiled as she stepped back to a settee and seated
herself, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. “We haven’t room to house
many maids. As it is, even the stable boy must go back to his home each night.”

“We can house staff for you. Our servants hall stands half
empty most of the time. It was built to sleep a score of spit boys and dairy
maids that the household hasn’t seen since the Tudors died off.”

She laughed. “That is very kind.” After a moment’s
hesitation, she held up one end of the blanket, an invitation to join her under
its warmth.

He stepped toward her slowly, as if acknowledging the
importance of the intimacy she offered. Though he sat next to her and she could
feel heat radiating from his body, he made no effort to press against her and
she sat very straight, not wanting to lean on him. Together, they stared at the
flames in silence for several long minutes.

“It must have been very difficult,” he said at last, “losing
your father, and then having to move.”

“It was, but we’ve gotten on.” She spoke lightly, but then
decided she was not being entirely honest. “I was quite angry at first. My
cousin—the heir—had invited us to remain at Holingbroke for as long as we
wished and I did not understand why we needed to leave so suddenly.”

“Perhaps it was some conflict between his wife and your
mother?”

She shook her head. “He had no wife.”

“Ah.” He stared into the fire for a moment. “Your mother
made a wise move, I think, though others might not agree.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“The longer you stayed on, the more obliged she would be to
agree to accept his proposal.”

“But Cousin John was the very soul of propriety. He would
never dream of proposing to a woman so lately in mourning.”

“Oh, not a proposal of marriage for her, but for you.”

“Me?” She sat back suddenly, her voice coming in a squeak
that pained even her own ears.

“It is often the arrangement.”

“But John Castling is so old, older than Mama, I believe.”
Revulsion coursed through her.

“And heir to the estate and all its land and income?”

“Yes. But I would never…Mama would never…” Marry an old man
who wore a powdered wig to dinner every night? The thought was repugnant.

“No,” he agreed, “I do not believe she would. But you might
yourself feel obligated, if the offer were made. To provide for her and your
sister.”

“Marry that old man just to provide Honoria with a dowry?
Never!”

He just looked at her for a moment. “You would, I believe.
You have that sacrifice in you.”

She shook her head. “To marry for money, Mama says, is the
key to misery. She would not allow it.”

“You realize that attitude runs contrary to convention.”

She laughed. “Yes, I’m sure it must. Mama takes great pride
in flouting convention.”

“And I am most grateful for it.” He took her hand in his and
all at once his voice grew lower and his address more intimate. “I will always
remember this Christmas as the year I rescued new friends from a fire that did
not exist.”

“And stopped a duel that no one will ever hear of,” she added.
“A Christmas worthy of remembering.” She nestled closer to him and laid her
head on his shoulder, feeling all at once as if she could finally rest at ease.
“Wake me when it’s time to dress for church.”

A painful prickling sensation around his elbow warned
Charlie that he had lost circulation in his left arm, but he did not think that
was what had wakened him. Some abrupt sound intruded upon a dream in which he
waltzed with Miss Castling at the Eights Week Ball at Balliol, her grace and
ease inspiring him to appear with much more aplomb than usual and inciting all
manner of jealous murmurings from his college housemates.

Charlie’s eyes snapped open when the sound intruded again on
his consciousness. The first light of the winter morning streamed wanly through
the windows as if reluctant to provide any real illumination. The lovely Miss
Castling lay nestled at his side, her legs curled up under her on the settee.
Warmth emanated from her though the air in the room was cold enough that he
could see the clouds of his breath. Overall, he was not inclined to move,
despite the insistent pounding on the door only a few feet away from where he
sat.

He closed his eyes, pulled his sleeping beauty closer and
hoped whoever it was would go away.

“Open up!” His father demanded from outside, shaking the
locked door. “Oliver? Robin told me you’d gone in to keep watch over our Mr.
Puckett.”

Charlie gave a start as the evening’s events came back with
a full rush of horror. Somehow Isabel had failed in her mission to keep his father
asleep and he had come to meet his unworthy challenger.

Carefully laying Miss Castling’s head on the cushion of the
settee, he stepped toward the door but then paused. If he refused to open the
door, would his father eventually give up?

“Oliver!”

This time the summons was loud enough to bring the footman
tumbling down the stairs at the back of the house. And though Charlie might
refuse to obey his father’s command, the servants in his employ would not dare
risk his wrath and he couldn’t say he blamed them. What could he do?

There was no time to think. He cast a glance at Miss
Castling stirring into consciousness and hoped this was one of the times where
acting without thinking would prove the best course of action.

Just before Oliver reached the door, Charlie cut in ahead of
him and turned the key they’d left in the lock.

But he opened the door only the merest crack. “Papa,” he
called through the opening, “It’s Charlie. Before I let you in, you must
promise that you will listen to me.”

“Damn your impudence, boy. Open up, this instant.”

“I will not, unless you curb your tongue.” Again he glanced
at Miss Castling, who was now sitting upright and looking about as full of
panic as he felt. He tried to stay calm for her sake, if not for his own.

“And,” his father roared, “
I
will be obeyed in my own
house.”

“It is not your house, sir, at present,” Charlie countered.
“The leasehold belongs to Mrs. Castling.” He curbed the urge to look at Amanda
a third time to see if she recognized the argument she had once used with him.

His father started to pull the door open. “I will not be
kept outside like some scurrilous vagabond.”

Charlie opened the door just enough to face his father. “Do
you mean kept outside like the scurrilous vagabond with whom we had words
during the course of the night?”

“Bah!” his father growled as he pushed his way inside.
“Where is the blackguard? I will not have it said that James Hilliar is one to
avoid his engagements.”

Charlie closed the door and stepped back into the room far
enough to put himself between his father and the staircase. “I do rather wish
you would avoid this particular engagement. And before you answer, please do
bid a good morning to our hostess, Miss Castling.” He nodded toward the settee.

“Eh?” His father squinted into the dim parlor.

Amanda picked up her cue with admirable swiftness, stepping
up to him and sinking into a graceful curtsy. “A very happy Christmas to you,
Mr. Hilliar.”

“What? Er, yes, I suppose it is. A happy Christmas, then, to
you and,” he looked around “er, your family.”

“We are so very grateful for your hospitality during the
course of the very trying episode. My mother will particularly wish to thank
you herself, when you return to the manor.”

“Yes, er, must attend to some business first.” He looked
around as if expecting to find that she shielded Puckett behind her back.

“No, Papa, you do not,” Charlie said gently but firmly. “The
business has been concluded.”

“What? How?” he demanded.

Amanda looked at him expectantly. Not doubtfully, but with
expectation, which meant that she assumed he had come up with a satisfactory
plan. That was indeed gratifying, even if he had no plan, since she must think
him clever enough to have devised one.

So he had damned well better do so.

“Let us sit down,” he suggested, more to buy himself time
than anything else. He waved to Oliver to resume his post on the landing
outside the bedchamber where Puckett was sleeping.

“Oh, yes, do let us enjoy the furniture now that we have
some,” Amanda said with a sweet smile, urging his father to sit in a leather
armchair across from the settee where she resumed her seat.

Charlie checked himself just before he made the mistake of
joining her. The intimacy of last night could not be repeated here, at least
not in front of his father. He sat in the only remaining chair, a monstrous
straight-backed affair that had apparently been designed by an interrogator
with the Spanish Inquisition. “Remind me to have another chair sent down,” he
said to Amanda as he shifted uncomfortably on the hard seat.

“Of course,” she smiled.

Unfortunately, the smile did not have the same effect on his
father as it did on him, since his father was able to answer it with a frown.
“This is a matter of some delicacy, Miss Castling. May I beg a moment of
privacy with my son?”

“That will not be necessary,” Charlie answered quickly.
“Miss Castling is fully apprised of all the matters at hand and we need keep no
secrets from her.”

“Am I to have no say in my own affair of honor?”

“In a manner of speaking, no.”

“No? By what right do you—”

Charlie held up his hand to interrupt. “As your second, it
was my duty to bring the matter to an honorable conclusion and since I have
done so, you may consider the affair at an end.”

The old man’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Did I make
you my second?”

“You may have forgotten, in all the excitement.”

“Yes,” he sniffed, “well, what then was this honorable
conclusion you speak of? Did the man retract his falsehoods and issue a full
apology?”

“No, he fled in disgrace to avoid charges of housebreaking,
burglary, assault, battery and breach of the peace.”

His father considered for a moment. “I suppose that was the
best to be expected, under the circumstances.” He let out a long, slow breath.
“I was afraid you were going to tell me you’d paid the man off. Then he’d just
be back again, nosing at us for more money.”

“He wouldn’t take money, actually. I tried that at the
first.”

“Charlie,” his father admonished.

“Fortunately, my first instinct was thwarted, but all’s well
now.” He stood and cleared his throat, well aware that Puckett could come down
the stairs and disprove his tidy explanation at any moment. “Should we not all
be preparing for church and so forth?” He nodded toward the door. “We may
continue our discussion with our neighbor over Christmas dinner.”

His father made no move to get up. “I suppose, but really,
this was not expected. Robin said the man was still here, sleeping off his
drink.”

And he was, too, so how to refute that?
“He, uh, took
such fright at the thought of trouble with the magistrate—not the first time
with him, I think—that he bolted right out the side window. Robin must not have
seen him.” Charlie nodded toward the broken window on the far side of the room.
“We closed up the shutters afterward, of course, to keep out the chill.”

“Yes, I see…” He leaned forward squinting at the shuttered
window, but made no move to examine it more closely. Instead, he pointed his
walking stick toward the door. “Well, it is a surprise, but I cannot pretend it
is an unpleasant one, so yes, I agree we should make ourselves presentable to
celebrate the Nativity and allow Miss Castling to do the same.” He stood and
made his way toward the door, but paused before stepping out.

“You know,” he said in a softer voice as he turned to face
them, “it is really the answer to an unspoken prayer of sorts. I was just so
angry, you see, and now, well, I am no longer. The fellow seems to have got his
just desserts and we’ll have no more trouble from him, I think, for he’ll be
known as a felon and a coward for refusing to face me.”