The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding

Something in his brother’s voice caught Harry’s strict attention, something sharp and jagged that was quite unlike Charles. He swung around to face him, but Charles’s face was hidden in the shadows.

‘Made for each other?’ Harry said. Perhaps it was so—they had been friends for so long, bound by the long ties of their families, by their mothers’ wishes. He had thought of her when he was gone, dreamed of her, carried her miniature with him to inspire him. She was like a dream, just as all that green English quiet had been a reason to come home.

And by Jove but she was beautiful. The most beautiful lady in London, just as all those silly, betting-book dandies declared. For some reason, though, she seemed to prefer Harry to all those other men, at least for now.

But would Helen ever like that farm life he so envisioned? The quiet evenings, the small community? He was not at all sure. Perhaps that was what really held him back now.

Again he saw Miss Parker’s sweet smile, felt her gentle touch on his hand, but he pushed such thoughts away.

‘She agrees we should wait until I can resign my commission and we can see what happens next,’ he said.

Charles shook his head, frowning. ‘You should be careful, then, Harry. While you are gone on your adventures, someone else could easily pluck up such a prize. They do say that the Duke of Hamley, now that his time of mourning is at an end, seeks a new duchess.’

Harry laughed. Duchess—now there was a role that would suit Helen well. ‘No one would make a better duchess than Helen.’

Charles was silent for a long, tense moment. ‘I would never have taken you for a fool, Harry.’

Before Harry could answer, their carriage turned through the gates of Hilltop Grange and jolted up the winding old drive, past the overgrown forest that had once been a manicured garden under the careful eye of their mother.

Now, Hilltop looked nothing like the golden welcome of Barton Park, which had seemed to float above the night like a cloud of light. Hilltop had no light at all, save the glow of one lamp in the window of the library. Harry knew that once daylight came, the overgrown ivy on the grey stone walls, the crumbling chimneys, the covered windows, would all be too apparent. He felt again that deep pang of sadness, of guilt for following a different duty.

But that one light meant their father was still awake, or more likely fallen asleep next to his empty brandy bottle. He seldom left the library now.

‘Our great inheritance,’ Charles said, his tone quiet and bitter.

Harry gave a grim nod. ‘I am sorry, Charles. I should have been here all along.’

Charles glanced at him, his expression startled. ‘Oh, no, Harry, never. You are doing what you have to—your duty to King and Country as you are called to do. No one has been more dutiful than you, ever since we were children.’

He thought again of what their home had once been, what it was now. ‘I don’t know about that.’

‘Well, I do. Whatever I face here with Father is as nothing compared to whatever you have faced all these years. Besides, I’m seldom here at Hilltop at all these days.’ He grinned and that strange, solemn, thoughtful Charles vanished. The rakish, fun-loving young man everyone knew was back. ‘London is much more diverting. Why would a man ever live anywhere else?’

‘Diverting—and expensive,’ Harry muttered, but he couldn’t help laughing at Charles’s devil-may-care smile. It was always thus with his younger brother, their mother’s golden boy. While Charles was the fun one, Harry had indeed always been the responsible one. The quiet one.

Charles shrugged. ‘What else can one do? I would be wretched in the army, worse than useless. The church would never have me.’

‘What of your painting?’ he asked, remembering the rare talent Charles once possessed with a brush, the way he could capture the mood of a landscape in a few deft strokes of paint.

Charles laughed. ‘A boy’s diversion. Not fit for a grown man, y’know.’

‘According to who? Our father?’ Harry asked quietly.

Rather than answer, Charles pushed open the carriage door as soon as they came to a full halt and jumped down. Harry followed him up the shallow stone steps into the echoing hall of Hilltop Grange. In the shadows, the portraits of their ancestors, including their golden-haired mother, watched them in silence. In the rooms beyond, the furniture was shrouded in canvas covers, like ghosts. Their mother’s cherished pianoforte was silent.

For just an instant, Harry had such a different vision of the house, light gleaming on polished wood. The warmth of the fire, the scent of flowers from the gardens, the rush of small feet down the stairs, music. But the lady who turned from the keyboard to welcome him with a smile—her eyes were the sweet, soft hazel of Rose Parker.

‘Father, wake up!’ Charles shouted, banging on the library door with his fist. The dream was shattered, like the dust of Hilltop itself.

Chapter One (#u6c94411c-bb8c-56ea-bce8-484a43a54129)

Winter, three years later

‘Jouissons dans nos asiles, jouissons de biens tranquilles! Ah, peut-on être heureux, quand on forme d’autres vouex?’

‘That’s quite enough!’ Aunt Sylvia shouted from her armchair near the fire, where she was swathed in shawls and a fur blanket. Her three lapdogs shifted and barked. ‘What a wretched song by that horrid Rameau. Why would you play such a thing?’

Rose sighed and rested her wrists on the edge of the keyboard as the last notes died away in the overheated drawing room of Aunt Sylvia’s vast house. She would have laughed if she wasn’t quite so tired. She removed her spectacles and rubbed at her eyes. In her years of working as Aunt Sylvia’s companion, she had come to learn no moment was predictable. A favourite food one day, which had to be ordered from London and fetched from the village shop, a two-mile walk, by Rose every day, would not be wanted once it arrived. An expensive pelisse would be dismissed as too itchy, then needed again. The wheeled Bath chair would have to be fetched for a walk in the garden, only to be greeted with shouts of ‘What do you think I am, an old invalid? I shall walk! Give me your arm immediately, Rose. You cannot be rid of me so easily, you know, you silly girl.’

Rose did not want to be rid of Aunt Sylvia. She paid a wage that kept Rose’s mother in her cottage, now that Lily and Mr Hewlitt had two children to take care of in their small vicarage and Mama’s small income seemed even smaller than ever. Her mother deserved to stay in her own home and Rose had to work to make it so. But Rose did wish Aunt Sylvia would make up her mind for once.

‘I thought you always enjoyed the old French songs, Aunt,’ she said. ‘Because they reminded you of your time at Versailles.’

In her youth, Aunt Sylvia had once waited upon Queen Marie Antoinette, before she married the wealthy Mr Pemberton and returned to England. She spoke of it all the time and definitely never let anyone forget it, with her grey hair piled high and panniers strangely paired with newer, higher waists and puffed sleeves.

‘Why would I want to hear songs that remind me of such a terrible loss?’ Aunt Sylvia said, thumping her walking stick on the floor. One of the dogs barked. ‘You young people, you know nothing of such things. Nothing of how fortunate you all are.’

Rose suddenly remembered Captain St George and their dance at the midsummer party so long ago, the haunted look in his dark eyes as he mentioned battle and seemed to remember Waterloo. She had thought of him too often in the years since, especially in the long, quiet nights as she lay awake waiting for Aunt Sylvia to call her. Had he married the beautiful Miss Layton, had he come back from battle and found peace at last? She couldn’t help but hope so.

She glanced out the window, out the slim rectangle of thick glass revealed between the heavy brocade curtains Aunt Sylvia kept closed all the time. It had started snowing, a light, lacy, delicate pattern of white against the night sky. It reminded her that it was nearly December, nearly the Christmas season, and she wondered what her mother, what Lily and her little family, were doing now.

Lily and her babies were surely decorating their small sitting room with greenery, baking plum cakes to carry to Mr Hewlitt’s parishioners. Perhaps her mother was embroidering new little gowns to wrap up for her grandchildren’s gifts.

She felt the familiar pang of sadness of missing them and she had to remind herself why she had to work in the first place.

‘Perhaps I could play you a Christmas carol or two, Aunt Sylvia?’ she said. ‘It is nearly that season.’

‘Christmas!’ Aunt Sylvia cried. ‘Don’t even talk to me about the wretched thing. Play some Mozart. You know how I always like that.’

Except for when she called Mozart an overrated performing monkey of a boy. Rose smothered a laugh, and launched into the ‘Allegro’ from Marriage of Figaro. Just as she always could, she soon lost herself in the music, and the harsh world of Aunt Sylvia’s house, her loneliness for her family, vanished. She floated in her own realm, above everything else.

One day, she thought with a happy smile, perhaps she would have her own home with her own pianoforte. Could play whatever she chose, while her family listened...

The piece ended and Rose felt as if she was pushed out of that magical, floating world into the stuffy drawing room. Suddenly all she could hear were the snores of her aunt, mixed with the softer snuffles of the dogs and the crackle of the flames as a log collapsed into ashes in the grate. She remembered how her childhood home had once collapsed, how such things were always dreams.

She peeked over her shoulder to find Aunt Sylvia had indeed fallen asleep, her head lolling back on her cushioned chair. Hardly daring to breathe, for fear she would awaken everyone and prolong the evening, Rose carefully lowered the lid of the pianoforte over the keys and slid off the stool. She cautiously tiptoed over to make sure Aunt Sylvia’s shawls were still warmly tucked around her, and then crept out of the drawing room. She found Miss Powell, her aunt’s long-suffering maid, waiting outside.

Rose gave her a nod, which Miss Powell tersely returned, and at last Rose could make her way up the stairs to her own chamber. It was not a large room at all, barely big enough for a narrow bed, a washstand and her trunk, and it looked down on the frost-covered kitchen gardens, but it was at least her own. In the cottage at home, she had shared with Lily until they could build on an extra room and her sister’s feet at night were always freezing.

And then she missed her sister and mother all over again.

‘Don’t be such a goose,’ she told herself sternly. Surely it was only the Christmas season making her feel so melancholy now, so homesick. She had too much to do to worry about Mama and Lily now. Aunt Sylvia would want her up early as usual, writing letters and walking the dogs.

As she dug around in her clothes trunk for her night chemise, hoping her sheets wouldn’t be too chilled by the time she crawled between them, there was a knock at the door. Surprised anyone would be about at that hour—Aunt Sylvia dined early and only Miss Powell stayed up to help her retire—she hurried to answer it.

One of the young housemaids stood there, yawning into her apron. ‘Beg your pardon, miss, but these came for you by the afternoon post, but I forgot to give them to you. We do get that busy with the tea things...’

Rose shuddered to remember the row with Aunt Sylvia and the undercooked almond cakes that afternoon. ‘That is quite all right, thank you.’ She took the letters eagerly as the maid hurried away.