Once Upon A Regency Christmas: On a Winter's Eve / Marriage Made at Christmas / Cinderella's Perfect Christmas

‘In a moment.’ He pulled her back and kissed her again, long and languorous, ignoring her wriggling. After a moment she realised she didn’t know whether she was wriggling to be free or to be closer. He let her go and watched her from his position on the floor, all delicious long sprawled limbs and tight breeches and very evident arousal. ‘You are all dusty, Lady Julia.’

‘And you, Captain Markham, are a rogue!’ She started down the stairs, shaking out her plain woollen skirts. ‘Coming, Miri!’ Three steps down she stopped, turned back and knelt to stretch out to catch his hand. ‘A rogue.’ Then she was running down the stairs, listening for the tread of booted feet behind her.

‘There you are.’ Miri was in the hallway. ‘I was speaking to Paul, the groom, who is something of a weather-wise man,’ she reported. ‘He says this dry spell will hold and predicts a thaw in a few days.’

‘If so, I will see if I can get to my horse tomorrow.’ Giles came up behind Julia, his hand resting unseen at the small of her back. ‘I’ll take one of the carriage team, if one of them is willing to be backed. When the thaw comes I want to be ready to leave here before the rivers swell with melted snow and we start losing bridges or the fords flood.’

‘By all means.’ That was prudent. I don’t want to be prudent. The hand at her back was trailing lines of ice and fire up and down her spine. ‘Is it far to where you left it?’ If the carriage horses could be ridden, then she was going, too. It was so long since she had been on a horse, too long since she had been outside beyond the bounds of walls and roads.

‘I’d walked about four miles when you picked me up, I estimate. So six or seven. I’ll set out after breakfast to make the most of the light.’

‘You had better find out whether there is a rideable beast in the team. Could you check all four? It would be useful to know in case we need to ride them later on.’ She wouldn’t tell him she would go, too, not yet. He would be sure to object that it was too cold, too dangerous, too something and she was bursting with a restless energy that chasing spiders and organising servants was doing nothing to dissipate. In fact, it was getting worse and the remedy was Giles.

Hell, but he was frustrated, aching with the need for Julia. And she wanted him in return, he knew that. The cold of the stable yard was some help as he stamped through the snow to the barn. There was light in the window above the stable door and, when Giles entered, the sound of footsteps from above. He made for the ladder to the loft space, but stopped when a voice behind him said caressingly, ‘Oh, you are a handsome fellow, aren’t you?’

It was Miri. He couldn’t see her, but as she was answered by a series of gobbling noises she was not hard to locate. Giles found her sitting on the hay with the turkey cock leaning heavily against her knee, eyes closed, while she scratched the feathers at the base of his bald neck. ‘You’re a very clever turkey,’ she praised him. ‘Fancy finding that nice Captain Markham to save you. Any other bird would have flown right into trouble.’

‘He’s such a weight I can’t imagine him doing anything but flopping off the stagecoach.’ Giles grinned at her when she looked up with her charming smile. ‘What are you doing in there?’

‘I came to see the horses and he was worrying at the label on his leg so I took it off. It must be his name, don’t you think? Bulstrode sounds so fat and self-important.’

‘Unfortunately I suspect the Family Bulstrode is lamenting the disappearance of its Christmas dinner.’ He opened the half-door for her as she got to her feet with one last caress for the besotted turkey. ‘I assume the men are upstairs?’

‘You will be glad to be on your way.’

He was getting to know Miss Chalcott and the sweet smile and calm façade hid a more complex character than met the eye. One with bite. ‘And you’ll be glad to see the back of me, no doubt.’

She coloured a little at that, but she met his gaze frankly. ‘Yes. I have enjoyed meeting you, Captain. I had fun with the snowmen and I’m grateful for your help with the house. But Julia deserves peace and time to recover herself, decide what it is she wants.’

‘To complete her mourning?’

‘To recover from everything that has happened to her since she was sixteen, Captain. Don’t hurt her.’

‘Well, that’s frank.’ His sense of humour was faltering in the face of the attack.

‘It was meant to be.’

‘I have no intention of hurting her.’

‘Good. I hope you are not offended.’ She smiled again and left the stables, her cloak swinging around her heels, leaving him torn between amusement and irritation.

‘Offended? Certainly not. Why should I be offended by having my amorous intentions questioned by a pretty chit?’ he muttered, climbing the ladder.

‘Captain?’ Thomas, the coachman, looked round the door of the snug room he and the groom occupied. ‘Thought I heard someone talking. Anything amiss?’

‘Nothing at all. Can any of the coach horses take a rider? I must retrieve my own mount and you’ll not want to send out the carriage and team.’

‘They can all be ridden, no problem. Come into the warm, sir.’ He closed the door behind Giles and put down the harness he had been mending. Beside the stove Paul, the groom, got to his feet and nodded respectfully. ‘We train them so they can be ridden to the farrier. Not the smoothest ride you’ll ever have, but any of them will do you for a few miles. I’ll get some short reins on a bridle for you this evening. You’ll be bareback, though.’

‘I’m a cavalryman, Thomas. I’ll ride most things with or without a saddle.’ The room was warm and smelled not unpleasantly of horse, leather, tobacco and hard-working men. It was simple and reassuringly familiar from years spent in billets, in tumbledown cottages, in tents, all made into homes for professional soldiers.

‘Have you far to go, Captain? If you don’t mind me asking.’ Thomas nudged a chair forward and Paul produced a stone bottle that sloshed cheerfully.

‘Under a day, unless any bridges are down or roads blocked. Thanks.’ Giles took the bottle and tipped his head back to take a swallow, then lost the power to breathe. ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he managed after several seconds. ‘What is this?’

‘My old mother’s winter tonic.’ Thomas accepted the jug and took a hefty swig. ‘Secret recipe handed down for generations. Here you are, Paul, keep it moving, lad.’

Ah, well, there are worse ways to spend a snowbound afternoon than blind drunk, that time-honoured way to deal with the pain of a woman on your mind.

Chapter Six

‘Oh! Are you sickening for something?’

Giles came through the door into the dining room and stared at the food on the table as though he were not quite certain what it was for.

Julia stood up, took his arm and pushed him into the nearest chair. ‘You are the most ghastly colour. Let me feel your forehead. Have you a fever?’ No, his skin was cool. ‘I’ll see if Mrs Smithers has any tonics or medicines in stock.’ Under her hand she felt him shudder.

‘The last thing I need is a tonic. Thank you. Coffee. Please.’

‘No coffee, remember? It will have to be strong tea.’ Miri, smiling wickedly, lifted the pot.

‘Very strong. Sugar.’ He took the first cup, appeared to inhale it and took the second, which she had already pushed across to him. ‘More.’

Light dawned. ‘You are drunk.’

He finished the third cup. ‘Hungover.’

‘So that is where you were yesterday afternoon! Have you drunk the cellar dry?’

‘Some sort of tonic your coachman swears by. Probably one needs several years’ training to get the full benefit.’ Giles regarded the bacon with a jaundiced eye, carved two thick slices of bread off the loaf, buttered it liberally, slapped four rashers between them and began to demolish the resulting sandwich. ‘That’s better. I think,’ he remarked when all that was left were crumbs.

‘You should go back to bed and sleep it off.’

‘Bed is very tempting.’ The slightly bloodshot grey eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement and she felt herself blushing. ‘My dear Lady Julia, if every officer who woke up after a night spent with a bottle of dubious liqueur was unfit to function we would have been rolled up by Bonaparte within weeks.’

That wicked almost-smile convened layers of meaning about bed and his ability to function and the wretched man knew it. Julia pursed her lips rather than run her tongue along them. ‘I am delighted to hear it. I had been looking forward to the ride.’

‘You?’ The smile vanished. ‘There are no saddles. I don’t know how bad the roads will be or how long it will take. You should stay safely here.’

‘Captain Markham, I have ridden over Indian deserts, through jungles, across plains on just about everything there is to ride in the country—horses, mules, elephants and camels. I can assure you I did not do so side-saddle wearing a fashionable riding habit and only venturing out when it was entirely safe to do so.’ The look on Giles’s face as she stood and walked to the door, the divided skirt swishing against her tall leather boots, was worth braving any depths of snowdrift for.

‘And your husband permitted this?’

‘In India such travel is a matter of routine. If my husband wanted me to be about his business, he had no choice. I hope for your future wife’s sake that you will not be the kind of husband who keeps an English version of a zenana. I will be over at the stables when you have finished your breakfast and calmed your poor, aching head.’

‘You would say harem, I imagine, Captain.’ Miri’s earnest explanation followed Julia into the hall as she shrugged into a heavy greatcoat borrowed from Smithers. Her riding skirt had been made to withstand thorns and blown sand, but not an English winter, and beneath her outer clothes she was layered like an onion with silk undergarments.

Thomas was walking one of the carriage horses up and down, a rug over its back. ‘Morning, my lady.’