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

‘Julia!’ Miri was laughing at her. ‘Whatever are you thinking about? Good morning, Captain Markham.’

‘Billiards,’ she managed.

‘And what is there about billiards to make you blush?’ Miri was intent on teasing.

‘If you must know, I was thinking about the Marquess of Hastings. His billiard table. Government House.’ She cast a harassed glance at Giles, who had seated himself at the end of the table. ‘Good morning, Captain. There is bacon, eggs, bread and butter. You could ring for cheese. There are also some preserves. Damson, I think. Tea? There is no coffee or chocolate.’

And if I keep on talking long enough the floor may simply open up and swallow me.

‘Thank you.’ Giles accepted the tea cup. ‘What is there about the Marquess of Hastings and billiards to bring the colour to your cheeks? Is he such a bad player?’

‘No, I am.’ The floor remained disappointingly intact and Giles’s—Captain Markham’s—faint smile remained provoking. ‘It has stopped snowing. Perhaps the roads will be open soon.’ And you can leave. Please. Before I make more of a fool of myself than I have already.

‘I’ll go out and see, although I doubt it. The temperature is as low as ever, so nothing will have thawed.’ He buttered a slice of bread and addressed himself to his food while Julia sought for innocuous topics of conversation.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Miri announced. ‘Mrs Smithers has some stout boots that she said she would lend me.’

‘Have you ever seen snow before?’ Giles asked.

‘No, not before yesterday. It is very beautiful, but rather frightening.’

‘There is no danger if we stay near the house, which I suspect is all we will be able to do. It is best not to take liberties with snow, although I’ve moved troops in worse in an emergency. But it is a sneaky killer and it is best not to provoke it.’

He sounded utterly matter-of-fact and professional about what must have been a nightmare. Julia cast a covert glance at the firm jaw and the broad shoulders and found she could easily picture Giles leading men through any kind of danger and doing it well. He was still talking to Miri when she pulled herself out of her imagination.

‘We can build a snowman if you like. Won’t you join us, Lady Julia?’

‘Thank you, no. Please do not let Miss Chalcott get cold. She is not used to low temperatures, let alone these conditions.’

Those unusual grey eyes were quizzical. ‘Neither of you are, which is why it would be unwise to wander about outside alone at any time.’

‘That all depends what one encounters, doesn’t it?’

Giles’s eyes narrowed and, to her confusion, he smiled, not at all embarrassed. Miri, apparently blissfully unaware of any cross-currents, beamed at her. ‘Please come, too, Julia. It will be fun. There are sure to be more boots.’

Of course it will be fun. Miri would love the novelty of the snow and she was a miserable friend to grudge joining in, just because she had made a fool of herself last night. ‘Very well. Let us have fun.’

* * *

The sun was shining when they emerged, swaddled in layers of coats and scarves. Giles followed the partly-filled wheel ruts to the gates. ‘Not as bad as I feared,’ he reported back.

‘Thank heavens for that.’ Julia stamped her feet in their layers of woollen stockings inside the clumsy boots. ‘Is the road clear?’

‘The hedges have stopped the snow drifting off the fields for as far as I can see, although it may be bad further on. It is still too thick for the carriage and too soon to try on horseback. We may get out by Christmas if this weather holds. Now, snowmen.’

He showed Miri how roll a snowball across the lawn so that it grew. ‘We need a big one for the body and a smaller one for the head.’

‘Let me.’ She pounced on the ball and began to push it, laughing with delight, her breath making white puffs in the air.

Giles left her to stand beside Julia. ‘Shall we walk along the edge of the shrubbery, see if there are any evergreens for your Christmas garlands?’

‘Is it worthwhile, decorating this place?’ A nice safe topic.

‘Walk, before your toes freeze.’ He possessed himself of her hand and tucked it under his elbow before she could object, studying her from his superior height. She was not used to having to tip her head back to meet a man’s eyes. ‘You are determined to be miserable, aren’t you?’ he enquired.

‘No!’ She glared up at him, indignant. ‘I am determined to get out of here, that is all. Poor Miri, dragged all this way from home. I was mad to even contemplate it.’

‘Poor Miri?’ He tipped his head towards the lawn where her stepdaughter was already working on a second snowman’s body, every line of her bundled-up body radiating enjoyment.

‘Snow is a novelty. So is being cold, being snubbed, feeling homesick. I wanted to do the right thing for her, I told myself. Now I wonder if I wasn’t being selfish in demanding her company.’

‘What was it like for you, arriving in India, being hot, being homesick? Not snubbed, I imagine. Not an earl’s daughter.’

He was curious, but she was not surprised. She would have found it strange if he was not. ‘No, not snubbed.’ The temptation to pour it all out into a sympathetic ear was almost overwhelming. Instead she said what she had been avoiding all morning. ‘I must apologise for last night.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘If you had pounced on me in the stables, forced a kiss on me, you would be apologising.’ She risked a sideways glance when he remained silent.

‘You are very refreshing, Julia.’ When she frowned up at him the corner of his mouth kicked up, emphasising the scar on his cheek. ‘If I had done that then, yes, an apology would be in order unless it was obvious that a kiss was welcome. But I could have stepped away at any point, which might give you a clue that I enjoyed it. I assure you, I would have fled screaming if I had been unwilling—the door was right behind me.’

‘How very gallant you are, Captain. You kiss the poor, needy widow, you refrain from taking advantage of her and then you protest that you enjoyed the experience.’ She must stop talking now before she made any more of a pathetic spectacle of herself.

‘If you are suffering from a lack of male attention, Julia, then I can only assume that the passengers on the ship and every man in London between the ages of sixteen and sixty had something seriously wrong with them.’ There it was again, that narrow-eyed, very masculine assessment that had her pulse pounding.

Oh, yes, the men on the ship had looked. They had seen either a rich widow ripe for the plucking or her beautiful stepdaughter to be seduced. Or, in one or two cases, both. What none of them saw was a woman yearning for experience, for passion and for a virile man in his prime to deliver them.

Well, she had a virile, attractive man by her side at this moment. One who appeared to be discreet and considerate. She could be a coward or she could risk a monumental snub and tell him what she wanted. Julia took a steadying breath, but Giles was before her.

‘Tell me how you came to be in India, married so young to a man who must have been much older than yourself.’

Why not? None of it was a secret and she had already abandoned any pretext of pride with this man. ‘I was poor and unlucky in my relatives,’ Julia began. ‘My father died five years after my mother, when I was sixteen. He had married below him, his family said, and it was good that he had no son by such an unsuitable woman, a merchant’s daughter. The title went to his cousin, who was horrified to discover the state of the family coffers. Papa was not the most provident of men and there was no money, not enough to maintain the estate as it should be.’

‘One can understand the heir’s feelings,’ Giles observed.

‘Cousin Richard said I was a further drain on his pocket and that he had no intention of funding a Season for me the following year. An acquaintance was going out to India, so I could make myself useful by accompanying her as a companion and then I was sure to pick up a husband for myself. The problem was solved.’

She glanced up at his face when he said something sharp under his breath. He looked appalled. ‘You were sixteen, bereaved.’

‘I was also exceedingly pretty and his daughters are rather plain. I can say it now because my looks did not survive long. I was blonde and curvaceous and I had a beautiful roses-and-cream English complexion. Enchanting, though I say it myself. I arrived in Calcutta just as the cholera did. It killed thousands, amongst them many of the eligible young men who had come down to meet the Fishing Fleet. I caught it, too. They shaved my head because of the fever and when I recovered I was as thin as a rake, the roses had fled and my hair grew back straight and much darker. My travelling companion was dead, my looks gone, my pockets empty. I was desperate.

‘And so Sir Humphrey Chalcott won himself the daughter of an earl.’

Chapter Four

Giles tried to imagine what it would have been like for a girl scarcely out of the schoolroom to find herself in an alien land, weak, abandoned. Where had she found the strength to carry on?

Julia’s voice was quite steady as she told her tale, almost as though she spoke of someone else entirely. ‘Sir Humphrey thought he was acquiring status and influence. What he did not realise until too late was that the new earl had no intention of giving him anything, let alone the allowance he was hoping for.’