A Christmas Affair (2 page)

Cursing softly, Justin rolled him over onto his back, his curses growing in volume and intensity at the sight of the blood staining the front of the lieutenant’s jacket. He tore open the jacket, his breath catching in his throat at what he saw.

“Gut shot, ain’t I?” Daniel asked, his face paling with pain and shock. “Guess that tears it for me, sir.”

“Nonsense, Lieutenant.” Justin pulled a bandage from the kit at his side and began dabbing at the steady flow of blood. “I’ll have you at the hospital tent in no time at all.”

“No.” Daniel shook his head weakly. “Too late. Besides I’d rather die here than let one of those drunken sawbones have at me.” He blanched at the pain and the bitter chill he felt creeping over him. He grabbed instinctively for the colonel’s hand. “Colonel!”

“Yes?” Justin abandoned his efforts, knowing they were useless. His hand closed protectively over Lawrence’s, and he was not ashamed at the tears that were burning in his
eyes.

“You won’t tell my sister, will you? About the gaming, I mean?” His bloodless lips parted in a rueful smile. “Mandy don’t approve of it, you see, and she’d kick up a devil of a dust if she was to know.”

“It will be a secret between us,” Justin promised, his voice hoarse with grief. He had seen death so many times he thought he was inured to it, but this was almost more than he could bear. God damn Napoleon Bonaparte, he cursed silently, knowing full well that the carnage about him was the direct result of that madman’s dreams of glory.

“And you’ll see she gets the letters?” Daniel could no longer see, and his voice was already beginning to fade.

“I’ll deliver them myself,” Justin vowed. “Upon my honor, I’ll place them in her hands myself.”

“Thank you, sir,” Daniel managed another smile. “And you’ll have a care of them won’t you? Never mind what Mandy says . . . tell them I’m sorry. . . .” And in the next instant he was gone, leaving an anguished Justin to weep in bitter fury as the battle raged around him.

Chapter One

Surrey, December 1813

“It is not that I am ungrateful, Amelia,” Miss Amanda Lawrence began, her velvet-dark eyes snapping with vexation as she glared out at the thick curtain of snow falling beyond the snug confines of the parlor. “Indeed, I consider myself the most fortunate of females, being blessed as I have with a loving family and a situation that is far more agreeable than most of my countrymen. But even you must admit that the prospect of being snowed in while Aunt Elizabeth is in residence is beyond all enduring. I vow, I can think of nothing we might have done to warrant so harsh a punishment!”

“I am sure God doesn’t look upon a visit by our only surviving relation as a punishment, dearest,” Miss Amelia Lawrence replied, her smile gentle as she added another stitch to the shirt she was mending. Accustomed as she was to her elder sister’s fiery temper, she knew Amanda meant only half of what she said, and so was able to meet the pronouncement with some show of equanimity.

“That is because God doesn’t know her as well as I do,” Amanda retorted, picking up her own sewing and jabbing the needle through the worn cambric. “She is an avaricious,
interfering, impossible, old harridan, and I shall consider it one of the wonders of the world if I don’t throttle her before the fortnight is out! Why did she have to pick Christmas to descend upon us like a blight?”

“Because we are all that she has,” Amelia answered serenely. “Where else would she pass the holidays if not with us?”

Several locations occurred to Amanda, but out of respect for Amelia’s tender feelings, she grudgingly held her tongue. Her sister’s disposition was almost as angelic as her blond, blue-eyed appearance, and she had no wish to upset her. Still, the thought of her tedious aunt intruding upon them made her lips thin with displeasure. Try as she might, she found it impossible to warm to her late father’s younger sister, and it was not, as Daniel had once teasingly suggested, because no home could endure two tyrants.
She
was not in the least bit tyrannical.

The thought of her beloved brother intensified the frown puckering her copper-colored brows. It had been over five months since they had last heard from Daniel, and that letter was more than a month in reaching them. She knew his regiment had fought in the Battle of Vitoria that drove Napoleon’s brother from Spain, but she’d been unable to learn anything else. Her entreaties to the War Office had gone unanswered, and as the weeks passed, she was beginning to fear the worst.

“Well, at least Aunt has brought the latest gazettes with her,” Amelia said with forced cheerfulness. She sensed Amanda’s disquiet and was anxious to tease her into a more gentle humor. “I haven’t seen a copy of
La Belle Assemblie
since her last visit, and I wouldn’t want Charles to think me unfashionable when he comes home for the holidays.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want to give him a horror of you,” Amanda replied, shaking off her melancholy at the warm glow in her sister’s eyes. Amelia had been in love with the neighbor’s eldest son since the pair of them were in leading
strings, and although nothing had been said, there was an understanding that they would marry once Charles had fulfilled his obligation to his king.

“Perhaps you might want to study the gazettes as well,” the younger girl ventured, casting Amanda a hopeful look. “It’s been years since you’ve had a new gown, and I’m certain that you’ll want to look your best for the Harmiston’s Christmas ball. I heard it from Lavinia Whitehead that her cousin Eustace will be in attendance.” This last bit of information was offered with a sly look that brought a reluctant smile to Amanda’s face.

“If you mean that as some sort of inducement, Amelia, I fear you are far off the mark,” she said with a chuckle. “Eustace Whitehead is an odious prig who told me that he considers redheaded women to be, and I quote, ‘inherently forward.’”

“He could never have said anything so thick-skulled!” Amelia was clearly horrified.

“Ah, but he did,” Amanda assured her, her dimples flashing at the memory. It had been at the squire’s last rout, and the pompous young clergyman had cornered her out on the terrace, his beefy hands clutching his lapels as he offered his opinion on everything from how the war was being fought, to the wanton conduct of females with “hair too colorful to be pleasing.”

“What did you say?”

“Only that I could quite understand how he felt, as I had often regarded men with double chins to be prosy, self-indulgent bores,” Amanda replied sweetly, tucking a flame-colored tendril back into place. As usual her thick hair was bound up in a tidy bun, a few wisps escaping confinement to curl about her neck and ears. The style was better suited to a woman twice her tender years, but Amanda liked its ease and practicality. Besides, as she had once told her younger brother, an old maid such as herself ought to dress the part.

“You didn’t,” Amelia gasped, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. But even as she made the demand, she already knew the answer. Amanda, with sufficient provocation, would say whatever crossed her mind.

An arch smile was the only reply as Amanda turned her attention to the mending on her lap. Tuesday was the day she and Amelia set aside to catch up on the family’s sewing, and with four growing children, there seemed to be an unending supply of it. The shift she was now hemming had once belonged to Amelia, and she was cutting it down for Belinda. She was only happy that the lively eight-year-old was so indifferent to the vagaries of fashion, for there was no way the family coffers could extend to a new wardrobe this year.

They were just finishing up the last of the mending when the door to the parlor opened, and an elderly lady dressed in black merino entered the parlor, her sallow face pinched with displeasure. “Really, Amanda,” she began in the hectoring tones that Amanda was growing to hate, “I can not think why you insist upon keeping that cook in your employ. She is too forward by half, and her breads leave a great deal to be desired. You really must replace her.”

Amanda bristled in instant defense of the cook, her dark eyes narrowing as her aunt took her chair before the fire. Mrs. Hatcher had been with them since before her father’s death, and she had proven a loving and loyal friend over the years. She opened her lips to administer a sharp retort when she caught Amelia’s eye. At the gentle shake of the younger girl’s head, she reluctantly amended her speech. “I shall have a word with her, Aunt,” she managed, gritting her teeth with determination.

“See that you do,” Mrs. Elizabeth Herrick sniffed, settling her starched mobcap on her thin and graying locks. “And while you’re about it, you might also have a word with the butler. I distinctly smelled spirits on him last night. A proper household manager would never tolerate a servant
who imbibes.”

Amanda clenched her hands into tight fists. “Yes, Aunt” she said, fighting the urge to toss the disagreeable old woman into the nearest snowbank. Relative or nay, she fumed silently, there was only so much she was willing to tolerate in the name of familial obligation.

“And I think it time you were dismissing the maids as well.” Mrs. Herrick began helping herself to the meager tea the girls had been sharing prior to her arrival. “You pay them far too much to my way of thinking, and in any case it will do you girls no harm to help earn your keep. You do little enough as it is.”

This was too much for Amanda, and she leapt to her feet, the trousers she’d just finished mending tumbling to the floor. “How dare you, ma’am!” she cried, her thin face flushing with fury. “This is my brother’s house, and I will thank you to remember that fact!”

“Indeed?” Rather than taking offense, the older woman looked faintly amused. “I shouldn’t be so certain of that, missy.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Merely that I would have a word with your guardian if I were you,” Mrs. Herrick said, taking a greedy bite of a fruit tart. “This house belonged to my grandfather, and should anything happen to Daniel, I will be next to inherit. It has been what . . . six months since you’ve had news of him? And anything can happen in wartime. Who knows” — she sent both girls a poisonous smile—“he could well be lying dead even as we speak.”

“Why you hateful old —” Amanda began hotly, only to be interrupted by a horrified cry from Amelia.

“No! No, Daniel is not dead! He’s not . . . is he Amanda?” She turned to her older sister, seeking comfort and reassurance as she had always done.

Amanda’s heart broke at the frightened look on Amelia’s face. She longed to tell her that all was well, but there was
no denying that the long silence was ominous. Tamping down her own fears, she turned a look of such fury on Mrs. Herrick that the woman shrank back in her chair. Amanda paid her no mind but rushed to her sister’s side.

“Hush, my dear,” she soothed, slipping a comforting arm about Amelia’s shoulders as she helped her to her feet. “We mustn’t even think such things. Come now, let me help you to your room” and she guided her gently toward the door. When they reached their destination, she turned to cast a final, glaring look at her aunt.

“I shall speak with our guardian,” she said, her voice cold with menace. “In the meanwhile, if you dare repeat such things in front of the other children, I vow I’ll have you thrown out into the snow. Do you understand me?”

“Really!” Mrs. Herrick was shaken but still determined. “You can not take that tone with me! I am your aunt,and—”

“Do you understand me?” The words were all the more threatening because of the soft manner in which they were spoken.

Mrs. Herrick’s cheeks paled, and she averted her head from Amanda’s piercing gaze. “I understand,” she muttered crossly.

“See that you do,” Amanda said, turning back toward Amelia, who was crying into her handkerchief. “And understand something else as well; there is nothing I won’t do to protect my family. Nothing.” And with that final threat she closed the door quietly behind her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Amanda demanded some three hours later, her eyes dark with fury as she confronted the elderly solicitor who had been appointed her guardian shortly before her stepfather’s death. “Didn’t you think I’d want to know?”

“Of course, my dear, of course,” Mr. Elias Stranton stam
mered, mopping his perspiring brow with a snowy handkerchief. “But there didn’t seem to be any need for it. Daniel’s a young lad, after all, with the whole of his life yet before him. I made sure he would survive Mrs. Herrick by a good five decades, if not more.”

Amanda raised her eyes to the ceiling, mentally calling upon divine help in controlling her temper. “But Daniel is a soldier now,” she reminded him through gritted teeth. “A rather hazardous occupation for a man, don’t you agree?”

“Perhaps,” the older man conceded reluctantly. “But there is every hope that he will make it through the wars unscathed. Why, my own brother fought the French for ten years or more without so much as a scratch to show for all of it. You worry too much, my dear; it is the way with you ladies,” and he gave her hand a pat.

That same hand closed in a fist to resist the urge to land a stinging blow to the solicitor’s ears. It took a great deal of effort, but she managed to resist the impulse. “Did Daniel know of this proviso before he enlisted?” she asked, her voice low with controlled anger.

“We spoke of it,” Mr. Stranton answered with a vague shrug. “That is to say, I told him that should he the without male issue your father’s inheritance would then pass to your aunt according to the terms of your grandfather’s will. It was but a mere formality, you see, and as I told him he —”

“But did he know about the house? That it would pass on to Aunt Elizabeth?” Amanda pressed, determined to get to the truth before her temper exploded. She’d left the house without lunch, scarcely bothering to change her clothes before setting out for the village. Her aunt’s taunting words had filled her with such apprehension that she knew she couldn’t rest a single moment until she’d spoken with her guardian.

“As to that I can not say, Miss Lawrence,” came the cautious reply. “We never specifically discussed the matter, but it stands to reason that the manor house is the most signifi
cant part of the inheritance. May I ask you why you are suddenly so interested?” he asked, shooting her a worried look. “You’ve not received any unhappy news, have you?”