A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) (16 page)

“It is. Thank you.” Those few subdued syllables hung in the darkness for a moment before she spoke again. “Are you putting on your boots?”

“Yes. I’m going to find a place downstairs. If the Porters discover me I’ll tell them I wanted to give you some peace.” He tugged at the leg of his breeches, to straighten the seam where it went into his boot. “We’ve spent enough time in here to prevent any doubts of our being married, I think.”

She was silent, though the air between them fairly vibrated with whatever reply she was biting back.

“What is it? Surely you see I can’t remain in this bed.”

“No, I understand.” Her voice grew fainter. “I only don’t know how I’m to lace up my stays.”

Oh, Lord. The stays. He’d completely forgot.

He heaved himself from the bed and went to the window, pushing the drapery aside. Sometime in the night, the snowfall had stopped. Quite a bit of it blanketed the land, though, obscuring the shapes of the trees and mounting up in drifts all pale and pristine in the moonlight. The sky in the east showed streaks of gray: daybreak couldn’t be too far off.

He touched his forehead to the glass and closed his eyes. It was Christmas Day. He’d known since his failure to find a wheelwright that this Christmas would be a poor one. But he hadn’t known he’d be facing it with this hacked-out hollowness in his chest.

“I’ll do your stays.” He spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll remain in the room for that purpose. There’s a chair near the hearth, and I’ve had enough sleep to get by.”

“Thank you,” she said. No rustle of sheets followed, or creaking of the mattress, or any other sound to indicate she was doing anything but sitting as she had been, back to the headboard, staring into the curtained dark.

For nearly a minute he stood in the silence, racking his brain for any words that might make things easy between them again. At last he let the drapery fall, and went to take his place in the chair by the hearth.

Lucy paused at the door to the kitchen. If she were at Hatfield Hall she might be going into the breakfast room now. She would be well-rested and wearing her hair in some more artful arrangement than she’d been able to manage this morning on her own. She’d enter the room to find pretty china, silver forks and spoons, and, with luck, a place at the table beside some jolly young man who would tell stories that made her laugh. He might flirt a bit, in an easy manner, leaving it to her to decide whether she wished to respond. And the room would be warm, and the food would be sumptuous, and everyone would be in fine holiday spirits.

She allowed herself two seconds to wish, wholeheartedly, she were at Hatfield Hall. Then she fixed a smile on her face and crossed the threshold.

“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Porter.” With as much ebullience as she could muster, she went to the table where the woman stood at work. “Thank you so much for having your maid bring up that hot water, and the shaving things. I don’t believe there’s a gift on earth that could have pleased Mr. Blackshear more than the sight of soap and a razor.”

“Happy Christmas to you too.” Mrs. Porter wore her sleeves rolled up. Flour dusted her forearms almost to the elbows. She was doing something with a lump of dough. “Did you sleep well? The room wasn’t too cold?”

“It was perfectly cozy. I slept very well indeed. So did Mr. Blackshear. May I ask what you’re making?” Her pulse galloped and her cheeks felt warm. She hadn’t slept well; neither had Mr. Blackshear; and the room had most certainly not been cozy—indeed that was how the trouble had started, with Mr. Blackshear so cold and miserable on the floor that she’d had to go and fetch him back to the bed.

“This is just a loaf of bread. But after I set the dough to rise, I thought I’d make a pie.” Mrs. Porter pressed the dough with the heel of her hand as she spoke, leaning a good part of her weight into it before turning and folding it and pressing again. “We didn’t make a Christmas pudding this year, since it was only to be Mr. Porter and me. Nor do I have any mincemeat ready. I have dried apples, though, and I think a pie of any sort is a good addition to a Christmas dinner.”

No Christmas pudding! All of yesterday’s melancholy sympathy came flooding back at this latest evidence of what a meager holiday the Porters had planned for, with their reduced circumstances and their absent daughter.

Well, shame on her if she couldn’t put her troubles and disappointments aside for a few hours, and bring what youthful Christmas cheer she could to this house. “A dried-apple pie sounds lovely.” It did, now that she thought of it. “Is there some easy part with which I can help? I’ve always wished I could be in the kitchen when the Christmas cooking went on.”

Mrs. Porter told her where to find an apron, and soon enough she was mixing apples and sugar in a pot atop the stove, with a bit of cider to make the apples plump. Mrs. Porter managed the crust, which was the difficult part and involved an entirely different process from what she’d done with the bread dough. Two or three minutes into this state of affairs, footsteps sounded in the corridor and Mr. Blackshear appeared in the kitchen doorway.

He’d shaved. Well, of course he had. She’d seen the soap and razor brought in, after all, and hardly exaggerated when she told Mrs. Porter of his pleasure at receiving them. But she’d almost forgot, over the course of a day, what he looked like without that layer of stubbly whiskers. He wore one of Mr. Porter’s shirts, too, with a fresh cravat—they’d arrived along with the soap and razor—and he’d wet his hair to make the rumpled parts lie down flat. The rumples in his waistcoat and breeches, he’d of course been unable to address.

It pinched at her heart somehow to see him so, half like the man he’d been on this journey, and half like the man he expected himself to be.

But that wasn’t the sort of meditation that could promote youthful holiday cheer. “Guess what we’re making, Mr. Blackshear.” She sent him her most winning smile. She would not let the new awkwardness between them blight the Porters’ Christmas.

“Something with apples. I smelled them from halfway down the hall.” He smiled too, a bit tentatively. He hadn’t met her eyes once in the mirror while lacing up her stays. This time she hadn’t minded. The frankness with which they’d spoken in the dark, directly after the incident, had evaporated in the cold light of morning.

“It’s a pie. I’m stewing the apples.” She made a show of frowning into the pot as she stirred. “With some of that sugar you brought yesterday. Mrs. Porter is making the crust, which requires a good deal more skill.”

“It’s more a matter of practice than skill, I’d say.” Mrs. Porter was mixing flour with some kind of fat, her fork clicking musically against the bowl as she worked everything into a lump of dough. “Get it wrong enough times, and you’ll learn to get it right. Did you want a cup of tea, Mr. Blackshear?”

“Perhaps a bit later. I imagine Mr. Porter is outside doing some chores? I thought I’d see if I can be of any help.” He went to fetch his greatcoat, still hanging over a chair by the fire. He had to pass very near her on his way, and when the air stirred between them as he brushed by, she felt as if she might crumble into a million pieces on the floor.

She ought to have woken him when he first rolled over and dropped his arm across her. She’d known perfectly well he’d be aghast to find himself so disposed, but she’d lain there, guiltily enjoying the warmth of his unknowing embrace. Only after several minutes did things undergo a change, and then only gradually did she grasp what was transpiring. She hadn’t expected the insistent bulk of his male part, discernible even through layers of clothing. Or his movement, desultory at first and then increasingly regular and rhythmic. Her sensual dreams had been necessarily vague, and had never included those details.

Well, he’d told her and told her, hadn’t he, that he didn’t belong in that bed with her. He’d even invoked improper dreams as a reason he oughtn’t to remain in the room. And still, she’d been so unprepared for the event that her brain had gone blank as a whitewashed wall. When saying his name hadn’t succeeded in waking him, she simply hadn’t known what to do.

“Have you decided when you might go to Downham Market?” She spoke up, because too long a silence might give Mrs. Porter time to perceive the unease that hung like an invisible mist between her two guests.

“After church, I thought.” He picked his hat up off the chair and rotated it, brushing the crown. He’d absently held that hat upside-down on his knee in the rain, the first time they’d met. “If Mr. Porter can spare his cart then.” He inclined his head to Mrs. Porter.

“I’m quite sure he can, if you’re certain you want to make the journey.” Mrs. Porter kept half her attention on the cold water she was adding by spoonfuls to her dough. “You might wait and see if tomorrow brings better weather. Truly, you and Mrs. Blackshear are no trouble at all.”

“You’re kind to offer.” He set the hat on his head and took his gloves from one of the coat pockets. “But we really must make every effort to go today. Our relations were expecting us yesterday, and I fear each passing hour gives them greater apprehension that we’ve been struck by some disaster.”

He was right, of course. Aunt and Uncle Symond would be worrying about her, and his brothers and sisters must miss his company as much as he clearly missed theirs. Not to mention that there could be no question of spending another night together in that bedroom. Still, it saddened her to think of the Porters having Christmas dinner all alone. What if the pie was being made for her sake, and his? It did seem unlikely that Mrs. Porter would have waited until this morning to make it, if she’d meant all along to have one. At home the pies were always made a day or two ahead.

There was no tactful way to broach the topic, though, and probably no turning him from his established plan, pie or no pie. “Be careful not to stay out too long in the cold,” was all she said, in her best wifely manner, and then he went out the back door and she watched through the window as he followed the tracks Mr. Porter had left when he’d gone out some time before.

He could have been her husband in truth. Twice now he’d said they must marry. If she’d just said
yes,
they could perhaps have found a way to overcome their marriage’s ugly, un-chosen beginning, and make it into something good.

If they couldn’t, the regret and recrimination would eat them both alive.

“These apples are coming along very nicely, I think.” She forced brightness into her voice, because sometimes you could get it to take hold there, and send its shoots and tendrils into the rest of your demeanor and from there even into your mood. “Do you think I can leave them on the warm part of the stove when the time comes to flatten the dough? I’d especially like to see that part.”

And she did, as it developed, not only see that part but take a turn with the rolling-pin, at Mrs. Porter’s insistence. She saw how to make the crust thin but not too thin; how to lift the unwieldy sheet of it and drape it into the pan; what to do with the excess that hung over the edge.

It wasn’t a bad way to spend the early part of Christmas morning, really. Mrs. Porter made a pot of that weak tea, and they toasted slices of yesterday’s bread and helped the maid Mary with putting things away, when she came in, and had a fine companionable time as they waited for the men to return.

And when they heard male laughter and the stomping of snow-covered boots, and then the kitchen door swung open, she could see at once that an hour of helpful labor had effected a similar improvement in Mr. Blackshear’s spirits. He had his arms full of evergreen boughs, and above them his face wore the healthy flush of cold and exertion, and his eyes glittered with good humor.

“You mustn’t blame me for this, Harriet.” Mr. Porter waved an arm at the profusion of fir and holly. “I told him it wasn’t necessary, but there was no stopping him. He said a house doesn’t smell right at Christmastide without these things.”

“So it doesn’t. You shall see.” Mr. Blackshear was unrepentant. “Though I dare say I might have brought more. These will barely be enough to deck your dining room.”

Lucy’s heart melted with understanding. He’d done this for the Porters. He himself wouldn’t be here to enjoy the fruits of his labor: in a little while they’d be leaving for church; and then after church he’d set out to fetch the wheelwright; then they’d leave here altogether.

He, too, must have resolved this morning to set aside his own cares and see what he could do for others.

“He’s chopped us a great stack of firewood as well.” Mr. Porter’s satisfaction fairly lit up the room as he went to the fireplace, pulling off his gloves. “And his man and Ned between them gave all the horses a walk. I don’t know but that the broken wheel might have been a Christmas gift for us, after all. If it’s not wrong of me to say so.”

Mr. Blackshear’s glance connected with hers for a second or two. Their smiles met in midair and then he looked away, conscious, she knew, of what he thought was unwarranted praise.
I was only doing what’s decent,
he would say if prodded, or
I was in need of the exercise.

Someone else would be his wife. Someone better suited to a man so strict with himself and with others. While for her part she would find some more suitable husband, a man who would propose because he esteemed her and was charmed by her, not because he saw her as his lifelong penance for accidental indecency.