Marian's Christmas Wish (7 page)

“I found him two years ago with a broken wing,” Marian
explained as she removed her cloak and shook off the rain. “He can fly, but he
does so rather reluctantly. And he keeps the mice down. I have named him
Solomon, of course.”

“Of course.” Lord Ingraham removed his coat. “And who
is this frippery fellow?” he asked, squatting down to pat a black puppy, who
licked his hand and then rolled over on his back in blatant invitation. Lord
Ingraham scratched where he was bid, and the puppy groaned with pleasure.

Marian knelt down beside him. “You would not have
recognized him six weeks ago, my lord.” She gently pulled at the puppy’s ears. “He
was a bag of bones, you see. I found him in a box beside the road. The rest of
the litter was dead. It is shameful the way some people use animals, my lord.”

“And will you find a home for him?” She nodded and gave
the puppy’s ears a final tug. “He is to be the vicar’s Christmas present.”

“Lucky man,” declared Lord Ingraham. “And does the
vicar know?”

She twinkled her eyes at him. “He will on Christmas, my
lord.”

Lord Ingraham stood and pulled up Marian. “You are an
abominable child. Now, where is this famous salve that you have promised?”

“It is here,” she said, and went to the shelf. “I have
made it out of goose grease and other more felicitous ingredients.” She sniffed
it. “I added a bit of lavender water, or else you would smell rather like a
nesting box, my lord. Sit down, and I will apply it.”

He sat on a stool and she draped a towel around his
shoulders, anchoring it with a pin. “Just in case,” she explained, “although I
trust you will sit still and not dart about as most of my patients do, my lord.”

“Not even if you should step on my foot. And do,
please, stop calling me ‘my lord.’ My name is Gilbert. Or you may call me
Lowell, or Mason, which my friends do. After two daughters and many years, Papa
had quite given up on a son, and he lost his head at my birth. I have any
number of names. You need only choose.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Oh, dear, my papa
had no more imagination than Marian Wynswich, my lord.”

“It is enough. In fact, now that I know you, it is
quite enough. I am serious, Marian. ‘My lord’ sounds much too old, and I’ll
have you know I’m not a day above twenty-eight.” He met her look of frank
surprise. “It is entirely the doing of this salt-and-pepper hair of mine, Madam
Skeptic, which you can blame entirely on the life I have lately led.”

Marian unstoppered the jar. “Sit still.” She touched
his scar. “I will call you Gil, my lord.” She dipped her finger in the salve
and spread it slowly over the burn. “Now, if you will wait a moment, it will
soak in
...
Gil.”

“Very good. No one calls me Gil, so it is entirely your
name.’’

She outlined the scar, scrutinizing it. “How odd, my
lord—I mean, Gil. Such a strange pattern. I do not understand. And look there
on your temple—is that a fainter scar? I could not see it for your hair.
Whatever were you doing, sir? Percy would dub me vastly impertinent, but I
suppose I cannot help that.”

He smiled at her and gestured to the stool nearby. “Sit
down, Marian. I had the misfortune to be aboard HMS
Defiant
when we were attacked in midocean
by a French fleet, returning from Haiti, I believe.”

Marian’s eyes widened. “My word, sir, whatever were you
doing there?”

“Attempting a return from a peace mission to Washington. Such a wretched swamp for such a beautiful city! Too bad we burned it. At any
rate, we were returning from Washington and were set upon and burned to the
waterline. I had the misfortune to trip and slip myself on a grate so hot it
was practically glowing. Hence the pattern.” Marian’s eyes filled with tears.

“Here, here, my dear,” Lord Ingraham said, and touched
her cheek. “The ship heaved only a second later, and I found myself pitched
into the ocean.” He dipped his finger in the salve and touched it to the burn. “The
oddest thing happened. About the last thing I remember as the water closed over
me was my face hissing. And the smell, of course.” He shuddered. “That is
something one doesn’t forget.”

“When did all this happen?”

He thought back. “It was July, about six weeks before
we burned Washington. I remember particularly because the French ship took us
aboard and I woke up a few days later to a celebration of Bastille Day. I
drank more rum than I should have, of course, but you know the French.”

“However did you escape?” she asked, her eyes still
wide.

“There was no trick to it. The captain could see no use
for a slightly singed diplomat. I was set ashore in the Azores. It was easy
enough to hail a passing ship bound for Plymouth.” He looked at her for the
first time since he began his recital. “I don’t look in too many mirrors
anymore, but then, that never was my style to begin with.”

Marian sat in silence, her lips pursed.

“You appear ready to make a pronouncement,” Lord
Ingraham said. “Our acquaintance is brief, but that much I know about you
already.”

“I was merely going to observe
...
I think I know why you have chosen to avoid Bath this
Christmas season. Do they not know at home?”

It was Lord Ingraham’s turn for silence. To Marian’s
eye, he appeared less sure of himself, and for a moment he did seem young to
her. Impulsively, she took his hand and held it tight.

“It will fade, you know,” she said when she trusted her
voice. “But, sir, it is Christmas, and you should be home. You know you should.”

He freed his hand and stood up. “No, Marian, not this
year. Maybe next year. Such things are difficult.”

He sat down again and without a word she applied more
salve to the burn. He reached up and stopped her hand. “But it will not fade
overnight, Marian.”

“No.”

She wiped her fingers on the towel and put the stopper
back in the bottle. “But only think how dreadfully you will be missed, Gil.”

“Next year.”

The stable door opened. The door to the workroom was
partly ajar, so Marian tiptoed to it. “Oh, it is Percy. He will come to take
you away and show you around the estate.”

“Oh, but I will not go,” said Lord Ingraham as he
dabbed at the corner of his chin, where the salve dripped. “Besides that, he
has Sir William, I’m bound, and surely Sir William is company enough.” He
winked. “If we are silent, my dear, he will never know we are here.”

They both stood by the door, listening as Percy showed
Papa’s horses to his guest, explaining in his careful way their excellent
bloodlines, their prime points.

“But, my dear Percy,” they heard Sir William say, “whatever
can your mother be thinking of to keep these prime goers here all year,
unridden and eating their heads off? Is it not a peculiar extravagance? I do
not wonder that your estate is all to pieces.”

Marian set her lips tight together. “And next he will
prose on about my eating habits. He thinks to tell us how to manage,” she told
Lord Ingraham. “He is right, of course, and that is the sorrow of it.” She
sighed. “Mama refuses to sell them. She cries and sighs and takes to her couch
when the solicitor comes, or when the bailiff and I attempt to get her to
listen to reason.”

“And this falls to your task?” he asked, his voice low.

“Oh, yes! And I am a thankless child.” She stifled a
laugh. “I thought I would lose all countenance when Mama pointed at me after
one of those quelling interviews and declared, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s
child is a thankless tooth!’ Ariadne and I were in whoops about it for days.
Poor Shakespeare suffers at Mama’s hands.” She looked at him.

“Speak, by all means, Marian.”

“King Lear
is scarcely my favorite, I must admit. Really, Gil, why
doesn’t that wretched Cordelia just say what she thinks?”

It was Lord Ingraham’s turn to smother a laugh. “Why,
indeed, Marian? Cordelia’s a regular spineless wonder. Why did I never see that
before I met you?”

“But setting Shakespeare aside—which Mama has always
done—we are in the basket and Ariadne will be sacrificed on the altar of duty.”

“And another thing,” Sir William was saying, “do you
not think Ariadne is a trifle short?”

Marian looked at Lord Ingraham in amazement.

“I do not know that there is anything we can do to
correct this oversight,” said Percy from the other room, his voice a study in
seriousness.

“Perhaps the rack?” Lord Ingraham whispered to Marian,
and then clapped his hand over her mouth when she started to laugh. He held it
there, even as his own shoulders shook.

Sir William made his ponderous progress down the row of
loose boxes, commenting on this horse and that horse, animadverting on the
spendthrift ways of some, and raising questions about the wisdom of a
connection with the Wynswiches. Soon their footsteps receded into the distance,
and the stable doors were slid in place again.

Marian was long through laughing when Lord Ingraham
removed his hand. She sat on the floor, her knees drawn up, her chin resting on
them, as Mama Cat coiled around her and rubbed against her legs. “I had such
high hopes for Ariadne, and now Percy thinks to marry her to that silly fat man.”
She shook her head. “Percy tells me I must not speak so. And so I should not.”
She wagged her finger in his face. “But, sir, I will never marry. From all that
I can see, it is an uncomfortable business. Now sit down again, and hold still.”

Lord Ingraham obeyed and she smoothed the salve in
another layer over his cheek again. “Marian,” he asked suddenly, “how old are
you?”

“I am almost seventeen,” she replied, and started when
he winced. “Am I hurting you? I would not for the world.”

“No, no. Your fingers are wondrously careful.” He
swiveled his head slightly to regard her. “How soon are you seventeen?”

She shrugged. “In March, but it hardly signifies. We
cannot afford a London Season for Ariadne or for me, and besides, I did not
inherit the Wynswich looks. But I did have such plans for Ariadne and the
vicar.”

The cat jumped into Lord Ingraham’s lap, turned around
several times, and settled herself. He fingered her fur thoughtfully. “Surely
there is someone in this wide world who prefers black hair to chestnut, and
blue eyes to Wynswich brown,” he said. “But I see a mulish look in those blue
eyes, and I am reminded that marriage is an uncomfortable business, as you put
it.”

“It must be,” she pointed out. “Only look how long you
have avoided the altar of duty.”

“Yes, I have, haven’t I?” he agreed. “Perhaps I have
not sufficiently applied myself.”

“I know it is different with men,” Marian said
generously. “Mama used to say that when Papa received love notes from his opera
dancers.”

Lord Ingraham let out a shout of laughter. “Marian,
what will you say next?”

She stuck out her tongue at him and returned to her
contemplation. The rain was beginning again, the soothing sound of it making
her eyes droop. It reminded her how tired she was, how little sleep she had
snatched the night before. She hardly noticed when Lord Ingraham put his hand
on her shoulder. She leaned against his hand for the briefest moment before he
took it away.

“Does nothing ever go the way we plan?” she asked. “I
did so want to have a wonderful Christmas.”

“So you shall, Marian,” he said.

She thought he was going to say something else, but the
door slammed open. The cat hissed and leapt off his lap and into the basket of
kittens. The owl ruffled his feathers.

“Mare! There you are!”

Alistair let out a crack of laughter. “Lord Ingraham!
Did you let Marian quack you?” He pulled off his coat and shook it over Marian,
who made a grab for him. He danced nimbly out of reach. “Mare, did I see Percy
and that funny little man ride off in the gig? D’ye think Percy will show him
all around? Lord, I feel sorry for Ariadne.”

He went over to the shelf and picked up another bottle,
opening it and holding it under his nostrils. “Marian, a dose of this and Sir
W. would cock his toes up stiff.”

“Alistair,” she exclaimed, and took the bottle from
him. “It would likely only give him a headache to remember. But do not wave it
about. Alistair, you are a dreadful nuisance.”