A Country Christmas (Timeless Regency Collection Book 5) Page 8

  Eloise narrowed her eyes at him. Mr. Burke had shown himself not the least bit trustworthy or admirable, and she was not prepared to give him any benefit of the doubt.

  “Franklin,” Mr. Burke began, turning toward Neville, who still stood with his clenched fists at his side. “I did get a kiss from Miss Hallstrom that day of our ride.”

  Eloise protested, “Only because—”

  “Shh,” Mr. Burke said, turning toward her and giving her a sharp look. “You’ll have your opportunity to speak your piece.” He turned back to Neville. “I stole that kiss because I was determined to prove myself the better man in a competition I knew I was losing.”

  “There was no wager,” Neville said, holding Mr. Burke’s eyes.

  Eloise stared at him. No wager?

  “Perhaps not, but competition all the same. Miss Hallstrom was not a willing participant in that kiss, and she let me know, with a force quite unexpected, that she was not open to my attention in any way. Tonight was not the first time she has sent me heels over bottom, so I would warn you not to trifle with her in any way. Turns out, all those times I thought she was basking in my company, she did not want me at all. She wanted you.”

  After all the embarrassment Eloise had suffered these last two weeks, she would have believed she was incapable of feeling more, but hearing her long-hidden feelings proclaimed with such stark rawness was excruciating. She felt Neville look at her and dropped her eyes to the ground she wished would swallow her whole.

  “Me?” Neville said. “But you were so hurt that Burke had left Hemberg.”

  She would not look at him, but neither would she go mute and not speak in her own defense. “I only remarked that he had gone during a conversation that had turned awkward.”

  “And the wager,” Mr. Burke interrupted, drawing both sets of eyes to him. “That is my next confession.” He looked squarely at Eloise. “As Franklin said already, there was no wager. I made it up to preserve my pride when I realized you cared for Franklin above me.” He shrugged. “Character has never been my strength.”

  “You made it up?” Eloise said.

  “Well, I made that particular wager up,” Mr. Burke amended, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “It is a game we played in London, and I had wanted to resurrect it at the Websters’ ball with you as the prize, but Neville wouldn’t have it. I believe his exact words were ‘No, not here. Not Eloise.’”

  “It was a childish game even when I participated,” Neville said, his voice quiet. “And I am as ashamed to have been a part of such a thing as I am for you to know it.”

  “There was no wager set upon me?” Eloise said again. That meant Neville hadn’t used her as a piece in a game.

  “No,” Neville said, shaking his head. “What you must have thought of me.”

  “Which leads us to the next topic of discussion,” Mr. Burke said, though Eloise continued to hold Neville’s gaze. “Eloise, do you agree that the majority of your memories of Neville until these last few months were from your childhood?”

  Eloise nodded, though she didn’t understand the importance of this question.

  Mr. Burke nodded and turned his attention to Neville. “And Neville, do you agree that the majority of your memories of Eloise until these last few months were from your childhood?”

  “Yes,” Neville said, looking as confused as Eloise felt.

  “And, generally, do you both agree that men can be thick, cotton-headed idiots, especially in regards to anything of an emotional breadth?”

  Neither answered, but Mr. Burke nodded as though they had. “And so, what we have here is Miss Hallstrom, who has been rather besotted with our Mr. Franklin for some time, I believe, and Mr. Franklin, who missed every signal and misinterpreted every attempt she made to get his attention, only to bungle it completely when, in fact, he does find Miss Hallstrom a most entrancing woman—as good a woman as any sorry man could want, if said sorry man could make up for being a dunderhead and, in the process, make everything right.”

  Eloise was looking at the floor again, repeating in her mind what Mr. Burke said but not having the first clue how she might respond to it. Neville did have feelings for her? That is what Mr. Burke had said, but then Neville hadn’t agreed it was true and—

  “I think you have said enough, Burke,” Neville said in a softened tone, causing Eloise to look up once again to find him watching her. “Might I now ask that you leave us to sort the rest of this out ourselves?”

  Mr. Burke let out a dramatic breath. “Well, I suppose you might.” He began moving toward the door but then paused. Eloise looked at him. He gave her perhaps the first sincere smile she’d ever seen on that man’s face. “I do hope, in time, that you might forgive me, as I should very much like your respect.” He quit the room, and then there were just the two of them.

  “Well,” Neville said, attempting to put a laugh in his words, which did not translate well.

  “Yes,” Eloise said, trying to look anywhere but at him. Her gaze caught the fireplace, and she moved toward it, trying to figure out how they would sort out this mess. In the process, she turned her back on Neville and inhaled sharply when he came up behind her—apparently taking the awkwardness in hand directly. He touched her arm, sending a trembling wave of awareness throughout her body.

  They stood there, silent but connected, for the space of two breaths, then Eloise took a step backward, bringing her back against his chest. Hesitantly, he put his arms around her waist, paused, and then rested his chin on her shoulder until she finally relaxed into the embrace and wrapped her arms around his. It felt both strange and perfectly right to hold each other this way, and as the silence stretched on, she felt her fear and frustration and embarrassment melt from her. It was her belief in this very rightness between them that had prompted the red dress she’d worn to the Websters’ ball.

  “I’m sorry, Eloise,” he whispered, moving the soft tendrils of hair by her ear with his breath and causing her own breath to catch. “I’m sorry for being a stupid schoolboy and for bringing Burke back tonight and for not seeing what was right in front of me.”

  What could she say? And what if she chose the wrong words and broke this tenuous thread between them? She closed her eyes and relaxed into him even more.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Neville asked after nearly a minute of silence passed.

  Eloise nodded, intimately aware of the scent of his cologne, the heat of his chest pressing against her back, and the way being close to him filled her up with light.

  “Did you really wear that red dress for my notice?”

  She nodded again.

  He grunted and shook his head just enough for her to feel the movement against her shoulder. “And then I said what I said. Even now, I can’t fully explain what I felt when I saw you that night—so beautiful, so striking, so . . . different than I had ever seen you before. Can you understand that, Eloise? It was as though my mind had already made its decision about you as a playmate and a friend, and so I was blind to who you are now.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, opening her eyes and staring into the fire.

  “And can you forgive me for the things I said?”

  Eloise turned in his arms then, but he kept them loose at her waist. “Of course I can forgive you, Neville.”

  “And can we start anew?” he asked.

  “Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “A season where our hearts are softer and our thoughts are higher?”

  “God and sinners reconciled?” he asked, using the words of the familiar carol.

  Eloise laughed, but when she met his eyes again, his face was serious. “I’ve kissed a lot of girls, Eloise, but it was always a game, a lark of young men who haven’t a reasonable thought in their heads. I’m ashamed of ever having been a part of it and assure you that I am trying very hard to be a better man than the boy I’ve been. Can you believe me when I say that my next kiss will
mean more than all of those combined and then some?”

  “I don’t know,” Eloise said, finding no room for anything but love, adoration, and gratitude in her heart, which felt freer than it ever had before. “Sometimes seeing is believing.”

  She saw just the first quirk of a smile before he lowered his face and she went up on her toes in response. Their lips met with tenderness. Her arms went around his neck, and his arms around her waist pulled her closer. There was something about this moment that transcended a man and a woman in a parlor on Christmas Eve to include a boy and a girl with muddy feet and smiling faces. They shared history and community, and now they shared something more than the past, more than the present. Now they shared a future, as rich and as beautiful as either could imagine. Full of promise. Brimming with hope.

  When Neville pulled back, he looked at her with pleased surprise. Though she had limited experience, Eloise sensed that he had never been kissed like that before. She reached a hand up to trace the arch of his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, and the line of his jaw. He was here. Close enough for her to touch and feel and hold. Throughout her inspection, he watched her, and when she smiled, he smiled.

  “Happy Christmas, Eloise.”

  She rose up and kissed him lightly, already imagining a lifetime of Christmas Eve kisses between them. “Happy Christmas, Neville. The happiest, in fact.”

  Other Works by Josi S. Kilpack:

  Josi S. Kilpack is the author of more than twenty novels, which include women’s fiction, romance, mystery, and suspense. Wedding Cake, the final book in her Sadie Hoffmiller culinary mystery series, was released in December 2014, and her Regency romance novels A Heart Revealed and Lord Fenton’s Folly were released in 2015.

  Josi and her husband, Lee, are the parents of four children and live in Northern Utah. In addition to writing, Josi loves to read, bake, and travel. She’s completed six half marathons to date, but may never run another because right now she hates running and does hot yoga instead.

  Josi’s website: www.josiskilpack.com

  Blog: www.josikilpack.blogspot.com

  Twitter: @JosiSKilpack

  To my daughter, Sarah, who understands.

  Chapter One

  Sailing Master Able Six never minded a little walk. His naturally long stride had suffered some constriction in a French prison after the capture of his ship, the HMS Swiftsure, but that had been a mere trial to endure until he escaped through a long-forgotten drain into the ocean.

  The three fellow prisoners brave enough to squeeze after him through the claustrophobic confines of a drain were quick to sing his praises when they swam to the HMS Carlisle in the Brest blockade. Praise was never a bad thing, especially for a talented fellow with ambition to be Sailing Master without “Second” after his name and pay rate.

  Able’s exploits meant prompt advancement, with one yawning chasm to his ambition. Sadly, time, tide, and the Peace of Amiens wait for no man, so here he was, a master now, but cast ashore by the unwelcome, pernicious peace treaty engineered by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Prime Minister Henry Addington—drat their hides.

  Which is why the end of November 1802 found Master Able Six, half-pay cheque in hand, walking up from the Clerk of Cheques office in the Plymouth dockyard to a boarding house with not many more comforts than the not-soon-enough-forgotten French prison.

  He didn’t mind discomfort, up to a point. However, eight months of discontent, chafing about peace, wanting to be at sea again, tiring of cheap lodgings and cheaper food had taken the bloom off the rose for many a seaman stuck in Plymouth, Able among them. The thought of facing one more bowl of porridge with cream verging on blinky was more than he could manage.

  He solved his breakfast dilemma easily enough. It was time for a fast, or nearly so. A cup of hot coffee, as served at the Seaman’s Welcome, did the job. A few pennies saved on breakfast bought an extra pasty for noon. Night meant potatoes and gravy at the grandiloquently named Captain Hawkins, with its poorly drawn but still interesting murals of the doughty seadog’s exploits at San Juan de Ulúa against a Spanish fleet. Able could sit there for hours, warming himself with potatoes and stories of others’ days of courage and desperation.

  Night came early now. He would still be full by the time he crawled into bed in his solitary room. Able knew he could have saved a few more pennies by sharing a room with one or two other waifs of the Royal Navy cast ashore by peace, but he chose not to.

  And that was the deal: he could choose. He knew he had the luxury of changing his mind, but right now the pleasure of a room of his own outweighed better food. After all, a man born somewhere in Dumfries, deposited naked and squalling on the steps of St. George’s Church, then taken to the parish workhouse was well enough acquainted with slim rations from an early age. The familiar, empty spot in Able’s stomach was just that: familiar.

  A lesser man than Master Six would have wasted time kicking himself that he had taken a portion of his first prize money back to St. George’s Church for a headstone for his mother, found dead in the alley behind the church, bearing all the signs of having recently given birth. Her only possession, now his, had been a Book of Prayer with the name Mary written in childish script.

  Of course, Able had no way of knowing if the dead woman had swiped the prayer book from someone, in which case, who knew what his mother’s real name was? He chose—ah, that word again—to believe his mother’s name truly was Mary. He had used some of his still-meager prize money earned in a hard way at the Battle of Aboukir Bay to buy a simple headstone to replace the wooden marker for No. 143. Able Six knew what it was to be given a numbered name. Whether Mary was his mother or not, at least No. 143 was gone.

  As the Peace of Amiens wore on, that lesser man would have wished he had not bothered with the expense of that headstone and used the money to live on. Master Able Six was not, and never had been, a lesser man.

  He still had his boat cloak, that durable bit of Royal Navy garb doubling as an extra blanket when his room turned cold and frost rimmed the underside of the ceiling. Generous by nature, Able had taken pity on a bosun’s apprentice mate who had traded away his own cloak for food, and redeemed from pawn such a garment for the shivering lad.

  That bit of philanthropy had occurred a month ago, when unseasonably cold wind roared into Plymouth and he was walking toward The Drake with Elias Caldwell, third luff on the Swiftsure, a confident fellow who had no idea how little he knew. Caldwell owed his freedom to Able because he had the good sense to follow the sailing master down that unused drain and into the ocean.

  “You’re a kind fellow,” Caldwell had remarked, after the visit to the pawn shop and gift of a cloak to a cold sailor.

  Able shrugged. “Could’ve been me,” was enough comment for the occasion.

  Speak of the devil—here was Lieutenant Caldwell now, coming up behind Able from the docks with his own half-pay cheque, which he waved to Able.

  “Master, I am off to the country,” he said. “Mother will have dinner on the table precisely at six, because she keeps country hours. I’ll just pop in on the whist game first.”

  Master Six smiled to himself. He had seen Caldwell’s dedication to whist and his less-than-stellar ability at the table, because he was no mathematician. By the time Mama sat down to dinner, her son would likely still be deep in cards at The Drake. If his usual pattern persisted, Lieutenant Caldwell would leave the table with barely enough to get a conveyance into the country, where he would bide his time until the next half-pay cheque. Caldwell—drat his hide, as well—had a home to go to, a bed and food.

  But Able Six was not a bitter man. He could wait for the tide to turn, as it invariably did, if not every twelve hours, at least soon enough. An ambitious man himself, the sailing master understood ambition in others. He knew First Consul Napoleon would not long be able to resist the siren call of war.

  Until that happened, it would be porridge for breakfast as late as possible, potatoes and gravy in the afternoon
, and an early bedtime for Master Six.

  Nodding to Lieutenant Caldwell, Able ducked into the labyrinth called the Barbican that constituted Plymouth’s famous—or infamous, depending—warren of shops and cheap lodgings. As a sailing master and therefore a warrant officer now, he could have stayed at The Drake, but since he had spent more years fore with the crew than aft with the officers, Able found the Lady Luck more to his personal taste and certainly cheaper.

  After a visit to the postal office to cash his cheque, he repaired to the Lady Luck, paying the landlady for his pathetic room, and then her skinny daughter with chapped hands for washing his linens. He took the stairs quickly and flopped on his bed, already relishing the constant pleasure of his best friend—his nearly worn-out copy of Euclid’s Elements.

  The book was on the slanted night table next to his virtuous bed, a cot too small for more than one person. He reached for it, first patting Mary’s prayer book as he always did. He didn’t bother to open Elements, because he knew it by heart, the same as he knew every book he read for the first time. When Swiftsure’s captain had learned of Master Six’s peculiar ability to never forget anything he ever read, he had quizzed him at length, then just shook his head, declaring that one hundred years ago in Germany, Able Six would have been burned to death as a witch.

  “I’d probably have lit the fire myself,” Captain Hallowell had commented, but only in jest, because he liked Able Six.

  But this was Plymouth, England, in 1802, and geniuses who had such abilities needn’t fear the burning grounds or Bedlam. His captain had suggested he not spread word about this unheard-of prowess. “You’re a nice enough lad, though young to be a sailing master,” Captain Hallowell stated. “You might make people nervous.”

  Able recognized good advice when he heard it, and kept his odd gift to himself. With Captain Hallowell’s kind complicity, though, he had promptly gone about reading every book on the Swiftsure, including all logs. He stored up a wealth of knowledge, which might perhaps come in handy someday.