A Duke for Christmas Read online

  “My mother has refused to come live with me, you know. Most people think she is dead.”

  “Why on earth would they think that?”

  “She sent only her affidavit, testifying to my parentage,” He tapped his heels against the sides of his horse and started moving off. Sophie followed, realizing the two coaches had paused rather than passing them at the crossroads.

  “Were you disappointed that your mother didn’t come to speak to the lawyers herself?” she asked, catching up.

  He shook his head. “Mother does what she can.”

  “Is she unwell?”

  “No, not physically. But her strength isn’t all it should be. She simply could not withstand a journey from York to London.”

  “York? I visited there once when I was ill. The air is so wonderfully bracing.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? Mother went to live with an aunt there after I went away to school. She hated relying on Great-Aunt Clementina’s charity, and that’s neither more nor less than what she offered.”

  Sophie would not have thought his good-natured face could look so bleak. For the first time, she wondered if the man behind the smile was more complex than she ever would have guessed.

  “I can understand the wish to find a safe harbor, even if one must accept charity to find that security.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what she did. She was worried about me, too. Great-Aunt Clementina paid my school fees. In return, she demanded Mother’s services as a companion, secretary, and general dogsbody.”

  “So she did it all for you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “If I know women,” Sophie said, riding knee to knee with him, “I’ll lay odds she feels no regrets about her choices.”

  “None that she has ever mentioned.”

  “Would she?”

  His lips twisted wryly. “Probably not.”

  “And you are a great man now, a noble, a man of wealth ... have you given her a palace by the sea with columns carved of chalcedony?”

  His frown remained. “No. She won’t take a thing from me. She says that as she didn’t live the life of a duchess with my father, she won’t be a dowager duchess with me. She is, of course, and the people of her town call her so. My great-aunt can’t stand it. She has always been the grande dame of the town, and to have her despised companion suddenly elevated so far above her ...” He grinned, a mocking devil in his eyes. “It makes up for a lot, I can tell you.”

  “Yes, I can imagine your feeling of vindication.” How wonderful it would be to be able to give her mother all the elegancies of life. If Broderick’s poetry ever gained the renown it deserved, she would pour a bucketful of golden coins into her lap. How her mother would laugh—and then, inevitably, she would cry.

  She looked around, almost surprised to see she hadn’t been transported by fairy wish to her own home. But the cold wind still tossed the bare-fingered trees and the hooves still clopped relentlessly over the hard dirt road. She freed a hand to tug her cloak closer to her chin. “I think I had better change to the carriage. I’m a little cold.”

  The early dark was drawing in when the weary cavalcade at last came through the main, and virtually only, street of Finchley. Sophie leaned forward to gaze hungrily at the once familiar sights of her home. The last slanting red beams of winter sun illuminated so many memories. She’d once known every stick, stone, and soul.

  Glancing up, she saw that lantern light shone through the bright stained glass windows of the old church. She’d seen grander religious edifices, both the golden glory of St. Peter’s Basilica and the enduring magnificence of the Pantheon. Once she’d even been to York Minster. None of these, however, spoke to her with the loving warmth that the sight of her own church brought to her, the place she’d been christened, that she’d adorned with flowers as a girl, where she’d married.

  Though she looked about her, devouring the street with her eyes, she realized that all the citizens must be within their homes. Most of the laboring families would have eaten before dark set in, while the gentry would only now be seating themselves about the family table. Their lights glowed behind drawn curtains. Sophie had to restrain her greediness to see her friends again.

  Then the weary but still valiant horses drew them quickly beyond the village, to the impenetrable dark of the fallow fields. The coach lamps hardly illuminated that!

  Sophie found she didn’t need light to find her way. She knew the place where the gravel spurted from under the wheels and how they had to slow perforce for the place where the road dipped down. She heard the splash of water striking the panels of the coach, there where the little stream crossed the road, flowing in all but the most frigid temperatures. Then the wind sounded especially loud as they came through the place where the linden trees grew, their branches threshing in the breeze.

  Yet when they reached the point when they should have turned toward Finchley Old Place, the coach continued on. She knew now where they were going. She only wondered why. Had her mother taken to living with Maris and her husband? It didn’t sound likely, but one never knew. People did change so. Suddenly, Sophie felt a little frightened, almost as if she were going to strangers. She tossed a few reassuring words at the two girls huddled together on the opposite seat.

  After a few more minutes and despite the frigid air, Sophie forced down the window and looked out, leaning on the frame. The two girls protested, huddling into their cloaks. Sophie, however, had eyes only for the house ahead, brilliantly shining with every window alight.

  Then the front door opened above the curving double staircase that ran down a full flight to the ground. Silhouetted against the streaming golden light were the three people she loved most in the world, the women slightly more than the man.

  Sophie hardly waited for the carriage to come to a stop. She threw open the door and leaped down, never mind the folding step. Stumbling a little, ignoring a sharp pain in her ankle, she ran to their open arms.

  * * * *

  Mrs. Lindel, as ever, functioned as the still center of a chaotic storm. She saw to it that the groom, coachman, and boys had their feet tucked under the kitchen table within ten minutes of their arrival, mugs of hot tea in their reddened hands, and a smell of hot roast beef filling the air. Sir Kenton’s own people were looking after the horses and unloading the luggage.

  At another table, several of the younger girls attached to the household sat creating a garland of greenery for the holiday decorations. Gilded nuts nestled next to sprays of holly ripe with berries. The two Italian girls who had followed Sophie stood watching. “Per Natale?” Lucia asked.

  “Non so ancora” Angelina answered with a shrug.

  One of the girls, an under-dairymaid by the look of her apron, glanced up and smiled. She scooted over on her bench, motioning for another girl to do likewise. Beckoning to Lucia, she patted the space beside her. “Come on, it’s easy. We’ll show you what to do.”

  With a glance at her sister, Lucia sat down. The dairymaid put a bunch of nuts into her hand. “You thread them on like this,” she said, demonstrating. “That’s right. Come on, you too.” She pointed to the other empty space. The other girls muttered or giggled depending on their temperament but, whether from kindness or from being under the eye of authority, they welcomed the Ferrara girls despite the language barrier. Sophie had every confidence they’d soon overcome that.

  At a touch from her mother’s hand, Sophie followed her. “Now, Sophie,” she said, pausing in the gray-blue hall between servant’s hall and the upstairs. “Tell me about those two young girls you have brought with you.”

  “They are very dear creatures. So patient and kind, with never a word of complaint through all the vicissitudes of this long trip.” After a moment’s thought, she added, “They are very hard workers, as well.”

  “But what are they doing here? Don’t mistake me, pray. I am not objecting to their arrival. But I don’t know what to do with them. We don’t need two maids.”

  “I had t
o bring them both, Mother. I hadn’t any choice. Signora Ferrara could have thrown me on the street and kept all my clothes and furniture if I hadn’t.”

  “But why on earth?”

  “Because I couldn’t pay her for my rent over the last three months.”

  “Why couldn’t you? Did Broderick leave you so little?”

  Sophie drew a deep breath. This was the most difficult part of her homecoming. “I have his poems.”

  “I see.” Her mother’s hair had grown slightly grayer, a few more lines had appeared in face and throat, but her eyes retained their faraway look. As usual, when those eyes sharpened and focused, her daughter could hold nothing back.

  “He left me some eighteen months ago,” Sophie murmured. “His mistress took everything when he died. His lawyer, misunderstanding the situation, told her before he told me. She took everything, his clothes, his books, his cravat pins ... everything. But she didn’t want his work, I suppose. It had no value to her. She’d thrown them down in the middle of the floor. There was a footprint on the top one.” Sophie crossed her arms over her stomach, holding hard, trying to suppress the interior shaking that started whenever she thought about Catherine Margrave.

  Mrs. Lindel reached out and drew Sophie into her arms. “Oh, my love,” she said softly. “What has the world done to you?”

  “It’s not the world,” Sophie said, her eyes tight against her mother’s shoulder. “It would be easier to bear if I could say that. Then it would just be circumstances and one can’t kick very much against circumstances. This was my own doing, Mother. All my own.”

  “Now, how can that be?” She took a step back, so to look into Sophie’s eyes, smoothing back the loosened hair from her flushed face.

  “I married him, didn’t I? Everyone told me I shouldn’t. You, my uncle, even Dominic Swift warned me. But, no, I had to be stubborn. I was in love.”

  “Yes, you were. So radiant. Like a dancing sparkle on the water.”

  “They don’t last, either.” Sophie slipped out of her mother’s arms and paced. “And Broderick’s love for me lasted about as long.”

  “But what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and all the agony of her confusion rang in her voice. “I tried to be a good wife, every day I tried. We found an apartment right away, but there was nothing in it. So I went to the secondhand furniture shops—there are so many in Rome. I found wonderful things for just a few soldi. A table, a settee, a... a bed. I left them for Signora Ferrara anyway, as it turned out. They weren’t worth taking back to the secondhand shops after... they weren’t even worth the cartage.”

  If she closed her eyes, she could still see her apartment. She’d distempered the walls in a biscuit color soon after they’d moved in, but the leaks in the roof had mottled the walls into myriad tones. No matter how often she dusted and swept, a fine layer of silt would appear, softening colors and blending patterns. Every piece of furniture represented hours of searching, practicing her bad Italian until she’d bring home her hard-won prize.

  At first, Broderick had enjoyed the expeditions as much as she. It was he who had chosen the funny little demi-lune table, decorated all over with birds in golden paint. They’d gotten it for an ‘old song’ he said, because one of the bun feet was broken in half, yet it had still been far more than they could afford. He’d laughed at the price, saying that their little nest needed some birds.

  Sophie blinked back tears, refusing to cry over painted birds when she’d hardly shed a single tear for her late husband. She’d cried enough over him when he was alive, she decided. “I thought I was doing what he wanted. I made certain there was always something to eat in the house. I was quiet when he wanted to ... to write, and I talked to him when he wanted conversation. But he didn’t want a wife.”

  “What on earth did he want then?” Mrs. Lindel asked indignantly.

  “A muse, I suppose. Someone who cared as little about regular meals or paying creditors as he. He found his muse in the mistress of an artist friend of his.”

  “So Broderick betrayed him, too?”

  “Hamish didn’t seem to mind so much. I suppose he’d found out what she was really like. It was only after Broderick took up with her that he started telling me to ask Uncle Shirley for money. Besides, Hamish had fallen in love with the French girl who used to model for him, his wife’s second cousin. She was French, too, and had gone off with some count or other, Russian, I think, though he might have been Polish.”

  With a glance, Sophie saw that this last revelation had been perhaps too shocking. Mrs. Lindel had her hands up to her cheeks, her mouth agape. “What sort of horrible people did Broderick introduce you to?”

  “Oh, there were many people who were much, much worse. Six months ago, I met a poet who’d run off with his wife’s sister and was traveling through Italy with her and his wife and his wife’s new paramour, who was a poet also, as well as all their multitude of children. They seemed very satisfied with the arrangements.”

  “Horrible, immoral people.”

  “I quite liked the sister, though she suffered from melancholia. Couldn’t stand the poets. I suppose I had had too much of the artistic point of view by then.”

  “So I should think. Thank God you are home now among decent, well-bred folk.”

  “Oh, Mother, I do. I never thought I should see England again with or without Broderick.”

  “You should have written to me about all this! I had no notion your situation was so dire. If I had, I should have come to Italy myself to bring you home.”

  Sophie clasped her mother’s hand. “I know, my dearest. That’s why I didn’t write. I couldn’t bear for you to worry, being so far away. No, I had resolved to stay in Rome so long as I was married to Broderick. I knew we could never afford a divorce proceeding and, even if we could have, to be so gossiped about would have been torture for both you and me.”

  “Dear me, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “So long as I was so far from here and living among a set of people whom no English tourist ever sees, I could hide what had happened. Once he was dead, there was no need. I’m a respectable widow now. No one ever need know what a miserable failure my marriage was.”

  “Rest assured, no one will ever hear one word of this from me. I won’t even tell Maris.”

  “No, indeed. She’s so happy, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is. Dear Kenton worships the ground she walks upon and now that she is expecting their first child, well... you can imagine.”

  “Yes. Tell me, have they passed through that sticky phase when they were kissing in corners every minute?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. One must always cough before entering a room here at Finchley.”

  “That reminds me,” Sophie said. “Why are we here instead of at home? Are you living here now?”

  “Heavens, no. I’m having the lower rooms painted and the ceiling in the dining room replastered. I wrote you, I think, that a whole corner fell during my dinner party in September?”

  “Did it? The last letter I had from you came in May and was dated in May.”

  “Oh, of course. Well, anyway, Colonel McMullen was all but brained. I had no notion that a water jug overturned in my room would cause such a disaster. Fortunately, the Cosbys have a cousin who does painting and plastering. He was staying there while he worked. He’s all finished now, but the house is in such disorder that Maris invited me to stay until the Cosbys come home. They went to visit their niece while the house was in disarray.”

  “How long before we can go back?”

  “The Cosbys are coming home just after the New Year. If it were up to me, I should prefer to go home, but Maris and Kenton are pressing me to stay over Christmas. Of course, if you want to go back to Finchley Old Place, I will go with you. The two of us should be able to manage the housework.”

  “To be honest, I should like to draw out this period of luxury as long as I can, Mother. I have had enough of doing for myself.”r />
  “So I see by your hands,” Mrs. Lindel said, taking the cold reddened hands into her own. “I have a pair of chicken-skin gloves I will lend you. Rub goose grease well in for a week and sleep every night in the gloves and soon your hands will be as white and lovely as before.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten all such secrets,” Sophie confessed. “I’d like to stay on over Christmas. You have no idea how I have longed for an English Christmas. The Italians celebrate so differently.”

  “I do hope those girls won’t feel too strange here. You say they speak no English?”

  “A few words only.”

  “Well, I’m sure I shall make myself understood. You go and take some dinner. I’ll see to the girls.”

  “You don’t want me to come along and translate?”

  Mrs. Lindel shook her head. “I must be able to communicate without you. You won’t always be about.”

  Sophie wondered where her mother thought she would be except at home. She’d learned her lesson. Hard taught, yes, but less likely then to be forgotten. Her future might contain many things. Love would not be among them. Never again.

  Chapter Five

  “Come on, Dom,” Kenton murmured, glancing over his shoulder at the women huddled together on three armless chairs, discussing changes in the village with great intensity. Every now and again, laughter rang out, bright against the background of hushed voices. “Brandy in the library.”

  “Brilliant thought,” Dom said. He sighed happily after one sip. “Wonderful stuff. You must introduce me to your smuggler.”

  “Quite legally acquired, actually. Half the profit is gone from smuggling now that the wars are over.”

  Dominic settled himself in a leather armchair, the twin of the one that Kenton sat in. At Finchley, they kept the civilized custom of dressing for dinner even when en famille, and Dominic wondered why his own black coat did not fit nearly so well as Ken’s, even though they went to the same expensive tailor. He slid down onto his tail, his long legs up on a convenient footstool, his feet toward the fire.