Warming Winter's Heart: An Historical Romance Novella Read online

  She recognized the thought for what it was – a deflection against her own culpability in losing sight of the child. He’d been at her side one moment and gone the next. He was a strong-willed little boy.

  Thank God the gentleman had been swift enough to save him from injury or worse. Caroline’s hand tightened around the boy’s as they crossed the still-busy street away from the coaching inn.

  Her claim to being Lucas’s mother fell naturally from her lips before she could give the truth. But their knight in shining armor didn’t believe her. She saw it and heard it – and he was right.

  She prayed forgiveness for her half-lie – after all, what harm could it do? The chances of seeing the man again in a city as large as London would be infinitesimal.

  Ahead, light still burned in the windows in St. Luke’s Mission’s kitchen. It was still early by the standards of the place. Reverend Alfred Camp and his other workers were doling out hot meals and arranging a cot for the night to those who could not bear a night out of doors in the cold.

  She urged Lucas through one of the side doors and closed it behind her. The vicar’s wife, Patricia – Patty to those close to her – spotted them immediately.

  Mrs. Camp was a small woman in contrast to her much taller and stickily-built husband, but she had a nervous energy that translated itself into good works for the residents of this borough.

  “Ah, there you are!” said the older woman, kindly. “I thought you’d gone to take this little one to bed.”

  Caroline was breathless but forced out an explanation. “L… Lucas gave me the slip before we reached the stables a… and nearly got himself run over,”

  Despite the warmth of the hall, she suddenly felt cold. Her hands trembled.

  Mrs. Camp frowned a moment. She gave her apron over to another and gently led Caroline to a quiet part of the hall. “You’ve had a wee shock, haven’t you? Come sit down here a moment.”

  “She be needin’ a spot o’ brandy, she do,” observed O’Toole, one of the Mission’s regulars.

  “She might, but there will be no spirits imbibed here.”

  “More’s the pity,” the vagrant grumbled.

  Despite feeling lightheaded, Caroline could still smile at the exchange. She sat on the bench where Mrs. Camp placed her and pulled Lucas onto her lap.

  The boy was quiet, hopefully chastened by his experience. He settled against her chest.

  A moment later, a cup of warm milk was placed in her hands. She took a sip and offered the cup to Lucas. The boy shook his head in refusal. Caroline finished the rest, pleased to see her hand now steady as she placed the vessel on the bench beside her.

  “Could you send someone out to the inn and ask my driver to come here please?” she asked Mrs. Camp.

  O’Toole rose to his feet, his too-large clothes barely hiding a wiry frame. Neither could a full grayish-white beard disguise the man’s sunken cheeks.

  “I’ll go for ye, Miss, if it’s good for an extra helpin’ o’ that puddin’.”

  “A good reward for a good deed,” Mrs. Camp answered.

  O’Toole left, leaving Caroline under the scrutiny of the woman before her.

  “You do enough for us already. There’s no need for you to be here every night – especially since you’ve decided to take on the responsibility for this little one,” she said.

  “It’s no bother, honestly it’s not. I like helping in a more direct way than simply giving alms.”

  “If more folks were half as generous as you, the world would be a much better place, indeed.” The vicar’s wife lowered her voice to avoid being overheard. “You also have responsibilities away from this place that are deserving of your attention, too.”

  Caroline squeezed her eyes shut a moment. Mrs. Camp was right.

  “I know, but—”

  “Enough of your excuses, my dear. You might think we don’t know the full extent of what you do, but the reverend and I do have eyes in our heads.”

  There was little point in arguing. Caroline would only lose. She offered a deflated nod. It was returned with a smile before the older woman returned to her duties in the kitchen.

  “Miss… yer carriage has arrived.”

  Caroline offered O’Toole a tired smile and struggled to her feet. He took Lucas from her arms and followed her to the black carriage that waited out on the corner, too large to turn around in the narrow laneway.

  If the man had wondered what “Miss” was doing entering a private carriage, he was too well-mannered to ask. If she were considered to be some eccentric, then so be it. Only Reverend and Mrs. Camp knew the truth of it.

  While O’Toole lay the tired child on the bench, a footman aided her into the carriage. As it pulled away, she saw O’Toole shuffling quickly back to the mission for his good reward.

  The vehicle made its way through the market streets of London, even at this hour crowded with traders and shoppers looking to order goods for Christmas. Their journey was not a long one, only five miles to her fashionable address in Mayfair, where she would once more no longer be “Miss”, but rather Lady Caroline Lavene, the widow of Lord Tristan Lavene.

  She pulled back the hood of her forest green coat and removed the white cap that covered her auburn hair, massaging her scalp to relieve a niggling headache as she watched over the sleeping boy before her.

  Lucas been an answer to a prayer. Her late husband had been an independently wealthy man with no property entailed, and everything had become hers without condition. Tristan left her everything she could wish for – except a child of her own.

  Becoming widowed after only five years of marriage had been a shock. She had remained in deep mourning for her husband the whole year after he died following a short illness. After that first twelve months, she was supposed to emerge again, but the world seemed a different place, and she no longer knew her way in it.

  It had become all too easy to retreat.

  The social whirl on the fringes of the ton had lost its appeal. The obsession with fashion silhouettes and hemlines, or whether blondes or brunettes would be all the rage this Season seemed nothing but frivolous nonsense. Then one year, and another, had slipped by so easily that her thirtieth birthday came and went without acknowledgement.

  It was Lucas who brought her back into the world.

  She had been driving past St. Luke’s Church one day when she saw the toddler sitting forlornly on the steps. He could be no older than two years of age. Before Caroline knew it, she had ordered her carriage to stop.

  There she met the Reverend and Mrs. Camp, the vicar of St. Luke’s and his wife. Neither knew the child, nor anything of his parents. He had simply been abandoned. Well, what could she do other than take the child home with her? Only until inquiries could be made, of course.

  After a couple of days, it seemed silly to keep calling him “child”, so Caroline had named him Lucas, after the church.

  That had been the beginning of her downfall.

  If she had left it at that, actually made inquiries and returned the child to the church if they proved fruitless, then her heart might still be her own. But the longer Lucas remained with her, the more attached to him she became. A few days became a few months, one year became two. And now she loved him as though he were a son of her own body – the only child she would ever have.

  And, tonight, she had almost lost him.

  The carriage slowed as the horse turned into the drive. Caroline reached for the hanging leather strap to support herself as the vehicle rocked. Lucas had not stirred on the bench opposite. Just as the carriage rolled to a stop under the porte cochere, she reached out and touched his soft warm cheek.

  He was the miracle she needed and hadn’t known how to ask for. He helped give her life meaning and purpose, pulling her from the misery and loneliness of her widowhood and introducing her to her second family at St. Luke’s Mission.

  The door opened and an old man emerged, rugged up against the cold. Fordyce was her butler of sorts. He took Lu
cas inside the house and followed her up the stairs into the bedroom which was next to hers.

  Mrs. Stewart, the nanny, a plump little woman with white hair, waited and rose from her knitting as they entered. She had already laid out the child’s night attire and helped Caroline put Lucas to bed.

  Lady Lavene ran a rather unconventional household. As she had no intention of returning to the social whirl, did it matter if a formal table was not kept or if there was conversation and singing while the servants worked? Many of those under her roof were people referred by Reverend Camp, who had fallen on hard times.

  In Lucas, she had been given a second chance to live; how could she begrudge another poor soul the same opportunity if she could provide it?

  As had become custom, once Lucas had gone to bed, the writing desk in her drawing room was illuminated with candles. Here, she had one more task to complete before retiring herself, one more thing she could do to improve the lot of those who had little.

  The Camps knew who she was and much about her, but they did not know about this enterprise for it was still to debut in the public eye. It would do so tomorrow and she expected it would raise eyebrows.

  The Argus was not the usual newspaper of the ordinary Londoner. It was the one read by Parliamentarians and those seated in the House of Lords. It was the paper of record for the Beau Monde, a mirror reflecting their lives and interests.

  Now it was about to start publishing something a little different in its pages.

  She glanced at the sheaf of papers to her right. It had taken all her courage to impose upon the editor the debt he’d owed Lord Tristan and he was reluctant at first when he heard the price. But after a little persistence by Caroline, he agreed to mark a Christmas Advent of a different sort.

  Twenty-two days and eleven stories of hardship and hope about men and woman who were too often beneath the notice of those who could give a little to improve the lives of their fellow man.

  Each tale she was told came from those who’d found sanctuary at St. Luke’s Mission. Their stories had drawn her from the depths of her own depression, reminding her that, despite her own loss, she had so much to be grateful for.

  On the advice of The Argus editor, she was to use a nom de plume instead of her own name. Oddly, it had given her courage to be more bold in her words and forthright in her telling – something she would never had done on her own.

  Tonight, the eve of the publication of the first article, she was to pen the last in the series. From the sheaf on her right, she withdrew the first to read again, a reminder of her mission of hope:

  How easy it is to overlook what is right in front of us if it is not convenient to notice.

  While one may rail at the cook for the smallness of the plum puddings or the meanness of the flesh to be found on the goose, consider that your blessings may have already been given and you are ungrateful for them.

  For so many would be delighted to have a taste of a plum pudding liberally flavored with brandy or savor a slice of meat cut from the breast.

  But such want and hardship seem invisible to people who have much, and feel themselves hard done by when they do not have more.

  The Christmas season is soon upon us, where the pious and impious among us both will sit in the church pews and be reminded of the Lord of Creation who humbled Himself to be born as a poor babe.

  Can we not do the same? Humble ourselves from our lofty positions to see the world from the eyes of those who have nothing?

  Charity begins at home, we are told, but when our houses are already filled with food, drink, and pleasure, might we not enlarge our hearts and look beyond our own threshold?

  Personal charity, combined with equitable laws to protect the most vulnerable in our society, is a just cause around which all good men ought to rally.

  Caroline nodded with satisfaction. Plain speaking was what was needed. There followed her first subject – the plight of youngsters forced into labor as chimney sweeps.

  The missive was concluded with her chosen nom de plume – The Nightingale.

  She smiled at the name. It seemed appropriate. She was a little voice drawing attention to those in darkness and in need.

  She drew a fresh sheet of paper before her, flicked open her inkwell with a thumbnail, and began to write…

  Chapter Three

  Julian woke and wondered why everything ached. Then he remembered. The surprised look on the boy’s face as he gathered the child in his arms, the closeness of the hoof that grazed him, the bruising fall onto the cobbles…

  But mostly he remembered the face of the woman who came to claim the boy.

  Her brown eyes framed with finely arched eyebrows were what remained with him. Then her voice, warm and cultured, at odds with her rather plainly fashioned dress and cloak. A governess? If so, why was she out so late with her charge?

  Letting out a groan, he rolled up into a seated position on the edge of the bed. He scrubbed his face, feeling the new morning’s bristles.

  A sliver of light peaked through the thick, blue curtains that covered the window. He’d slept later than he planned.

  He rang for a valet while he attended to his most pressing personal business. By the time he had set out his razor and soaps for washing, two footmen entered, one with a large ewer of hot water, the second with a tray with a small pot of tea with the morning edition of The Argus under his arm.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the elder of the two men.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Viscount Carmarthan left instruction for you to sleep as long as you wished, sir. It is currently just after nine o’clock.”

  Not so late, then.

  The footmen left. Julian stripped, observing in a mirror the dark bruises along his thigh and searching behind him, found the distinct shape of a hoof on his back. That, he hadn’t even felt at the time…

  He wished he’d had the opportunity to talk to the woman and child – even if only to scold her for being so careless.

  But there was something not right about the pair which he couldn’t put his finger on. If the child was hers as she had claimed, Julian wondered about the father, because there was little of her that he could see in the lad.

  He shook his head and continued with his washing. There was no point in pursuing the matter; he would never see them again. Besides, he had important things to attend to, such as the first annual general meeting of the Wheal Gunnis Copper Mining Company.

  There was only good news from that quarter. The lode they had discovered had been more promising than preliminary testing had revealed. All the shareholders were to receive a dividend in the New Year, which was quite remarkable for a company so new.

  If the meeting was to discuss that alone, he might very well have stayed in Somerset and given up the invitation to London. But Wheal Gunnis’ true owner, Phillip Gedding, the brother of Allie, the new Viscountess Carmarthan, wanted to discuss paying out some minor investors. His plan was to bring the company back into the hands of its three original shareholders – Gedding, the Viscount, and himself – and he was the last to arrive.

  Julian spread the newssheets on the bed while he finished dressing.

  So, who was bidding what for copper, today?

  Part of an opinion item caught his eye.

  …that children as young as six are being exposed to such dangers as the illnesses borne from soot. Chimney sweeps younger than eleven years have been known to suffer chimney sweep cancer…

  A sharp knock on the door broke his concentration.

  “Enter.”

  “The viscount asks whether or not you will join him and the viscountess for breakfast.”

  Julian hid a smile, viscount… in the year since he met David, never once had the man called on formality. Hell, it had been six months before he even knew the man had a title. Julian found him in the dining room with Allie opposite him.

  He had never given much thought to getting caught in the parson’s mousetrap, but ever sin
ce this couple’s wedding, he had begun thinking more and more about it – the idea of getting married, of sharing his life with a woman who might take an interest in his work, and one who would want something more than a life of social excitement in the city.

  Seeing David and Allie together now and the tender looks they shared across the dining table only reinforced that notion.

  Yes, he wasn’t too proud to admit it – he wanted a wife.

  But the face of Lydia came to him unbidden. A chill went down his back and he didn’t hold back on the grimace that crossed his face.

  Despite the girl’s looks, there could be no doubting a marriage between them would be one of misery. Being fair of face and form was not enough compensation for being shackled to someone as superficial and capricious as he knew her to be.

  He hoped Lady Abigail could work her magic and perhaps find the girl some equally empty-headed lord to wed.

  Meanwhile, he wanted someone who would be a partner, a help-meet.

  “Well, are you going to stand on the threshold all day gurning, or are you going to come in?” said David with friendly exasperation. “How are you feeling today, Winter? You seemed quite knocked about last night.”

  “Better for a good night’s sleep,” Julian replied, helping himself to a generous amount of ham, eggs, and toast.

  “It could have been serious,” said Allie. “You were lucky you didn’t break a bone or worse.”

  Julian took a seat. “I seem to have the worst luck around pretty women, as you well know.” He offered his hostess a self-deprecating smile and received a sympathetic one in return.

  “You should leave the matchmaking to me,” she said. “There are a number of very eligible young ladies attending our ball.”

  “Don’t think she doesn’t mean it. I’ve seen the guest lists,” David joined in, a twinkle in his eye showing that his friend was having just a little too much fun at his expense.

  Nonetheless, Julian bore the ribbing with good humor. After all, if there was anyone who understood the pitfalls of succumbing to family pressure, it was David. It had stolen ten years of the man’s life. Julian didn’t intend to make the same mistake.