Chapter Two
GAbrIEL éTIENNE DE Roche, sixth Comte de Roche—retired privateer and disillusioned émigré—stared at the roaring fire in the drawing room of Crabb Hall and wondered, not for the first time, why he had come.
A flippant invitation from an old friend—Ivo Bonville, now Lord Crabb—was, of course, what had brought him to the door of Crabb Hall, bearing gifts and a sore backside after several hours’ carriage ride from London.
But why he had accepted the invitation still perplexed him.
He had never cared much for Christmas. His fondest memories of the season were of those spent aboard ship with dozens of stinking, farting men, downing whatever liquor was to hand in a desperate attempt to add festivity to another monotonous day at sea.
Yet now that he was retired—and faced the prospect of his first Noel alone in a rented London townhouse—Ivo’s invitation had called to a part of his heart he had thought long dead.
Well, not dead exactly. Merely lost. Left behind in 1793, when the revolutionaries had seized the Chateau de Roche and slaughtered half his family.
Now, as servants crept nervously about him, Gabriel wondered whether a Christmas spent alone might not have been preferable to under the unabashed scrutiny of the inhabitants of a tiny enclave in the Cotswolds Hills.
Not that he was unaccustomed to being stared at. His sheer size had always drawn glances, and the scars he had earned while sailing under a letter of marque had done little to soften his forbidding appearance.
Perhaps that was why the robin in the shop had taken up residence in his mind.
Not the frivolous ornament, of course, but the girl who had admired it. Small and fluttery like a bird, yet brave and curious too, as robins so often were.
Her tentative smile when he had turned from the counter had followed him from the shop. No one ever smiled at him. They usually found the tips of their boots far more compelling.
He was clearly failing in his customary habit of dourness, he thought with a harrumph. Nothing invited avoidance quite like a dark frown—and Gabriel’s practiced scowl was a work of art so great that few dared approach him.
The English adored small talk, and he had not the patience to endure endless discussion on the weather. It was always bad; what else was there to say on the subject?
“I hate to interrupt your glowering into the fire, Roche, but I’m leaving for the bazaar now—if you’d care to join me?” called Ivo, Lord Crabb, cheerfully from the doorway of the drawing room.
“I have read of the exotic bazaars of Persia and the Ottoman Empire; I shall not miss the chance to see Plumpton’s attempt at staging one,” Gabriel replied dryly as he rose to his feet.
“Expect more cake and less Constantinople,” Ivo said with a wink, gesturing for him to follow him out the door.
The two men rode to the village on horseback, as Lady Crabb had already gone ahead to assist in organising the setting up of the parish hall. Gabriel personally thought such menial labour far beneath a viscountess—but then, the English were a funny people.
In the village, Lord Crabb gestured for them to dismount outside a building that bore a painted sign reading The Ring o’ Bells.
“Is it to be held here?” Gabriel asked, becoming vaguely hopeful as he caught the unmistakable sounds of male chatter and clinking glasses from within.
“No,” Crabb grinned. “This is where we find the fortitude to get us through the evening’s events. Enjoyment of female-organised activities can generally be found at the bottom of a pint glass—or two.”
Gabriel gave a grunt of amusement, though inwardly he noted that this was Lord Crabb’s third piece of unsolicited advice on the subject of maintaining a happy marriage since his arrival.
The viscount, Gabriel realised, had become one of those married men who was convinced that every other fellow would be infinitely better off with a wife.
Unbidden, an image of his fair-haired robin sprang to mind—but Gabriel quashed it firmly.
It was simply the season, he told himself: the frost-covered cottages, the lintels dripping with holly, the mangers set in every window.
All that sentiment and candlelight were enough to make any man think of ridiculous things—like marriage.
A man such as he—huge, hulking, and ill-mannered after years at sea—could hardly expect a gentle wife to want him.
As though to prove his point, his entrance into the pub was met with stunned silence and a muttered aside from one of the men at the bar that he thought bears were extinct in England.
Gabriel easily ignored this, though Lord Crabb cast the perpetrator a withering glance.
“Mr Marrowbone, I thought you were meant to be out on constable duties?”
“I am,” the constable took a sip of his pint and set it down on the bar. “I’m keeping an eye on the undesirables.”
A chorus of good-natured disagreement went up from the other patrons, though whether they were defending themselves or the constable was unclear.
“And soon you’ll be dealing with drunken brawls—albeit ones you started,” Lord Crabb observed wryly before turning to the barman. “Angus, two pints of your best.”
The bushy-bearded proprietor promptly set two pints of ale on the bar. Gabriel picked his up and discreetly sniffed its foamy head, wondering inwardly what the other ales were like if this was the best on offer.
“To Plumpton,” Gabriel said, lifting his tankard in toast—for he had learned that the English enjoyed their drink all the more when it was taken in honour of something.
“To Plumpton,” Lord Crabb echoed wryly, and the toast was taken up by half the pub—some of whom must have been truly in their cups, for they grew misty-eyed with pride over a village that, by Gabriel’s reckoning, consisted of a single row of shops and a village green that winter had turned into a quagmire.
Though it wasn’t without its charms, Gabriel admitted to himself, as he set his pint back down, thinking of his robin.
“I say, is that de Roche?”
Gabriel turned at the sound of his name and was surprised to find Captain James Thorne standing before him. As a naval man, their paths had crossed more than once—across both years and seas—and, much like Lord Crabb, they had become friends of a sort.
“What are you doing in Plumpton?” Thorne asked cheerfully, settling himself comfortably beside the two men.
“I could ask you the same,” Gabriel replied dryly.
“I came to visit Crabb here,” Thorne said, nodding toward the viscount, “And never left. Married a local girl—happiest I’ve ever been. Plumpton does that to a man.”
“It kidnaps you?” Gabriel asked, alarmed.
“No,” Thorne chuckled. “Though it does domesticate you. No man escapes unwed.”
Gabriel glanced at Lord Crabb, certain he would see his own horror reflected back at him. Instead, he found only contented agreement— so unnerving that Gabriel immediately called for a second pint.
Crabb’s invitation, he thought dourly, had come with an unspoken caveat—the sacrificial offering of his bachelorhood.
Once the three men had finished their second pint—which, to Gabriel’s surprise, tasted better than the first—Lord Crabb insisted they move on to the bazaar.
“You don’t want to miss Mrs Honeywell’s mince pies,” he informed Gabriel solemnly.
Gabriel—who would have gladly forgone a veritable feast to remain nestled in the warmth of the pub among his fellow men—kept diplomatically silent. He was a guest, after all.
And besides, he thought, with a strange, unwelcome thrill, perhaps his robin might be at the bazaar. She did seem the type to bake sweetmeats—though that assumption was based entirely on her smile, which had been sweet enough to merit the comparison.
This, however, led him to wonder just how strong Angus’s ales were; not only had the first made him forget how bad it tasted, but the second had him ascribing imaginary virtues to a girl he had seen for all of a moment.
Perhaps ale was the true reason no man left Plumpton unwed, he thought with amusement, as he followed his two friends from the pub up toward the village hall.
The hall was thronged when the men ventured inside. The air was thick with the mingled scent of spices and baked goods—all of it underpinned by that indefinable English perfume of damp wool and good intentions.
Gabriel paused near the entrance, surveying the chaos. The money raised, a sign read, was destined for the parish benevolent fund “for the unfortunate”—though judging by the merry crowd none of the unfortunate were present.
Gabriel quickly lost his two friends to the bustle and, left to his own devices, began to peruse the stalls.
Tables groaned beneath jars of preserves, knitted mufflers, and elaborately iced cakes.
He passed a “sampling table” of cider, already surrounded by men who looked suspiciously as though their charitable benevolence began and ended there.
His attention was finally caught by a stall displaying embroidered samplers, manned by a very pretty—if frighteningly earnest—young lady who introduced herself as Miss Morton.
The samplers, Gabriel realised with amusement, bore slogans of piety.
“Virtue is its Own Reward,” read one; “Idleness Breeds Mischief,” declared another.
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Gabriel read aloud, his tone dry as dust. He turned his gaze to Miss Morton, who blinked at him in alarm.
“I believe those in need of such advice are presently in the pub, mademoiselle.”
Miss Morton drew herself up, indignation bright in her eyes.
“Really, sir!” she blustered, before gathering her samplers and flouncing away in a rustle of petticoats.
A soft chuckle came from beside him. A well-dressed blonde lady smiled up at him, her eyes alight with amusement.
“Oh, we’ll keep you,” she said warmly.