Chapter 2
The next morning, Joshua woke before the rest of the household.
It was a habit too firmly ingrained by years of military discipline to be easily shaken—and truthfully, it was a welcome moment of solitude before the day’s noise began.
The fire in his chamber had burned low, but a faint glow of embers gave enough warmth for him to dress without haste.
He washed in cold water, shrugged into his coat, and made his way downstairs.
The house was quiet but for the faint creak of timbers and the distant clatter of the kitchen.
Halfway down the main staircase, a warm, rich fragrance reached him—spices, sugar, and butter: the unmistakable scent of Christmas baking.
He slowed his step, drinking it in. How many times had he woken to just such a scent in this house as a boy?
In those days, the thought of currant buns fresh from the oven or mince pies cooling on wire racks had been enough to lure him into the kitchen before the cook was ready for visitors. Some things, it seemed, did not change.
The baize door to the kitchen passage was ajar.
Joshua stepped through, and the warmth hit him in a wave.
The great kitchen hearth roared with heat as copper pots hung gleaming from their hooks and every surface seemed laden with some stage of preparation—trays of ginger cake cut into slices; ribbons of pastry laid out for tarts; great bowls of dried fruit waiting to be stirred into the plum puddings.
And there, at the far table, stood Merry.
Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow over a dark blue wool gown, and a plain white apron was tied neatly at her waist. A wisp of auburn hair had escaped its pins to curl against her cheek, and she was bent over a hamper, arranging jars and parcels in orderly layers.
Joshua paused in the doorway. For a moment, the image was so domestic—so utterly unlike the self-assured young lady sparring with him at last night’s dinner—that he found himself oddly reluctant to break it.
She glanced up and caught him hesitating. “You are abroad early, Captain. I thought soldiers relished the chance to lie abed when not on campaign.”
“Some of us are past saving,” he replied, stepping into the room. “Though I might have stayed abed if I had known the scent of your baking would reach even the top floor. What treacherous inducement is this?”
“My baking?” She laughed, shaking her head. “I am merely conscripted to help pack the Christmas hampers. The cook and kitchen maids have done all the clever work. I am the common labour.”
Joshua came closer, glancing at the contents of the nearest basket. “Common? That looks to me like the work of a quartermaster—everything fitted to the inch. Bread, cheese, jars of jam, apples…and is that a joint of beef beneath the cloth?”
“It is. One for each of our tenants, along with candles, dried beans, and some sweetmeats for the children. The Roxtons and Fieldings have been doing this together since before I was born.”
“I remember.” He smiled faintly. “When we were children, I always tried to arrange it so I would be the one to hand over the ginger cake, thinking it would earn me extra thanks.”
“And did it?”
“Only from the ones under ten. Their parents generally thanked my mother.”
The door swung open, admitting Mrs. Fielding and Mrs. Roxton, both wrapped in shawls despite the kitchen’s heat.
“There you are, Joshua,” his mother said with satisfaction, as though she had been hoping to find him here. “Merry has nearly finished packing the last of the hampers. We thought you might be the one to drive her about to deliver them.”
Joshua glanced at Merry, whose expression was carefully neutral. “Is that so?”
“It will save the grooms the trouble,” Mrs. Roxton added, entirely too innocently. “And you know the tenants—they will be glad to see you both.”
He might have objected—but two pairs of maternal eyes were fixed upon him in expectation, and he had faced down less daunting odds in battle. “Very well,” he said, with a slight bow. “If Miss Roxton feels able to endure my company for the morning.”
Merry gave a little curtsy, her tone perfectly polite. “If Captain Fielding is certain the task will not prove too dull after his…adventures.”
He smiled knowingly, enjoying her verbal sparring, despite them both knowing full well their mothers were throwing them together for a purpose.
They finished packing the last two hampers together, side by side at the table. Joshua found it impossible not to notice the faint scent of lavender water clinging to her despite the kitchen aromas.
By the time they carried the baskets out to the courtyard, the pale winter sun had risen over the frosted hedgerows. A light dusting of snow had fallen in the night, just enough to whiten the gravel. The family’s cart was waiting, harnessed to a sturdy bay cob, his breath steaming in the air.
Two of Joshua’s nephews came pelting out as they were loading the baskets. “Uncle Joshua, may we come?” cried Roger, his cheeks scarlet from the cold.
“Not today,” Joshua said, lifting him onto the cart’s step so he could peer in at the hampers. “You would eat half the sweetmeats before they reached the tenants.”
“I would not!” Roger protested hotly—then spoiled the effect by snatching a candied plum from the top of one parcel and popping it in his mouth.
Merry laughed, ruffling the boy’s hair. “We will bring you back something from Mrs. Hobson’s kitchen if you let us go in peace.”
That promise was enough to send both boys racing back into the house, calling for plum cake.
They set out at a steady trot, the wheels crunching softly over the snowy lane.
The air was sharp and bright, the fields on either side lying in winter sleep beneath a silver veil of frost. Joshua took the reins easily—it was the first time in years he had driven along these roads, yet every turn was as familiar as the lines on his own palm.
At the first cottage, a white-haired woman opened the door even before they knocked. “Well, if it is not Miss Merry and young Master Joshua!” she exclaimed, beaming. “Come in, come in, you will freeze out there.”
They left her with the hamper and a promise of carols on Christmas Eve.
At the second, they were mobbed by three children in patched coats who all wanted to carry something in.
Merry crouched to their level, producing a packet of sugar biscuits tied in red ribbon.
“One each, mind you,” she said, in the tone of someone well-accustomed to enforcing fairness.
At the third cottage, a thin man with a cough accepted the hamper with quiet gratitude.
Joshua remembered his face—he had been a younger man when Joshua had last seen him, hale and broad-shouldered.
Time and hardship had pared him down. Joshua pressed a crown into his hand, murmuring something about it being from the King’s army, and the man’s eyes brightened.
By the time they had made their way along the outer lane and back toward the village, Merry’s cheeks were pink from the cold and her breath clouded in the air. Yet she had not once complained, and her cheer seemed to warm each doorstep they visited.
“You are good at this,” Joshua said as they turned toward the High Street.
“At what?”
“Making people feel they matter. You know every name, and half their stories.”
“It is hardly difficult when you have lived here all your life,” she said lightly. “Besides, people do matter. And at Christmas most of all.”
He glanced at her, but she was looking ahead, her profile calm in the winter light.
“Indeed.”
Merry had awoken with the particular cheer which belonged to Christmas week and to work that promised usefulness.
Long before most of the house had stirred, she had slipped from her room, coaxed her hair into something like order, and gone down to the kitchen, there to marshal jars, parcels, and papered packets into neat tiers within wicker hampers.
She liked the arithmetic of it: two loaves, a cut of beef, a round of cheese, a pot of jam, candles, beans, and a bundle of comfits tied up with red ribbon for small hands.
It pleased her to think of those hands untying the bow.
When Captain Fielding appeared at the kitchen door—fair from the cold, fair in himself, and all the more striking for the plainness of his coat—she had schooled her countenance to composure.
If her heart had executed a small and ridiculous leap, no one need suspect it.
He had that soldier’s way of taking in a room at once, and then fastening upon the work to be done as if it were no matter.
She was not sorry his mother and hers had contrived that they should deliver the hampers together—she was only sorry for his choosing last evening to imply he might extract her from a danger that did not exist.
The morning had been brisk and busy. At each cottage Joshua had lifted the heavier parcels without flourish, and with a gravity which made thanks easier to offer.
He remembered people, too. Not merely faces, but histories: a cow gone barren the year of the bad hay…
a son taken to sea…a girl now out at service in Stow. It was unaccountably soothing.
By the time they turned in to the High Street, the sun was a pale coin above the church tower, and the little world of the village was awake.
Smoke rose in steady columns, shopkeepers swept their thresholds, and a boy led a stubborn pig past the green with the seriousness of a general before a siege.
As they passed the baker’s door, warm clouds of spice and yeast wafted to their appreciative noses.
The milliner’s windows bewitched with velvet and feathers for last-minute Christmas gifts.
Children skated their boots upon the clear patches of ice as if the lane were a ballroom polished for their capers. Merry loved it all.