Chapter 3
Chapter Three
THE HONORABLE OLIVER DAVID DAWSON FEATHERSWALLOW
A man looking for his missing
Christmas spirit and, sadly, not finding
it at the bottom of a whiskey glass…
The evening started predictably enough…
Mother sends her third text about tomorrow’s charity luncheon—Please confirm for tomorrow at your earliest convenience, darling.
Edward’s receiving the service medal. Your presence is required, Oliver.
Not suggested. REQUIRED. And they’ll have Christmas pudding.
You love a Christmas pudding—which I ignore while nursing my second Macallan at my usual table.
I needed a night away from it all, and The Crown and Thistle is the perfect place.
It’s quiet, charmingly dilapidated, and far enough from Mayfair that I’m simply “that odd bloke who brings a novel to the pub,” not “the Featherswallow spare.” The regulars are a mixture of geezers who worked at the textile mill before it closed and young professionals raising families in the outrageously expensive flats that now fill the former factories.
Both are too well-bred, too drunk, or both to acknowledge that they know exactly who I am.
And my favorite bartender, Reggie, has perfected the art of shooing away the random tourist who’s wandered too far from the city center and starts pestering him about the Viscount in the corner.
I’m not the Viscount, of course.
I’m The Honorable Oliver David Dawson Featherswallow, a title befitting a secondborn son. My older brother, Edward, is the Viscount.
He has been since last Christmas, when our father passed away…
I take another slow sip of my whisky, gaze drifting to the holiday lights strung along the stage, where a group of local children are slogging their way through a nativity play rehearsal, overseen by Belinda Moore, supermom, small business boss, and florist to the London elite.
The perky piano player in the far corner transitions smoothly from one Christmas classic to another with a skill that would usually warm my cockles.
I’ve always adored the holidays.
Just like my father.
We were the ones who set out at dawn on the first of December each year, tromping through the woods around our country estate until we found the perfect fir for the drawing room.
As a boy, I’d watch father chop down our tree and “help” carry it home by riding on his shoulders while he pulled the cart.
In later years, our roles reversed. Father would watch, sipping hot tea from a thermos, regaling me with tales of how much he loved hunting these woods with his father as a boy, while I took my turn with the axe.
He was ten years older than my mother, seventy at the time he passed, and enjoyed a merry, meaningful life. He adored his wife, his children, his work, and his hunting dogs, and passed peacefully in his sleep the day after his last happy Christmas.
The people who loved him couldn’t have asked for a better end for the sweet man who glued our quirky, sardonic, often feelings-averse family together.
I miss him like a vital organ, and strongly suspect Christmas will never be half so happy without him.
Still…
My father wouldn’t want me to cringe at the sound of children’s voices lifted in holiday song. He also wouldn’t want me to keep my mother in suspense, even if I have already confirmed my attendance at the luncheon.
Twice.
Fetching my cell from my vest pocket, I tap out a quick text to the Dowager Viscountess Vivian Marie Featherswallow, a well-meaning woman who can’t resist the urge to manage her grown children—Of course, I’ll be there, Mother.
Promptly at noon. Wouldn’t miss it. I will, however, be demanding half your pudding as tribute.
The pine scent they pipe through the halls at Spencer House makes me hungry.
A moment later, Mother types back—Not a problem at all, dear.
You know I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.
See you, then, and please shave immediately before you come.
You look a bit villainous when the whiskers start to grow in, and we wouldn’t want you to frighten the ladies.
There will be so many nice young people in attendance.
Including that lovely Kelly Campbell you went with at Oxford.
What a handsome young woman she is, Oliver.
And so accomplished. I heard she’s a partner now at Frederick and Swan.
I sigh, beginning to rethink the wisdom of texting Mother after five p.m.
She tends to be in a matchmaking mood after dinner. And now that she has Edward happily married off, I’m the sole focus of her efforts to ensure her sons are prepared to continue the family line and fulfill our duty to God and country.
I’m sure, once Edward and Matilda produce an heir, she’ll ease up a bit, but until then…
Well, until then, thanks to a string of abdications and a tragic mountain climbing accident, I am still fifth in line to the throne behind my brother’s fourth. Far enough away that becoming “King Oliver” is about as likely as Swallow House sinking into the sea, but not impossible.
After all, our country estate in East Sussex isn’t far from the shore, and ocean levels rise every year…
With a gentle roll of my eyes, I assure her—Yes, I will be freshly shorn. But I will not be asking for Kelly’s hand in marriage as she’s currently dating Hannah, her old rowing teammate, and is no longer interested in men.
Mother sends back a thumbs up emoji, and—How lovely for her. There are so few men like your father on the market these days. Young women have to find happiness where they can.
I’m briefly tempted to explain that some women simply prefer women—whether a “man like my father” is available or not—but decide it’s best to quit while I’m ahead.
Mother’s actually open-minded for a woman of her age and upbringing, and any text thread that ends without her setting me up on another awkward date is a good one in my book.
I’ve just tucked my phone away and reached for my copy of Great Expectations—a favorite holiday reread—when the children launch into an especially ear-shredding version of Silent Night.
I love a holiday carol, but good God…someone should have told the tone-deaf shepherds in back to lip sync and tiny Mother Mary to keep her volume to a more respectable level.
Fighting a wince, I scan the assembled parents, but they don’t seem to care that their progeny won’t be winning any talent awards.
They actually look chuffed to be here. Tired, but chuffed, which seems to be the norm for modern parents.
Most of my friends with children are perpetually exhausted, even with night nannies and maids who come in several times a week to take care of the washing and housework.
I can’t imagine how an average family without the funds to hire help manages it all.
And due to the circumstances of my birth, I will never have to find out.
Should I find my perfect match and start a family someday, the way Father assured me I would, I’ll be able to afford all the nannies and diaper services London can provide.
Not only do I receive a healthy income from our family holdings, but I’m also the owner of a successful architecture firm, specializing in sustainable housing solutions.
It’s how I found The Crown and Thistle.
Those unreasonably expensive lofts that now fill the old textile factories? My design and the project that launched my firm to national acclaim eight years ago.
All in all, I am a very lucky man.
Very, very lucky.
But this holiday season still feels painfully dreary, no matter how many lights I string on my tree.
My thoughts are turning back to the morbid, back to my father’s hand cold in mine, and last January, the most miserable month of my life thus far, when it happens…
Suddenly, the door at the back of the stage flies open, and a woman catapults into the pub like she’s been shot out of a circus cannon.
In a blur of red curls and flying luggage, she barrels into the nativity scene. Her wheeled bag catches on a wiseman’s cane, sending the poor boy sprawling, and her oversized purse swings wide, taking down a shepherd on her way to center stage. There she trips over her own feet and takes a tumble…
Directly into the manger.
The baby Jesus, a Belinda Moore floral masterpiece, I was just thinking looked silly surrounded by children with leaking noses dressed in sheets, explodes on impact.
Petals burst upward like glitter in a snow globe, wire springs leaping in every direction as the woman lands flat on her back in the hay.
Slowly, the floral rain settles atop her, making the poor thing look like she’s been attacked by a wedding bouquet.
Her hair—that profusion of red—fans out around her like a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
She seems to have broken a shoe, and her skirt has twisted up to reveal ripped tights and the start of an ugly bruise.
For a moment, everything freezes.
The audience stares.
The wise men and shepherds gape.
Even the stuffed cow looks vaguely offended.
Then the child playing Mary starts giggling maniacally while shouting “bloody hell,” Joseph makes a break for the loo, and Belinda—poor, perfectionist Belinda who did the flowers for Edward’s engagement party and still hasn’t forgiven me for being forty minutes late—looks ready to commit justifiable homicide.
Red scrambles to her feet, babbling apologies in an accent that I peg as Manhattan by way of New Jersey.
I recently finished staffing my New York office, and that clipped, “no time for niceties” cadence is still fresh in my memory.
A scan of her wrinkled clothing reveals an ink stain, brown patches on the pale gray wool, and stray tufts of cotton, possibly from a wise man’s beard.
All in all, she looks like she’s been through a war.
One she lost.