Chapter 13 #2
They’re launching into a slurred version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen when Mother spots me and separates from the group.
“Hello there, darlings,” she says, kissing both my cheeks before turning to greet Emily, her antennae bobbing. When she’s done, she squeezes both our arms as she begs, “Please, be careful tonight. No bets with Grandmother this year. I’d love some sane holiday photos of the family next Christmas.”
“I’ll do my best, Mother.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “But you know how she is. She always makes a bet sound so sensible at the time.”
“And you all always lose!” Grandmother calls from the next room, proving her hearing is as keen as ever. “Show Emily the tree, Oliver. Let’s see if she’s as lucky as you are.”
“What?” Emily asks.
I start toward the sitting room. “You’ll see. Come on, then, and we’ll fetch a cup of punch while we’re at it.”
Emily grins, still cuddling Nuggy as we move into the sitting room. There, two Christmas trees sparkle on opposite ends of the makeshift dancefloor, where couples are swaying under a disco ball to the drunken carols drifting in from the next room.
“This is incredible,” she whispers, taking in the festive madness. “It’s like Downton Abbey had a baby with Studio 54.”
“That’s…disturbingly accurate.” I guide her to the far corner, where Grandmother’s primary tree stretches toward the ceiling. Every branch groans beneath the weight of decorations accumulated over multiple generations.
Nudging Sir Reginald away from the base, where he’s trying to eat the red tree skirt, I clear the way for Em to step closer.
“Wow, what a beauty.” Her jaw drops as she gazes up.
With a sleepy-looking puppy tucked against her chest and the fire casting her in a golden glow, she looks like she stepped out of a Victorian Christmas card.
I want to tell her that she’s beautiful, but there would be no excuse for that.
There’s no one close enough to hear the “performance,” and I have yet to suck down a single cup of punch.
So, instead, I clear my throat and motion toward the branches. “All right, are you prepared to find a pickle?”
Her brows shoot up. “Excuse me?” Beneath her breath, she adds, “I’m not that kind of girl, Mr. Featherswallow.”
“That’s not what I heard, Ms. Darling,” I shoot back, because I can’t resist an excuse to flirt with her.
“But I wasn’t talking about that pickle.
I was talking about the pickle ornaments on the tree.
When you’re ready to start looking, I’ll time you.
Ten seconds to find as many pickles as you can.
Two or more, and you’ll have good luck secured for the new year. ”
Proving she loves a challenge, her eyes light up. “All right. Give me a countdown.”
I lift my arm, arching a theatrical brow as I murmur, “In three, two, one, and go!”
Emily jerks her focus back to the tree, zeroing in on a tiny pickle with a glittering halo almost immediately.
She follows her initial success by pointing out two relatively normal pickles, then a pickle in a diaper, and a pickle Santa with a giant sack of toys, proving she has excellent pickle-detecting radar.
“Time!” I shout, pretending to be scandalized as I announce, “You beat my record by two. What dark magic is this?”
She shrugs. “No magic. Just an excellent eye for detail, sir.”
“And excellent luck guaranteed for the year,” I agree, stepping over to the punch station to pour us each a glass. “Or so Featherswallow family lore would have you believe.”
“I like Featherswallow family lore, so far,” she says, shifting Nuggy to one arm as she accepts the drink.
She glances around the room again with a stunned shake of her head.
“I can’t believe places like this really exist. I mean, I know they do, I’ve toured lots of historic homes, but…
” She sips her punch. “I don’t know, I guess I never imagined how modern life would play out for people who still live in places like this. ”
“Would you like the tour?” I ask, nodding toward the far door.
“Fair warning, it includes a lot of dead people in frames, an offensive number of knick-knacks, and at least one allegedly haunted chandelier. Grandmother’s had the electric people out to look at it five times, but they swear there’s nothing wrong, and it only misbehaves when Edward’s around.
I think it’s because he looks like my great-great-grandfather, who was apparently a bit of an arse. ”
“Knick-knacks and ghosts? Sounds like a good time to me.” She glances down at Nuggy, who’s fallen asleep against her chest. “Should I lay her down somewhere?”
“Not unless your arms are tired,” I say. “She seems quite happy.”
“They’re not. And I’m quite happy, too,” Emily says, holding my gaze for a beat. “Thank you so much for trusting me with your family.”
“Of course, Darling,” I say, voice gruffer than before. “You’re a delight. My family is lucky to have you here to calm the corgi hordes and keep me out of trouble.”
She arches a brow. “Oh, I don’t know about that. We seem to have a knack for trouble.”
“True.” I loop my arm around her shoulders. “But at least there aren’t any paparazzi here to take pictures this time.”
“No, just your grandmother,” she teases.
We slip away from the hubbub of the front rooms, and I guide her through one of the homes that shaped me. The Featherswallow country estate, with its grand history and faded furnishings, is my personal favorite, but I have so many fond memories of “The Little House,” as Grandmother calls it.
Of course, it’s anything but “little,” only little by comparison to the Plimpton manor home in Cornwall, and fifteen minutes later, we’re just getting to the back of the first floor.
“This is where I got drunk on Edward’s eighteenth birthday,” I say as we move through the warmly lit library.
“I was only thirteen and terribly jealous of the big boys having their first pints.” I motion toward the window seat.
“Then I was terribly sick over there, and Grandmother was terribly mad. But she didn’t tell my parents, for which I was grateful.
She just made me clean it all up and go for a long, vigorous walk with her the next morning while I was hideously hungover.
” I shudder at the memory. “Scared me away from alcohol for years.”
“Wise woman,” Emily murmurs, pulling in a deep breath. “It smells so good in here. I love the smell of old books.”
“Me, too, but I love the smell in the next room even more.” I lead the way around the corner, down a short hall, and into the glassed room where I played dinosaur hunter as a child, prowling my prey through the flowers and ferns.
The solarium unfolds before us, dark beneath the winter night sky. But even in December, it’s warm and muggy, humid with the breath of hundreds of plants. Orchids climb the walls. Palms brush the ceiling, and roses perfume the air with memories of summer.
“Oh, wow,” Emily breathes. “This is…”
“Mad? Excessive? A violation of heating efficiency standards?”
“Fantastic,” she finishes firmly. “It’s like stepping through the wardrobe into another world.”
She wanders deeper into the urban jungle, still carrying Nuggy like a spoiled baby. She stops next to a particularly large fern, studying its sprawling fronds in the moonlight. “I don’t pretend to know a lot about plants, but this looks old.”
“It is,” I say, doing my best to ignore the fact that she’s stopped beneath one of the many sprigs of mistletoe Grandmother has hung around the house every year.
Mistletoe isn’t reason enough to break the rules…
Is it?
“That fern was planted by my Great-Great something Aunt Cordelia,” I say. “It’s over two hundred years old.”
Emily turns to me, her eyes huge. “No way.”
I lean against the potting bench on the wall.
“Yes, way. Cordelia had quite the green thumb. She was also beautiful, brilliant, and an exemplary horsewoman. Half of London was in love with her, and it was assumed she’d make a spectacular marriage.
” I lower my voice dramatically, “Before it all came crashing down.”
“Oh no,” Em says in an equally dramatic tone. “What befell the poor woman!?”
“Her reputation was ruined by a lecherous earl with wicked intentions.”
“Oh no, not a lecherous earl with wicked intentions!”
“We joke, but it really was quite awful. Apparently, in early summer, 1814, at the first ball of the season, Cordelia shared a kiss with the Earl of Swythemore. They were out in his rose garden, alone, safe from detection…or so they must have thought.” I step closer as I whisper, “But by morning, the gossip was everywhere. Someone had seen them in each other’s arms. The news spread through the Ton like wildfire.
Within days, it had become a massive scandal, and Cordelia was on the verge of ruin.
The only way to salvage her reputation was for the Earl to propose marriage. ”
Emily’s eyes narrow. “Come on, Earl, don’t drop the ball.”
“Oh, he dropped the ball. Dropped it big time,” I confirm. “He claimed she’d thrown herself at him, hoping to trap him into matrimony, and he was simply an innocent victim of her feminine scheming. Classic ‘he said, she said,’ but that was all it took to ruin a woman in 1814.”
“It’s about all it takes now,” Emily says with a roll of her eyes. “But at least we can work to earn a living these days.”
“Indeed,” I agree, “Thankfully, Cordelia’s father was a good egg.
He didn’t force her to marry one of the less appealing fellows she would have been able to land in her disgraced state.
He allowed her to live here, with him, and arranged for her big brother to take care of her after he passed.
She spent her entire life behind these walls, rarely leaving the house after her disgrace.
But it wasn’t all bad.” I glance around us.
“This was her haven. She became a skilled botanist. Created some beautiful hybrid roses and a strain of wheat that was resistant to mold.”
Emily sighs as she sets her sleeping charge down on the potting bench. Nuggy snuffles before sprawling into a full sploot and continuing to catch up on her beauty sleep. “Well, that’s good, but… Damn, being a woman has been pretty shitty for most of recorded history.”
I nod. “It has. The patriarchy’s a beastly business.
Especially here, and especially in the 1800s.
I like to think I would have been a decent sort, but noble men really could get away with murder back then, so…
” I exhale a soft laugh. “I probably would have been a terrible rake who gambled the family money away at my club and ravaged innocent young ladies in gardens.”
She cocks her head, her brow furrowing. “No, I don’t think so.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “No. You’re a good one, Oliver Featherswallow. A very good one, actually, even though you came off a tiny bit twatty at first.”
“Your British slang is coming along nicely,” I say. “But that should be ‘a bit of a twat’, not ‘a bit twatty.’ Please try to remember that in the future.”
“Got it. I’ll keep that in mind.” She smiles, soft and unguarded, a smile that feels like it’s just for me.
And suddenly I can’t keep my guilty conscience to myself.
“I’m not always good,” I admit in a huskier voice. “I’ve been thinking impure thoughts about you nearly every hour of every day. And I’m seriously tempted to use that mistletoe above your head as an excuse to ravage you in the solarium.”
Her eyes fly up, landing on the pearl berries hung between two palm fronds.
When her gaze returns to mine, her pupils are wide, dark.
Determined.
“Well, if you need an excuse,” she whispers.
She doesn’t have to ask me twice.
One moment, we’re frozen in the dark, a sleeping puppy snoring on the potting bench between us.
The next, she’s in my arms.