Chapter 6 #2
“And again, I must ask why.”
Had he always been so stubborn? Lucy rolled her eyes. Yes, yes he had. “You’re dressed as Father Christmas. That’s reason enough.”
“I can take off the robes and such.” He even went so far to stand, stooped, as his fingers went to the hidden hooks at the front of his garb.
“No, no, these are the cards you’ve dealt for us all this morning, so you’ll play them until the end.
” Rather pleased with an analogy that he could understand, Lucy beamed.
“Now, tell your driver to go back and turn down that lane. There’s a sign by the roadside that says, ‘Home for Wayward Orphans and Unwanted Children’ and I mean to stop there. ”
He gawked at her, but he rapped on the roof, and when the coach slowed to a halt, Colin jumped out to confer with the driver.
Lucy winked at Ellen, who watched the scene with an expression of interest but said nothing.
When the viscount returned to the vehicle, somewhat wetter for the experience, he sat heavily on his bench. “Happy now? He said he’d do it.”
“Very.” Travel was so much more exhilarating when one didn’t need to focus on themselves or the past. “Also, after we do this one thing, I’d like for you to take an hour and answer each letter sent to you addressed to the man you pretend even now to be.”
He gasped and touched a hand to the greatcoat dumped upon the bench beside him. “How do you know about those?”
“Suffice it to say, both Ellen and I do know of them, and you must answer them for the sake of the children.” She exchanged an amused glance with his daughter.
“There are no return addresses, just the letters.” A whine had set up in Colin’s voice, and she gritted her teeth against it. But she had raised two children through such a phase, and she would prevail here.
“It’s not about the posting of such things, Colin,” she said in a soft voice. “It’s about doing something that doesn’t benefit you.” She frowned as she looked at him. “You used to love Christmas, and this is such a little thing.” When he said nothing, she lowered her voice. “Why are you so afraid?”
His eyes flashed blue fire and he crossed his arms over his chest, clearly closing himself off.
Lucy wasn’t having any of it. He’d sulked enough. “Then answer me this. What are you running from?”
“Please, Father, just talk to Lucy. Perhaps it would help you,” Ellen pleaded with clasped hands and eyes that implored. “She and I had a conversation yesterday that made me feel ever so much better.”
Colin sighed. “I’m not running. I’m keeping myself inside walls, perhaps.”
“Why?” It was the greatest insight from him she’d had, and the most truthful utterance.
His face was a confliction of emotions, the strongest of which was sadness.
And perhaps defiance. A muscle in his jaw worked before he spoke.
“Everyone leaves me: Mother, Jacob, my wife, my baby boy, you. Soon Grandmother will.” When connected his gaze with hers, raw anger and self-doubt roiled there.
“Did no one ever think to ask what I wanted from life before decisions were made that left me alone?”
“Some of us did,” she replied in a quiet voice as emotions and memories washed over her, escaped from behind the careful dam she’d built to hold them back. “You were selfish, wanted to live as you pleased regardless of the rest of us wished.”
He scoffed and fixed his focus to the window. “None of you accepted me as I was.”
“That wasn’t the man we knew you could be.” Her heart squeezed for the open wounds he still nursed. Perhaps they both did. “We wanted the best for you—of you—but until you could see it for yourself, we had to let you grow up, mature.”
“And lived your own lives.”
“We couldn’t wait forever. The number of days isn’t promised to any of us, Colin.
You should know that with the deaths you’ve encountered.
” She dared much and leaned across the aisle to touch a gloved hand to his knee.
He flinched as if she’d burned him. “The question now is, what will you do with the rest of your life?” She glanced at Ellen, who had tears glimmering in her eyes.
“And you are not alone. You have a beautiful, brilliant daughter who loves you fiercely. Start there.”
“I’ll help you find your Christmas joy again,” Ellen said in a voice that shook. “You do not need to struggle alone any longer. Haven’t we gotten closer in just the two days we’ve been traveling?”
“We have.” He looked at her and his eyes widened. Did he truly see her now for the first time? “You’re a marvel, Ellen.”
The girl grinned, and Lucy blinked back tears. “Well, I do have an extraordinary father.”
He chuckled. The rich sound filled the interior of the coach and set tingles dancing at the base of Lucy’s spine. Oh, how she’d missed that sound. “This is true. Perhaps you can help me write replies to those letters?”
A hint of a blush colored her cheeks. “I would adore that.”
When the coach slowly rolled around the circular drive in front of the children’s home, Lucy encouraged them all to disembark
At the door following Colin’s knock, he asked, “Why are we here?”
“You are going to play at being Father Christmas for the children here, if any would like to see you and talk,” she replied in a low voice. Beside her, Ellen fairly hopped in place.
“Oh, how fun!”
“How not.” He vehemently shook his head. “I refuse.”
“I think you will do it,” Lucy replied with a smile. She didn’t even mind the steady drum of rain upon the hood of her cloak or the chilly December air made even more cold by the damp. “Any man who slinks out of an inn due to an indiscretion dressed like that deserves to do this.”
He glowered but further conversation was cut short when the door swung open and a gray-haired woman with a dour expression stared at them.
“May I help you?” She looked over each of them in turn and then turned up her snub nose. “It is early yet to conduct visiting hours and we don’t have adoption appointments scheduled today.”
“We are not here for adoption proceedings,” Lucy began with a smile.
“We are here, in fact, to have any children who wish it talk with Father Christmas.” She gestured to Colin who fairly seethed beside her.
“If you agree, I’m quite certain Viscount Hartsford—the man who generously decided on this gambit—will make a sizeable donation to your organization. ”
Ha! That would teach him to involve her and Ellen in a scheme.
Colin grumbled but said nothing.
“I think we can arrange something,” the woman said and stood back for them to enter.
“I am the headmistress here, and currently we have twelve children of varying ages. At present, you can wait in the parlor while I rouse them. I’ll order tea brought ‘round. It’s the least I can do, and you look cold. ”
After being shown into a shabby parlor that had probably once been the height of fashion, Lucy and Ellen sat side by side on a faded olive-green settee while Colin held court in a worn leather wingback chair facing them with a meager fire nearby.
A half hour later, tea service and the first two children arrived.
While Lucy busied herself with the refreshments, she furtively watched Colin’s interaction with the two boys—not more than eight.
They each came close to him, awe shining in their eyes, then when Colin asked them about themselves, the words came out in a childlike rush, both boys babbling as if they’d never had the chance before.
Maybe they hadn’t.
When the sweet desires of their hearts came forth and they stared up into Colin’s face with wide, dark eyes, and they only wished for happiness and perhaps a stick of candy, Lucy’s heart lurched. She clutched her teacup tightly while Ellen did the same, her attention riveted to her father.
Over and over children slipped into the parlor in pairs, leaving when the first two vacated the space.
Their requests and stories were much like the original boys.
Some wished for a home to live in, some wished for a puppy to befriend, most asked for new shoes or socks or pretty hair ribbons.
None of them made overly selfish requests, and each one brought tears into Ellen’s eyes and a lump into Lucy’s throat.
Throughout it all, Colin listened, his head bent near to each child, an arm wrapped about their slim shoulders.
He didn’t say much, and he promised very little of course, but he let them talk, and perhaps that was the best gift to both parties.
With each new child, he visibly thawed until his own eyes were suspiciously shining.
Once he’d spoken with all of them and he was given a now-tepid cup of tea, Colin kept his own counsel until the headmistress joined them.
Then, he hastily rested his teacup on the low table and he launched to his feet.
“I want you to know the morning has been well spent,” he said in a graveled voice.
He delved a hand beneath his robes and into a pocket, she assumed, and then he withdrew a small leather pouch that jangled with coin.
“Please make certain every child receives socks and mufflers for Christmas. And a stick of candy apiece.” He handed the woman the pouch and she wrapped her bony fingers around it.
“This is… quite unexpected,” she whispered, weighing the pouch in her palm, her eyes shrewd as she no doubt totaled up expenses against the funds.
“It is Christmas, good woman. That is all.” Then he threw off the robe, yanked off the beard, false hair and cap, and then thrust them into her arms. “For next year, and make sure the fellow who does it is better suited than me.” He bent his head close to the older woman’s.
“When I return to my home in London, I will send a check with more funding. You all deserve that.” He winked, and Lucy gawked.
“Perhaps I’ll be the patron of this establishment. ”
The headmistress nodded. “I would enjoy that, my lord,” she gasped out, her fingers grasping his offerings. “We rarely find notice here, and never at Christmastime.”
Not long afterward, they departed the children’s home and Ellen was handed into the coach.
Colin halted Lucy before she could climb inside. He laid a hand on her arm, his body entirely too close, his gaze boring into hers, the heat of him seeping into her. “Thank you.” His voice was low and rumbling with the old thrill she used to know.
She gasped in shock as she gazed up at him. The five-inch difference in their height hadn’t changed in the intervening years. “I beg your pardon?” Never had he said those words to her in all of their history.
A faint blush of color rushed up his neck. “Just what I said. Thank you. I needed to see this, those children, their situation. I makes me remember how grateful I am, for the life I lead.”
“Oh.” She dropped her gaze as cold disappointment pooled in her belly. “That wasn’t the point of this exercise. You were supposed to give of yourself, write those letters…” But he had with the coin and his time and offering to do more for the children’s home.
He winked, and his eyes twinkled with a knowing gleam. “The first steps are the smallest.” Then, he dropped a fleeting kiss to her cheek, and while she stared mutely at him, he handed her into the coach. “Ellen and I will work at our letters on the road, if you were wondering.”
Lucy’s cheeks blazed. Her entire body heated. Thank goodness Ellen had engaged her father in conversation as soon as he entered the vehicle. With his actions, she’d seen a trace of the man she’d used to know. She glanced at him, taken aback by his easy grin as he chatted with his daughter.
It changed nothing. He had his life. So did she, but perhaps he might live his better now. She wished for nothing else.
Didn’t she?