Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
James cursed when he got the letter on Christmas Eve.
He was in Middlewich. He had longed to stay in London and wait for Catherine’s return, but he had promised his mother to come home at Christmastide, so he had made the journey. He might take some comfort in his sisters’ company, anyway.
James had not seen his friend Thomas in London for well over a month, but he did not expect a letter from him.
They were not men who wrote letters to each other.
The letter forwarded from London and arriving in Middlewich on Christmas Eve was, therefore, a surprise.
Thomas had written the missive weeks ago, and it had likely gotten delayed somewhere between Sommerleigh and London and then also en route to Middlewich.
The letter was a greeting and an invitation.
Thomas’ wife’s stepmother and sister were coming for Christmas, and Thomas would be drowning in women, and would James like to join the festivities and rescue Thomas since it was well-nigh impossible to drag his wife Harry from her mathematics and all the entertaining of the Lovelock ladies would fall on Thomas’ shoulders?
With his numerous sisters, James must surely know how to amuse genteel females?
Thomas felt he himself would be hard-pressed to come up with suitable topics of conversation.
James fidgeted through the midnight church services and the services on Christmas day itself.
He helped his sisters decorate an indoor tree in honor of Queen Charlotte who had died in November.
She was the one who had brought the custom from the continent, still rarely practiced in England, of a decorated tree on Christmas.
On Christmas night, he kissed his sisters and said goodbye to his father and mother.
“Where are you going?” his father asked.
“To see Thomas. The Earl Drake.”
“The old Earl Drake was a good man. His son, your friend?” The duke made a grimace of disapproval.
“A wastrel, like you. A rakehell. How he could live and my William be taken from us, I will never know. But I have heard the young earl has married recently. A common chit of some kind who is very rich.”
“The Countess Drake’s father could have bought a dozen knighthoods, if he had wished to,” James said evenly.
His father harrumphed. “It’s good he did not. It sounds like he knew his place, at least.” The duke leaned forward and spoke sotto voce. “And I hear her mother was a whore.”
James slouched and let his eyelids droop and gave a lazy smile. “The Lady Drake’s mother was, I believe, the daughter of a tailor. Her stepmother was an actress before she married the countess’ father.”
“Like I said,” his father yawned, “a whore.”
James gave instructions to Enfield to enjoy his time with his wife in Middlewich and to return to London with James’ luggage after the new year.
No, he was off to see Thomas. No, they did not stand on ceremony at Sommerleigh, he could get by with very few clothes, just a saddle bag.
Thomas’ man Jackson would be willing to shave him, and, no, James did not want a valet, and he especially did not want the redoubtable Mrs. Enfield angry at him for stealing her husband away early after they had been so many months in London.
And, in truth, James did not want a chaperone. Even one as understanding as Enfield.
At dawn, he saddled a horse. He could be at Sommerleigh by noon.
He left his horse in the stall next to Thomas’ stallion Octavius. Two grooms quickly had his mount’s saddle off and were currying and watering the horse. Even when he had been faced with financial ruin, Thomas always had the best horsemen in the county in his employ.
James stopped for a moment while still inside the stables and tried, in vain, to use his fingers to arrange his hair. Finally, he gave up. Besides, maybe Catherine liked his hair disarrayed? She had put her hands in it so many times that night at the inn in Duddenhoe End.
As he crossed the stable yard, he heard voices. Women’s voices. Catherine’s voice. He rounded the corner and saw Catherine walking down the drive towards the house. There were two other women with her and his friend Thomas, but all he really saw was Catherine.
“Jamie!” Thomas called out and strode to him and clasped him in a hug. “I got no message you were coming. Happy Christmas!”
“I was at the castle when I received your invitation quite late on Christmas Eve. Yes, happy Christmas, Tom.”
The three women had reached them at this point. Harriet, tall and thin with wild tendrils of brown hair, looking rather fierce but a good deal healthier than when James had last seen her, at her wedding. Some color in her cheeks, some more flesh on her still-spare form.
Arabella, a younger version of Catherine, small and rosy and blonde and smiling.
And Catherine. Kate.
James bowed. “Lady Drake. Mrs. Lovelock. Miss Lovelock. Happy Christmas to you all.”
He had met all three of them last spring. No one would think it odd he remembered their names.
He tried very hard not to let his gaze linger on Catherine, but it was extremely difficult. She was beautiful, her cheeks pink, a blue bonnet covering her hair. The blue matched her eyes. She held holly in her gloved hands.
“I see you have been gathering greenery.”
She met his eyes and smiled. “Yes, Lord Daventry. We have been having what Harry calls a good tramp. The grounds are extraordinary. I think I have never seen a place as pretty as Sommerleigh.”
Thomas laughed. “It’s plain you have never been to Middlewich then and seen the castle and the gardens there. Someday, when the old Duke Crosspatch is away in London, we’ll have Jamie take us up to the castle and show us all around.”
Arabella’s eyes shone. “Oh, yes, please. That would be lovely.”
Harriet—no, she was Harry—tugged at Thomas’ sleeve. “Luncheon.”
“Oh, yes, my wife is hungry,” Thomas said. “Come, let’s all go in before hunger leads to a fit of temper.”
Catherine laughed and started walking towards the house. “I find it hard to believe Harry is hungry. Lord Drake, if you only knew the trouble I always had in getting her to leave her mathematics and come to eat.” Her voice trembled a bit, but James thought it likely he was the only one who noticed.
Thomas thumped his chest. “Country air and long walks, there’s nothing for it!”
As they approached the front door of the house, James lingered outside, and after Arabella, Harry, and Thomas entered, he said to Catherine under his breath, “Why did you run away, Kate?”
“Please.” She turned to him, her eyes beseeching. “Not now. Let me be happy now.”
“I only—” he started, but she had gone into the house. He finished alone, “—want your happiness.”
But, during luncheon, he admitted to himself he wanted his own happiness, too.
More than anything, he wanted to be near Catherine.
Catherine herself was gay at the dining table, suggesting a game of hoodman blind this afternoon to keep their blood coursing.
He seconded the notion, knowing he would have agreed to anything she said, but the rest of the group was not enthusiastic.
Harry gazed at the ceiling and said she had something upstairs she must take a quick peek at.
Something with a proof she was writing. Thomas said he was tired and wanted to sit in the library with James.
Arabella said she wanted to read her novel the Dalrymples had given her for Christmas, Rob Roy by Mr. Walter Scott, did Lord Daventry know it, it was most dreadfully exciting, and she loved everything Scottish, didn’t he?
Catherine laughed and said she was defeated and she would read, as well.
But tonight they would play Snapdragon and no one would tell her no.
James ate steadily, realizing he had not really eaten anything since receiving Thomas’ letter on Christmas Eve. He needed his strength. He had eleven days in the same house with Catherine. Eleven days to win her. Eleven days to woo her.
In the library, Thomas poured them each a small whisky.
“To your marriage, Tom.”
“Yes, thank you. To my marriage and to Sommerleigh.” They drank.
James looked around the library. “You know I haven’t been here since I told you to marry for money.”
“Yes, since you told me to marry my mother-in-law.”
James laughed a trifle too heartily. “Well, I was mistaken in that, I agree. But you seem to have settled quite happily with your choice of a Countess Drake.”
Thomas flung himself into a chair. “It’s the damnedest thing, Jamie. I have only just realized I’d never had a conversation of substance with a woman before I married Harry. You have a mother and sisters, of course, but my sister Jane married when I was very young . . .”
James knew Thomas’ sister Jane was a sad subject for him. “Are you sure you’ve ever had a conversation of substance with anyone, Tom?”
“Well, no, you’re right, maybe not.” Thomas smiled. “And certainly, with Harry, I can’t follow a lot of what she says.”
“You’ve not been to Madame Flora’s or to London recently.”
A silence. “No.”
“That’s a change.”
“Don’t niggle at me, Jamie, just come out and say what you have to say.”
James looked down at his now-empty glass. “I wondered if you had found that something had changed irrevocably for you after you bedded your wife, ”
Thomas got up and poured another finger of whisky into his glass and came over with the decanter and gave James another finger, too.
“Happy Christmas,” he said.
“Happy Christmas,” James echoed.
They drank.
“Well, I guess this is actually the damnedest thing, Jamie.” Thomas crossed to the window and stared out. “I haven’t bedded her.”
James kept silent.