Fifth Day of Christmas #2
Kestrel smiled, certain he’d made the inquiry to assure her that he was the gift giver.
But she didn’t want to take the time to go back for them and instead used the cold as an excuse to wedge herself between Mr. Culpepper and Tom.
They kept as close as they could, as if to protect her from stray gusts of wind. It was very cozy.
The group passed over the gravel drive and onto a grass path that led into a wooded area along a thin gray stream. The light dusting of snow had drifted away days ago, and only the cold remained, a haunting ghost conjuring just the wish for a white Christmas.
It is still Christmas, Kestrel reminded herself again. She had seven more days—eight including today! It wasn’t too late to let Christmas change her.
Her gentlemen chatted and complimented, but half of Kestrel’s attention was focused on a fuming Charming stubbornly walking behind the group, her arms folded under her breasts.
“Mrs. Charming, are you unwell?” asked Gussie.
“Jolly good,” Charming growled. “Pip. Pip. PIP.”
Andrews emitted a soft, tragic whine in his throat. Jerome looked about to cry.
“Let us have some merriment as we go,” Andrews said desperately.
“I was just going to suggest that!” said Kestrel. “We could sing Christmas carols.”
“Well, I was going to—” Andrews started.
“Go ahead, Gussie,” said Kestrel. “Pick your favorite carol. I can sing harmony if you sing melody.”
“Of course you can,” Gussie mumbled, annoyed.
Kestrel was too agitated to wait for Gussie to sing. “Let’s play a game instead. Split into teams, ladies against gents. What game should it be?”
“I had a plan,” Andrews said firmly. “There is a walking game I find most amusing that Mrs. Charming and I once—”
“I know!” Kestrel interrupted, excited by an idea and desperate to ride that excitement out of the discomfort. “A scavenger hunt! We split into two teams and go searching the grounds for the same ten items. Whichever team finds them all first—”
Andrews stopped walking to turn and look at Kestrel, his cheeks red. “Perhaps, Miss Spinster, you could let me get a word in edgewise and leave the game planning to those whose job it is to actually plan the games.”
If crickets came out on brisk winter mornings, they would have been hiccuping forlornly. Kestrel’s face felt hot.
“Yeah, of course.” She pivoted and walked briskly away from the path and into the trees as fast as her Regency boots could propel her.
“Miss Spinster?” someone called after her. It might have been Andrews, or maybe Tom or Mr. Culpepper, but her heart was beating so hard in her ears, she could barely hear.
She waved her hand without turning around. “I’m fine! You all go on! Go on without me!”
Kestrel felt like an enormous jackass. How did she keep getting herself into the very situations she was most keen to avoid?
She was always a sympathetic ear to friends’ problems, but when the focus turned to her, the critical attention literally felt fatal.
She knew her extreme reaction to personal conflict didn’t make sense.
But feelings weren’t about logic. They were about pain and discomfort and doing everything in her power to outrun them.
As soon as the evergreen trees hid her from the group, she started to run in earnest. She’d worked up a sweat by the time she emerged into an opening bordering an outbuilding. On the chill breeze came the warm smell of animals and freshly turned hay. The stables.
Edwin. the stable man, was wearing muddy boots and a jacket, standing at a worktable under the roof shared between two small wood buildings. He didn’t appear cold, his short salt-and-pepper curls uncovered, his large hands bare. He glanced up when she approached and then quickly stood straight.
“Hello, Edwin,” she said.
His gaze shot all around as if looking for help.
“Am I not supposed to be here?” she asked.
“Generally the ladies avoid this area,” he said, fiddling with a horseshoe and seeming painfully shy.
“Generally. Do some ladies come around?” Kestrel was desperate for any conversation that might help her climb out of the funk of the last one.
“We’re usually warned before they might come this way. But sometimes Charming stops by to pet the horses . . .”
His mouth pulled to one side, the suggestion of a smile, and his dark brown eyes blinked slowly, as if wanting to remain longer in the memory.
Kestrel was curious to test her suspicions. “So, what do you think about the changes Charming made since becoming a partner?”
Again, at her name, Edwin reacted visibly. His eyebrows lifted, and did she imagine it, or did his pupils dilate? “I think she’s done wonders.”
“Ooh, tell me more,” Kestrel said, taking a seat on a cut log.
Edwin turned back to sorting the horseshoes and nails on the worktable. “It’s a happier place now. Not so much about propriety. There’s room to breathe, like.”
Yes, Kestrel could imagine. Charming was the pink ball-gown over Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s tight corset. Austenland needed Charming.
A young man in a servant’s outfit of brown coat and breeches was walking a chestnut horse into the yard, pulled by a lead rope. Just then, a fluffy black-and-white dog came running in from the other side, barking happily. The horse spooked, rearing up and coming down hard with its front hoofs.
Kestrel was on her feet at once.
“Heel!” she said to the dog, but it either didn’t know the command or wouldn’t obey a stranger.
The horse pulled away from the servant boy, its lead rope dangling. The boy dodged and fell on his backside, and Kestrel was afraid he would be struck when those front hooves came down. Edwin was running toward the horse, but someone else came out of the closer building and got there first.
It was Hank. Of course it was Hank. And her instinctive reaction was relief. If Hank was here, then everything would be okay.
Hank grabbed the halter and pulled the horse’s head down.
And after its front hooves landed on the ground, he kept gently pulling its head lower, all the while speaking calmly.
“I know, you were scared. You thought you were in danger. But you’re not alone.
We’re a safe little herd of two. I’m with you. ”
Still holding on to the halter, Hank pressed his forehead against the horse’s brow and continued to encourage its head even lower. Kestrel knew from her ranch days that if a horse’s head was up, they were alert and possibly anxious. A horse with a head down was a relaxed horse.
The dog crouched behind Edwin, tail and ears low as if aware that it had been naughty. Edwin looked unworried, his hands in his pockets. And Kestrel understood. Edwin must have fetched Hank yesterday. Hank had helped him with the mare, and now they were probably best friends. It was all so Hank.
The horse made a low nicker. Its stomping feet quieted. Hank gave it a rub between its eyes, then a long pat on its neck as he carefully tied the lead rope to a post. Hank gave the servant boy a hand up, and only then noticed Kestrel.
“Ope!” he said, his eyes wide, and his hands gripped the end of the tied rope as if it were a wild animal that might break free.
Her immediate thought was, That’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
She quickly scolded her thoughts. It was categorically untrue, especially given that she’d been spending time with the likes of Tom.
Unlike any of the Austenland gents, Hank would never be at home on the cover of a magazine.
Yet to her, all his features seemed ideal.
His dark, expressive brows. His long nose and blushing cheeks.
His broad shoulders and uncertain smile, slightly broken by the white scar through his upper lip.
He inhaled audibly as if having to remind himself to breathe, and for the space of that inhale, Kestrel couldn’t remember if last night had been real or a dream.
She seemed to feel the bookcase against her back, Hank’s body pressed against hers, his lips on her collarbone, his hand on the back of her knee, sliding upward—
“Hello,” he said, his eyes full of deer-plus-headlights.
She shook herself and remembered to bob a curtsy like a proper lady.
The strange, fantastic hope that had started to soar inside her crashed unceremoniously down.
He was not the Regency gentleman waiting for her in the library.
He was the man who had broken up with her suddenly, said goodbye, and never reached out to her again until randomly showing up two years later to crash her perfect Christmas.
“I, uh . . .” Hank looked in panic at the rope as if he had no idea what to do with it, finally forcing himself to let it go.
After his confident power when he’d calmed the horse, this body language was obviously ill at ease.
He looked at Edwin, searching for some hint of what to do.
A very confused Edwin was staring at both of them with pressed brows and mouth agape.
Eventually, and strangely, Hank decided to cross his hands over his chest like a corpse in a coffin and then bowed. His cheeks reddened, and he quickly dropped his hands as he no doubt realized that he had enacted the weirdest faux-bow in all of history.
The dog was approaching Hank while maintaining an I-know-I’ m-in-trouble crouch. Its mournful eyes stared up at him, tail curled down apologetically but still flicking as if trying to wag.
“Winchester, you know better than that,” Hank said in a low voice. But he opened the flat of his hand, and the dog, overjoyed, rubbed its head against it, tail still down and yet wagging so energetically, its whole body twisted like a snake’s.
“Blimey,” Edwin said as he returned to his task at the table, “one day later and Winchester already cares more about your opinion than mine.”