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A smart series of raps on Lucy’s bedchamber door brought her out of exhausted slumber.
Who the devil can that possibly be?
When the sound didn’t come again, she rolled over and snuggled again into the bedclothes as the sound of steady rain fell upon the roof. Her eyes had just drifted closed and the knock came once more, frantic this time, and accompanied by a hissed whisper.
“Lucy!”
What was Colin doing in the hall at this time of night? Still, a tiny thrill went down her spine before common sense took over. He wasn’t on the other side of that door for a midnight tryst, especially not with his daughter in the room. Plus, he hadn’t shown interest or even admiration for Lucy throughout the trip.
Was it perhaps subconscious hope on her part?
Don’t be silly.
As another series of insistent knocks rained upon the wooden panel, she huffed a sigh and slipped out of the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Ellen asked in a voice garbled with sleep. “I thought I heard Father’s voice.”
So did I. Perhaps it was nothing but a foolish dream. “I’ve no idea, but I’ll find out.” Lucy slipped on a dressing gown of faded lavender silk. She padded over the worn hardwood and then cracked open the door a few inches...
...only to stare into the countenance of Father Christmas, or rather Colin dressed as that long-ago saint, complete with a ragged white beard she assumed was glued on as well as matching hair beneath a dark red cap that hung down and trailed over one shoulder.
Her eyes widened as she raked her gaze up and down his person. Where had he procured a robe of dark red velvet and gold brocade? And perhaps more to the point, was he even properly dressed beneath the wide-sleeved garment that hung to the floor? “What is the meaning of this? You do realize it’s the middle of the night and—”
“I am aware.” His eyes flashed in the dimness of the hall. “It’s about an hour before dawn, but we must leave now.” Urgency flowed through his voice.
“I don’t understand.” She crossed her arms over at her chest, and briefly he dropped his gaze to her bosom. Her heartbeat fluttered. “What is the hurry?”
“It’s none of your concern but trust me when I tell you that we must leave as soon as possible, before things grow worse.” He jerked his chin to indicate the stairs at the end of the hall. “Dress and then bring your bags down this instant.”
“I won’t, until you tell me what’s going on.” Lucy resisted the childish impulse to stamp her foot.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not reveal the reason.” He drew himself up to his full height of five foot nine inches and glared down at her, but the beard and false hair took much of the power from his glower. “Just do this for me.”
“Is the inn on fire, Colin?” she asked in a shocked voice as she opened the door wider. “I don’t smell smoke in the air.” When he narrowed his eyes, she continued. “Are we under attack? For I don’t hear the explosion of mortar shells.” A swath of hilarity swelled in her chest and she couldn’t stop teasing him. “Ah, I know. Perhaps there’s a highwayman on the prowl and he’s sneaking through the corridors in the attempt at separating guests from their valuables, and you wish us to flee into the night ahead of him.”
“Lucy!” Colin grabbed her shoulders and gave her a bit of a shake. “If I tell you the reason, will you pack and dress without further argument?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say, not while his hands remained on her person and the warmth from him seeped into her skin.
“Very well.” The ire went out of his expression, and as if he just noticed his touch, he dropped his hands and took a step backward. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. “I thought the innkeeper stared overly hard at me last night, but I didn’t remember ever making his acquaintance.” He kept his voice to a whisper, as did she.
“Had you?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Briefly and in passing.” Colin shifted his weight. “Turns out, he is the brother of a woman I might have had... relations with.”
“Might have?” She eyeballed him. “You’ve had so many that you cannot remember?” Why was she not surprised? And disappointed. Her stomach muscles clenched, and she cast a glance over her shoulder. Ellen sat bolt upright in bed, staring at them. It wasn’t to be helped.
“Spare me the lectures at the moment.” He tugged at the cravat buried beneath his robe, which, upon closer inspection, was a rather shabby affair and stank of... Lucy took a surreptitious sniff and reared backward. Ale and tobacco. “Yes, I had an affair with the man’s sister—more of a one-off sort of thing really—I’d come this way on a trip to visit a hunting mate of mine, stopped here, had a few drinks, saw the woman, things... happened—”
“Ugh.” Lucy held up a hand. “Skip that part.”
He nodded. “Well, I recognized the chap the same time he did me, for that day a couple of years ago, he’d discovered me in his sister’s bed here—his married sister—and he none too gently threw my arse out in the street with the threat that if he ever saw me again, he’d kill me.”
Merciful heavens, did he not realize his indelicate actions would continue to cause him trouble if he didn’t change? Was warming the bed of a willing woman worth that? She blew out a breath that ruffled an escaped tendril of hair from her braid. “Why did he not follow through on the threat last night, for I assume you two came into contact in the tavern?”
Of course he’d been drinking again. Oh, Colin, stop destroying yourself.
“There were many people milling about. Rain brings in the patrons, apparently.” Colin’s shrug was everything negligible. “So I retired, but I’m sure he’ll be waiting for me at departure time.” He made a gesture with a hand meaning get on with it. “Anyway, here we are, so you need to dress and pack, and we need to go with alacrity.”
Perhaps it was time to face some of the demons of his own making. “I hardly doubt the man will kill you, and I will not flee into the night as if I were the guilty one.”
“Come on, Lucy. Please?” The puppy dog pleading in his lake-blue eyes wore her down more quickly than she’d like. It would seem that around him, she possessed no willpower. She’d do well to remember that for the duration of the trip. “If this man threatens violence, and something happens to me, what will you and Ellen do? Who will remain to protect you?”
A queer little tingle went through her lower belly. “Do you think you’re our champion?” When he didn’t answer, she offered a small grin. “I’m quite certain your daughter and I can look after ourselves. In fact,” she couldn’t resist teasing him. “If you are laid up, we shall simply continue our journey without you. Perhaps, she can even pick you up when she comes back after the holidays.”
Then her grin died. For I will not come this way again. London life is behind me.
“Do be serious, Lucy.” But his growl didn’t have the amount of bite it did before.
“Fine.” She relented, only because it was the height of scandal to stand there, dressed as she was, with this man. “I’ll meet you in the common room in thirty minutes.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Outside. I’ll rouse the driver and help him with the horses.” He stepped away then paused. “Perhaps we’ll arrive at Lancaster Hall that much sooner.” His expression suggested that was the preferred plan.
Then he was gone, loping along the corridor and plunging down the wooden stairs like a man possessed. He certainly didn’t worry about maintaining stealth.
With nothing for it, Lucy closed the door. She spun about to face Ellen, who’d lit a lantern. “There are times I don’t think your father is quite right in his upper story,” she murmured as she crossed the room.
Ellen snorted. “It’s good that you’re finding such a thing out now, for it won’t come as such a shock to you later.” She cocked her head to one side. “We are leaving now?”
“So it would appear.” A trace of sadness cycled through her for a misdeed that still affected Colin’s life. Will he never learn?
“Why is Father dressed so bizarrely?”
“That, my girl, is a long story we do not have time for.” It wasn’t her responsibility to inform Colin’s daughter about his indiscretions.
“What about breakfast?”
Lucy chuckled. “Do you always think with your stomach?” In that regard, she was very much like Simon.
“Not always, but traveling makes me hungry,” the girl said with a grin.
“I’ll make certain your father stops somewhere so you can have a proper breakfast,” Lucy promised. “Now, we best dress, else he’ll come up here again, and I wouldn’t put it past him to spirit us away, fully clothed or not.”
As they dissolved into giggles, they accomplished the tasks at hand.
December 22, 1821
They’d been on the road for less than an hour before they passed a sign that gave Lucy an idea, mostly because Colin had yet to remove the Father Christmas disguise.
She tapped him on the knee, startling him from a half-doze. Could she blame him for wanting to sleep since they were roused from slumber early and it still rained, which rendered the confines of the coach rather cozy? No, but it was his fault they were here with the dawn, and he could very well reap the benefits of an early riser, plus do a good deed. “Tell your driver to go back. I want to turn down that lane we passed.”
“Why?” Colin glanced out the rain-streaked window glass. “We’re free of the inn, but not nearly as far away as I’d like to be.”
She leveled a look upon him. “I think you owe it to me for dragging us from our beds so early, and in the rain as the roads grow muddy with each passing hour.” When he stared right back, she sighed. “It’s time to remind you what Christmas is about.”
“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 what 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 live 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. It 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?