A Homespun Regency Christmas

The nightmare was the same as it always was, the full horror of those moments rushing back onto him as if eleven years had not passed. As if it were happening again—and again. He always knew it was a nightmare, yet he could never pull himself out of it, pull himself back into the reality of his life now. He just had to watch it once more, until the bitter ending.

The explosion that tore half his ship away hurled him into the churning waves. At first, he welcomed the chill of the water, the freezing bite of its depths. The entire left side of his body burned with a frigid, heavy flame, his uniform torn away, the gold braid cutting into his raw flesh. But then the full force of the cold salt water slapped against him, bringing new agony.

He began to sink, dragged to Davy Jones’ locker by an inexorable force. He welcomed it, welcomed the dark, sweet oblivion that he knew waited for him there, promising to soothe away the unbearable pain. He was a sailor; had been since he was a boy of fifteen. It was a fate he was familiar with and had always half-expected.

Then, as the waves closed over his head and he shut his eyes against the waning of the light, he saw her face. Elizabeth. His fiancée, his love. Her golden curls glowed with all the brilliance of the sun. Her violet-blue eyes beckoned to him, begging him to stay with her, to not leave her, not lose their love. She reached out to him, as if to pull him back to the land of the living.

Her eyes were stronger than the force of the sea. He reached out for her beckoning fingers—and his hand brushed the hard, splintering wood of a piece of flotsam. A plank from his ship. He grasped it and, with every bit of strength left in him, every ounce of willpower, pulled himself up into the air.

His ship was dying, sinking fast, but all around him the battle still raged. Cannon fire turned the air thick and rancid, the black clouds mingling with flames and blood. Shouts and cries swirled above him, while all about him was the detritus of the ship he had been entrusted with. Burning wood, guns, bits of steel—the bodies of his men.

He recognized Lieutenant Bridgers, as the young man’s body floated past him, eyes wide open yet unseeing. He stared down at his own arm that wouldn’t seem to move, and blinked in disbelief at the sight of raw, red flesh where his blue wool sleeve was torn away.

Bits of burning sail landed on that arm even as he watched, bringing fresh waves of agony. He gasped, and fell back onto his lifesaving plank. The battle around him, the cacophonous noise, the light fading left him with only one thought.

Mark Payne sat straight up in his bed, a shout strangled in his throat. Of course. A nightmare. That was all it was, all it ever was. It was not real.

But once it had been. It had been a real hell, fresh and hot around him, burning his nose with its stink. Eleven years. Eleven years he had been haunted by that day. Would the memory of it, of his failing, never leave him?

Mark longed for it to be gone, yet he knew it never would be. Not until he could lose the ache of guilt that gnawed at his belly.

At least here, in his isolated little house in Cornwall, there was no one to be disturbed by his nighttime shouts. Or the endless pacing on the nights when he could not sleep at all. Here, he could hurt no one.

He knew that the villagers speculated about him, made up tales, as they had ever since he came here seven years ago. He knew they asked endless questions of the old woman who came in to cook and clean for him, questions she could not answer, though she certainly tried to with fantastical speculation. Perhaps he was a werewolf? A devil, cursed and cast out of hell? An exiled prince from a faraway land?

Mark laughed now to think of those stories—and they were only the ones that had come to his own ears. He could not even begin to imagine the ones he had not heard. The Cornish were ever fond of wild tales. Perhaps that was why he had come here, and not to one of his family’s estates in Kent or Devon. Here, he was only one more haunt among many.

Even his nearest neighbor, the grand and ancient Royce Castle, was said to be haunted. Full of ghosts and spirits and devils of all sorts—even an island witch. Though Royce Castle was above two miles away from Mark’s small abode, on clear days he could glimpse the turrets and speculate about those creatures, speculate about what an island witch could possibly want with such a cold and desolate land.

Mark threw back the heavy bedclothes. He knew he would find no more sleep this night. The fire in the grate had died away, leaving the small bedchamber chill and dark. He lit the candle on the bedside table, casting a small circle of light in the gloom, and reached for his dressing gown. The fur-lined velvet slid over his nakedness, caressing his damaged flesh with its softness. As he tied the corded sash, he turned to the window, pushing back the draperies to let the night in.

And such a night it was, as different from the landscape in his nightmare as it could possibly be. He might have suddenly landed on the moon. The same moon that peeked from behind thick clouds to cast a brief, silvery glow over the night.

Rare snow from early in the evening lay in a thin white layer, light as an eiderdown, over the ground, shimmering in the new light. Frost hung from the bare branches of the trees in his sadly overgrown and tangled garden, and a new snowfall drifted like magic from the skies. It was not yet thick; every flake could be seen in its own individual perfection.

It was a breathlessly beautiful scene. Mark was reminded of a story his mother used to tell him and his brother and sister when they were small children. A tale of an ice princess, who was incredibly lovely but very, very lonely. She lived all alone in her palace made of winter, because no one understood her or her magic. They all shunned her. So she spent all her time creating snowflakes, no two alike, each a picture of cold perfection.

Thoughts of his family—his mother, and Charles and Edwina—far away in London, reminded him that it was very nearly Christmas.

Christmas. The holiday the ice princess and her snow minions—and his own mother—loved above all others. When had he last thought of it? Not for a very, very long time.

His mother always wrote to him at this time of year, of course, urging him to come home, to share the holiday with them. Yet how could he? How could he ruin this time of year for his family, the people he loved the most, by showing his face in their elegant drawing room? He did not belong around their pianoforte, singing Christmas ditties, or around their table with roasted goose and berry tarts.

Every time he was tempted to go back, he remembered the revulsion that swept over Elizabeth’s beautiful face when she first beheld him after the battle. He heard again her scream of despair, remembered how she had turned away.

Mark pushed back his brocade sleeve and stared down at his left arm. By some miracle, it had been saved from the surgeons’ knives, but the skin was puckered, criss-crossed with scars and welts. In the sunlight, it was a strange, shell-pink color; in the moonlight, it was pale, disguised. The left side of his face was the same, scarred, marked forever by what had happened that day. He could usually hide from it, by being alone, by having no mirrors in his house except the tiny one above his shaving stool.

Mark laughed roughly at the fanciful thought. He was so very rarely fanciful. ‘‘You are moon-mad, Captain Payne,’’ he muttered to himself. ‘‘Or perhaps bewitched? There are many curses floating about in Cornwall. One must have landed on you.’’

He started to turn away, to reach for the bottle of brandy sitting on the bedside table, when some noise startled him. He swung back toward the window.

‘‘What the devil was that?’’ he said out loud, peering into the night. It had sounded like some low cry or moan. Not a scream or shout; something beckoning, enticing. Like the ice princess’s lonely song.

There was nothing else. Only the silence of the snow-blanketed night. But Mark’s nerves still rang. Something was out there. He could sense it, just as he had once sensed enemy ships lurking in the sea fogs. He suddenly felt alert, alive, as he had not in months and months. He had to find whatever was in the night.

He shrugged off his dressing gown and reached for the clothes he had carelessly piled on the chair before retiring. As he tied back his overlong dark hair and searched for his greatcoat, one thought reverberated in his mind.