A Homespun Regency Christmas

Antoinette sat straight up in bed, gasping for air. She felt the edges of some tantalizing dream floating away from her, snatched away before she could grab onto it. What had she been dreaming? It dissipated like so much smoke, leaving her with only the remnant impressions of something unbearably sweet.

The blankets fell away from her shoulders, and she shivered despite her long-sleeved muslin night rail. The cottage was chilly and dark, the scents of her dried herbs and flowered soaps heavy in the crisp air. Antoinette shrugged her thick braid back over her shoulder and collapsed against the piles of feather pillows. She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly until she felt her fevered blood slow in her veins.

The dream was completely gone, and she was all alone in her familiar cottage. The moonlight spilling from the mullioned windows cast a glow over her brightly colored silk quilts, the bottles and pots on her dressing table, the bundles of dried herbs suspended from the ceiling beams. She could see the snow falling out there—the first snow she had seen in a very long time.

Antoinette had always felt safe in the cottage. The whitewashed walls seemed to embrace her from the first day she saw them. But right now, in this quiet midnight, it seemed as if those very walls were closing about her. She needed air. She needed to talk to someone. She needed . . .

She needed her mother. Her mother would be able to help her decipher all the strange feelings that were swirling inside her of late. Antoinette had tried before to contact her mother, but it had always been in vain. Maybe now, on this strange night, the winter solstice, it would work. Antoinette felt the magic in the snow-dusted moonlight on her very fingertips.

She climbed down from the high bed, and without even lighting the lamp, pulled open the doors of the carved wardrobe. The moonlight fell on the array of gowns, cloaks, and robes hanging there, the bonnets and slippers and shawls arranged on the shelf. One silvery beam glistened on the sleeve of one of her robes.

Antoinette drew the soft silk of the robe over her night rail and fastened the gold frogs up the front. As she slipped on her sturdiest half boots, she reached into a small box under the bed and pulled out her most cherished possession. The red leather binding of the book was worn to a satin smoothness by all the women’s hands that had touched it over the years. Her mother. Her grandmother. Her great-grandmother, who had inscribed much of the ancient knowledge on its parchment pages.

Antoinette smoothed her palm over the book’s precious cover before placing it carefully in an oilskin pouch. She added candles, a flint, an array of herbs.

The night was colder than Antoinette expected. Cornwall was usually quite mild, at least compared to the rest of the freezing island of England, but not this night of rare snow. Her breath escaped into the air in tiny smokelike puffs, and her boots crunched on the thin layer of moisture underfoot. New flakes, delicate as the lace many of the local villagers made, landed on the hood of her cloak and caught in her eyelashes and the braid of her hair. The sky had become strangely clear, though, stars blinking down at her like diamonds from between a wide break in the clouds.

She had no idea where she was going. She simply turned out of her garden gate and walked, letting her feet lead her where they would. She would not be surprised to discover she was still in her bed, dreaming. It was not like her to leave the safety of her house to go wandering alone in the night, especially since some villager on his way home might see her and carry the tale of her midnight ramblings back to his neighbors. People there were suspicious enough of her, despite the friendship of Cassie and her family, and of the vicar and his wife.

‘‘Do not be silly, Antoinette,’’ she told herself, turning down a different pathway. ‘‘No one is fool enough to be out on such a night. No one but you.’’

Indeed, it was silent. So silent she could almost hear the new snow falling on the ground. She heard no supernatural whispers, no one calling to her. Even the ghosts of Royce Castle were asleep, as all sensible people—human or spirit—should be.

Antoinette laughed softly. It felt a bit like when she was a child, and she and Cassie would slip out to go swimming in the ocean at night—exciting, a strange fluttering deep in her stomach. Only back then their environs had been considerably warmer.

Her laughter faded when she saw where her steps had led her. She was atop one of the steep, rocky cliffs that fell straight down into the roiling winter sea. She stared out over the water, mesmerized for an instant by the waves and the sky.

She came to the shore often, of course. The rocky sand was a favorite picnic spot of the Leighton children, and the old smugglers’ caves there contained very strong ghostly vibrations. But she seldom came here at night, and never like this—all alone, in the snow and cold, atop the sharp cliffs.

Tucking her woolen cloak beneath her knees, she knelt down on the ground and took her treasures out of the pouch. Candles—white, silver, purple, blue, gold—were neatly arrayed, protected by their glass globes. Antoinette lit them, and sprinkled thyme, lavender, meadowsweet, and dried rose petals in the snow around them. As she did this, she closed her eyes and focused all her thoughts toward the love of her mother, toward all her mother’s teachings. She rose and, at her feet, the ancient book fluttered open, the pages shuffling in the cold breeze.

‘‘Mother of all days,’’ Antoinette called, ‘‘come to us this night, touch us with your presence. Bring me your wisdom, your peace, your power. Help me to find the right path.’’

She held out her arms, and the hood of her cloak fell back. A new wind arose around her, sweeping at her skirts, skittering the candles’ flames, though they did not go out. Indeed, they seemed to glow even brighter.

The cord binding her braid fell and her hair blew free, the waist-length strands whipping across her face and throat. A warmth kindled deep inside her, growing hot and brighter.

Antoinette raised her arms higher, palms up to catch the moonlight. ‘‘Come to me,’’ she chanted. ‘‘Help me!’’

She lurched a step forward, and another. She felt light, so very light, as if she could fly free of all her confusion . . .

‘‘No!’’ she heard a man shout. At first disoriented, she thought it was part of the spell. A strange part, one she had not conjured herself, but many times things happened she had not counted on when she was in a meditative state. She did not have the powers of her mother. She closed her eyes tighter, trying to will the strange voice away.

Antoinette opened her eyes and spun around, seeking the source of that shout. The magic of the night dissipated, the wind faded to a mere cold embrace.

She turned too quickly, though. The soles of her boots slid on the coating of snow, and she felt them slipping beneath her. Almost as if time had slowed down, allowing her to see herself falling, she coasted backward. Her arms flailed, trying to grasp onto something, anything.

She fell toward the earth. The sky arched overhead, black and cold and void. Something hard struck at the back of her head—and then she saw nothing at all.

Mark ran from the ring of trees toward the edge of the sea cliff, his boots slipping on the new layer of snowfall. The woman lay there, so very still, a crumpled heap of silk and wool.

He dropped to his knees beside her just as the moon disappeared behind a veil of clouds, leaving them in deepest midnight shadows. The only light was from the flickering ring of candles, sheltered from the cold by glass globes. The scent of lavender and dried rose was sweet and rich—and strange, in the middle of winter.

Mark had no time to ponder such oddities as candles and flowers, though. His only thought, his entire being, was concentrated on the woman lying still on the ground.

Very carefully, he bent down toward her, watching her for any sign of breath and life. He took her hand in his, and pressed his fingertips to her slender wrist. ‘‘Thank you,’’ he whispered, when he detected the thready hum of her pulse. Her chest rose in a steady, though shallow, rhythm.

So she was not dead, but not yet out of danger. Mark recalled how, on the second ship he sailed on, a cabin boy had been struck on the head by a falling bucket. The lad had remained unconscious for many days before dying, never once awakening. Head injuries were quite perilous and unpredictable.

He quickly stripped off his greatcoat and made a cushion of it on the ground. Slowly, gingerly, he moved her head onto its softness, probing gently for an injury. There was a small knot near the base of her neck, but none of the stickiness of blood.

He had been quite right all these years to resist his mother’s letters urging him to come home. Look what happened when he ventured outside his door! He was a menace to other people. A curse. Here he had merely meant to prevent the girl from throwing herself over the cliff, and instead he had nearly killed her.

He should go for help, he thought, as he reached for one of the woman’s candles and brought it closer. But where could he go? The nearest house after his own cottage was Royce Castle, and the woman who came in to keep house for him had said that the Leighton family had gone to Bath until after the New Year, and most of the servants were home in the village with their families. The physician was in the village, too, more than thirty minutes’ ride from here. Mark would just have to take care of her himself.

He lifted up the candle so he could see her better—and gave a strangled gasp. It wasn’t merely that she was beautiful, though she certainly was, extremely so. It was that she was so completely unlike anyone he had ever seen before, and not at all what he would expect to find here in this remote corner of England.

She was more like something he would find in a dream, a fantasy of warm seas, waterfalls, and jasmine flowers. Maybe she was a dream, truly. This whole bizarre night was a dream.

The woman’s skin, though ashen at the moment, was a dark, burnished color, like cream in coffee, undulating like smooth silk over high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Her hair, spread around her on the snow, was a wild riot of thick, black waves. She was dressed unlike anyone else, too. Her dark cloak had fallen back to reveal a strange robe of green silk, embroidered in gold with exotic flowers and symbols, fastened up the front with gold braid frogs. She was very tall. If she was standing, she would probably be about as tall as Mark’s own six foot three, yet she was slender as a reed.

‘‘You must be an illusion,’’ he whispered to her. ‘‘What else would you be doing on this godforsaken shore?’’

When Mark first joined the Navy at age fifteen, he was sent to the West Indies station, where he stayed for over five years. Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda. There he had seen many women like this one, dusky, willowy, impossibly exotic. He had never seen one to approach her aura of elegance, though. Even unconscious, she exuded a certain power surely unknown to any English lady.

And was she a witch? Mark was certainly not a man to put stock in village gossip. He had been the subject of it far too often himself. But something odd had been happening here this night. Look at her robe, the candles.

The necklace she wore. It was a heavy silver pendant, suspended on a long chain, etched in its center with a crescent moon image, surrounded by a circle of rough-cut gemstones. They glowed in the candlelight, seeming to entice him, to beckon him. . . .

The tips of his fingers were grazing the cold silver, when she let out a soft moan. Her long fingers stirred and reached up toward her temple.

‘‘You’re awake!’’ Mark shouted in jubilation, a relief unlike any he had ever known rising up in his heart. She was not dead, nor in an endless stupor. He had not killed her.

‘‘Am I?’’ she whispered roughly. Her eyes opened, focusing up on him. They were wide, as black as the night around them, and as clear as if she was simply waking from the most refreshing of slumbers.

Her brows, as silken and arched as a raven’s wings, drew down slightly when she saw him, as if puzzled. Too late, Mark realized he held the candle near to his face—his ruined face. It was sure to send this goddess back into her unreachable sleep to see that! And he had not put his gloves on, either. He hastily blew out the candle and cast it away into the snow.

She did not scream or gasp or turn away, as other ladies often did. Nor did her expression dissolve into pity. She simply watched him, that tiny puzzled frown on her brow.

‘‘Who are you?’’ she asked, her voice low and soft, touched with a French island lilt. She stared up at him warily, her slender body stiffening. ‘‘What happened to me? Are you a ghost?’’

He swallowed hard past the sudden dryness in his throat. ‘‘No, I am not a ghost. Not yet. My name is Captain Mark Payne, madam,’’ he answered her, the words escaping before he could even catch them. Captain? He had not called himself by that title in many years. But there it was, the sound of it hanging in the air between them. ‘‘I fear you took a fall and hit your head. I thought you were about to jump off the cliff, and I called out to you. I fear I startled you—I’m sorry.’’

‘‘A fall?’’ Carefully, wincing a bit, she turned her head to see the sputtering candles, the scattering of herbs now being covered by the new snowfall. ‘‘I remember coming here now. Do you live nearby?’’

She studied him very carefully, her dark eyes narrowed. He did not know what she saw there, but whatever it was obviously somewhat reassured her. She finally nodded, and said, ‘‘You saved me? Thank you very much.’’

Mark could only nod brusquely, unable to take his gaze from her. She appeared to be waiting for him to say something. Her perfect stillness, her very aura of some unfathomable serenity, seemed to invite confidences of all sorts. Even from a man who had confided in no one, relied on no one, for seven long years.

But she was far too fragile to listen to any of his nonsense, and he would be even more of a boor than he already was to burden her with his apologies. She was the one he must take care of.

‘‘Well, Captain Mark Payne,’’ she said, her voice a bit stronger though still shaky. ‘‘I am Miss Antoinette Duvall, and pleased to meet you, despite the less than auspicious circumstances. Do you always walk in the snow in your shirtsleeves?’’

Mark gave a bark of laughter, suddenly realizing that he was indeed in his shirtsleeves, and it was demmed cold. ‘‘No, madam. I am not quite as foolish as all that. My coat at present resides beneath your head.’’

‘‘Oh!’’ Her trembling hand darted up to feel the soft, crumpled wool of his greatcoat. ‘‘Here, sir, you must take it back. I would not have you catch a chill for your good deed. You must be freezing. Unless you really are a ghost? Then you would not be cold at all.’’

He was cold, but she was probably much more so, lying on the ground. The snow was drifting thicker and faster around them. And he worried about her rambling talk of ghosts. ‘‘Do you feel well enough to rise, Miss Duvall?’’

‘‘Put your arms around my neck,’’ he told her. As she wound her silk-clad arms weakly about him, he slid his own beneath her legs and lifted her carefully as he rose to his feet. He was glad to find all of that wood-chopping he had done, all the new thatching on his roof, the evening rides along the cliffs, had not been for naught. Antoinette Duvall was not a small woman, but she fit easily into his arms.

With a low, pained sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled of jasmine and candle smoke. ‘‘Thank you, Captain Payne,’’ she whispered. ‘‘You are truly a knight in shining armor.’’

‘‘Not at all.’’ She still clutched his coat in her shaking hand, and awkwardly shook it out to spread it over one of his shoulders.

He carried her away from the cliff, toward the meager shelter of the trees. Once on the pathway, though, he was struck by a sudden doubt—where to take her, where she would be safe and cared for? The Leightons at the castle were gone; he had no idea where Miss Duvall lived. The closest residence was his own cottage.

Mark glanced around them, and saw a fallen log that was as yet only lightly dusted with snow. ‘‘If I put you down here, can you sit for a moment while I go to fetch it?’’

He was not sure he completely believed her; her head bobbed against him weakly. But he could not argue against the urgency in her voice. She obviously needed that book, whatever it was, and she would not be easy until she had it. He placed her carefully on the log, making certain she would stay upright and that her cloak was tucked warmly beneath her.

Mark turned and ran back toward the cliff, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat. The book was indeed there, beside the dying candles. A few flakes melted on the antique parchment pages, but it appeared to be undamaged. As he brushed off the moisture, he saw printed there words in some strange language, the dark brown ink faded with age.

He had no time to ponder the volume’s mysteries, though. He closed it with a snap and pushed it inside his coat. There was Miss Duvall he had to return to with all haste, or she would surely faint away again.

Indeed, she was listing quite alarmingly when he returned to the fallen tree; her head wobbled on her slim neck. She smiled radiantly, though, when he handed her the book. She cradled it against her as if it was made of the rarest rubies.

‘‘Ah, but my rescue will have been in vain if we do not get you home this minute. You will surely catch a chill,’’ Mark said, scooping her up into his arms again. ‘‘Do you have a maid or companion waiting at your house? You should not be alone with a head injury. You need someone to keep you awake until a physician can be summoned.’’

‘‘No, I live alone,’’ she answered, her voice soft, almost drowsy. Her head drooped back against his shoulder. ‘‘There is a girl who comes to clean for me, but only in the afternoons.’’

‘‘What is it?’’ Antoinette asked complacently, not at all fazed by any use of impolite language. He wondered nonsensically if she had perhaps grown up around sailors and become used to their ways. ‘‘Is something amiss? Beyond the obvious, of course.’’

‘‘If there is no one where you live, then there is only one place for you to go, Miss Duvall. At least for this night.’’

‘‘Oh? And where is that?’’ Her tone held only casual curiosity, as if her immediate future held only marginal interest for her. He sensed her deep weariness.

‘‘My house. Thornbush Cottage, it’s called. Someone must look after you for the next few hours. They are the most vital after someone sustains a head injury.’’

If he had expected missish protests, cries, or tears, he was to be pleasantly disappointed. She merely gave a quiet laugh, and said, ‘‘That is three times now you have rescued me, Captain Payne. I am so very sorry to inconvenience you, but I fear you are correct. I have some knowledge of healing myself, as you obviously do, and I know I should not be alone right now. I feel so very—odd.’’

Her arm tightened about his neck, and she cuddled closer with a gentle sigh. Her breath was cool against his bare throat.

He had indeed been correct, Mark thought, as he turned down the hidden lane toward his cottage. Miss Antoinette Duvall was unlike any other woman he had ever met.