A Homespun Regency Christmas

Antoinette’s head throbbed with a low, dull ache, giving a fresh twinge every time her rescuer took a step. The cold wind blew her cloak and robe about her, and her senses hummed with the force of her interrupted spell. Yet none of those discomforts were stronger than the one thought reverberating in her mind . . .

She rested her head against his hard shoulder and studied him carefully in the moonlight. She was certain she had never seen him before, or she certainly would have remembered him. He was quite unforgettable, and not only because of the scars tracing a delicate white pattern over the left side of his sun-bronzed face. Her heart ached at the knowledge of the pain he must have suffered, the agony that etched those marks on his flesh.

Even with those scars, he was a handsome man, with a strong jaw shadowed by a day’s growth of beard, a slightly crooked nose, and eyes that glowed a strange pale silver even in the night. His hair was dark and overlong, falling over his collar in rich waves that escaped from their loose tie and tickled softly at Antoinette’s fingers. He was very tall, and strongly built—strong enough to carry her over the uneven ground, and she knew she was no featherlight female. The muscles that moved and bunched across his shoulders and arms were as powerful as those of any farm laborer.

He was no laborer, though; she knew that for certain. She had never met a farmer with such an air of command, of aristocratic self-possession.

It was not just his good looks, but his innate strength that drew her to him, that made her quite unable to look away from him. It was the deep, cutting sadness she saw hidden deep in his eyes, a despair deeper than any she had seen before.

Antoinette longed to know who he was, where he came from. What sorrows he carried in his heart. Whatever they were, she would vow they made her own loneliness, her own sense of displacement, seem insignificant indeed.

But her powers of discernment were muted by the pain in her head, and by a sweeping wave of exhaustion threatening to drown her beneath it. She closed her eyes, and felt the heavy weight of her limbs.

She must have sighed out loud, for she sensed his gaze upon her. ‘‘We are very nearly there,’’ he said gently. ‘‘I’m sorry for jostling you.’’

He lifted her higher in his arms, and beneath her skirts she felt him reach out and push open a squeaking gate. ‘‘You must be exhausted after everything you have been through this night, Miss Duvall, but you must not go to sleep yet. Not until we can ascertain the true extent of your injuries.’’

‘‘I know,’’ she answered, her words breaking off on a wide yawn. She grimaced when she realized she had not even covered her mouth. ‘‘Forgive me. You must think I was raised in a barn somewhere.’’

Captain Payne gave a low chuckle, which vibrated warmly through her body. ‘‘I will confess to a curiosity about where you were raised, Miss Duvall, but I think you are in no condition to answer at the moment. You should be quiet, and rest as well as you can.’’

Antoinette opened her eyes at the sound of a soft click and a thud. He had opened the door of what appeared to be a cottage. It was smaller than her own abode, and darker, covered with a thick climbing ivy that concealed even the windows. The captain ducked his head down as he took them through the narrow doorway into a room even darker than the night they left behind.

Antoinette could see nothing in the gloom, but it was obvious that he knew his way easily. With a gracefully balanced movement, he bent down and gently deposited her on a soft settee.

‘‘I’m warmer already,’’ she answered. The room still held the memory of an earlier fire, and already the chill was receding from her fingertips and earlobes. The pain in her head was also muted, yet the fatigue only grew greater now that she was warm and still. Antoinette untied the ribbons of her cloak and pushed it back from her shoulders, settling against the cushions of her new seat.

She listened to the sounds of the captain’s movements, her senses heightened by the rich darkness. He was near, she could feel that. She heard the hollow thunk of wood being piled in the grate, the rustle of paper, and the click of a flint—once, twice. A flare of light broke the gloom, and soon a merry blaze glowed in the fireplace.

Still kneeling before the grate, he turned to look at her, his expression solemn. In the orange firelight, his scars were more pronounced, a puckered pale pink, and she saw that his left hand and wrist were also damaged. They were injuries that were healed, though, and nothing at all to some of the wounds she saw in Jamaica.

And they could not compare to the glory of his hair, autumn-brown, waving to his shoulders, or to the wary intelligence shining from his eyes.

‘‘So this is your home?’’ she asked, slowly shifting her gaze from his to examine the room around her. The whitewashed walls and gray stone hearth were the same as those in her own home, but there the comparison ended. Where hers was full of pictures, books, and the scent of herbs, his was just—bare. The few pieces of furniture were old and shabby; there were no rugs, no draperies at the windows. The only painting was a print of a frigate cutting through the churning gray waters.

It gave her no clues whatsoever as to the personality of her rescuer, yet its clean starkness did confirm one thing she had suspected, even before he gave her his rank—he was a military man. Judging from the print, a navy man.

He gave her a half smile, sitting back on his heels to watch the flames he had kindled grow brighter. ‘‘Tiny, you mean.’’

‘‘Hm, yes, that is one way to put it. But, as I reside in a rather small cottage myself, I am keenly aware of the advantages of a less than grand space. Not so much dusting, for one. And, even better, it is easier to keep the dreadful English chill away.’’

His smile widened just a fraction, slowly, as if his mouth had grown rusty from a long lack of mirth. He seemed to fear his face might crack if he dared smile further, or, God forbid, laugh aloud. Antoinette decided that when she was not so tired, she would wrack her brain for the most ridiculous jests she knew, just to see if he could indeed laugh.

‘‘Compared to the cramped conditions aboard a ship, Miss Duvall, this cottage is a veritable palace,’’ he said. ‘‘And everything stays where you put it, with no pitching or rolling about.’’

His faint smile faded away altogether, and he glanced away from her into the fire. ‘‘Was a navy man. A very long time ago.’’ He pushed himself to his feet and sat down in the only other chair in the room, a twig rocker by the side of the mantel. He closed his hands on the chair’s wooden arms, curling his long fingers tightly. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the flames, the rasp of their breathing, and the rhythmic ticking of a strange, oval-shaped gold-and-ivory clock on the mantel.

Antoinette gazed up at its pale face. It was after one o’clock, still hours until the dawn. It was obvious that Captain Payne was not a man for light chatter, but Antoinette was itching to talk, to make some sort of noise. Otherwise, the warmth and the ticktocking of the clock would send her straight to sleep.

‘‘Have you lived very long in the neighborhood, Captain Payne?’’ she asked him, rubbing at her temples. The pain was already muted, receding away. ‘‘I myself have been here for five years, yet I am sure we have never met.’’

He turned to her, very careful, Antoinette noticed, to keep the left side of his face in shadow. ‘‘I have lived here for seven years now, but I do not mix very much in society.’’

‘‘Nor do I. Not that there is very much of what most people would call ‘society’ hereabouts. Not very many balls or routs. Though there are some agreeable people.’’

The corners of his mouth turned down a bit in obvious doubt. ‘‘Indeed, Miss Duvall? You do not find them to be a rather—gossiping lot?’’

Antoinette thought of the individuals who had tried so very hard to make her feel at home here, such as the vicar and his wife, Lady Paige, Mrs. Greeley. Then she thought of the others, too many to count, who stared at her wide-eyed as she walked through the village, whispered behind her back as she passed.

Were they really so very different, though, from the people in Jamaica, people of her own sort, who whispered and speculated about her friendship with the white Richards family?

‘‘That is too true. London, a ship, Cornwall—there is truly no escaping the curiosity of others. Not even, I imagine, in an Indian jungle. At least I have found what I was looking for in Cornwall.’’

‘‘And where did you come from before?’’ Antoinette suddenly noticed how very uncomfortable her damp boots had become. She bent to unhook them—and winced at the fresh wave of pain in her head.

‘‘Here, let me do that. You should remain still.’’ He left his chair and knelt down at her feet, his elegant fingers deftly unhooking the pearl buttons from the stiffening leather. ‘‘I fear I am out of practice at playing host. You ought to have something warm to drink. I think there may be some tea about.’’

He looked up at her, that tiny, rusty half smile on his lips again. In the firelight, his hair glowed with the burnish of October leaves, waving damp and silky to his shoulders. Antoinette longed with a sudden, tingling passion to touch that hair, to sink her fingers through its softness and trail them down his damaged cheek to his jaw, his lips....

‘‘If you are so perceptive with a head injury, Miss Duvall, I should hate to see you with all your wits about you,’’ he said. ‘‘You must be formidable indeed.’’

Antoinette’s throat was suddenly so dry, she wasn’t sure if she could speak clearly. Sitting here, with this strange, glorious man at her feet, the night and the fire wrapped around them, she did not feel like her usual sensible self at all. ‘‘I am not sure about formidable,’’ she managed to say hoarsely. ‘‘But I am incurably curious. Some might even say a busybody.’’

Captain Payne gave a low chuckle that was really no more than a rumbling deep inside his chest. He slid her boots from her feet and lined them up neatly next to the fire, then stood up to stroll away through a narrow, half-hidden doorway. Antoinette surmised, from the rattling of china and metal, that that must be the kitchen.

‘‘You cannot possibly be half the busybody my housekeeper is, Miss Duvall,’’ he called back to her. ‘‘But in answer to your question, my family lives mostly in London. They have country estates, also, which I am sure they still travel to now and then.’’

‘‘You do have family, then?’’ Antoinette asked, her breath held with the apprehension that she had gone too far, asked too much. His silence stretched on too long.

Distance, though, seemed to lessen Captain Payne’s obvious reticence. Perhaps it was the fact that he could not see her face while he spoke from the kitchen. Or perhaps he sensed, as she did, the odd intimacy of this midnight, this feeling that they were the only two people in the whole world.

‘‘I do have family,’’ he said finally. ‘‘I am the younger son of the Earl of Havelock. My brother, Charles, is the earl now, and my mother and sister live with him at Havelock House in Portman Square. Edwina, my sister, is much younger than Charles and myself—she is to make her bow in the spring. I am sure she will be quite the toast of the Season if she is as beautiful as I remember.’’

There was obvious affection in his tone as he spoke of this family, yet Antoinette saw nothing of them in his house. No portraits, no mementos. Nothing arranged on the mantel except the clock. ‘‘They do not care to visit you here?’’

‘‘No. They do not.’’ There was cold finality in the words, his previous, ever so brief words gone like so much candle smoke.

Captain Payne came back into the sitting room with a tray arrayed with mismatched china cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits, as well as a kettle which he placed on the hob to warm.

‘‘That is quite all right,’’ Antoinette answered, not sure what else she could say to continue to draw the captain out.

Much to her surprise, he was the one who continued the conversation. ‘‘And where is your family, Miss Duvall? You are obviously not a native of Cornwall.’’

Antoinette gave a little laugh. ‘‘Ah, so you noticed that, did you? No, I am not English. I was born in Jamaica. My mother was a freed slave from Saint-Domingue. She and my father came to Kingston before I was born, and he died shortly thereafter. He was a blacksmith, I believe, the son of a French merchant and his placée, though I have no memory of him at all. My mother was a seamstress, a very fine one.’’

Antoinette had never told anyone of her family. Not even Cassie knew the truth about Antoinette’s father. Most English people would be shocked to their core by this litany of slavery and illegitimacy. Captain Payne, though, was not like other Englishmen; she had sensed that the moment she first saw him. He merely nodded at her words, and reached for the kettle to pour hot water into their cups.

‘‘We have all night, Miss Duvall.’’ He passed her the cup, and gave her a wry grin. It seemed less stiff now, as if he was remembering at last how a smile went.

‘‘Very well, then.’’ Antoinette stretched her stockinged feet out toward the fire, and sipped at the strong, bracing tea. She told him of how her mother was employed as seamstress to Cassie’s mother, of how their families became close and Cassie became like her sister.

‘‘So, when her father died and she came here to live with her aunt, she asked me to come with her,’’ Antoinette finished. ‘‘I could not say no.’’

Antoinette gave a disbelieving snort. ‘‘Brave? Nay, Captain, I was a coward, unable to make my own way in life without my friend to cling to.’’

Captain Payne shook his head. ‘‘I lived in the West Indies for five years, Miss Duvall. I know what you left behind; I know how very different it is from this place. It is warm, full of flowers and sun and strange, compelling music. To have that, and come to this cold, narrow-minded, inhospitable place—that is courage indeed.’’

There was a sudden passion in his voice, a pain, a longing, that seemed to echo that in her own heart. ‘‘I have not always found England to be so terrible.’’

‘‘I—no. It is not all one could wish for, of course, but what is? I often miss the sun, and the way the sea looks there, so very different from the cold waves here. But there are compensations. Such as tonight.’’

His dark brows drew down. ‘‘Tonight? You enjoy being knocked unconscious and falling in the snow, then? You are a strange female.’’

Antoinette laughed, feeling an odd rush of sudden lightness. ‘‘Of course not! Snow is horrible. So cold. But if all that had not happened, I would not have met a new friend.’’

Those brows arched up in surprise, as if the word ‘‘friend’’ was one he had not heard in a very long time. Then he chuckled, a sound more warming than the fire and the tea. ‘‘Indeed, Miss Duvall. I would have been most unhappy to be deprived of making your acquaintance.’’

‘‘And, considering everything we have been through this evening, could you perhaps call me Antoinette? Just for tonight?’’

‘‘It is a bargain—Mark.’’ Antoinette took a biscuit from the plate and settled back happily in her chair. Despite everything—her injuries, the cold, her spell gone awry—she felt more content here in this tiny, bare cottage than she had in a very long time.

‘‘I think that captaining a navy vessel is far braver than anything I could have ever done,’’ she said. ‘‘And far more exciting besides.’’

Mark shrugged, and reached for a biscuit of his own. ‘‘A few. But they are hardly suitable for a lady’s ears.’’

‘‘Ah, yet as we have established, I am not your typical English lady. Come now, Mark. We have many hours until dawn. Tell me some of your sea tales.’’

He gazed into the fire, perhaps trying to recall a story that was not too gruesome, or too personal. Antoinette doubted he would tell her how he came to get his scars—not yet, anyway. Their friendship was too new, too delicate.

Antoinette was a patient woman, though. One day, he would tell her. And it was the Christmas season, after all—a season when anything was possible. She had not believed that before, but now she was beginning to.

‘‘When I was a mere ensign,’’ he began, ‘‘I was sent to the West Indies, to Jamaica in fact, and there an old sea captain told me a most fanciful story indeed. . . .’’