“You must admit he is very handsome,” Felicity insisted as she and Sophia finished wreathing the doorknocker in greenery and ribbons. Sophia had been drafted into the job since Cedrica had gone to organise a room for Lord Elfingham, although where she would put him in the crowded house, Sophia had no idea.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” Sophia reminded her.
Elfingham had behaved very handsomely indeed, showing no offence at Felicity’s rudeness or Hythe’s. He had taken his horse to the stables, accompanied by a group of young men to whom he was explaining the horse’s virtues. Hythe, who would sooner cut off his arm than join them, nonetheless followed the horse with his eyes before seeking consolation in the billiards room with Hamner.
Felicity echoed her thoughts. “He has beautiful manners, Sophia. You know he does.”
Sophia could not help but nod. She had noticed his manners when they first met. The exotic horseman in his foreign robes, his dark eyes meeting hers, had inclined his head politely and spoken in perfectly enunciated English.
What a fool he must have thought her. She had been near speechless—from the horror and excitement of the child’s near escape, of course. She was twenty-five and well beyond being overset by a charming smile and an attractive person, however tall and broad and well put together.
She thought about this morning’s dream and shivered, but Felicity did not notice. She was still enumerating Lord Elfingham’s virtues. “He dances divinely, and he does not assume that the person with whom he is dancing is a brainless ninny.”
Sophia nodded again. He was as graceful on the dance floor as he was on horseback, with a way of focusing all of his attention on his partner.
“Do you think the horse is really injured?” Felicity asked. “It does seem a coincidence, him turning up like this.”
“It was limping,” Sophia said, keeping her speculations to herself.
Had he followed Felicity here, to the Haverford house party? How audacious if he had!
Again, Felicity’s thoughts marched with hers. “I think it very romantic if he has followed us, Sophia. Into the very jaws of his enemy! They say,” she dropped her voice to a thrilled whisper, “the Duke of Haverford and the Earl of Sutton cut one another in the actual presence of the Prince Regent. Cut one another dead!”
“We shall not repeat gossip, Felicity.” Sophia tied the last ribbon and deftly twitched its loops into position. “There. We are done. Step back and see what you think.”
Over her sister’s shoulder, Sophia could see Lord Elfingham and the other young men returning from the stables. Hythe would not agree to a match between Lord Elfingham and Felicity, not unless the House of Lords found in Lord Sutton’s favour, and perhaps not even then. She refused to allow the thought to console her.
“Come. Let us go and see how the decorating is going in the parlour,” she said. She would remove Felicity before the tempting man could reach them. This time. It would be a long few days until Lord Elfingham was on his way again.
“How did you come to be in this part of the country?” Lady Felicity asked James.
Lady Sophia, sitting across the dinner table from them, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
James let his amusement at the interrogation colour his voice as he answered. “I went to York on an errand for my father, Lady Felicity, and was heading back to London to keep Christmas with my family, with a saddle bag full of presents for the children.” He shrugged. It was true, though they would keep the feast on the sixth of January according to ancient custom, rather than the twenty-fifth of December as the Western church did.
“You celebrate Christmas? Are you a Christian then? I thought you would be a Mahometan.”
Lady Sophia took advantage of the more casual dining rules Her Grace encouraged to hiss her outrage across the table. “Felicity!”
“Lord Elfingham does not mind, Sophia. Do you, Lord Elfingham?”
Not at all, James realised. The child’s naive curiosity was refreshing after the sly innuendoes and baseless assumptions he faced wherever he went. “I am happy to answer honest questions, Lady Sophia,” he assured the elder sister. “Curiosity is natural, and I would rather be asked than for people to make up their own stories.”
“Then answer it.” Hythe’s impatient response from his place some distance along the table showed his mind was on keeping watch over his sisters, rather than his own dinner partner.
Lady Sophia turned her indignant glare on her brother.
James smiled at Lady Sophia and ignored Hythe. “I am a Christian, Lady Felicity, as are my whole family, though some of the people of my father’s kingdom—my brother’s now—follow the way of Islam. Our church was founded in the first century; some say by the Magi when they came back from seeing the baby Jesus, while some say by the Apostle James.”
His answer raised more questions, and he found himself describing Christmas at home to an audience of half the table.
Not all. James had been grateful to discover that the Duke of Haverford was not in attendance; it would have been difficult to be polite to the man. He had his supporters, though.
One haughty woman had already snubbed him as they met in the drawing room before dinner. She sniffed before ostentatiously looking away. She now sat near the head of the table not far from the duchess, talking to a man James knew to be in the Haverford camp on the legitimacy question. Hythe was seated at the illustrious end, too. James preferred the company here, near the foot.
The bright-eyed girl Lady Felicity had introduced as her friend, Esther Baumann, looked around with transparent delight, obviously happy to be at any end of the table. She held back when the others commented on the Christmas traditions he had been raised in, comparing them with their own.
He thought to please Lady Sophia by involving her sister’s friend. “Miss Baumann, how does your family celebrate?”
The girl blushed, looked down at her plate, and then opened her mouth.
Hamner interrupted, with a smile for the girl and a sneer for James. “Miss Baumann is a Hebrew, Elfingham.”
“Ah!” James said. “My apologies, Miss Baumann, for making an assumption. You have your own festivals, of course. Khanuká was in November this year, was it not?”
Miss Baumann flicked him a surprised glance, and he smiled warmly. She must feel as out of place here as he did. “My father’s kingdom had many People of the Book, as the followers of the Prophet call them: we are Christians, but our people also included Jews and Múslimun. Zoroastrans, too, and stranger faiths from the far reaches of the Silk Roads.”
“Sounds like your father’s kingdom was a paradise. Perhaps you should have stayed there,” Hamner grumbled.
“Are you really a prince, then, Lord Elfingham?” He wasn’t sure which of the blue-eyed blondes he’d been introduced to in the drawing room this little debutante was, taking in his deliberately English appearance with wide eyes.
“A bey, my people would say. Not in England, my lady. Here, I am a mere viscount.”
He kept his eyes on the lady, but caught the edge of a glare from both Hamner and Hythe.
Lady Felicity took up the questions. “You said your brother’s kingdom now. Is he the oldest then?”
“I am my father’s eldest son,” James explained. “But inheritance in the kaganates of the Kopet Dag goes to the one chosen, who may not be the eldest. And,” his shrug dismissed the loss, “my father needed me in England. So, Matthew became kagan in my father’s stead, and here I am.”
He had understood since he was twelve that he might be called on to sacrifice all he had ever known and travel half way around the world to take up the life his own father had rejected. He’d prayed fervently, every morning and every night, for the safety and health of Charlotte’s and Sarah’s brother, the one who stood between him and this fate. Then they’d received news of the man’s death, beginning the slow nightmare of waiting for his uncle’s death to split his own family in two and tear him from the land he loved and the nephews and nieces he cherished.
The questions kept coming, until the duchess stood, giving the signal for the other ladies to leave. James rose with the gentlemen, and watched them as they followed their hostess through the doors that connected with the drawing room.
“A port, Elfingham?” asked the gentleman who had moved to the seat to his left. He was clearly prepared to be friends, and James should probably stay and be civil. His tiredness won over his mission to charm the ton, but he smiled sincerely as he made his explanation. “Thank you, my lord. But I travelled a long way today, and I must seek my bed if I am to be in time for the Christmas service.”
That fetched a few raised eyebrows and another hostile glare from Hythe.
“I do not imagine I shall be up in time to attend church,” one man commented cautiously, and was reassured by a chorus of agreement.
James just grinned. “I will perhaps see you later in the day then.”
As he made his way across the hall, the footman stationed there answered a knock on the door. James paused to see the new arrivals. The first, he knew. The Marquis of Aldridge, elder son of the Haverfords, undoubtedly here to spend Christmas Day with his mother. The other was enough alike to be a brother. Aldridge had one, but he was somewhere overseas; in Russia, James had heard.
Aldridge murmured something to the footman that had him hurrying almost at a run to the drawing room. Aldridge and his companion had barely divested themselves of coats, hats and mufflers before the duchess rushed into the hall and hurled herself at the other man.
“Jonathan. Jonathan. I had no idea. When did you get back? How are you? Let me look at you.” She hugged and patted the newcomer, pushed him away to take him all in, then hauled him close for another hug, all the time babbling, laughing, and weeping. The prodigal son was back for his fatted calf, apparently. “Jonathan, you are home. Oh, my dear, I am so glad. I could not have asked for a better Christmas present.”
From the doors of the drawing room and dining hall, other guests spilled into the hall to see what the commotion was about.
James watched Lady Sophia smiling at the duchess and her two sons. He understood the duchess’s sentiment. If he could ask for the Christmas present of his choice, it would be Lady Sophia as his bride.