Advent Calendar 22nd December.
A Duke for Christmas
by Lara Temple.
Part 1.
The Golden Giant
was neither golden nor a giant.
But at least it
was warm.
Marcus took the
cracked tankard of ale the publican handed him and wondered what on earth there
was in this tiny road side inn to attract so many people, especially on what
he'd belatedly remembered was Christmas eve.
He's only stopped because
of Brutus. It was one thing for him to almost freeze to death. Quite another
for Brutus. After six years of faithful service carrying him across Portugal,
Spain and France, suffering thirst, famine and enemy fire, Brutus deserved
better than to become a hunk of frozen meat on the side of a country lane. He
had been far too confident he would remember the way to Nethercote, and if dark
hadn't fallen so early, perhaps he might have. But Even if it was only a few
miles away, he didn't want those miles to be his faithful friend's last.
Marcus rubbed his
eyes. He had not slept well since he arrived in England from France and hadn't
eaten since morning. He meant to stop somewhere on his way to Nethercote, but
so long as Brutus kept going, he fell into the old practice of moving when
nothing stopped them.
If Brutus hadn’t
stumbled on a patch of ice in the dark, nearly sliding into the narrow scar of
a ditch, he probably would still be out there, trying to remember which of the
hedged lanes was the one to the estate he inherited along with his lamented
title.
So instead of the
monstrous dining hall at Nethercote, he would eat his supper in the crowded
public room along with what looked to be every man, woman, and child in the
county. The only place there was any space was an invisible circle around Marcus
himself.
He was clearly
being given space.
At first he
thought it was his scar. It had certainly put off people in London, and at
least once with spectacular effect. But as he thawed out of his apathy he
noticed quite a few of the people present were even more damaged. This
recognition was followed by the realization, both sad and strangely comforting,
that he was not the only decommissioned soldier in this tiny inn. Which was
peculiar, to say the least.
But even that
strange comfort of being tossed back to the peculiar camaraderie of war wasn't
enough to combat the smell or the noise. For years he had been surrounded by
men in various states of dirt, noise and though not quite inured to a lack of
privacy and space, he accepted it as another price of war.
But after seven
years in the army he was no longer at war and so he drank the rest of his ale
and ate the bread and surprisingly good cheese and tried to gather the strength
to go find the palette in a narrow back room which was the only accommodation
the inn could offer. He was just rising when a hush fell on the room. For a
moment he thought it was some reaction to his movement, perhaps his scar was
even more intimidating than he had realized, but then the man seated closest to
him patted the table and leaned over, whispering.
'About to start.'
That was it.
Something in the quiet certainty of those words made him sit once more.
The hush shifted
to a murmur of approval and a squeaking of benches and chairs as bottoms
settled more comfortably.
'Good evening,
everyone.'
Marcus
straightened abruptly at the voice. It wasn't merely that it was female and
well-bred. It was older, deeper – definitely deeper – but the last time he had
heard it was in an orchard probably not many miles from there and absurdly he
remembered it.
The men and women
answered almost as a chorus.
'Good Evening,
Miss Alton.'
Miss Alton. Genna
Alton, younger sister of the woman who had jilted him seven years ago and made
a fool of him, but mostly of herself, last week.
He could still
hear Charlotte Alton’s voice as she turned and saw him seated on Brutus at the
end of Rotten Row in Hyde Park, her beautiful golden curls peeping artfully
from the high poke bonnet lined with silk as cornflower blue as her eyes which
widened alarmingly as her gaze took in the damaged skin along his cheek and
neck. Even in shock she was a picture of soft loveliness, but her voice was
high and unnatural as she blurted out that damning sentence
‘Oh no! You used
to be so handsome!’
Her expression of
horror had been almost, almost comical. Something a poor actress would adopt in
a stage farce when confronted by some poorly constructed Gothic spirit. It had
marred her own beauty, but less permanently than his scars.
He wondered if she
would have found the strength to hide her aversion if she had been better
prepared for the state of his face. Probably. His newly earned title and
fortune were some incentive to practice. Or perhaps he was being unjust to her.
Even as these
thoughts rose up again in his mind like bile, they fell back again because Miss
Genna Alton began to speak. It hardly occurred to him to wonder what on earth
she was doing in this place, reading a book to this motley crowd, when her
voice and the story she began reading pulled him away from that sordid scene in
Hyde Park and straight into the story she was reading, robbing him of the power
or critical thought.
‘From the cliff
the Nile was a great silver snake, shimmering with venom. Scarred crocodiles
sunned themselves among the papyrus reeds, their jaws open with delight at the
prospect of more fools wishing to reach the temple on the other side.
‘You shall not
cross. Not whole, at least.
‘The Sprite took
Adam’s hand, her palm a wisp of breath against his hot skin. ‘It must be done,
Adam. But I have no power once we touch water. It is that or accept that Japheth
has won.’
A rumble of denial
and condemnation spread like thunder through the room. The same man who bid Marcus
sit tapped his fist several times on the table, muttering under his breath.
‘Never! Never!’
Genna Alton looked
up from the book, her grey-blue eyes alight with laughter
‘Do you think Adam
will baulk at a few crocodiles?’ she challenged and the rumble became a roar of
‘nay!’s
She had changed so
much. The scruffy girl of seventeen was gone and with it the rather serious
frown that often marred her pixie-ish face. Charlotte had often called her the
family cuckoo because she looked so different from the ethereal Altons –
smaller, with brown rather than golden hair, and grey-blue eyes rather than the
dazzling crystalline blue of her older sister and brother.
That day in the
orchard she had warned him that Charlotte would not marry him on soldier’s pay,
not even for the Dukedom he would eventually inherit. And they had argued. As
usual. Unlike her lovely older sister, Genna had a gift for rubbing people the
wrong way. That summer they had argued so often Mrs Alton had begun concocting
all manner of excuses to ensure her daughter disappeared when he came to call.
But though she was
as argumentative as Socrates with a thorn in his backside, she had been quite
right about her sister. His offer of marriage was accepted with all due flattery,
but the excuse of their state of mourning for her father’s death earlier that
year coupled with and his departure for the war, eased her way to postpone any
official announcement. He was hurt but not surprised when her letters, never
very informative, spaced out. He himself was finding corresponding with her
slow going. He was surprised and hurt to hear of her very advantageous marriage
a year later, though.
He was even more
surprised to receive a letter from her a year ago. When he didn’t answer, being
too taken up in recovering from the effects of an ambush in the Pyrenees to
even manage a polite dismissal, it was followed by more letters.
The crowning glory
reached the day after the battle of Toulouse, achieving an impressive feat of
postal delivery. It was a tangle of flowery sentences about youthful mistakes,
how hard and lonely it had been for her when he left to war, the impact of the
loss of her father, and even a hint that Lord Vincent had taken advantage of
her youthful credulity. The latter made Marcus raise his brows – he knew poor
Robert Talgarth from school and the fellow was far too amiable for the role
Charlotte Alton cast him in. The letter had ended with a flattering assertion
that her heart had always been his. If he could but return safely to England,
perhaps…
She was, in short
– widowed, moderately wealthy, and waiting.
And he had been
amused, annoyed, a little flattered, and little curious.
His answer had
been accordingly – polite and completely non-committal. He had no interest in
renewing his acquaintance with Charlotte Alton. But when he returned to London
curiosity had won out and he had gone to view the only woman he had been
foolish enough to love and who now offered herself so prettily to a man she had
not seen in almost seven years.
He hadn’t
consciously chosen Hyde Park as the place to renew their acquaintance. Fate had
made that choice. He had recognized her immediately, standing in a small group
of men and women on the grass several yards from where he was riding with a
fellow decommissioned officer along Rotten Row.
She was still
strikingly beautiful and he waited a little uneasily for the thudding heartbeat
that had accompanied encounters with her near his uncle’s home at Nethercote.
They did come but for the absolutely wrong reason. She turned, recognition
lighting her eyes but then as her gaze moved over his face the feline
contentment vanished and the words burst out of her, high pitched and
protesting, like steam escaping a kettle.
‘Oh, no, Marcus!
You used to be so handsome!’
He knew the
effects of shock and could not really blame her for such childish crudeness.
Shock tended to strip people and wrong foot them. But when she turned away, her
hand gesturing to him to stand back, as if he was threatening to approach, her
second sentence was no longer born of shock but straight from her own
selfishness.
‘That is not fair!
You should have warned me you were scarred!’
Even with all the
bustle of the park the hush around them was audible. Despite everything he felt
anger and disappointment – at himself and at her. But also pity – he knew with
some guilty satisfaction her precious society would hold her accountable for
such revealing cruelty. Other might cringe at the damage to his face, but they
were rather more careful about revealing their distaste.
It was as Genna
Alton had told him that day in the orchard:
‘Lottie will never
love you as much a she adores herself. She won’t trust you unless you idolize
her.
You may be intelligent and handsome but that
isn’t enough. You must either showcase her or provide her the means to do so.
Deep down she knows you won’t idolize her, and since the current Duke is only
forty she cannot count on spending his wealth while she is still young.
One day you will
disappoint her and you will be to blame.
How old would
Genna Alton she be now? If charlotte was twenty five, Genna would be twenty
three. Her sister had changed but Genna looked very different from his memory.
She had certainly learned to smile. Her eyes slanted upwards at the corners,
two dimples bracketing a surprisingly full mouth. Against all reason he tensed
as her gaze moved over her crowd. And stopped. The stormy blue grey became very
evident as her eyes widened, her gaze moving over his face. His scar tingled as
her eyes slid down the raw slice of the bayonet.
He waited for her
to mirror her sister’s response. Her eyes didn’t slink downwards or away as
people so often did but compassion was almost worse than disgust. Then she
smiled again, a totally different smile.
He leaned back,
utterly present. His heart, which had been working away with boring monotony,
suddenly set off like a barrel bouncing down a boulder-strewn hill. His hands
and feet had been thawing but they suddenly blazed and every hair on his body
rose on alert. It was like the call of ‘Voltigeurs!’ while riding through the
ravines in the Pyrenees together with the onset of heatstroke and thirst after
hours of marching in the Iberian sun.
It lasted no more
than the space of a breath and she was looking down at the book, picking up
where she stopped. He didn’t listen, didn’t hear a word, just sat in shock as
his body slowly unraveled the chaotic tangle it had plunged into. Until all
that was left was the insistent throbbing that stretched from his throat to his
groin – a column of utterly surprising agony. Not once in all his thirty years
had he experienced such a cannonade of lust. He certainly hadn’t expected to
feel it for a young woman with only passable looks who knew him for a fool and
spent a whole long ago summer picking fights with him.
The groans dragged
him back to reality. The shifting and shuffling as people rose. The man next to
him leaned in again.
‘She’ll be back on
Wednesday if you’re in the area, soldier. But not here. At the House.’
‘The House?’
‘Hope House.
That’s why you’re here, aren’t you?’
‘I…no. I am on my
way to Nethercote.’
The man sat back.
‘Forgive me, I
thought… seeding as you’re a soldier.’
‘I am. But what is
Hope House?’
‘House for the
likes of us. From the war and down on our luck. If you need a roof over your
head for a day or a year, and help finding honest work. Just half a mile away
and Miss Alton usually does her readings there but the painters were in the big
hall and Mrs Reed, a real dragon, she is, said she won’t have us all brushing
against her newly painted walls until they’re good and dry so Miss said we’d
take the public room here rather than miss the reading. Every Monday and
Wednesday evening.’
He nodded and
left, smiling at Genna as she stood by the innkeeper and his wife. Marcus
stood, willing her to turn. When she did he waited for her eyes to stray and
fall from his scars again but her eyes were on his with the same disconcerting
directness he remembered from seven years ago. She crossed the room and stood
on the other side of the wooden table.
‘Hello Marcus.
What on earth are you doing here?’
***
Come back tomorrow for the last part of this story and if you were enjoying it, please take a look at the following links and follow Lara Temple. She is an amazing writer!
Happy Reading!
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