Sophia James: Mistletoe Magic

‘I am sorry to be so late, Lizzie,’ she said, stopping as bright emerald eyes met his own. Another beauty, but of a different mould.

‘This is Mr Lucas Clairmont, Hope. He has come from London today to see you and your sister.’

Hope’s eyes went to Charity’s and a communication passed between them. A silent language of perception and accord.

‘Very pleased to meet you, sir.’ She curtsied in a way reminiscent of another age.

‘Mrs Poole tells me you spend a lot of time outdoors. What things do you do there?’

‘We fish sometimes for the dinner table, and collect this cress. If we are lucky, we bag hares or wild birds and in the spring we steal the eggs from the nests that are low in the hedgerows.’

‘So this bounty is your doing?’ he replied, gesturing to the food on the table.

‘Some of it is, sir. Winter is the most difficult time to gather, but come spring we can find all sorts of berries and mushrooms and even wild tomatoes.’

‘So your sister helps you?’

‘Of course.’ She flashed a smile and the other nodded. Tonight Charity appeared a lot more worried than she had a few hours ago but Hope picked up quickly on her fright, settling herself on the other side of the girl and again that wordless communication that excluded everyone in the room.

‘They are very close, sir. If anyone were to split them up…’

‘I have not come here to do that.’

‘This house is the only home they have ever known and were they to be thrown out…’

‘I have not come to do that, either.’

‘Their mother was perhaps a trifle wild, I realise that, but Charity and Hope have never caused us even a moment’s worry.’

Luc placed his eating utensils down and laid his hands on the table. ‘Thackeray led me to believe the girls were being looked after in the manner my late wife would have wished them to be. If I had had any notion of the lack of finance you have put up with for the last God knows how many months-’ he stopped as the old lady winced at his profanity ‘-for the last months,’ he repeated, ‘then I would have been up here a lot sooner.’

‘So we can stay?’ Hope asked the question, the same emotion as her name easily heard in her voice.

‘Indeed you can, and I will see to it as soon as I return to London.’

He left Woodruff Abbey with all of its inhabitants waving him goodbye and a handful of warm potatoes wrapped in cloth that Charity had given him.

The first thing he did when he arrived in the city was to tell the elderly Horatio Thackeray that his services as his lawyer were no longer needed, and set an investigator on to the trail of finding where the money had gone. In his stead he hired a younger and more compassionate man whose reputation had been steadily rising in the city.

‘So you wish for Woodruff Abbey to be kept in trust for the children?’ David Kennedy’s voice contained a tone in it that could most succinctly be described as incredulous.

‘That is correct.’

‘You realise of course that once the deed is filed it is binding and you would have no hope of seeing your property back should you change your mind at a later date?’

‘I do.’

‘You also wish for the monies from the estate to be placed in a fund to see to the running of the Abbey, and for a specified number of servants to be hired to help the older couple?’

‘That is right.’

‘Then if you are certain that that is what you want and you have understood the finality of such a generous gesture, you must sign here. To begin the process, you understand. I shall get back to you within the month when the deeds are written.’

A quick scrawl and it was done. Luc replaced the ink pen in its pot and gathered his hat.

‘There is one proviso, Mr Kennedy.’

The lawyer looked startled.

‘The proviso is that you tell no one of this.’

‘You do not wish others to know of your generosity?’

‘I do not.’

‘Very well, sir. Will that be all today?’

‘No, there is another thing. I am transferring funds from an account I hold here in London, which shall stay in place in case of any shortfall. Under no circumstance at all do I wish for the inhabitants of the Abbey to go without again. If indeed there is any problem at all, I expect to be contacted with as much haste as you could muster to remedy the matter.’

‘That shall be done, sir. Might I also say how pleased I am to have the chance to do business with you-’

‘Thank you,’ Luc cut him short. He had a card game he could not miss that was due to start in just over two hours and he needed to take the omnibus to Piccadilly.

Lillian tucked her diary away in the small console by her bed and told herself that she should not write of her thoughts of Lucas Clairmont.

She had heard that he had been away from London for the past five days, travelling according to Nathaniel Lindsay’s wife, Cassandra, who was the sister of Anne Weatherby. Where, she had no clue, though according to Anne he had left his lodgings and given no idea of when he expected to return.

Presumably it would be before the house party on Friday. She wondered who he knew in England to take him away for such a period and remembered the Countess of Horsham’s scandalous gossip. Lillian shook her head. Surely a man of little means and newly come from the Americas would not have the wherewithal to house any children, let alone those born out of wedlock?

Lucas Clairmont was a mystery, she thought, his accent changing each time she saw him and some dark menace in his golden eyes. Not a man to be trifled with, she decided, and not a man whom others might persuade to take any course he did not wish to, either.

She made her way down to the library on the first floor of the town house and dislodged a book on the Americas that her father had bought a few years earlier. Virginia and Hampton and the wide ragged outline of Chesapeake Bay was easily traced by her fingers and there along a blue line signifying the James River lay Richmond, surrounded by green and at the edge of long tongues of water that wound their way up towards it. What hills and dales did he know? What towns to the east and west had he visited? Charlottesville. Arlington. Williamsburg and Hopewell. All names that she had no knowledge of and only the propensity to imagine.

A knock on the door brought her from her reveries and she called an entry.

‘Lord Wilcox-Rice is here, ma’am, with his sister, Lady Eleanor. He said something of a shopping expedition.’

‘What time is it?’ Lillian asked the question in trepidation.

‘Half past three, miss. Just turned.’

Rising quickly, she was glad that her day dress was one that would not need changing and pleased, too, for the bright sky she could now see outside.

‘Of course. Would you show them through to the blue salon and let them know that I shall be but a moment whilst I fetch my bonnet and coat.’

Ellie Wilcox-Rice was one of Lillian’s favourite acquaintances; in fact, it was probably due to her influence that Lillian had allowed even the talk of an engagement to her friend’s brother to be mooted.

As they walked along Park Lane she laughed at Ellie’s rendition of her Saturday evening at a ball in Kensington, a wearying sort of affair, it seemed.

‘I should have much rather been at the crush of James Cholmondely’s ball.’ Ellie sighed. ‘Jennifer Parker said she had the most wonderful time and that she had danced with an American with whom she fell in love on the spot.’

‘Probably Mr Lucas Clairmont,’ John said, waiting as the girls looked at a shop window, beautifully decorated for the approaching Christmas season. ‘He has all the ladies’ hearts a-racing, I hear, and no one has any idea of who exactly he is.’