Margaret McPhee - A Magical Regency Christmas - Christmas Cinderella / Finding Forever at Christmas / The Captain's Christmas Angel

He had been very, very lucky. Blessed. And his widowed mother had been able to live out her days in safety and peace. He knew of other women, bereft of family and fortune, who had not been so lucky.

He will lead me to lie down in green pastures...

Counting his blessings was one thing, but if he lay down in this particular pasture right now he’d catch his death of cold and Mrs Judd would be more than annoyed at the waste of his good supper, so he hurried on.

* * *

He didn’t enjoy his solitary meal nearly as much as the walk. It wasn’t Mrs Judd’s excellent cooking, but the fact that there was no one to share it with him. He had shared the rectory with his predecessor and mentor Matthias Rutherford for several years before the old man’s death earlier that year.

Rutherford had resigned the living a year earlier, but stayed on in the rectory, increasingly frail, but alert. It had been like losing his father again. Worse, in a way, because this time he had known exactly what he was losing. He had known Rutherford far better than his own father. And now Christmas was coming, the first without the old fellow. Grief was no stranger; he had buried his mother and his elder cousin, Dominic’s brother Richard. It was part of his calling to comfort the bereaved. Sometimes he thought it might be nice for the comforter to be comforted...

He caught himself up at once, rising from his chair and deliberately sloughing off the melancholy that had crept over him. Grief was one thing, self-pity quite another. One of the more insidious sins. And he had comforters: Dominic, Pippa, even little Emma and Philip. He chuckled, remembering Emma’s critique of his handling of Philip.

Still, it would be something to have a companion. Someone to share the rectory with him. Someone with whom to talk on quiet evenings. Someone to share his now solitary post-dinner brandy and assist with the parish.

Now that he thought about it, the more he realised what an idiot he’d been not to think of it earlier. His gaze fell on the chess table, its armies frozen for the past ten months. It was obvious: he needed a curate, one who played a decent game of chess and could take up the post of village schoolmaster.

* * *

In the opinion of Miss Hippolyta Woodrowe, Cinderella was a complete ninnyhammer. Of course, Cinderella had been extremely lucky. But in Miss Woodrowe’s opinion it was a great deal better not to rely on luck. Let alone relying on Prince Charming to gallop up waving a glass slipper to save a damsel from destitution.

Having foolishly cast her cousin Tom in that role two years ago, Polly Woodrowe had learned her lesson. Prince Definitely-not-so-Charming preferred to forget your very existence, let alone your claim on his affections, once your fortune was gone.

She snorted. Easier to believe in the fairy transforming pumpkin, rat, mice and lizards into an equipage suitable for a princess, than that Prince Charming would still have loved Cinderella when he found her in rags.

‘Toss her down the Palace steps more likely,’ she muttered, as she walked along the village street. Of course, it seemed that Cinderella had been sweet-natured almost to a fault, because not only did she never become bad-tempered at her lot, but she actually forgave her beastly stepsisters in the end.

Clearly Cinderella had possessed a much nicer character than Polly Woodrowe could lay claim to. Cinderella had waited patiently, suffering in stoic silence, waiting for her prince. Polly felt like kicking someone. Several someones.

In the two years since her remaining trustee had explained that her fortune was gone, gambled away by his fellow trustee’s son, Polly had learnt to depend upon herself. She shivered a little and lengthened her step. Only the other day her younger cousin, Susan, had complained that, ‘Hippolyta walks much too fast. Ladies shouldn’t stride so, should they, Mama?’ Well, a lady who wanted to keep warm in a cloak of inferior quality, and reach her destination before her toes froze quite off, walked as swiftly as she could. Especially if she wanted the officially sanctioned errand to the village shop to cover her real goal.

And there it was—the rectory gate. Her stomach churned at what she was about to do. Perhaps Mr Martindale would not be home. He might be out visiting parishioners, or...or burying someone. Her steps slowed. He was bound to be out. She could return another time. Or not at all. He would think her forward. Pushy. Her aunt thought she was pushy now. When she had still been wealthy her father’s merchant status hadn’t mattered. Now apparently she gave herself airs, her father’s connection with trade abhorrent to her cousins...

She hesitated. Since when had she cared what a mere country rector might think of her? But she had always liked Alex Martindale. A much older schoolboy, he’d been kind to the little girl visiting her cousins. Sometimes she’d watched him going to and fro from his lessons at the rectory, dazzled when he’d given her a kindly greeting. The same friendly greeting he’d given to the village children, a smile in the grey eyes—the Alex Martindale she remembered was not one to look down on those less fortunate than himself.

People changed, though. Or perhaps as you got older you simply learned more about them. A great deal of it unpleasant. She knew a pang of regret for the innocent young girl who’d had a definite tendre for a handsome boy. Brought up to know her duty, she had obediently turned her eyes to her Cousin Tom, who she was assured by her aunt had a great fondness for her.

She snorted and kicked at a clod of mud. Alex Martindale had probably changed anyway. Everyone grew up. And her idea was a foolish one, especially since it would be bound to get back to her aunt and cause even more trouble.

Polly had half-turned away from the rectory gate when she realised what she was doing: giving in before she’d tried, bowing meekly to her fate instead of doing something about it as she had decided yesterday while her cousins were in church. Her aunt had decreed her bonnet and cloak far too shabby to attend church with the family—although apparently not too shabby to walk in to the village on an errand today—and there had been a pile of mending. So if Mr Martindale thought her an ungrateful, grasping, ill bred—that comment of Aunt Eliot’s had really stung—pushy baggage who gave herself airs, then so be it. That pile of mending had been the final straw in a week of slights and snubs.

Gritting her teeth, she stiffened her wilting spine and set her hand to the gate. He would either listen to her, or not. Think ill of her, or not. A lady with only herself to depend on could not afford scruples about being thought forward. And if she had not her own good opinion, then that of others counted for nothing.

* * *

‘Miss Woodrowe to see you, Rector.’

Alex looked up from the letter he was writing to the bishop, outlining his plans for the school and his intention to employ a curate. ‘Miss Woodrowe?’ For a moment he was puzzled. Then it came to him. Miss Hippolyta Woodrowe, of course. Niece to Sir Nathan Eliot, that was it. The wealthy Miss Woodrowe. Heiress to a mill-owner. Quite possibly the fortune had been exaggerated, but she had visited often with her widowed mother, a welcome and fêted guest, even as a child and young girl.

‘Show her in, Mrs Judd.’ He put his pen back in its holder and rose as Mrs Judd stood back to admit his visitor. He frowned. Perhaps it was the light. The day was gloomy and he’d only lit the lamp on his desk, but he could not reconcile his memory of the lively, well-dressed Miss Woodrowe, who had always had a shy smile for him, with this unsmiling young woman in the drab cloak with its mud-spattered hem. Perhaps he was remembering the wrong girl?