Page 6 of A Merry Christmas
The morning had been brisk and busy. At each cottage Joshua had lifted the heavier parcels without flourish, and with a gravity which made thanks easier to offer. He remembered people, too. Not merely faces, but histories: a cow gone barren the year of the bad hay…a son taken to sea…a girl now out at service in Stow. It was unaccountably soothing.
By the time they turned in to the High Street, the sun was a pale coin above the church tower, and the little world of the village was awake. Smoke rose in steady columns, shopkeepers swept their thresholds, and a boy led a stubborn pig past the green with the seriousness of a general before a siege. As they passed the baker’s door, warm clouds of spice and yeast wafted to their appreciative noses. The milliner’s windows bewitched with velvet and feathers for last-minute Christmas gifts. Children skated their boots upon the clear patches of ice as if the lane were a ballroom polished for their capers. Merry loved it all.
“Mrs. Hobson will scold if we are ten minutes late,” she said, knowing already that Mrs. Hobson would scold even if they were ten minutes early.
“Then we must face our punishment,” Captain Fielding returned, with that dry civility which somehow made her smile.
The door to the bakery let out a rush of sweet, yeasty air. Mrs. Hobson herself came bustling out, flour on her apron. “You have missed my currant buns by ten minutes,” she scolded fondly. “But I have some seed cake that will do for a treat to warm you, with a cup of cider.”
As they left the bakery, the distinctive sound of well-sprung wheels and rhythmic clatter of hooves came up behind them. She knew she would see a curricle before she turned her head—perhaps she had been listening for it all morning. Its harness gleamed while its tiger sat with professional insolence, and its master handled the ribbons with a confidence that drew the eye.
Mr. Barnaby Tremaine was very handsome. She was not disposed to be ungrateful to Providence for the fact. He had the sort of dark comeliness that milliners fashioned upon their mannequins when they wished to sell cravats. His hair was as glossy as a rook’s wing, his eyes a bold brown, and his mouth given to an insolent smile. His attire projected the London gentleman, with his coat of the newest cut, his gloves the finest kid, and his boots glossed to a mirror-like shine. Where Captain Fielding was all function turned into grace—broad of shoulder without heaviness, lean and quick, his fair haircropped close as if he still expected to wear a shako—Mr. Tremaine was grace made into a function: a creature designed for drawing rooms, card tables, and the admiration of those who confused expense with taste.
He pulled up just short of the cart and sprang down with elegant ease. “Miss Roxton,” he said, bowing over her hand in a manner calculated to create a small spectacle of the exercise. “If Christmas means angels abroad upon the earth, then I see we are properly observed.”
Merry might have laughed if the speech had been less pleased with itself. “Good morning, Mr. Tremaine. You are abroad very early for a gentleman who does not rise without the promise of a view in the mirror.”
That made him laugh in earnest. He clearly liked impertinence when it came from pretty lips. “Cruelty, Miss Roxton, before noon?” He turned, the bow to the Captain becoming the spare salutation of one man to another when there is history neither will set out before a crowd. “I had not understood you were returned, Fielding.”
“Only yesterday,” Captain Fielding said. His smile, if it could be called such, was the very minimum demanded by civility. “We are delivering hampers.”
“So I perceive. Charity and beef. I applaud the ancient usages. For my small part, I bring nothing but idleness and a long morning before me. Might I steal Miss Roxton from her labours for a turn along the street? I promise to return her before you can miss her.”
Merry’s pulse—the unmanageable traitor—gave a flutter wholly disproportionate to the request. She opened her mouth to make some neat acceptance, and then shut it again, for Captain Fielding had not removed his hand from the reins, and the line of his profile suggested that he did not intend to do so.
“We have yet two households on the lane,” he said. “Mr. Piper, and the widow Fryer.”
Tremaine looked as if he would have liked to argue with the order of the universe, but the tiger coughed, the horses stamped, and two of Mrs. Hobson’s little apprentices came out to stare with eyes the size of pennies. He adjusted his gloves instead. “Then I shall accompany you.It is the least I can do, to witness such virtues. I shall carry a hamper, if it will make me useful.”
Merry saw, with painful clarity, that what Captain Fielding would most like to carry was Mr. Tremaine and set him down at the far end of the county. She saw also that they were three people in a very small patch of winter sunlight, and that the village was always grateful for a show. She smiled, as if such a morning ought always to include a gentleman or two hovering about a cart of good deeds.
“If you carry a hamper, sir,” she said, “you will carry it without sampling.”
“Miss Roxton,” he protested, hand to heart, “you wrong me. I have never sampled anything I did not intend to purchase.”
“Then it is a good thing these are not for sale.”
Captain Fielding’s mouth moved a fraction—whether in amusement or contempt, she could not say.
At Mr. Piper’s, who mended boots and men’s patience in equal measure, Tremaine insisted upon carrying in the hamper and upon setting it down where Mrs. Piper did not wish it at all. Captain Fielding quietly lifted it to the proper place without remark. At Widow Fryer’s, Tremaine took the lead in describing the excellence of the beef and the plum, as if the season, the Scriptures, and the celebration of the same were his invention, while Captain Fielding stooped to make the fire draw and set the kettle to boil. The widow, who was as sharp as misfortune can make one, thanked Tremaine aloud and Fielding with her eyes, and Merry hoped neither gentleman would be vain enough to require more.
On the way between homes, it was impossible that she should not compare them, for they were as unlike as two gentlemen could be, and yet both charmed. There was strength in the Captain—a breadth across the shoulders that did not require a tailor to proclaim it, hands scarred here and there by work he had done whilst never thinking to preserve them from blemish, and a way of moving that suggested he knew where he was at every moment and what the ground beneath him was doing.
Mr. Tremaine, by contrast, was a picture in a print-shop window—a very fine one. But there was in him, sometimes, a note of calculation, as though he had learned too exactly how to be desired, and was now impatient at having to perform the lesson again for duller pupils. Was there more to him then, than a pretty shell?
It was not fair to stand them side by side within her mind and declare a prize. They were not horses, and she was not at Tattersall’s. She was a sensible girl who had waited a very long time for an excitement of her own, and she would not be dissuaded from tasting it, merely because Captain Fielding chose to remember Tremaine as a bully of the schoolroom. Men changed…boys most of all.
“You are quite silent, Miss Roxton,” Tremaine remarked, at the very moment she wished her thoughts were printed somewhere safer than her eyes. “I shall believe I have offended you if you do not abuse me soon.”
“I was reckoning how many pies you have not sampled,” she said.
“There, you see? Every word an injustice.” He bent nearer. “Will you save me two dances on Twelfth Night? I have put my name down upon Miss Lennox’s list, but I confess I came upon it with a pencil.”
“I save no dances before I have seen the company,” she replied. “It is a rule which saves me a world of apologies later.”
“Then I shall keep my evening clear of other claims,” he said, as if gallantry were the same as possession. Tremaine bowed over her hand after helping her into the cart, then departed.
Captain Fielding said nothing at all—only flicked a glance at the cob’s ears and sent the cart forward again.
