Rafe’s horse had slipped, likely from fatigue, for the snow wasn’t that deep.
“Spend more effort guiding that creature, and less haranguing me, and you won’t risk his hide.”
“I’m trying to guide your perishing self,” Rafe said, patting his horse. “Thankless, hopeless job though it is, and this being Christmas too.”
The Yuletide season was an ironic time for Leo to become engaged. He’d once dreamed of children and a future with a woman who’d have made a wonderful mother and a devoted wife. Marielle Redford had been his best friend, his dearest delight, and then she’d become his deepest regret.
Now she would be nothing but a memory, which was for the best. She’d married another, Leo had gone for a soldier—not in that order—and life had moved on, one bitter, bleak mile at a time.
“See what you’ve gone and done,” Rafe said, half a mile later. “You’ve lamed my poor, wee Wellington with your mad scheme.”
Wellington stood eighteen hands in his bare feet, could pull a laden canal barge without breaking a sweat, and—unlike his owner—was the soul of uncomplaining calm. He’d been a gift from Leo to Rafe years ago, and the pair took excellent care of each other.
“He’s not lame,” Leo said, assessing the horse’s gait. “He’s tired of listening to you whine and prattle, as am I, as is Beowulf.”
Leo’s horse shook his reins, suggesting at least one creature in all of creation still had some respect for his employer.
“I tell you, the old boy’s going off, just like he did north of Toulouse.”
Which, thankfully, had been more than two years ago. “He wasn’t lame, he was simply tired and you were drunk.”
Leo obliged Rafe with further argument for the next two miles, mostly so they’d both stay awake. The wind howled, the horses plodded onward, and London came inevitably nearer. Leo was riding toward his future, toward marriage to a woman of suitable rank to marry a marquess.
Somehow, years ago, Marielle Redford had managed to walk up the church aisle and put youthful dreams behind her. How had she done it, and had she spared a thought for the young man who’d once loved her more than life itself?
“We’re stopping at the next inn,” Rafe declared. “A man who’s served the crown loyally for years deserves to use a chamber pot in a nice cozy parlor rather than freeze his pizzle off in the inn yard. I could also use a toddy, should some kind soul be interested in preserving me from a cruel death on the road. A plate of cheese toast wouldn’t go amiss either.”
They’d reached a hamlet west of Chelsea. Leo hadn’t been here for years, hadn’t let himself acknowledge that his travels would take him past this monument to his dashed hopes.
“Looks like a right, snug establishment with a proper respect for the joyous season,” Rafe observed.
The Ox and Ass was festooned with pine roping, wreaths hung in the windows, and red ribbons had been twined about the porch pillars. Evening was an hour away, but the lamps in the yard were already lit, and two noisy boys were pelting each other with snowballs.
“We’ll stop long enough to rest the horses and get warm,” Leo said. “Then we push on to Chelsea, because I must be punctual for my appointment tomorrow morning. A gentleman does not keep a lady waiting, no matter the weather.”
Or the holiday.
“A gentleman,” Rafe said, “does not marry a lady he’s never met, nor undertake his courting in the office of a bedamned, useless, sniveling solicitor on Boxing Day.”
Next Rafe would visit the topic of the head injury Leo had supposedly sustained at Badajoz, or the daft notions of the Quality, for if nothing else, acquiring a title had promoted Leo from gentry to Quality.
“My solicitors don’t snivel,” Leo retorted. They fawned though, and they sent along bills for services at a great rate.
“Methinks you need a toddy,” Rafe said. “The cold has gone to your brain.”
“For once, I agree with you. A toddy is in order, and we can drink to the health of my bride.” Leo’s potential bride. Nobody had signed any settlements, nobody had agreed to anything, but Leo was prepared to be generous.
“He’s gone barmy,” Rafe informed his horse. “Poor sod left the better part of himself on the battlefields, and this damned title has about finished off his common sense. What has the world come to, when a man whose bravery was noted by Old Hooky himself, an officer whose men marched through hell for him without complaint…”
Rafe’s litany continued as they rode into the inn yard, ceasing only when the ordeal of dismounting had to be faced. Leo swung down carefully, and his frozen feet accepted his weight with a predictable agony of protest.
Nothing for it, but to solider on. Leo hoped the woman he was to court was more sanguine about their union than he could be. Fate had landed him at the last place he’d kissed Marielle, and the least he could do was raise a warm glass of spirits to feckless dreams and the woman who’d inspired them.
The dreariest excuse for a Christmas Day blew snow squalls about beneath a bleak sky beyond the window of Marielle’s sitting room.
“I was an idiot for choosing to spend the night here.” A sentimental idiot.
“Yes, milady,” Petunia muttered as she poured Marielle another cup of tea.
“You aren’t supposed to agree with me that easily,” Marielle countered, returning to her seat near the fire. The room was chilly, except for the small area near the hearth circled with fire screens. Even there, the carpeted floor was drafty.
“Yes, milady. I mean, no milady.” Petunia passed Marielle a teacup that did not match its saucer. “Shall I ask the innkeeper’s wife for a tisane, milady?”
Milady, milady, milady. Marielle had been born a plain miss, and then she’d become Lady Drew Semple, wife to the third son of a marquess. Nearly a decade after speaking her vows, she still wasn’t comfortable being addressed as my lady.
Which she’d just have to get over.
“I do not need a tisane. Traveling at the holidays ought not to agree with anybody.”
Petunia’s face was carefully expressionless, suggesting she’d heard the talk about Marielle’s ancient history. A competent companion walked a slippery path between status as a family member—Petunia was a cousin-in-law at some remove on the Semple side—and the upper servants. She was unfailingly polite, but never quite warm.
As Marielle’s feet hadn’t been warm for days. “I have good memories of this inn,” Marielle said, rubbing one slippered foot over the other.
She also had sad memories.
Petunia wrapped a linen towel about the tea pot. “I had the maid put your sheets on the beds, and we’ve a private dining room reserved for supper.”
A Christmas feast, the innkeeper had said, though from what Marielle had seen, nobody else had been demented enough to travel on Christmas Day, braving weather that would freeze Lucifer’s ears off.
“You might as well eat the shortbread, Petunia. I don’t care for it.” Leopold had loved shortbread, and so Marielle had made it for him at Yuletide, batch after batch. When adolescence had begun adding inches to his height at a great rate, he’d gone so far as to put both butter and jam on his shortbread.