Chapter 27

Christmas commeth but once a yeare.

—William Camden, Remaines (1614)

Only at the Fairchilds' Hollowgate or the Wolfes' Beaumond could the entire family gather comfortably, so of course the Fairchilds hosted the feast. And shortly after breakfast and church, the hamper of Beaumond contributions at their feet, the Wolfe coach retraced Beatrice's journey of the day before along the Weeke Road.

"Flossie and Robert and Peter and Robbie are four," William began to count on his fingers. "Lily and Mr. Kenner and Edward and Katy and Henrietta make nine. Then Minta and Carlisle and Dotty is twelve. Plus Tyrone, Aggie, Joanie, and Margaret for sixteen. And we are four, for a total of twenty."

"Twenty-one," said Edmund. "Canal man."

William snapped his fingers. "That's right. The canal man. Clayborne."

"Clayton," corrected Mr. Wolfe.

"Clayton," Willsie agreed. "Twenty-one people!"

"It would have been more," Mrs. Wolfe observed, "if your uncle Charles and aunt Jeanne and cousin Austin weren't in Oxfordshire with Benjamin and his Maria."

"Still," said her son. "Twenty-one! What a hullabaloo this will be."

William was not wrong. The drawing room buzzed with nieces and nephews ranging in age from two months (Henrietta Kenner) to Peter and William and Edmund's thirteen years. The doctor Mr. Carlisle bent to inspect the forehead of a wailing child who had collided with the chimneypiece; Minta pounded on the pianoforte keys to be heard over the din, while Tyrone accompanied her with his fiddle, Aggie dancing with little Joan in her arms. Florence and Lily immediately descended on Mrs. Wolfe to consult her about the meal, and several servants threaded their way through, dispersing after the final instructions for the feast were given. Yet somehow, amidst all this, Beatrice's eyes flew at once to Mr. Clayton, standing quietly beside her brothers-in-law Mr. Kenner and Mr. Fairchild.

As if he belonged there, she thought, detaching little Margaret from about her knees to lift her up for a kiss.

Her stepfather Mr. Wolfe went at once to join them, and Beatrice's younger brothers convened with their cousin and schoolmate Peter as they always did, younger Edward trailing after, upon the older boys' sufferance.

Tearing her eyes from the object of her affections, Beatrice crossed the room to the instruments, sitting beside (or hiding behind) Minta on the bench, but Aggie soon seized her hand. "Help me roll up the carpet! How can we have this great crowd gathered and not dance?"

Seeing their aunts' intentions, the host of children eagerly joined in the efforts. In a twinkling not only the carpet, but every piece of furniture without a person disposed upon it was cleared away, and Beatrice found herself partnered by her nephew Peter when Minta struck into The Merry Merry Milkmaids. Around they whirled and wound and wove, laughing at how Edmund towered over tiny Katy and how Robert swooped Flossie up before she could finish consulting Wilcomb about the puddings. Little Joan and Margaret and the Carlisles' Dotty watched with round eyes, Joan clapping and Dotty sucking her fingers and Margaret hopping up and down as if she yearned to join them.

As she circled, beaming, Beatrice could not but be aware of Mr. Clayton's gaze following her. Unmarried, unengaged Mr. Clayton! Surely he would dance with everyone before the evening was over. Everyone, including her. Surely.

Minta concluded on a thundering chord, to be shooed from her seat by Mrs. Wolfe. "Dance, dance! Everyone—not just the children."

Husbands and wives made their way to each other, Beatrice standing hesitantly by, wondering if her stepfather or Willsie would partner her, but Mr. Wolfe went to turn the music for his wife, and before William could reach Beatrice—

"Miss Ellsworth, if I might have the honor."

She curtseyed, shivering despite the warmth of her exercise when Mr. Clayton took her hand. She had thrown aside her gloves in order to roll the carpet, and he—he must have removed his as well, seeing the informality of the intimate gathering.

When the set was formed, Mrs. Wolfe chose Hole in the Wall, played at a decorous pace and calling out the steps for the sake of the children. Beatrice was sorry the dance did not afford many opportunities for private conversation (if that were even possible when every couple before and behind and beside was composed of her family members), but they managed a little whenever they took hands to lead up the center back to their place.

"I need not wish you a happy Christmas, Miss Ellsworth. This gathering is joy itself."

"My brother William called it a ‘hullabaloo.'"

"Miss Ellsworth—when we reach the bottom of the set—"

"Yes?"

She waited, pulse fluttering, through the corner crosses and the circling with Lily and Simon—

"Might we have a word apart?"

Gladness flooded her. Then their conversation the day before was not all he wished to communicate? He had more to say? If not for her open, glowing look, her reply would have sounded downright flirtatious: "Again? What was yesterday's talk, then?"

More crossing and circling, but the bottom of the room drew nearer.

"Mere preliminaries." As mild as his answer was, the hooded look which accompanied it made Beatrice's breath catch.

Cross, circle, cast, take hands. Cross, circle, cast, take hands. Beatrice's mind worked feverishly. Where could they go? The long gallery would give them privacy, but likely it was chilly in there and servants would be coming and going. The terrace? At least they could not be overheard outside, but they could be seen, and it would be even colder than the gallery. The dining room was out of the question. That left the small parlor. But would Mr. Clayton think such a closeted setting an affront to propriety? After the rumpus of her unauthorized correspondence with Mr. Rotherwood, she hardly wanted to give Mr. Clayton more reason to think her wanting in decorum.

No, no. Better to err on the side of caution.

When they had cast below the Carlisles, Beatrice blurted, "Minta, excuse us. I have to—show Mr. Clayton something—that Mama and I brought in the hamper."

Her sister laughed, "Now?" But she waved them off, and, with a timid glance at Mr. Clayton, Beatrice led him from the room.

Hurrying down the passage, she opened the door to the dining room where the table was beautifully set for the meal to come, silver and glass and porcelain dishes gleaming, garlands winding between the candlesticks. As yet only the wall sconces were lit, shedding a pleasant dim glow which she hoped would hide any awkward blushes.

When Mr. Clayton preceded her into the room, she hung back beside the door, leaving it well ajar.

"We brought the holly and mistletoe and ivy from Beaumond," she said, pointing. "In the hamper. As I told my sister I would show you."

A corner of his mouth curled. "Very nice. I would go so far as to say extremely nice. But then, I am inclined to think well of everything in my present mood."

"Oh?" she asked primly. She did not want to keep hovering by the door but had no idea what to do next.

"Miss Ellsworth, I have a confession to make."

He found his confidence flagging when she neither moved further into the room nor shut the door. Was she hoping—praying—someone would rescue her from what was to come? Having never actually proposed to anyone—his engagement with Priscilla took place by Donald Brand's deathbed, when the father placed the daughter's hand in his—Clayton felt his inexperience. If only he had made a clean breast of it all the day before! But he had not wanted her driving back to Beaumond in darkness.

"Oh?" said Beatrice again over the tightness in her throat. No other word seemed to remain in her head.

Absently he twiddled a sprig of the holly on the table until it caught on his skin and had to be plucked out. Confound it, man, out with it! If worse comes to worst, you will be out of here tomorrow, never to show your face in Hampshire again.

"Yes," he tried again. "A confession. Miss Ellsworth—"

Whistling a carol, Bobbins the footman elbowed the door wide, starting with surprise when he saw Beatrice and nearly dropping the dish of hothouse fruits. "A few minutes yet, miss."

"Of course, Bobbin."

His gaze slid from her to Clayton. "Did you—require anything?"

"No, nothing. I was just—showing Mr. Clayton how lovely Mrs. Fairchild made everything." Beatrice flapped a hand at the table.

The footman nodded, a wrinkle in his brow perfectly expressing his skepticism of this explanation. Pressing a tuft in the carpet under his shoe, he then said to no one in particular, "That being done, I should say there will be a great deal of going in and out of here now, and perhaps the gentleman might be shown next Mrs. Fairchild's new jasperware sconces in the parlor."

"Of course," she said, both embarrassed and inwardly grateful for this suggestion. The parlor! And Mr. Clayton could not blame her for taking him there, when it was Bobbins who proposed it.

Holding the door for them, the servant gestured them out, and Beatrice hastened to obey, leading her companion to the next door along the passage. Florence Fairchild's new ormolu sconces, inset with blue and white jasperware were indeed very pretty, but neither Beatrice nor Clayton bothered to inspect them. In fact, Clayton noticed nothing of his surroundings, his nerves stretched to their limit. But the little parlor had been familiar to Beatrice from earliest memory. Her mother had died when she was only six, leaving no very distinct impressions, but Beatrice could remember early years spent cuddling beside her eldest sister Florence on the sofa. She could remember Tyrone lounging in the armchair, reading, a leg slung over one side. Lily sewing, Minta and Aggie playing draughts, her father beaming upon them all as he sat beside his last wife, the current Mrs. Wolfe. But now—oh now Beatrice feared the little parlor would bear witness to the most fateful scene of her life.

Somehow they were standing beside the mantel, a fireplace-width apart, Beatrice trying to pin a vague, pleasant expression on her face, while Clayton thought how much easier it was to beg money from a dozen earls than to bare his heart to this lovely creature who held his every chance of happiness. But for fear of another servant bursting in to tend the fire or—equally unwelcome—a family member coming to call them to supper, he metaphorically held his breath and dived in.

"Miss Ellsworth, the business which brought me to Winchester was not the canal alone."

Her vague, pleasant expression wavered but held. She blinked rapidly, taking hold of one of the stone scrolls ornamenting the jamb and following the curve with her fingertip.

"I wanted to—explain to you how I came to be engaged to Miss Brand. You see, when I met you and the Tyrone Ellsworths in Bognor, Priscilla and I had already been engaged two years. Since the time of her father's—my mentor's—death. Because he cared for us both, it was Donald Brand's dearest wish that she and I could then—care for each other in turn when he was gone. A neat idea, you see. I would be provided for financially, and Priscilla, though still in the schoolroom—"

"Would one day have a husband," Beatrice finished, nodding. "A husband he approved of. I understand."

Some of the tension in his nerves loosened at that, and he unconsciously drew a step closer. "I did not mean to deceive anyone in Bognor," he continued. "I suppose wherever there are single young men and young ladies involved, questions as to eligibility arise. But at first I thought it would not pertain—you come from—a genteel family of means and education and land, but I—" He gave a shrug. "Who was I? Nobody. No money or family to speak of. No public school or university formed my mind. I had not even spent many consecutive years in any one place and had been, through no deliberate plan, a rolling stone. It did not occur to me to…warn anyone against me."

"Please, Mr. Clayton. You did nothing wrong."

"Ah, but I did. I accepted your family's friendship. Nay—I sought it. Enjoyed it. And only too late realized I might have given the wrong impression and made you think I was a single man."

Beatrice's head hung lower, and she murmured, "You can only have felt culpable if you imagined I—that we—had designs on you."

"No. That, I did not think. I attributed no sinister motives to any of you," he said with a rueful grin. "I mean only that I might have endangered you—your feelings—without meaning to. And for that I apologize. But my conduct at Bognor had other certain, absolute, undeniable victims."

Her eyes came up then, searching and sweet. "Do you mean Miss Brand? Did your friendship with—us—make her unhappy? Is that why she ended your engagement? If so, I am very, very sorry."

He took a steadying breath. Now for it.

"Priscilla was indeed one of the victims I referred to, in that, after I met you Ellsworths, I could no longer imagine learning to love her as a wife would wish to be loved. We were not people who would naturally have been drawn together, if not for the circumstance that we already were inextricably tied. My realization changed nothing—could change nothing, except to make me…regretful for what could not be changed. Still, if I could not love her, I could do my duty, I told myself."

Beatrice hung on his words, even as she was so flustered and running ahead that she could scarcely comprehend him. What precisely had doomed poor Miss Brand in Mr. Clayton's eyes? Did her humbler background no longer please him after he had befriended the Ellsworths? Or was it the obvious marital complacency between Tyrone and Aggie which made him despair of finding the same with Miss Brand? Had meeting her, Beatrice, had no effect on his situation, then?

"But my idea of doing my duty and Priscilla's notion of it was yet another place where the two of us did not see eye to eye," he went on. "It was not unhappiness with our friendship which led to her ending our engagement. Not directly. Rather, she accused me of neglect. Perfunctoriness, you might call it. I might be the husband her father chose for her, but that was when she was a schoolgirl, and now that she was older, I would not be the one she chose. I was too wedded to my work. Too indifferent to the things she most enjoyed: dancing, society, excitement."

"I am sorry for it," said Beatrice again. "That must be very difficult for both of you."

The space between them shrank another step. He was shaking his head slowly. "I daresay both Priscilla and I have emerged astonishingly unscathed. She will see me nearly as often as before because I am still her guardian until she marries or comes of age, and Priscilla would likely add that my demeanor toward her won't change in the slightest, considering what an indifferent lover she thought me. She wasn't wrong, either. If I were as poor a canal-builder as I was a lover to her, I would shortly have to find a new profession."

"Then, if you are both none the worse for ending your engagement, why should you call Miss Brand a victim?"

Another step.

"Because my duty was not enough," he answered softly. "Priscilla fell a victim because I fell a victim. You see, one morning in Bognor, finally feeling more the thing after a recent illness, I decided to try the bathing so many recommended. It was cold and bracing, with the novelty of being pushed about by something more powerful than myself. But I did not yet know the meaning of helplessness. For then I heard a cry from the neighboring dipper. Without an inkling for how my life was about to change, I went to her aid and pulled from beneath the waves—a…parting of the ways with everything which had come before. With the solitude I had known since Donald Brand's death, where I had no intimates among the people all about me. But more shockingly, a parting with my own heart."

She drew a sharp breath, and then he was beside her, not touching her and yet every atom of her thrilled to his nearness.

"By rights I should have had no heart to give," he whispered, "having promised it away two years earlier. But on this occasion I did not give it intentionally. It was taken from me entirely without my permission. By you, Miss Ellsworth."

She was trembling now, waging a war on two fronts: against the tears of joy which threatened and against a swirling lightheadedness. Clayton could do nothing for the former, but he saw her sway and caught her by her arms.

"Breathe, Beatrice," he urged. "Take a deep breath and tell me my fate."

"Oh, John!"

It was invitation enough.

He lowered his lips gently to hers, groaning a little at their warmth and softness, and soon they were wrapped in each other's arms, the tightness of his hold doing nothing to help her breathing and much to impair his own. Her caressing hands stole up his back, exploring the solid weight of muscle and bone, while his gripped her waist and the nape of her neck, his fingers winding in the tendrils there. Closer.

It was only some minutes later, when her kisses took on a distinct flavor of salt, that he drew back, short of breath and grinning, to regard the wetness of her eyes and beloved face. "Good heavens, it's Bognor all over again. Are you once more in danger of drowning?"

"If I am," she laughed, "do save me, John."

His prompt rescue cost Beatrice a comb and several pins from her hair, as well as the previously immaculate appearance of his neckcloth, and then they must both repair themselves before the narrow mirror over a side table.

"Stop, stop!" cried Beatrice, when he ducked to graze the base of her neck with his lips. "We will be called to supper any second, and what will everyone say?"

"Everyone will say ‘hurrah'," he murmured, taking hold of her again. "For I told Mr. Wolfe and your brother of my intentions yesterday, expecting it to be a much harder bargain to strike than the sale of a few canal shares."

Against his lips, Beatrice asked, "Did you really? But why should it be a harder bargain to sell?"

He lifted his head. "Isn't it obvious, my love? Because without Priscilla's fortune, I am well-nigh penniless. Add to that, I must work for my living, and add to that, I would steal you away to London and then to wherever my work would take me in the future."

"London is not terribly far," said the selfsame Beatrice who to this juncture had never wanted to roam much beyond the walls of home. "Several coaches make the journey every day. And as for working for your bread, I suspect every male in my family already thinks your work splendid and forward-looking. In fact, if you are not careful, Mr. Wolfe and Tyrone—and Willsie and Edmund, for that matter—will likely beg to be on your board of directors, or to form one, if one does not yet exist. But what did you tell them about the penniless part?"

"I told them…I—will—rise." He punctuated each word of his vow with a kiss, one to her collarbone, one to her ear, and the last to her lips. "But until that happens, would they be so kind as to hand over your sizeable marriage portion for me to fritter away? I suppose the first expense will be to find us a home, unless you wish to share my Spartan little room in Warren Street."

"As long as you were there, John, I wouldn't mind," she declared with charming, if na?ve, conviction.

"Well, I would, to think of you in such a setting when I am away overseeing the work."

"Couldn't I come with you? I wouldn't bother you a bit, I promise!"

He pressed the tip of his nose to the dimple in her cheek fondly. "The men can be rough and the conditions uncomfortable, but if you choose to walk or drive beside the Regent's Park on a beautiful day, I will not prevent you. After all, without your efforts with Rotherwood and the zeal of your family members, who knows when work on the Cumberland Arm would ever have begun?"

"Yes," agreed Beatrice with a toss of her chin. "Now you thank me for persuading Mr. Rotherwood! Before, my only reward was your coldness and disapproval!"

"And my jealousy. Let's not forget that."

"Was it really, John? Jealousy! How silly of you, when it was obvious you were everything to me."

"‘Obvious,' stuff! I don't know about ‘obvious'."

"Obvious to me, at any rate." She blushed. "And to the Huftons, I suppose. When there was that fuss about me writing to Mr. Rotherwood, I was forced to confess to them that, not only was I not trying to entrap the man, but I didn't care a button for him—and then they guessed the rest."

He studied her. "Is that why you left town so suddenly? Imagine my surprise when I dashed over to Green Street, eager to announce my jilting, only to find you gone!"

Resting her cheek against his shoulder, she said, "No—I left because I'm afraid Marjorie and I had another quarrel. If you talk of frittering away a girl's fortune, I fear Mr. Dodson will do so with hers because he cannot resist gambling in all forms. At least—that was one of the reasons I went."

"And the other?"

"I was too great a coward to attend your wedding to Miss Brand!" she confessed. "I loved you enough to wish you well—sincerely well—but it would be easier to do and think and feel what was right if I did not have to see the moment I would lose you forever."

It was so near an escape that they both shuddered in remembrance, and Clayton bent to embrace her again.

"Thank God, then, I was so poor a lover Priscilla cast me off."

Beatrice favored him with a teasing smile. "I hope you will never neglect me, sir, nor treat me in a perfunctory manner."

"My dear girl, if you ever hope to know a moment's peace from my attentions, I would advise you to remain behind in Winchester." Clayton would gladly have followed this assertion with many supportive proofs, but the long-expected steps in the passage were heard at last, and they were obliged to release each other.

An announcement of what their absence had accomplished hardly proved necessary, for the joy and understanding which flashed between them spoke volumes. Nevertheless, Clayton uttered a word in Mr. Wolfe's ear, which the man communicated instantly to his watching wife by a wink and a nod, and she to everyone else by going at once to take Beatrice in her arms and kiss her. Mrs. Wolfe was followed by a swarm of siblings and their spouses, Beatrice being hugged and kissed and screamed over, while the gentlemen pumped Clayton's arm and clapped him by the shoulder.

"What is it? What has happened?" Katy Kenner asked, plucking at her papa's sleeve.

"Your aunt Beatrice is going to marry that fellow there, and you will have a new uncle," Simon Kenner replied.

"All that kissing," Katy's brother Edward said with a grimace, after Clayton gave his bride-to-be a decorous peck on the cheek, and then another. "And everyone has forgotten all about supper."

But young Edward was mistaken, and when the merry family was ranged about the bounteous table and he had had as much as he could hold of goose and oysters and sausage and pudding and mince pies and apples and hot chestnuts, then even he didn't mind, and even he thought it wouldn't be a bad thing, if one day a girl smiled upon him the way his aunt Beatrice did upon her Mr. Clayton.