Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas Read Free

depths; and then their light was shrouded by half-closed lids. “I entrust you, rather, to my coachman. Tower is, as his name suggests, the epitome of strength. He has obtained the parsonage’s direction from your carter and has unharnessed two of my team. I shall take one horse and ride onwards to The Vyne; your carter shall take the other, and lead his poor nag home. She has gone lame in her off rear.”
    “But what of your baggage, sir?” my mother demanded. “What of your safety? We cannot possibly exile you from your own equipage, and in such weather! That is to be doing too much!”
    “Not at all, ma’am. I shall regard it as a trifle.”
    If I detected further amusement in his countenance, I did not betray him. I could well imagine that any man should prefer a brisk trot towards dinner and a fire, to a tedious seven-mile journey through snow seated on the box next to his own coachman. That Mr. West did not wish to embarrass us with his presence inside the carriage, I ascribed to an unexpected delicacy.
    “Tower shall join me once he has set you safely down at Steventon parsonage, madam,” he informed Mamma. “It is only a matter of three miles, and the road to The Vyne not much longer again than that. The horses were changed at Reading, and may easily stand the distance.”
    “You are very good, sir.”
    He smiled wryly. “Having been nearly the death of you, I cannot be too solicitous of your security.” A last quicksilver glance at me, the ghost of a nod, and his head was withdrawn from the body of thecoach. The door slammed to, and we heard the rap of his knuckles without; the wheels began to turn.
    “Happy Christmas!” he shouted.
    I peered through the sidelight. But it was already fogged with moisture, and the darkness obscured every outline; he was an indistinct figure bracketed by horses, with a whirlwind descending.
    Happy Christmas, Mr. West, I mentally returned; and wondered what might bring a stranger to so wild a place as The Vyne at such a frigid time of year.

2
CHRISTMAS SPIRITS
    Saturday, 24th December 1814

Steventon Parsonage, cont’d
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    “And so you are come at last.” Mary groaned as she lifted her head from the sopha cushions. “I declare I had quite given you up! The children have been asking for you since breakfast—and you know how their teazing makes my head ache. But you did not consider of me, I suppose, as you dawdled along the lanes. I am the very last creature alive, however, to complain of ill-usage at the hands of those I love.”
    “You can have no idea what we endured,” my sister, Cassandra, protested indignantly. “The conveyance James elected to despatch—I cannot in conscience call it a carriage—”
    “Poor Mary,” my mother broke in briskly. “Are you unwell? That will be very trying for James, with the Christmas service to manage.”
    “James!” she retorted with deepest loathing. “He has not been near me all week! It does not suit the rector of Steventon to nurse the sick. He is far too busy hunting!”
    We remained awkwardly in the parsonage’s central hall, our clothing sodden and our tempers frayed. Despite the coldness of our welcome, we were anything but strangers to this house—fullyhalf my life was lived within these walls, and I might find my way from kitchen to garret in pitch darkness without a single misstep. Judged by worldly eyes, Steventon parsonage is little more than a cottage—the front entry a latticed door, flanked by double windows to right and left. It was never an elegant abode, tho’ my father sheltered eight children and generations of pupils here. Ten bedchambers above-stairs, three of them in the garrets; two wings at the back of the house, where Cassandra and I shared a bedchamber and a small dressing room we dignified with the name of boudoir. Our father, I recollect, was so good as to purchase matching tented beds for his daughters, swathed in blue-and-white-check dimity, from Ring Brothers’ establishment, in