Regency Christmas Gifts Read Free Page B

hadn’t
ever opened a package before.” She hung her head. “I couldn’t
resist.”
    She was honest little minx, not looking a great
deal like her mother, with hair auburn and curly and eyes so blue.
He had no doubt she would be a beauty some day, but her mother
already was. Who are these people?
    The missing maid came into the room first,
followed by Suzie, who gave him such a look. “Thomas, you’re
supposed to take their cloaks,” she said in that forthright, big
sister way.
    “ I tried.”
    “ We’re just returning a package,”
Mrs. Poole said. “We don’t wish to take up your time.”
    “ Please do.” Suzie held out her
hands for their cloaks. “My brother was saying just this morning
how bored he is.”
    Mrs. Poole surrendered her cloak and muffler to
his sister, even as he introduced them.
    “ This is my sister, Mrs. Davis,” he
told his impromptu guests. “She was kind enough to leave Wales and
tend house for me. Suzie, this is Mrs. Poole and Beth.”
    Once the tea tray was on the table in front of
the sofa and the cloaks in the maid’s hands, Suzie gestured for
them to sit down.
    “ I truly don’t want to be a bother,”
Mrs. Poole said, even as she saw her cloak carried from the
room.
    “ You’re no bother,” Thomas assured
her again. “Is there a carriage and driver that my all-purpose
handyman should see to?”
    “ We walked from Haven,” Mrs. Poole
said as she accepted a cup of tea from his sister.
    He glanced down at her shoes, which appeared to
be as sturdy as her cloak and hat. Still, dusk was nearly upon them
this December afternoon. “I trust you are not walking
home.”
    “ Oh, no,” Beth said. “We could
afford to walk one way and ride the other. That is our plan. Thank
you.” She accepted a macaroon from Suzie.
    There was no overlooking the blush that rose to
Mrs. Poole’s cheeks, making her even more attractive. With a pang,
he knew he was looking at poverty, the genteel sort, the quiet kind
that hid itself in hundreds, maybe thousands, of British
households, most recently where death had come to soldiers and
seamen.
    Maybe his manners were atrocious, but he had to
know. “Mrs. Poole, do you have a … is your—”
    “ He was a second lieutenant, Fifth
Northumberland Foot, and he died on the beach at Corunna,” she
said, her voice so soft. “They were the forlorn hope, holding back
the French so others could live, and waiting for the frigates to
arrive.”
    “ I’m so sorry,” he said. “We came up
too slow because of contrary winds. I was there.”
    Oh, he had been. In thirty years of stress and
war, the beach head at Corunna stood out, giving him nightmares for
years. In his dream, the fleet moved with dream-like slowness, and
he was the only one who appeared interested in the proper use of
sail. More than one night, he had wakened himself, calling “Listen
to me!” over and over. Now he just muttered it and went back to
sleep, thanks to the distance of seven years.
    He had to share what he knew with Mrs. Poole.
Something in her eyes told him that she wanted to know even the
tiniest scrap about a good man gone. “We watched that rearguard,
Mrs. Poole. You have ample reason to be proud of your late
husband.”
    “ Thank you for telling me, sir,” she
said. “Bart was always a brave man.”
    It was simply said, but told him worlds about
this woman he had only just met and probably would never see again.
Funny how such a thought could make him uneasy. Never see her
again? Impossible .
    She was a lady of great presence, probably
earned in the fiery furnace of war, the kind of war that comes
flapping home to roost among widows and children. “It could have
been worse, I suppose. His body was recovered and he is buried here
in Plymouth.” She gave her daughter a look of great affection.
“Beth was born a month later. I was here in Plymouth, and what with
one thing and another, we never left.”
    He thought about the probable pension for a
second