A Gentleman in Winter

Chapter One

“Papa! Papa! We have a letter from Caldicott Hall! Papa!”

No voice carried more piercingly than that of a seven-year-old boy spreading the most exciting news ever to befall his painfully prosaic life.

“Papa! A letter—!”

Vicar Abel Faucon wrenched open the window to his study and leaned out. “Nathaniel, they can hear you halfway to London. Cease your racket and please mind your step.” Half a foot of snow was just enough to send the unwary plunging into a ditch, and sopping wet correspondence was nigh impossible to decipher.

“I’ll be careful, Papa,” Nathaniel yelled back, as he nearly lost his footing at the foot of the vicarage steps.

Abel closed the window, lest all the heat in the study be lost to the frigid December morning. Stirring Up Sunday was behind him, the Advent season now under way, and the sermons should have been predictably comforting.

The light will soon return.

The pleasure of gathering with family and friends is the best holiday boon.

The cold allows us to rest and think in peace.

Patience is a virtue learned a little at a time.

All very true. Also very dull.

“The lad should be in the choir.” Hosea Spraddle stood in the door to the study, smiling slightly. “Sermon giving you trouble?”

“No more than usual. Do come in. How are Mrs. Dunwalter and the baby?”

“Thriving. Dunwalter is a new man, the first in all of history to become a father, or at least to become a father to the next Wellington, Mozart, and Gainsborough, all in the personage of one squalling baby.”

Davey Dunwalter’s joy was also the result of relief at a lying in safely concluded. Spraddle, being a bachelor, might not grasp that part.

“When I called last week,” Abel said, “Dunwalter was still in the dazed and disbelieving phase of his forty days. He has apparently had some rest.” Unlike his missus, who would be lucky to snatch more than two-hour naps here and there for the next few weeks.

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Such were the demands of a newborn.

“Rest and reassurance.” Hosea folded his lanky form into one of the wingchairs by the hearth. He was tow-headed Saxon stock, and moved with the economy of a man who knew better than to hurry. “He’ll learn some humility too, if we’re lucky.”

“And restraint.” The Dunwalters had been married exactly six months.

“Now, Vicar. The holidays are upon us, and we must compose ourselves in gratitude for a healthy new baby. The child himself will do more to quell hasty marital enthusiasms than you or I could ever do.”

In the mother, perhaps. Abel had been a vicar long enough to know that fathers were not always susceptible to the same lesson, often until it was too late.

Nathaniel’s footsteps thumped up the front porch.

“Will you take the lad to Town to see the holiday sights?” Hosea asked, rearranging a pillow at his back. He was old to be curate—nearing thirty—but had private means and seemed content with his lot.

When Lucilla had been so terribly ill, Hosea had been a godsend clothed in unassuming airs, quiet humor, and short sermons. The man was a stranger to restlessness while Abel had lately found it impossible to settle at his desk for even an hour.

“Uncle Tammington has taken himself to Leeds for the holidays,” Abel said. “A holiday house party of some sort. I suspect the lure of a certain widow’s figgy pudding explains his sudden penchant for winter travel. He was larking about Leeds at Michaelmas too.”

“He’s getting on to be larking anywhere. What of her ladyship, will she be off to Town for the holidays?”

Her ladyship would be Lady Ophelia Oliphant, the leading light of what passed for society in St. Edor’s parish.

“She has not confided her plans in me.” Her ladyship knew everybody, everywhere, and was as apt to spend her holidays in Paris or Edinburgh as she was to bide through the winter at Sea Haven.

“I’ll miss her if she flies away to visit some duchess or other,” Hosea said, leaning forward and holding his hands out to the fire. “Her Christmas baskets are the delight of many a village household.”

“You will miss her Sunday roasts, too,” Abel said. “As will I. And her library.” Though as to that, Abel had the freedom of the Sea Haven library, which had saved his sanity on more than one occasion.

“Papa!” Nathaniel burst into the study. “Papa, I have the letter. Hello, Hosea. We have a letter from Caldicott Hall!”

“One heard the rumor,” Hosea said. “Very exciting news. I understand that a duke lives at Caldicott Hall.”

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“He doesn’t,” Nathaniel said, moderating his tone at last. “His Grace lives in France. My friends Atticus and Leander live at Caldicott Hall, and we were spies and Romans and everything this past summer. We flew kites and played marbles, and it was mad keen wonderful, and I miss them. Open the letter, Papa.”

Abel examined the direction, which had been written in a feminine hand—but not her hand. He knew every flourish and dip of Miss Amelia’s Hunter’s penmanship, knew how she spaced her words and what margins she preferred.

“Please hang your jacket in the porter’s nook, Natty. Take off your boots, and put on your slippers. I’ll read the letter when our guest has finished his business.”

“Hosea’s not a guest,” Natty said, an uncharacteristic display of poor manners. “He’s Hosea and almost lives here.”

Abel resorted to a patient paternal silence. Natty’s response was a huffy little-boy sigh, then he trooped out of the study, martyrdom in every step.

“That Natty has some friends is good,” Hosea said, rising to close the door then returning to the hearth. “Not his fault the village is enjoying a paucity of boys his age at present. Give it a few years, and we’ll be awash in little boys again.”

“The Caldicott Hall boys are loyal correspondents.” Though given the distance to Caldicott Hall, they would be little more than that unless Lady Ophelia again invited her friends to Sea Haven. “Good for the penmanship, to have correspondents.”

Hosea used the poker on the fading fire. “How would you know? But for your reports to the bishop, you spend all your spare time scribbling your stories.”

The stories, written under the pen name Capability Hawk, were a lucrative distraction from the idle sameness of village life.

“I write to Uncle Tam. I’ve written to Lord Julian.” Who presided over Caldicott Hall in his older brother’s absence. “I write sermons with notable regularity.”

Oppressive regularity of late.

Hosea tossed a square of peat over the screen and set the poker aside. “Write one on the temptation to despair, why don’t you? Nobody talks about it, but this time of year can be terribly hard on the nerves. Too much jollity, too much wassail, too much pretending it’s not cold, dark, lonely, and miserable for many of us.”

Abel’s vicarly instincts twitched. “Hosea, aren’t you taking your annual holiday at your sister’s?”

“I have not been invited. She’s expecting her third at any moment, and a brother hovering is not the done thing. Besides, I am directing our Christmas pageant, lest you forget the magnitude of my sacrifice, and a heroic curate does not shirk even in the face of overwhelming odds.”

Ignoring the letter on Abel’s blotter was becoming an effort of heroic portions. “You always take the early rehearsals on the pageant, then I step in and you pop along to Canterbury and stuff yourself at your sister’s until Twelfth Night. Might you not pay her a visit in January?”

To be honest, a rest from Hosea’s company appealed. He did all but live at the vicarage, having free run of the place. He was no sort of imposition, though he did take most of his suppers at Abel’s table, and he was the best of curates.

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Even so, the holidays were trial enough without Hosea underfoot, unfailingly kind, unfailingly cheerful, and unfailingly there.

“Will you open that letter, Vicar?”

There, and gently nosy. “When my guest has concluded his business. I am trying to set a good example for my son, you see, who can be impulsive and occasionally heedless.” Also loud, busy, curious, and—fortunately—unfailingly dear.

Hosea muttered something that was doubtless witty, if a bit insubordinate. “I’ll see you at supper.”

“Of course.” Again. “You are off to recruit angels?”

“Exactly. Then I demote them to shepherds and if they are consistently unruly, to sheep, oxen, or in the case of Miss Lindy MacKenna, a donkey. I fervently thank the Deity you thought to share tactic with me. Miss Lindsy didn’t sass me for two straight weeks after I put a pair of long ears on her.”

“Strategy is everything with Christmas pageants.” And curates. “Until supper.”

Hosea looked as if he might say something clearly insubordinate, but instead shuffled from the room.

Abel closed the door behind him, slit the letter open, then took it over to the window, the better to read his third epistle from Lady Julian Caldicott. When Abel had met her, she’d been Miss Hyperia West, affianced bride of the heir to the Waltham dukedom. She wrote with the gracious assurance of a woman who maintained a wide correspondence.

Her words conveyed warmth, humor, and wisps of her direct, intelligent presence.

She prosed on about holiday decorating as it related to little boys prone to sliding down bannisters, and her lordly husband’s ambivalence about the whole, long series of Yuletide rituals. Abel was nodding along, preparing himself for the disappointment of seeing no mention of Miss Hunter—he dared not think of her as Amelia—when her ladyship landed a telling blow even before the much treasured postscript.

Abel sat in the chair Hosea had vacated, puzzled, stunned, pleased, and horrified. One was flattered, but must refuse. One hardly knew… One thanked her ladyship but was compelled to demure….

The letter finished with the usual five words. Miss Hunter sends her regards. Abel stared at them, and wanted to howl like an orphaned wolf.

The door banged open. “Papa, what does his lordship say? Did Atticus and Leander write too? Are they coming back to Sea Haven?”

Oh, it was much worse than that. “Nathaniel, the door to the study was closed. What have we agreed about closed doors?”

“Is it bad news, Papa? Did Atticus or Leander fall ill?”

A boy who’d lost his baby sister and his mother to winter illness was entitled to be concerned for the health of his friends and family. Was, in fact, helpless to ever entirely shed that concern.

“Everybody is thriving and good spirits, your friends most especially. The letter is from Lady Julian and she sends you greetings personally.”

While Abel pondered what other platitudes to convey, Natty snatched the letter and began reading it.

“Nathaniel Faucon, correspondence is private. Please give me that letter.” Abel dared not snatch it back lest he tear the pages. Any connection, no matter how slight, to Miss Amelia Hunter was precious to him.

Ridiculous sentimentality.

“Papa, Lady Julian is inviting us to spend Christmas at the Hall! Lady Julian says we can come for Christmas to bide at the Hall!” Natty waved the letter like a flag of victory. “We’re going to Caldicott Hall for Yuletide. Both of us!”

Abel did pluck the letter from his son’s hand. “No dessert for you tonight. You not only took my letter and failed to return it when asked, you read what was not meant for your eyes, Nathaniel. For shame.”

The boy’s glee winked out like candle in a winter gale. “I’m sorry, Papa, but it’s good news and we are going to the Hall for Christmas, and I will see Atticus and Leander and we’ll play marbles and spy on the grown ups, and write our messages in code, and it will be wonderful.”

All true.

Wonderful and awful. Abel considered telling Nathaniel that no, they would not travel to the Hall. Her ladyship was merely being cordial, and parish responsibilities were endless at Yuletide, and travel in winter a chancy undertaking.

Watching Natty skip around the study, joy emanating from his very person, Abel could not deny his son what amounted to a wish come true.

Abel hoped for better luck denying his own heart.

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