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Regency Christmas Wishes(88)

By:Barbara Metzger


“Were you there?” Jonathan asked.

“No, but I’d have given a pretty penny to have been! I did see Molyneaux destroy Rimmer, though, earlier in the year. Now, there was a match to remember.”

“Aye,” another noble Roman said, “so you said. And you told me that I had something of the Champion’s style when Nick and I went at it that time after I thought he’d insulted that barmaid in town, you remember, the one I fancied.”

“Ho!” Pamela’s father said. “But you fancied every barmaid, Charles.”

The men laughed. Charles smiled. “So I did. Wasn’t she the wench though? Lord! She had half the boys in the district sniffing after her. When they weren’t fighting over her, they were planning on how they could snare her. She finally ran off with young Fairchild, didn’t she?”

“Her? No,” a fellow clad as a Gypsy put in. “She ran off with a tinker, I heard.”

“Heard wrong,” another gentleman, this one in motley pirate’s garb, protested. “She never. Harry here had the right of it. She run off with young Fairchild, and his father had to pay a pretty penny to be rid of her. Almost got to Gretna too.”

“No, that was Fairchild and Dylan’s daughter who got intercepted on the road to Gretna,” Pamela’s brother Kit said.

“Aye, that’s right,” a man got up as a harlequin in patches said. “And then they up and ran to Scotland, and never looked back. Anyone hear what happened to them?”

“You ask every year, Godfrey,” another man said. “And no one ever knows. Did you fancy her yourself?”

“Why, so I did. Who wouldn’t?”

“There’s truth in that, she was a pippin. But then what happened to the bar wench Nick fought over?”

“She went to London by herself,” the harlequin said. “What happened after that, I don’t know, but that I do remember.”

“I remember that you fancied her too,” the Roman said slyly.

That evening Jonathan also learned, yet again, that it was possible for a man to sleep standing up, with his eyes open, and without falling down.



He opened his eyes. Now that he was finally in bed, Jonathan couldn’t sleep.

“Can’t sleep?” his wife asked from the next pillow.

“How did you know?”

“I can’t either,” she said.

“Well, as it happens, you lucky lady, I happen to have a cure for that,” he said softly, and reached for her.

She scooted back and sat up against her pillow.

“What’s this?” he asked on a laugh, drawing back. “I bathed and cleaned my teeth.” He raised his arm and pretended to sniff at his underarm. “I’m fragrant as a rose.”

She said nothing.

His voice became tender. “I’m sorry. Are you unwell?”

“No,” she said tersely.

He was still for a moment. He’d been pleased to find her awake in the deep of this lonely night and had looked forward to her intimate company. He’d been willing to settle for good conversation. But though he’d only been married three months, he wasn’t slow at recognizing storm signals flying.

“I see,” he said slowly. “So, what is it then?”

“You,” she said deliberately. “I believe you are the one who can tell me what it is.”

“I can?”

“You ought to,” she said. Like steam escaping from a kettle her words rushed out. “You should! I mean to say, why else would a man stand mute as a clam all night, if he didn’t have some issue or another that was bedeviling him?”

He was honestly perplexed.

“You did not say two words together to anyone tonight!” she cried. “Not to my mother or father, or any of my sisters or brothers. You stood like some . . . icy paragon, looking down your long nose at my family!”

He tried to remember just whom he had conversation with. “I wasn’t looking down at anyone,” he said defensively. “There was just nothing for me to say.”

“Nothing to say!” she echoed with vast frustration in her voice. “You, who reads every news sheet and magazine, and keeps up on politics and literature, theater and . . . and everything going on around you, had nothing to say to my family? I think not, and I tell you that I take it badly. If I could go to those frightful Fanshawes and pretend to be enchanted by their dissolute and vulgar company, the least you could do was to pretend to be entertained by my family. But I suppose they are too decent for you.”

His head went up, and now he did look down his long nose at her. It was just too bad, he thought, that she probably couldn’t see it in the darkness. “My friends let you speak,” he said icily. “I, on the other hand, had no chance to say anything. My friends included you in their conversations and their games . . .”