In the last month, Miss Wilhelmina Pursling—Lydia’s best friend, who she missed dreadfully—had married and gone to London. Shortly thereafter, Captain Stevens—Lydia’s former fiancé, who she missed not in the slightest—had been sentenced to six months of hard labor. Good riddance.
Lydia didn’t want to think of Stevens. Instead, she blew on her notebook one last time, slipped the blotting paper between the pages, and checked the stopper on her ink.
“You’re rather livelier than Miss Pursling,” old Mr. Crawford said from across the way.
“And less practical,” Lydia responded. “Happy Christmas, Mr. Crawford. Is your daughter coming up from Buford?”
Mr. Crawford’s face creased in a smile. “Imagine your remembering a thing like that! Yes, she is coming, and bringing her little ones.”
“How lovely! And why you think I shouldn’t remember, I don’t know. I played with Willa until I was nine. Please say I might stop by and bring a basket for her and the children. You wouldn’t deny me the pleasure.”
As she spoke, Lydia gathered up her things and placed them carefully in her satchel, securing the container of ink in a side pocket so that it wouldn’t be jostled about. She was aware that she was humming as she did so—a rendition of “Good King Wenceslas.”
Christmas was almost on them, and she couldn’t have been happier. The air smelled of cinnamon and ginger. Pine boughs decorated lintels, even here at the Nag’s Head. It was a time for wassail and cheer and—
“Happen we all miss your Miss Pursling—that is, the Duchess of Clermont,” Crawford said softly. “Yes, my Willa would love your company.”
The smile froze on Lydia’s face.
Wassail, cheer, and the slight, selfish emptiness she experienced when she remembered that her best friend was no longer a mere hour’s journey away, but a hundred miles distant.
But she forced her lips into a wider grin. “La, silly,” she said. “I’ll see her again next autumn, just as soon as Parliament lets out. How could I miss her?” If she smiled wide enough, it might fill that space in her heart. She pulled on her gloves. “Happy Christmas.”
The group scattered in a shower of holiday greetings. Lydia waited until they were all gone, waving cheerfully, wishing everyone the best for the holidays.
Almost everyone. Her cheeks ached from smiling, but she would not look to her left. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Well,” a dark voice said to her side as the door closed on Mr. Crawford, “you are chock-full of holiday spirit, Miss Charingford.”
Lydia looked pointedly in front of her at the ivy-and-pine centerpiece on the table. “Why, yes,” she said. “I suppose I am. Happy Christmas, Doctor Grantham.”
He didn’t thank her for the sentiment. He surely didn’t return a polite greeting of his own. Instead, Doctor Grantham laughed softly and her spine prickled.
Lydia turned to him. He was tall—so very much taller than her that she had to tilt her neck at an unnatural angle to stare him down. His eyes sparkled with a dark intensity and his mouth curled up at one corner, as if he nursed his own private amusement. He was handsome in a brooding sort of way, with those eyes, that strong, jagged nose. All the other girls giggled when he looked their way. But Grantham made Lydia remember things she didn’t like to think about.
He particularly made her remember them now. He looked at her down his nose and gave her a faint, mocking smile, as if she’d made a terrible error by offering him holiday greetings.
Lydia straightened. “Happy Christmas,” she repeated, her voice tight. “You’re allowed to say it back even if you don’t really wish the other person happy. It’s a polite nothing. I won’t imagine you mean anything by it—just as you know that I don’t truly care whether you’re happy.”
“I didn’t think you were wishing me happy,” Grantham responded. “I thought you were simply describing events as you saw them. Tell me, Miss Charingford, is it really a happy Christmas for you?”
Lydia flushed. Christmas memories were not always fond. In fact, Christmas brought to mind the worst moments in her life. Leaving home with her parents and her best friend six years earlier. A dingy house let in Cornwall, and that awful, awful night when the cramps had come…
“Yes,” she said forcefully. “Yes, it is. Christmas is a time for happiness.”
He laughed again, softly—mockingly, she thought, as if he knew not only the secret that she kept from all of Leicester, but the one she held hidden in her heart. He laughed as if he’d been there on that dreadful night that had seemed the absolute opposite of Christmas—an evening when a girl who was very much not a virgin had miscarried. There’d been blood and tears rather than heavenly choirs.