Ms. Davenport's Christmas Read online

  Lady Harrington dried her eyes and listened eagerly to the tale of masquerading as highwaymen, of the long journey to Gretna, then of the journey south, Lord Ranger taking Jilly to meet his parents, and Lord Paul bearing off Mandy to introduce her to his. Then they had come together once more because the girls had a request, that they stay with Lady Harrington and be married in the village church of Benham St. Anne’s.

  “And so you shall!” cried Lady Harrington. “But why did you not put a notice in the newspapers?”

  “There will be one in today,” said Lord Ranger, “announcing our forthcoming marriages. To state that we were married already, and at Gretna, would have caused a great deal of unnecessary scandal.”

  “So what of your parents?” asked Lady Harrington. “Have they forgiven you?”

  “We wrote to them to say we were coming here to stay,” said Jilly, “and that if they wished to see us properly married in church, they were welcome to come. I hope we have not presumed too much, my lady. But we did so want to surprise you.”

  “We will give you a wedding to remember,” said Lady Harrington. “But wedding gowns! You do not want provincial wedding gowns.”

  “We have splendid wedding gowns in our baggage,” said Mandy. “Lord Paul’s mother, the Duchess of Barshire, insisted on ordering them for us. We shall be so grand. Oh, it is so good to be home.”

  “Yes, it is home to us,” said Jilly.

  “And where will you live?” asked Sir John.

  “We shall settle somewhere near here,” said Lord Ranger. “Jilly wants somewhere exactly like Greenbanks.”

  “You will find it easy to find a place,” remarked Sir John. “So many families are ruined at the gambling tables of St. James’s and have to put their estates on the market.”

  “Come, girls,” said Lady Harrington, getting to her feet. “You shall have your old rooms.”

  Sir John gave a little cough. “Not their old rooms exactly, my dear. Married ladies now.”

  “Goodness, my wits are wandering. Jilly’s old room is quite suitable for herself and her husband, and Mandy’s old room can be used by both of them as a dressing room, and Mandy and Lord Paul can have the Blue Room, which James uses when he is here.”

  Laughing and chattering, they went up the old staircase, Jilly saying over and over that they had never expected to see Greenbanks again.

  The cheerful maids bustled about, unpacking their clothes. Jimmy was sent off to the village to carry the glad news, and soon a little procession, headed by the squire, Sir William Black, and his family, could be seen heading up the drive.

  Will I ever be as competent as Lady Harrington? thought Jilly as that lady calmly coped with this unexpected houseful of guests and visitors.

  Mr. and Mrs. Davenport were returning from a visit to neighbors. There was no Abigail with them. They had pensioned her off, persuading each other that the reason was that their girls had left so there was no further need for her services, where the real reason was that the very sight of her filled them with guilt. They were convinced Jilly and Mandy were living in sin with a couple of aristocratic rakes who had seduced them. They had given up scanning the newspapers, hoping for some kind of announcement.

  Mrs. Davenport had written many angry letters to the Harringtons, accusing them of having corrupted their daughters, but somehow had not the heart to post any of them.

  Pride had forced them to tell their friends and neighbors that their daughters were still in the South on an extended visit. They were so used to being smugly righteous that they hardly knew how to cope with all these new feelings of nagging guilt. Their attendance at church had slowly fallen off. Once they had gone every day of the week. Now they only went reluctantly on Sundays. There was a new vicar, not like the old hellfire one, who preached love and charity, and sometimes the miserable Davenports felt he had guessed their secret and was speaking directly to them.

  The postboy sounded his horn outside, but Mrs. Davenport remained where she was. For the past few months, she had run out to meet him, hoping for news until hope had died.

  The footman came in and bent low before Mrs. Davenport with a silver tray on which several letters lay. In practically every other household, the post was given to the master, but Mrs. Davenport had made it clear long ago that she expected to read all letters first.

  She took the letters and opened the first one, which was sealed with a heavy blob of wax embossed with a crest.

  She stared down at the first lines and then looked at the signature at the bottom of the page. “It is from Jilly,” she said weakly. “I cannot read it.”

  Her husband twitched it out of her hands, scrabbled in the folds of his cravat for his quizzing glass, and then studied it.

  “Jilly is married,” he said in a wondering voice, “to Lord Ranger, and Mandy to Lord Paul. They were married at Gretna, but both want to be remarried in church. They have gone to Lady Harrington’s to be married there and say that if we join them, we are more than welcome!”

  He took the other letters. There was one from Mandy, one from Lord Ranger, and one from Lord Paul.

  “Lord Paul says the notice of the forthcoming marriage has been sent to the newspapers and that both his parents and Lord Paul’s will be in attendance.”

  Mrs. Davenport had begun to cry. She felt as if the weight of centuries had been lifted from her.

  “Of course, we would not dream of attending,” said Mr. Davenport wrathfully. “To have connived in that highwaymen masquerade, to have shamed our name, to have gone to those Harringtons, who caused all the trouble in the first place…”

  But his wife was not listening. She rubbed her eyes and then said in a firm voice, “I have heard Lord Paul’s mother, the Duchess of Barshire, is vastly fashionable. There is no time surely to have something made, but I had my purple gown made in London. Yes, that will do very well. Oh, so much to arrange. Oh, thank God!”

  And leaving her amazed husband staring after her, she bustled from the room.

  Lady Harrington was walking with Jilly by the pond the day before the wedding. “You must not let the absence of your mother and father upset you, dear,” she said. “They do not deserve your concern.”

  “They are, however, our mother and father,” said Jilly in a low voice, “and somehow I would have liked their blessing. They were, you see, both of them brought up very strictly and they continued with us. I can see now that I am removed from them that they were doing what they thought best for us.”

  “Well, I hope they don’t come. I have enough on my hands,” snapped Lady Harrington, who was feeling the strain of having two dukes and two duchesses who expected strict formality under her roof.

  Both had arrived with retinues of servants who had to be billeted in and around the village, and both had insisted that their footmen be present to serve all meals and that their French chefs take control of the kitchens. Lady Harrington sighed. Having such an abundance of servants should have made life easier, but there were just too many of them, and the footmen had to be watched every moment in case they seduced the Harrington maids.

  “I am glad to hear your in-laws are leaving directly after the wedding,” said Lady Harrington. “I feel like one of those poor landowners surviving a visit from Queen Elizabeth.”

  Marquees were being erected in the gardens to house the guests. Colonel Tenby had arrived home for the wedding and had insisted on housing as many of the guests as he could.

  They walked back together side by side to the house.

  Then Jilly looked down the drive and said in an amazed voice, “But that is our carriage.”

  “So? What of it? Probably Lord Ranger and Lord Paul coming back from somewhere.”

  “No,” said Jilly. “I mean my parents’ carriage. They have come.”

  As they reached the house, Mandy came out with Lord Ranger and Lord Paul.

  Jilly and Lady Harrington joined them. “Remember,” urged Lady Harrington, “they can do nothing to you now.”
r />   The steps were let down and the Davenports descended.

  Mrs. Davenport, dressed more fashionably than either of her daughters had ever seen her, stood looking at them for a moment and then said in a small voice they had never heard her use before, “We are come for your wedding.”

  Jilly and Mandy ran to hug her, and Mrs. Davenport began to cry while Mr. Davenport furiously blew his nose.

  Lady Harrington drew Lord Ranger and Lord Paul into the house. “Leave them to it,” she said crossly. “Though, by God, it’s more than that precious pair deserve.”

  The little church was crowded the next day and the streets leading to the village were jammed with carts, gigs, and post chaises, everyone having traveled from far and wide to see this fashionable double wedding.

  Margaret Andrews and Belinda Charteris had traveled from London to be bridesmaids. Lady Harrington clutched her husband’s hand hard as Mr. Davenport, with a daughter on each arm, walked up the aisle.

  The girls were in white Brussels lace embroidered with rich gold thread and seed pearls. Each had a coronet of pearls and gold wire holding their veils.

  Lady Harrington’s eyes filled with tears and she dabbed them furiously with her handkerchief. On her other side Mrs. Davenport began to weep as well.

  For both of them the service passed in a tear-soaked blur until the village band broke into a jolly tune and the bells in the steeple crashed out to proclaim the glad tidings to the waiting crowd outside that Jilly and Mandy were married.

  Somehow drawn together now, Lady Harrington and Mrs. Davenport stood together as Jilly and Mandy were helped into the flower-bedecked wedding carriage and were then followed by their husbands. Flower petals were thrown from all around. The crowd sent up a great cheer and the carriage moved off through the crowded narrow village street.

  Everyone vowed the wedding was the best ever once the marquees were full to bursting point with everyone eating and drinking, for Lady Harrington had invited the whole village.

  Then there was dancing and then suddenly Lord Ranger and Lord Paul escorted their brides from the marquee and went towards the house.

  “Thank goodness it all went so well,” said Lady Harrington to Mrs. Davenport. “Tomorrow when they have all gone, you and I will put our feet up and have a comfortable coze.”

  “It is a wonder they don’t hate me,” mumbled Mrs. Davenport.

  “What you need,” said Lady Harrington firmly, “is a glass of champagne.”

  “I never drink!”

  “It is your daughters’ wedding. Have one glass and we will toast them.”

  Soon Mrs. Davenport was sipping champagne. Her husband looked about to protest, but then he changed his mind. In his mind’s eye he still walked down that aisle with two of the most beautiful girls in the world.

  Lord Ranger slowly undid the tapes at the back of his wife’s wedding dress and let it fall to the floor.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked softly, turning her around to face him.

  “I was thinking about Christmas,” said Jilly. “I was thinking that miracles do happen.”

  He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed and removed the rest of her clothes and then his own. No one, he thought with a burst of gladness as he gathered that well-loved body into his arms, had ever told his unsophisticated bride that ladies should not indulge in passion.

  And then as he covered her naked body with his own and began to kiss her, he forgot about everything else.