Regency Christmas Wishes: Captain Grey's Christmas Proposal / Her Christmas Temptation / Awakening His Sleeping Beauty

As she raised her eyes to his, Jem remembered to breathe. ‘My father commissioned another statue, one in stone this time. I was the model. It was the last thing he did before he died.’ She hesitated.

Now what, he thought. Now what?

‘I think you should challenge William Tullidge to a duel,’ Mr Hollinsworth said, and rubbed his hands with something close to glee.

‘He’ll shoot me dead,’ Jem said immediately. ‘I am a terrible shot.’

The room grew silent again, as the others seemed to expect Jem to say more. ‘A duel is nonsense. I can offer the man a down payment and see if he will wait three or four months for my money to arrive.’

‘Tullidge is impatient and used to matters falling out in his favour,’ Mr Hollinsworth said. ‘I doubt he ever waited a week for a dime owed him.’

‘We have until the day after Christmas,’ Teddy said, dignified as he remembered, but with something else. He could nearly feel her excitement, as though the wheel was suddenly turning in her direction.

‘What about Mrs Winnings?’ Jem asked. He felt sweat dripping down his back as he contemplated staring down the muzzle of a pistol aimed at him. ‘Could she stave him off? What was the nature of this devil’s bargain the two of them made?’

‘Mrs Winnings has finally lost all the money she received for Papa’s store. Her house burned in the fire six years ago,’ Teddy told them both. ‘She gambles at cards...’

‘Badly, I would say,’ Mr Hollinsworth said.

Teddy sighed. ‘She is always certain the next turn of the card will recoup her fortune. I fear gamblers are like that. She staked her house, a poor ruin of a place, mind you, on the turn of the card and lost it.’

‘He played her deliberately, didn’t he?’ Jem asked.

‘Emphatically yes,’ she replied. ‘He’s been eyeing me this past year and more, and it unnerves me. He promised she could keep her house and he would give her two thousand dollars for me.’ She paled visibly at her own words and covered her face with her hands. ‘She was saving me for an emergency, Jem.’

‘That is an unheard-of sum,’ Mr Hollinsworth said, his face pale.

It’s not a penny too high for someone as beautiful as Theodora Winnings, Jem thought, shocked, too, but not as surprised as the printer.

‘I was her insurance against total ruin,’ Teddy said, and bowed her head.

That was all she needed to say. Jem thought about the barrel of that pistol, then dismissed it. He had been on lee shores before, when nothing good was going to happen unless he and his crew exerted supreme effort. His crew had never failed him. He looked around at his crew—Teddy, and a fat printer from somewhere—and grinned at them.

‘Teddy my dear, I can’t explain this, but when I looked at your statue in Charleston I felt some odd assurance that things would work out in my...in our favour. I didn’t even know where you were, but something told me to go to Savannah. I know it’s nonsense, but what is that, measured against a duel to the death with a Southern gentleman?’

His crew laughed, indicating they were as certifiable as he was. Emboldened by their reaction and amazed by his own words, James Grey, usually a thoughtful man who never performed a hasty act, remembered Mrs Fillion’s admonition in Plymouth and decided to have faith.

Further emboldened, he kissed Theodora Winnings’ cheek and told her to go home before she got into trouble with the silly gambler who had controlled a good woman far too long.

‘Heaven knows you are probably in trouble with Mrs Winnings right now,’ he said, as he opened the door for her. ‘What will she do?’

‘She has a silver-backed hairbrush,’ Teddy said with touching dignity. ‘It hurts.’

He stared at her in shocked silence, realising how naïve he was.

‘Too bad I cannot duel with her, too,’ he said, pleased with himself that he controlled the anger threatening him. ‘Do you dare leave her house in the evening?’

‘She goes to her room by nine of the clock,’ Teddy said.

‘I’ll be at Christ Church then.’ He couldn’t help a chuckle, even as he wondered why in God’s name he had any right to be cheerful, not with death by duel on his menu this week. No doubt about it: In the past few months, he had gone through more emotions than Edmund Keene on the Drury Lane stage. ‘The choir has asked me to join them in Christmas carols.’

‘I didn’t know you sang,’ she said.

‘I didn’t either, Teddy,’ he told her, and kissed her lips this time, something he had wanted to do for the past eleven years. ‘There’s a lot I didn’t know, before I ran away to the United States.’

She smiled at that, touched his cheek for a too brief moment with the palm of her hand, and left the printing shop. He watched her hurry away, looking right and left, maybe hoping no one had seen her. Usually a bustling, busy thoroughfare, Bay Street was surprisingly empty. He chalked it up to an unexpected blessing.

‘Well, now, Mr Osgood N. Hollinsworth,’ he began, turning back to face the printer, ‘since you seem confidently sanguine that I should challenge a poor specimen of manhood to a duel, do you have any idea how I can survive it and live happily ever after with the woman I love?’

‘Not one single idea,’ Hollinsworth assured him cheerfully. ‘I have found in life that it’s often best to make up things as I go along.’

‘I wish I found that reassuring,’ Jem replied. ‘Where away?’

‘The residence of Mr William Tullidge, Esquire,’ Hollinsworth replied. ‘You have a date with destiny.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t look so cheerful,’ Jem groused.

‘Have faith, Captain. Didn’t you just say that?’

‘I did,’ Jem replied, his mind resolved. ‘Lead on, sir. What could possibly go wrong?’

Chapter Ten

To call William Tullidge’s residence in Ellis Square a mansion without equal would be to denigrate it. Even in his occasional hurried visits to London, Jem had never seen a house so well suited to its surroundings and beggaring any description except magnificent. He stared in open-mouthed wonder, his terror at the approaching encounter momentarily forgotten.

‘Pardon me, Mr Hollinsworth, but what pays this well in Savannah, a town that we will agree is pleasant, but not a metropolis?’

‘Slavery, Captain, pure and simple,’ his companion said. ‘He has built an empire with a lash on the backs of souls bought with blood money. He raises some cotton, but deals more in slaves.’

Startled by the intensity in the generally congenial voice of the printer, Jem stared at Hollinsworth. ‘Sir, with your vehement views, I am astounded you didn’t shake the dust of the South off your shoes years ago.’

‘I had my reasons for staying, Captain,’ he replied, and there was no mistaking the grim cast to his countenance. ‘I have almost satisfied them and will leave soon.’

‘He’s not going to see things our way, is he?’ Jem asked calmly enough, considering how his heart started to bang against his ribs.

‘Unlikely,’ Hollinsworth said, but he seemed to have inexplicably regained his good humour. ‘I should warn you that he bears no love for the Royal Navy that burned his plantation on Tybee Island, among others, during our late unpleasantness.’

Jem took a good, long look at Mr Osgood N. Hollinsworth. ‘Why do I have the nagging suspicion that you are enjoying this whole business?’

Trust the old rip to drag out a flippant response. ‘Captain, at times it seems as though centuries pass in my life where nothing much happens. Oh, there is always the usual, but you and Miss Theodora Winnings have piqued my interest.’

‘I am not reassured,’ Jem said dryly. ‘Ah, well. I’m in too deep to back out.’

‘I hoped you would say that.’

Jem gave him a withering look and walked up the steps to the imposing front doors. He noticed the pineapple carved into the woodwork over the door.

‘I remember this from Massachusetts,’ he told the fat man puffing along behind him. ‘Hospitality’s symbol?’

‘I wouldn’t hold my breath, Captain,’ Hollinsworth said, as Jem knocked on the door.

A butler ushered them in and suggested they wait in the hall, once Jem stated he was Captain James Grey, Royal Navy.

‘If what you say is true, that should at least get the man’s attention,’ Jem said. ‘My mere mention of the Royal Navy kept us out of the sitting room, eh?’

It did. Jem stood in a foyer of stunning beauty, with a parquet floor of some intricacy and what looked like leather wall coverings with an embossed design. Built on the backs of slaves, eh? Jem thought, as he admired and deplored at the same time.

‘Here he is,’ Hollinsworth said under his breath, as a man older than Jem came down the central staircase, looking not a bit pleased.

‘What business can I possibly have with the Royal Navy?’ he asked with no preamble, no bow and certainly no hand extended, either.

‘Theodora Winnings,’ Jem said, determined to be as brief as the man with rancour in his eyes who stood before him. ‘Mr Tullidge, I am Captain Grey, and I wish to acquaint you with my interest in that lady.’

‘Lady? You’ve been misinformed.’

‘Lady,’ Jem repeated firmly. ‘I met her years ago in Charleston and proposed matrimony by way of a letter. Her reply in the affirmative went astray for eleven years. I am here now, and I intend to claim her.’

‘You intend to claim her?’ Tullidge asked. He laughed. ‘You intend to claim her? I won her in a game of piquet. Mrs Winnings belies her name. She never wins, and we all know it.’

How distasteful, Jem thought. ‘Apparently you and friends of yours play cards with her, knowing you will win.’

‘We do. Should be ashamed of ourselves, shouldn’t we?’ he asked, unrepentant.

James saw no point in dignifying such meanness with a comment. He remained silent.

‘Poor, poor Mrs Winnings never could figure out what to discard.’ Tullidge shrugged. ‘A little loss here, a little loss there. She finally gambled away her house, and then she gambled away her last slave.’ He made a sad face at Jem that was utterly overruled by the triumph in his eyes. ‘Poor, poor you.’

‘I love her,’ Jem said. It was the first time he had said the words out loud, and they felt so good. ‘Do you?’

‘Love? She’s a slave and I fancy her.’ Tullidge laughed again. ‘Too bad your letter went astray, Captain. It fairly breaks my heart.’

‘Miss Winnings told me you have guaranteed her mistress her house again, plus two thousand dollars,’ Jem said. He felt like the last cricket of summer, chirping on a hearth, with winter coming. ‘I will offer you five hundred dollars now against another two thousand, once my letter of credit and remittance is approved in a Savannah counting house of your choice.’

‘How long will that take?’ Tullidge asked. ‘Three months? Four months? Longer?’

‘It will come,’ Jem said.

He knew disappointment was the only outcome of this conversation. He knew that before he knocked on the door, but a man has to try. ‘Does she mean anything to you?’

‘Certainly not,’ Tullidge said, ‘but Lord, she is a beauty, even if she is too old for my tastes, really. A year or two and I will sell her.’

Jem heard a great roaring in his ears and felt an ache in his jaw unlike anything he had experienced before. This was worse than combat, worse than bringing his frigate alongside the enemy and pounding away at close range. The tender woman he loved was at stake. He felt a great helplessness, he who was renowned in both fleets for his capability under fire and his innate sense of what to do when there was nothing to do.

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