Regency Christmas Wishes: Captain Grey's Christmas Proposal / Her Christmas Temptation / Awakening His Sleeping Beauty. Christine Merrill
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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?’
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,