My True Love Gave to Me Read online

  My True Love Gave to Me

  Jackie Barbosa

  Circe Press

  My True Love Gave to Me:

  A Bonus Epilogue to Hot Under the Collar

  (A Lords of Lancashire Novella)

  Jackie Barbosa

  Cover art by Beverley Kendall

  Frontispiece by Joanne Renaud

  © 2020 by Jackie Barbosa

  ISBN-13 978-1-7353205-1-9

  Digital Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, this story would never have come into being without Joanne Renaud, who suggested the idea of a Walter and Artemisia short story more than two years ago. Initially, I wasn’t sure that I had another story for them, but then the idea for My True Love Gave to Me popped into my head and here we are. (Joanne is also responsible for the lovely frontispiece illustration.)

  I also can’t thank Zoe Archer (aka Eva Leigh) enough for poking and prodding me to actually write the darn thing. We’ve been doing regular writing sprints together, and it’s been amazing for my productivity.

  Finally, a quick thanks to my beta readers: Linda Hilton, Corinne Lehmann, Marilyn Miller, and Joanne Renaud (again). Your feedback was invaluable!

  Contents

  1. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

  2. Away in a Manger

  3. What Child Is This?

  4. I Wonder as I Wander

  5. In the Bleak Midwinter

  6. Children Go Where I Send Thee

  7. Lullay, Lullay (Coventry Carol)

  8. Joy to the World

  Epilogue

  Also By Jackie Barbosa

  Author’s Note

  A Bit of Rough

  1

  It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

  Grange-Over-Sands, Cumbria – December 24, 1807

  Walter Langston woke with a start, his heart pounding against his breastbone. Uncertain what had disturbed him, he lifted his head and looked over at his wife, Artemisia. She was still spooned against him and, to all appearances, sound asleep.

  Perhaps he’d had a nightmare? That would explain his sudden awakening and racing pulse. Except that usually, if a dream roused him, he remembered something of it. Not this time.

  So he lay, alert and listening for the source of his disturbance. He’d just begun to think he truly must have been dreaming when he heard it. A horse’s whinny and then the creaking of hinges as the stable door was pushed shut.

  Walter shot out of bed like a bullet from the barrel of a musket, scrambling in the dark for the clothing he kept by the bedside in case of emergencies. Early in his career, he had discovered that a clergyman was as likely to be called upon in the middle of the night as a doctor or magistrate, and so he had learned to be prepared for such nocturnal interruptions.

  As he tugged on his trousers, he reflected gratefully on the fact that he’d never got round to oiling those hinges properly or he might never have been alerted to the crime. Though it was probably too late already. By the time he got dressed, the thief would likely be long gone.

  “Wha’sa-matter?” Artemisia murmured, her voice slurred with sleep.

  “I think someone is trying to steal Buford.” Throwing a crisp linen shirt over his head, he bounded to the window overlooking the rear of the vicarage and pulled aside the draperies to peer out.

  It was one of those unusually bright nights that often occurred in winter when the sky was clear and the moon was at or near the full. The stable was positioned to the right of the house, its doors opening onto a gravel drive that ran parallel to the back of the property.

  The sight that met his eyes made him gape with astonishment. He had expected—and perhaps hoped—to see someone leading Buford, an unremarkable gelding of uncertain pedigree, out the gate and onto the road. Someone he might be able to frighten off by throwing open the sash, sticking his head out the window, and shouting, “Stop, thief!”

  But what he saw instead was the horse standing alone in the center of the drive, stamping his feet, and looking from side to side with a decided air of bewilderment. The stable doors were closed and so was the gate. Not another soul was in sight.

  What in the world?

  “From the vicar?” Artemisia demanded, sounding more awake. “And on Christmas Eve, too. Have people no shame at all?”

  Still holding the drapes open, Walter looked over his shoulder at his wife. “No shame and apparently no sense. The thief appears to have left the goods behind.”

  “What?” Artemisia threw off the covers and rose from the bed, her shapely, naked form limned in silvery light like that of a pagan goddess until she drew on her dressing gown. She hurried to his side as she pulled the two sides of the robe together for warmth, for the room was chilly despite the embers that glowed in the grate. When she reached the window, she looked down to survey the same puzzling scene that met his own eyes. “What on earth?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Walter said. “Why go to the trouble of trying to steal a horse only to leave it behind?”

  His wife shook her head uneasily. “It must be a ploy to get you to come outside. Though I cannot imagine to what end.”

  “Neither can I, but I intend to find out.” He gestured for her to take his place in front of the window. “Stay here and keep watch until I get down there. On the off chance the thief is hiding just out of sight and plans to abscond with poor Buford while I am making my way downstairs. And shout if you see anyone.”

  Nodding, she replaced his hand where he held open the drapes with her own, and Walter rushed to put on his boots and coat. Once in the hallway, he grabbed one of the lanterns from the wall and hurtled down the stairs two at a time. When he reached the ground floor, he paused, but hearing nothing from upstairs, he proceeded out the front door and around the side of the house.

  Buford was still standing in the drive, his bay coat sparkling so entrancingly in the moonlight that he appeared to be almost a figment of Walter’s imagination. But there was no denying that the horse was real; not when his breath steamed from his nostrils and his hooves clacked audibly against the gravel.

  Walter approached his mount with some caution, scanning his surroundings, but no one appeared in his peripheral or indeed any other part of his vision, and soon he was close enough to pat the animal on his neck and murmur soothing nonsense words. Upon assuring himself that Buford was quite unharmed and no one appeared poised to attack, he waved up toward the window where Artemisia still stood.

  Shaking his head with puzzlement, he walked to the stable doors to examine them. The bolt that held them closed had been pulled open and left that way so that the panel through which Buford had been led into the yard still gaped slightly ajar. The sound of the bolt being thrown and the door being opened must have been what had roused him at first. Again, he marveled that he’d heard either noise through the closed window, but the hinges truly were rusted and squeaky.

  But the whole series of events made no sense. Buford was not a valuable specimen of horseflesh, but if the thief had realized this and decided to abandon the endeavor, why go to the trouble of leading the horse out into the yard and closing the stable door afterward? Why take the risk of being caught?

  Perhaps one of his parishioners was trying to teach him a lesson? There were a few members of his flock who considered Walter a bit too trusting and prone to forgiveness, although he noticed they rarely considered him too forgiving when it came to his pardons of their own transgressions. He’d been advised more than once, however, that he ought to lock the church at night to keep out the riffra
ff and be more assiduous in securing his personal property. Walter had more than once assured these counselors that first, the house of the Lord should be open to all at any hour and second, anyone who stole anything that belonged to Walter probably needed it more than he did.

  Yes, he decided, there were a few who might try something like this to get him to change his ways. Purely in his own best interest, of course. That was the most likely explanation, though why anyone would choose Christmas Eve of all nights to attempt to impart such a message was beyond him.

  He pulled on the panel to open it fully, prefatory to returning Buford to his stall. The hinges creaked abominably, but he thought he heard something else as well. He paused with the panel half open, and then he heard it.

  The thin, reedy cry of an infant.

  2

  Away in a Manger

  Walter knew, with a sick feeling of dismay and disbelief, what he would find when he entered the stable. He knew because it was Christmas Eve. And he knew because it made everything else make a certain kind of horrible sense.

  Lifting the lantern, he stepped inside. Buford’s stall stood open and, when he rounded the corner, he found the source of the plaintive, thready wail just where he expected. Lying atop the mound of hay in Buford’s trough—his manger—was a tightly wrapped bundle the precise size and shape of a very young infant. And indeed, when Walter got closer, he could see the babe’s face, round but wizened in the way that, in his somewhat limited experienced, characterized newborns.

  The baby, which had fallen momentarily silent, screwed up his—or perhaps her, it was impossible to tell at this juncture—features and let out another tinny cry.

  Jesus Christ.

  Well, not literally, of course. Or at least, Walter doubted it. A vicar’s stable in Cumbria seemed an unlikely locale for the second coming.

  Setting the lantern atop the wall so that he could see what he was doing, he gently lifted the swaddled infant from its resting place. The cloths and blankets were, he was relieved to discover, thick enough to keep the poor thing warm and dry, which suggested they had been recently tended. As soon as he cradled the baby in his arms, its crying ceased, and Walter’s chest constricted.

  What if he hadn’t heard the creaking of the stable door and Buford’s whinnying? What if this tiny, defenseless being had been forced to spend the entire night alone in the dark, with no one to attend its pitiful cries for comfort and sustenance? When he found out who had perpetrated this little joke—if one could call it that—Walter would thrash them within an inch of their lives.

  But righteous indignation wouldn’t do the mite any good right now.

  Once he was certain he could carry the child securely in one arm, he grabbed the lamp again and all but ran back to the house. On the doorstep, he had to juggle the lantern so he could turn the knob to enter the house. As soon as he was in the foyer and had kicked the door closed, he shouted his wife’s name. She appeared at the top of the staircase and, upon catching sight of him, immediately grasped the situation.

  Reaching his side within seconds, she gently took the swaddled infant in her own arms. “You must fetch Doctor Jessup straightaway. I’ll make sure the cloths are clean and dry while you’re gone.”

  Walter nodded. They needed to assess the baby’s health as soon as possible, and neither of them was qualified for the task. “At least Buford is already out of the barn.”

  Harold Jessup, Grange-Over-Sands’s only physician, lived with his wife and two of their children in a modest but comfortable house on the outskirts of the town proper, just far enough away from the vicarage that it would be inconvenient to make the trip on foot, even if the situation wasn’t urgent.

  He stopped only long enough to bridle Buford. The gelding was easy-going and well-trained enough to be ridden bareback, but not so much so that controlling him without a bit would have been possible. Once mounted, Walter urged the horse into a rapid walk, and they made their way quickly through the cold, dark, and eerily empty streets of the village Walter had come to think of as home. Upon reaching the doctor’s two-story, half-timbered residence, Walter dismounted but did not bother tying Buford to the post. He wouldn’t go anywhere under the circumstances.

  Like Walter, Jessup was accustomed to being wakened in the middle of the night and opened the door less than ten minutes after Walter had knocked upon it. A stocky man in his mid-forties with a jovial face and bright, clever eyes, the doctor was already clad in his standard black coat and trousers and clutching his black bag in his hand.

  “What seems to be the trouble, vicar?” he asked once he had determined his late-night visitor’s identity.

  His eyebrows—dark brown in contrast to the graying hair at his temples—climbed his forehead as Walter related the story. When Walter had finished, Jessup nodded and said he would be along directly in his carriage.

  “It won’t take me long, but if you should find the infant in poor condition when you get home, don’t hesitate to come back and hurry me up.”

  After indicating his understanding, Walter climbed onto Buford’s back again and made his way home to the vicarage. When he arrived, he found his wife and Mrs. Graham already in the kitchen attempting to coax the infant to swallow milk from a spoon. The effort appeared to be going rather badly, for a significant puddle of white liquid had formed next to his wife’s chair and her sleeve was so damp that it had molded to her arm.

  “You seem to be getting more on the outside of it than the inside,” he remarked.

  Mrs. Graham made a dismissive clucking noise. “He is doing very well considering babies don’t normally eat from spoons.”

  Walter settled into the chair around the corner from his wife. “So it’s a boy, then?”

  Artemisia grinned at him. “Most assuredly.”

  Mrs. Graham tipped one more spoonful mostly into his mouth and said, “He seems happier now, don’t he, Mrs. Langston?”

  “Yes,” his wife agreed, her face glowing with pleasure, “though I expect we’ll have to do this again a few times before morning.”

  “Really?” Walter asked, raising an eyebrow. “He’s so small. Can’t he keep the rest of the night?”

  Artemisia let out a soft puff of laughter. “Newborns have to eat very often—as much as every few hours—until their tummies get big enough to sustain them for longer intervals. Or so I have been informed by the exhausted new mothers I have visited in the past few years.”

  “Oh. Well, then, you and I will take care of it. You may go back to bed, Mrs. Graham.”

  The housekeeper—who thankfully was now only the housekeeper, the role of cook having been taken on by the recently hired Mrs. Appleby, who appeared to have slept through the excitement—shook her head decisively. “Not on your life, Mr. Langston. I shan’t sleep until I know this little fellow is as healthy as he seems.”

  When Dr. Jessup arrived some fifteen minutes later, the baby had fallen into what appeared to Walter to be a very contented sleep, and his wife had settled into one of the more comfortable chairs in the parlor and was staring at the infant in her arms with an unquestionably besotted look on her face.

  If this was some sort of prank on the part of one of her few remaining detractors in the village to tease her with the promise of the one thing she was unable to have—a child—Walter was going to commit violence and damn the consequences. Worst of all, it was exactly the sort of thing he could imagine Robert Beaumont doing in retaliation for having been exposed as a liar and a cheat. He would certainly have the resources, Walter thought darkly.

  Examining the baby required waking him from his sleep, and he whimpered piteously as the doctor unwrapped and jostled him about. The process was mercifully quick, however, and he was soon reswaddled and back in Artemisia’s arms, where he immediately settled into a comfortable but wakeful silence.

  God, the feeling between his wife and the child was mutual. Already.

  “Well?” Walter asked Jessup as the man began packing his instruments back i
nto his case.

  The doctor straightened and gave Walter a smile that was equal parts reassuring and sober. “He’s a healthy, full-term infant and no worse for having been out in the cold night air as far as I can tell. I’d put his age at a week to ten days old, and he’s been properly cared for during most of that time, though I suspect he’s been somewhat underfed in the last twenty-four hours. I’ve brought some extra swaddling I happen to keep on hand, and I’ll leave that for you as you’ll need it to keep him clean and dry through tomorrow. And while you can feed him a combination of cow or goat’s milk and pap for a short time, I’d recommend hiring a wet nurse as soon as possible.”

  Jessup snapped his bag shut and started for the door.

  “Wait.”

  The doctor drew up short.

  “Do you have any idea who he might belong to?” Walter asked. He knew none of his parishioners could be the babe’s mother, for only three women in the church had recently been in the family way and one had given birth almost two months ago while the other two were several months from delivering. That said, he didn’t know every woman in Grange-Over-Sands, as not everyone in town attended services at St. Mary’s.

  The doctor shook his head. “I haven’t any patients who are due to give birth this month, so his mother can’t be anyone I’ve treated. That doesn’t mean his mother’s not from the village—women can and do give birth without my aid or knowledge—but I’m afraid that’s not much help in making an identification.” Squinting at Walter, he added, “If the baby’s mother has abandoned him, why are you anxious to find her?”