Magnus and the Christmas Angel

Jude Knight

Published by Titchfield Press

Copyright 2016 Judith Anne Knighton writing as Jude Knight

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except for including brief quotations in a review.

ISBN: 978-1535089173

Dedication

To my readers, and especially to the winners of made-to-order stories who gave me the specifications for this and other short stories.

Table of Contents

1      1

2      5

3      10

4      15

5      20

6      24

Bluestocking Belles      34

Published books      36

Coming in 2016      40

Connect with Jude Knight      45

1

I

mperatrix was not in Magnus’ bedroom. She had not been accidentally shut in the cellars or the attic or any of the dozen unused bedrooms, frozen in a state of readiness for guests who never came. She was not anywhere in the house.

She was not in the stables, or the dairy, or any of the sheds or other outbuildings. The children of the Fenchurch Abbey estate had searched high and low, and brought a score of cats for Callie to inspect, hoping to win the reward.

None of them were Imp.

Callie had questioned all the servants who had cottages near the main house, and none of them had somehow acquired an elegant, imperious, elderly, and very pregnant black cat.

Or not so pregnant now. Imp had gone missing three weeks ago. Somewhere, she had nested and produced her litter. Somewhere—and half an hour ago, Callie had suddenly had an idea about where. They had moved from Blessings more than a year ago, and Imp had birthed two litters since then, her latest at Fenchurch Abbey (in Magnus’ dressing room on his cravats). But perhaps she had returned to the place that had been home for most of her life?

Callie shivered, and pulled her shawl further forward over her head. She had run impetuously from the house without first checking the weather, and without telling her maid where she was going, thinking she would not be long.

The clouds looked ominous, but her childhood home was only a brisk walk away; she could be there, retrieve her cat, and be back well before dark. She was not a fool. She wore a rain cape, and it never snowed this far south as early as Christmas Eve. Except, it seemed, this year.

Perhaps it would remain a few stray flakes, melting before they reached the ground, but the sky was black and heavy. She might not make it back to Fenchurch Abbey before the snow began in earnest.

The servants would fret if she stayed at Blessings overnight. Magnus would neither know nor care. He had spent more time in London than at the Abbey since their wedding. Proving his identity so he could take up his title, he said. This was true, but avoiding his unwanted wife was doubtless also on his list of reasons.

His brief impersonal note had said he hoped to be home before Christmas, and she had ordered his room prepared: his bed made with fresh sheets, and a fire burned each day to drive the chill and damp from the air. But he had not come. She imagined that London held attractions far greater than the country girl his sense of honour had forced him to marry.

She turned another corner in the path. Here among the trees, the hill between her and Blessings was hidden, but the path was rising and she would soon be at the crest overlooking her destination.

No. She could no longer claim to be a girl. In the years it took him to come home and honour their childhood betrothal, she had left girlhood behind.

Her old nurse would say she was being unfair. Nanny was the only servant to stay with her when she had no money to pay wages after her brother died a year ago and his creditors seized everything moveable.

“His lordship were castaway then seized by savages, Miss Callie, as you well know. He came home as soon as he could escape, and just in time, too.”

Yes, and even if she found him much changed—a dour and silent man had replaced the merry boy she had loved her whole life—she was grateful to him for saving her from marriage to his dissolute cousin, who was claiming Magnus’s title, his estate and his bride. Wedding Lewis Colbrooke, the putative Earl of Halwick, was a horrifying prospect, but the only path she could see to save her and Nanny from starvation or worse.

Undoubtedly, the gossip about Magnus’s reappearance from the dead was still thrilling the ton. It was certainly dramatic. He strode into the church and voiced a loud objection to the ceremony currently in progress. “...for she is betrothed to the Earl of Halwick, and I am he!” She had turned, and recognised him immediately, for all that she had not seen him since he was 15, and he was now a man grown, hard, scarred, and grim. In her relief, she had fainted for the first time in her life.

Her thoughts had carried her up the path and out of the woods. From the crest, Blessings should be visible, but the snow was falling more heavily and the path ahead disappeared into gloom. She narrowed her eyes. Was that not a horse? It stood patiently in the swirling snow, while its rider had dismounted and was bending over something on the ground.

Perhaps she could ask for help. She hurried down towards the horse, but her feet slowed as she approached. Surely that was Magnus’ horse? And, yes, it was Magnus himself, standing and turning towards her.

In his large hands, something hung limp and lifeless. Something black—an animal. “Imp! You brute, Magnus! What have you done?”

2

M

agnus Colbrooke pressed on through the gathering snow, determined to reach home before Christmas. Callie would be expecting him, though whether she wanted him there was another question.

His pulse quickened and his heart sank at the thought of her. Now he had been confirmed as Earl of Halwick, sorted out the mess his affairs had become in his long absence, and made certain his pestilential cousin could no longer trouble him or Callie, he needed to deal with the far less tractable problem of his reluctant wife.

The snow was getting heavier, but taking the short cut through the grounds of Blessings had cut three quarters of an hour from the journey. Even now, he was still closer to Blessings than to Fenchurch Abbey. He would need to push the horse faster if they were to be home before the worst of the storm.

Part of him wanted to turn back to Blessings. Abandoned for more than a year, it would be cold and lifeless, but not as cold and lifeless as his likely welcome from Callie. From the moment she had taken one look at his tattooed face and fainted, he had tried to impose on her as little as possible, keeping his distance. The scars on his face were nothing to the scars on his soul from all he had done to survive during the years of his captivity. He could not bear for her to despise him more than she did already.

A black shape in the snow jerked him from his reverie. Perhaps a rabbit, crawled off to die after being shot by one of the tinkers from the camp close by Blessings. But it was not the right shape for a rabbit.

He could not have articulated why he stopped and dismounted to look more closely. Some vague thought of helping the poor thing, if it still lived. Perhaps he already knew—even from his lofty seat on the horse—what he had found, but his mind chattered on about feral cats and tinkers’ cats even as his hands picked up the cold dead body of Callie’s beloved Imperatrix.

She was curled around a kitten, as dead as its mother, poor little scrap. What had Imp been thinking, bringing the little one out in this weather?

A gasp behind Magnus told him he was no longer alone; a voice he knew, a scent he would recognise till the day he died even if he never smelled it again, composed of the herbs she strewed among her clothes, the flower oils she used to scent her soap, and something that was indefinably Callie.

He turned to meet blazing blue-green eyes in a white face. “Imp! You brute, Magnus! What have you done?”

“I found her, Callie. She must have been trying to bring the kitten home.”

The name slipped out. She had told him that first day, after he interrupted her wedding and proposed himself as replacement groom, that no-one had called her Callie since she was a girl. So he honoured her wish, and called her Caroline. But in his heart, she would always be Callie.

Magnus hurriedly wrapped the cat in his muffler, hoping she hadn’t seen the rat bites that scarred her beloved pet. He let her take the cat from him and hug it to her, fighting the urge to put his arms around her as the tears streamed down her cheeks. She would not welcome his comfort, had shrugged it off before. He stood helplessly watching, the little kitten cradled in one hand.

“I am sorry, Caroline,” he said, after a while. “I know what she meant to you.”

She looked up from weeping into the cat’s fur, her eyes still swimming with tears but her face calm. The Callie he had left behind him thirteen years ago showed every emotion on her face. What had happened while he was gone to teach her such control?

“I apologise, Magnus. I know you would not hurt her. Is that her kitten?” She moved Imp to one arm and held out the other hand. Her use of his name set his heart rioting. She did that occasionally; forgot his title and called him by the name she’d used when they were children, and each time his whole being vibrated with the hope that perhaps they could bridge the gap of years to find their old friendship.

“Ah, poor little scrap,” she said, echoing his own reaction. Small as her hand was, the kitten filled it.

“Are there more, Fenchurch?” And just like that, she doused his hope in a bucket of cold titles. He had to wade through his disappointment to comprehend her question.

“More kittens? I have not had time to look, and if there were tracks, the snow has covered them.”

“Let us hope they are still safe at Blessings.”

She started to walk away, and he turned the horse to follow her. “Why would they be at Blessings? Caroline, we need to get to the Abbey. The storm is getting wilder.”

Callie waved a dismissive hand. “You go if you wish. I am going to Blessings.”

Magnus pulled the horse across in front of her, making a barrier. “There is nothing at Blessings. It has been empty for more than a year. Come home, Caroline.”

She faced him, white-faced and furious, ready to take on him, his horse, and the whole confounded snow storm. “I am going to Blessings, Magnus. I believe Imp had her babies there, and she died trying to bring them to me. I am not going to let her down.”

“It is not safe. There are tinkers camping near. There are no fires, no food. I cannot let you do it.” As if he had a hope of stopping her, and so she immediately told him.

“You are bigger than me, Magnus. You can lift me up and carry me to the Abbey, screaming all the way. But as soon as you put me down, I will go to Blessings. If you are so concerned about me, then come and protect me. But I will go to Blessings.”

3

M

agnus followed her, of course. Callie had known he would. Sometimes she thought the boy she loved was still inside the man who had returned six years late and changed almost beyond recognition. She had always been able to persuade that boy to support her.

“We will go to Blessings, then,” he said, “but let me put you up on the horse, Caroline. We need to be under cover before this gets much worse.”

He sounded tired, and for a moment she almost turned back. He must have been riding these two days, and she was keeping him from journey’s end. But the kittens would not survive if she did not find them, and they were all she had of Imp; a gift from Magnus many years ago, just before his father sent him off to the other side of the world.

But before he lifted her onto the horse, she heard a faint sound. “Magnus, wait. Do you hear that?”

He lifted his chin, his face intent. The tattoos that covered his chin and cheek made his expression hard to read, but after a moment he said, “Yes. Up there.”

She looked where he pointed. A large oak tree. A small white kitten clung to a broad branch just above head height, making an occasional attempt to stretch to a hole in the trunk just out of its reach. It had clearly clambered or fallen from the nest, and was too weak to return.

Magnus handed her the reins, and quickly scaled the trunk, returning with the small animal. Callie put its littermate and mother down, and took the living kitten, tucking it inside her bodice, where its tiny cold body could be quickly warmed. It was full-furred, and its eyes were open, but still very young; perhaps the same age as Imp when Magnus rescued her from their tormenting older relatives. And it had not been alone for long, its belly still rounded from its last meal.

Magnus was already back up in the tree, sitting on the kitten’s branch and checking in the nest. He met her eyes and shook his head, his own eyes sombre. No more kittens? Or no more living kittens?

“She was taking them home,” Callie told him. “She brought them this far, but then the snow came. There is no point in going on to Blessings, now.”

“We have no choice, Caroline. We cannot cross the hill in this.” Magnus bent to pick up Imp and her baby, and put them inside his coat. He was right. In the brief time it had taken to collect the kitten and check the tree for more, the volume of snow had doubled.

She let him lift her on to the horse, and swing up behind her. The wind was colder this high, less filtered by the low shrubs that bordered the path. He urged the horse into a fast walk, and soon the grey shape of Blessings loomed before them out of the gathering dark.

“I will see to the horse, Caroline,” Magnus told her, “while you take the kitten out of the snow.”

“Will you leave Imp out here?” she asked. If Imp had been driven from Blessings to save her kittens from rats, as the wounds suggested, Callie did not now want to leave her to them.

“I will bury her and the little one. I don’t want...” he trailed off.

“I saw the bites, Magnus.” She tried to keep any tartness from her voice. It was kind of him to want to spare her, though she was not the protected child he clearly still thought her.

“Do you wish to... say anything?”

“Prayers, you mean? No, Magnus. I...” she swallowed, as tears thickened her throat, “I will remember her in life, and won’t scandalise the rector by demanding a funeral.” Her forced laugh sounded more like a sob even to her own ears. “I will see if I can make a fire inside,” she said, and fled before she collapsed to cry on Magnus’s shoulder.

The house was freezing cold, and empty. Her brother’s creditors had stripped it of anything saleable, and broken much else out of sheer spite.

She went straight to the room that had once been the library, the shelves now bare and forlorn. Thank goodness! The marauders had not found the secret room she and Magnus had discovered when they were children. It fitted into an odd corner between a round tower on the original house and the New Wing (built when Charles II was restored to the throne), and no-one but them seemed to know of it. It had become her refuge from her brother and his friends after her father died, and was still stocked for a stay of several days at need.

She bustled about, keeping busy, wondering what was taking Magnus so long. The room was still stocked with wood to make a fire, and she soon had it started. Next task was a pot of tea—a kettle full of snow melting over the fire and fragrant leaves from the tin of tea she kept on the mantle. The tea was still useable, but unfortunately the food she always kept in her hideaway had long since turned to dust and mould. She tipped it out of the window, container and all.

She collected more snow, using every container she could find, and set it near the fire to melt and warm. Magnus would need a wash when he returned, and they at least had plenty of tea, if nothing more substantial.

If not for her concern about the kitten, she could be pleased to be here again, in the hidden room. Here, the girl she had been and the boy she had loved had talked for hours, studied together, shared hopes and dreams for the future. Perhaps here she could summon the courage to try to find common ground with the man that boy had become, to try to make something real of their marriage.

The kitten revived in the warmth next to her skin, and when Magnus arrived it was in her lap, playing with a ribbon she dangled and occasionally stopping to declare, with a peremptory meow, that a meal might be pleasant at some point in the near future. Poor little thing.

4

I

t was full dark by the time Magnus had stabled and rubbed down the horse, buried the cat and kitten, and negotiated with the tinkers for food and milk. He had also taken time, in the last of the light, to check the loft over the stable, where evidence of the battle Imp had escaped lay in the scattered bodies of rats. She had made a good account of herself before she set off through the woods in a desperate attempt to bring her babies home.

The snow was sheeting down now, thick and fast. They would be here for the night, and possibly for a day or two. The servants would worry, but he had promised the tinkers a bonus if they delivered the message he had left with them as soon as they could make the trip safely.

He traversed the pitch black house, heading for the library, in no doubt about where Callie would go to ground.

Tonight, he had seen glimpses of the girl he loved in the still, dignified woman she had become.  He had returned from London determined to talk to her, to find out what she wanted for the future. If it were in his power, she would have it, whether to lead her own life apart from him or build the kind of marriage they once dreamed of.

He fumbled for the hidden catch that released the bookshelf concealing the door, which opened to light, and heat, and the appealing sight of a pretty woman seated on the floor, her gown pooled about her, playing with a kitten. Her boots were steaming on the hearth next to several jugs and bowls of water, and one stocking foot poked from beneath her skirt, riveting his eyes.

She looked up and smiled, and his heart stuttered. He would give the world to have her look at him like that every time he entered a room.

“Fenchurch, I have made tea. You will have to have it without milk, I am afraid.”

Magnus grinned. “Not so. I have treasures, Caroline. Let me just put these things down and shut the door, and I will show you.”

He left the saddlebags in the corner; they would come in handy later. But the basket from the tinkers’ camp he put on the floor by Callie, and sat down next to her.

“I have treasures,” he repeated. “Goats’ milk, enough for the kitten and for our tea too, bread, cheese, and some apples.” He handed her each item as he named it: the jug with the milk, the round of bread and wedge of cheese, each wrapped in muslin, and four large apples, undoubtedly filched by the tinkers from Blessings’ neglected orchard.

Wide-eyed, she admired his riches. “But how?”

“I saw tinkers in the woods when I rode past earlier. I thought they might be willing to spare a little for us. They offered us a corner of a caravan. The storm will be bad, they said, and the house is inhospitable.” The contrast between the tinkers’ expectations and the cosy room made him smile. “They have clearly never found our little room, Callie.”

Bother. He had called her Callie again, and she was frowning, but not about that apparently, for she said, “I should have stopped to put on my gloves.”

“Are you cold, I will...”

“Not for my hands, Magnus. To feed the kitten.”

“Ah. Well, as to that...” He stripped off his riding gloves. Stout leather, they would hold milk in as well as they held water out. Callie made short work of preparing one, turning the thumb and the three of the fingers to the inside as he retrieved his belt knife. He cut a tiny slit in the tip of the remaining finger, and then folded the tip over to stop leaks while Callie poured some of the milk into the makeshift feeder.

Bent over his hand, she was so close he could have brushed his lips over her hair. Bad idea, Magnus. Or perhaps the best he had had in six months. After all, he had not made much of a job of pretending he did not desire her with every heartbeat, that he wasn’t more in love with the dignified woman than he had ever been with the young girl when he was a green lad.

“There. That should be enough to start.” Callie sat back and lifted the kitten, cradling it against her breast with one hand while she guided the milk-laden glove to its mouth with the other.

He was a fool. All she cared about was the kitten. But the little mite suddenly realised that milk was trickling into its mouth and began to knead, and purr, and suck, and Callie smiled up at him, her face glowing. “Look at the little angel. Oh Magnus, that is the perfect name for her. Angel. Our Christmas Angel”

“Angel out of Imp, Callie?”

“Well, yes, and why not?” The glove slipped and the kitten complained bitterly. Callie turned her lovely eyes back to her little patient, and coaxed the finger back into its mouth again, and Magnus got up to wash his hands and slice the bread.

“She must be around three weeks old, Caroline,” he said. “Imp has been missing for that long?”

“Yes,” Callie confirmed. “We have searched high and low. I knew she must be ready to have her kittens, so at first I was not worried.”

“She always hides when she has her litter. Not nestled in my cravats, this time.” He grinned, to show that he was joking, and after a moment she smiled back.

“I checked there first, Fenchurch. And then throughout the house, and the stables, and the neighbouring farm.” She ran a gentle finger over the kitten’s head. It was more than half asleep, its belly round and full. She went on with what sounded like a change of subject. “This morning, Mrs Mallock climbed all the way up to the top floor. One of the new maids found her asleep in the maid’s bed. Apparently it was Mrs Mallock’s bed when she was a new maid.”

“Ah. You thought Imp might have gone back to the days of her first litter.”

“She was getting old, Magnus.”

“So you came to check the loft over the end stall of the south wing.”

Callie’s finger stilled and she looked up from the kitten. “How did you know?”

“You told me in your letters,” Magnus said. “Imp always chose that spot to deliver her litters, at the least-used end of the stable, far away from your brother’s hunters and their grooms.”

5

T

he hunters on which Callie’s brother lavished his attention until he could no longer afford them.

And Magnus remembered her letters? From the day he left, she had written to him. A few lines a day, a letter a week, a bundle of letters posted every month. Trivial stories of a country girl on her ordinary daily round. And he had written back, letters from all down the coast of Africa, then up the other side and into Asia, and across the Pacific. Letters full of exotic stories and drawings of strange and wonderful places.

How boring he must have found her dull and commonplace ramblings.

“I kept writing,” she blurted. Letter after letter, at first sent in the hopes the missing ship would finally appear, and later put into the chest where she kept the much read, much cried over letters he had written in return.

“After my ship went down?” Magnus asked, his eyes warm.

Until the evening before her date at the altar to marry Magnus’s cousin. That letter, much smudged where she wept on it, and creased where she crushed it in her hands, lay with the others in her chest at the Abbey.

Callie nodded.

“I would like to read them,” Magnus said.

Callie shook her head, helplessly. Her domestic ramblings, her outpouring of grief after her father died, her increasing desperation as her brother spiralled down into ruin, stripping the estate to spend his wealth and eventually her dowry on horses, gambling, drink, loose women, and ever more extravagant schemes to rescue their fortunes. Abetted and egged on by his dear friend Lewis Colbrooke, who somehow always seemed to be the winner in any game of chance, and to come unscathed out of any risky venture. Until the swine won even the deeds to Blessings, and Callie took refuge with Squire Ambrose and his wife.

Magnus took her shake as refusal. “Not if you do not wish me to,” he said, the warm eagerness in his eyes turning to disappointment.

“I am afraid you will find them dull,” she explained. And far too revealing. She had censored nothing, thinking no-one would ever see them.

“Never dull.” The warmth had returned to Magnus’s eyes, and his voice slowed to the meditative tones, like rich brandied honey, that always sent a shiver through her. “They were home to me, Callie. I read them over and over and again, until they were thin with touching, and they brought me here, to Blessings and to the Abbey; to my own land, and to you. When the ship went down, I had your latest package of letters with me, inside my shirt, and as they hauled me out of the water, all I could think of was that I had a little part of you still with me.”

He shook off the mood. “Let us organise a bed for little Angel, and get some sleep.”

Callie watched as he quickly and efficiently used an old discarded shirt to line one of the three chamber pots that had found their way here. He placed it on the hearth where it would be warm, but not too hot. Callie wondered if he recognised the shirt. He had been wearing it the day he fought the older boys for two wild kittens, and brought them to her, bloodied but triumphant. Magnus’s father had sent him overseas after that, and Callie had washed and kept the shirt.

His next words showed he was traversing the same memories as her. “We did this for Imp and Glad. Do you remember?”

“Yes. We fed them through one of your riding gloves and put them to bed in a... bowl.” She blushed a little at discussing such indelicate pottery, and he quirked a grin at her, the tattoos making it seem fierce.

Callie had named the black kitten Imperatrix, Empress, for her regal bearing and clear sense that the world would revolve to her command. The tabby became Gladiator for his combative nature. She gave him to the eldest daughter of a tenant farmer, and Glad lived up to his name, growing to become winner of a thousand barnyard battles and ruler of all the toms for a wide radius around the home farm where he was champion rat catcher and mouser.

“Does Glad still live,” Magnus asked, as she settled Angel into the hollow Magnus had warmed by settling the still warm teapot in it for a few moments.

All of a sudden, memories of what she had lost collapsed onto Callie in an avalanche of sorrow. “No. He died last year,” she choked out, “and now Imp has gone, and nothing will ever be as it was.” Somehow, here in their past refuge, it seemed natural to be in his arms, crying on his shoulder as she had during childhood crises so long ago.

He wrapped his arms around her, rubbed his cheek against her hair, patted her shoulder, and repeated over and over again, “That is right, Callie. Let it out. All will be well. We will make it right, Callie. Let it all out.”

It was a long time before she could collect herself, gathering the last shreds of her dignity and pulling away. Except for the night her father died, and the long, long night before the day she was to marry Lewis, she had not cried since she was a girl of twelve, grieving because her dearest friend had been sent to the other side of the earth.

6

C

allie cried no more tidily now than she had when they were children. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her nose was running. Another tear gathered in the corner of her eyes as Magnus watched, and spilled down her cheek. He was far gone indeed if he found her desirable even blotched and tear-stained.

“I never cry,” she told Magnus, as she took the handkerchief he handed her and blew into it, noisily.

“Then it was clearly time,” he said, with a last pat, and took heart when she did not twist away.  He dared a little more, and gave her a quick one-armed hug, before saying briskly, “You may have the sofa, and I shall make a pallet on the floor.” He handed her one of the other chamber pots. “Here, Caroline. Take it out into the library and leave it there when you are finished.”

She blushed, then did as he said, blushing again when she returned to find him in shirt and pantaloons, washing his face and hands. He resisted the urge to put on his coat. She was his wife, after all, and in any other circumstances would, after six months of marriage, have seen him in an even greater state of undress. Except that her reserve, her formality, her obvious fear of his tattooed face (and, did she know it, shoulders and buttocks), had made him keep his distance.

When he returned from the library, she was on the sofa, wrapped in the blanket he had spread for her.

He banked the fire, and blew out the candle, and tucked himself into his own blanket. He had slept on harder floors than this one.

“Sleep well, Magnus.” The benediction she had given him years ago, on stolen nights in this room.

“Sleep well, Callie,” he returned.

He’d forgotten again, but she did not correct his use of her pet name, just closed her eyes and soon her even breathing said she slept.

He slept too, but woke when the kitten did. Twice, he cradled it inside his shirt while he warmed milk, then whispered nonsense to it as he fed it. Callie must have been even more tired than he was; she did not stir but remained tucked down in her cocoon of blankets.

After the second feed, with little Angel curled in a ball in her chamber pot on the hearth, he checked his timepiece. It was well after eight of the clock, but little light filtered through the window. Even with his nose nearly on the tiny panes of chilly distorted glass, all he could see outside was swirling snow. They would not be going home today.

He fed wood to the fire. He would need to replenish the wood pile, but they could burn some of the broken furniture that littered the outer rooms. Fetching water was of more importance, and best to do that before the tinkers were about. Not that he thought them likely leave their camp in this weather. Nor did he have reason to believe them dishonest, but just in case they decided to take advantage of being cut off from the world to lighten him of the rest of the purse from which he’d paid for the food and milk, he and Callie should stay in their hidden retreat today.

Once he had checked on the wellbeing of the horse, filled every convenient container he could find with snow and set it to melt, used and emptied the chamber pot, and carefully closed the hidden door, he set the kettle to boil. They would break their fast on bread and cheese, and dine on it too, but he had some treats in his saddle bags for a little Christmas cheer.

The toasting forks were where he remembered. He was threading a slice of bread on one when Callie spoke. “I will just attend to... things, and then I will do the toast, Fenchurch.”

“The chamber pot is in the other room, Caroline, where we left it. Come straight back, please. There are tinkers about.”

A few minutes later, she returned.

“We used to keep jam...” She fossicked around in the deep cupboard to one side of the little window. “Here! I have it, Fenchurch. And look,” she had the lid off and was exploring the contents with a spoon, “... sugary, but still good. Try some,” and she held the spoon in front of his mouth, and he obediently opened and sucked the sweetness.

Having her so close, her face alive and amused, in the hidden sanctuary he’d held in his heart for so long, broke down his defences. He blurted, “You used to call me Magnus. I wish you would again.” He waited for her to freeze him with the glare she had perfected, but she simply looked surprised.

“I do call you Magnus.”

“Sometimes. You mostly call me Fenchurch. I keep looking around for my father.” He almost accused her of doing it to keep him at a distance, and was glad he had not when she explained, “I have got into the habit, I suppose. At first, I thought to show everyone that I accepted you as the Earl of Fenchurch, when Lewis kept insisting you were an imposter. You are changed, Magnus. But anyone who knew you would know who you are.”

Really? All this time he had thought she was using his title to reject him and she was doing it to support him? “Thank you, Caroline. I appreciate your support.”

“You used to call me Callie,” she said, her voice sad.

What? But she... “You told me to call you Caroline.”

“I did not! When?” Now she glared, but the crease between her brows said hurt rather than anger.

“At St Georges. I said your name and you said you were not called Callie anymore.”

Her face cleared. “I did! I said no one called me Callie now. I meant no one knew me well enough to call me Callie, Magnus. And when you started to call me Caroline, I thought you meant to keep me at arms’ length.” She laughed, the amused gurgle that had lightened his dreams during his years in captivity. “Oh Magnus, how silly. You thought I was calling you by your title to reject you, and I thought the same about you.”

A plaintive meow drew her attention to the kitten, which was awake and climbing out of its pot. She scooped it up with one hand and tucked it under her chin. “Good morning, Angel. Are you hungry? Are you hungry, my sweet?”

In the same sing-song tone, so that it took Magnus a moment to realise she was addressing him, and not the kitten, she went on, “But then you stayed away. Even when you were at the Abbey, you saw me only at meals and you were cold and formal. You did not...” she didn’t look up from the milk she was pouring into a pot to warm, and even the back of her neck turned bright red, but she did not falter. “You did not claim me as your wife, Magnus. I know you felt obligated to marry me, but I could not help but believe you regretted it.”

“No!” Magnus’s emphatic rejection startled the kitten and Callie alike, and he moderated his tone. “No, Callie. Never that. If you only knew... But Callie, how could I force myself on you when I am so awfully scarred that you fainted at the mere sight of me?”

Again, her eyes opened wider with surprise.

“I fainted from sheer relief, Magnus. For weeks, months even, I had been trying to find a way to survive without marrying Lewis. He enjoyed it, you know, closing off my options one by one. Lying, bribery, threats; whatever worked to stop anyone from offering me employment or a place to live.

“He told me he could do anything he liked with me, for my only other option was a brothel. He said he could demand that became his mistress, and I should be grateful he was willing to take me to wife. But I knew he was doing me no favours. As his mistress I would have met other men, and I could, perhaps, have found a way out, even if it were another protector. As his wife, I would belong to him and never be able to escape.”

The toast was burning, the bitter smell jerking Marcus from his red rage. “I should have killed him,” he said. “I should have let the mob have him, as they wished.”

He stripped the toast from the fork, and hurled it into the back of the fire, and was startled when Callie put the replete kitten down and leant forward to put a hand on his shaking arm.

“You saved me, Magnus. I was in despair, and you came.”

“Callie, I should have come straight away, as soon as I arrived in England.”

“Yes,” she said, “You should have.”

“I am not the boy who left here, Callie. I am not even the boy who was coming home to you, six years ago. I have seen things, done things to survive that I do not want to ever think about again. You deserve so much better than me. But even I was better than Lewis. When I heard... It was the morning of the wedding, Callie. The trustees for the earldom told me that Lewis was claiming everything. When one of them told me he was even marrying my betrothed—and within the hour—I came immediately. I was so afraid I would be too late.”

“You came. You were in time.” She had moved even closer, and he yielded at last to the driving urge to take her in his arms. Ah. She fitted as he had always known she would, resting against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her arms as far around him as she could reach.

“I was in time. And that is why Lewis still lives.”

He moved his chin backwards so he could see her. “I thought you were afraid of me, of the tattoos.”

She put up a hand and traced the pattern that covered the whole of one side of his face, from jawbone to hairline.

“They are strange, but rather beautiful. Why did they do that to you, Magnus?  It seems a strange way to punish someone.”

He laughed. “Not a punishment. They mark the face and the body to reward a person, as we hand out medals. Only slaves and children bear no marks.”

She traced the marks again. “You must tell me all that happened to you.”

Perhaps not all. But more than the bare bones of the story he had given the Committee of Inquiry charged with testing his identity. The shipwreck, the nine months as a castaway, the capture by islanders and the slow steps to win his way free of slavery and into a war band, which he eventually led. And finally, the day an English ship put in for water.

He worked his passage home on HMS Swallow where he occupied a strange position between tattooed savage and Englishman, sailor and civilian, crew member and possible earl. He hid his fierce grin in her hair. Before the shipwreck, his status as an earl’s son had protected him from the worst elements on board. As a castaway, he had been the youngest, weakest, and prettiest, at the mercy of the rest. The Swallow crew soon learned that he was a man grown, and a seasoned warrior at that, accustomed to holding his own in a world where promotion was largely on merit.

“The tattoos are not just on my face, Callie.” His pulse quickened at the thought of showing her the others, and his smile softened.

A rattle drew their attention to the kitten. It had found the saddle bags, and was batting a loose strap so that it swung and knocked two buckles together.

“Ah, Angel, thank you for the reminder,” Magnus said. “Callie, I have a Christmas present for you.”

He didn’t have to let her go—just lean across and pull the bags towards him, the kitten scampering behind, enjoying the new game. It pounced on the flap he wanted, and he picked it up and handed it to Callie while he pulled out the oilskin wrapped package he wanted.

“Here, Callie. I was going to give this to you for Twelfth Night, but I cannot wait. Merry Christmas.”

She turned slightly so she could lean against him and use both hands to unwrap the package, and he kept one arm around her while with his other hand he turned the kitten on its back and tickled its belly with the end of a saddlebag strap.

“Marcus? These are the deeds to Blessings.”

“I had them from Lewis just before I put him on a ship for South America. He will not be back, Callie. His schemes and lies and cheating are all public knowledge, and the men he has wronged are baying for his blood.”

“And now you own Blessings?”

“You own Blessings. We didn’t have time for a proper marriage settlement, and with my identity in doubt... Well, now that I am confirmed as earl, I have corrected that oversight. It is in the package. It just needs your signature. Unless you want changes. I will make any changes you wish, Callie. All I want is for you to be happy.”

Callie was crying again, but smiling as well. “You are turning me into a watering pot, Magnus.”

He bent to kiss away the tears, and when she turned further towards him to ease that gentle service, he drifted his lips across hers, at first just brushing then settling to press and caress. He urged her mouth open with his own, and brushed her tongue with his. Her tentative return thrilled through his body and he sank into the kiss, feeling at last at home, after all these years.

Sharp pinpricks and an anguished yeowl recalled him to himself, and he eased slightly away from Callie to lift an offended Angel from between them.

“Even Christmas Angels should not come between a man and his wife,” he told the kitten, sternly. Callie giggled, a happy bubble of a sound that he had heard many times long ago and missed like a lost limb. He bent to kiss her again, holding the kitten out of the way, this time.

“I don’t deserve you, Callie,” he said again.

“You will just have to make the best of it, Magnus,” said his wife. “I waited twelve years for you to come home and another six months for you to come to claim me. I do not intend to ever let anything come between us again. Not distance, not misunderstandings, not even a Christmas Angel.”

Jude Knight would like your help

Book reviews help readers to find books, and authors to find readers. Please consider writing a review for Magnus and the Christmas Angel, even a couple of sentences telling people what you liked (or didn’t like) about it. Reviews can be posted on Goodreads, and on the websites of those who stock the print version of this book. (It is not for sale as an ebook.)

News and special offers

Subscribe to Jude’s newsletter for information about publication dates and more. As a subscriber, you will receive advance information about release dates and special price periods as well as exclusive, subscriber-only special offers. Jude sends a newsletter six times a year. New subscribers receive a link to a page full of free short stories and novellas to download as ebooks.

You will find a subscription link at http://judeknightauthor.com

Bluestocking Belles

The Belles are seven very different writers united by a love of history and a history of writing about love. From sweet to steamy, from light-hearted fun to dark tortured tales full of angst, from London ballrooms to country cottages to the sultan’s seraglio, one or more of the Belle’s will have a tale to suit your tastes and mood.

The Belle’s blog, The Teatime Tattler, publishes at least twice weekly, with exclusive news, interviews, and scandals set in and around the Regency.

The Belles have committed to publishing at least one box set per year. Proceeds from some of the Belles’ joint projects go to the Malala Fund, to support education for young bluestockings around the world.

Find the Bluestocking Belles online:

www.BluestockingBelles.net/

Friend us on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/BellesinBlue

Follow us on Twitter:

@BellesInBlue

Malala Fund

The Bluestocking Belles have chosen the Malala Fund as the charity we support, and to which we donate communal royalties. Periodically, we take on projects intended to directly support this cause, which exemplifies our personal values and intentions: the right of girls and women to do whatever they choose with their lives.

For more information about the Malala Fund and the founder, Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, go to  www.Malala.org

Holly and Hopeful Hearts

When the Duchess of Haverford sends out invitations to a holiday house party and a Twelfth Night ball, those who respond know that Her Grace intends to raise money for her favourite cause and promote whatever matches she can.

Seven assorted heroes and heroines set out with their pocketbooks firmly clasped and hearts in protective custody. Or are they?

Jude has two stories in Holy and Hopeful Hearts: A Suitable Husband, and The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. They will be published as stand-alone stories in 2017.

Jude’s published books

See the excerpts page on Jude’s website for first chapters of all the following stories. http://judeknightauthor.com/excerpts/

Candle’s Christmas Chair

When Viscount Avery wants a chair for his invalid mother, he finds that the best invalid chair maker in Bath is Minerva Avery, who has been haunting his dreams for three years since she rejected his courtship. He has until she finishes the chair for his mother to convince her to change her mind. If he says it with flowers, will she understand?

Min is a carriage-maker’s daughter, educated beyond her station. Once, she dreamed of stepping into the fairy tale world of the ton, only to have her dreams crushed when she found the handsome guardsman was courting her for her fortune. Now the man she cannot forget is back, handsomer and more charming than ever, and he seems determined to raise those false hopes all over again. But she only has to hold out until she finishes the chair he has commissioned.

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

Hidden from the earl who hunts them, Anne and her sisters have been accepted into the heart of a tiny rural village. Until another earl comes visiting.

Rede lives to avenge the deaths of his wife and children. After three long years of searching, he is closing in on the ruthless villains who gave the orders, and he does not hope to survive the final encounter. Until he meets Anne.

As their inconvenient attraction grows, a series of near fatal attacks draws them together and drives them apart. When their desperate enemies combine forces, Anne and Rede must trust one another to survive.

A Baron for Becky

Becky is the envy of the courtesans of the demi-monde - the indulged mistress of the wealthy and charismatic Marquis of Aldridge. But she dreams of a normal life; one in which her daughter can have a future that does not depend on beauty, sex, and the whims of a man.

Finding herself with child, she hesitates to tell Aldridge. Will he cast her off, send her away, or keep her and condemn another child to this uncertain shadow world?

The devil-may-care face Hugh shows to the world hides a desperate sorrow; a sorrow he tries to drown with drink and riotous living. His years at war haunt him, but even more, he doesn't want to think about the illness that robbed him of the ability to father a son. When he dies, his barony will die with him. His title will fall into abeyance, and his estate will be scooped up by the Crown.

When Aldridge surprises them both with a daring proposition, they do not expect love to be part of the bargain.

Hand-Turned Tales

Dip in, and try my writing for free: four very different tales with a variety of heroes, heroines, villains, and settings.

In The Raven’s Lady, Felix returns home in disguise after 13 years. He plans to catch a smuggler then take up his viscountcy. He does not expect the smuggler to be Joselyn, his childhood sweetheart. (Short story: 5,500 words)

In Kidnapped to Freedom, Phoebe is stolen away from her plantation by a handsome masked pirate. But all is not as it seems. (Short story: 5,100 words)

All that Glisters is set in New Zealand in the 1860s, a time when gold miners poured into the fledgling settlement of Dunedin. Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it. (Short story: 13,000 words)

The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a gothic historical romance set in the world of my novels and novella. Rupert has been imprisoned by his wicked sister, and forced to wed. His new wife, Madeline, has likewise been threatened into saying her vows. Forced into marriage, they find love, but can they find freedom before it is too late? The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a prequel to Revealed in Mist. (Novella: 23,500 words)

Gingerbread Bride

Lieutenant Rick Redepenning has been saving his admiral’s intrepid daughter from danger since their formative years, but today, he faces the gravest of threats–the damage she might do to his heart. How can he convince her to see him as a suitor, not just a childhood friend?

Travelling with her father’s fleet has left Mary Pritchard ill-prepared for London Society, and prey to the machinations of false friends. When she strikes out on her own to find a more suitable locale to take up her solitary spinsterhood, she finds adventure, trouble, and her girlhood hero, riding once more to her rescue.

Gingerbread Bride is a novella in The Golden Redepennings series

Revealed in Mist

Prue's job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?

Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the woman who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to marry such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. She prays he will learn to tolerate her.

Alex understands his new wife never wished to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. He hopes she will learn to bear him.

Locked in a marriage of convenience, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they thought possible. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by an enemy determined to destroy them both. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save not just their one hope of love but their very lives.

Concealed in Shadow

The story of Prudence and David continues in Concealed in Shadow.

When Prue disappears with David’s half-brother, he is determined she must have met with foul play, whatever interpretation Aldridge might put on it. But finding her again may mean choosing between his country and his woman.

Here are the first three paragraphs.

***

The ship had been at harbour for four days now, after a stormy passage from London. The sailor who brought their daily allocation of food and drink would not answer questions, but Prue guessed they were docked somewhere in Ireland. Certainly, the polyglot shouting that filtered into the ship's hold had been flavoured these last few days with the musical lilt of Gaelic, and of Irish-intoned English.

She and Gren were shackled to the same wall bolt, with enough play in the chains that they could reach the narrow bed, the bucket that did for amenities, and the food and drink their jailors periodically sent.

They had not seen those jailors since the day of their capture. Were Wharton and Jo Palmer still aboard? Had Aldridge raised the alarm? Would David be able to find trace of them? Prue fretted away the long hours wondering.

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

As the Duchess of Haverford’s companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace’s guests. Perhaps among the gentlemen gathered for the duchess’s house party, she will find a suitable husband? Marcel Fournier has only one ambition: to save enough from his fees serving as chef in the houses of the ton to become the proprietor of his own fine restaurant. An affair with the duchess’s dependent would be dangerous. Anything else is impossible. Isn’t it?

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her, he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy.

Sophia keeps secret her tendre for James, Lord Elfingham. After all, the whole of Society knows he is pursuing the younger Belvoir sister, not the older one left on the shelf after two failed betrothals.

With Mariana Gabrielle

Never Kiss a Toad

[A Victorian romance continuing family stories begun in the various Regency books of Jude Knight and Mariana Gabrielle.]

David "Toad" Northope, heir to the Duke of Wellbridge and rogue in the mold of his infamous father, knows Lady Sarah "Sal" Grenford, daughter of the once-profligate Duke of Haverford, will always hold his heart.

But when the two teens are caught in bed together by their horrified parents, he is sent away to finish school on the Continent, and she is thrown into the depths of her first London Season.

Can two reformed rakes keep their children from making the same mistakes they did? The dukes decide keeping them apart will do the trick, so as the children reach their majority, Toad is put to work at sea, learning to manage his mother's shipping concern, and Sal is taken to the other side of the world, as far from him as possible.

How will Toad and Sal's love withstand long years of separation, not to mention nasty lies, vicious rumors, attractive other suitors, and well-meaning parents who threaten to destroy their future before it has begun?

(Never Kiss a Toad is being published one episode at a time on Wattpad, and will be published complete as an ebook later this year or early next.)

Connect with Jude Knight

Jude Knight writes stories to transport you to another time, another place, where you can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, and delight in a happy ending. Meet strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you’ll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour.

Follow Jude on Twitter: @JudeKnightBooks

Friend Jude on Facebook: facebook.com/judeknightbooks

Subscribe to Jude’s blog: judeknightauthor.com

Subscribe to Jude’s newsletter: judeknightauthor.com/newsletter/

Follow Jude on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/judeknight

Table of Contents

Candle’s Christmas Chair

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

A Baron for Becky

Hand-Turned Tales

Gingerbread Bride

Revealed in Mist

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Concealed in Shadow

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

Connect with Jude Knight