Regency Christmas Wishes. Carla Kelly

silence filled the room. He watched dust motes dance. Theodora didn’t raise her gaze. She placed her hand near her heart. He waited, barely breathing.

      ‘You sailed in December of 1790,’ she said. He leaned forward to hear her soft words. ‘In September of ninety-one, a hurricane struck the city.’ Her breath came quicker. ‘The statue outside the convent literally blew away. The winds stripped all the ivy from the buildings. Such a storm.’

      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?’