Diana's Drummer Dilemma: Twelve Days of Christmas

By Louisa Cornell

Other ladies receive lovingly penned letters from their husbands serving
on the battlefields of Europe. Lady Diana Lazenby receives…drummers.
Drummer boys, to be precise. Ten of them so far. If her wayward husband
thinks the arrival of these wounded, wary lads will alleviate the pain
caused by the death of their son or her husband's five-year absence,
then he is sadly mistaken.

Shattered by the guilt of his son's death, Wyndam Lazenby had no idea
how to converse with, let alone comfort, the wife he has adored since
childhood. He bought his commission a week after the funeral and dared
not look back. He hadn't meant for the orphaned drummers to replace the child she'd lost.

He simply doesn't want her to be lonely.

With Napoleon's final defeat, Lady Diana expects Wyn to return to their
estate in Cumbria. But after eighteen months of waiting, she's given up.
And then the great fool shows up on her doorstep fully expecting to pass
a quiet Christmastide at home. Little does he know she and the army he
has provided her will drum him out of her life forever, if he doesn't
give her the Christmas gift she wants most—the heart of the man she
still loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Merch y Cymry Publishing
• Release date: Dec 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393174943

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the late Rebecca Carlisle. She took in stray dogs and stray people and never failed to make each of their lives better. Your life ended much too soon, Rebecca, and you looked after all of us strays, four-legged and two-legged, to the very end. You always were a guardian angel. We hate you had to leave us to finally get your wings.

Chapter One

December, 1816

Hawkshead, Cumbria

He should have padded his horse’s feet.

The trick Captain Wyn Lazenby had seen used by Spanish partisans during the Peninsular Campaign would come in handy for a man trying to sneak through his childhood village well past midnight. He wasn’t sneaking, not exactly. However, the clop-clop-clop of Socrates’s hooves on the cobblestones of Hawkshead’s main street battered like cannon fire in the icy stillness of the December night. A sound certain to wake at least one of the village gossips from her righteous slumber. The very last thing Wyn needed at this point.

As he came to the thatched-roof cottage of the Rowe sisters, Wyn slowed Socrates to the point the poor beast looked back at him as if to say Would you like to dismount and walk? Socrates was not acquainted with the gossip detection powers of the two elderly spinsters. There were editors of London newssheets who would sell their very souls for such powers.

Should have worn a disguise. At least until he was out of the village proper.

He pulled his collar up around his face and hoped the darkness might do the rest. The beastly bite of the Cumbrian winter winds didn’t bother him. Bundled up in his greatcoat, hat, and gloves he was far better armed against the weather than he’d been in the north of Spain. His body had long ago given up hammering him with bone splintering aches and pains in warning against the chill. Or at least he had given up paying them any heed. He’d been too tired to notice much of anything about himself these last five years. Life trotted along far more easily that way.

Socrates side-stepped and tossed his head. With good reason. The rain that had threatened earlier had finally arrived. In the form of sleet tossed into their faces like so much rice at a newly married couple it stung like the very devil.

Best not think too much about weddings and marriage.

Why would he? It had been eleven years since he and Diana had married. It had been five years since he’d gone off to war, leaving her alone with her grief. His grief had traveled with him over every battlefield in Europe, through Waterloo, and all over England the last year and a half since he’d cashed out and come home.

Well, home in the sense of planting his feet on English soil.

The sleet clattered onto the last vestiges of the cobblestones as Wyn steered his horse off the main thoroughfare and onto a hard-packed dirt lane. The hedges on either side rose well over Wyn’s head and created a cloak of inky black all around him. It didn’t matter. He’d traveled this narrow country lane thousands of times in sunlight, moonlight, and every sort of light in between. From here he’d found his way home blindfolded, on a foolish bet, and drunk as a lord the night after his son was born. He dug the heel of his hand into his chest and urged Socrates into a trot.

Home.

The increasing wind strummed the leaves of the hedges and the naked limbs of the trees towering over them like some ghostly harpist. He’d avoided his inevitable return to Hawkshead and to his estate at Cameron Hall for as long as possible. That wasn’t entirely true. He might have stayed away forever save for the last infinitesimal spark of what he could not even bring himself to call hope. Insanity, perhaps? Stubborn-hearted pride? A love so insistent he had not killed it in himself in spite of killing it in everyone around him? In the only person in whom it mattered?

Whoa. Wyn drew back on the reins so sharply Socrates bucked a little and skidded down the middle of the lane. The horse had picked up speed whilst Wyn had ruminated over the past. That wasn’t why he’d jerked the big gelding to a standstill. The tall, brick façade of Cameron Hall rose out of the darkness. He just made out the wings on either side of the central part of the house with its four-columned covered front portico. Not a single light shone in the floor to ceiling windows across the entire front of the house. As if no one was in residence, or perhaps no visitors were welcome.

Come along, boy, Wyn said gently as he patted Socrates’s neck and turned him to the left, the direction of the stables behind the east wing. Let’s get you bedded down for the night. Once inside Cameron Hall’s immaculately kept stables Wyn made quick work of leading his horse into an empty stall, untacking him, and seeing to the animal’s comfort with a rubdown, bedding straw, a bucket of feed, and another of water. He was happy to see everything was in perfect order. It meant old Jowpers, the man who’d put him on his first pony, was still on the job.

He strode to the stable doors and opened one enough for the frigid wind to toss stinging bits of sleet in his face. Coming down harder now, the frozen rain blurred his vision to the point he could not see the back of the house nor the door into the kitchens, his preferred method of entering the home that had been in his family for generations.

Glad ta’ see ye’ve not forgotten ta’ take care of yer mount’s comforts afore yer own, Captain.

Wyn closed his eyes and turned towards the sound of the familiar voice. I had a good teacher. He opened his eyes slowly to allow them to adjust to the glare of the light of the lantern coming towards him. Barely five feet tall, the stable master had changed very little since last he’d seen him. A little more stooped perhaps. A little more wrinkled. His hair had been white as long as Wyn had known him.

Aye, Jowpers said with a grin. Ye did at that. Welcome home, sir. With his free hand he tugged the front of his cap. No recriminations. No questions. The man greeted him as if he’d been gone a few days rather than five years.

Thank you, Jowpers. I’m sorry to have waked you. With his back to the half-opened door, Wyn flinched as the sleet beat against him, splatting some against the nape of his neck in spite of the high collar of his many-caped greatcoat.

Ye didn’t. Gip did. He indicated the black and white dog at his feet, tail wagging and tongue hanging out in greeting. He woke me, but he didn’t bark. Knew it must be someone who belonged here and not a stranger.

Wyn bent to scratch the old dog behind the ears. Someone who belonged here. Time would tell. In fact, this entire idea began to sit in his stomach like months old hardtack.