The Lazarus Curse by Tessa Harris Page A

well that Richard needed male company, a man he could look up to, someone dependable, who would always be there for him. And the worm of doubt that had crept into her brain ever since Thomas had returned to London almost two months ago began to reemerge.
    Now she found herself beginning to lose her patience, but she bit her tongue. “No, Richard. He cannot take you out,” was her curt response.
    Taking a deep breath, she poised her nib once more, but before she could resume her letter, Howard appeared at the door.
    “Mr. Lupton is here to see you, m’lady.”
    Lydia arched a brow. Their daily meeting was not scheduled until the afternoon. She put down her pen. “Very well,” she replied.
    Nicholas Lupton marched in wearing a thick coat and a muffler about his neck that obscured his chin, but not his mouth. His face was wreathed in a broad smile.
    “Good morning, your ladyship,” he greeted her, jovially. He made a shallow bow, but his movement was severely restricted by the fact that he carried something large and wooden under his arm.
    “Good morning, Mr. Lupton,” replied Lydia, somewhat bemused by the object that her estate manager was holding.
    By this time Richard, on seeing Lupton, had scrambled to his feet and was dancing around him, tugging eagerly at his coat.
    “Richard, please!” scolded his mother. “Leave Mr. Lupton alone or I shall have to send you upstairs.” She found herself raising her voice to the child, something she was doing with increasing regularity, and she disliked herself for it. She looked at the object of her son’s excitement. “I do apologize, Mr. Lupton,” she said.
    The estate manager merely laughed. Waving dismissively with his free hand, he bent low to greet the young earl, who immediately began inspecting the strange object tucked under his new friend’s arm.
    “What is it?” inquired the boy.
    Lupton beamed again. “Why, this”—he announced with all the flair of a showman—“is a sledge.”
    Lydia was shocked. Her son looked puzzled. The estate manager was holding what appeared to be a small wooden table with curved runners attached to its legs.
    “A sledge. What is a sledge?” asked Richard, forming the unfamiliar word carefully.
    Lupton eyed Lydia, trying to gauge her reaction. Had he overstepped the mark? She returned his gaze for a moment, before she, too, began to smile.
    “A sledge is like a carriage for the snow,” she told her son.
    The estate manager crouched down and planted the sleigh on the floor. “You sit on it, see?” he said, pointing at the planks, “and then I will whirl you ’round and ’round on the ice till you’re dizzy as a gadfly.” There was an infectious enthusiasm in his tone.
    The boy laughed and plonked himself on the seat, then brought both his short legs up at right angles and tried to shuffle as if to make the strange contraption move.
    “You have taken to it naturally, sir,” Lupton told him, patting the child on the back.
    “Can we go now, Mamma? Please? Can we go on the ice?” Richard looked at his mother with large, pleading eyes and melted her resolve.
    “Very well,” she relented. “But we must wrap up warm!”
    And so the small party, Lydia, Richard, and Nicholas Lupton, boarded the dogcart and headed off on the track toward Plover’s Lake. The brilliant blue sky was cloudless and the sun was bright, but the air was freezing and their breath billowed about them like steam as the horses trotted along. Lydia was swathed in a fur stole and hat and her hands were tucked into a muff. She had made sure that Richard was equally protected, with woollen stockings, a worsted coat, and stout boots. A thick scarf hugged his neck.
    The snow lay three or four inches deep on the road, but on the verges and against the hedges the overnight wind had blown it in drifts. In some places it was as if a giant had spread a bedsheet over the fields and hedgerows and forgotten to smooth it down. Lydia found herself smiling, despite