A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (24 page)

“Well, what do you say, ma’am?” His father was frowning ferociously and acting to the audience of shrieking, bouncing children, who had lost some interest in the proceeding until Grandpapa had decided to take a turn.

“I think I would have to say it really is a kissing bough, sir,” Mrs. Cross said calmly and seriously. “I would have to say it works very nicely indeed.”

“My sentiments entirely,” he said. “Now I am not so sure about the monstrous concoction of ribbons and bows that is hanging in the hall. The children’s creation with the help of my daughter-in-law, I believe.
That
is no kissing bough.” He still had his hands on Mrs. Cross’s waist, Edgar noticed, while grimacing from the noise of children screeching in indignation.

“
What?
” his father said, looking about him in some amazement. “It
is
?”

The children responded like a Greek chorus.

And so nothing would do but Mr. Downes had to tuck Mrs. Cross’s arm beneath his and lead them all in an
unruly procession down the stairs to the hall, where Helena’s grotesque and ragged creation hung in all its tasteless glory. He kissed Mrs. Cross again, with a resounding smack of the lips this time, and pronounced the children’s kissing bough even more effective than the one in the drawing room.

The children burst into mass hysteria.

It had been a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon for all. But parents were only human, after all. The children were gradually herded in the direction of the nursery, where it fell to the lot of their poor nurses to calm their high spirits. Something resembling quiet descended on the house. The conservatory would be the quietest place of all, Edgar thought. He would take his wife there. They could not suspend indefinitely the talk that this morning’s revelation had made inevitable.

He had to find out about Gerald Stapleton.

But Cora had other ideas. She reached Helena’s side before he did. “The children’s party on Christmas Day needs to be planned, Helena,” she said, “as well as the ball in the evening. Papa has had all the invitations sent out, of course, and the cook has all the food plans well in hand. But there is much else to be organized. Shall we spend an hour on it now?”

“Of course,” Helena said. “Just you and I, Cora?”

“Stephanie was a governess before she was a duchess,” Cora said. “Did you know that? She is wonderful with children.”

“Then we will ask her if she wishes to help us plan games,” Helena said.

They went away to some destination unknown, taking the duchess with them as well as the wife and daughter of one of Edgar’s Bristol friends. After they returned, it was time to change for dinner. And dinner, with so many guests, and with so many Christmas decorations to be exclaimed over and so many Christmas plans to be
divulged and discussed, lasted a great long while. So did coffee in the drawing room afterward, with several of the young people entertaining the company informally with pianoforte recitals and singing.

But it could not be postponed until bedtime, Edgar decided. And certainly not until tomorrow. He had started this. He had thought methodically through all he knew of Helena, and all she had told him, and not told him, and had concluded that her first husband was not the key figure in her present unhappiness and bitterness. It was far more likely to have been the son. Her reaction to his question this morning had left him in no doubt whatsoever. She had been so shocked and so distressed that she had not even tried to deceive him with impassivity.

They must talk. She must tell him everything. Both for her own sake and for the sake of their marriage. Perhaps forcing her to confront her past in his hearing was entirely the wrong thing to do. The bitterness that was always at the back of her eyes and just behind her smiles might burst through and destroy the fragile control she had imposed on her own life. The baring of her soul, which she had repeatedly told him she would never do, might well destroy their marriage almost before it had begun. She might loathe him with a very real intensity for the rest of their lives.

But their marriage stood no real chance if she kept her secrets. They might live together as man and wife in some amity and harmony for many years. But they would be amicable strangers who just happened to share a name, a home, a bed, and a child or two. He wanted more than that. He could not be satisfied with so little. He was willing to risk—he
had
to risk—the little they had in the hope that he would get everything in return and with the very real risk that he would lose everything.

But then his life was constantly lived on a series of
carefully calculated risks. Of course, as an experienced and successful businessman, he never risked all or even nearly all on one venture. No single failure had ever ruined him, just as no single success had ever made him. This time it was different. This time he risked everything—everything he had, everything he was.

He had realized in the course of the day that he was not only in love with her. He loved her.

He might well be headed toward self-destruction. But he had no choice.

She was conversing with a group of his friends. She was being her most vibrant, fascinating self, and they were all charmed by her, he could see. He touched her on the arm, smiled, and joined in the conversation for a few minutes before addressing himself just to her.

“It is a wonderfully clear night,” he said. “The sky will look lovely from the conservatory. Come and see it there with me?”

She smiled and he caught a brief glimpse of desperation behind her eyes.

“That is the most blatantly contrived invitation a man ever offered his new bride, Edgar,” one of his friends said. “We have all done it in our time. ‘Come and see the stars, my love.’ ”

The laughter that greeted his words was entirely good-natured.

“Take no notice, Edgar,” one of the wives told him. “Horace is merely envious because he did not think of it first.”

“I will come and see the stars,” Helena said in her lowest, most velvet voice, leaving with their friends the impression that she expected not to see a single one of them.

Which was, in a sense, true.

H
E STOOD AT
one of the wide windows of the conservatory, his hands clasped at his back, his feet slightly apart. He was looking outward, upward at the stars. He looked comfortable, relaxed. She knew it was a false impression.

She liked the conservatory, though she had not had the chance to spend much time here. There were numerous plants and the warmth of a summer garden. Yet the outdoors was fully visible through the many windows. The contrast with the snowy outdoors this evening was quite marked. The sky was indeed clear.

“The stars are bright,” she said. “But you must not expect to see the Bethlehem star yet, Edgar. It is two nights too early.”

“Yes,” he said.

She had not approached the windows herself. She had seated herself on a wrought-iron seat beneath a giant palm. She felt curiously calm, resigned. She supposed that from the moment she had set eyes on Edgar Downes and had felt that overpowering need to do more than merely flirt with him this moment had become inevitable. She had become a firm believer in fate. Why had she returned to London at very much an off-season for polite society? Why had he chosen such an inopportune time to go to London to choose a bride?

It was because they had been fated to meet. Because
this
had been fated.

“He was fourteen when I married his father,” she said. “He was just a child. When you are nineteen, Edgar, a fourteen-year-old seems like a child. He was small and thin and timid and unappealing. He did not have much promise.” Because she had been unhappy herself and a little bewildered, she had felt instant sympathy for the boy, more than if he had been handsome and robust and confident.

“But you liked him,” Edgar said.

“He had had a sad life,” she said. “His mother abandoned him when he was eight years old to go and live with her two sisters. He had adored her and had felt adored in return. Christian tried to soften the blow by telling him that she was dead. But when she really did die five years later, Gerald suddenly found himself thrust into mourning for her and knew that she had loved him so little. Or so it seemed. One cannot really know the truth about that woman, I suppose. Everything about him irritated Christian. Poor Gerald! He could do nothing right.”

“And so you became a new mother to him?” he asked.

“More like an elder sister perhaps,” she said. “I talked to him and listened to him. I helped him with his lessons, especially with arithmetic, which made no sense at all to him. When Christian was from home I listened to him play the pianoforte and sometimes sang to his accompaniment. He had real talent, Edgar, but he was ashamed of it because his father saw it as unmanly. I helped him get over his terrible conviction that he was unlovable and worthless and stupid. He was none of the three. He was sweet. It is a weak word to use of a boy, but it is the right word to use of Gerald. There was such sweetness in him.” He had filled such a void in her life.

“I suppose,” Edgar said, breaking the silence she had been unaware of, “he fell in love with you.”

“No,” she said. “He grew up. At eighteen he was pleasing to look at and very sweet natured. He was—he was youthful.”

Edgar had braced his arms wide on the windowsill and hung his head. “You seduced him,” he said. He was breathing heavily. “Your husband’s son.”

She set her head back against the palm and closed her eyes. “I loved him,” she said. “As a
person
I loved him. He was sweet and trusting and far more intelligent and talented than he realized. And he was vulnerable. His
sense of his own worth was so very fragile. I knew it and feared for him. And I—I wanted him. I was horrified. I hated myself
—hated
myself. You could not know how much. No one could hate me as I hated myself. I tried to fight but I was very weak. I was sitting one day on a bridge, one of the most picturesque spots in the park at Brookhurst, and he was coming toward me looking bright and eager about something—I can no longer remember what. I took his hands and—Well. I frightened him and he ran away. Of all the shame I have felt since, I do not believe I have ever known any of greater intensity than I felt after he had gone. And yet it happened twice more before he persuaded Christian to send him away to university.”

She had thought of killing herself, she remembered. She had even wondered how she might best do it. She had not had enough courage even for that.

“Now tell me that you are glad I have told you, Edgar,” she said after a while. “Tell me you are proud to have such a wife.”

There was another lengthy silence. “You were young,” he said, “and found yourself in an arranged marriage with a much older man. There were only five years between you and your stepson. You were lonely.”

“Is it for me you try to make excuses, Edgar?” she asked. “Or for yourself? Are you trying to convince yourself that you have not made such a disastrous marriage after all? There are no excuses. What I did was unforgivable.”

“Did you beg his pardon later?” he asked. “Did he refuse to grant it?”

“I saw him only once after he left for university,” she said. “It was at his father’s funeral three years later. We did not speak. There are certain things for which one cannot ask for pardon, Edgar, because there is no pardon.”

He turned to look at her at last. “You have been too hard on yourself,” he said. “It was an ugly thing, what you did, but nothing is beyond pardon. And it was a long time ago. You have changed.”

“I seduced you a little over two months ago,” she said.

“I am your equal in age and experience, Helena,” he said, “as I suppose all your lovers have been. You have had to convince yourself that you are promiscuous, have you not? You have had to punish yourself, to convince yourself that you are evil. It is time you put the past behind you.”

“The past is always with me, Edgar,” she said. “The past had consequences. I destroyed him.”

“That is doubtless an exaggeration,” he said. “He would not dally with his father’s wife and went away. Good for him. He showed some strength of character. Perhaps in some way the experience was even the making of him. You have been too hard on yourself.”

“It is what I hoped would happen,” she said. “I went to Scotland after Christian’s death and waited and waited for word that Gerald was somehow settled in life. Then I went traveling and waited again. I finally heard news of him last year in the late summer. Doubtless you would have, too, Edgar, if you moved in
ton
nish circles. Doubtless Cora and Francis heard. He married.”

“Well, then.” He had come to stand in front of her. He was frowning down at her. “He has married. He has found peace and contentment. He has doubtless forgotten what has so obsessed you.”

“Fool!” she said. “I finally confirmed him in what all the experiences of his life had pointed to—that he was unlovable and worthless. He married a whore, Edgar.”

“A whore?” he said. “Those are strong words.”

“From a woman who has admitted to having had many lovers?” she said. “Perhaps. But she worked in a
brothel. Half the male population of London paid for her services, I daresay. I suppose that is where Gerald met her. He took her and made her his mistress and then married her. Is that the action of a man with any sense of self-worth?”