A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (27 page)

“Priss.” He frowned. “I could not bear it.…”

“And I cannot bear to hide here for the rest of my life,” she said. “I cannot bear to keep you hiding here. And Peter adores other children. You can see that at church each week. Besides, I want to meet Helena. I
want you to see her again. I want—oh, Gerald, I want freedom even if it must come at the expense of some contentment. I want freedom—for both of us and for Peter and the new baby.”

“Then we will go,” he said. “Mr. Downes, I hope you know what you are doing. But that is unfair. As my wife says, you cannot be held fully responsible for what we decide to do. Let us bring everything into the open, then. I will see Helena, and Priss will be taken into society. And Peter will be given other children with whom to play. We will leave in the morning? Christmas Eve? You are quite sure, Priss?”

“Quite sure, dear.” She smiled at him with a calm she could not possibly be feeling.

But then Edgar, too, sat outwardly calm while inwardly he quaked at the enormity of what he had just set in motion.

Sir Gerald and his wife pounced simultaneously in the direction of their son, who was absorbed in making an impossible tangle of bright threads.

C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
. I
T HAD BEEN A RELATIVELY QUIET
day for Helena. Although several of the adults had made visits to the village for last-minute purchases, and the young people had gone outside for a walk and come back again with enough snow on their persons to suggest that they had also engaged in a snowball fight, and several individual couples had taken their children outside for various forms of exercise—despite these things, there had been a general air of laziness and waiting about the day. Everyone conserved energy for Christmas itself, which would start in the evening.

Dinner was to be an hour earlier than usual. The carolers would come during the evening, and Mr. Downes and all his guests would greet them in the hall and ply them with hot wassail and mince pies after they had sung their carols. Then there would be church in the village, which it seemed everyone except the younger children was planning to attend. And afterward a gathering in the drawing room to provide warm beverages after the chilly walk and to usher in the new day.

Christmas Day itself, of course, would be frantically busy, what with the usual feasting and gift-giving with which the day was always associated and the children’s party in the afternoon and the ball in the evening.

Her father-in-law had not insisted today that Helena
rest after nuncheon, though he did ask her if she felt quite well. He and everyone else, of course, wondered why Edgar had gone to Bristol just two days before Christmas and why he was still not back on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. She could feel the worry and strain behind Mr. Downes’s smile and Cora’s. She decided of her own accord an hour before tea to retire to her room for a rest.

She did not sleep. She was not really tired. That first phase of pregnancy was over, she realized. She had come for escape more than rest. There was such an air of eager anticipation in the house and of domestic contentment. One would have thought that in such a sizable house party there would be some quarreling and bickering, some jealousies or simple dislikes. There were virtually none, apart from a few minor squabbles among the children.

It was just too good to be true. It was cloying.

She felt lonely. As she had always felt—almost all her life. It seemed to her that she had always been on the outside looking in. Yet when she had tried to get in, to be a participant in a warm love relationship, she had done a terrible thing, trying to add a dimension to that love that just did not belong to it. And so she had destroyed everything—everything! If she had only remained patient and true to Christian, she realized now—and it would not have been very difficult, as he had always been good to her—she might have mourned his death for a year and still been young enough to find someone else with whom to be happy.

But then she would never have met Edgar, or if she had, she would have been married to someone else. Would that have made a difference? If she had been married this autumn and had met him in the Greenwald’s drawing room, would she have recognized him in that single long glance across the room as that one
person who could make her life complete? As the one love of her life?

She lay on her bed, gazing upward, swallowing several times in an attempt to rid herself of the gurgle in her throat.

Would she? Would she have fallen as headlong, as irrevocably in love with him no matter what the circumstances of her life? Had they been made for each other? It was a ridiculous question to ask herself. She did not believe in such sentimental rot. Made for each other!

But had they been?

She wished they had not met at all.

If they had not met, she would be in Italy now. She would be celebrating the sort of Christmas she was accustomed to. There would be no warm domestic bliss within a mile of her. She would not have been happy, of course. She could never be happy. But she would have been on familiar ground, in familiar company. She would have been in control of her life and her destiny. She would have kept her heart safely cocooned in ice.

Would he come home today? she wondered. Would he come for Christmas at all? But surely he would. He would come for his father’s sake. Surely he would.

What if he did not? What if he never came?

She had never been so awash in self-pity, she thought. She hated feeling so abject. She hated him. Yes, she did. She hated him.

And then the door of her bedchamber opened and she turned her head to look. He stood in the open doorway for a few moments, looking back at her, before stepping inside and closing the door behind him.

She closed her eyes.

A
LL DAY
E
DGAR
had been almost sick with worry. He was taking an enormous risk with several people’s lives.
If things went awry, he might have made life immeasurably worse for both Sir Gerald and Lady Stapleton as well as for Helena. He might have destroyed his marriage. He might have exposed his father to censure for behavior unbecoming a man with pretensions to gentility.

But events had been set in motion and all he could do now was try to direct them and control them as best he could.

The Stapletons had not changed their minds overnight. And so they set off early for Mobley Abbey on Christmas Eve on roads that were still covered with snow and still had to be traveled with care. Sir Gerald, Edgar noticed, was very tense. His wife was calm and outwardly serene. Each of them, Edgar had learned during his short acquaintance with them, felt a deep and protective love for the other. Without a doubt they had found comfort and peace and harmony together. Equally without a doubt, they were two wounded people whose wounds had filmed over quite nicely during a little more than a year of marriage—their marriage, he guessed, must have coincided almost exactly with the birth of their son. But were the wounds healed? If they were not, this journey to Mobley might rip them open again and make them harder than ever to heal.

They arrived at Mobley Abbey in the middle of the afternoon, having made good time. Edgar, who had ridden, set down the steps of the carriage himself, though it was Sir Gerald who handed his wife and sleeping child out onto the terrace. The child’s nurse came hurrying from the accompanying carriage and took the baby, and Edgar directed a footman to escort them to the nursery and summon the housekeeper. He took Sir Gerald and Lady Stapleton to the library, which he was thankful to find empty, ordered refreshments brought for them, and excused himself.

He went first to the drawing room. Helena was not there. His father was, together with a number of his guests.

“Edgar!” Cora came hurrying toward him and took his arm. “You wretch! How dare you absent yourself for almost two full days so close to Christmas? Helena has been quite disconsolate and I have scarce removed my eyes from the sky for fear lest another snowstorm prevent your coming back. It is to be hoped that you went to Bristol to purchase a suitably extravagant Christmas present for your wife. Some
almost
priceless jewel, perhaps?”

“Edgar,” his father said, rising from the sofa on which he had been sitting and conversing with Mrs. Cross, “it is good to see you home before dark. Whatever did take you to Bristol?”

“I did not go to Bristol,” Edgar said. “I told Helena I was going there because I wished to keep my real destination a secret. We are all surrounded by family and friends while Helena has only one aunt here.” He bowed in Mrs. Cross’s direction. “I went to see her stepson, Sir Gerald Stapleton, at Brookhurst and persuade him to come back with me to spend Christmas.”

“Splendid!” Mr. Downes rubbed his hands together. “The more the merrier. My daughter-in-law’s stepson, you say, Edgar?”

“What a very kind thought Mr. Downes,” Mrs. Cross said.

“Sir Gerald Stapleton?” Cora’s voice had risen almost to a squeak. “And he has come, Edgar?
Alone?
”

Cora had always been as transparent as newly polished crystal. The questions she had asked only very thinly veiled the one she had not asked. Edgar looked steadily at her and at his brother-in-law beyond her.

“It is Christmas,” he said. “I have brought Lady Stapleton, too, of course, and their son. If you will excuse
me, Papa. I must find Helena and take her to meet them in the library. Do you know where she is?”

“She is upstairs resting,” Mr. Downes said. “This will do her the world of good, Edgar. She has been somewhat low in spirits, I fancy. But then your absence would account for that.” The statement seemed more like a question. But Edgar did not stay to pursue it. He left the room and, almost sick with apprehension, went up to his bedchamber.

She was lying on the bed, though she was not asleep. Their eyes met and held for a few moments and he knew with dreadful clarity that the future of her life and his, the future of their marriage, rested upon the events of the next hour. He stepped inside the room and shut the door. She closed her eyes, calmly shutting him out. She looked quite unmoved by the sight of him. Perhaps she had not missed him at all. Perhaps she had hoped he would not return for Christmas.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek. She still did not open her eyes. He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips. He felt a strong urge to avoid the moment, to keep the Stapletons waiting indefinitely in the library.

“Your father will be happy you have returned, Edgar,” she said without opening her eyes. “So will Cora. Go and have tea with them. As you will observe, I am trying to rest.”

“I have brought other guests,” he said. “They are in the library. I want you to meet them.”

She opened her eyes then. “More friends?” she said. “How pleasant for you. I will meet them later.”

She was in one of her prickly moods. It did not bode well.

“Now,” he said. “I wish you to meet them now.”

“Oh, well, Edgar,” she said, “when you play lord and master, you know, you are quite irresistible. If you would
care to stop looming so menacingly over me, I will get up and jump to your command.”

Very prickly. He went to stand at the window while she got up and straightened her dress and made sure at the mirror that her hair was tidy.

“I am ready,” she said. “Give me your arm and lead me to the library. I shall be the gracious hostess, Edgar, never fear. You need not glower so.”

He had not been glowering. He was merely terrified. Was he going about this the right way? Should he warn her? But if he did that, the chances were good that she would flatly refuse to accompany him to the library. And then what would he do?

He nodded to a footman when they reached the hall, and the man opened the library doors. Edgar drew a slow, deep breath.

“S
IR
G
ERALD AND
Lady Stapleton.” Cora whirled around and looked at her husband, her eyes wide with dismay.

“My new daughter’s stepson,” Mr. Downes said, beaming at Mrs. Cross and resuming his seat beside her. “And his wife and son. More family. When was there ever such a happy Christmas, ma’am?”

“I am sure I have never known a happier, sir,” Mrs. Cross said placidly.

“Tell me what you know of Sir Gerald Stapleton,” Mr. Downes directed her. “I daresay Edgar will bring them to tea soon.”

“Yes, my love,” Lord Francis said, going to Cora’s side.

“Oh, dear,” Cora said. “Whatever can Edgar have been thinking of? Perhaps he does not even know.” She looked suddenly belligerent and glared beyond her husband to the group of their friends, who were regarding her in silence. She lifted her chin. “Well,
I
will be civil to
her. She is Helena’s relative by marriage, even if it is only a
step
relationship. And she is Edgar’s and Papa’s guest. No one need expect me to be uncivil.”

“I would be vastly disappointed in you if you were, Cora,” her husband said mildly.

“And why would anyone even think of treating a lady, the wife of a baronet, a fellow guest in this home, with incivility?” the Earl of Thornhill asked, eyebrows raised.

“You do not remember who she is, Gabriel?” his wife asked. “Though I do hope you will repeat your words, even when you do.”

“The lady did something indiscreet, Jennifer?” he asked, though it was obvious to all his listeners that he knew the answer very well and had done so from the start. “Everyone has done something indiscreet. I remember a time when you and I were seen kissing by a whole ballroomful of dancers—while you were betrothed to another man.”

“Oh, bravo, Gabe,” Lord Francis said as the countess blushed rosily. “The rest of us have been tactfully forgetting that incident ever since. Though something very similar happened to Cora and me. Not that we were kissing. We were laughing and holding each other up. But it looked for all the world as if we were engaged in a deep embrace—and it caused a delicious scandal.”

“The
ton
is so foolish,” Cora said.

“Sir Gerald and Lady Stapleton are guests in this home,” the Duke of Bridgwater said. “As are Stephanie and I, Cora. I shall not peruse them through my quizzing glass or along the length of my nose. You may set your mind at ease.”