A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (31 page)

“I did not deserve it,” she said.

“You deserve it now.” He twirled her again. “And happiness is yours for the taking, is it not? I believe he is fond of you, Helena. I do not wish to divulge any secrets, but you must know anyway. He told Priss and me when he came to Brookhurst that he loves you. We have both seen since coming here that it is true. He is the man for you, you know. He is strong and assertive and yet sensitive and loving. It is quite a combination. You must be happy to be having a child. I remember how you used to share your disappointments with me when you were first married—because you felt you could not talk to my father on such a topic, you said. How you longed for a child! And how good you were with the children you encountered—myself included.”

“I have been afraid of being a mother,” she told him.

“Do not be.” Their roles had been reversed, she realized suddenly. He was the comforter, the reassurer, the one to convince her that she was capable of love and
worthy of love. “All the little children here adore you, Helena, including Peter, who is shy of almost all adults except Priss and me. He fought with the rest of the children this afternoon to be the one to hold your hand in their circle games. You will be a wonderful mother.”

“I am so old,” she said, pulling a face.

“God—or nature if you will—does not make mistakes,” he said. “If you are able to be a mother at your age, then you are not too old to be a mother. Enjoy it. Parenthood is wonderful, Helena. Exhausting and terrifying and wonderful. Like life.”

“Gerald,” she said. But there was nothing more to say. Some feelings were quite beyond words. And hers at this particular moment ran far too deep even for tears. “Oh, Gerald.”

He smiled.

“Y
OU WANT TO
do
what
?”

Edgar bent his head closer to his wife’s, though he had heard her perfectly clearly. The ball was over, the guests who were not staying at the house had all left, the house guests had begun to drift away to bed, the servants had been instructed to leave the clearing away until morning. And he was eager to get to bed. Helena had glowed all evening—especially after the waltz which he had wanted, but which she had danced with her stepson. She looked more beautiful even than usual. Edgar was feeling decidedly amorous.

“I want to go skating,” she told him again.

“Skating,” he said. “At one o’clock in the morning. After a dizzyingly busy day. With a mile to walk to the lake and a mile back. In arctically cold weather. When you are pregnant. Are you mad?”

“Edgar,” she said, “don’t be tiresome. It is so bourgeois
to feel that one must go to bed merely because it is late and one has had a busy day and it is cold outside.”

“Bourgeois,” he said. “I would substitute the word
sane
.”

But she whirled about and with a single clap of the hands and a raising of arms she had everyone’s attention.

“It is Christmas,” she said, “and a beautiful night. The ball is over but the night is not. And Christmas is not. Edgar and I are going skating. Who else wants to come?”

Everyone looked as stunned as Edgar had felt when she first mentioned such madness. But within moments he could see the attraction of the idea take hold just as it was doing with him. The young people were almost instantly enthusiastic, and then a few of the older couples looked at each other doubtfully, sheepishly, inquiringly.

“That is one of the best ideas I have heard today, Daughter,” Mr. Downes said, rubbing his hands together. “Letitia, my dear, how do you fancy the thought of a walk to the lake?”

“I fancy it very well, Joseph,” Mrs. Cross replied placidly. “But I hope not just a walk. I have not skated in years. I have an inclination to do so again.”

And that was that. They were going, a large party of them, with only a few older couples wise enough to resist the prevailing madness. At one o’clock in the morning they were going skating!

“You see, Edgar?” his wife said. “Everyone is not as tiresome and as staid as you.”

“Or as bourgeois,” he said. “I should not allow you to skate, Helena, or to exert yourself any more today. You are with child. Can you even skate?”

“Darling,” she said, “I have spent winters in Vienna. What do you think I did for entertainment? Of course, I skate. Do you want me to teach you?”

Darling?

“I shall escort you upstairs,” he said, offering his arm. “You will change into something
warm
. We will walk to the lake at a sedate pace and you will skate
for a short while
with my support. You are not to put your health at greater risk than that. Do you understand me, Helena? I must be mad, too, to give in to such a whim.”

“I said I would lead you a merry dance, Edgar,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “The word
merry
was the key one.” She slipped her arm through his. “I will not risk the safety of your heir, never fear. He—or she—is more important to me than almost anything else in my life. But I am not yet willing to let go of Christmas. Perhaps I never will. I will carry Christmas about with me every day for the rest of my life, a sprig of holly behind one ear, mistletoe behind the other.”

She was in a strange mood. He was not sure what to make of it. The only thing he could do for the time being was go along with it. And there
was
something strangely alluring about the prospect of going skating on a lake one mile distant at something after one o’clock of a December morning.

“The holly would be decidedly uncomfortable,” he said.

“You are such a realist, darling,” she said. “But you could kiss me beneath the other ear whenever you wished without fear that I might protest.”

He chuckled.
Darling
again? Yes, life with Helena really was going to be interesting. Not that there was just the future tense involved. It
was
interesting.

S
HE HAD MARRIED
a tyrant, Helena thought cheerfully—she had told him so, too. The surface of the ice was, of course, marred by an overall powdering of snow which had blown across it since it had last been skated upon. And in a few places there were thicker finger
drifts. It took several of the men ten minutes to sweep it clean again while everyone else cheered them on and kept as warm as it was possible to keep at almost two o’clock on a winter’s night.

Edgar had flatly refused to allow Helena to wield one of the brooms. He had even threatened, in the hearing of his father and everyone else present, to sling her over his shoulder and carry her back to the house if she cared to continue arguing with him. She had smiled sweetly and called him a tyrant—in the hearing of his father and everyone else.

And then, as if that were not bad enough, he had taken her arm firmly through his when they took to the ice, and skated with her about the perimeter of the cleared ice just as if they were a sedate middle-aged couple. That they were precisely that made no difference at all to her accusation of tyranny.

“I suppose,” he said when she protested, “that you wish to execute some dizzying twirls and death-defying leaps for our edification.”

“Well, I did wish to
skate
, Edgar,” she told him.

“You may do so next year,” he told her, “when the babe is warm in his cot at home and safe from his mother’s recklessness.”

“Or hers,” she said.

“Or hers.”

“Edgar,” she asked him, “is it horridly vulgar to be increasing at my age?”

“Horridly,” he said.

“I am going to be embarrassingly large within the next few months,” she said. “I have already misplaced my waist somewhere.”

“I had noticed,” he said.

“And doubtless think I look like a pudding,” she said.

“Actually,” he said, “I think you look rather beautiful and will look more so the larger you grow.”

“I do not normally look beautiful, then?” she asked.

“Helena.” He drew her to a stop, and four couples immediately zoomed past them. “If you are trying to quarrel with me again, desist. One of these days I shall oblige you. I promise. It is inevitable that we have a few corkers of quarrels down the years. But not today. Not tonight.”

“Hmm.” She sighed. “Damn you, Edgar. How tiresome you are.”

“Guilty,” he said. “And bourgeois and tyrannical. And in love with you.”

This time she heard and paid attention. This time she dared to consider that perhaps it was true. And that perhaps it was time to respond in kind. But she could not say it just like that. It was something that had to be approached with tortuous care, something to be crept up on and leapt on unawares so that the words would come out almost of their own volition. Besides, she was terrified. Her legs felt like jelly and she was breathless. It was not the walk or the skating that had done it. She was not that unfit.

“If we are not to skate even at a snail’s pace, Edgar,” she said, “perhaps we should retire from the ice altogether.”

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “You must be tired.”

“I do not want to go home,” she said, looking up to see that the stars were no longer visible. Clouds had moved over. “We are going to have fresh snow. Tomorrow we will probably be housebound. Let us find a tree behind which we can be somewhat private. I want to kiss you. Quite wickedly.”

He laughed. “Why waste a lascivious kiss against a tree,” he asked, “when we would be only
somewhat
private? Why not go back home where we can make use of a perfectly comfortable and entirely private bed—and do more than just kiss?”

“Because I want to be kissed
now
,” she said, wrestling her arm free of his grip and taking him by the hand. She began to skate across the center of the ice’s surface in the direction of the bank. “And because I may lose my courage during the walk back to the house.”

“Courage?” he said.

But she would say no more. They narrowly missed colliding with Letty and her father-in-law. They removed their skates on the bank. They almost chose a tree that was already occupied—by Fanny Grainger and Jack Sperling. They finally found one with a lovely broad trunk against which she could lean. She set her arms about him and lifted her face to his.

“You are quite mad,” he told her.

“Are you glad?” she whispered, her lips brushing his. “Tell me you are glad.”

“I am glad,” he said.

“Edgar,” she said, “he has forgiven me.”

“Yes, love,” he said, “I know.”

“I have loved during this Christmas season and have been loved,” she said, “and I have brought disaster on no one.”

“No,” he said, and she could see the flash of his teeth in the near darkness as he smiled. “Not unless everyone comes down with a chill tomorrow.”

“What a horrid threat,” she said. “It is just what I might expect of you.”

He kissed her—hard and long. And then more softly and long, his tongue stroking into her mouth and creating a definite heat to combat the chill of the night.

“You have brought happiness to a large number of people,” he said at last. “You are genuinely loved. Especially by me. I do not want to burden you with the knowledge, Helena, and you need never worry about feeling less strongly yourself, but I love you more than I thought it possible to love any woman. I do not regret
what happened. I do not regret marrying you. I do not care if you lead me a merry dance, though I hope it will always be as merry as this particular one. I only care that you are mine, that I am the man honored to be your husband for as long as we both live. There. I will not say it again. You must not be distressed.”

“Damn you, Edgar,” she said. “If you maintain a stoic silence on the subject for even one week I shall lead you the
un
merriest dance you could ever imagine.”

He kissed her softly again.

“Edgar.” She kept her eyes closed when the kiss ended. “I have lied to you.”

He sighed and set his forehead against hers for a moment. “I thought we came here to kiss wickedly,” he said.

“Apart from Christian,” she said, “I have never been with any man but you.”

“What?” His voice was puzzled. She did not open her eyes to see his expression.

“But I could not
tell
you that,” she said. “You would have thought you were
special
to me. You would have thought me—
vulnerable
.”

“Helena,” he said softly.

“You were,” she said. “I was. You are. I am. Damn you, Edgar,” she said crossly, “I thought it was
men
who were supposed to find this difficult to say.”

“Say what?” She could see when she dared to peep that he was smiling again—grinning actually. He knew very well what she could not say and the knowledge was making him cocky.

“I-love-you.” She said it fast, her eyes closed. There. It had not been so difficult to say after all. And then she heard a loud, inelegant sob and realized with some horror that it had come from her.

“I love you,” she wailed as his arms came about her
like iron bands and she collided full length with his massive body. “I love you. Damn you, Edgar. I love you.”

“Yes, love,” he said soothingly against one of her ears.

“Yes, love.”

“I love you.”

“Yes, love.”

“What a tedious conversation.”

“Yes, love.”

She was snickering and snorting against his shoulder then, and he was chuckling enough to shake as he held her.

“Well, I do,” she accused him.

“I know.”

“And you have nothing better to say than that?”

“Nothing
better
,” he said, putting a little distance between them from the waist up. “Except a tentative, tiresome, bourgeois suggestion that perhaps it is time to retire to our bed.”

“Tiresome and bourgeois suddenly sound like very desirable things,” she said.

They smiled slowly at each other and could seem to find nothing better or more satisfying to do for the space of a whole minute or so.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked eventually.

“For you to lead the way,” he said. “You will start damning me or otherwise insulting me if I decide to play lord and master.”

“Oh, Edgar,” she said, taking his arm. “Let us go
together
, shall we? To the house and to bed? Let us make love together—to each other. Whose silly idea was it to come out here anyway?”