Christmas Brides (Three Regency Novellas) (2 page)

Unlike his former ward.

When Pemberton looked up at him, he smiled. “Come sit by me, my boy. The fire feels good to these old bones.”

“These bones of mine can certainly welcome the warmth.” De Vere pulled a chair in front of the fire and sat. “It's a beastly cold day.”

Pemberton scrutinized him much as one would a portrait in the Royal Gallery. De Vere braced himself for a rebuke. Not that his kindly mentor had ever chastised him.

“I am concerned for you,” Pemberton finally said. “I have known you for three decades and have never known you to step out of de Vere House unless your appearance was perfection.”

“But you see, I did not step from my home this morning.” He drew a long breath. “I've come from Newmarket.”

The exceedingly long pause which followed was almost palpable. Finally, the elder man spoke. “I take it the races did not progress in an agreeable manor for you.”

“To be perfectly honest, sir, they could not have been worse.”

“'Tis a good thing your properties are tied up in the entail, then.”

De Vere nodded. “Indeed. The pity of it is, I cannot afford to occupy either of my properties. That's why I've come to you today.”

“I shall be happy to loan you money to tide you over.”

“That is
not
why I've come.” Anger surged through him. He had unwisely gambled and lost. Now he was prepared to face the consequences of his mistakes. “I came so you would be the first to learn that I plan to lease both the house on Cavendish Square and Beddingworth. With vastly reduced living expenses and the income from the properties, I should be able to right my situation in a year or two. I, ah. . . didn't want you to learn of my indiscretions from someone else.” Even worse, he hated to lose the man's admiration.

“I am a very wealthy man. You are the closest thing I'll ever have to a son. I wish to
give
you the money you lost.”

De Vere stood and spoke icily. “There is nothing that could persuade me to accept it.”

Mr. Pemberton shrugged. “Sit down, my boy. Just because you won't accept my assistance doesn't mean I must be deprived of a visit with you.”

De Vere chuckled as he returned to his chair.

“'Tis a pity,” the elder man continued, “but I know you won't change your mind about accepting my help. In this, you're entirely too much like your stubborn father.”

“You, more than anyone, understood the complex man who was my father.” The two had gone through Eton and Oxford together and had been the closest of friends until the day his father died.

His gaze raked over the man beside him. He had never noticed when Pemberton's hair had gone white. Were his father still alive, he would likely resemble this aged man who sat next to him. He wondered if the eighth decade of life would have tamed his roguish father, wondered if he himself would ever be tamed.

“Because we were too damned much alike!”

“With one exception, sir. You abandoned hedonism once you wed.”

The elder man nodded. “I believe you, too, will when a pretty thing sweeps you off your feet.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “Which brings up another subject that concerns you.”

“You think I should marry.”

“Indeed. You need to marry an heiress.”

“I agree, but I am incapable of offering my title to the highest bidder, so to speak.”

“I understand. You're holding out for a romantic marriage.”

“If a man must be forced to spend his life joined to one woman, it should be with a woman he
wants
to spend the rest of his life with.”

“I've lived a long time and learned a thing or two along the way. It has been my observation that, in many cases, once a man and woman are wed—even when there was no love involved—and have children together a deep bond of friendship forms between them, and often that friendship turns to love.”

“And in just as many cases, the shackles make the couple miserable. Look at the Duke of Wellington!”

“I will own, his marriage is wretched. He can barely stand to be in the same room with his wife.”

“I'd rather go my grave a bachelor.”

“I pray that you don't. It would make me very unhappy to think that no descendent of you or your father would ever occupy Hamptonworth. It would be very sad to leave this earth and know that no part of you remains.”

“Oblige me by speaking no more of such morbid thoughts.”

Pemberton smiled. “You must tell me about your misfortunes at Newmarket.”

“Misfortune does not begin to sum up my sad experience. You will remember me speaking of that fleet chestnut . . .”

* * *

Long after Lord de Vere took his leave of Pemberton House—without seeking to say goodbye to her—the physician came. She practically flew down the stairs to speak with him before he went to see her father.

The courtly physician, who was favored by at least two of the royal princesses, bowed as he took Miss Pemberton's hand and kissed the air above her glove. “You are most fortunate not to have to leave your home on a day like today, Miss Pemberton. 'Tis beastly cold out there.”

“I have made sure Papa does not leave and have encouraged him to sit near the fire where it's warmer.”

Marsden nodded. “Very good. Your father is getting on in years. How old is he now?”

“Three and seventy. Because his father lived to be ninety, I've always assumed Papa would, too, but this past week I've become most alarmed.”

“What seems to be wrong with him?”

She drew a deep breath, hating to say the words, hating to think of what this ailment could signify. “Discomfort in his chest.”

Mr. Marsden's brows squeezed into a vee. “That is not good, not good at all in a man of that age.” The physician who had not yet reached fifty flicked his gaze to the stairway. “I shall have to examine him.”

“Yes, of course. Will you come to me after you've seen him?”

“Most certainly, my dear.”

She went to sit before the fire in the drawing room. One of the footmen had placed a tall arm chair that was upholstered in green velvet a few feet from the hearth. Settling her lap desk on her thighs, she completed the letter to Aunt Smithington-Fortenoy, folded it, then sat there peering at the window. A thin sheen of frost pooled at the bottom of each pane, and thick gray fog obliterated even the view of Lord Conningham's tall, narrow house just across the street. It
was
a dreadful day to be out of doors.

Would they even be able to travel to Upper Barrington for Christmas? She had given the matter considerable thought. With rugs and hot bricks and mufflers swathing his frail neck, Papa should tolerate the ride well enough. Surrey was not so terribly far from London, after all.

Yet their country house on two thousand acres of rolling parkland and pastures seemed as far removed from London as Istanbul. Many happy Christmases had been spent there with those she loved, gathering holly and skating on the frozen lake and lighting the Yule log and worshiping at tiny St. Stephen's on the morning of Christ's birth.

She wouldn't like it at all if a snowstorm prevented them from going to Upper Barrington.

After the passage of a quarter of an hour, the door to the drawing room came open, and Mr. Marsden stood there, framed by the massive, pedimented doorway, an achingly solemn look on his ruddy face.

Her breathing accelerated violently. Her palms sweat. Her throat went dry. She was incapable of giving voice to that which she dreaded most. She merely stared at the physician, noticing absurdly unimportant things like the bulbous nose indicative of a man who overindulged in strong spirits and the sterling buttons on his gray wool jacket.

She came to realize Mr. Marsden wanted to tell her the grievous pronouncement no more than she wanted to hear it. Eventually he cleared his throat. She fought the urge to cover her ears as she'd done as a girl when she did not want to hear unwelcome words. She was no longer that child. Now she was a woman of three and twenty. She rose, held her head high, and faced the physician, a querying expression on her face.

“I must prepare you, Miss Pemberton. This is likely the last Christmas you will ever spend with your father.”

A burst of hot tears gushed to her eyes. She made no effort to wipe away the rivulets that began to drip from her cheekbones and chin. “You have told my father?”

He nodded solemnly.

“Then I must go to him.” A sob broke as she turned toward the door.

Before she could face her dear Papa, though, she must attempt to cheer him. For the past two weeks, his sole source of pleasure had come from sampling the pickles sent from his cousin, Betsy Blaine-Ramsbury, who zealously guarded the recipe that had been used in Papa's grandmother's home and, according to Papa, produced the only crave-worthy pickles on the planet.

She descended the stairs to the basement and raced to the kitchen where she fetched one, long, delicious pickle. Cook noticed her reddened eyes and glistening cheeks but was too polite to comment upon it. She wiped her hands on her apron, took the pickle, and placed it on a delicate ivory and gilt saucer. “Yer papa will want more than one.”

“If my papa was permitted to have his way, all of Cousin Betsy's pickles would already be gone.”

Cook smiled. “Indeed they would.”

By the time Miss Pemberton had mounted three flights of stairs to her father's library, her tears had dried.

She tapped upon his door.

“I know it's you, Belle, and I'll not allow you in if you're crying.”

A smile tweaked at the corners of her mouth. “I'm not crying.”

“Then you may enter.”

Her white-haired father sat before the fire, a blanket spread across his lap, his discarded book fanned open on the Turkey carpet beneath his chair. He had never looked so frail.

“I've brought you one of Cousin Betsy's pickles.”

He smiled at her. “I knew I could count on you to brighten my day, my dearest.” Neither the sparkling blue of his eyes nor the stridency of his voice bespoke a man in his decline.

He greedily bit into the pickle. “You've spoken with Marsden?”

She nodded solemnly as she lowered herself into the chair next to him. She supposed it was the chair Lord de Vere had sat upon.

“I suppose he told you this will be my last Christmas?”

“You mustn't believe everything the fellow says. After all, he's a man, and man is not infallible.”

“You, my dearest, must not always be so optimistic. I am an old man. I've lived a long, exceedingly happy life. For nine and forty years I indulged my every whim. Then I was blessed to fall in love with the best of women, whose last act on this earth was to give me the child who would be the joy of my life and the comfort of my old age. Save but one thing, I could die perfectly happy right now.”

She knew very well what that
one thing
was. “You mustn't worry about leaving me alone. It's by my own choice that I'm not wed.”

He availed himself of the last bite of pickle and savored it for several seconds of appreciative
um-um-umming
before speaking. “I've worried that you refused to marry because you did not want to leave me alone.”

She shook her head. “First, my dear parent, you must realize that any man who was ever foolish enough to attempt to court me did so in order to secure my fortune. I know it's difficult for you to realize, but I am not considered a beauty.”

“But you
are
pretty!”

“I am short and plain and far too particular in my tastes to settle for any man desperate enough to pay me homage.”

“We have had this discussion before, and we shall never see eye to eye on it.”

“Then I must change the topic of discussion. Pray, Papa, will you feel up to the journey to Upper Barrington?”

“Of course I will! I've spent every Christmas for the past thirty years there, and it's my next-to-fondest desire to spend my last one there.”

She must humor him. Bless her dearest father, he was taking the news of his demise remarkably well. “It does seem that since this
may
be. . .” She had to pause, to fortify herself in order to utter that which was so very painful to acknowledge. “. . . your last Christmas, I should seek to grant you one last wish. What
is
it that is your
next-to
fondest desire?” She knew very well what his answer would be.

“I cannot die content unless I know you will be taken care of by a husband who loves and cherishes you.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “'Twould be easier to find forests in the desert.”

He shook his head adamantly. “I strongly disagree with you.”

“I daresay you're just worried I'll turn out to be a peculiar spinster of dubious repute like Lady Hester Stanhope.”

Her father rolled his eyes. “If I believed that, I'd shoot myself right now.”

She giggled. She could not believe she was sitting there giggling just minutes after the physician had informed her Papa was dying. “Pray, Papa, have you ever encountered a man whom you think would suit me?”

He nodded sheepishly. How could a man with such spark in his eyes be nearing death?

“Oblige me, then,” she said, folding her arms across her chest, “by revealing to me who this man is.”

“He was at our home this very afternoon.”

Her eyes rounded. “I believe Mr. Marsden is already married.”

“I wasn't referring to Marsden,” he snapped.

Her pulse began to pound. Not once in her three and twenty years had her father ever tried to play matchmaker between his well-loved daughter and his well-admired ward. Had he always held the opinion that she and de Vere would suit?

It was true he had never maligned de Vere no matter how debauched the viscount was. She was shocked her protective father would even consider marrying her to so dissolute a man.

Of course, de Vere
did
have his good qualities. He was vastly intelligent. He
had
always been excessively kind to her, even when she was but six years old and he a lad of thirteen—which, she had to admit, many lads of that age would not have been. He also took his duties in Parliament seriously and was respected by his peers.