For Love's Sake (16 page)

“Flora! Kindly go attend to Miss Graham!”

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Laurel said as she clutched the lacy pink corset to her chest. “I’m not used to anyone seeing me without my clothes on.”

She turned around to face the fireplace, holding on to the mantle for support while Flora tightened the laces down her back. With every tug and pull of those strings, her figure molded into a more exaggerated version on its natural self. By the time Flora finished Laurel had curving hips where she once was straight, and twice the bosom that she had actually been blessed with. Regardless of its deceitfulness, she had to admit that it was a
very
nice figure.

Without bothering to knock, Christopher poked his head into the room. Seeing her in her lingerie sent a pang of desire through his body, but instead of sending the maid out of the room and ravishing her right then and there, he only smiled an appreciative smile.

“I thought we would go for a walk,” he explained as he studied the soft mounds of her breasts, which were tottering over the top of the corset. “So see that you dress warmly.”

Her brown tweed suit would be best, with a stiff-collared white shirt underneath. She even wore a little red tie, emulating masculine fashion in a way that was popular among the ‘new women’. Her light brown hair was piled beneath a large tweed flat cap, and a warm sable cloak draped over her shoulders.

She met Christopher downstairs at the front door.

“You look right at home,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out into the courtyard.

Without the rain, Laurel was able to glance around for the first time. Brown vines clung to the rubble stone exterior of the house, making it look very neglected. Dead weeds lay between the cracks of the stone pavers, and what once might have been a fountain was sadly overgrown.

“Why would you let it look like this?” she asked.

Christopher glanced around as if he too were seeing it for the first time. “I am sure James has been very busy. But those vines on the wall are really roses in summer…I cannot say anything about the rest of it, though.”

“Well, I’ll do you a favor and clean it all up when the weather turns warm. Such a beautiful house shouldn’t be given over to the weeds.”

From the courtyard, they slipped through another ancient wooden door that led through the kitchen gardens. Their feet crunched on the gravel path that took them down to the stables. Although everything was drab and brown, Laurel let herself imagine what it would look like in the fresh green of spring.

There would be flowers. Bright pink roses by the front door, vivid yellows and reds along the garden walls, deep purples, and leafy greens of the shrubberies. The rolling pastureland would be dotted with horses munching clover in the spring rain, as well as little brown rabbits darting in and out of the fence posts. It would be beautiful. She could see that even now among the heavy mist and bitter cold.

They stepped into the large stable, which sheltered them from the biting wind. Double rows of box stalls lined the aisle, although there were only a handful of horses housed inside. A huge black draft horse stomped at the ground and rattled the walls of his stall. He was the biggest animal that Laurel had ever seen, and she immediately took a step backwards.

“Don’t worry about Atlas,” Christopher said as he walked over to the black iron bars of the box. The mammoth horse reached out his pink velvet nose for him to rub. “He may be big, but he never bites. It’s the pony you have to watch out for.”

Laurel looked over the walls of the stall next to Atlas, and saw a little white horse with a long white, feathered tail. As soon as she did, it pulled back its lips and bared his big yellow teeth.

“Oh God!” she laughed.

“They don’t like to be separated,” explained Christopher. “Or, rather, I don’t think Atlas cares one way or another, but Sugar Cube insists on following him everywhere he goes.”

“Why on Earth do
you
have a pony named Sugar Cube?”

He grinned and led her down the aisle. “It was for my niece and my nephews, but they’ve all outgrown her. James says she’s a menace, but I don’t have the heart to send her away.”

 
In the last stall was a pretty bay mare with big, round eyes and tall, alert ears that danced back and forth as Laurel and Christopher peered through the bars.

“If you’d like, I’ll teach you to ride,” Christopher offered. “Colleen here will be a good mount for you. I’ve ridden her in the hunt several times, and she’s as steady as they come.”

Laurel was about to respond when a mud-spattered James came ambling through the open doorway. His cap was tucked beneath his arm and he carried a long wooden walking-staff in his hand.

“Beg your pardon, Your Lordship. I didn’t know you was in here.”

The lad started to back out the door, but Christopher stopped him. “How is the flock, James?”

“Oh, very well, Sir. I’ve been told to expect a good season this year.”

Christopher nodded and turned to explain to Laurel, “I’ll bet you did not know that I was a sheep farmer. When the spring comes, we will be overrun with fluffy little lambs.”

“Would you like to see them? The flock, I mean,” James asked, trying to knock the mud cakes off of his boots. “I can have them brought ‘round.”

They followed him out into the pasture and over a tall hillock. Christopher and Laurel waited in the cold, watching their breath mingle, while James went to fetch the sheep. After a few moments, little gray specs began to appear on top of a far hill. Flanking either side were two Collies, and James bringing up the rear.

“Are those
dogs?
” Laurel asked, astonished at the scene.

Christopher laughed and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He was proud of his “simple” life, and he was pleased that she could at least appreciate it for what it was.

The flock of sheep moved closer, coming down the hill and through the shallow valley below. The mottled gray dog kept the sheep on course while his black partner darted after any stragglers who tried to break away from the others. They ran the sheep up the hill, close to where Christopher and Laurel stood. Seconds before the flock trampled them, the black dog cut the sheep off and pushed them to a safe distance.

Laurel clapped her hands in amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. That was incredible!”

Christopher ran a hand through the silky fur of the strange, speckled dog with cold blue eyes, which were not unlike his own. “This is Tibby. The other one is Lou. They have lived here just as long as I have. In fact, I bought them from James’ father not long after I graduated from University, didn’t I James?”

“Oh yes, My Lord,” the breathless young man agreed. “Six years we’ve been here—me
and
the dogs. No finer brace of Collies in all Amesbury.”

“I believe it,” Laurel smiled.

They left James and the dogs to their work and returned through the pasture gate to the stable yard. It was almost time for tea, and Christopher still had not shown her the duck pond on the lawn behind the house, or the million other tiny things that he had grown to love about the estate over the years.

“I can’t wait for the spring, when we can make love in a field of buttercups with the lambs jumping all around us,” he whispered to her. “Or fall asleep in the hayloft with the warm sun on our faces.”

Although the idea seemed absurd, Laurel found herself also looking forward to it. To think that she was there with a man that could have anything in the world, but only wanted her, filled Laurel with a sense of pride that she never knew before. If the world were any more perfect than it was at that exact moment, she was certain that she would die of happiness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Christopher dozed in the warm orange glow of the fire sputtering in the drawing room. Laurel looked up from her book to see the sparks shoot up and then sizzle out. She allowed herself to get lost in its hypnotizing flames before looking down to resume her place in
Jane Eyre
. Every book in the house was at her disposal, and Christopher even assured her that the library in Amesbury had a far better selection. There would be no more reading and then re-reading every tattered old copy of the same few books that she had been able to get her hands on back home.

Suddenly, the heavy wooden front door burst open. Christopher awoke from his nap with a start, and Laurel’s book fell to the floor with a loud
thump
.

“Christopher!” a feminine voice called from the entrance hall, “I simply could not let you spend the holiday out here all alone!”

The tall, auburn haired woman stared through the door at her flustered son and his confused companion.

“But I see now that you are not alone at all…”

Two more faces peered at them from behind her, and Christopher struggled to his feet to greet them. “Mother! I…uh…um…”

Three pairs of eyes looked from him to the young woman seated in the armchair next to him, and then back at him again.

“Mother, may I present…” he coughed, quickly. “...my
fiancée
, Miss Laurel Graham.”

If Laurel had not already been seated, she would have fallen down right where she stood. He just introduced her to his mother as his fiancée!

“Dearest, I would like you to meet my mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Amesbury,” Christopher said.

“Oh, no no!” his mother said, extending her arm. “Please, call me Margaret.”

Laurel stood up and shook the woman’s hand.

“This is my sister, Kate,” he continued, gesturing to the woman behind his mother. Beside her stood a small, red-haired girl who could not have been more than twelve or thirteen. “And this is her daughter, Constance.”

The girl dipped into a graceful curtsy, and Laurel, for lack of anything else to do, did the same. This brought peals of laughter from behind the little girl’s gloved hands.

Christopher winked playfully at his niece.

“Since Jonathan and the children are at the Riviera, we thought that we would spend Christmas with you,” his mother explained. “After all, I have not seen you in five months…”

They all looked around the small, dark room. There were no stockings, no decorations, and most importantly, no tree. With Christmas only two days away, the atmosphere was not very festive. Christopher felt like a very poor host, even though his guests were unexpected, and he’d only just arrived in the country days before.

“I suppose we could find a tree,” he said. “Although I’m sadly short on decorations.”

“Yes. You two go and take Constance to cut down a tree,” the Dowager Marchioness of Amesbury decided. “Kate and I will see if we cannot find some suitable trimmings.”

A saw was finally located in the barn, and Christopher emerged carrying it and some rope. Laurel and Constance waited beneath a mountain of blankets as he climbed up into the cart beside them.

“I think I saw some big evergreens growing between here and Amesbury,” he said with a flip of the reigns. “Why don’t we try there first?”

Atlas gave a shake of his giant head and the cart started down the drive. It was not long before they were on the road with the low-hanging braches that seemed to entrap travelers within their embrace. To Laurel, it seemed as if, at any moment, one of them would reach out and grab her.

Constance must have felt the exact same way, and she sank as low as she could between the two adults. “It’s so pretty in the summer,” she said in a quiet, trembling voice. “But it’s very frightening in the winter.”

Christopher patted her knees. “There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You know that.”

He stopped the wagon at the edge of the woods. Laurel jumped down, and then helped Constance, while he grabbed their tools out of the back. In single file, they trooped through the dead leaves and mud until they found a few green trees.

“This one is much too big for the drawing room,” Christopher said, craning his neck to see to the top of a large, wide spruce. “But it would do well beside the dining room table.”

“What about that one over there?” Laurel asked, pointing to a stout little spruce that had been left behind when other tree hunters came to cut down their own.

Christopher studied its branches. “I like it. Constance, what do you think?”

The little girl nodded. They had found their Christmas tree.

Shrugging out of his jacket, he took the saw and began to slowly cut through the trunk. It was hard work, and despite the cold, Christopher managed to break a sweat.

“Mama told me not to let you cut off any of my fingers,” Constance informed him. For emphasis, she tucked her gloved hands into her armpits.

“I won’t…it seems I can’t even…cut down a tree,” he panted as he ran the saw back and forth across the bark, barely making a dent in the wood. “We’d never be able to…survive in the wilderness…if I was in charge.”

After a few tense moments, Christopher finally managed to make some headway, and the tree gave out with a groan. Laurel and Constance took a few tentative steps back as it fell to the ground.

“Man triumphs over nature,” he said to them.

They dragged the tree back to the road and tied it in the back of the cart. When the three of them arrived back at the house with their precious cargo, James and Mr. Humphrees were waiting to help unload it.

“Excellent tree, My Lord,” Mr. Humphrees exclaimed. “What a beauty.”

“
I
picked it out,” Constance corrected him as she swung down from the seat.

“Well you did a wonderful job, Miss,” the gentleman said.

When they walked through the door of the drawing room, Christopher’s mother and his sister were already hard at work preparing ornaments for the new tree.

“Oh there you are, I was starting to worry,” Kate said as she threaded a piece of red ribbon through a silver star. “How did it go?”

Both women looked up to see Christopher drenched in sweat and covered in thick, sticky sap. They knew exactly how it went, and neither of them argued when he excused himself upstairs to have a bath.

“Christopher has told us absolutely nothing about you,” his mother said to Laurel over dinner. “To be perfectly honest, I did not even know he was engaged.”