Under The Mistletoe (13 page)

Estelle patted him lightly on the arm. “He married me,” she said, and looked at Lady Lawrence and laughed gaily.

“Oh, unfair, ma'am,” Lord Martindale said. “Since he has already done so, you see, the rest of us poor mortals are unable to compete.”

“We could find some excuse to slap a glove in his face and shoot him,” Sir Cyril said.

They all laughed.

“But I should not like that at all,” Estelle said. “I would be an inconsolable widow for the rest of my life, I warn you.”

“In that case,” Sir Cyril said with a mock sigh, getting to his feet and circling the table in order to pull out Lady Lawrence's chair, “I suppose we might as well allow Lisle to live. Lucky devil!”

When they were all outside the shop, the gentlemen bowed and took their leave, and Estelle promised to meet Lady Lawrence at the library as soon as she had completed her errand. She did not want her friend to come into the jeweler's shop with her—a different jeweler from the one her husband had visited half an hour before.

She was very excited. Surely he would understand when he saw it, even though strictly speaking it would not seem like a gift for him.

She had the advantage over the earl. She remembered quite clearly that there had been nine sapphires. And she was able to tell the jeweler exactly how wide the gold band was to be made. She took a long time picking out a diamond, and did so eventually only because she must do so unless the whole idea was to be abandoned, for none of them looked quite like the Star of Bethlehem.

But it did not matter. She was not going to try to deceive Allan. There was no question of trying to pass off this new ring as the lost one. She would give it to him only because she wanted him to know
that the betrothal ring had been important enough to her that she would spend almost all she had on replacing it. She wanted him to know that there was still the hope in her that she had worn on her finger for two years.

The hope that one day he would come to love her as she loved him.

She was going to ask him to keep the ring until she came home to stay. Perhaps he would understand that she wanted that day to come.

Perhaps.

But she would want him to have it anyway.

She hurried along the street in the direction of the library a short while later, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes still bright. Everyone around her seemed to be loaded down with parcels. Everyone looked happy and smiled back at her.

What a wonderful time of year Christmas was. If only every day could be Christmas!

 

The Earl of Lisle was sitting in one corner of his darkened town carriage, his wife in the other. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, it being late at night. Estelle's gaze was necessarily confined within the carriage, then. But she did not need to see out. Her gaze was fixed on an imaginary scene of some magnificence.

“ ‘For unto us a child is born,' ” she sang quietly to herself. “ ‘Unto us a son is given; unto us a son is given.' ” She looked across to her husband's darkened face. “Or is it ‘a child is born' twice and ‘a son is given' once?” she asked. “But no matter. Mr. Handel's
Messiah
must be the most glorious music ever composed, don't you agree, Allan?”

“Very splendid,” he agreed. “But I am surprised you heard any of it, Estelle. You did so much talking.” He had meant the words to be teasing, but he never found it easy to lighten the tone of his voice.

“But only before the music began and during the interval,” she said. “Oh, come now, Allan, you must admit it is true. I did not chatter through the music. How could I have done so when I was so enthralled? And how could I have sat silent between times when we were in company with friends? They would have thought I was sickening for something.”

Her eyes fixed on the upholstery of the seat opposite her, and soon she was singing softly again. “ ‘There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.' ” She hummed the orchestra's part.

The earl watched her broodingly. He could not see her clearly in
the darkness, but he would wager that her cheeks still glowed and that her eyes still shone. As they had done through dinner at the Mayfields', through the performance of Handel's
Messiah
they had attended in company with six friends, and through late-evening tea and cards at the Bellamys'.

She was so looking forward to Christmas, she had told everyone who had been willing to listen—and everyone was always willing to listen to Estelle, it seemed. The first that she and her husband had spent at their own home. And her mama and papa were coming, and her married brother with his wife and two children, and her unmarried brother. And her husband's mother and his two sisters with their families. And two aunts and a few cousins. One more week and they would begin to arrive.

She had been pleased when he had agreed a couple of months before to stay in London and host the family Christmas that year. But she had not bubbled over so with high spirits to him. He could not seem to inspire such brightness in her.

“I spent a fortune this morning, Allan,” she said to him now, turning her head in his direction. And he could tell from her voice that she was still bubbling, though she had only him for audience. “I bought so many presents that Jasper looked dubious when I staggered along to the coach. I think he wondered how we were to get all the parcels inside.” She laughed.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.

“I love Christmas,” she said. “I live like the world's worst miser from summer on just so that I can be extravagant at Christmas. I think I enjoy choosing gifts more than I like receiving them. I bought Nicky a little silver watch for his pocket. Such a dear little child's thing. You should just see it.” She giggled. “I suppose he cannot tell time. I will have to teach him.”

“Did you buy such lavish gifts for the other servants?” he asked.

“Oh, of course not.” She laughed again. “I would have to live like a beggar for five years. But I did buy them all something, Allan. And they will not mind my giving Nicky something special, will they? He is just a child, and has doubtless never had a gift in his life. Except for his seashell, of course.”

“Did you meet anyone you knew?” he asked.

“I was with Isabella,” she said. “We nodded to a few acquaintances.” There was the smallest of hesitations. “No one special.”

“Martindale is not special?” he asked quietly. “Or Porchester?”

There was a small pause again. “Someone told you,” she said. “We
met them on Oxford Street and they invited us for tea and cakes. I was glad to sit down for half an hour. My feet were sore.”

“Were they?” he said. “You did not look as if you were in pain.”

She looked sharply at him. “You saw us,” she said. “You were there, Allan. Why did you not come inside?”

“And break up the party?” he said. “And make odd numbers? I am more of a sport than that, Estelle.”

“Oh,” she cried, “you are cross. You think that I was doing something I ought not to have been doing. It is quite unexceptionable for two married ladies to take tea with two gentlemen friends at a public confectioner's. It is too bad of you to imply that it was some clandestine meeting.”

His voice was cold. “One wonders why you decided not to tell me about it if it was so unexceptionable,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, exasperated. “For just this reason, Allan. For just this reason. I knew you would read into it something that just was not there. It was easier not to tell you at all. And now I have put myself in the wrong. But if you will spy on me, then I suppose you must expect sometimes to be disappointed. Though when I think about that last statement, I don't suppose you were disappointed. Unless it was over the fact that it was not just me and one of the gentlemen. That would have suited you better, would it not?”

“One is hardly spying on one's wife by walking along Oxford Street in the middle of the day,” he said.

“Then why did you ask me those questions?” she said. “In the hope that I would lie or suppress the truth? Why did you not simply remark that you had seen me with Isabella and Lord Martindale and Sir Cyril?”

“I should not have had to either ask or make the comment,” he said. “If it was all so innocent, Estelle, you would have come home and told me about the afternoon and your encounters. You find it very easy to talk to all our friends and acquaintances, it seems. You never stop talking when we are out. Yet you have very little to say to me. How can I escape the conclusion sometimes that you have something to hide?”

“What nonsense you speak!” she said. “I have been talking to you tonight, have I not? I talked to you about the concert and you remarked that I had chattered too much. I told you about my Christmas gifts and you suggested that I had spent too much on Nicky. Do you think I enjoy such conversation? Do you think I enjoy always being at fault? I don't think I am capable of any goodness in your eyes.”

“There is no need to yell,” he said. “We are in a small space and I am not deaf.”

“I am not yelling!” she said. “Oh, yes, I am, and I yell because I choose to do so. And if you were not so odious and so determined to put me in the wrong, you would yell too. I know you have lost your temper. You speak quietly only so that I will lose mine more.”

“You are a child!” he said coldly. “You have never grown up, Estelle. That is your trouble.”

“Oh!” she said. And then with a loudly indrawn breath, “I would rather be a child than a marble statue. At least a child has feelings. You have none, do you? Except a fanatical attachment to propriety. You would like a little mouse of a wife to mince along at your side, quiet and obedient and adding to your consequence. You have no human feelings whatsoever. You are incapable of having any.”

“We had best be quiet,” he said. “We neither of us have anything to say except what will most surely wound the other. Be quiet, Estelle.”

“Oh, yes, lord and master,” she said, her voice suddenly matching his in both volume and temperature. “Certainly, sir. Beg pardon for being alive to disturb you, my lord. Console yourself that you will have to put up with me for only another few weeks. Then I will be gone with Mama and Papa.”

“Something to be looked forward to with eager anticipation,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

They sat side by side for the remainder of the journey home in frigid silence.

Estelle had to keep swallowing against the lump in her throat. It had been another lovely day, though she had seen very little of her husband until the evening, when they had been in company. She had so hoped that they could get to the end of the day without trouble. She had hoped that he would come back to her that night so they might recapture the tenderness of the night before. And they had come so close.

She took his hand as he helped her from the carriage, and tilted her chin up at such an angle that he would know her unappeased. His jaw was set hard and his eyes were cold, she saw in one disdainful glance up at him.

He unlocked the door and stood aside to allow her to precede him into the hallway. Although the coachman had been necessarily kept up very late indeed, all the other servants were in bed. The Earl of
Lisle refused to keep them up after midnight when he was perfectly capable of turning a key in a lock. He had explained his strange theories to his butler three years before, on his acquisition of the title and the town house.

Estelle waited in cold silence while he took her cloak and laid it on a hall stand, and picked up a branch of lit candles. But before she could reach out a hand to place on his sleeve so that he might escort her to her room, he set a warning hand on her arm and stood very still, in a listening attitude.

Estelle looked at him questioningly. He handed her the candlestick slowly and without a word, his eyes on a marble statue that stood to one side of the staircase, between the library and his study. A hand gesture told her that she was to stay exactly where she was. He moved silently toward the statue.

A child's treble wailing broke the silence before the earl reached his destination. The sounds of a child whose heart was breaking.

“What are you doing here?” the earl asked, stopping beside the statue and looking down. His voice was not ungentle.

Estelle hurried across the tiles to his side. Nicky was standing between the statue and the wall, his fists pressed to his eyes, one bare foot scratching the other leg through his breeches.

“I was thirsty,” he said through his sobs. “I got lost.”

The earl stooped down on his haunches. “You wanted a drink of water?” he asked. “Did you not go down the back stairs to the kitchen? How do you come to be here?”

The sobs sounded as if they were tearing the child's chest in two. “I got lost,” he said eventually.

“Nicky.” The earl reached out a hand and pushed back the boy's hair from his forehead. “Why did you hide?”

“I got scared,” the boy said. “Are you goin' ter beat me?” His fists were still pressed to his eyes.