Under The Mistletoe (9 page)

“Jeremy needs you,” she said.

Again there was a long pause, during which he dared not ask the question whose answer might shatter his newfound, fragile dream. How foolishly hesitant he was with his wife—so different from the way he was in all other aspects of his life. But she answered the question before he could ask it.

“
I
need you.”

“Do you?” His heart felt as if it might burst.

“Edwin,” she said in a rush, her voice breathless, her face still turned away, “I should have said no. Even though Mama and Papa were in desperate financial straits, I should not have agreed to buy their reprieve at the cost of your freedom and happiness. But I had met your father and liked him enormously, and I knew that he really wanted me for you. And so I persuaded myself that perhaps you wanted me too. But it was purely selfish of me. I thought I could leave behind the cold, loveless world in which I had grown up and become part of your father's warm, joy-filled world. Instead I killed any joy you might have had. I am so sorry. But let us go home with you, and I will try . . .”

His hand closed tightly about one of her arms, and she stopped talking as he turned her to him and gazed down into her face, bathed in the light of the moon and the Christmas star.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I am the one who destroyed
your
happiness, taking you away from your own world only because I knew my father was dying and I could not say no to him. I despised myself for agreeing to that bargain when you must have dreamed of making a dazzling match with a titled gentleman of the
ton
, someone who was your social equal. All I could think to do after my father died was to bring you here, to a home that at least would be familiar to you in size and grandeur, and to give you a measure of freedom from me and my world. Yet now you want to come back to me?”

She bit her lip. “You did not despise me?”

“
Despise
you?” He took both her arms in his hands and drew her closer. “Elizabeth, I fell head over ears in love with you the moment I set eyes on you. I tried to . . . treat you with restraint and respect. I thought that perhaps after you had grown accustomed . . . But you seemed to turn to stone. And then my father died.”

When she lifted one gloved hand to cup his cheek, he could see that it was trembling. He could also see stars reflected in her eyes.

“Edwin,” she whispered, “I thought you despised me. I wanted that marriage so very, very much—with you, with your father's son. You were to be my escape from a life I had ever enjoyed, and I was so very enchanted when I first saw you. But when you said nothing after our marriage about love or even affection, but were so . . .
respectful
, I thought you despised me.”

“We have been such idiots,” he said, raising her hand to his cheek and holding it there. He grinned at her. “I thought it was just me, but it was you too. I know so little about pleasing a woman, Elizabeth, especially the woman I love.”

Her eyes looked even brighter suddenly, and he knew they were filled with tears.

“You do know,” she said. “Today has been the happiest of my life—to see you smile and laugh, to see you hold Jeremy, to have you kiss me beneath the kissing bough, to—” She stopped abruptly and bit her lip again.

He turned his head and kissed her gloved palm.

“I will teach you to enjoy what happens in our marriage bed, Elizabeth,” he said. “I promise. Just give me time. I have to learn how to please you.”

“You pleased me.” She snatched her hand away from his cheek to set it, with her other hand, on his shoulders. She gazed earnestly into his face. “You pleased me, Edwin. I thought I would die of pleasure. But I did not show it, did I? Perhaps I ought to have done so. Mama told me—before our nuptials—that I must always lie still and pray for it to be soon over. But tonight I did not want it to be over. I prayed for it never to end. You pleased me, Edwin. Oh, you did!”

He chuckled and then wrapped his arms about her and held her tight. He laughed aloud, and she joined him.

“I must tell you,” she said, “that I have told Mama that she and Papa must leave Wyldwood after Christmas. Even if I must stay here alone with Jeremy, I will be happier without Mama's influence. I want to be your
wife
, even if I am to see you only once or twice a year.”

He caught her to him even more tightly.

“My dearest,” he said. “Oh, my love. I will not let you out of my sight again for longer than a day at a time—and even that will be too long.”

She drew back her head and smiled at him. He smiled back before lowering his head and kissing her. This time there was no audience, as there had been in the drawing room before tea, and this time there was no anxiety or uncertainty, as there had been in their bedchamber earlier. This time there was all of love to be shared openly and joyfully. And the knowledge that a future together stretched ahead of them even after Christmas had passed into a new year and a new spring and a new hope.

When he lifted his head, they smiled at each other again. The house—their house, the house his father had purchased for him, really a rather lovely house—was behind her at the top of the snow-clad lawn. In fancy he could almost see the rudely carved Nativity scene behind the dark drawing room windows. He knew exactly which window Jeremy slept behind, warm and safe in his crib. Their son.

Above them, the sky was moonlit and starlit, the Christmas star beaming softly down on their heads—or so it seemed.

“It must be after midnight,” he said, his arms still about her waist, hers about his neck. “Happy Christmas, my dearest.”

“Happy Christmas, Edwin,” she said.

“I do not know about you,” he said, grinning down at her, “but I am frozen out here. Whose idea was this, anyway?”

She smiled back at him, a radiant smile that lit her with beauty.

“It was the most wonderful idea in the world,” she said. “I have seen Christmas angels and the Christmas star, and I have taken all the love and joy of Christmas into my heart and my life. But I
am
chilly,” she admitted.

“We had better go back to bed, then,” he said, “and see if we can warm each other up.”

Even in the moonlight he knew that she blushed. But she did not stop smiling or gazing into his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Edwin. Let's do that.”

The Christmas star shed its radiant light onto Wyldwood long after they had gone inside and warmed each other and loved each other and fallen asleep, twined together beneath the rumpled bedcovers.

 

“I
've lost the Star of Bethlehem,” she told him bluntly when he came to her room at her maid's bidding. There was some sullenness in her tone, some stubbornness, and something else in addition to both, perhaps.

He stood just inside the door of her bedchamber, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her, showing little emotion.

“You have lost the Star of Bethlehem,” he repeated. “Where, Estelle? You were wearing it last night.”

“I still have the ring,” she said with a nonchalance that was at variance with her fidgeting hands. She noticed the latter, and deliberately and casually brushed at the folds of her morning wrap in order to give her hands something to do. “But the diamond is gone.”

“Was it missing last night when we came home?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her. Having assured herself that her wrap fell in becoming folds, she was now retying the satin bow at her throat. She looked as if she cared not one whit about her loss.

“I would have mentioned it if I had noticed, would I not?” she said disdainfully. “I really don't know, Allan. All I do know is that it is missing now.” She shrugged.

“It probably came loose when you hurled the ring at my head last night,” he said coolly. “Did you look at it when you picked it up again?”

She regarded him with raised chin and eyes that matched his tone. Only the heightened color of her cheeks suggested the existence of some emotion. “Yes, I did,” she said. “This morning. The star was gone. And there is no point in looking about you as if you expect it to pop up at you. Annie and I have been on our knees for half an hour looking for it. It simply is not here. It must have fallen out before we came home.”

“I was standing at the foot of the bed when you threw it,” he said. “You missed me, of course. The ring passed to the left of me, I believe.”

“To the right,” she said. “I found it at the far side of the bed.”

“To the right, then,” he said irritably. “If I were to say that you threw it up into the air, you would probably say that you threw it under the floorboards.”

“Don't be ridiculous!” she said coldly.

“The diamond probably landed on the bed,” he said.

“What a brilliant suggestion!” She looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Both Annie and I had similar inspiration. We have had all the bedclothes off the bed. It is not there. It is not in this room, Allan.”

She reached into the pocket of her wrap and withdrew a ring, which she handed to him rather unnecessarily. There was certainly no doubt of the fact that the diamond was missing.

The Earl of Lisle took it on the palm of his hand and looked down at it—a wide gold band with a circlet of dark sapphires and an empty hole in the middle where the diamond had nestled. The Star of Bethlehem, she had called it—her eyes glowing like sister stars, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted—when he had given her the ring two years before, on the occasion of their betrothal.

“Look, my lord,” she had said—she had not called him by his given name until he had asked her to on their wedding night a few minutes after he had finished consummating their marriage. “Look, my lord, it is a bright star in a dark sky. And this is Christmas. The birthday of Christ. The beginning of all that is wonderful. The beginning for us. How auspicious that you have given me the Star of Bethlehem for our betrothal.”

He had smiled at her—beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacious Estelle, the bride his parents had picked out for him, though his father had died a year before and unwittingly caused a delay in the betrothal. And holding her hand, the ring on her finger, he had allowed himself to fall all the way in love with her, though he had thought that at the age of thirty there was no room in his life for such deep sentiment. He had agreed to marry her because marriage was the thing to do at his age and in his position, and because marrying Estelle made him the envy of numerous gentlemen—married and single alike—in London. She would be a dazzling ornament for his home and his life.

It would have been better if he had kept it so, if he had not done anything as foolish as falling in love with her. Perhaps they would have had a workable relationship if he had not done that. Perhaps after almost two years of marriage they would have grown comfortable together.

“Well,” he said, looking down at the ring in his hand and carefully
keeping both his face and voice expressionless, “it is no great loss, is it, Estelle? It was merely a diamond. Merely money, of which I have an abundance.” He tossed the ring up, caught it, and closed his hand around it. “A mere bauble. Put it away.” He held it out to her again.

Her chin lifted an inch as she took it from him. “I am sorry to have taken your time,” she said, “but I thought you should know. I would not have had you find out at some future time and think that I had been afraid to tell you.”

His lips formed into something of a sneer. “We both know that you could not possibly fear my ill opinion, don't we?” he said. “I am merely the man who pays the bills and makes all respectable in your life. Perhaps the diamond fell into the pocket or the neckcloth of Martindale last evening. You spent enough time in his company. You must ask him next time you see him. Later today, perhaps?”

She ignored his last words. “Or about the person of Lord Peterson or Mr. Hayward or Sir Caspar Rhodes,” she said. “I danced with them all last evening, and enticed them all into anterooms for secret dalliances.” Her chin was high, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I believe we said—or rather yelled—all that needs to be expressed about your behavior at the Eastman ball—or your lack of behavior—last night,” he said. “I choose not to reopen the quarrel, Estelle. But I have thought further about what I said heatedly then. And I repeat it now when my temper is down. When Christmas is over and your parents return to the country, I believe it will be as well for you to return with them for a visit.”

“Banishment?” she said. “Is that not a little gothic, Allan?”

“We need some time apart,” he said. “Although for the past few months we have seen each other only when necessary, we have still contrived to quarrel with tedious frequency. We need a month or two in which to rethink our relationship.”

“How about a lifetime or two?” she said.

“If necessary.” He looked at her steadily from cold blue eyes. Beautiful, headstrong Estelle. Incurably flirtatious. Not caring the snap of a finger for him beyond the fact that he had had it in his power to make her the Countess of Lisle and to finance her whims for the rest of a pampered life, despite the occasional flaring of hot passion that always had him wondering when it was all over and she lay sleeping in his arms if she had ever gifted other men with such favors. And always hating himself for such unfounded suspicions.

She shivered suddenly. “It is so cold in here,” she said petulantly. “How can we be without fires in December? It is quite unreasonable.”

“You are the one being unreasonable,” he said. “You might be in the morning room now or in the library, where there are fires. You might have slept in a bedchamber where there was a fire. Chimneys have to be swept occasionally if they are not to catch fire. Half the house yesterday; the other half today. It is not such a great inconvenience, is it?”

“It should be done in the summertime,” she said.

“During the summer you said it could wait until the winter, when we would be going into the country,” he reminded her. “And then you had this whim about having Christmas here this year with both our families. Well, I have given you your way about that, Estelle—as usual. But the chimneys have been smoking. They must be cleaned before our guests arrive next week. By tomorrow all will be set to rights again.”

“I hate it when you talk to me in that voice,” she said, “as if I were a little child of defective understanding.”

“You hate it when I talk to you in any voice,” he said. “And sometimes you behave like a child of defective understanding.”

“Thank you,” she said, opening her hand and looking down at the ring. “I wish to get dressed, Allan, and go in search of a room with a warm fire. I am grateful that you have seen fit not to beat me over the loss of the diamond.”

“Estelle!”
All his carefully suppressed anger boiled to the surface and exploded in the one word.

She tossed her head up and glared across at him with dark and hostile eyes. He strode from the room without another word.

Estelle returned her gaze to the ring in the palm of her hand. The back of her nose and throat all the way down to her chest were a raw ache. The diamond was gone. It was all ruined. All of it. Two years was not such a very long time, but it seemed like another Estelle who had watched as he slid the ring onto her finger and rested her hand on his so that she could see it.

It had been Christmas, and she had been caught up in the usual euphoric feelings of love and goodwill, and the unrealistic conviction that every day could be Christmas if everyone would just try hard enough. She had looked at the diamond and the sapphires, and they had seemed like a bright symbol of hope. Hope that the arranged marriage she had agreed to because Mama and Papa had thought it such a splendid opportunity for her would be a happy marriage. Hope that the tall, golden-haired, unsmiling, rather austere figure of her betrothed would turn out to be a man she could like and be comfortable with—perhaps even love.

The ring had been the Star of Bethlehem to her from the start and without any effort of thought. And he had smiled one of his rare smiles when she had looked up at him and named the ring that. Looking into his blue eyes at that moment, she had thought that perhaps he would grow fond of her. She had thought that perhaps he would kiss her. He had not, though he had raised her hand to his lips and kissed both it and the ring.

He had not kissed her mouth at all before their marriage. But he had kissed her afterward on their wedding night in their marriage bed. And he had made a tender and beautiful and almost painless experience out of what she had anticipated with some fright.

She had thought . . . She had hoped . . .

But it did not matter. The only really tender and passionate moments of their marriage had happened in her bed. Always actions of the body. Never words.

They had not really grown close. He never revealed much of himself to her. And she shared only trivialities with him. They never really talked.

They were lovers only in fits and starts. Sometimes wild passion for three or four nights in a row. And then perhaps weeks of nothing in between.

She had never conceived. Not, at least . . . But she was not at all sure.

The only thing consistent in their relationship was the quarrels. Almost always over her behavior toward other gentlemen. His accusations had been unjust at first. It was in her nature to be smiling and friendly, flirtatious even. She had meant nothing by it. All her loyalty had been given to her new husband. She had been hurt and bewildered by his disapproval. But in the last year, she had begun to flirt quite deliberately. Never enough to deceive the gentlemen concerned. No one except Allan had ever been offered her lips or any other part of her body except her hand. And never even one small corner of her heart. But she had taken an almost fiendish glee in noting her husband's expression across a crowded drawing room or ballroom, and anticipating the wild rages they would both let loose when they came home.

Sometimes after the quarrels he would retire to his room, slamming the door that connected their dressing rooms behind him. Sometimes they would end up together in her bed, the heat of anger turned to the heat of sexual passion.

The night before had not been one of those latter occasions. She had dragged the Star of Bethlehem from her finger and hurled it at
his head and screeched something to the effect that since the ring had become meaningless, he might have it back and welcome to it. And he had yelled something about its being less likely to scratch the cheeks of her lovers if she were not wearing it. And he had stalked out, leaving the door vibrating on its hinges.

And now she really was without the ring. No, worse. She had the shell of it left, just as the shell of her marriage still remained. The star was gone—from the ring and from her marriage.

She was taken by surprise when a loud and painful hiccup of a sob broke the silence of the room, and even more surprised when she realized that the sound had come from her. But it was a wonderful balm to her self-pity, she found. She allowed herself the rare indulgence of an extended and noisy cry.

It was all his fault. Nasty, unfeeling, sneering, cold, jealous monster! She hated him. She did not care that the ring was ruined. What did she care for his ring? Or for him? Or for their marriage? She would be delighted to go home with Mama and Papa when Christmas was over. She would stay with them, surrounded by all the peace and familiarity of her childhood home. She would forget about the turmoil and nightmare of the past two years. She would forget about Allan.

“Allan.”

The name was spoken on a wail. She looked down at the ring and sniffed wetly and noisily.

“Allan.”

She drew back her arm suddenly and hurled the ring with all her strength across the room. She heard it tinkle as it hit something, but she did not go in pursuit of it. She rushed into her dressing room and slammed the door firmly behind her.