Christopher’s grizzling showed no sign of stopping and Honora tried to ignore the chill spreading through her innards. There was no point in thinking like that and as she patted the baby’s back she searched for a suitable distraction—both for him and herself.
‘Did you know it’s Christmas Eve, Christopher? Perhaps a carol might cheer you.’
She cleared her throat, slightly self-conscious. Normally Honora would rather eat coal than sing in front of an audience, but she supposed she was safe enough with Christopher. If he didn’t appreciate her talents, he had no way of saying so, after all.
‘“While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around. ‘Fear not,’ said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind. ‘Glad tidings of great joy I bring, To you and all mankind.’”’
Honora felt the baby still a little in her arms, his cries growing slightly less passionate. She swayed to the parlour’s window and stood with her back to the room, holding him to the light as she continued.
‘“To you, in David’s town this day, Is born of David’s line, The saviour who is Christ the Lord, And this shall be the sign: The heavenly babe you there shall find, To human view displayed...”’
Christopher gave a great yawn and fell silent, his eyes closing in sleep now instead of fury. Honora rocked him soothingly, pleased with her success as she gazed out at the Manor’s grounds. Snow still covered the grass, rising in strange heaps where it skimmed a hedge or low wall, and for the first time she wondered what Mary would say if she were to see her old friend’s new home. She’d be happy Honora had found a place in the world, no doubt, and delighted it included a handsome husband who treated her with such care. For her part Honora could scarcely believe the wild turn her life had taken, throwing her into Isaac’s path and making her reconsider every fiercely sworn oath she’d ever made not to fall for a man again—
‘All meanly wrapped in swathing bands, and in a manger laid.’
The sound of Isaac’s voice behind her made her jump and she turned to see him just inside the doorway, finishing the verse in an unselfconscious baritone that vibrated through her chest. As always when catching an unexpected glimpse of him, Honora felt her heart leap up into her mouth and her pulse began to hum beneath the thin skin of her throat, an insistent flit she was surprised he couldn’t hear.
‘How long were you standing there!’
‘Long enough.’ He came fully into the parlour and stood before the fire to warm his hands. By the ruddy cast of his cheeks he’d just been out in the snow and Honora admired the way the high colour contrasted with the soft brown of his ruffled hair. ‘Teaching the boy his Christmas carols already?’
‘I certainly wouldn’t have if I’d known you were loitering about, listening at keyholes.’
He huffed a laugh, eyes crinkled appealingly at the corners, and not for the first time since their confusing wedding night Honora longed to trace the contours of that face. She fully understood why Isaac hadn’t the resolve to finish what they’d started—but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. Honora had barely slept, all too aware of the warm body next to hers and every sinew screaming to touch him. Her self-control was stretched to its limit. A more prudish woman might be ashamed of such desires, but Honora remembered what it was to lie with a man and her longing for Isaac far outstripped any such feelings she’d ever had for Frank. Now they were married there was no shame in indulging those desires she knew Isaac shared, but Charlotte still lying so pale and weak was enough to give them pause.
You’re bound together now for the rest of your lives. There’s plenty of time to explore whatever might be growing between you—both in body and soul.
‘I was hardly loitering at keyholes. I beg your pardon if I embarrassed you, though.’
Honora shifted Christopher carefully into her other arm, transferring his solid weight from one aching shoulder. He was making good progress even if his mother wasn’t and she caught Isaac’s satisfied glance at the baby’s sleeping face.
‘There’s one way I’ll forgive you. I’d like to ask a favour.’
‘What’s that?’
‘May I borrow the carriage this afternoon? There’s somewhere I feel I must go.’
Isaac snorted. ‘You needn’t ask for things like that, Honora. It’s your carriage now as much as mine and entirely at your disposal. Where is it you’re thinking of going? A last-minute Christmas errand?’
She hesitated, taking a moment to rearrange the linen that swaddled Christopher’s tiny frame. In truth, her mission was one she’d wanted to complete for some weeks, but something inside her had held back.
‘I want to visit Frank’s grave.’
Isaac’s face tightened and for a split-second Honora saw an expression flee across it she didn’t understand. Was it displeasure? Jealousy? Or something different she couldn’t quite name? It brought to mind the same look she could have sworn she’d seen when she had asked the identity of Christopher’s father, that same flit of sudden secrecy that put her immediately on guard.
But that would suggest some link between Frank and Charlotte—surely that can never have been the case.
She tried to dismiss the notion at once, but to her discomfort it refused to be brushed aside so easily. Unless she was very much mistaken there was something Isaac conspired to keep from her and the idea was more unsettling than she wanted to allow. It caught at her with its claws, irritating but insistent and determined not to be ignored.
‘It isn’t from sentiment. Not really,’ she continued firmly, trying to blot out the creep of uncertainty. ‘I’ve been considering it for some while and I don’t think I can truly rest until I feel I’ve closed that door for ever. After everything he subjected me to, all that passed between us... Do you understand? Can you see why I want to meet him one last time?’
She watched him carefully, although whatever she’d seen in his face had gone. Perhaps it had passed through or perhaps he was hiding it, but he seemed composed as he nodded.
‘I understand. You’ll want me to accompany you, to show you where he lies.’
‘If you would.’
‘Of course. That’s the least I can do.’
Honora tried to smile. ‘Thank you. I thought you wouldn’t mind visiting him. You were such friends, after all.’
The tiniest flicker of movement twisted Isaac’s lips—miniscule but still stoking the fire of Honora’s kindling suspicion. He made a low sound that might have been of agreement and looked away to the window that bathed Honora in wintry light, the snow gleaming in the weak sun that illuminated holly boughs about the room to gleam like emeralds. His back seemed to have stiffened and a beat of unexplained tension threatened to stretch out between them, until Honora shifted the baby forward.
‘Will you take Christopher for a moment? I’d like to speak to Clara about my warm cloak. It tore last time I wore it and I need to mend the hem—she must have some thread I can use before we go out.’
‘You don’t need to do your own mending any longer, you know. You’re Lady Lovell now—I’ll buy you ten new cloaks if the fancy takes you.’ Isaac turned to take the swaddled bundle from her, brushing her fingers accidentally, but all the same sending soft fire to lick where he touched. Christopher looked smaller than ever cradled in Isaac’s strong arms and she couldn’t help but stare, captivated by the gentleness on his carved features and the tender ease with which he held such a fragile burden.
He looks at Christopher as if he loves him. An illegitimate child, fathered by some nameless villain Isaac must despise and the cause of his ward’s deepest shame, yet he cares for him all the same and holds him as though he has the world in his arms. A man like that is hard to find...surely it’s no wonder I grew to love him. He gave me no other choice.
Honora took a breath and allowed the truth to roll over h
er as strong and unstoppable as the crashing of a waterfall. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to admit it, but there was a kind of strange peace to be found in accepting what she couldn’t fight.
I never wanted to let a man into my heart again after how Frank tried to grind it into dust and caused such a gulf between me and my parents, those who actually loved me. I never intended to make an exception for Isaac—but how could I do otherwise? A kind man with compassion for an orphaned girl, a child born from shame and a widow without a penny to her name?
She felt the quickening of the blood rushing through her veins, but didn’t try to push the thought away. By some miracle she’d found a man worth finding, one who treated her with the respect and care Frank had never bothered to attempt. In time perhaps Isaac might come to see her in the same light, his regard for her deepening to join the desire she knew he already felt.
Stranger things have happened, she thought as she watched Isaac begin to pace the flame-lit room with kissing balls hung at every corner, rocking the child as he walked with such beautiful patience she felt her yearning for him soar up to the sky.
There’s no knowing how my luck might change and if this husband might come to love me better than the first... But first I must determine what secret he keeps. I won’t be made a fool of again.
* * *
‘Down here. Towards the fence.’
A cold breeze nipped at Isaac’s nose as he led Honora through the graveyard, careful to keep his face as impassive as it had been in the carriage. It wasn’t the pretty church they’d married in that they skirted around now, instead a smaller chapel just outside Carey’s boundary, and he thought again how glad he was that Frank had been nowhere near the place where Isaac had taken Honora for his own.
I didn’t need his spectre following me down the aisle. After all the pain he caused I’d rather forget he existed. However...
He knew there was no chance of hoping for that until Honora had made her peace with the past and he had little choice but to lead her among the frosted graves to where Frank lay. Apprehension writhed inside him, dogging each step across the snowy ground, and he could hardly bear to glance at his wife as they finally stood side by side before the place her first husband would wait for ever in endless silence, Honora growing still as she recognised the name carved into a simple stone.
She leaned forward to brush a light dusting of snow off the ingrained letters and with a sharp twist of his innards Isaac saw her hand shook. It was the smallest of tremors but he wanted to catch her up none the less, to hold her against him and comfort her in what must feel so uncanny a moment. He couldn’t see her face, only the back of her bonnet as she bent her head, but her vulnerable neck rose out of her collar to catch his eye, so smooth and warm he longed to lay a hand on it. What would he see in her expression if it wasn’t hidden from him? Would there be grief there—grief Frank didn’t deserve?
Unseen by his distracted wife Isaac took a step back, partly to give her the illusion of privacy, but also to hide his grimace as he lifted his hat and raked a hand through his hair. Memories of the man lying beneath the soil turned Isaac about until he hardly knew which way was up, Frank’s final moments coming back to torture him at the worst possible time.
Isaac had thought the villain was acting at first when he’d watched Frank fall to his knees, a few scant paces ahead with the distance between them closing by the second. Blood and fury had bellowed in Isaac’s ears and he had kept running, tearing through the darkness of the night until he’d reached where his prey lay gasping for breath on Marlow Manor’s frost-scattered lawn, clutching his chest and moaning like a felled beast.
It had only been when Isaac had tried to haul Frank to his feet that he’d known it was too late and now, standing in a windswept graveyard at Honora’s back, he could recall every detail of the moment he had realised Frank was as good as dead.
‘Have mercy, Lovell, please—I have a wife. Honora...at my old Wycliff Lodge...’
‘The fact you have a wife hidden away down in Somerset doesn’t move me, Blake. Where was your concern for her when you dishonoured my ward?’
‘But she needs me. You wouldn’t make an innocent woman a widow before her time?’
Isaac clenched his teeth, a dark shadow of the rage he’d felt that night sweeping over him. As far as Isaac was concerned the world had lost nothing with the passing of Frank Blake, but the quiet figure of Honora still sent a dagger through his heart and he stepped back to her side.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ His voice was almost lost to the wind that picked up the stray curls escaping from Honora’s bonnet, making them dance as if they were alive.
‘No. I don’t believe so.’ She looked up at him, head lifting to see into his face. Her eyes met his and all at once Isaac felt as though he was falling, that hazel gaze so direct it knocked him off balance and made him lose one jagged breath. ‘There’s nothing else. You’ve done so much already.’
Isaac’s heart stumbled over a beat as he felt her take his hand, Honora seeming suddenly shy as she laced her fingers with his. Her lashes swept down as she watched her grey glove entwine with his black, his hand so much bigger, but gentle all the same.
‘I wanted to come here today to finally lay the past to rest. Until I did that I couldn’t fully embrace my future...or you, in truth.’ A glimmer of fresh colour suffused her cheeks and Isaac steeled himself against the urge to cup them between his palms and bring her face up to meet his. Instead he remained still, listening with his pulse leaping as she pressed on.
‘I know we met under strange circumstances. I know you never wanted a wife, and I certainly didn’t make it easy for you to warm to me at first. But I wanted you to know...how much it means to me that you saw past all the things that made others sneer and took me as I am. After Frank I thought there could be no good men left in the world—apart from my father, who deserved better than my stubbornness—and that they all lied and deceived for their own ends. Thanks to you I see now that isn’t so.’
She snatched a glance up at him. With her tawny cheeks grown rosy and a gleam of uncertainty in her eye she looked so much younger, so different from the self-assured woman he had come to love.
‘Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? There’s nothing you’d hide from me? No secret you would keep?’
Isaac felt his mouth dry abruptly.
Of all the questions she could ask...
There would never be a better time to come clean, he knew with crystal clarity as all other sensation but that of slender fingers gripping his fell away. The perfect moment didn’t exist, but wasn’t this as close as he would ever get, Honora standing before him with such openness in her face it inspired him to do the same? She half suspected already, he could tell, although exactly what stirred the rushes of her curiosity neither he nor even she truly knew for sure. It was instinctive, he supposed, the sharp consciousness of an intelligent woman—like a bloodhound she’d picked up a scent and she followed it now to wherever its origin lay.
You always meant to tell her and now she’s given you the chance. Do the right thing, Lovell. Be the better man you vowed you would be.
‘You think I’m hiding something?’
‘I think it’s possible.’
Isaac gave a dry laugh. Trust Honora not to give too much away. She was too shrewd for that, even now—another reason he loved her, as if he needed any more.
He sighed. By the keen look in his wife’s eye he couldn’t speak soon enough, although the words clung to his lips as though trying to save themselves from being set loose upon the world. Once he’d uttered them there was no turning back. He would have to face whatever form Honora’s shock, surprise, horror took, with no excuse and nowhere to hide from her emotion. What would it be? he wondered, trying to ignore the thrill of dread that flared inside him like a cold flame. Disappointment? Anger? Unhappiness she’d been tri
cked into marriage without all of the facts? There were so many avenues she might charge down and none of them good, but her honesty deserved honesty in return. After everything Honora had done for him, the very least she was owed was the chance to make up her own mind.
‘You’d be correct. I’m afraid it concerns the man we had in common.’ Isaac took a breath, collecting himself under a cloak of unease. Honora watched him closely, never faltering, and in the face of her patience Isaac took the final leap.
‘He didn’t die in my arms because we were friends. I don’t think we ever were.’
Isaac swallowed and felt his dry throat contract. Beneath his coat he sensed a chill that had nothing to do with the winter wind snapping at his face. It went deeper than that, wending its way into his bones. It might be the last time Honora looked at him with anything other than disgust and he wanted to remember her as she was that moment: windswept and beautiful, a woman of courage and substance he knew he didn’t deserve.
‘Honora, Frank was—’
‘I knew it.’
Isaac blinked, caught out by her unexpected response. ‘What? What did you know?’
‘That you and Frank could never truly have been friends. You need never have pretended, in some misguided attempt to spare my feelings.’ She held up her free hand, the other still twined with Isaac’s that he never wanted to let go. ‘I know what Frank was: a wastrel and a rake. How could you ever have liked him? You had nothing in common. His gambling, his poor treatment of women, careless attitude to life—all his flaws are alien to you. You would never behave like that and I’m more glad of it than I can say. Those kinds of men deserve nothing but contempt.’
Her grip on Isaac’s fingers tightened and she looked up at him so frankly, with such truthfulness in her lovely eyes, that he had to bite back a grunt of pain.
Gambling. Poor treatment of women. Careless attitude... All the things on which Frank and I based our cursed friendship.
Honora had just described him to the letter, or as he had once been, before Charlotte’s fall from grace had made him re-examine his place in the world. Her disdain for feckless men was plain in every syllable and Isaac felt himself flood with a chill that seized his very heart.
A Mistletoe Vow to Lord Lovell Page 17
