A Regency Christmas VI

by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Laura Matthews

  She cried out, but more in shock at that unique sensation than in pain. As she tried to adjust to the stretched fullness, he moved in her, moved her around him, so that the disintegration threatened again.

  She fought it, though. Now was his moment of weakness. This was the moment when she could rip his secrets from his soul.

  What naiveté!

  Jack Beaufort was certainly overwhelmed by sensation, but he was vulnerable to nothing but his own shattering lust.

  When he rolled off her, he gathered her to him, looking at her again with those dangerous eyes. What he saw there killed his sated pleasure. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  She turned her head away. “Yes.”

  He stroked her soothingly. “It only hurts the once.” Justina stared at the dead pheasants, feeling as pathetic as they. It wasn’t pain she spoke of. She had let him destroy her and gained nothing.

  Not true, whispered a small voice. You have gained a new existence.

  Not one I want! I have lost my armor. I have lost the battle and the war and am left naked.

  “I wanted you to stop,” she said, making herself rigid in his embrace.

  After a moment, he freed her and turned onto his back. “Then it must have been too late, for I was not aware of it. I’m sorry. I can apologize all blasted night if you want, but it won’t change anything.”

  “Just as you can’t change the fact that Simon is dead.”

  He turned back to her with a frown. “What the devil has Simon to do with this?”

  And Justina realized that she had, in a sense, won. A Pyrrhic victory, perhaps, but a victory all the same. They were both stripped down to raw truth. “You killed him,” she said. “You caused his death. You betrayed him. And I came here to prove it.”

  She expected him to deny it, to throw up his guard again. She did not expect the naked shock and pain. “How did you know?”

  Her heart almost stopped. Why had she not realized this moment would be so painful? “I just knew,” she said, almost gently. “I have always known.”

  “The letter? There was something in the letter?”

  “No. If there had been, I would have reported it to the authorities.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “You were just too lucky. You had to be a traitor.”

  He rolled over her then, pinning her down in the bed with his angry body. “A traitor! Is that what you think? Then why the devil were you so stupid as to come here tonight?”

  She struggled fiercely, uselessly. “Because I could not live with you so fortunate!”

  He captured her wrists in one strong hand and placed the other around her throat. “If I were a traitor, I’d strangle you now.”

  She swallowed, and felt his pressure there. “Then do it! Do it. I’d rather die than live like this!”

  His hand jerked up to cover her mouth. “No. Never that! For Simon’s sake, you will live, Justina. You will live as long as I can make you.”

  He made it sound like a curse out of hell.

  They stared at one another, and Justina realized tears were escaping to slither down her cheeks. She swallowed the rest of them. She did not cry.

  But she certainly wasn’t made of ice anymore. For good or ill she was thawed, softened, and opened to pain as subtle and complex as the pleasure he’d shown her.

  Then she saw the tears in his eyes and knew that some of her pain was his.

  Gently, he released her mouth.

  She licked her lips. “What happened?”

  He rolled out of the bed. Silently, he picked up a gray banyan that lay on the bench at the end of the bed and shrugged into it. Then he went to a wardrobe to fish out another, this time bright blue, and toss it to her. “Put that on and I’ll tell you what you came here to learn.”

  She slid her arms into the soft wool robe, but stayed half under the bedcovers, watching him. Her Delilah plot had worked after all. Samson was shorn, and he was going to tell her all.

  The only reason she didn’t stop him was because she sensed that he needed to.

  He sat on a chair some distance from the bed, once more lounging back, but this time, she thought, more with weary despair than ease. “I told you I become indiscreet when drunk,” he said. “Then I went on to prove it. After that night in the estancia, I touched no more than a sip of wine for the rest of the war.”

  “You’re trying to tell me you let something slip because you were drunk?”

  “Drunk and in bed with a beautiful woman. A fatal combination, as you can see.”

  “And did you give up women, too?” she asked tartly.

  His reply surprised her. “Yes, I gave up women, too. I’m sorry if I was out of practice.”

  “How would I know?” Horribly off balance, she hit out. “You were going to tell me how you killed Simon.”

  He didn’t so much as flinch. “Yes, I was, wasn’t I? I. don’t know if I can make it dramatic enough for you, though.”

  He met her eyes calmly. “It is simply as I said. I was indiscreet. I assumed Maria Bianca was as silly as she appeared to be and let her tease our next day’s route out of me. She was very clever, actually. She pretended to beg for escort to her cousin’s home, which led me in the end to explain that we were going nowhere near the place. In the course of which I told her where we were going.”

  His eyes were still steady. “The rest is as I told you. When she knew our route, she knew that our march would overtake the carts carrying the Cabrera wealth. To her credit, Maria Bianca did her damnedest to get us to stay for Christmas Day, but when I insisted on going on, we were doomed. Except me, of course, Maria Bianca’s all too skillful lover.”

  He was right. It wasn’t dramatic enough for her. She stared at him, wanting to believe that there was more, but saw, at last, the naked truth.

  She put her elbows on her knees and sank her head in her hands. “But why call yourself damned? It was a mistake. A mistake anyone could make!”

  She looked up to see him shrug. “It’s the consequences that matter. My carelessness killed them all. If I’d died there, I’d have just felt stupid. But I was condemned to live, and live, and live.”

  “I’d think war gave many chances to die, if that was what you truly sought.”

  His lips twisted. “How true. But I’m Lucky Jack. A hail of bullets would take everyone but me. One horse threw me just before a cannonball would have shattered my head. A dense fog once stopped my entire regiment from finding one of the bloodiest engagements of the war. Sometimes I thought Simon was watching over me just to get his own back.”

  “If Simon was watching over you, it was because he cared.”

  As soon as Justina said it, she knew it was true. Simon had never been one for revenge, and would be the last person to hold a grudge over a mistake. If the dead could watch over those left back on earth, Simon must have been tearing his hair out for three years as his closest friend tried to kill himself and his beloved sealed herself in ice and pursued revenge.

  Oh, Simon. I’m so sorry.

  “So,” Jack said, “now you have it all, though I doubt it will do you much good. In the heat of the war that story might have got me court-martialed. In peacetime, and with my exalted rank and list of war achievements, no one will act on it.”

  Justina rested her head in her hands again, trying to think, trying to sort logic from emotion, right from wrong. In the end she realized she couldn’t hate anyone for such a small mistake, even one that had led to tragedy.

  But what did that leave for her? She was thoroughly melted now, and as she’d feared, the Justina Travers she knew simply did not exist. That woman had dedicated three years to a pointless crusade; she had shaped herself into a weapon of destruction, armed to fight an enemy who had turned out to be rags and straw.

  Simon, Simon. Why did you do this?

  For she had no doubt that he had. She remembered that dizzy spell back in Charles’s office, when she’d felt guided to Torlinghurst. But she’d not b
een brought here for revenge. Simon had guided her here this Christmastide to learn this truth so that she could put all this behind her, pick up her life again, and live it to the full.

  She looked at Jack. “I feel lost. I don’t exist.”

  He rose slowly and came over to the bed. She saw his deformed but beautiful hand and experienced an insight. Or perhaps it was a message from beyond death. “One musket ball got you.”

  He followed her gaze down to his hand. “In the ambush, yes. How did you know?”

  “I guessed. You tried to save him.”

  “Of course. I tried to save them all.” He took a deep breath. “I saw the flash of the musket and put out my hand to stop the ball. It was instinctive but futile. It went through and into him. I stood there begging them to shoot me...”

  He was lost again in the past—how much time did he spend back there, begging for death?—but then he shook his head and reached out to gently touch her cheek. “Put it behind you, Justina. Please. It’s what he’d want. I remember talking once to a Portuguese priest who’d traveled in the East. He told me that there they believe that too much grief ties the dead to us and stops them from moving on. I think it’s time for us both to let Simon go. Can we try?”

  He held out that injured hand and she put hers into it.

  He drew her out of the bed and to the window. Clear in the midnight-blue sky shone the Christmas star. “I would consider myself lucky for the first time in years,” he said, “if you would stay with me and help me make something of this strange new life.”

  She turned to look at him. “Why?”

  “Perhaps because you are the one person with whom I can be myself. I’m so tired of disguises. If I have to play the duke, I’d like to be able to retreat to these rooms now and then and just be Jack.”

  “Simon loved you.”

  He understood her. “Yes, I want to marry you for his sake, too. He can’t like seeing you in servitude to the dragon.”

  Justina chuckled, and it was like the cracking of a shell. “Haven’t you realized that was a fabrication? Your great-aunt doesn’t know I exist.”

  He stared at her. “Disguises indeed! How did you get into Torlinghurst, then?”

  “I came with the mummers.”

  Now he was smiling as if it were a newfound skill for him, too. “The fair maiden Melicent!”

  “Yes, though I thought of myself as Delilah.”

  The smile didn’t fade. “A role you play very well.”

  “I don’t think so. You still have your hair and your eyes, your grace.”

  “You’re just lucky that I don’t have any coins in the pocket of this robe,” he said with a wicked twinkle.

  The ability to tease was as weak as the ability to walk might be to an invalid. But there was hope that it might grow stronger in time.

  “What forfeit were you planning to inflict?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to wait and see. Perhaps it depends on your answer to my proposal.”

  Justina realized she hadn’t said whether she would marry him or not. Moreover, she didn’t know.

  She turned to look at the shining star. “I wonder what Melicent thought when the dragon was dead and she realized she was supposed to bind herself to George for the rest of her life.”

  He rested a hand on the nape of her neck and rubbed her there. It was a touch that offered strength and caring all her life long. “Perhaps she saw that George needed her, and that was why he’d braved the dragon in, the first place.”

  “The George downstairs thought he’d conquered his maiden.”

  He turned her gently to him, his hands on her shoulders. “This George has no such illusions. You have conquered me. But as I told you, I was slain years ago. I would listen to Simon speaking of his Justina, and look at your picture, and wonder why Lucky Jack was not nearly as lucky as he. In fact,” he said, releasing her, “it seems wrong for me even to hope...”

  She caught his hand, his scarred hand. “No. It isn’t wrong. If you are tired of disguises, then so am I. Who else can I be honest with but you?” She searched his eyes. “You will not mind me speaking of him?”

  “Never.”

  She chose her next words with care. “You understand that I might never feel for you as I still do for him?”

  “Yes.” His look was direct and undefended. “I never want to drive Simon out of your heart. But I don’t think he would mind if we shared the space there one day. We shared many another billet.”

  Justina echoed his wistful smile, holding the miniature in her hand. “No, he wouldn’t mind.” She looked out again at the peaceful estate lit by the moon and starlight, considering it all. “I think perhaps this is Simon’s Christmas gift to us. The traditional one of peace and joy. I have the peace already. It is strange to my heart, but very sweet. Even the dreadful conde can enjoy his estate, for I’ll wound myself no more with hate. And I can believe in the possibility of joy, here, with you.”

  “And so can I.” He put his arm around her as they looked out at the star. “Go in peace, Simon.”

  “Amen,” said Justina, though with the tiniest ache in her heart. She knew it came from a healing wound, however, not a festering one. She turned to smile at the man beside her. “And I will marry you, your grace of Cranmoore, and do my best to make you think of yourself as Lucky Jack every day of your life.”

  She saw tears start in his eyes before he gathered her into his arms with a strength that almost crushed her. “Thank God. Thank God. And thank you, Simon. No man has ever received a Christmas gift as precious as this.”

  The Surprise Party

  by Mary Balogh

  It was snowing halfheartedly. Not enough to make a picturesque scene of the garden below the nursery window. Not even enough to whiten the ground. Only enough to dust the edges of the lawns with white powder and to blow in thin white streaks across the path. Only enough to make the sky heavy and leaden so that it seemed more like early evening than midafternoon.

  It was not exactly the type of Christmas scene one dreamed of. But then Christmas was still three days away. Perhaps it would snow properly before then.

  “Enough to build a snowman with,” Rupert Parr said, frowning speculatively up at the sky through the window.

  “Enough to make snow angels with,” Patricia Parr, his sister, added, contemplating rather glumly the few thin flakes that were drifting slowly downward.

  Caroline Parr was kneeling on the floor, her elbows on the window ledge, her chin in her hands, gazing outward. “Will Christmas come soon, Rupert?” she asked wistfully. “Will it snow?”

  She remembered Christmas last year, when there had been goose and plum pudding to eat. But it had not been quite the happy day she had been led to expect. Nurse had been cross and Rupert and Patricia had been peevish. It had not snowed—Caroline could not really remember what snow was like. And Mama and Papa had not come home. They had had to go to an unexpected but very important meeting, Nurse had explained to Rupert, and would come home as soon as they could. They sent presents which arrived a week late.

  “Tell me about Christmas,” Caroline said now, addressing herself to her eight-year-old brother, whom she considered omniscient, though she did not turn her gaze from the outside world. “Tell me about snow.”

  But it was their nurse who answered. Caroline loved Nurse dearly, but she had been cross and sharp-tongued lately—even worse than she had been last Christmas.

  “There will be no talk of Christmas this year,” she said firmly. “And no talk of snowmen and snow angels either, Master Rupert and Miss Patricia. The two of you are old enough to know better. For shame, filling Miss Caroline’s head with ideas that are not proper. There will be other years and other Christmases to enjoy.”

  “I beg your pardon, Nurse,” Rupert said in the voice that always made Caroline want to hold his hand and rub her cheek against his arm for reassurance. It was his grown-up voice, not his real voice.

  “You must understand, Master Rupe
rt...” Nurse said.

  But Caroline stopped listening and watched the snow snakes slithering diagonally across the path, all going the same way. She watched for one going the other way, but there were none. They were all fleeing from a fierce dragon, she decided. The dragon was holding a beautiful princess captive. It was a bad dragon. Soon one of the snow snakes would turn back to fight the dragon and rescue the maiden and become a great hero. He would marry her and they would live happily ever after. She watched intently for the hero snake to slither back across the path, into the teeth of the wind.

  She only half heard Nurse, who was reminding Rupert and Patricia that with Mama and Papa so recently passed on—Caroline sometimes wondered where it was they had passed on to, but when she had asked, Nurse had said it was heaven with angels singing around the throne of God and she was not to ask so many questions—they must not even think about presents or mince pies or caroling or anything else that would make them forget they were in mourning.

  Patricia hated her black dresses, but Nurse would not let her wear anything else. Caroline did not mind hers. She never minded what Nurse put on her provided she was warm and comfortable.

  “What is to become of us?” Rupert was asking Nurse behind Caroline’s back. He was still using his grown-up voice. “Everything will be taken away, will it not? And the house sold. To pay Papa’s debts. And you will not be able to stay with us because there will be no money to pay you. We will be sent to the orphanage, Nurse, will we not? I don’t mind. I will look after Patricia and Caroline until they are grown up and married. I will go out and seek my fortune.”

  “And I will come with you, Rupert,” Patricia said eagerly. “We will leave Caroline in the orphanage because she is too little and come back for her when we have made our fortune. I am seven. I can cook for you and mend for you.”

  “Don’t talk silly,” Nurse said sharply. “You will frighten Miss Caroline. Of course you will not be sent to the orphanage. Your aunt or your uncle will come for you and give you all a home. They were notified. They will come for you any day. Now, I want you two to get out your books and read. Come, Miss Caroline.” Her voice softened somewhat. “Come and sit on Nurse’s lap, dearie, and I will read you a story.”