A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau

by Mary Balogh

  The street outside was quite busy, she noticed, but there was no tall, broad gentleman striding along it as if he owned the world. It was only as the thought became conscious that she realized she had spent a good number of hours during the past five days standing just here watching for him, waiting for him to return to apologize again. Had she really been doing that without even realizing it? She was horrified.

  “And yet, my dear,” Mrs. Cross said, “all husbands must not be condemned because yours made you unhappy.”

  Helena whirled around, her eyes blazing, her heart thumping with fury. “It was not an unhappy marriage,” she said so loudly that her aunt grimaced. “Or if it was, the fault was mine. Entirely mine. Christian was the best of husbands. He adored me. He lavished gifts and affection on me. He made me feel beautiful and charming and—and lovable. I will not hear one word against him. Do you hear me? Not one word.”

  “Oh, Helena.” Her aunt was on her feet, looking deeply distressed. “I am so sorry. Do forgive me. What I said was unpardonable.”

  Helena closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “No,” she said. “The fault was mine. I did not love him, Letty, but he was good to me. Come, let me take you up to your room. It should be warm by now. I am in the mopes because I have not been out in five days.” She laughed. “That must be something of a record. Can you imagine me not going out for five whole days?”

  “Frankly no, dear,” her aunt said. “Have there been no invitations? It is hard to believe, even if this is October.”

  “I have refused them,” she said. “I have been suffering from a persistent chill—or so I have claimed. I do believe it is time I recovered my health. Do you fancy an informal dance at the Earl of Thornhill’s tomorrow evening?”

  “I always find both the earl and the countess charming,” Mrs. Cross said. “They do not ignore one merely because one is past the age of forty and is wearing a gown one has worn for the past three years and more.”

  Helena squeezed her arm. “We are going shopping tomorrow morning,” she said. “I feel extravagant. And I feel so full of energy again that I do not know quite what to do with it.” She stopped at the top of the stairs and hugged her aunt impulsively. “Oh, Letty, you do not know how good it is to have you here again.” She was surprised to find that she had to blink her eyes in order to clear her vision.

  “And you do not know,” Mrs. Cross said, “how good it is to be here, Helena. Ah, the room really is warm. How kind you are to me. I feel quite like a person again, I do declare. And how ungrateful that sounds to Clarence. He really was very good to me.”

  “Clarence,” Helena said, “is a sanctimonious, parsimonious bore and I am very glad he is not my relative. There. I have put it into words for you so that they will not be upon your conscience. I am going to leave you to rest for a while. There is nothing more tiring than a lengthy journey.”

  “Thank you, dear,” her aunt said with a grateful sigh.

  Had she really not been out for five days? Helena thought as she made her way back downstairs. Had she really convinced herself that the weather was just too inclement? And that the company of those of the beau monde who were at present in London was too tedious to be borne?

  Her lip curled with self-mockery. Was she afraid to face him? Because he had rejected her? Because he had refused her offer of friendship and declined her invitation to escort her to one of the galleries? Was she so humiliated that she could not look him in the eye?

  She was humiliated. She was unaccustomed to rejection. No man had ever rejected her before—oh! Her stomach lurched uncomfortably. Oh, that was not true. She realized something else suddenly about the past five days. She had hardly eaten.

  To have been rejected by a cit! To have been rejected by any man—but by a man who was not even a gentleman. And a man to whom she had given herself. She had offered to make him better acquainted with London. She had offered her—patronage, she supposed was the word she was looking for. And he had said no for the purely bourgeois reason that he was about to pay court to some young girl.

  How dared he reject her! And how petulant that thought sounded—and was.

  She should, of course, never have asked for his friendship. She wanted no one’s friendship, especially not any man’s. Most especially not his. She could not imagine what she had been thinking of. She should not even have received him. And he had not even come to beg for further favors, but to apologize for his lack of courtesy. If it were not so lowering, it would be funny. Hilarious.

  She certainly was not going to avoid him. Or show him that his rejection had meant anything to her. The very idea that she should mope and hide away just because he had refused to give her his escort on an afternoon’s outing! She wished him joy of his young girl.

  She was going to the Earl of Thornhill’s informal ball tomorrow evening and she was going to dance and be merry. She was going to be the belle of the ball despite her age or perhaps because of it. She was going to wear her bronze satin gown. She had never worn it in England before, having judged it far too risque for stodgy English tastes. But tomorrow night she was going to wear it.

  She was going to have Mr. Edgar Downes salivating over her—if he was there. And she was going to ignore him completely.

  She hoped he would be there.

  EDGAR WAS UNCOMFORTABLE with Fanny Grainger’s age. It seemed that she was twenty, at least two years older than she looked. But even so she seemed a child to him. Lady Stapleton had been wrong when she had said that the age gap must appear nothing to him, that it would be apparent only to the girl herself. He was uncomfortably aware that he was well past his youth, while she seemed to be just embarking upon hers.

  The other two young ladies he had met at the Earl of Greenwald’s appeared equally young. And less appealing in other ways. Miss Turner, whom he had met two evenings later, was noticeably older—closer to thirty than twenty at a guess—but she was dull and lethargic and totally lacking in conversation. And she had a constant dry sniff, an annoying habit that grated on his nerves when he sat beside her for half an hour.

  Miss Grainger, he rather suspected, was going to be the one. He had imagined when he came to London that he would be able to look about him at his leisure for several weeks before beginning a serious courtship of any lady in particular, almost as if he had thought he would be invisible and his intentions undiscernible. Such was not the case, of course. And Sir Webster Grainger and his lady had begun to court him. They were quite determined, it seemed, to net Edgar Downes for their daughter.

  She was sweet and charming in a thoroughly youthful way. If he had been ten years younger, he might have tumbled head over ears in love with her. At his age he did not. He kept remembering Lady Stapleton’s saying that the girl had a previous, ineligible attachment. He did not know how she had learned that. Perhaps—probably—she had merely been trying to make him uncomfortable. She had succeeded. The thought of coming between a young lady and her lover merely because he happened to be almost indecently rich was not a pleasant one.

  He wondered if the girl disliked him, was repulsed by him. Whenever he spoke with her—and her parents made sure that he often did, always in their presence—she was polite and sweet, her deeper feelings, if she had any, quite hidden from view.

  Cora was pleased. “She is a pleasant young lady, Edgar,” she announced at the breakfast table one morning, “and will doubtless be a good companion once she has recovered from her shyness, poor girl, and her awe at your very masterful bearing. You could try to soften your manner, you know, but then it comes naturally enough to you and soon she will realize that behind it all you are just Edgar.”

  “You do not think I am too old for her, Corey?” he asked, unconsciously using the old nickname he had tried to drop since her marriage.

  “Oh, she will not think so when she comes to love you,” his fond sister assured him. “And that is bound to happen very soon. Is it not, Francis?”

  “Oh, quite so, my love,” Lord Francis said.
“Edgar is eminently lovable.”

  Which remark sent Cora off into peals of laughter and left Edgar quite unreassured.

  The promise he had made to his father seemed rash in retrospect. Perhaps at the Thornhills’ ball, he thought, he would dance with the girl and have a chance to converse with her beyond the close chaperonage of her parents. Perhaps he would be able to discover the answers to some of his questions and find out if Cora was right. Could Miss Grainger be a good companion?

  Was there something in his bearing that other people, particularly young ladies who were facing his courtship, found daunting, even overbearing? Lady Stapleton had not been daunted. But he did not particularly wish to think of Lady Stapleton. He had not seen her since that ghastly morning visit. He hoped that she had left town.

  He realized she had not when he was dancing with Miss Turner, feeling thankful that the intricate patterns of the dance took away the necessity of trying to hold a conversation with her. It was not a great squeeze of a ball. Lady Thornhill had been laughingly apologetic about it and had insisted on calling it a small informal dance rather than a ball. To him the ballroom seemed crowded enough, but it was true that it was possible to see almost all the guests at once when he looked about him. He looked about him—and there she was standing in the doorway.

  He did not even notice the older lady standing beside her. He saw only her and found himself swallowing convulsively. She wore a gown that might have appeared indecent even in a boudoir. It was a bronze-colored sheath that shimmered in the light from the chandeliers. To say that it was cut low at the bosom was seriously to understate the case. It barely skimmed the peaks of her nipples and dipped low into her decolletage. The gown was not tightly fitted and yet it settled about her body like a second skin, revealing every shapely and generous curve. It left little if anything to the imagination. It made Edgar remember with unwilling clarity exactly how that body had looked and felt—and tasted—beyond the thin barrier of the bronze satin.

  She stood proudly, looking about her with languid eyes and slightly mocking smile, apparently quite unaware of any impropriety in her appearance. But then she somehow looked too haughty to be improper. She looked plainly magnificent.

  The lady beside her must be the aunt, Edgar decided, noticing the woman when she turned her head to address some remark to Lady Stapleton. She was gray-haired and pleasant looking and dressed with neat propriety.

  Edgar returned his attention to the steps of the dance.

  She had been late to the Greenwalds’ soirée, too, he remembered. Clearly she liked entrances. But then she had the looks and the presence to bring them off brilliantly. Thornhill was hurrying toward her.

  Edgar returned his partner to her mother’s side at the end of the set, bowed to them both, and made his way in the direction of his sister. There was to be a waltz next. He would dance it with Cora, who was closer to him in height than almost any other lady present. He felt uncomfortable waltzing with tiny females. But the Countess of Thornhill, one of Cora’s close friends, hailed him as he passed and he turned toward her with a sinking heart.

  “Mr. Downes.” She was smiling at him. “Have you met Lady Stapleton?” It was a rhetorical question, of course. She did not pause to allow him to say that, yes, he had met the lady at Lady Greenwald’s soirée the week before and had escorted her home and stayed to bed her two separate times.

  “And Mrs. Cross, her aunt,” Lady Thornhill continued. “Mr. Edgar Downes, ladies. He is Lady Francis Kneller’s brother from Bristol.”

  Edgar bowed.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Downes,” Mrs. Cross said.

  “How do you do, Mr. Downes?” He had forgotten how that velvet voice could send shivers down his spine.

  “Lady Francis is a very pleasant lady,” Mrs. Cross said. “She is always very jolly.”

  Yes, it was an apt description of Cora.

  “And quite fearless,” Mrs. Cross continued. “I remember the year the Duchess of Bridgwater—the dowager duchess now, of course—brought her out. The year she married Lord Francis.”

  “Ah, yes, ma’am,” he said. “The duchess was kind enough to give my sister a Season.”

  “The next dance is a waltz,” the Countess of Thornhill said. “I have promised to dance it with Gabriel, though it is perhaps vulgar to dance with one’s own husband at one’s own ball. But then this is not a real ball but merely an informal dance among friends.”

  “I think one need make no excuses for dancing with one’s husband,” Mrs. Cross said kindly.

  Edgar could feel Lady Stapleton’s eyes on him, even though he looked intently at her aunt. He could feel that faint and characteristic scorn of her smile like a physical touch.

  “Ma’am.” He turned his head to look at her. “Will you do me the honor of dancing with me?”

  “A waltz, Mr. Downes?” She raised her eyebrows. “I believe I will.” She reached out one hand, though there was no necessity of taking to the floor just yet, and he took it in his.

  “Mrs. Cross,” the countess was saying as Edgar led his partner onto the floor, “do let me find you a glass of lemonade and some congenial company. May my husband and I have the pleasure of your company at the supper table when the waltz is at an end?”

  Edgar’s senses were being assaulted by the heady mixture of a familiar and subtle perfume and raw femininity.

  “WELL, MR. DOWNES,” she said, turning to face him, waiting for the music to begin, “in your school for budding merchants, did they teach you how to waltz?”

  “Well enough to keep me from treading on your toes, I hope, ma’am,” he said. “I was educated in a gentleman’s school. They allowed me in after I had promised on my honor never, under any circumstances, to drop my aitches or wipe my nose on my cuff.”

  “One can only hope,” she said, “that you kept your promises.”

  She was alarmed by her reaction to him. She felt short of breath. There was fluttering in her stomach, or perhaps lower than her stomach, and a weakness in her knees. She had vowed, of course, to ignore him completely tonight. But then she had not planned that very awkward introduction Lady Thornhill had chosen to make. Strange, that. It was just the sort of thing she would normally maneuver herself. But not tonight. She had not wanted to be this close to him again. He was wearing the same cologne. Though it seemed to be the smell of the very essence of him rather than any identifiable cologne. She had fancied even as recently as last night that there was a trace of it on the pillow next to her own.

  He danced well. Of course. She might have expected it. He probably did everything well, from making love on down—or up.

  “Are congratulations in order yet, Mr. Downes?” she asked to take her mind off her fluttering nerves—and to shake his cool air of command. “Have you affianced yourself to a suitably genteel and fertile young lady? Or married her? Special licenses are available, as you must know.”

  “Not yet, ma’am,” he said, looking at her steadily. He had been looking into her face since the music began. Was he afraid to look lower? But then he had seen all there was to see on a previous occasion. “It is not like purchasing cattle, you know.”

  “Oh, far from it,” she agreed, laughing, “if by cattle you mean horses, Mr. Downes. I would not have asked you so soon if I must congratulate you if it were a horse you were choosing. I would know that the choice must be made with great care over an extended period of time.”

  He stared at her for so long that she became uncomfortable. But she scorned to look away from him.

  “Who hurt you?” he asked her, jolting her with surprise and even shock. “Was it your husband?”

  The same assumption in two days by two different people. Poor Christian. She smiled at Edgar. “My husband treated me as if I were a queen, Mr. Downes,” she said. “Or to be more accurate, as if I were a porcelain doll. I am merely a realist, sir. Are your riches not sufficient to lure a genteel bride?”

  “I believe my financial status and my
personal life are none of your concern, ma’am,” he said with such icy civility that she felt a delicious shiver along her spine.

  “You do that remarkably well,” she said. “Did all opposing counsel crumble before you in court? Were you a very successful lawyer? No, I will not make that a question but a statement. I have no doubt you were successful. Do all your employees quiver like jelly before your every glance? I would wager they do.”

  “I treat my employees well and with respect,” he said.

  “But I will wager you demand total obedience from them,” she said, “and require an explanation when you do not get it.”

  “Of course,” he said. “How could I run a successful business otherwise?”

  “And are you the same in your personal relations, Mr. Downes?” she asked. “Am I to pity your wife when you have married her—after congratulating you, of course?” With her eyes she laughed at him. Her body was horribly aroused. She had no idea why. She had never craved any man’s mastery. Quite the opposite.

  “You need feel nothing for my wife, ma’am,” he said. “Or for me. We will be none of your concern.”

  She sighed audibly. “You are naive, Mr. Downes,” she said. “When you marry into the ton, you will become the concern of the ton. What else do we have to talk about but one another? Where can we look for the most fascinating scandals but to those among us who have recently wed? Especially when the match is something of a misalliance. Yours will be, you know. We will all look for tyranny and vulgarity in you—and will hope that there will not be only bourgeois dullness instead. We will all look for rebellion and infidelity in her—and will be vastly disappointed if she turns out to be a docile and obedient wife. Will you insist upon docility and obedience?”

  “That will be for me to decide,” he said, “and the woman I will marry.”

  She sighed again and then laughed. “How tiresome you are, Mr. Downes,” she said. “Do you not know when a quarrel is being picked with you? I wish to quarrel with you, but I cannot quarrel alone.”