A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau

by Mary Balogh

  “He had had a sad life,” she said. “His mother abandoned him when he was eight years old to go and live with her two sisters. He had adored her and had felt adored in return. Christian tried to soften the blow by telling him that she was dead. But when she really did die five years later, Gerald suddenly found himself thrust into mourning for her and knew that she had loved him so little. Or so it seemed. One cannot really know the truth about that woman, I suppose. Everything about him irritated Christian. Poor Gerald! He could do nothing right.”

  “And so you became a new mother to him?” he asked.

  “More like an elder sister perhaps,” she said. “I talked to him and listened to him. I helped him with his lessons, especially with arithmetic, which made no sense at all to him. When Christian was from home I listened to him play the pianoforte and sometimes sang to his accompaniment. He had real talent, Edgar, but he was ashamed of it because his father saw it as unmanly. I helped him get over his terrible conviction that he was unlovable and worthless and stupid. He was none of the three. He was sweet. It is a weak word to use of a boy, but it is the right word to use of Gerald. There was such sweetness in him.” He had filled such a void in her life.

  “I suppose,” Edgar said, breaking the silence she had been unaware of, “he fell in love with you.”

  “No,” she said. “He grew up. At eighteen he was pleasing to look at and very sweet natured. He was—he was youthful.”

  Edgar had braced his arms wide on the windowsill and hung his head. “You seduced him,” he said. He was breathing heavily. “Your husband’s son.”

  She set her head back against the palm and closed her eyes. “I loved him,” she said. “As a person I loved him. He was sweet and trusting and far more intelligent and talented than he realized. And he was vulnerable. His sense of his own worth was so very fragile. I knew it and feared for him. And I—I wanted him. I was horrified. I hated myself—hated myself. You could not know how much. No one could hate me as I hated myself. I tried to fight but I was very weak. I was sitting one day on a bridge, one of the most picturesque spots in the park at Brookhurst, and he was coming toward me looking bright and eager about something—I can no longer remember what. I took his hands and—Well. I frightened him and he ran away. Of all the shame I have felt since, I do not believe I have ever known any of greater intensity than I felt after he had gone. And yet it happened twice more before he persuaded Christian to send him away to university.”

  She had thought of killing herself, she remembered. She had even wondered how she might best do it. She had not had enough courage even for that.

  “Now tell me that you are glad I have told you, Edgar,” she said after a while. “Tell me you are proud to have such a wife.”

  There was another lengthy silence. “You were young,” he said, “and found yourself in an arranged marriage with a much older man. There were only five years between you and your stepson. You were lonely.”

  “Is it for me you try to make excuses, Edgar?” she asked. “Or for yourself? Are you trying to convince yourself that you have not made such a disastrous marriage after all? There are no excuses. What I did was unforgivable.”

  “Did you beg his pardon later?” he asked. “Did he refuse to grant it?”

  “I saw him only once after he left for university,” she said. “It was at his father’s funeral three years later. We did not speak. There are certain things for which one cannot ask for pardon, Edgar, because there is no pardon.”

  He turned to look at her at last. “You have been too hard on yourself,” he said. “It was an ugly thing, what you did, but nothing is beyond pardon. And it was a long time ago. You have changed.”

  “I seduced you a little over two months ago,” she said.

  “I am your equal in age and experience, Helena,” he said, “as I suppose all your lovers have been. You have had to convince yourself that you are promiscuous, have you not? You have had to punish yourself, to convince yourself that you are evil. It is time you put the past behind you.”

  “The past is always with me, Edgar,” she said. “The past had consequences. I destroyed him.”

  “That is doubtless an exaggeration,” he said. “He would not dally with his father’s wife and went away. Good for him. He showed some strength of character. Perhaps in some way the experience was even the making of him. You have been too hard on yourself.”

  “It is what I hoped would happen,” she said. “I went to Scotland after Christian’s death and waited and waited for word that Gerald was somehow settled in life. Then I went traveling and waited again. I finally heard news of him last year in the late summer. Doubtless you would have, too, Edgar, if you moved in tonnish circles. Doubtless Cora and Francis heard. He married.”

  “Well, then.” He had come to stand in front of her. He was frowning down at her. “He has married. He has found peace and contentment. He has doubtless forgotten what has so obsessed you.”

  “Fool!” she said. “I finally confirmed him in what all the experiences of his life had pointed to—that he was unlovable and worthless. He married a whore, Edgar.”

  “A whore?” he said. “Those are strong words.”

  “From a woman who has admitted to having had many lovers?” she said. “Perhaps. But she worked in a brothel. Half the male population of London paid for her services, I daresay. I suppose that is where Gerald met her. He took her and made her his mistress and then married her. Is that the action of a man with any sense of self-worth?”

  “I do not know,” he said. “I do not know the two people or the circumstances.”

  She laughed without any humor whatsoever. “I do know Gerald,” she said. “It is just what he would do and just the sort of thing that for years I dreaded to hear. He thought himself worthy of nothing better in a wife than a whore.”

  “How old was he last year?” Edgar asked. “Twenty-nine? Thirty?”

  “No,” she said, “you will not use that argument with me, Edgar. I will not allow you to talk me out of my belief in my own responsibility for what has become of him. I will not let you forgive me. You do not have the power. No one does.”

  He went down on his haunches and reached out his hands to her.

  “Touch me now,” she said, “and I will never forgive you. A hug will not solve it, Edgar. I am not the one who needs the hug. And you cannot comfort me. There is no comfort. There is no forgiveness. And do not pretend you do not feel disgust—for what I did, for what I trapped you into, for the fact that I am bearing your child.”

  He drew breath and sighed audibly. “How long ago did this happen, Helena?” he asked. “Ten years? Twelve?”

  “Thirteen,” she said.

  “Thirteen.” He gazed at her. “You have lived in a self-made hell for thirteen years. My dear, it will not do. It just will not do.”

  “I am tired.” She got to her feet, careful not to touch him. “I am going to bed. I am sorry you have to share it with me, Edgar. If you wish to make other arrangements—”

  He grabbed her then and drew her against him and she felt the full force of his strength. Although she fought him, she could not free herself. After a few moments she did not even try. She sagged against him, soaking up his warmth and his strength, breathing in the smell of him. Feeling the lure of a nonexistent peace.

  “Hate me if you will,” he said, “but I will touch you and hold you. When we go to bed I will make love to you. You are my wife. And if you are so unworthy to be forgiven and to be loved, Helena, why is it that I can forgive you? Why is it that I love you?”

  She breathed in slowly and deeply. “I am so tired, Edgar,” she said. So tired. Always tired. Not just from her pregnancy, surely. She was soul-weary. “Please. I am so tired.” Was that abject voice hers?

  “We will go to bed, then,” he said. “But I want you to see something first.” He led her to the window, one arm firmly about her waist. “You see?” He pointed upward to one star that was brighter than all the others. “It is
there, Helena. Not only on the night of Christmas Eve. Always if we just look for it. There is always hope.”

  “Dreamer,” she said, her voice shaky. “Sentimentalist. Edgar, you are supposed to be a man of reason and cold good sense.”

  “I am also a man who loves,” he said. “I always have, from childhood on. And I am what you are stuck with. For life, I am afraid. I’ll never let you forget that star is always there.”

  There was such a mingling of despair and hope in her that her chest felt tight and her throat sore. She buried her face against his shoulder and said nothing. After a few minutes of silence he took her up to bed.

  15

  EDGAR WAS UP BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, a little earlier than usual. The fire had not yet been made up. He shivered as he stretched his arms above his head and looked out through the window. As last night’s clear sky had suggested, there had been no more snow.

  He was tired. Nevertheless he was glad to be up. He had slept only in fits and starts through the night, and he had felt Helena’s sleeplessness, though they had not spoken and had lain turned away from each other for most of the night after he had made love to her.

  Her story had been ugly enough. What she had done had been truly shameful. She had been a married woman, however little say she had had in the choice of her husband. She had known and understood the boy’s vulnerability—and he had been her husband’s son. She had been old enough to know better, and of course she had known better. The attraction, the desire had been understandable—the son had been far closer to her own age than the father. That she had given in to temptation was blameworthy. She had been morally weak.

  Her conscience had not been correspondingly weak. She had punished herself ever since. She had refused either to ask forgiveness or to forgive herself simply because she thought her sin unforgivable. She had never allowed herself to be happy or to love—or be loved. He guessed that her extensive travels had been her way of trying to escape from herself. It might be said that true repentance should have made her celibate. But Edgar believed he had been right in what he had said to her the night before. She had punished herself with promiscuity, with the conviction that she was truly depraved.

  Their marriage stood not one chance in a million of bringing either of them contentment. Unless …

  It would be an enormous risk. He had known that all through the night. She was quite convinced that she had destroyed her stepson, that her betrayal had been the final straw in an unhappy life of abuse. And she had been quite certain of her facts when describing the man’s marriage. He had married a prostitute taken from a London brothel.

  It seemed very probable that she was right. And if she was, there would never be any peace for her. He might argue until kingdom come that Sir Gerald Stapleton had been abused by both his father and mother, far more important people in his life than she had ever been, and that he had not used his individual freedom when he was old enough to fight back against his image of himself as a victim. Helena would forever blame herself.

  And so he must do today the only thing he could do. It was the only hope left, however slim it might be. He must remember what he had told his wife last night about the star. It was always there, the Christmas star perhaps, constant symbol of hope. There must always be hope. The only thing left when there was no hope was despair. Helena had lived too long with despair.

  Her stillness and quietness did not deceive him. She was awake, as she had been most of the night. He crossed to the bed and set a hand on her shoulder.

  “I am going to Bristol,” he said. “There is some business that must be taken care of before the holiday. I will stay at the house tonight and return tomorrow.”

  He expected questions. What business could possibly have arisen so suddenly two days before Christmas when there had not even been any post yesterday?

  “Yes,” she said. “All right.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Get some rest,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The dusk of dawn had still not given place to the full light of day when Edgar led his horse from the stables, set it to a cautious pace to allow it to become accustomed to the snowy roads, and set his course for Brookhurst, thirty miles away.

  IT WAS AN enormous relief to have Edgar gone for the day. It would have been difficult to face him in the morning after the night before. Helena was annoyed with herself for giving in to his constant needling and pestering. She should never have told him the truth. She had done so as a self-indulgence. It had felt surprisingly cathartic sitting there in the quiet, darkened conservatory, reliving those memories for someone else’s ears. She almost envied papists their confessionals.

  But it had not just been self-indulgence. She had owed him the truth. He was her husband. And therein lay the true problem. She was unaccustomed to thinking sympathetically about another person, caring about his feelings. It was something she had not done in years. And something she ought not to do now. What good could ever come of her sympathy, of her compassion?

  She cared about him. He was a decent man, and he had been good to her. But she must not care for him or allow herself to be comforted by his care. She remembered what he had said the night before—why is it that I love you? She shook her head to rid her mind of the sound of his voice saying those words.

  She was glad he had gone. There was no business in Bristol, of course. His friends had looked surprised and his father astonished when she had given that as an explanation for his absence. He had gone there so that he could be away from her for a day, so that he could think and plan. There would be a greater distance between them by the time he returned, once he had had the chance to digest fully what she had told him. And a greater distance on her part, too—she must return to the aloofness, the air of mockery that had become second nature to her for a number of years but that had been deserting her since their marriage. She was glad she had not told him the one, final truth.

  She was glad he had gone.

  She spent a busy day. She walked into the village during the morning with Cora and Jane, Countess of Greenwald, to purchase some prizes for the children’s games at the Christmas party. The children, the young people, and most of the men had gone out to the hill to ride the sleds down its snowy slopes. After nuncheon she was banished to her room by her father-in-law for a rest and was surprised to find that she slept soundly for a whole hour. And then she went outside when it became obvious that the duke and duchess, who were going to build a snowman for their little boy, had acquired a sizable train of other small children determined to go along to see and to help.

  “You are remarkably good with children, Mrs. Downes,” the Duke of Bridgwater told her when three snowmen of varying sizes and artistic merit were standing in a row. “So is Stephanie. I might have stayed inside the house and toasted my toes at the fire.”

  It was surprising in a way that he had not done so. Helena had been acquainted with him for several years and had always known him as an austere, correct, rather toplofty aristocrat. He still gave that impression when one did not see him in company with his wife or his son. Their company was obviously preferable to toasted toes this afternoon, despite his words.

  For a moment Helena felt a pang of emptiness. She favored the duke with her mocking smile. “It must be incipient maternity that is causing me to behave so much out of character, your grace,” she said. “I have never before been accused of anything as shudderingly awful as being good with children.”

  “I do beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “I experienced much the same horror less than a month ago when my butler observed me to be galloping—galloping, ma’am—along an upper corridor of my home with my son on my shoulders. Why I confess to this next detail I do not know—I was whinnying.” He grimaced.

  Helena laughed.

  The evening was spent in the drawing room. Family and guests passed the time with music and cards and conversation and a vigorous game of charades, suggested by the young son and daught
er of one of Mr. Downes’s friends and participated in with great enthusiasm by all the young people and a few of the older ones, too.

  A definite romance was developing between Fanny Grainger and Mr. Sperling, Helena noticed. They were being very careful and very discreet and were watched almost every moment by Sir Webster and Lady Grainger, who dared not appear too disapproving, but who were far from being enthusiastic. But matters had been helped along by her father-in-law’s apparently careless remark at tea that Edgar’s business was to buy and renovate Mr. Sperling’s country estate as a future home for the young man when he should have risen high enough in the company’s ranks to need it as a sign of status.

  Edgar either felt very guilty about Miss Grainger, Helena concluded, or he had a great soft heart, inherited with far tougher attributes from his father. She strongly favored the soft heart theory.

  It felt good to be alone again, Helena thought, to be free of him for one day at least. She wondered if he had got safely to Bristol. She wondered if he had dressed warmly enough for the journey or if he had caught a chill. She wondered what he was doing this evening. Was he sitting at home, brooding? Or enjoying his solitude? Was he out visiting friends or otherwise amusing himself? She wondered if he kept mistresses. She supposed he must have over the years. He was six-and-thirty after all and had never before been married. Besides, he was an experienced and skilled lover. But she could not somehow imagine the very respectable, very bourgeois Edgar Downes keeping a mistress now that he had a wife. Not that she would mind. But she had a sudden image of Edgar doing with another woman what he did with her in their bed upstairs and felt decidedly irritable—and even murderous.

  She did not care what he was doing tonight in Bristol. She was just happy to be able to converse and laugh and even join in the charades without feeling his eyes on her.

  Was he thinking about her?

  She hoped he was not wasting time and energy doing any such thing, since she was certainly not thinking about him.