A Christmas Promise

by Mary Balogh

  The hostility gradually faded from her eyes as he watched her, to be replaced by wariness. “Very well,” she said at last.

  But any chance he might have had of comforting her for the death of her father—if she needed comforting—was lost. He handed her from the carriage when they arrived at Grosvenor Square and she disappeared into the morning room to write her letters while he retired to his own room to sleep for a few hours. And yet he found himself over-tired. He could not sleep.

  And he found himself wishing he could live the last few days over again. He wished that he had followed his own recent advice and established a relationship of mutual respect from the start between himself and his wife. He wished he could have his wedding night over again. He wished he could consummate his marriage with more gentleness and consideration. But perhaps things could not have been different anyway. Perhaps his wife was as cold and as shrewish as she had seemed so far in his acquaintance with her.

  And yet she was unexpectedly hot in some ways. He closed his eyes and remembered the wildness and the boldness with which she had made love to him. He would have sworn that she had had a great deal of experience if it had not been for the blood—and for the barrier that he had felt himself tearing through. And he remembered the frenzy with which he had finally ended that encounter, shouting out, spilling his seed into her with all control gone.

  He inhaled slowly. It had not been the way he liked it—not that he had had it like that before. He liked sanity and warm comfort between the sheets with his women. And yet, he realized with no small annoyance as he turned onto his side and tried to will himself to sleep, he was aroused. Just thinking of his wedding night had aroused him.

  WHAT HE HAD SAID in the carriage on the way home the morning after her father’s death, Eleanor decided over the coming days and weeks, was sensible, and she was glad that it had been said even though his voice and his eyes had been icy when he spoke, and she had been chilled by the knowledge that she owed this man obedience for the rest of her life.

  But she was glad afterward that he had spoken thus. The following days would have been difficult under any circumstances, but they would have been a great deal worse if he had not put a stop to the open hostility between them. For she saw a great deal more of him during the day than she had ever seen of her father.

  Mostly it was unavoidable. The ton arrived in force during the five days preceding the funeral, and even afterward, to meet the bride of the Earl of Falloden, to congratulate them both on their marriage, to sympathize with them on their bereavement. Mostly they came out of curiosity, she thought, to see the cit’s daughter who had netted one of their own most eligible matrimonial catches. To look at her and criticize every detail of her appearance and behavior. To look for signs of vulgarity.

  And she would have given them what they wanted, she sometimes thought—as she had at Pamela’s party two years before—if she had not made that agreement with her husband and if he had not stayed so unwaveringly at her side through all the visits. Perhaps he stayed close just to prevent the sort of situation that would cause him embarrassment. But whatever his reason, he was always there beside her, his hand sometimes resting at her waist as he presented her to numerous strangers as his wife.

  He stayed at her side even when her father’s friends and associates came to express their sympathies, as several did. And he conversed courteously with them, even with Mr. Simms with his broad cockney accent, keeping his bargain with her as she kept hers with him.

  It was strangely comforting—except when she thought about the reality of the situation, as she did occasionally in the privacy of her own room. It was all a facade, a mere matter of civility, a way of getting through life without the unpleasantness of confrontation. It was fine for the days leading up to the funeral and for the weeks following it. But she found herself waiting for life to get back to normal again, waiting to go home. She was finding it almost impossible to accept the fact that this was now normal life, that this was home. That her father was no more. That the Earl of Falloden was the man with whom she must spend the rest of her life. Randolph. She could not quite associate the name with him. Or any other name, for that matter. He was the Earl of Falloden to her.

  There was not even the smallest degree of affection between them, he had said. His words were perfectly true. There was not. And yet the reality of it frightened her. She had grown up with deep affection—with her father and with the other members of her family when they were together as they quite often were. But her father was dead, and her family was lost to her. Her husband would not wish to lower himself to associating with them. Was she to live the rest of her life without affection, then? She already felt starved after a few weeks. Ravenously hungry for love.

  And angry and dreadfully upset when Wilfred responded to the letter she had written to his father with a passionate love letter. All the love that might feed her aching and empty heart. Yet a forbidden love.

  Perhaps, she thought at first, if she could just be patient, she would within a year or so have a child on whom to lavish all the pent-up love that was fairly bursting from her. Even though it would be his child, it would be hers too, and a person in its own right. But hope even for that faded as the days and then the weeks passed and he never came to her at night. For which blessing she was profoundly thankful. She found herself almost sick with dread for the first couple of weeks when she retired to bed. But without those terrifying encounters there would be no child.

  She did not know how she would live with an empty, meaningless marriage, and with no children. Being an only child herself, she had always dreamed of having a large family of her own—five or six children. And dogs and cats. And—oh, and life and love and laughter.

  For the first two weeks after the funeral she at least had the evenings to herself. After dinner, during which they always conversed politely on impersonal topics, she retired to her sitting room while he did she knew not what. She did not even know whether he went out or stayed at home. He never entered her sitting room, which was at the opposite side of her bedchamber from her dressing room. And so she made of the room her own private domain, rearranging the furniture for maximum coziness, filling it with her own personal belongings from home—from her father’s home, after she had spent a day there gathering together what she wished to keep. And in her private sitting room she read and sewed and felt almost happy.

  But that was not to last.

  “What do you do in the evenings?” he asked her abruptly one day at dinner.

  “I read,” she said. “Or I embroider. Or I knit. All those things that any real lady does, my lord.” But she flushed under his steady gaze. She did not often forget their agreement. “I am sorry.”

  “Bring your book or your embroidery or whatever you choose to do this evening to the library, then,” he said. “We might as well spend our evenings in a room together since we seem on the whole to have learned to be civil to each other.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said. But she felt only dismay and a sinking of the heart at having to obey this man’s every whim. Life was not fair to women, she thought. And that was an understatement. She wondered what he would say or do if she refused or at least expressed her reluctance to obey. And yet, looking at him as he signaled a footman to refill his wineglass, she reminded herself that he was at least human, that at least spending the evening in the same room with him would give the illusion of closeness, would take away some of the loneliness of her existence.

  She fetched her embroidery to the library, knowing that it would be pointless to bring a book, knowing that she would not be able to concentrate on its pages. And she settled herself into a deep leather chair on one side of the roaring fire while he sat at the other, a book spread on his lap. And she bent her head over her work and found that she had been wrong. There was an aching loneliness, far worse than that she felt usually of an evening. For it was a cozy room and warm against the early December chill. And her husband was sprawled comfortably in his c
hair. It was the perfect domestic scene.

  And yet it was all illusion. They were strangers, unhappy strangers, who had agreed for the sake of good sense to live together with civility. There was no affection, no closeness whatsoever. She could not, if she wished to do so, lift her head to share some confidence or some piece of nonsense with him.

  She lifted her head to look at him. He was looking steadily at her, his book neglected on his lap.

  “It is pretty,” he said, indicating the cloth on which she worked.

  “Thank you.” She lowered her head again.

  “I have four fellows coming to Grenfell Park for Christmas,” he said. “I had invited them out there before our wedding for a few days of shooting. Do you wish me to put them off? It would be easy to do, what with my sudden marriage and your bereavement.”

  Four gentlemen. To be entertained over Christmas. She turned cold. And one of them would doubtless be Sir Albert Hagley.

  “No,” she said. “It would not be right, my lord.”

  “Is there anyone that you would like to invite, then?” he asked. “Some friend or friends? You have not associated with any since our marriage, but there must be some. Are there?”

  “There is no one of your class, my lord,” she said. “No one with whom your four friends would be pleased to mingle.”

  “Invite them anyway,” he said. “I will leave it to your discretion, my lady, to invite only those who will feel comfortable.”

  They were fair words, she thought. Civil. And yet looked at another way, they were insufferably condescending. She could invite some friends provided they did not murder the English language every time they opened their mouths? Or laughed too loudly at a joke? Or dipped their fingers into the gravy?

  “Thank you,” she said. “How many do you wish me to invite?”

  “As many as you like,” he said.

  She bent her head over her work again, and he said no more. She was busily trying to decide whom she would invite. But her friends would be reluctant to leave their families over Christmas. She would invite some people, however. She would think of someone. She remembered suddenly her promise to her father to make Christmas a warm and wonderful celebration. She could hardly do that if she were alone with five gentlemen.

  Yes, she would find someone—or preferably a few people—to invite. And if her husband’s four friends did not like mingling with cits and other members of the middle class, well, then, she would treat them accordingly. After all, her promise to be civil had, strictly speaking, been made only to her husband in her dealings with him.

  She looked up at him, prepared to do battle if he should have anything else condescending to say. But he was reading his book and looked deeply absorbed in it.

  BY THE NEXT DAY Eleanor had decided that she would invite two aunts, her father’s sisters, and the two unmarried daughters of one of them to spend Christmas at Grenfell Park. Aunt Beryl had been married to a tenant farmer until his death five years before. He had worked hard and left Aunt Beryl and Muriel and Mabel in comfortable circumstances. Aunt Ruth had always lived with them. She had never married.

  They were refined, she thought. Indeed, they had several times dined with Lord Sharples, whose tenants they had been. Aunt Beryl boasted frequently about those occasions. But Eleanor despised herself for choosing the most refined of her relatives to invite. As if it mattered. As if she cared what her husband or his four gentlemen friends would think. She loved all her relatives. The times when they came together for various celebrations had always been the highlights of her life.

  She would have written the invitations during the morning, but the housekeeper suggested that they go over the household accounts together. Her husband was from home and would be gone for most of the day, he had told her at breakfast. He was closing her father’s affairs with her father’s man of business.

  And she would have written during the afternoon, but visitors called again. There were not many any longer, but most days brought one or two. Mr. Simms came, bringing with him his wife, who had been ill the first time he came. Mrs. Simms looked about her in awe, although her husband was almost as wealthy as Papa had been. But she relaxed and settled for a comfortable coze when she knew that his lordship was from home. She and Mr. Simms rose to leave only when Lady Lovestone and her daughter arrived. Eleanor had not met them before.

  They were so sorry not to have paid a call earlier, Lady Lovestone assured Lady Falloden, but … There was a string of excuses. Eleanor smiled at her and at her pretty blond daughter, who sat silently staring at her.

  “I was never more surprised in my life,” Lady Lovestone said, “than when I heard of Falloden’s betrothal and hasty marriage. Of course, he was living under difficult circumstances, poor man. And your father was a …?”

  “Mr. Joseph Transome,” Eleanor said. But her husband was not there as he usually was to help her restrain herself. She was being regarded from two pairs of haughty eyes. “Coal merchant,” she added.

  “Yes.” Lady Lovestone nodded. “Well, I hope you will be happy, I am sure, Lady Falloden. Indeed, I do not see how you could fail to be happy. Sir Hector might have been prevailed upon to allow Falloden to pay his addresses to Dorothea, you know, but he was shockingly low on funds. I daresay that situation has been remedied.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said. “Papa was dreadfully rich.” She smiled at Dorothea Lovestone and wondered if the girl had loved her husband. And if he had loved her.

  “Of course,” Lady Lovestone said, “there were other things, though I daresay they might have changed if he had married Dorothea. But such matters would not be of concern to you, I am sure, Lady Falloden. One advantage of not having a gentle upbringing, I always say, is that one does not have such tender sensibilities. It can be a dreadful thing to be too tenderhearted.”

  “I daresay,” Eleanor said, smiling. “I would not know, ma’am, not having had a gentle upbringing.”

  “And since you are in mourning for your poor dear papa anyway,” Lady Lovestone said, “I daresay you do not mind that Falloden goes out every evening without you. Dorothea has been brought up to expect evening entertainments. And of course he is very discreet, which must be a comfort. I have heard that his—ah—other interest is quite refined, though I know nothing about such creatures, of course.”

  “Of course,” Eleanor said, still smiling. “Only enough to be able to share with the wives, ma’am. That is understandable. And you might hurt them if you knew too many details, after all. If the mistresses were prettier than they, for example, or more shapely. Or better performers in bed.”

  “Dorothea, my love!” Lady Lovestone said, her hand shooting to her heart while the girl squirmed with discomfort and stared saucer-eyed at Eleanor.

  “It is not hurtful at all, but only enormously soothing,” Eleanor said, “to know that my husband’s—ah—other interest is refined. She might be vulgar, after all, and that would be a dreadfully lowering thing.”

  “Lady Falloden,” Lady Lovestone said, “I pray you to remember that my daughter is present.”

  “I do beg your pardon.” Eleanor smiled warmly at the girl and then at her mother. “But since you introduced the topic, ma’am, I assumed that you considered it a suitable one for your daughter’s ears.”

  They talked of the weather for five minutes before Lady Lovestone rose to her feet and signaled to her daughter and they took their leave a full ten minutes before it would have been polite to do so.

  They went away satisfied, Eleanor thought, sitting down straight-backed in the chair she had vacated in order to take leave of her visitors. All their suspicions had been confirmed. The Earl of Falloden had married the enormously vulgar daughter of a cit—for her money. They could boast forever that Dorothea would have been his choice if only Sir Hector could have been prevailed upon to overlook his penniless state and his monumental debts. They could now be happy. She had made their day complete.

  She raised her half-empty cup of tea to her lips, but
set it back in the saucer again untasted. Her hand was shaking. So he had a mistress, did he? She might have known it. He was, after all, a member of the decadent aristocracy. He could not be expected to have any of the stricter moral values of her own class. And he was certainly getting no sexual satisfaction from his wife.

  She did not care. She really did not. Let him do those terrifying and painful things to someone who was paid well to endure them. Let him spend as many evenings as he wanted with his mistress. That would leave her free to be alone in her own domain. She did not care.

  But her thoughts turned immediately to Aunt Beryl and Aunt Ruth and her cousins and her reasons for choosing them to invite to spend Christmas at Grenfell Park. She would be damned, she thought, anger rising to fury within her, before she would invite guests only on the grounds that they would be least likely to disturb her husband’s sensibilities and those of his guests.

  Oh, she would be damned before she would choose thusly.

  She had asked him how many of her own guests she might invite, and he had replied that she might ask as many as she wanted. Well, then. He had had a chance to put a limit on the number, but he had unwisely neglected to do so.

  Eleanor got to her feet, a rather grim smile on her lips. The escritoire and the writing paper and pens were in the morning room. She had a busy few hours ahead of her.

  6

  HE WAS RATHER LOOKING FORWARD TO CHRISTMAS, the Earl of Falloden realized with some surprise. He had never particularly enjoyed the season. Even when he was a boy, when his parents were still alive, nothing much had been made of Christmas. He had had no brothers or sisters and his parents had liked to stay at home rather than seek out parties or invite guests. And when there had been guests, they had always been exclusively adult and he had been confined to the nursery. With his grandparents things had been much the same.

  In more recent years he had gone wherever he was invited, sometimes to parties in the country homes of his friends, sometimes merely to dinners and balls in town. But he had always been glad when it was over. For some reason he had always felt lonely at Christmas, as if there should be a great deal more to it than he had ever experienced.