A Christmas Promise

by Mary Balogh

  But this year he was looking forward to it. He would be at Grenfell Park, and he would be able to look around him and know that it was all his, without conditions attached, and that he could dream of all he wanted to do for the house and the park and the farms with the knowledge that at last he could make his dreams reality. He had spent many childhood holidays at Grenfell with his grandparents and had lived with them after his fourteenth year, after the death of his parents within a year of each other. He loved Grenfell.

  And he was not sorry that he had invited guests when in his cups the week before his wedding. Bertie was coming, as were Lord Charles Wright; Jason, Viscount Sotherby; and the Honorable Mr. Timothy Badcombe. He had never had guests for Christmas. Perhaps their presence would make the season more enjoyable.

  And strangely enough—very strangely—he was not averse to the prospect of being in the country with his wife. There had been a cautious peace between them since the morning after her father’s death. They had not quarreled or spoken bitingly or with sarcasm to each other, except on very rare occasions, when the offending words were almost always followed immediately by an apology.

  There was no affection between them, no friendship, no closeness at all. And yet the hostility had gone or at least had been pushed into the background. He had hopes that they could live together with civility for what remained of the first year of their marriage. And perhaps for longer. For he made a disturbing discovery during the first month of his marriage, and that was that he could not ignore the new state of his life. He could no longer feel like an unmarried man. And it was not just her presence in his home. It was her presence in his conscience.

  After her father’s funeral he took to going to White’s each evening. But instead of enjoying himself there, as he had always used to do, he found himself thinking about the unfairness of life. His wife, being a woman, had no choice but to stay home alone since he was not escorting her anywhere. Her evenings must be unutterably dreary, he thought.

  Twice he went to Alice’s, and bedded her both times. The second time he took her a gift, a ruby-studded bracelet, which he knew she would like. He had never before been able to buy her expensive gifts on whim. But guilt lay heavy on his heart as she exclaimed over it and had him clasp it about her wrist. It had been bought with money he had acquired with his marriage. And his wife was sitting home alone.

  “It is a parting gift,” he told Alice abruptly. And realized as he waited for dismay to overtake him at speaking so impulsively that he did not feel dismay at all. Only relief.

  He had not bought his wife any gifts at all. Eleanor. Somehow he found it difficult to think of her by name. He could not bring himself to call her by name.

  They were going to go into the country together for Christmas. They were going to stay there for the better part of a year. Perhaps, he thought, he would make a real effort to get to know her, to discover if there was anything but coldness and waspishness behind the calm, unsmiling appearance she always presented to him. Perhaps he would even begin to live with her as his wife, though it would be difficult to go to her bed again when he had not done so since their wedding night.

  If his promise to her father compelled him to spend a year with her anyway, he thought, then he might as well use that time getting his heir on her if he could. If he could get her with child within the year, and if the child turned out to be a boy, then there would be no further necessity for them to live together if he found after all that nothing could be made of their marriage.

  He was going to give it a try anyway. And what better time was there to try to inject a little warmth into their relationship than Christmas? He only hoped that she had invited a friend or two. It might be a difficult situation otherwise—five men and one lady.

  “We will leave for Grenfell Park next week,” he told her one evening when they were sitting, as they had done for five evenings in a row, in the library after dinner. He might even have enjoyed those evenings, he sometimes thought, except that he could never think of any topic of conversation that might have drawn them into a cozy chat. They never chattered, only conversed very deliberately on impersonal topics. “I will need to inform the housekeeper how many guests will be expected for Christmas.”

  She raised her eyes from her book. And raised her chin a notch in a gesture he recognized from earlier days. Then it had usually been the herald to some sarcasm or some defiance.

  “I hope you have invited a friend or two,” he said.

  “One or two?” she said. “You did not impose a limit on the number I might invite, my lord.”

  “You have invited more, then?” he said. “Good.”

  “You are not afraid,” she asked, “that your friends will object to sharing your home with people from my world?”

  She looked and sounded as if she were on the verge of quarreling with him again, he thought. Just like a hedgehog.

  “If they do,” he said, looking steadily back at her, “then they will have me to deal with. You are my wife.”

  “And any slight to me would be a slight to you,” she said. “Of course. I am honored.”

  “That was uncalled for, my lady,” he said.

  “Yes.” She looked down at her book again.

  “Whom have you invited?” he asked. “How many?”

  “My family,” she said, glaring at him suddenly, daring him to object, the color high on her cheekbones. “We have always spent holidays together whenever possible. And this is a special holiday. It is the first Christmas without my father. And I promised him that I would make it a wonderful one. But doubtless you will think it inappropriate to have a family celebration less than two months after his death.”

  He wondered with the beginnings of unwilling anger how many other fictitious promises to her father she would invent over the coming weeks and months. Obviously she was a woman who craved a life of gaiety and was not going to allow respect for a dead father to get in her way. “We can celebrate in a subdued manner,” he said.

  “Not with my family,” she said, “They are the loudest, most boisterous—most vulgar—crowd you could possibly imagine.”

  The anger built. “Exactly how many are we talking about?” he asked.

  She was silent for a few moments, her eyes lowered. But he could tell by the slight movement of her fingers that she was counting, doing a mental review of the relatives she had invited.

  “Twenty,” she said, looking back up at him coolly, “counting Cousin Tom’s two children. Is that too many, my lord? Should I have assumed when you said that I might invite any number that you meant no more than four?”

  “Twenty,” he repeated. Good God.

  “It is a dreadful prospect, is it not,” she said, “to think of Grenfell Park, seat of the Earl of Falloden, being overrun by businessmen and merchants and farmers? Rather like cattle being let loose in the nave of a cathedral. But you must remember, my lord, that Grenfell Park has been paid for and will continue to be paid for with a merchant’s money.”

  He stayed in his chair. If he got to his feet, he thought, he might show his fury in deeds as well as in words.

  “I am not likely to forget it this side of the grave, my lady,” he said. “Not with a shrew of a wife to remind me constantly.”

  “Well,” she said, “you can always escape from me, my lord. You can always take yourself beyond the range of my shrewish tongue. I am told she is refined. That must be a comfort to you.”

  “Who is refined?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Your mistress,” she said. “The woman with whom you take your pleasure.”

  “Ah,” he said. “And who was kind enough to inform you that she is refined, pray?”

  “The mother of the girl you loved—or love, perhaps—and were too impoverished to marry.”

  “Lady Lovestone,” he said. “Yes, I loved Dorothea and would have married her if circumstances had been different. She is beautiful and sweet and tenderhearted.” He felt a pang of longing for the sweetness and
refinement he might have had in a wife.

  “All the things I am not,” she said.

  “The words are your own,” he told her coldly.

  “And doubtless you would have given up your mistress for her and lived happily ever after,” she said. “How unfortunate that you are a spendthrift, my lord, and like to play deep at gaming and have not a great deal of good luck. And how fortunate for me. I might never have won myself such a noble husband if you had learned to live within your means.”

  “Fortunate you might call it,” he said, getting to his feet at last. “You have my title and all that comes with it for the rest of your life. But you will never have one corner of my heart or my liking or my respect. Or my company, either, whenever I can help it.” He bowed deeply to her. “Enjoy your triumph, my lady. I hope—I sincerely hope—it will prove to be an empty one.”

  “And I hope,” she said through her teeth as he strode toward the door, “that my father’s money brings you not one ounce of happiness, my lord. I sincerely hope it.”

  Something smashed violently as he closed the door of the library behind him. He guessed that in her passion she had hurled something, probably the porcelain figurine from the table beside her, across the room.

  “My coat and hat,” he said curtly to the footman in the hall.

  “Shall I send for your carriage, my lord?” the man asked with a bow.

  “I shall walk,” he said, restraining the urge to bark at the man, who had done nothing to offend, and he strode out through the door one minute later, his greatcoat still unbuttoned despite the evening chill and the brisk wind. But he could not even go to Bertie to pour out his venom and his frustration, he realized. She was his wife and this was his marriage. A private business. Not one he could discuss with a friend. He thought of Dorothea again as he buttoned his coat and pulled on his gloves hastily. He could not remember ever having felt more lonely than he felt at that moment.

  THERE WERE FEWER THAN two weeks left before Christmas, she told herself, gazing out of the carriage window on unfamiliar countryside made drab by a heavy gray sky and a semi-dusk despite the fact that the afternoon was no more than half gone. There was no feeling of Christmas. Usually there was. Usually she took a maid and went shopping several times, not so much because she could not have purchased everything all at once, but because she liked the atmosphere of the shops and streets. She had always particularly liked Oxford Street at Christmas.

  Perhaps it was because her father was recently dead, she thought. Undoubtedly that was the reason. And thinking about him, she felt the now-familiar aching in her chest and throat and the equally familiar sense of guilt. She had been unable to mourn for him. She had not once cried for him. She looked down at her blue velvet cloak, the one she had worn at her wedding. She had even put off her black mourning clothes when they left London. So had her husband, but she noticed that he wore a black armband. She did not. Tomorrow Papa would have been dead one month.

  Or perhaps, she thought, it was because she was recently married and yet was already very unhappily married. They were seated side by side in the carriage, yet they had exchanged scarcely a word since leaving London, only the essential civilities. She was curious about the countryside, anxious and eager for her first glimpse of Grenfell Park, wondering how much farther there was to go. And yet she could not ask him. They had scarcely spoken in the five days since their quarrel.

  She had wanted to apologize for that. Her behavior had been unpardonable. He had been quite justified in calling her a shrew. She had started it all, she had been forced to admit. Though he had looked stunned when she had told him there were twenty members of her family coming for Christmas—and indeed she had been surprised at the number when she had added it up—he had not made any objection either about the number or the character of his guests. Perhaps he would have had she given him time, but the point was that he had not before she decided to quarrel with him—her usual self-defense when she felt nervous or embarrassed.

  She had wanted to apologize also for the smashed figurine, which had been one of her favorite pieces in the house. But she had not seen him again that evening or all the next day and the day after that only briefly. And he had bowed to her with distant formality and looked at her with cold, haughty eyes and spoken in a voice to match. And she had remembered the reason she had invited so many and the reason her nerves had been so brittle in the library that evening and the evenings before it.

  He had a mistress. He did that with another woman when he had a wife. Not that she cared, of course. She would a thousand times rather he did it with someone else than with her. But even so, for five days she had felt unlovely and unattractive and lonely, although she had told herself her life was as she wished it to be. She did not want him anywhere near her bed, except that she wanted a child. And she spent five days wanting Wilfred and trying not to think about him. And five days remembering the blond and delicate Dorothea Lovestone.

  So she had hardened her heart and not apologized. And it was too late now. Too late to restore even the less than satisfactory civility to their dealings together.

  She was startled out of her black thoughts by the sight of a solitary horseman beside the road, his horse held stationary while he looked toward the approaching carriage. A highwayman, she thought, and was about to turn to her husband to give the alarm. But the rider turned his horse’s head and galloped off ahead of them. He must have been merely uncertain of his direction, she thought.

  How much farther?

  “We will be at the village in a few minutes’ time,” her husband said suddenly, as if he had read her thoughts, “and at the house ten minutes after that.”

  It was the most he had said all at once since their journey began. Perhaps in the last week. She did not turn her eyes away from the window.

  “We will be here for the next year,” he said. “This is the place and these are the people with whom you will grow familiar, my lady. I believe it would be as well for us to forget about the past week, to put it behind us. Since we must endure each other’s company, we might as well do it with a measure of civility.”

  She swallowed. He was holding out an olive branch again.

  “And next week we will have guests to entertain,” he said. “Twenty-four of them, to be exact. It would be churlish of us to be so at odds with each other that we cannot give them a happy Christmas. Do you not agree?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Very well, then,” he said. There was a short silence. “I put an end to my liaison with Alice Freeman a few days before you spoke to me about her. I beg your pardon for not having done so before our marriage.”

  She felt only humiliation. When she had spoken so shrewishly, he had already finished with his mistress. And he had begged her pardon. She wanted to beg his for having broken their agreement, for having given them both a week of silence and unpleasantness. She searched around in her head for suitable words.

  But her attention was distracted. Bells? Even over the noise of the carriage and horses, she could hear bells pealing.

  “Oh, Lord,” her husband said, “I was afraid of this.”

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  “If you have any smiles in you, my lady,” he said, “you had better don them now. We are about to be given a traditional country welcome.”

  “What?” She stared at him blankly.

  “The Earl of Falloden is arriving home with his new bride,” he said. “We must be greeted accordingly. I wonder how they knew we were approaching.”

  The horseman, Eleanor thought. And she felt her heart thumping as the carriage entered a village street and she saw that every window and door was hung with white bows and every inhabitant seemed to be out on the street, some of them waving handkerchiefs, all of them smiling broadly.

  “Smile!” her husband commanded. “And raise your hand in greeting.”

  Eleanor obeyed. And for the first time had some realization of how her marriage was to change her life, o
f what it meant to be a countess.

  The carriage drew to a halt outside the village inn and a clerical gentleman was bowing to her as her husband handed her out and a lady was curtsying at his side. The Reverend Jeremiah Blodell was honored to make the acquaintance of her ladyship, the Countess of Falloden, and he begged the honor of presenting his good wife, Mrs. Blodell. Eleanor checked her first impulse, which was to reach out her right hand, and inclined her head instead, smiling at the vicar and his wife.

  And then her husband extended his arm and led her through the lobby of the inn, where two maids in mobcaps curtsied to the ground, up the stairs to the assembly rooms, and out onto the balcony that overlooked the street. It was not a large village, but it seemed to Eleanor that every inhabitant must be in the street below. To her it looked to be a dense enough crowd. Someone called for three cheers, and the crowd complied with enthusiasm.

  When they quieted down, her husband took her by the hand and presented her to the crowd as his bride and the new Countess of Falloden. After the cheer that greeted his announcement and his brief words of thanks for the warm welcome home, the Reverend Blodell delivered a lengthy speech, which Eleanor was too agitated to listen to. It was succeeded by more cheering. She raised her hand in one brief wave, and someone in the crowd whistled.

  The two maids in mobcaps and two menservants were carrying trays of champagne and cakes into the assembly rooms when they left the balcony and came back inside. And the village’s leading citizens and some of the more prosperous tenant farmers were coming upstairs.

  For the next ten minutes she clung to her husband’s arm as he presented her to what seemed like a dizzying number of people and she tried desperately to store names and their matching faces in her memory. It was a skill her father had always impressed upon her. In business, he had said, it was a wise practice to remember the name even of someone one had met once ten years before. It made a good impression. It suggested to people that one cared for more than just deals and money.