A Very Romantic Christmas

by Lorraine Bartlett

  She nibbled at the toast on her plate, watching him with open curiosity. “You seem tired, my lord.”

  “I did not sleep well.” Not much of a lie, considering he had not slept at all.

  “I slept like a babe.” She smiled. And then she launched her assault. “Who was that woman?”

  Woman? His foggy brain grasped for meaning in her question. “Lady Dilys?”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Not your make believe ghost--who you will be happy to know left me in peace last night.”

  “Perhaps she took pity on you your first night as my guest.” He would not mention the dark smudges under her eyes. Were they caused by fear of Lady Dilys, or had she lain awake last night to plot her campaign against him this morning? “She’s said to have a soft heart for women whose husbands have abandoned them.”

  She stared at him unblinkingly. “Who was she?”

  “I believe she was a lady who died in childbirth many centuries ago.”

  “Not Lady Dilys.” She poked her fork into a bit of egg with repressed violence. “The woman yesterday. The one who appeared in the hall right after I arrived.” Her voice and gaze were both sharp with curiosity and another emotion he could not identify. “The woman you gestured away before I could get her name.”

  “She is no one important,” he lied, though Bridget would have spitted him to hear herself dismissed so blithely.

  His wife took a sip of her tea as if she were as calm as a glassy sea. But he was not fool enough to be blind to the tension beneath the surface. “To you, or to me?” She challenged him, her eyebrow cocked arrogantly.

  “To you, of course. Are you certain you slept well?” He could sense that she was in a new, more dangerous mood this morning. He wondered if Lady Dilys had plagued her sleep, despite what she had said. If so, he refused to feel guilty. He had not asked her to come. He had not wanted her to come.

  “I confess I slept well enough, although I did awaken once or twice to some very odd noises. Have you another ghost besides the quiet Lady Dilys?”

  Had she heard them last night? He thought he’d put her far enough away that she would hear nothing except the creaks and groans of an old run-down abbey. “Ghosts. Lady Dilys is just one of many, I assure you.”

  For a moment he thought she might challenge his statement. Instead, she shrugged and lifted a wrapped bundle to the table. “Perhaps so.”

  He tensed, wondering if she had brought her pistols and was about to challenge him to duel. “I should have assured you that none of our resident ghosts are dangerous. You should not have let the noises disturb your sleep.”

  “I did not. I had other things on my mind. I spent the night going over these.” She bent to the floor and lifted an armful of papers with a small gasp of effort. Before he could rise to help her, she had dumped a handful of well read letters onto the expanse of tabletop between them. His letters to her.

  “I believe these are yours, my lady, not mine.” He wondered, if he touched them, if they would burst into flame from the heat of his shame.

  Her indignation broke through her attempt to remain cool and collected. A flush crept up her cheeks. “If you don’t want me, then I certainly don’t want these…these lies, pretty though they might have been.”

  “They weren’t lies,” he lied.

  She wasn’t listening to him. She stood, her stare worse than a pistol ball in the chest, as she leaned across the table until he could feel the warmth of the anger radiating from her. “Is she the reason?”

  “She?” He was puzzled for a moment until he realized what emotion she was displaying. Jealousy. He shouldn’t have been pleased, but he was.

  “Bridget. Your mistress. Or is she the woman you want to take my place? Is she the reason you no longer have the desire to write your lies and placate me with letters?”

  “She is my sister.” He answered her grudgingly, despite his conviction that he owed her no explanation. There wasn’t a soul in the household who wouldn’t cheerfully set her straight if she were to ask them.

  “Oh.” She straightened up, confounded. He thought there might even have been a fleeting disappointment before her expression smoothed to the bland indifference she used to hide her true feelings. As she moved away from him, his breath eased.

  “I have no mistress. I am not the one who is accused of adultery, Kate. I have heard it said, though, that those with sins on their conscience, often see sin in others.” There, now he had laid the matter on the table again.

  She gasped in outrage so great she seemed unable to speak. But she would speak soon enough, he knew. She would protest her innocence, again. And he would refuse to believe her. How long would they have to dance this jig before she grew tired and accepted the divorce? He understood why Niall had been so angry with him last night.

  “I have not had a lover. Not your cousin. Not any man.” There was fierce challenge in her eyes. And hurt. Hurt he had caused. Hurt he wished he could take her in his arms and soothe away. What was wrong with him? He knew a divorce was best. For both of them.

  “Gossip says otherwise.” Gossip he had been careful to have Niall spread, but he did not have to tell her that.

  She paled. “Who would tell such lies? Don’t they know it will ruin me? How can you believe them?” Her eyes gazed downward to the letters and she lifted one, smoothed it open. “Do you know that today is the fifth anniversary of our wedding?”

  “I had not remembered,” he lied. “But you are correct. We were married on Twelfth Night.” Which was why he preferred to celebrate the occasion by getting well and truly drunk. He would have started already, if he did not have to deal with her.

  “I have waited a long time for you, Sean.” She spoke quickly, as if hoping that at least some of her words would strike him and change his course. “I do not deserve to be discarded like this.”

  “Could you not believe that I am giving you a chance to be with the man you love, rather than the rather useless husband you have?”

  “The man I love? Niall? Have you spoken to your cousin? The gossip is a vicious lie. I promise you that. Surely you can believe your own cousin if you choose not to believe me.” Her gaze sharpened on him. “Unless you have some other cause to divorce me.”

  “I am not the one who must believe you, Kate. English society can be vicious, we both know that.” He did not want to think of her at the mercy of those who had nothing better to do than gossip and find excuse to cut someone. “I have my already dubious reputation to guard. You would not expect me to accept the title of Lord Cuckold, now would you?”

  Her lips twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. “And what about my reputation?”

  He had an answer prepared for that question, thank goodness. “The duke will protect you, I am certain. Has he not done so for your sisters?”

  “My sisters all have loving husbands.” She laughed bitterly. “There is no protection for a woman who is divorced by her husband.”

  “You will find another husband soon enough. Perhaps Niall, if he is not too cowardly.” He had once thought it an acceptable solution, but now that she was here, in his home, the scent of roses clinging to her, he would have called the words back if he could.

  She laughed gutturally, as if she might choke on the suggestion itself. “I have no desire to marry another McCarthy man. Not after the first has proved so disappointing.”

  He knew she was trying to hurt him. Though he could not blame her, he would neither allow her to see that she had. “If my cousin is not to your taste, then you are free to choose another.”

  She paced to the window and looked out, though there was nothing to see as the night’s fog had not yet cleared. “I will not consent to this divorce.”

  “I do not need your consent.” The words were harsh, but true.

  She bent her head, leaning her forehead against the glass as if to cool her brow. “Your charges are false.”

  “So you say.” He didn’t know whether it wiser to prete
nd to disbelieve her than to believe her.

  She turned to face him, and there was not a shred of resignation in her stance. “I will fight you on this, I promise.”

  He thought briefly of Maeve, who had made her own laws for a time. Fortunately for him, the only laws he had to consider were the English ones. This time, they were on his side. “You have no standing.”

  “So the duke has told me.” The lift of her chin suggested she still hoped to find some way to circumvent the law.

  “Then you understand there is nothing you can do but accept the inevitable?” He was thankful, for a moment, that he had not been the first to explain to her that a wife had no party to her husband’s suit to divorce her, that it was entirely between the husband and the lover.

  She smiled, and the flash of triumph in that smile sent a chill up his spine. “I can be called to give evidence.”

  Give evidence? Parade herself in front of stern, unbending men to tearfully plead her innocence? Was she truly that foolishly stubborn? He tried not to show how her threat disturbed him. His voice was even as he replied, “That is not usually done.”

  She nodded and he dared to hope that she had put aside the idea. Until she said, “Because there is no evidence a wife can usually provide to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt she has not committed adultery. I, however, can.”

  He saw the conviction in her eyes and realized she meant what she said. “There is no proof--”

  “But there is,” she interrupted him with a sharp wave of her hand. “I can prove that I’ve been with no man at all.”

  He should not have been glad to hear it. Niall had not done the job properly if he had not bedded her. After all, she was as cunning and strong willed as Maeve, and he had told his cousin so. But he was fiercely glad that she had not fallen prey to Niall’s charms. Despite the problems that caused him.

  “How can anyone know such a thing for sure?”

  She blushed, right down into the bodice of her gown, so that he didn’t doubt her word for a moment when she said fiercely, “A doctor will know. I am a virgin. And I will prove it to the length and breadth of England—and Ireland--if you persist in this action of divorce.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He had forgotten her temper. Had underestimated her desire to right the wrong he was doing to her. But he did not apologize. She would not dare put herself on public show in such a way. Even if her common sense had truly deserted her, the duke would not let her. “That would be humiliating for you.”

  “And for you, as well. What man does not bed his own wife for five years? It is well enough known that we married hastily because you were found in my bed--if I am proved a virgin, what will the gossips say about you? That you are a eunuch? Lord Eunuch. Isn’t that much worse than Lord Cuckold?”

  “Perhaps.” Without doubt. He would be a laughingstock. And he would lose his suit for divorce. Still, there was no way the duke would allow her to expose herself in such a way. He laughed, as if her threat meant nothing. “But I am Irish, after all, what Englishman expects me to do the traditional?”

  She gave an infuriated gasp of outrage and then collected herself and smiled, as if she understood he was only displaying bravado now to intimidate her into backing down. “It will be enough to stop your action.”

  “It will, unless you are lying.”

  “I am not.” She dismissed his caution easily.

  He stood. What could he say to end this between them here and now? To send her packing, glad to divorce him. “Then you should not have come here.”

  “What do you mean?” A dawning apprehension touched her eyes as he crossed the room to stand close enough to touch her. But he did not. He would not. It would be enough to threaten her. It had to be.

  “You are my wife, Kate, whether I chose to make love to you or not.”

  “But you chose not to, and you must live with that.”

  “Nevertheless, you are my wife. Your body is mine. Nothing could stop me from taking you now. Here. And then what would your threats be but empty air?” He hadn’t intended to, but her closeness made reason disappear and he pulled her to him, demonstrating the truth of his words. “Your evidence gone all too easily.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” She did not back away from him and he realized that she intended to challenge him to the limit.

  He shook his head and touched her cheek lightly. “Katie, you are a foolish woman. I would not have guessed.”

  “I am indeed.” Though she winced at his words, she did not flinch away from his touch. Instead she laid her face against his chest. “Who but a fool would have believed the lies in your letters?”

  He sighed, resisting the urge to kiss her and make good his idle threat. “What do you want?”

  “What?”

  “I can see that I’ve wounded you with this action, but I am determined to divorce you. I made a mistake marrying you and it is time to correct it.”

  “Why are you so certain it was a mistake?” She pulled away from him and gazed up into his face as if she might divine the truth there.

  “Trust me. I know it.” He looked away, through the window and into the fog that had still not cleared off. He glanced back to see her bowed head “Tell me what I can offer you that might ease your pain, and allow you to accept that I do not wish to be your husband any longer.”

  “Did you ever?”

  “Would I have climbed through your window and risked life and limb if I did not?”

  “Even then you did nothing more than kiss me.” She would not be appeased. “Did you restrain yourself because you loved me? Or because you didn’t?”

  “Would it ease your pain for me to say yes or no?” Sensing her vulnerability, he leaned down and kissed her gently, though he knew his words would hurt. “Would it soothe your bruised pride for me to make up for what you missed on our wedding night? I will if you like. It is not necessary for a man to love a woman to bed her, as I’m certain you know.”

  She stared at him without answering for a moment and his heart beat faster. He wasn’t certain whether he wanted her to say yes or no. No, that was a lie. He wanted her to say yes, though he knew it wasn’t at all wise.

  Then, abruptly, she pulled away from him and gathered all the letters on the table into her arms. He thought she would toss them into the fire, but instead she threw them, so that they flew at him, pelting him lightly before they fell to the floor. “You are not the man who wrote these letters. You cannot be.”

  He picked up one sheet and scanned it quickly. “It is my handwriting, there can be no doubt.”

  She glared at him coldly. “Then you obviously wrote them to the wrong person, my lord. Please allow me to return them to you so that you can save yourself the effort of thinking of new lies to tell your next wife.”

  “I take it, then, that you will no longer object to the divorce?”

  She glared at him. “I cannot wait to be done with you.”

  He nodded, ignoring the pain of her words. It was what he had wanted, he deserved the pain. Deserved the hollow, unsatisfied feeling within his chest. “I’ll call a carriage to take you back, then.”

  She seemed shocked that the decision had been made so quickly and her visit was truly at an end for a moment. And then she nodded and snapped, “Please see that it is better sprung than the one that brought me to this hellish place.”

  He didn’t dare show his triumph for fear she would change her mind just to spite him. He tried not to sound eager when he called for the carriage. But the servant who answered his bellow shook his head. “The fog is thick as a good cream soup, my lord. No one will be going anywhere today.”

  “Fog?” They spoke in unison, equally appalled at the idea of Kate staying another night in the abbey. But a quick glance out the window proved the servant’s words true. The fog was thick, and it did not show any promise of burning off quickly.

  Sean sighed. “It seems you will celebrate Twelfth Night with us, my lady. I hope you will not look down upon our
poor celebration, in comparison to the one your family must even now be holding.”

  He could see that she wished to refuse. For a moment, he was tempted to allow her to spend her Twelfth Night with Lady Dilys. But he relented. Her family had shared their holiday with him. It would be churlish to make her spent Twelfth Night alone. “The parlor is much warmer, and brighter than your room. Do not let your fear of my ill manners to drive you from the meager hospitality I have to offer.”

  “I would like the chance to know your sister,” she said defiantly.

  “No doubt she wishes the same.” He would have to tell Bridget to behave. But he had no true hope that she would. She was much too much like her older brother.

  “I have but one favor to ask of you.”

  “A favor—“

  He held up his hand to halt her protest. “My uncle and my sister do not know of the circumstances of the divorce. Could you please not mention it today?”

  Her expression moved from outrage to mutinous denial in a flash. “So you don’t wish them to know you are willing to lie and ruin my reputation for your own convenience?”

  He appealed to her compassion, since he couldn’t argue her point. “Connor is an old man and Bridget a young girl. Don’t they deserve to enjoy their last day of Christmas without dealing with our troubles?”

  To his relief, her shoulders slumped briefly. “Very well. I shall mention nothing of it—” She lifted her face to stare at him. “But you shall owe me a favor, then.”

  A favor. What could she ask of him? That he not ruin her reputation? The duke would see to that negotiation, she had no doubt. Sean would get his divorce and the duke would see her reputation suffered relatively little damage.

  Part of her even understood how he had come to turn his back on her. If he did not wish to take his seat in Parliament, he doubtless thought her unable to be a good wife to him. What good could her influence do to keep this cold abbey warm?

  Kate thought of refusing to join their celebration. Of insisting on a tray in her room. But the scents of cider and cinnamon called to her and she soon found herself down in the drafty sitting room with Sean, his sister, his cousin and his uncle.