The Christmas Carrolls

by Barbara Metzger

  “Oh, Bess, no—”

  “Yes, and I have regretted it my whole life, especially knowing how you feel about your cousin’s child. But there is no choice.”

  “What if there is a choice, Bess? What if we have a chance to bring love and laughter back into this great rambling barn of a place that’s so empty without the girls? What if I found a way to safeguard everything I hold dear?” He rocked her close to him, telling her without words that she was the dearest.

  “What, would you conjure a different successor out of thin air?”

  “No, out of Sussex.” Bess stiffened and would have moved out of the earl’s arms altogether, but he wouldn’t let her. “No, this time you have to hear me out, Bess. There is a boy, my love, you know there is. If I were to legally adopt him, give him my name...”

  “What, you expect me to welcome your bast—your by-blow, your—”

  “Son.” He stated it quietly but firmly.

  “Your son,” Bess repeated. “Your illegitimate son. You want me to bring him into our home, where everyone would know how you betrayed me? That’s why you wanted the girls out of the house so fast, wasn’t it? So they couldn’t criticize their idol, their dear papa. That’s why you pushed Evan at Hollice, so she’d take Rendell, and why you left Meredyth alone with that soldier until the inevitable happened. You wanted them gone,” she angrily accused, “so you could bring your baseborn child here without their censure.”

  Lord Carroll could not deny her charges. “I thought you would accept the boy more readily without the girls’ reputations to think of, and I would not bring unwanted gossip to their comeouts.”

  “No,” she countered bitterly, “you’d only bring scandal into my own parlor. Well, you are wrong, sir. I shall not accept another woman’s child. Oliver would only challenge you through the courts, anyway, creating more of a bumblebroth.”

  “Oliver won’t be a problem. He knows I can have him up on charges in an instant. An English lord can beat his wife or renege on his tailor’s bills. He cannot cheat at cards. Besides, I have all those extra titles floating around. I’ll make him a viscount or something and offer him a generous allowance. That should satisfy him and that harpy he married. Listen, Bess, I have checked with my solicitors. It’s been done. If I—if we—adopt the boy, the law would have to recognize his right. We could give out that he was my brother Jack’s grandson, so there’d be less talk.”

  “Your brother died without issue. Everyone knows that.”

  “No, they only know that he didn’t have an English wife and children. Besides, I am an earl. Do you think anyone is going to disagree to my face if I say the boy is a product of Jack’s short, secret French marriage? No one will, especially not with Rendell to guard his finances and Comfort to see him established in society and Max Grey to oversee his properties. You’d be his guardian with them, to guide him, to raise him into the man I’d want. Winterpark needs you here forever. And I need you with me on this.”

  “What of my needs, my home and family, my husband’s loyalty?”

  “You’ve got it, dash it. One night out of twenty-one years, Bess, that’s all it was.”

  That’s all? It was a stake through her heart. Lady Carroll stood. “You know, perhaps a jaunt to Austria might be pleasant. You’re right, I’ve been pining over the girls too much.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Bess,” the earl begged, but his Bess was already on the other side of a very closed door.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The food was too rich in Vienna, the social rounds were too hectic, and Bess was too busy to spend time alone with her husband. She planned it that way. Lord Carroll knew, and he hated every minute of the trip, except when he was with one or the other of his daughters.

  Joia was already becoming a political hostess of note, and Holly had begun a literary salon. Merry was the darling of the military set, with Max a quiet, smiling presence at her side. Each was a success, but more important, each one’s marriage was a success. All three happy couples wanted to show the Carrolls the sights, entertain them in style, and introduce them to the cream of Viennese society.

  There was too much blasted cream, Lord Carroll grumbled. He was growing fat on flawn, and his gout was worse than ever. He was expected to dress up and waltz every damn night besides, like a trained pony at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Of course, he was gratified the gentlemen he’d selected for his daughters were proving so satisfactory, but now that he’d seen that for himself, the earl wanted to go home.

  Bess, on the other hand, seemed determined to take in every overcrowded party, visit every boring museum and suffocating gallery, listen to every pluck of every blasted violin string. Between times the countess shopped with the girls to round out their incomplete trousseaux and so she’d have something to wear to all the events. Not only was Lord Carroll deprived of his wife’s companionship, but he was paying handsomely for the privilege. No, he was paying for his past sins, and well he knew it. By the time they finally retired at night, Bess was too exhausted to talk, of course.

  His dear wife was trying to avoid his presence, Bradford believed, so that he couldn’t press her about the succession, as if, by ignoring the issue, she could make it disappear. Instead, with every ball and breakfast, Carroll was more convinced that he was too old for all this claptrap, that he should get his house in order before it was too late.

  So he went looking for Oliver.

  His hapless heir wasn’t in attendance at any of the court functions, nor any of the sporting events, coffeehouses, or gambling establishments. None of the girls had seen their cousin or his wife, either. Lord Carroll was able to track them down finally, but only through Joia’s husband’s contacts at the Consulate. Sons-in-law were handy for something, even if they couldn’t purchase their own wives’ bride clothes.

  The address the earl had been given was in an unfashionable outskirt of Vienna, where few of the foreign tourists bothered to visit. The earl was happy he’d brushed up on his schoolboy German. He was also happy he’d thought to change his blunt into local currency. Oliver’s landlady, it appeared, was not about to permit him to visit the sapskull until Oliver’s rent was paid, plus bills for his medicine, doctor, and food.

  The once-dandified Oliver was a sorry mess, and Lord Carroll was never sorrier he was connected to the makebate after he’d heard Oliver’s tale of woe.

  Aubergine, it seemed, regretted her bargain within days of the hasty marriage. The Tulip’s shirt points were the only stiff thing about him, the earl surmised from Oliver’s garbled account. As soon as they got to Vienna and the new Mrs. Carroll realized that she was even less socially acceptable than before, that Oliver’s expectations could not gain her entry into the haut monde, she’d been more displeased. She didn’t speak the language, not even French, didn’t have a single acquaintance among the English elite, and didn’t want to waste her brass paying the inept wastrel’s gambling debts. So she’d decamped with a Polish count and Lord Carroll’s wedding gift money.

  Oliver hadn’t been able to satisfy his obligations, not even the Austrian bootmaker who, unlike the English tradesmen, actually demanded payment on delivery. The fop knew he couldn’t send to his cousin for more funds, Lord Carroll having made that clear on the occasion of signing the wedding check. So Oliver went to a moneylender. When he found that his luck hadn’t turned, that he couldn’t repay this new, higher-rate-of-interest creditor, Oliver did what he usually did: he cheated at cards. And what happened was what usually happened: he got caught. This time the flat he’d chosen to fleece was a Prussian major who called him out, then laid him out with a bullet in the shoulder. Which still didn’t get Oliver’s debts to the cents-percenter paid. That displeasured businessman sent an associate to beat Oliver to a pulp, saying he’d kill him in a fortnight if the money was not forthcoming.

  And that, Oliver concluded, was why he was hiding out in a run-down room with a lamprey for a landlady, both eyes swollen shut, half his teeth missing, and his dealing
arm in a sling. He’d take any offer his cousin was willing to make if it would get him out of this benighted country alive. An allowance, a minor title, and a plantation in Jamaica? Where should he sign his disclaimer to the succession? Oliver would endorse it without looking, with his left hand. Hell, he’d use his own blood if the landlady wouldn’t provide ink.

  Sons-in-law were deuced convenient indeed, Lord Carroll congratulated himself. Rendell’s people handled the settlement with the moneylender. Comfort’s connections made the travel arrangements, and Max’s departing army friends acted as escort to ensure Oliver got on his ship. Of course, all three of the girls’ husbands were happy to get their cousin-by-marriage, clunch-by-birth, out of the country and out of their lives. They weren’t as happy as Lord Carroll, however. Bess was ready to go home.

  Merry and Max were anxious to take up the reins of their own property. They invited the earl and countess to come along to Kent, to offer advice and suggestions toward making the farm profitable, the house livable. Merry could have managed the place with her eyes closed, but she was wise enough to let Max do the deciding. Merry was good for the lad, and his quiet calm was good for her. They didn’t need their in-laws hanging about.

  Not even Bess could think of an excuse to linger in Kent, especially not with Joia and Comfort expected back in England soon. The countess was planning to meet their arrival in London to save them the extra travel time, and stay on there until they left for Ireland. Meantime, she threw herself into a frenzy of housekeeping at Winterpark, changing the girls’ bedrooms into suites for when they came to visit with their husbands. She also supervised an addition to the village school, a total refurbishment of Saint Cecilia’s, and the construction of a new infirmary. B’gad, her husband lamented, she’d see to paving the roads next, rather than spend time with him.

  The earl and countess seldom visited in their sitting room anymore. Both found it too painful to look at the hurt in the other’s eyes. Bess felt betrayed by Bradford’s demands; Lord Carroll felt betrayed by his wife’s distrust. She wouldn’t listen to him, much less see his viewpoint. For the first time in over twenty years, there was a coldness in the air at Winterpark, a palpable feeling that each would rather be somewhere else, with someone else.

  Carroll thought he might not go to London when Bess went. She’d enjoy herself more without his crotchets and complaints. And why should he suffer the fools in Town, when he could suffer just as well in the country? It wasn’t as if Bess was going to share his bedroom there, any more than she was sharing his concerns here.

  The earl slammed his fist down on the breakfast table. No, by George, he was not going to spend what time he had left on God’s green earth breathing soot in the city. And he was not going to live every day paying for one night of insobriety. “Bess,” he shouted across the long table, “do you still love me?”

  Bartholomew cleared his throat, then he cleared the room of himself and the two footmen carrying trays to the sideboard.

  Bess couldn’t claim exhaustion or a busy schedule, so she tried a diversion. “What a lovely display you put on for the servants, my lord.”

  “I do not care one whit about the servants’ opinions. I want to know if you still love me.”

  Very much on her uppers, the countess replied, “Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you are a fool.”

  “Fine,” he countered. “I love you, too, albeit I think you are as stubborn as a jackass.”

  “Good, we’re agreed on something.” She sipped her tea.

  The earl stood and gestured at the long stretch of mahogany between them. “Will you meet me halfway, Bess? Please, my dear?”

  Since the countess had been as wretched as her lord, she nodded, knowing he didn’t merely mean the table. Carrying her cup and plate to where he was now standing midpoint, the countess took the chair opposite the earl’s.

  He waited until she was seated. “The Barlowes are leaving for America before summer.”

  “Since I neither know anyone named Barlowe nor have any interest in them, I’m sure I wish them good luck and good riddance.”

  “The Barlowes are the people who have been taking care of the boy.” The earl knew he didn’t have to mention which boy. “They have two sons and a girl of their own they want to see make their way in the New World. I can’t let the boy go.”

  “You let your daughters go.”

  “That was different, Bess. The girls were ready and I knew someone would look after them as well as I would. The boy has nobody.”

  “Bradford, we’ve been through all this. I cannot accept your natural son in my home. Send him off to school if you can’t bear the idea of his finding a new life for himself, too.”

  “He’s already in school, Bess. But what about long vacations and holidays? Is he to have no home, nowhere to go, no one to care for him at all?”

  Bess’s heart melted a little at the thought of some poor waif left behind when the other boys went home for the summer. But he wasn’t her responsibility. “Do not try to enlist my sympathy, Bradford, for it will not work. He is another woman’s child. Let her take him in.”

  Lord Carroll reached over the table and took her hand, feeling better for the simple contact. “She’s dead, my dear, from an influenza epidemic at the school where she taught. I don’t know if she ever saw the boy after his birth. I doubt it. I do swear on my life that I never saw the woman again. Agents handled everything, her lease, her expenses.”

  Lady Carroll nodded her acceptance of the earl’s avowal. He’d not lie about a thing like that. He hadn’t even lied about the first time, when she’d wished he had. “What kind of unnatural mother— No, that is none of my affair. Besides, a woman like that, no better than she ought to be, why, you cannot even be certain the child is yours.”

  The earl let go of her hand and sipped at his coffee, a smile on his face. “Do you remember Merry as a tot, how we used to tease that she was an Irish leprechaun switched in the crib for our own blue-eyed, blond-haired infant?”

  The countess’s features softened, too. “She was all red curls and big green eyes and freckles. You used to say the fairies left her on our doorstep for good luck. And she was as bright and shining as a lucky ha’penny, wasn’t she?”

  “Aye, and always smiling, even when she had no teeth. I swear she was my favorite of all the girls.”

  “You never had a favorite in your life, Bradford Carroll. You had enough love for every one of your children.”

  “And for one more, Bess. For one more.” He took a miniature out of his pocket and handed it across the table.

  Bess studied the portrait of a grinning boy, with those same red curls and green eyes. “I’d forgotten Meredyth had those oversized ears of yours, too, Bradford.” To this day, the earl wore his silver hair cut long over his ears, hair that had been the same vibrant auburn when she first met him. “I swear I thought she would never grow into them, and I was never so relieved as when short curls became all the crack.”

  “That’s not my portrait, Bess. It’s the boy’s.”

  The countess sat back in her chair. There was no question of the child’s paternity, then. Speaking of butter-stamps, the boy could have had the family’s coat of arms tattooed on his forehead and been less conspicuously a Carroll.

  “You see?” the earl asked. “People will accept him as my brother Jack’s grandson.”

  “They will never accept him, Bradford. Stop dreaming.”

  “They will if you do. If we give him our name, take him into our home, how can anyone question us? The Duke of Carlisle will sponsor him. Damn, I’ll get Rendell to whisper in Prinny’s ear. We can make it work, Bess. And he’s a fine boy, bright and well mannered. You’ll like him.”

  “What, you’ve seen him?” The countess felt betrayed all over again. The child was no longer a faceless entity existing in limbo; now he was a real boy, stealing her husband’s affection from her own children, from her.

  “I had to, to make sure he w
as healthy and not in need of anything.”

  “And what if I need you to leave this be, to let him go to America with a decent family, one he knows?”

  “Don’t make me choose, Bess, I beg of you.”

  “I am your wife, Bradford. Your legal wife who has borne you three beautiful children who bear your name. There should be no choice.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nothing was settled, yet both the earl and his countess were resolved to stop the conflict. Pain for one meant pain for the other, that was how they’d lived the last twenty-one years, and that was how they intended to keep living. The love they shared just had to be enough to see them through this muddle, too. Lord Carroll wouldn’t press Bess about taking the boy into their home, and Lady Carroll wouldn’t deny Bradford his son outside it. He hadn’t given up, and she hadn’t backed down.

  Nothing more was said, but that night they clung together like young lovers reunited after a separation, holding tightly to each other after the lovemaking, as if to keep the world from intruding between them. It would in the morning, of course, but they could pretend.

  The household was relieved that the master and mistress seemed to have reconciled their differences. Bartholemew just shook his head, seeing a temporary truce instead of a negotiated peace. He hoped the diplomats in Vienna were having better luck.

  In March Lady Carroll went to London to welcome Joia and her husband home. Lord Carroll went along, reluctant but resigned, until he realized Comfort was escort enough for the ladies, and the viscount actually enjoyed the social rounds. The elegant aristocrat had to be the finest son-in-law a man could have, the earl decided.