Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  He had come to Williston Hall half-determined to do just that. And she was an extremely pretty and amiable young lady. Such an outcome of the Christmas holiday was half-expected by others in the room too, he believed.

  “It has been such a wonderful day,” she said, looking up at him with shining blue eyes, a blush of color high on her cheekbones. “I have never been part of such a party at Christmas before, my lord. There is so much to do at every moment of the day.”

  “It has been our pleasure to have you join our family,” he said, smiling down at her.

  Good God, he was thinking, trying to focus both his mind and his eyes on the young girl in his arms, if someone wished to paint a portrait of the typical, quintessential spinster, he could hardly do better than paint Emma as she was now. That prudish virginal dress. That ridiculous cap. That murder done to thick, youthful hair.

  He wanted to tear the dress off her, hurl the cap into the fire, drag the pins from her hair. He wanted to shake her until her neck snapped. He wanted to do violence to her.

  “And it is not to end soon,” Roberta was saying, her face bright with youth and vitality and Christmas. “Viscount Treadwell has invited my sister and brother-in-law—and me of course—to spend the New Year in Norfolk. He has sent off an invitation to Mama and Papa, as well.”

  “Then all of London must suffer from your absence for even longer than expected?” he said.

  She laughed, a light, infectious sound. “I am sure no one will miss me,” she said. “My brother-in-law Adrian says that there must be some significance to the fact that Mama and Papa are being invited too, but I think that is just silly. I am no one of any great importance, after all.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I seem to recall that you are the young lady who took the ton by storm during your first Season last spring.”

  She laughed again. Lord Radbrook was careful to avoid the center of the room for the remainder of the set.

  He danced with his mother, with Maria Shelton, with several of the other ladies. And he felt irritation build to anger and anger to fury as Emma continued to sit quietly in the shadows, her hands folded primly in her lap, making herself one with his aunt and her own.

  He felt fit to do murder as he laughed at something one of his partners said while he led her back to her chair at the end of a dance.

  Emma had rejected offers to dance with Lord Hodges and Colonel Porchester. She had even refused her brother, though he had been more insistent and openly derisive of her cap.

  “I would have given you half a dozen for Christmas if I had known you were so partial to the things,” he had said. “You forgot to bring your knitting downstairs, Emma.”

  She had pulled a face at him, and he had gone away eventually.

  Sophia had just announced a waltz. There had been several. It seemed to be a favorite dance of most of the younger people and of some of the older onces too. Emma had danced it once at a local assembly and had liked it, though the general opinion had been that it was fast and a little vulgar and best left to those people who liked to frequent London, which always encouraged all that was fast and vulgar.

  “Ma’am?” A lace-covered hand was held out for hers. “Will you dance?”

  “No.” She looked up, startled, and felt her face grow hot. She had thought that he would stay as far away from her as possible for what remained of her stay at Williston Hall. “Thank you, but I do not dance.”

  “Do not or will not?” he asked. His hand was still outstretched. His voice was cold, abrupt. She did not see what his expression was. She found herself unable to lift her eyes beyond his neckcloth.

  “Both,” she said.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “you will make an exception on this one occasion. Come and waltz with me.”

  She could not believe his breach of good manners. Both her aunt and his were interested spectators, she was aware. Yet there was something in his voice and in the tension of his body that suggested to her that even another refusal would not daunt him. He might just create a scene if she refused yet again.

  She got to her feet.

  Sophia was already playing. Couples were already dancing. She raised one wooden arm to his shoulder. He took her other hand in his. She realized that her own was cold only when she felt the warmth of his.

  “Have you waltzed before?” he asked.

  “Once,” she said.

  They danced in silence. She had not realized on that previous occasion just how intimate a dance it was. All attention was focused inward, within the circle of their arms. Had she been a little taller, perhaps she could have looked over his shoulder, watched the other dancers, felt less held by a certain spell, a certain tension.

  “Don’t worry,” he said quietly after a couple of minutes, when she had caught the rhythm of the dance and moved smoothly to his lead. His voice was cold again. “I shall keep us well away from the center of the room.”

  She did not answer him. The diamond pin nestled in the folds of his neckcloth caught the light of the candles in whichever direction they turned. She fixed her eyes on its brightly changing rainbow bursts.

  He swore softly suddenly, and she looked up, startled, into his eyes. They were as hard as ice. His jaw was tight, his face pale.

  “You are coming with me,” he said, dancing her toward the doors that led into the hallway. “We are going to have this out. Don’t make a scene, Emma.”

  She had no intention of doing any such thing. But she knew that he was on the verge of doing so, and would do it, too, if she made one false move. She did not resist when he opened one of the doors and ushered her out, one hand at the small of her back. He closed the door behind them.

  “The library,” he said curtly. “There will be a fire in there. And candles too, probably.”

  It felt a little like reliving the past, stepping inside the library again, as they had the evening before, waiting for him to rip up at her. She walked halfway across the room and turned calmly to face him. He stood with his back against the door, his hands behind him, still on the handles. His eyes passed slowly over her from head to foot.

  “I want to tear it off your back,” he said viciously while her eyes widened in surprise and something like fear. “And that.” He pointed an accusing finger at her head. “I want to . . .” He drew in a sharp breath and strode toward her. “And I am going to do it, too.”

  He snatched the cap from her head, dislodging a couple of pins as he did so, and strode to the fire with it. Emma turned to watch him with shocked eyes as he hesitated, looked back to her, and dropped her best lace cap into the flames.

  “Are you cold to the very core?” he asked. “Is there no warmth in you at all?”

  She said nothing. She determinedly blinked back the tears that would have blurred her vision.

  “What is it about me?” he asked her through his teeth. “What is wrong with me, Emma?”

  She swallowed.

  “I always thought myself eligible,” he said. “I still do. Even apart from the title and the fortune and the expectations and all the other trappings of wealth and privilege, I would have thought myself eligible. I have always known I am no Adonis, but then, I am no gargoyle either. I have some education, some conversation, some breeding. What makes me so unacceptable, then? Or is it not me? Is it you? Are you cold to the very heart?”

  “Edwin,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her, “don’t do this. Please don’t. There is nothing wrong with you. And I am human.”

  “What, then?” he said. “Why do you prefer this to me?” He gestured at her lavender frock.

  She shook her head. “It is what I am,” she said. “I dress to suit my station in life.”

  “God!” He whirled suddenly to pound one fist against the mantel. He stayed facing away from her, both hands gripping the high mantel, his eyes gazing down into the fire. “I was a fool. A total fool. I made myself an abject, ridiculous figure, pleading with you, crying over you, writing those letters. How cou
ld you have been cold enough to ignore them so totally, Emma? The whole fragile and broken heart of a young man was in them, ridiculous as they were.”

  “My father destroyed them,” she said. “I never saw them.”

  He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, his expression cynical. “Would it have made a difference if you had?” he asked.

  “I loved you,” she said, her voice dreary. And then, more impassioned, “I loved you, Edwin! If only I had loved you less, I think perhaps I would have fought against them and married you.”

  He pushed himself away from the mantel and turned to look at her fully. “What sort of nonsense is that?” he asked.

  “I had never been from home,” she said. “I had never met any man but the ones I had grown up with. I fell in love with you so totally, Edwin, that I was terrified by the power of my own emotions, terrified by what you did to my feelings and to my . . . to my body. I wanted you and what you had to offer more than I wanted anything else in life. I also wanted the safety and familiarity of home. I was afraid of my own awakened womanhood.”

  He stared at her, his expression stony.

  “And then they advised me against it,” she said. “Indeed, my father said that he would not give his consent. He said it was wrong, that I was not ready, that it would be ungrateful and unfilial of me to leave my mother so soon and when she was in such delicate health. He said so many things that bewildered me. So many things that I hated to hear and yet that strangely comforted me. I could crawl back into the life I knew.”

  “For the rest of your life,” he said, his voice a sneer. His eyes raked over her again.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I have regretted my decision every day since and will regret it every day for the rest of my life.”

  He laughed without amusement. “Then why have you not married?” he asked. “You are not going to tell me that you have not had chances, Emma.”

  “But none of them was you,” she said softly.

  He laughed again and stared broodingly at her.

  “I am the love of your life, I suppose,” he said. “You have carried me in your heart for nine years and will continue to do so to the grave.”

  “Yes.”

  “Strange,” he said, the sneer back on his lips. “Do you pull away in panic and revulsion from the love of your life when he tries to kiss you, Emma?”

  She swallowed. “Edwin,” she said, “I was eighteen. It was nine years ago. You were the first man to kiss me. And the last. You have changed. You did not kiss me like that nine years ago.” She flushed. “I am a spinster of almost thirty years. You frightened me. As you did when I was eighteen, I suppose, but this time in a purely physical way.”

  He stared at her.

  “I was frightened,” she said again lamely.

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “Come here,” he said at last.

  “Why?” She was clasping her hands very tightly to stop their trembling.

  He stretched out a hand toward her. “Let me see if I can do it without frightening you,” he said. “Come to me, Emma. Please?”

  She took a couple of hesitant steps toward him and then walked steadily into his arms until they closed about her and her face was buried against the velvet of his coat.

  “There has only ever been you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? I meant everything I said to you during those days, and time has not changed anything. I loved you for a month, went through hell for you for a year, hated you for eight, and have been through hell again for two days. But there was only ever you. You know that, Emma, don’t you?”

  She swallowed against the lump in her throat.

  “I was fond of Marianne,” he said. “I will not dishonor her memory or lie by denying that it was so. She was sweet and kind and I was fond of her. But there has really only ever been you.” His arms tightened about her. “Emma, what is it to be? Another year of agony before somehow I gather myself together again to live on? Or is there to be the happiness that lasted for only a month the first time?”

  She drew her head back from his coat front and raised her face to look into his eyes.

  “Edwin,” she said, “so much time has gone by. So much time has been lost. I am no longer young.”

  He smiled. “Nine years ago I was five years older than you,” he said. “How old are you now?”

  “Seven-and-twenty,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said, “what a strange coincidence. I am two-and-thirty, still five years older than you.” The smile faded from all but his eyes. “Do you still love me enough to marry me?”

  She bit her lip. “You cannot possibly want me, Edwin,” she said. “It is just the memory of me that you want. I am an old maid.”

  “You have been doing a fair imitation of one,” he admitted. “This ghastly dress is a masterpiece of disguise—at least it was until I touched you. But your acting skills have not been flawless. Who was it that came rushing and shrieking down a hillside on a sled this afternoon and almost stopped my heart with fear that she would overturn into a snowbank?”

  She smiled unwillingly at him.

  He lowered his head and kissed her slowly and gently, with closed lips.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. And when she closed her eyes and the silence stretched, “Yes, I will.” She opened her eyes again. “Will you do it as you did it out at the lake earlier, Edwin?”

  “Like this?” he asked, lowering his head, opening his mouth over hers, and brushing his tongue across her lips.

  She gulped. “Yes, like that.” she said, her voice breathless.

  He grinned at her. “Very well,” he said, “but only because you are my betrothed, Emma. I am glad I had the foresight to turn the key in the lock when we came in here. This is going to get quite unseemly, I warn you.”

  “I want to learn,” she said.

  “Oh, you will,” he said. “That I promise you, my love. You will surely learn. Now, open your mouth for me.”

  She looked up at him in surprise and obeyed as his mouth approached hers again.

  And then she was clinging to his lapels and flinging her arms up about his neck for better support as his head angled against hers and their open mouths met and his tongue thrust all the way into her mouth. Long before he finally lifted his head away in order to drop soft kisses on her nose and cheeks and eyelids, she had pressed her body to his from bosom to knees to save herself from sliding to the ground. At some unspecified moment she seemed to have lost control of the parts of her legs below the knees.

  “Lesson number one,” he murmured. “The rest come after the banns have been read and the marriage ceremony performed. Before the end of January.”

  “So long?” she said. “How many lessons are there?”

  “Five thousand, three hundred, and fifty-seven,” he said, trailing kisses down over her chin and along her neck to the base of her throat. “Give or take half a dozen.”

  “Oh,” she said. “And a month to wait for the second? With a warm and empty room, Edwin, and a locked door?”

  “Lesson two may frighten you again,” he said, returning his lips to hers and talking against them. His eyes were open, watching her. “It involves this.” His hands were at her breasts, cupping them through the fabric of her dress. His thumbs found her nipples and brushed over them until she shivered.

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes closed, her head thrown back. “Edwin?”

  “And then,” he murmured against her throat, “lesson three involves the removal of the top half of your dress for the same process. But you definitely would not want to proceed to lesson three tonight, would you? It would be very improper.”

  “Improper,” she said, dazed. “What is that?”

  “Of course,” he said, finding the buttons at the back of her dress, “it is Christmas, Emma, and people do all sorts of improper things at Christmas, like kissing each other in the middle of crowded drawing rooms just because th
ere happens to be a sprig of mistletoe above their heads.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is Christmas.”

  “And it is a hideous dress,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mm,” he said before raising his head and hers with one hand behind it and kissing her open-mouthed again, “and you look so very much lovelier and feel whole universes more feminine without it, Emma.”

  “Do I?” she said while she still could. Her voice became a moan. “Edwin!”

  All the other children had gone to bed long ago and fallen asleep long ago. Anna’s nurse had come to her twice, once offering to fetch her a drink and bringing her doll and tucking it in beside her when she shook her head, and once asking if she wanted her papa sent for.

  Anna continued to stare upward as she shook her head.

  “Do you want the lady, then, lovey?” her nurse asked softly so as not to waken Harriet and Julie. “Miss Milford? Do you want her to come and say good night to you? Would you sleep then?”

  Anna shook her head more slowly.

  But she hoped that her nurse would send for one of them anyway. She felt so very alone and so very sad, though she felt guilty for the sadness, since her Christmas wish had been granted in such a wonderful way and Christmas Day had been the very best one ever.

  She was glad when she heard their voices in the nursery, talking to her nurse. Both of them. They had both come. She was glad. She wanted to hug her mama—Miss Milford—one more time before Christmas was over. She did not think Christmas could be over yet. Surely it was not quite midnight.

  And then they came into the bedchamber and along to the side of her bed. Papa’s arm was about Mama’s waist, she saw immediately. And when she looked up into her mama’s face, she held her eyes there in wonder and hope.

  There was something. Her mama’s hair was untidy, as if it had just been grabbed and pinned back without benefit of brush or mirror, and her lips looked red and swollen, as if she had toothache, though not quite like that either. And her eyes—oh, there was something about her eyes.

  “Anna?” she said. “You can’t sleep?”

  “What is it, sweetheart?” Papa asked. “Has the day been too exciting for you?”