Christmas Nights

by Penny Jordan

  What was it about some people that made everything they said sound like either a reproach or a criticism? Lisa wondered grimly, but before she could answer she heard Mary Hanford adding, in an unfamiliar, almost arch and flattering voice, ‘Ah, Oliver, we were just talking about you.’

  ‘Really.’

  He was looking at them contemptuously, as though they were creatures from another planet—some kind of subspecies provided for his entertainment, Lisa decided resentfully as he looked from Mary to Henry and then to her.

  ‘Yes,’ Mary continued, undeterred. ‘I was just asking Lisa how she comes to know you…’

  ‘Well, I think that’s probably best left for Lisa herself to explain to you,’ he responded smoothly. ‘I should hate to embarrass her by making any unwelcome revelations…’

  Lisa glared angrily at him.

  ‘That suit looks good on you,’ he added softly.

  ‘So you’ve already said,’ she reminded him through gritted teeth, all too aware of Henry’s and his mother’s silently suspicious watchfulness at her side.

  ‘Yes,’ Oliver continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘You can always tell when a woman’s wearing an outfit bought by a man for his lover.’ As he spoke he reached out and touched her jacket-clad arm—a brief touch, nothing more, but it made the hot colour burn in Lisa’s face, and she was not at all surprised to hear Henry’s mother’s outraged indrawn breath or to see the fury in Henry’s eyes.

  This was retribution with a vengeance. This wasn’t just victory, she acknowledged helplessly; it was total annihilation.

  ‘Have you worn any of the other things yet?’ he added casually.

  ‘Lisa…’ she heard Henry demanding ominously at her side, but she couldn’t answer him. She was too mortified, too furiously angry to dare to risk saying anything whilst Oliver Davenport was still standing there listening.

  To her relief, he didn’t linger long. Aunt Elspeth’s god-daughter, the same one who had so determinedly flirted with Henry half an hour earlier, came up and very professionally broke up their quartet, insisting that Oliver had promised to get her a fresh drink.

  He was barely out of earshot before Henry was insisting, ‘I want to know what’s going on, Lisa… What was all that about your clothes…?’

  ‘I think we know exactly what’s going on, Henry,’ Lisa heard his mother answering coolly for him as she gave Lisa a look of virulent hostility edged with triumph. So much for pretending to welcome her into the family, Lisa thought tiredly.

  ‘I can see what you’re both thinking,’ she announced. ‘But you are wrong.’

  ‘Wrong? How can we be wrong when Oliver more or less announced openly that the pair of you have been lovers?’ Mary intoned.

  ‘He did not announce that we had been lovers,’ Lisa defended herself. ‘And if you would just let me explain—’

  ‘Henry, it’s almost time for supper. You know how hopeless your father is at getting people organised. I’m going to need you to help me…’

  ‘Henry, we need to talk.’ Lisa tried to override his mother, but Henry was already turning away from her and going obediently to his mother’s side.

  If they married it would always be like this, Lisa suddenly recognised on a wave of helpless anger. He would always place his mother’s needs and wants above her own, and presumably above those of their children. They would always come a very poor second best to his loyalty to his mother. Was that really what she wanted for herself… for her children?

  Lisa knew it wasn’t.

  It was as though the scales had suddenly fallen from her eyes, as though she were looking at a picture of exactly how and what her life with Henry would be—and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one little bit.

  In the handful of seconds it took her to recognise the fact, she knew irrevocably that she couldn’t marry him, but she still owed him an explanation of what had happened, and from her own point of view. For the sake of her pride and self-respect she wanted to make sure that he and his precious mother knew exactly how she had come to meet Oliver and exactly how he had manipulated them into believing his deliberately skewed view of the situation.

  Still seething with anger against Oliver, she refused Henry’s father’s offer of another drink and some supper. She would choke rather than eat any of Mary Hanford’s food, she decided angrily.

  Just the thought of the kind of life she would have had as Henry’s wife made her shudder and acknowledge that she had had a lucky escape, but knowing that did not lessen her overwhelming fury at the man who had accidently brought it about.

  How would she have been feeling right now had she been deeply in love with Henry and he with her? Instead of stalking angrily around the Hanfords’ drawing room like an angry tigress, she would probably have been upstairs in her bedroom sobbing her heart out.

  Some Christmas this was going to be.

  She had been so looking forward to being here, to being part of the family, to sharing the simple, traditional pleasures of Christmas with the man she intended to marry, and now it was all spoiled, ruined… And why? Why? Because Oliver Davenport was too arrogant, too proud… too… too devious and hateful to allow someone whom he obviously saw as way, way beneath him to get the better of him.

  Well, she didn’t care. She didn’t care what he did or what he said. He could tell the whole room, the whole house, the whole world that she had bought her clothes second-hand and that they had belonged to his cousin’s girlfriend for all she cared now. In fact, she almost wished he would. That way at least she would be vindicated. That way she could walk away from here… from Henry and his precious mother… with her head held high.

  ‘An outfit bought by a man for his lover…’ How dared he…? Oh, how dared he…? She was, she suddenly realised, almost audibly grinding her teeth. Hastily she stopped. Dental fees were notoriously, hideously expensive.

  She couldn’t leave matters as they were, she decided fiercely. She would have to say something to Oliver Davenport—even if it was to challenge him over the implications he had made.

  She got her chance ten minutes later, when she saw Oliver leaving the drawing room alone.

  Quickly, before she could change her mind, she followed him. As he heard her footsteps crossing the hallway, he stopped and turned round.

  ‘Ah, the blushing bride-to-be and her borrowed raiment,’ he commented sardonically.

  ‘I bought in good faith my second-hand raiment,’ Lisa corrected him bitingly, adding, ‘You do realise what impression you gave Henry and his mother back there, don’t you?’ she challenged him, adding scornfully before he could answer, ‘Of course you knew. You knew perfectly well what you were doing, what you were implying…’

  ‘Did I?’ he responded calmly.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Lisa responded, her anger intensifying. ‘You knew they would assume that you meant that you and I had been lovers… that you had bought my clothes—’

  ‘Surely Henry knows you far better than that?’ Oliver interrupted her smoothly. ‘After all, according to the local grapevine, the pair of you are intending to marry—’

  ‘Of course Henry knows me…’ Lisa began, and then stopped, her face flushing in angry mortification. But it was too late.

  Swift as a hawk to the lure, her tormentor responded softly, ‘Ah, I see. It’s because he knows you so well that he made the unfortunate and mistaken assumption that—’

  ‘No… He doesn’t… I don’t…’ Lisa tried to fight back gamely, but it was still too late, and infuriatingly she knew it and, even worse, so did Oliver.

  He wasn’t smirking precisely—he was far too arrogant for that, Lisa decided bitterly—but there was certainly mockery in his eyes, and if she hadn’t known better she could almost have sworn that his mouth was about to curl into a smile. But how could it? She was sure that he was incapable of doing anything so human. He was the kind of man who just didn’t know what human emotions were, she decided savagely—who had no idea what it meant to s
uffer insecurity or… or any of the things that made people like herself feel so vulnerable.

  ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’ she challenged him, changing tack, her voice shaking under the weight of her suppressed emotion. ‘I came here—’

  ‘I know why you came here,’ he interrupted her with unexpected sternness. ‘You came to be looked over as a potential wife for Mary Hanford’s precious son.

  ‘Where’s your pride?’ he demanded scornfully. ‘However, a potential bride is all you will ever be. Mary Hanford knows quite well who she wants Henry to marry, and I’m afraid it isn’t going to be you…’

  ‘Not now,’ Lisa agreed shortly. ‘Not—’

  ‘Not ever,’ Oliver told her. ‘Mary won’t allow Henry to marry any woman who she thinks might have the slightest chance of threatening her own superior position in Henry’s life. His wife will not only have to take second place to her but to covertly acknowledge and accept that fact before she’s allowed to marry him. And besides, the two of you are so obviously unsuited to one another that the whole thing’s almost a farce. You’re far too emotionally turbulent and uncontrolled for Henry… He wouldn’t have a clue how to handle you…’

  Lisa couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘You, of course, would,’ she challenged him with acid sweetness, too carried away by her anger and the heat of the moment to realise what she was doing, the challenge she was issuing him, the risks she was taking.

  Then it was too late and he was cutting the ground from beneath her feet and making a shock as icy-cold as the snow melting on the tops of the Yorkshire hills that were his home run down her spine as he told her silkily, ‘Certainly,’ and then added before she could draw breath to speak, ‘And, for openers, there are two things I most certainly would do that Henry obviously has not.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and what exactly would they be?’ Lisa demanded furiously.

  ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t have the kind of relationship with you—or with any woman who I had the slightest degree of mild affection for, never mind being on the point of contemplating marrying—which would necessitate you feeling that you had to conceal anything about yourself from me, or that you needed to impress my family and friends with borrowed plumes, with the contents of another woman’s wardrobe. And the second…’ he continued, ignoring Lisa’s quick, indrawn breath of mingled chagrin and rage.

  He paused and looked at her whilst Lisa, driven well beyond the point of no return by the whole farce of her ruined Christmas in general and his part in it in particular, prompted wildly, ‘Yes, the second is…?’

  ‘This,’ he told her softly, taking the breath from her lungs, the strength from her muscles and, along with them, the willpower from her brain as he stepped forward and took her in his arms and then bent his head and kissed her as Henry had never kissed her in all the eight months of their relationship—as no man had ever kissed her in the whole history of her admittedly modest sexual experience, she recognised dizzily as his mouth moved with unbelievable, unbeatable, unbearable sensual expertise on hers.

  Ordinary mortal men did not kiss like this. Ordinary mortal men did not behave like this. Ordinary mortal men did not have the power, did not cup one’s face with such tender mastery. They did not look deep into your eyes whilst they caressed your mouth with their own. They did not compel you, by some mastery you could not understand, to look back at them. They did not, by some unspoken command, cause you to open your mouth beneath theirs on a whispered ecstatic sigh of pure female pleasure. They did not lift their mouths from yours and look from your eyes to your half-parted lips and then back to your eyes again, their own warming in a smile of complicit understanding before starting to kiss you all over again.

  Film stars in impossibly extravagant and highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning romantic movies might mimic such behaviour. Heroes in stomach-churning, body-aching, romantically sensual novels might sweep their heroines off their feet with similar embraces. God-like creatures from Greek mythology might come down to earth and wantonly seduce frolicking nymphs with such devastating experience and sensuality, but mere mortal men…? Never!

  Lisa gave a small, blissful sigh and closed her eyes, only to open them again as she heard Henry exclaiming wrathfully, ‘Lisa… what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  Guiltily she watched him approaching as Oliver released her.

  ‘Henry, I can explain,’ she told him urgently, but he obviously didn’t intend to let her speak.

  Ignoring Oliver’s quiet voice mocking, ‘To Henry, maybe, but to Mary, never,’ she flushed defensively as his taunting comment was borne out by Henry’s furious declaration.

  ‘Mother was right about you all along. She warned me that you weren’t—’

  ‘Henry, you don’t understand.’ She managed to interrupt him, turning to appeal to Oliver, who was standing watching them in contemptuous amusement.

  ‘Tell him what really happened… Tell him…’

  ‘Do you really expect me to give you my help?’ he goaded her softly. ‘I don’t recall you being similarly sympathetic when I asked you for yours.’

  Whilst Lisa stood and stared at him in disbelief he started to walk towards the door, pausing only to tell Henry, ‘Your mother is quite right, Henry. She wouldn’t be the right wife for you at all… If I were you I should heed her advice—now, before it’s too late.’

  ‘Henry,’ Lisa began to protest, but she could see from the way that he was refusing to meet her eyes that she had lost what little chance she might have had of persuading him to listen to her.

  ‘It’s too late now for us to change our plans for Christmas,’ he told her stiffly, still avoiding looking directly at her. ‘It is, after all, Christmas Eve, and we can hardly ask you to… However, once we return to London I feel that it would be as well if we didn’t see one another any more…’

  Lisa could scarcely believe her ears. Was this really the man she had thought she loved, or had at least liked and admired enough to be her husband… the man she had wanted as the father of her children? This pompous, stuffy creature who preferred to take his mother’s advice on whom he should and should not marry than to listen to her, the woman he had proclaimed he loved?

  Only he had not—not really, had he? Lisa made herself admit honestly. Neither of them had really truly been in love. Oh, they had liked one another well enough. But liking wasn’t love, and if she was honest with herself there was a strong chord of relief mixed up in the turbulent anger and resentment churning her insides.

  Stay here now, over Christmas, after what had happened…? No way.

  Without trusting herself to speak to Henry, she turned on her heel and headed for the stairs and her bedroom, where she threw open the wardrobe doors and started to remove her clothes—her borrowed clothes, not her clothes, she acknowledged grimly as she opened her suitcase; they hadn’t been hers when she had bought them and they certainly weren’t hers now.

  Eyeing them with loathing, her attention was momentarily distracted by the damp chilliness of her bedroom. Thank goodness they had driven north in her car. At least she wasn’t going to have the added humiliation of depending on Henry to get her back to London.

  The temperature seemed to have dropped since she had left the bedroom earlier, even taking into account Mary Hanford’s parsimony.

  There had been another warning of snow on high ground locally earlier in the evening, and Lisa had been enchanted by it, wondering out loud if they might actually have a white Christmas—a long-held childhood wish of hers which she had so far never had fulfilled. Mary Hanford had been scornful of her excitement.

  As she gathered up her belongings Lisa suddenly paused; the clothes she had bought with such pleasure and which she had held onto with such determination lay on the bed in an untidy heap.

  Beautiful though they were, she suddenly felt that she knew now that she could never wear them. They were tainted. Some things were just not meant to be, she decided regretfully as she stroked the silk
fabric of one of the shirts with tender fingers.

  She might have paid for them, bought them in all good faith, but somehow she had never actually felt as though they were hers.

  But it was her borrowed clothes, like the borrowed persona she had perhaps unwittingly tried to assume to impress Henry’s family, which had proved her downfall, and she was, she decided firmly, better off without both of them.

  Ten minutes later, wearing her own jeans, she lifted the carefully folded clothes into her suitcase. Once the Christmas holiday was over she would telephone the dress agency and explain that she no longer had any use for the clothes. Hopefully they would be prepared to take them back and refund most, if not all of her money.

  It was too late to regret now that she had not accepted Alison’s suggestion that she join her and some other friends on a Christmas holiday and skiing trip to Colorado. Christmas was going to be very lonely for her alone in her flat with all her friends and her parents away. A sadly wistful smile curved the generous softness of her mouth as she contemplated how very different from her rosy daydreams the reality of her Christmas was going to be.

  ‘You’re going to the north of England—Yorkshire. I know it has a reputation for being much colder up there than it is here in London, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get snow,’ Alison had warned her, adding more gently, ‘Don’t invest too much in this visit to Henry’s family, Lisa. I know how important it is to you but things don’t always work out the way you plan. The Yorkshire Dales are a beautiful part of the world, but people are still people and—well, let’s face it, from what Henry has said about his family, especially his mother, it’s obvious that she’s inclined to be a little on the possessive side.’

  ‘I know you don’t really like Henry…’ Lisa had begun defensively.

  But Alison had shaken her head and told her firmly, ‘It isn’t that I don’t care for Henry, rather that I do care about you. He isn’t right for you, Lisa. Oh, I know what you’re going to say: he’s solid and dependable, and with him you can put down the roots that are so important to you. But, to be honest—well, if you want the truth, I see Henry more as a rather spoiled little boy than the kind of man a woman can rely on.’