The Christmas Visit: Comfort and JoyLove at First StepA Christmas Secret

by Moore, Margaret

  The corners of his mouth lifted. “Yes, here you are—trapped with the Earl of Cwm Rhyss.”

  Chapter Three

  Suddenly very aware she was alone in a room with an attractive, virile man while a blizzard raged outside and only two servants elsewhere in the huge house, as well as no neighbors for miles, Gwen swallowed hard.

  Yet what she felt wasn’t fear. It was something completely different—and completely wrong.

  The earl rose and added more coal to the fire. “Rather like a heroine of a gothic story, or a fairy tale. The virtuous Miss Gwendolyn Davies has blundered into an enchanted castle, presided over by a handsome prince disfigured by an evil witch’s spell.” He straightened and looked at her. “Perhaps if you kiss me, the spell will be broken. My scars will disappear and I’ll be as I was—young, handsome and happy.”

  Her heartbeat quickened. Her fingers trembled as she set down her glass.

  Determined not to betray how his words and that look—especially that look—affected her, she answered bluntly. “The past is what it is, my lord. There are things I would change about mine, but I can’t. We must accept that.”

  He grabbed the poker and jabbed at the fire, sending sparks rising into the chimney. “I don’t need you to tell me the past can’t be changed. I see that every time I look in a mirror.”

  She got up and grabbed the poker before he put a hole in the bricks. “You’ve got some terrible scars and you limp, but otherwise you’re sound of wind and limb. You’re rich, and you have a title. You have much to be grateful for.”

  “That makes what happened to me nothing at all?” he demanded, glowering at her as he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Easy enough for you to say, Miss Davies. Get yourself scarred so badly that people turn away in revulsion when they see you and then you may preach to me about how fortunate I am.”

  She put the poker back in its place and met his glare steadily. “Do you know how many men would gladly trade places with you, my lord?”

  “Do you know how many I would?”

  “People will soon forget to see the scars.”

  “The way you have, I suppose?”

  “Yes. If people shun you because of your scars, that shows their weakness and lack of character. I can appreciate that your heart was broken—”

  “What do you know of the state of my heart?”

  She flushed as she continued. “I know you were jilted by the woman you were to marry.”

  He laughed a cold, bitter laugh as he leaned back against his desk. “Not that it’s any of your business, but if there was one good thing about my accident, it was that it rid me of the lovely Letitia. If I’d married her, she would have made me a cuckold in a month. So I’m not pining for my lost love.”

  She was relieved, for his sake. “I’m glad to hear it. But you’re still pining for the life you’ve lost and no good can come of that, except bitterness and discontent.”

  “How simple you make it sound.” He swept the air with his hand. “Just march out into the world and reclaim your place in it.” He gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles whitening. “You’ve not witnessed the horror in people’s eyes when they look at you. Or realized your entire future has been torn from you because of a brawl you didn’t start, over a woman who proved to be no better than a whore.”

  “I’m not saying it will be easy. Do you think it was easy for me, an impoverished orphan, to make my way in a world that has few opportunities for women, especially poor ones with no family? I assure you, my lord, it wasn’t. Perhaps your future isn’t what you planned when you were young, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing left to hope for, to strive for. Indeed, I think you already know that, or you wouldn’t be writing a book. What is that but a hopeful venture?”

  “It’s an amusing pastime. Something to keep me from going mad.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I throw a few pages of it into the fire.” She reached around him.

  With a cry, he lunged and grabbed her hand before she could pick any up. Then he tugged her close. “Don’t touch my work!”

  “Your work, is it?” she said, aware that she was but inches from his body and that her heart was beating with an excitement different from anything she’d ever felt in her life. “Not your idle pastime?”

  His gaze seemed to bore into her. “I understand my own motivations quite well enough without you explaining them to me. I seek to shun my fellow man before they can shun me, while you do what you do because you crave the opposite. You want people to like you and you think that if you make yourself useful and necessary, they will. You’ll be valued. That’s what brought you here today—the longing to be loved, a need at least as selfish as my desire to be left alone.”

  As she stared at him, aghast, his mouth twisted into another smile. “Not so pleasant when the shoe is on the other foot, is it, Miss Davies? How does it feel to have your barricades stormed?”

  She wrenched herself free of his grasp. “How dare you twist my work into something self-centered and selfish? At least I’m trying to help people. What are you doing but sulking and brooding on your misfortunes? I may be trapped here by the weather, but you’ve chosen to hide here because of vanity.”

  “Vanity?” he growled her. “How can I be vain, with this face?”

  He shoved his hands through his hair, pushing it back so she could see the angry red scar that marred his face and neck and the remains of his ear. “Is it vanity to want to spare the world the sight of this?”

  “It’s vanity and pride. I’ve seen it before, especially among the officers who’d been handsome before they were wounded or crippled. A few even killed themselves rather than return home less than whole or with scars. You haven’t done that literally, but you’ve buried yourself here.

  “As for wanting to be loved, everybody wants that—including you, my lord. It’s the fear that you’re unlovable that keeps you here. Better to hide yourself away than risk rejection.”

  “I’m not the only one hiding, Miss Gwendolyn Davies, with her shapeless black gown and drab gray cloak and ugly brown bonnet and hair done up so severely it’s a wonder her head doesn’t ache.”

  She started for the door. “I wear what I can afford to wear, my lord, and my hair is this way because I have not the time, nor the maid, to do it differently.”

  He moved to block her path, so that she nearly collided with him. “Dressed like some sort of nun, you surround yourself with people dependent upon you, so they don’t dare reject you.”

  “I won’t listen to another word!” she cried, trying to go past him.

  “How dare you come to my house and upbraid me? What sort of gall do you possess that you think you have the right to make presumptuous pronouncements about my character or my situation?”

  “The same right you have to insult me and make fun of me and make presumptuous pronouncements about me.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. His chest heaving, he stared down at her.

  Panting with rage and indignation, her eyes full of angry tears and her heart with anguish at his insults, she glared back.

  And then suddenly, everything seemed to shift, as if the room had tilted. A look of surprise flared in his eyes, while something within her leapt and kindled and surged, an emotion, an excitement, different from anything she’d ever experienced before.

  A loud banging echoed through the corridor.

  The earl let go of her and reached for the oil lamp on his desk. Limping from the room, he disappeared down the corridor.

  As she hurried after the earl, Gwen struggled to regain her self-possession. Only an emergency would have sent someone out on such a night.

  Encircled by the glow of the lamp, the earl threw open the door under the portico. A short, stocky man, his hat, black beard and woolen jacket thick with snow, stumbled into the foyer. He clutched a lantern containing the stub of a weakly flickering candle.

  “Good God! It’s Mervyn!” the earl cried as he caught the man and hauled him up
right. “What the devil are you doing out in the storm?”

  “Your lordship? Thank God,” the man rasped, his breath coming in hoarse heaves as he leaned on the earl as if he was half-dead.

  Gwen ran to help. Bill Mervyn had a small farm farther up the mountain. He sometimes helped around the orphanage when they needed some repairs done, accompanied by his two young sons.

  Gwen got her shoulder under the farmer’s and took the lantern before it fell from his grasp. “Where are the boys?”

  “Still up at the farm,” he answered. “I had to leave them. I need to get the doctor. For Teddy. He fell. His leg’s broken bad. I’ve come to see if I can borrow a horse to get to the doctor.”

  “It’s a damn good thing you didn’t get lost or fall down and break your leg, too,” the earl said as they half carried Bill to the study.

  After they got him in a chair by the fire, Bill looked at the nobleman, his eyes pleading. “Can you give me the loan of a horse, my lord? I’ve got to get to the doctor down in Llanwyllan. I had to wait for the storm to let up, and it did a bit at last, thank God, but I’ve got to fetch him, and quick. I had to leave my boys all alone, and Teddy’s bad off.”

  The earl examined Bill, and in the nobleman’s expression, Gwen could see a mirror of her own thoughts: even if the weather was perfect, Bill was too wet and exhausted and distressed to go anywhere else that night.

  As Gwen stirred the fire, the earl poured the man a large snifter of brandy and forced the glass into his mittened hand. “Drink that.”

  Bill started up. “I’ve got to go for the doctor.”

  “Sit down,” the earl ordered, his voice as stern and commanding as any she’d ever heard from an officer in the British army. “You’re half-frozen. You can’t go back out into such weather.”

  “But—!”

  “I’ll go for the doctor.” The earl strode to the door. “Jones!” he bellowed.

  Both surprised and relieved by the earl’s offer, Gwen knelt at Bill’s feet and started to remove one of his wet boots. “Let’s get these off.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Bill said as he set aside the brandy and bent to help.

  “It’s all right, Bill. Take off your gloves, if you can,” Gwen ordered in a voice that had proved effective with generals and orderlies and every rank in between. “You’ve got to get warm and dry, or you’ll get sick.”

  Mrs. Jones, in a flannel robe, pushed past the earl and entered the room. “Mercy on us,” she cried. “Is that Bill Mervyn?”

  The white-haired, cherry-cheeked Mr. Jones appeared, with his shirt half-tucked into his trousers, one arm in the sleeve of his jacket, and his boots in his other hand. He silently gaped at the scene before him.

  “His son’s had an accident,” the earl explained. “Jones, saddle my horse. I’m going for the doctor.”

  The Joneses exchanged anxious, uncertain glances.

  “Mervyn tells me the snow’s letting up, and his son cannot wait,” the earl said. “Get going, man. We haven’t any time to waste. Mrs. Jones, I think Bill could use a good strong cup of tea and something to eat.”

  Still struggling with his clothes, Mr. Jones hurried out of the room, followed by his wife.

  “Bill,” Gwen asked gently, “did the broken bone pierce Teddy’s skin?”

  The distraught man nodded, his eyes agonized. “Aye. It looks terrible. I cut off his trousers and got a bandage on it. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did the right thing, Bill,” Gwen assured him, although she desperately hoped he hadn’t done any more damage, and that the bandage was clean.

  She rose and addressed the earl. “May I have a word with you, my lord? In private?”

  Bill started up again. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Gwen thought fast. “I just wanted to ask the earl how long it might take him to get to the doctor.”

  “It’s an easy road,” the nobleman replied. “I shouldn’t be long, provided the snow doesn’t get worse and hasn’t drifted.”

  Bill groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “I’ve ridden through snow before, Mervyn,” the earl said, as if insulted by the man’s fears. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I need to speak with Miss Davies.” He hesitated for the briefest of moments. “About my knee.”

  Gwen hurried after him into the corridor. “Is your knee—?”

  The earl grabbed her arm to pull her further from the door, then loosened his hold. But he didn’t remove his hand from her forearm.

  “It’s fine. That was an excuse. The boy’s in a bad way, isn’t he?” he demanded quietly, his grip tightening again. “That’s why you wanted to talk to me alone.”

  “Yes. Have you another horse, my lord? We’re closer than the doctor, and Teddy’s leg must be tended to at once. I can set it and clean it, well enough to prevent more serious damage until the doctor can see to him. Otherwise…well, he could lose his leg. Or worse, if the wound’s already infected.”

  “Of course you can have a horse. I nearly lost my leg, and I wouldn’t wish that fate on the boy. I know a shortcut to Mervyn’s farm. Jones will go for the doctor and I’ll show you the way.”

  Anything that could get them to Teddy quickly.

  “It’s not an easy track. How expert a rider are you?”

  “I can manage to sit on one long enough to get to Bill Mervyn’s farm, and it’ll be faster than trying to walk through the snow.”

  The earl muttered another curse. “Then we have no choice.”

  “I’ll run and fetch my cloak.”

  “I’ll get it. You stay with Bill. He could use some comfort.” The earl turned to go, then hesitated. “I’ve got laudanum, if you think that’ll help.”

  “Yes, and any bandages you can spare.”

  With a nod, the earl limped off while Gwen went back into the study and helped a shivering Bill remove his coat and scarf and woolen cap. She rubbed his hands and his feet, trying to get the blood flowing. With relief, she saw that he wasn’t frostbitten; his greatest trouble was sheer exhaustion.

  “How did Teddy break his leg?” she asked as she worked to get him warmer.

  “He fell on some ice in the yard,” Bill replied. “Twisted his leg. I heard the bone snap. I carried the poor lad to his bed and tended him as best I could, but I knew he needed the doctor.

  “All night I kept thinking it was going to stop snowing. Any minute, I’d say to myself. Any time now, until I couldn’t wait anymore.”

  “I understand,” Gwen said softly. “And it’s good you came here.”

  Bill grasped Gwen’s hand. “It’s God’s doing, that’s what, having you here.”

  “I’ll do my best to help Teddy, Bill.” She made herself smile and covered his hands with hers. “I can set a broken bone.”

  “Wear that.”

  They both jumped as a ladies’ cloak of scarlet velvet, lined with ermine and with a tasseled hood, landed on the desk. Blushing, Gwen gently pulled her hands free, although there really was no reason she shouldn’t have been holding Bill’s hands to comfort him.

  She turned to look at the earl, standing on the threshold, wearing a long, indigo greatcoat and a beaver hat. His black riding boots gleamed in the firelight. He carried a bag that clinked dully as he shifted his feet, and she recognized the sound of bottles wrapped in cloth. The laudanum, no doubt.

  “It’s a little fine for riding about the countryside, but it’ll be warmer than that gray thing you had on,” the earl muttered before swiveling on his heel. “I’ll be waiting for you in the stables, Miss Davies.”

  His tone was gruff and harsh again. She wouldn’t wonder about the reason for the change; she would concentrate on helping Teddy Mervyn.

  The earl had no sooner departed than Mrs. Jones returned with a tray bearing tea, toast, ham and eggs. As she set down the tray, she gave Bill a sympathetic look and said, “I’ll just leave these things for you here, Bill. I’m to fetch Miss Davies’s gloves and a good pair of st
out boots I have, and a thick scarf. I won’t be minute and then she can be on her way.”

  She spotted the cloak and sucked in her breath. “I thought he’d burned that,” she murmured before she hurried from the room.

  Because it had been the lovely Letitia’s? Gwen wondered. If the woman could reject a man like the earl because of a few scars, she didn’t deserve such fine apparel, either, although destroying the cloak would have been a waste.

  Bill had barely started to eat when Mrs. Jones returned with the boots, gloves and scarf.

  Gwen quickly changed her shoes for the heavier boots. They were at least two sizes too big, but that was of no consequence. She wrapped the scarf around her head and put on the velvet cloak.

  “I think I ought to go with—” Bill began, half-rising.

  “No, you stay here and get dry,” Gwen ordered. “We can’t have you falling ill, too.”

  Bill reluctantly returned to his seat.

  “Mrs. Jones, can I count on you to get him into a bed?”

  The kindly woman nodded and gave her a smile. “Leave him to me, deary. I know a wee bit about nursing myself.”

  “I thought you might,” she said, suspecting Mrs. Jones had been entrusted with the earl’s care since his childhood, which would explain her familiar relationship with the nobleman.

  “Don’t worry, Bill,” she said gently. “I’ll take good care of Teddy.”

  She hurried out of the study and into the yard. The snow on the ground was at least a foot deep, two or more where it had drifted. It was still falling, but the wind had died down, and the sun had obviously risen, for the sky was lighter to the east. Someone had already opened the gate. From the footprints in the snow, she guessed it was the earl.

  She pushed open the door to the stable, which was welcomely warm. Three horses stood ready.

  The earl was beside a huge black beast that snorted and stamped impatiently, reminding her of its master. The other horses were brown, and smaller. Even so, only an emergency would have compelled her to attempt riding either of them.