by Louise Allen
*
The kitchens were all a bustle with preparations for the Christmas Eve dinner, but Cook assured her that the sweetmeats she had made as gifts for the family were safe and sound in the coolest larder. One skill that Tess possessed to the satisfaction of the nuns was making the traditional candies that they sold in the town. She had created strong peppermint drops for Lord Moreland and Matthew and delicate rose pastilles for Lady Moreland and Maria, and Cook had found some pretty paper boxes for her to pack them in.
That just left Noel to find. He was drawn to the stables, but Tess worried that the bigger, fiercer stable cats would hurt him and fetched him back whenever he strayed.
She left by the kitchen door into the service yard, dodged the laundry maids lugging wet washing into the drying rooms, waved to the woodsmen delivering a load of logs and went through the archway into the stable yard. There was no sign of the kitten but she could hear Alex’s voice coming from the tack room and went close to the door to listen. She should go before he saw her, but she needed to find out how he was after that last, fraught declaration.
‘I think we’d do better running them unicorn.’ When she peeped though the gap between open door and hinge she saw Alex was sitting on a saddle horse, his back to her as he spoke to one of the Tempeston grooms.
‘Showy, my lord, I’ll give you that, especially with the three greys. But Mr Matthew’s been having a devil of a time with them and unicorn is a tricky configuration.’
‘But it will remove the gelding who’s proving most troublesome. The remaining three work well together.’
Obviously he wasn’t nursing a broken heart, or even wounded pride, if he could chat so casually about carriage horses.
Tess began to back away, then her heel caught an upturned bucket and it tipped over with a clang on the flagstones.
The groom leaned sideways and saw her. ‘There’s Miss Ellery, me lord.’
Alex swung one long leg over the saddle horse and turned to face her. ‘So I can see. I wondered what had happened to you, Miss Ellery. You had seemed a little discomposed earlier.’
‘Oh, I have been busy, my lord.’ Tess smiled politely. ‘A little art appreciation, a visit to the nursery and the kitchens, then I thought I must see where Noel had got to.’
‘I saw him in the hayloft a while ago,’ Alex said. His voice was calm, his eyes were stormy.
Tempest eyes, Tess thought. ‘I was concerned, but I see I was mistaken to be so. Life goes on, does it not, whatever emotional distractions confuse us.’
‘You can call what there is between us an emotional distraction, Tess?’
She threw up a warning hand to remind him the groom was somewhere close.
Alex turned and called, ‘Hodgkin, see if you can find Miss Ellery’s ginger kitten, will you?’ The sound of booted feet faded away. ‘You have it all worked out now, do you, Tess? I cannot say I have.’
‘You are suffering from a fit of quixotic gallantry. I am utterly unsuitable for you, you know that. It is not just that I am an orphan with no connections, no dowry and no qualifications whatsoever for a place in society.’ She braced herself. Time to tell him, time to see the shock and distaste on his face. Time to watch the man she loved disentangle himself from this coil with cool finality. ‘I am—’
‘Illegitimate, I know.’ Alex looked impatient, as though that bombshell was merely a minor irritation, a firecracker going off.
‘But my mother—’
Again he cut in before she could finish. ‘“Jane Teresa Ellery, born 1775, died, unmarried, 1809.” Yes? That is what the Peerage says and she was your mother, I assume? The date and her middle name seem too coincidental.’
Silence. ‘Am I allowed to finish a sentence now?’
‘Of course.’
‘There is no of course about it. You do not listen to me. You have not right from the beginning. If you had, I would never have missed that boat, none of this would have happened. Now you will not allow me to finish a simple explanation when you must see how difficult it is for me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Alex moved away abruptly, as though to leave, then swung back. ‘I am unused to difficult discussions with women. With a lady,’ he corrected himself. ‘But James Ellery, third Marquess of Sethcombe, is your grandfather, is he not?’
‘Yes. Is he still alive? My grandmother? I never met them, you see, or my aunts or uncles.’ And that sounded pathetic, as though she was pining for a family to love, whining that she wanted their love, admission to their charmed circle of belonging. Pathetic and true. Yearning for the moon.
‘Your grandfather is alive and, from what I gather, in his usual state of unarmed combat with my father over fishing rights on the river between the two estates, over fences, straying cattle, poaching tenants. My father said he inherited Sethcombe as a neighbour along with the title—like a bad debt or a mad relative in the attic. The old man was a cantankerous so-and-so even then. He must be a considerable age now if your mother was his youngest child. Your grandmother, I’m afraid, died some years ago.’
Tess blinked away the tears. She would never know whether her grandmother had cast her own daughter out and never forgiven her the horrible scandal or whether, like Alex’s mother, she had secretly tried to keep in touch, to send her loving thoughts. ‘It is a malign coincidence that your family’s lands march with the Ellerys’, is it not?’ She kept her voice hard.
‘Not really.’ Alex shrugged. ‘The aristocratic families are so entwined that it would be surprising if we did not adjoin some relative or another of yours.’
‘For my grandfather to be the enemy of your father, that has a certain…inevitability about it.’
‘Only if you are writing some damn stage melodrama,’ Alex snapped. ‘The gods and Fates are not hovering about trying to make life as difficult as possible for us with some pre-ordained doom. If you want to insist on making a production out of this, then let us assume we are supposed to bring about a reconciliation.’
‘Making a production out of this? What is this? The unfortunate fact that I have lost my virginity to you and now you have an attack of conscience about it?’ Loving someone did not stop them being hurtful, it seemed. I love you. She wanted to scream it at him, throw it in his face, watch him deal with that along with all the complications of male honour, family honour, love affairs real and imaginary, sexual scandal.
‘Miss Ellery, I’ve found your kitten.’ The groom came into the tack room, Noel clinging like a furry ginger burr to his shoulder, and stopped dead. ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I’m interrupting?’
‘Not at all,’ Tess said. ‘Please could you take Noel to the kitchen for me?’
Alex slammed the door behind the man and shot the bolt. ‘You are illegitimate, that is unfortunate, but if your mother’s family will recognise you, even as a distant relative, things will not be so bad,’ he said. ‘Who was your father?’
‘George Fenton, the younger son of Lord Melford.’
‘Why the blazes didn’t they get married then? I don’t know Melford. I think they’re a Cumberland family, aren’t they? Perfectly good match for the youngest daughter of a marquess.’
‘My father was married.’ There, she had said it.
Alex frowned. ‘Married? Then, you aren’t illegitimate. Tess—’
Her turn to interrupt now. ‘Married to someone else. And then he married Mama. It was bigamous. They were criminals.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Bigamous? But I heard nothing of that.’ Alex stared at her as though she had announced she was the love child of the Prince Regent.
‘I think the Ellerys managed to hush it up,’ Tess said. ‘Mama didn’t know, you see, that Papa’s first wife was ill, with a disease of the mind. Apparently she became ill quite gradually and Papa tried to find medical help for her, but in the end she was completely deranged. He had her looked after in a quiet country house of his. It must have been awful for him. There was nothing he could do for her except give her good care.
That’s where all the money must have gone, I think. Then he met Mama and they fell in love.
‘She thought he was a widower and couldn’t understand why her father forbade Papa to even speak to her. If he had only explained it would have been a heartbreak for her, but at least she would have understood before it was too late. I suppose in those days daughters were supposed simply to obey and not ask questions.
‘They loved each other. I do not know when Mama found out that his wife was still alive, but she must have forgiven him and they never told me, only that Papa had been married before and had loved his first wife, but he’d felt blessed to have found a new love with Mama. I think it must have been true. He was such a kind man he must have loved her until she changed into someone he no longer knew.
‘I had seen their wedding lines, but I had no idea they were invalid until Mother Superior told me when I was sent to the convent.’ Bastard, child of sin, daughter of depraved criminals. Unworthy. The words still rang in her ears. Only through hard work, humble acceptance of who and what you are, can you aspire to move in respectable company. You have no rights to the place where your parents were born, you have no place either amongst decent, God-fearing humbler folk…
Tess took a steadying breath. ‘I thought my name was Fenton until then, but of course, as the marriage was illegal then I am a bastard and must use my mother’s surname. So you see I am utterly impossible as a wife for you, or for any respectable man.’
She thought she could read Alex’s face now, but all she could discern was furious thought. Perhaps he was trying to work out a way to remove her from the house before his mother discovered just what she was harbouring.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Before you slept with me? Before you brought me into your family home?’
‘Before I fe— What’s the date?’
‘The date? Why, the twenty-third, of course.’ Perhaps she had tripped and banged her head and not realised. Or perhaps the shock had turned Alex’s brain.
‘No damned time,’ he muttered. He looked at her, his expression unreadable, then he took her by the shoulders, pulled her towards him and kissed her with a hard, possessive urgency.
That was goodbye, Tess thought as he released her as abruptly as he had taken her.
‘I knew Christmas was a bad idea,’ he said, turned on his heel, shot back the bolt and was out of the door and across the yard before she could speak.
*
Christmas Eve had been a strange day, Tess decided as she waited in the drawing room for the family to assemble for dinner. The earl had kept to his bedchamber, resting, because he was determined to go to midnight service. Lady Moreland and Maria had been out visiting friends and neighbours with gifts, calling on tenants. The servants had been busy with preparations and Alex and Matthew simply did not appear.
Annie reported that they had ridden off early together. ‘I heard Mr Matthew say, “I don’t blame you for running out on all the fuss,”’ she confided. ‘And his lordship said, “I need to think and I’m damned if I can do it in the house, so come and act like a brother for once and keep me company.” And Mr Matthew said a bad word and laughed and off they went.’
The earl, Maria and Lady Moreland came in as she was puzzling, yet again, about Alex. Was he simply finding excuses to avoid her? Tess stopped fiddling with her fan as she and Dorcas stood and curtsied, and then forced herself to make conversation while Dorcas retired to her usual corner.
‘Where are those boys?’ Lady Moreland said after half an hour of everyone avoiding staring at the door.
‘My apologies, Mama.’ Alex strode in, elegant in immaculate evening dress, Matthew, less polished but still correctly attired, at his heels. Both faces had high colour from having been rapidly warmed after long exposure to cold. ‘We have only just got back.’
‘From where?’ Lady Moreland demanded. ‘I shudder to think what state the goose will be in. Cook will probably hand in her notice this very night.’
‘I wanted to look at the estate, Mama. It has been a long time.’ He looked at his father and then at Tess. ‘I found it put things in perspective. I apologise for leaving our guests, but I see the house is most festively garlanded, so I assume you must have found occupation, Miss Ellery.’
‘I…I am sorry, Lord Weybourn, I did not quite catch what you said.’ Not with you smiling at me like that. The curve of his mouth was tender; the look in his eyes was regretful… Stop it. It means nothing. He is simply apologetic for leaving me all day without a word. That look is not…
He had been out all day thinking, looking at the estate with his brother. He had been reminding himself who he was, what was owed to his name. She could not deceive herself by choosing to see only that smile. Because she was fraught and nervous and aching for him, she saw in his expression what she longed to see. And that was impossible. Must be impossible.
Alex took her into dinner and Tess got through the meal somehow. It was true what the nuns had drilled into the girls: good manners and polite observances would carry you through the most difficult social situations. They would even cover up heartbreak.
Alex sent her no more of those achingly tender smiles. He, too, kept to polite conversation, teased his sister gently, drew out Matthew on the subject of horse breeding and endured his father’s observations on the state of the nation.
Finally Lady Moreland rose. ‘Gentlemen, if you are willing to forgo your port, shall we all retire to the drawing room for an exchange of gifts?’
She received no protests. Even Alex went meekly, Tess noted with relief—and promptly walked straight into Matthew’s arms. ‘Mr Tempest!’
‘Miss Ellery, behold, the mistletoe.’
She glanced up. ‘That is not where I told the footman to put it.’
‘Indeed not, but it is where I moved it to.’ He bent his head, his intent obvious, and then Tess found herself whirled round into Alex’s embrace.
‘Poacher,’ Matthew protested. ‘I would call you out for that, brother, if I were not so dazzled by Mrs White’s new Christmas finery.’ He caught Dorcas’s hand and, despite her squawk of alarm, pressed a bold kiss on her lips.
‘No,’ Tess whispered, caught in the circle of Alex’s arms. ‘It is not…kind.’ He was strong and hard and so wickedly tempting. Just one kiss, a kiss his family would think of as innocent Christmas fun. One last kiss to break her heart.
‘On St Stephen’s Day, if you want to leave me, Tess, I will let you go. I will send you back to London, somehow find you respectable employment. But you gave yourself to me for Christmas and until then, you are mine.’ His whisper was urgent, fierce against her lips. And he kissed her, a kiss as light as a breeze, a mere brush of his mouth, an exchange of breath that left her trembling and close to tears. Then he released her and kissed Dorcas, a wicked smacker that made her laugh and blush before he passed on to kiss his mother and sister on the cheek.
St Stephen’s Day, the twenty-sixth of December. She had not agreed to any length of time to stay. But she had gone to his bed, given herself to him, agreed to come with him to his family for Christmas, so perhaps he was within his rights to make demands. Although to what end, she had no idea. Surely he would not want to make love to her now, not when he knew she was the skeleton in the neighbours’ closet, not when he had settled in his own mind where his duty lay.
And she had not helped the family much, not as she had intended. The earl was not bedridden, Lady Moreland seemed to need no assistance and Alex and his father were on speaking terms, of sorts, without any intervention from her.
‘Are you unwell, Miss Ellery?’
The earl’s abrupt question made her start guiltily. If he only knew who he is harbouring under his roof. ‘Not at all, Lord Moreland. I was deep in thought, that was all. This is all very different from what I am used to.’
‘A nunnery, eh? Not much mulled wine there, I’ll be bound.’
‘No, my lord.’ The footman opened the door on to a blaze of
candlelight and a table laden with parcels and packages. The servants had been hard at work while the family ate. ‘Oh, this looks so festive!’
*
Alex found he was smiling. Not at the decorations or the presents, but at Tess’s obvious delight. She looked like a child for a moment, hands clasped to her heart with delight—and then she was a woman again, the woman he desired, the innocent whose life he had almost ruined. Might still, if he was not very careful, very lucky.
There had to be some way through this. He found he was looking at the portrait of his grandmother above the fireplace. Another dynastic alliance, another proper match for the Earl of Moreland. He had been infected by Tess’s ridiculous fantasy world of Christmas love and magic into thinking that, somehow, there was a happy ending to this. But if there was, he had to find it. He had fallen in love with a daughter of scandal, a woman disowned by her family who could bring nothing to the earldom.
Then his brain caught hold of his thoughts. In love. So that is what it is, this pain in my chest, this ludicrous optimism and plunging despair. Not just liking, not simply lust. I love her.
No one appeared to notice him standing like a stunned ox in the middle of the room. Alex shut his mouth with a snap and looked about him. His mother was ordering everyone to their places, grouped around his father like a conversation-piece portrait of a happy family. Maria had thought to send for little Daisy, so there was even the obligatory charming baby, he thought with a flash of his old cynicism. Even the dratted kitten had managed to find its way upstairs and was stalking a trailing ribbon on Maria’s gown.
Matthew had apparently been chosen as the distributor of gifts. Alex squeezed into a place on the sofa between his sister and Tess and was rewarded by a sharp elbow in the ribs.
‘You are squashing us,’ Tess whispered. ‘It is not kind.’
‘To squash you or to sit with you?’ he murmured back. Against his side she was warm and soft and smelled deliciously of rosewater and Tess. ‘Trust me, Tess.’ To do what? the cynical voice in his head jibed. Ensure her ruin? Make her unhappy?
