by Louise Allen
‘To do what?’ Her voice cracked as she echoed his thoughts and he saw her hands clench together. ‘To set me up as your mistress? To keep my secrets?’ She had as much faith in him as he did in himself. Or perhaps she was just more realistic.
‘I have no wish to make you my mistress,’ he said, soft voiced in her ear. The soft curls tickled his nose; the scent of her was almost intolerably seductive. I can’t give you up.
‘Then, why keep me here—?’ Tess broke off as his mother clapped her hands and ordered Matthew to begin.
Tess seemed flustered to be presented with a Kashmir shawl from his mother and a fan from Marie. Her own sweetmeats were received with expressions of delight, Daisy’s doll was instantly seized and sucked and Dorcas expressed delight with her parcel of novels. The floor was soon strewn with sheets of torn paper and tangled ribbons and Noel was in kitten heaven, chasing imaginary mice through the crackling heap.
When was Matthew going to get to his own gift to Tess? She had retreated as far into the corner of the sofa as possible, the tension crackling off her until he felt as though a thunderstorm was about to break. She’ll hate it, he thought with a fresh plunge into pessimism. She’ll think I am laughing at her.
‘For Miss Ellery!’ Matthew produced a rectangular package with a flourish and peered at the label. ‘With Christmas wishes from Alex.’
‘Thank you.’ Tess’s smile was warm as she took the package, but she was biting her lip when Matthew turned away.
‘Open it,’ Alex urged as she sat there making no effort to untie the knots.
It was almost the last parcel. She seemed to realise that all eyes were on her and scrabbled at the wrappings with uncharacteristic clumsiness. The lid came off the box and she pushed back the tissue paper and lifted out the contents.
‘A doll? Alexander, you’ve addressed a present for the baby to Miss Ellery,’ his mother said with a laugh.
‘No,’ Tess said before he could speak. ‘No, he hasn’t.’ Her hands were shaking as she held the stiff wooden figure with its froth of blue skirts and painted black hair. ‘It has sentimental meaning for me…something I told Lord Weybourn about. A memory from my childhood. Thank you.’ She turned to him and he saw her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘Tess,’ he said softly, taking the doll from her and making a production out of settling it back in its box to give her a moment to recover. ‘I never meant to make you cry.’
‘It was a lovely thought.’ Her hand on his was steady now, but he could feel the pulse hammering as he closed his fingers around her wrist. ‘And I know you do not mean to make me cry.’
It was not the doll that she referred to, he knew, as she set the box firmly on her knee and looked back at Matthew and the others with a determined smile. He had made her cry, even if she would not allow him to see it, even if she acquitted him of deliberate cruelty, or careless disregard of her feelings.
‘One last package, and it is for Alex,’ Matthew announced, handing over a small carved box.
Alex took it, puzzled. There was no wrapping, no label, just old dark oak rubbed smooth more by handling than from any refined finishing. He opened it and stared. ‘This is the Moreland signet ring, the seal.’
When he looked up his father was watching him, his left hand spread out, the fingers twisted and cramped and unadorned. ‘I cannot wear that ring any longer. I would rather give it to you now than have you take it from my dead hand. If you will stay, take on the business of the estate, then you will need it, Alexander.’
He found he could not speak. Beside him Tess made a little choking sound, perilously like a sob. Alex tugged his own signet off, moved it to his right hand, then slid the ancient ring onto his finger. It fitted easily. Looking down, he saw his grandfather’s hand, his father’s, and he found he could speak. ‘Thank you, Father. Of course I will stay.’
For a moment he thought his mother would weep and, to his horror, his father, also. Then the door swung open, there was a scrabbling of claws on the polished wood, Noel shot up his leg and onto his shoulder and James the footman skidded to a halt on the rug in front of him, both hands clinging to a leash with a panting hound puppy on the end of it. ‘Sorry, me lord, only I couldn’t stop her.’
The pup rolled over onto her back, waving huge paws and ungainly legs in the air. She grinned upside down at him, all teeth, tongue and slobber, wriggling with excitement, a ludicrous pink satin bow tied to her collar.
‘What the blazes is this?’
‘Your Christmas present from me,’ Tess said faintly. He realised she was suppressing laughter, probably hysterical. ‘Her name’s Ophelia.’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Ophelia?’ Alex leaned down and scratched the fat pink stomach and the puppy writhed ecstatically. ‘What sort of name is that for a hound? If it is a hound,’ he added dubiously.
‘I think there is some hound in there,’ Tess said. ‘She’s mostly hound. Perhaps the rest is mastiff. Look at the size of her feet.’
‘I am looking.’ And looking at the sullen gleam of the intaglio bloodstone in the ring on his hand. If he had been drinking hard all day he could not feel more dislocated from reality. He dragged himself back to the present, to one mongrel hound puppy busily licking his shoes. ‘The thing is going to be as big as a horse.’
‘Don’t call her a thing.’ Tess was still laughing, he could hear it in her voice. But she was wary, too. ‘The poor creature has had a hard life and deserves a proper name. She was found in a sack in the cattle pond. She would have drowned if one of the grooms hadn’t gone in and rescued her. That is why we called her Ophelia.’ She shot him a sideways glance. ‘All small boys should have a puppy. I thought a grown man might like one, too.’
He had never had a dog as a child. His father kept pedigree fox hounds, Matthew had been given a lurcher to go rabbiting with, but Alex had not expected to be allowed a dog, had not asked. He had never thought he wanted one. Ophelia rolled over and began to chew his shoe.
‘Stop that.’ He clicked his fingers at her and she sat up, tongue lolling out comically as she put her head on one side. ‘I don’t suppose you are house trained, are you?’
‘Er, no,’ Tess said. ‘In fact I think it would be a good idea if James took her out for a walk now.’
‘Thank you, Miss Ellery, for my present.’
The hound puppy gave his hand one last slobbery lick, then towed the footman out as his family got up, began to move about the room looking at each other’s gifts, talking. Beside him Tess sat, cornered by his body, the doll in its box on her knee.
‘I should have given you gloves or a reticule,’ he said, twisting the unfamiliar ring on his finger. A week ago, if someone had told him he would be wearing it, that his father wanted him to wear it, he would have thought them insane, or that he was drunk.
‘I should have given you a book or hemmed some handkerchiefs.’ Her fingers stroked the doll’s skirts and he imagined their caress on his skin like a remembered breeze.
You gave me something you knew was missing from my childhood, because you understand me. And you have given me something far more precious—your trust and your innocence. I only hope I can make this right for you, Tess. For us. Why couldn’t he talk to her? Why were the words so hard to find, so difficult to say, even in his head? I love you. I want to marry you. Can I make you happy?
No one was attending to them. ‘Tess, I wish you would let me do the right thing.’
She turned, her body shifting against his, firing all the memories of her naked in his arms, the passion and the trust. Where had the trust gone? ‘And I wish you would let me do the same,’ she murmured. ‘I do not want to marry you, Alex.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? To even ask that shows a great deal of self-confidence, my lord, if you cannot think of any reason that would outweigh your attractions as a husband. What can we put in the scale? On one side a title, wealth, a charming manner, kindness and, undoubted skills in the bedchamber. O
n the other the fact that I would bring a scandal into your family, that I can bring nothing else. You have only just begun to reconcile with them, Alex. Why would you throw that that away simply to do the right thing?’
‘If it were not for your birth, would you marry me?’ he demanded, cursing himself for beginning this whispered argument in a room full of people.
‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. A cliché, but a true one,’ Tess retorted. ‘I am no one, Alex. I have no family, no roots, nothing. I will not be your mistress and I cannot be your wife.’ She pressed a sharp, well-placed elbow in his ribs and wriggled out of her corner and onto her feet. ‘I am going to my room.’ As Alex stood she added, ‘And that was not an invitation.’
No, he could not make love to her again, not without fearing that he was putting unfair pressure on her, attempting to seduce her into doing what she did not think was right. Nor could he use words of love to her, not when he had no plan yet to counter the arguments she set out against a marriage. Tess, he was coming to realise, had as strong a sense of honour as he did.
*
It was all her fault for going to his bed. She was quite clear about that. There was no possible excuse. She had known that what she was doing broke every rule of good, modest behaviour and now she was reaping the reward.
Tess propped the doll up on her dresser and returned the beady-eyed stare. ‘I have no one to blame but myself. Mama had no idea she was doing anything worse than eloping with the man she loved. I knew perfectly well what I was doing.’ And, like the dreamer that she was, she hadn’t thought beyond that moment in Alex’s arms. She hadn’t realised she was in love with him and that being with him would make that love real and painful. And impossible.
‘I suppose I ought to call you Patricia, not Patty. Patty was a child’s doll. You are a foolish grown woman’s, confessional.’ So sweet of Alex to remember her words in the toyshop, so like him to buy her a doll to replace the one taken from her. He pretended he was a cynic, that he didn’t believe in Christmas and gifts and traditions, but he did yearn after the magic, deep under that glossy shell of uncaring sophistication.
He would make a wonderful father to those children she could never have. She imagined them growing up, the children of scandal, the rejected relatives of the neighbouring great house. If Alex had not been so careful then she might be carrying his child now. Tess folded her hands over her stomach, over her empty womb, as hollow as her heart.
‘I have lost nothing,’ she told herself, willing the tremor out of her voice. ‘I could never have Alex, never be anything else but his mistress.’ Imagine the anguish of seeing him court and wed another woman. She knew Alex—he wouldn’t keep a mistress then; his marriage vows would be sacred. Nor could she be with a married man. I have lost nothing, just a few weeks with him, perhaps. You see, it is not so bad, I am not even weeping.
She lay down on the bed and closed her dry eyes. It would be prudent to rest for an hour before they left for the church and the midnight service. No one must guess how she felt, least of all Alex.
*
She must have drifted off to sleep because Dorcas’s discreet tap on the door woke her with a start.
‘The carriages will be at the door in thirty minutes, but Lady Moreland says to come down as soon as possible. Will that gown be warm enough, Miss Ellery? Or shall I find your flannel petticoat?’
‘Goodness, no.’ Tess went into the dressing room and splashed cold water on her face. She would never undress for Alex again, but she was not going to appear anywhere near him in such a garment as a flannel petticoat. Which was totally illogical and, she supposed, he would say it was feminine nonsense if he knew of it. She could imagine the mischievous expression on his face as he teased her.
‘I must have the muff and the heavy cloak with the hood.’ Both were garments that Hannah had bought for her with Alex’s money. Should she try to pay him back? Or return them, perhaps? But she would never find respectable employment without respectable clothes on her back. He wouldn’t laugh about that, he would say it was foolish pride, and perhaps it was.
It was difficult at first to keep the smile on her face when she went downstairs to join the family in the hall, but the view from the door when Garnett flung it open took her breath away.
It had begun to snow and there, in a semicircle at the foot of the steps, was a group of carol singers. They launched into ‘Adeste Fidelis’ as the light spilled out down the whitened steps and illuminated their faces and beside her a fine tenor voice picked up the verse.
‘“Adeste fideles, læti triumphantes. Venite, venite in Bethlehem. Natum videte, regem angelorum. Venite adoremus…”’
It was Alex. Beyond him Lady Moreland added her contralto and Maria joined her. Tess began to sing, translating in her head. ‘“Come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…”’
Soon they were all singing, footmen and butler as well, and even a deep bass rumble from Alex’s father. There was silence when the last notes died away, then the singers began another carol, one that Tess, raised on the convent’s hymns, did not know: ‘Christians Awake!’
The rest of the staff had come out, too, and gathered round behind the villagers. Everyone sang and she stood and watched Alex, saw him smile at his mother, heard his voice, clear on the cold air, and knew she would remember this for the rest of her life.
One more carol and the staff were passing round glasses of punch, the farm wagon came round to carry the singers back to the village and the family coaches pulled up.
‘You are a dreadful fraud,’ Tess said to Alex as he helped her into the first carriage. ‘The things you said about carol singers!’
She expected him to joke, to pick up her rallying tone, but his face was serious as he settled her in the seat and stepped down. ‘I had forgotten the simple beauty of it,’ he said. Then he did smile. ‘Mama, mind that slippery patch.’ He helped his mother to her place, then Maria and his father. Matthew climbed in, assisting Dorcas, and Alex shut the door.
‘Is Alex—Lord Weybourn—not coming?’ Tess felt something like panic, which was foolish.
‘He has gone up on the box. Said something about clearing his head,’ Lord Moreland said with a grunt.
At least mine is clear enough, Tess thought. No room for daydreams now. Two days to get through, then I can ask Alex to send me back to London. I can go to Hannah’s lodging house. I have enough money to support myself for a few weeks. Perhaps Hannah will give me a reference.
*
The church was ancient and simple, its interior glowing with candlelight and made festive with evergreen swags along the pews. Up in the gallery the band was readying their instruments; there was a scraping from the fiddles, the deep boom of the serpent, the quick tootle of a flute.
Tess followed the family to the great box pew at the front of the nave and settled into a corner created by the pew butting up against a medieval tomb, an ornate box with the full-size effigies of a knight in armour and his lady lying on the top.
‘That’s Hugo de Tempest,’ Maria whispered.
Tess was grateful for the embroidered cushion on the hard oak bench seat and the carpet on the stone floor. The hassocks were embroidered, too, and she knelt on hers and did her best to calm her thoughts and turn them in an appropriate direction. Then she sat and fixed her gaze on the haughty profile of the recumbent Hugo and tried not to think about his descendant sitting four feet away from her.
*
Alex sat, knelt, stood and sang with his mind fixed on one thing, one person. As the congregation settled down for the sermon he shifted slightly on the pew so he could see Tess’s profile.
She was no longer his little nun. She was groomed and well dressed and had found the confidence to fit in with his family. And she was beautiful, he realised, watching the still, calm profile set against the frigid stone carving of the tomb. He had fallen in love with a woman without once thinking about beauty, and yet he had always expected it of any of the women he
had kept over the years.
He was dazzled by her body, there was no denying it, but it was Tess he had fallen in love with, not her face. His family liked her already, he had seen how competent, how caring she was with the staff in his own house. She would be a perfect countess—if only he could persuade her that she would be accepted. Damn the Ellerys. Why they had to build Sethcombe Hall next door and not in furthest Northumberland…
*
Alex was not certain afterwards when the idea had come to him. Possibly at some time between the end of the sermon and the blessing, certainly before he had shepherded his small flock down the aisle and abandoned his mother to Matthew’s support while he took his father’s arm.
‘Stop fussing, Alexander.’
‘As you say, sir. But I’d be grateful if you would be careful of your health. I have no wish to be using this signet except at your direction for many a long day.’
‘Ha! Humbug.’ But he smiled.
His mother hustled the earl off to his bed the moment they reached the house, Maria on their heels. Matthew had vanished. In front of him Tess was climbing the stairs slowly, back straight, cloak trailing behind her.
He followed her up quietly and caught her in the corridor. ‘Tess.’
‘Please, don’t.’ She did not turn. Her hood had fallen back and he looked at the nape of her neck. It was pale, vulnerable, soft. He knew how her skin felt under his lips, he knew how she smelled, just there, he knew the taste of her. Not to touch her now, not to pull her back into his arms so he could kiss that perfect place…that took an act of will.
‘Tess, do you hate me?’
‘Hate?’ She turned abruptly, so close he could have pulled her against his body if he had not linked his hands hard behind his back. ‘No, never. How could I? I—’ She broke off as his heart gave one hard thump.
What had Tess been about to say? I love you?
‘I wish I had never come here,’ she said fiercely. ‘I wish you had not skidded on those cobbles, that I had not fallen, that I had not overslept. I wish I was cold and lonely in that London convent because I knew my place there, I knew who I was and what I was. You made me dream impossible dreams.’
