The Mistletoe Wager

by Christine Merrill

  ‘Oh.’ This was news, thought Rosalind. For at one time Nicholas Tremaine had been of quite a different opinion about the holiday, much to their mutual regret.

  But there was no reason to mention it, for Tremaine seemed overly focused on his Garrick and his hat, as though wishing to look anywhere than at his hostess.

  Now Elise was unbuttoning her cloak, and calling for a servant, treating this very much as if it was still her home. It was even more annoying to see the servants responding with such speed, when they would drag their feet for her. It was clear that Elise was mistress here, not her. Rosalind’s stomach gave a sick lurch. Let her find her own way to her room, and take her lover as well. She signalled to the servants to help Tremaine, and turned to make an escape.

  And then she saw Harry, at the head of the stairs. The couple in the doorway had not noticed him as yet, but Rosalind could see his expression as he observed them. He saw Tremaine first, and there was a narrowing of the eyes, a slight smile, and a set to the chin that hinted of a battle to come. But then he looked past his adversary to the woman behind him.

  Resolution dissolved into misery. The look of pain on his face was plain to see, should any observe him. Then he closed his eyes and took a gathering breath. When he opened them again he was his usual carefree self. He started down the stairs, showing to all the world that there was not a thing out of the ordinary in entertaining one’s wife and her lover as Christmas guests.

  ‘Tremaine, you have decided to take up my offer after all.’ He reached out to clasp the gentleman’s hand, and gave him a hearty pat on the back that belied his look of a moment earlier. ‘We shall get you out of the blue funk you inhabit in this jolly time.’

  Tremaine looked, by turns, alarmed and suspicious. ‘I seriously doubt it.’

  ‘But I consider it my duty,’ Harry argued. ‘For how could I entrust my wife to the keeping of a man who cannot keep this holiday in his heart? She adores it, sir. Simply adores it.’ There was the faintest emphasis on the word ‘wife’, as though he meant to remind Tremaine of the facts in their relationship.

  ‘Really, Harry. You have not “entrusted” me to anyone. You speak as though I were part of the entail.’ Pique only served to make Elise more beautiful, and Rosalind wondered if it was a trick that could be learned, or if it must be bred in.

  ‘And Elise.’ Harry turned to her, putting a hand on each shoulder and leaning forward to kiss her.

  She turned a cold cheek to him, and he stopped his lips just short of it, kissing the air by her face before releasing her to take her wrap. ‘This is most unexpected. I assumed, when you said that you never wished to set foot over my threshold again…’he leaned back to stare into her eyes ‘…that you would leave me alone.’

  Elise’s smile was as brilliant as the frost glittering from the trees, and as brittle. ‘When I heard that you wished to extend your hospitality to Nicholas, I assumed that you were inviting me as well. We are together now, you know.’ There was a barb in the last sentence, but Harry gave no indication that he had been wounded by it.

  ‘Of course. And if it will truly make you happy, then I wish you well in it. Come in, come in. You will take your death, standing in the cold hall like this.’ He looked out into the yard. ‘The weather is beastly, I must say. All the better to be inside, before a warm fire.’

  Tremaine cast a longing glance over his shoulder, at the road away from the house, before Harry shut the door behind him. ‘Come, the servants will show you to your rooms.’

  ‘Where have you put us?’ Elise asked. ‘I was thinking the blue rooms in the east wing would be perfect.’

  Rosalind swallowed, unsure of how she was expected to answer such a bold request. Although Harry might say aloud that he wished for his wife to have whatever made her happy, she doubted that it would extend to offering her the best guest rooms in the house, so that she could go to her lover through the connecting door between them.

  Before she could answer, Harry cut in. ‘I am so sorry, darling. Had I but known you were coming I’d have set them aside for you. But since I thought Tremaine was arriving alone, if at all, I had Rosalind put him in the room at the end of that hall.’

  ‘The smallest one?’ Elise said bluntly.

  ‘Of course. He does not need much space-do you, old man?’ Harry stared at him, daring him to respond in the negative.

  ‘Of-of course not,’ Tremaine stuttered.

  Harry turned back to Elise. ‘And I am afraid you will have to take the room you have always occupied. The place beside me. Although we are full to the rafters, I told Rosalind to leave it empty. I will never fill the space that is rightly yours.’

  The last words had a flicker of meaning that Elise chose to ignore. ‘That is utterly impossible, Harry. I have no wish to return to it.’

  His voice was soft, but firm. ‘I am afraid, darling, that you must make do with what is available. And if that is the best room in the house then so be it.’ He turned and walked away from her, up the stairs.

  Elise hurried after him, and Rosalind could hear the faint hiss of whispered conversation. Nicholas Tremaine followed after, his retreating back stiff.

  Chapter Four

  By the time they reached the door to her bedroom, Nicholas had made a discreet exit. And for the first time in two months, Elise was alone with her infuriatingly reasonable husband.

  ‘But, my dear, I cannot give you another room, even if I might wish to. On my honour, they are all full.’

  Harry was smiling at her again, and she searched his face for any sign that he had missed her, and had orchestrated the situation just to have her near. But in his eyes she saw not love, nor frustrated passion, nor even smug satisfaction at having duped her to return. He was showing her the same warmth he might show to a stranger. He held a hand out to her again, but made no attempt to touch her.

  ‘I am offering you the best I have, just as I have always done. And you will be more comfortable, you know, sleeping in your own bed and not in a guest room.’

  He was being sensible again, damn him. And it was likely to drive her mad. ‘It is not my own bed any longer, Harry. For, in case you have forgotten, I have left you.’ She said it with emphasis, and smiled in a self-satisfied way that would push any man to anger if he cared at all for his wife or his pride.

  Harry responded with another understanding smile. ‘I realise that. Although it is good to see you home again, even if it is only for a visit.’

  ‘If you were so eager to see me you could have come to London,’ she said in exasperation. ‘You were there only last week.’

  Harry looked confused. ‘I was supposed to visit you? If you desired my company, then you would not have left.’ He said it as though it were the most logical thing in the world, instead of an attempt to provoke her to anger.

  ‘You tricked Nicholas into coming here for Christmas with that silly letter.’

  ‘And he brought you as well.’ Harry beamed at her. ‘I would hardly call my invitation to Tremaine a trick. I promise, I meant no harm by it. Nor by the arrangement of the rooms. Can you not take it in the way it is offered? I wish Tremaine to have a merry Christmas. And I wish you to feel at home. I would want no less for any of my guests.’ If he had a motive beyond that she could find no trace of it-in his expression or his tone.

  ‘But you do not expect the other female guests to share a connecting door with your bedroom, do you?’ She had hoped to sound annoyed by the inconvenience. But her response sounded more like jealous curiosity than irritation.

  He laughed as though he had just remembered the threshold he had been crossing regularly for five years. ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘Yes. That, Harry.’

  ‘But it will not matter in the least, for I have no intention of using it. I know where I am not welcome.’ As he spoke, his cordial expression never wavered. It was as though being shut from his wife’s bedroom made not the slightest difference in his mood or his future.

  And with that knowledge fru
stration got the better of her, and she turned from him and slammed the door in his face.

  Nick made it as far as the top of the stairs before his anger got the better of him. In front of him Harry and Elise were still carrying on a sotto voce argument about the sleeping arrangements. In truth, Elise was arguing while her husband remained even-tempered but implacable. In any case, Nick wanted no part of it. And he suspected it would be the first of many such discussions he would be a party to if he did not find a way back to London in short order.

  But not until he gave the girl at the foot of the stairs a piece of his mind. Rosalind Morley was standing alone in the entryway, fussing with the swag of pine bows that decorated the banister of the main stairs. She was much as he remembered her-diminutive in stature, barely five feet tall. Her short dark curls bobbed against her face as she rearranged the branches. Her small, sweet mouth puckered in a look of profound irritation.

  It irritated him as well that even after five years he fancied he could remember the taste of those lips when they had met his. It was most unfair. A mistake of that magnitude should have the decency to fade out of memory, not come running back to the fore when one had troubles enough on one’s hands. But he doubted she was there by accident any more than he was. And she deserved to know the extent of his displeasure at being tricked by her again, before he departed and left Elise to her husband. He started down the stairs.

  She was picking at the boughs now, frowning in disapproval and rearranging the nuts and berries into a semblance of harmony. But her efforts seemed to make things worse and not better. As he started down towards her, the wire that held the thing in place came free and he could see a cascade of needles falling onto the slate floor at her feet, along with a shower of fruit.

  ‘Damn,’ she whispered to herself, sneaking a curse where she thought no one could hear her.

  ‘You!’ His voice startled her, and she glanced up at him, dropped the apple she had been holding, and stared fixedly at it as it rolled across the floor to land against the bottom step.

  ‘Yes?’ She was trying to sound distant and slightly curious, as though she were talking to a stranger. But it was too late to pretend that she had no idea what he meant by the exclamation, for he had seen the panic in her eyes before she looked away.

  ‘Do not try to fool me. I know who you are.’

  ‘I did not intend to hide the fact from you. And I had no idea that you would be among Harry’s guests.’

  ‘And I did not know, until this moment, that you were Harry’s sister, or I’d never have agreed to this farce.’

  ‘Half-sister,’ she corrected.

  He waved a hand. ‘It hardly matters. You were more than half-loyal to him the day you ruined me.’

  ‘I ruined you?’ She laughed, but he could hear the guilt in it.

  ‘As I recollect it, yes. You stood there under the mistletoe, in the refreshment room at the Granvilles’ ball. And when you saw me you held your arms out in welcome, even though we’d met just moments before. What was I to think of the offer?’

  ‘That I was a foolish girl who had drunk too much punch?’

  He held up a finger. ‘Perhaps that is exactly what I thought, and I meant to caution you about your behaviour. But when I stepped close to you, you threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, most ardently.’

  Rosalind flinched. ‘You did not have to come near to reprimand me, or to reciprocate so enthusiastically when I kissed you.’ She stared down at the floor and scuffed at the fallen pine needles with her slipper, looking for all the world like a guilty child.

  He shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. ‘Believe me, I regret my reaction, no matter how natural it was. That little incident has taught me well the dangers of too much wine and too much celebration.’

  ‘So you blame me, personally, for ruining Christmas for you?’

  ‘And my chances with my intended, Elise. For when she got wind of what had occurred she left me and married another.’

  Nicholas was surprised to see the girl start, as though she was just now realising the extent of her guilt and the chaos her foolish actions had caused. ‘You were engaged to Elise? The woman who was in the entry with us just now? My sister-in-law?’ Rosalind shook her head, as though she were misunderstanding him in some way.

  ‘The woman who married your brother after you so conveniently dishonoured yourself and me.’

  She gave a helpless little shrug. ‘But I had no idea, at the time, what I was doing.’

  ‘Because you were inebriated.’ He held up a second finger, ticking off another point in his argument. ‘And on spirits that I did not give you. So do not try to tell me I lured you to disaster. Although you appeared fine to the casual observer, you must have been drunk as a lord.’ He puzzled over it for a moment. ‘If that is even a possible state for a girl. I do not think there is a corresponding female term for the condition you were in.’

  She winced again. ‘I was sorry. I still am. And I paid dearly for it, as you remember.’

  ‘You were sick in the entry hall before your father could get you home.’

  If possible, the girl looked even more mortified, as though she had forgotten this portion of the evening in question. ‘I meant when I was sent off to rusticate. I never had the come-out that my father had promised, because he said he could not trust me. I am unmarried to this day.’

  ‘You are unmarried,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘because your father could not persuade me that it was in my best interests to attach myself for life to a spoiled child.’

  ‘I never expected that you would marry me,’ she assured him. ‘And I had no wish to marry you. We had known each other for moments when the incident occurred. It would have done no good to pile folly upon folly trying to save my reputation.’

  He smiled in triumph. ‘Miss Morley, I think I know very well what you expected. For now that I have come to this house the picture is suddenly clear to me. You expected Elise would get word of it and that she would choose your brother over me. And that is just what occurred.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ she corrected. ‘And I did no such thing. To the best of my knowledge, Harry knows nothing of the happenings of that night. Father kept the whole a secret, and does not speak of it to this day. Harry does not enjoy the company of my father, and seldom visited his mother. We had only just arrived in London, and I did not get a chance to call on him before my behaviour forced the family to leave again. Even now, all my brother knows of that visit is that I did something so despicable that I was sent from London in shame, and that the family is forbidden to speak of it. We could not have the thing fall from memory if it was a continual topic of conversation.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that you were not in collusion with Harry to ruin my engagement to Elise?’ He arched an eyebrow at her and glared, waiting for her resolve to break under his displeasure.

  She raised her chin in defiance. ‘Do you honestly think that my brother would destroy my reputation so casually in an effort to defeat you?’

  ‘Half-brother,’ he corrected.

  ‘Even so,’ she allowed. ‘You may not like him, but do you think Harry is the sort of person who would behave in such an underhanded fashion as to get me foxed and throw me at you? It is not as if he does not care for me at all. He would have no wish to hurt me.’

  He paused and considered the situation, trying to imagine Harry Pennyngton as the mastermind of his destruction. While he could imagine Harry viewing an affair of the heart with the same shrewdness he brought to his business dealings, he would never have orchestrated the disaster with Rosalind Morley. More likely, when he had discovered that Elise was free, he had simply capitalised on an opportunity, just as she assumed.

  At last, he admitted, ‘Harry has always been the most even-handed and honourable of fellows. Elise comments on it frequently.’

  ‘See?’ Rosalind poked him smartly in the chest with a holly branch she had pulled from the decorations during her agitated re
pairs, and a leaf stuck in the fabric of his jacket. ‘If he’d had wind of it at the time it is far more likely that he’d have called you out for it, or helped to cover the whole thing up, just as my father wished to do. And he’d have never invited you here while I was hostess, even after all this time. If Elise had learned anything about it she would not have greeted me as warmly as she did just now. I doubt that either of them has a clue as to what happened.’ She blinked at him, suddenly worried, and whispered, ‘And I would prefer that it stay that way. Which will be difficult, if you insist on arguing about it in a public room.’

  Nick took this information in and held it for a while, examining it from all sides before speaking. If it was in any way possible that the girl told the truth, then he must give her the benefit of the doubt. Revelation of the story at this point would turn a delicate situation into a volatile one. He said, ‘I have no desire to unbury any secrets during this visit, if it is true that we have managed to keep them hidden. What’s done is done. We cannot change the past.’

  ‘This meeting was none of my doing, I swear to you,’ she said earnestly, before he could speak, again. ‘I would never have agreed to any of it had I known.’ He could see the obvious distress in her eyes, and she twisted the holly in her hands until the leaves scratched her fingers and the berries had been crushed. ‘I never meant to hurt you or anyone else by my actions. Or to help anyone, for that matter. I simply did not think.’ She looked down at the destruction, dropped the twig, and hurriedly wiped her hands on her skirt. She held them out in appeal. ‘I am afraid I am prone to not thinking things through. But I have worked hard to improve my character, and the messes I make are not so severe as they once were.’

  He nodded, though her unexpected presence still filled him with unease. ‘I understand. I am beginning to suspect we are both here for reasons that have little to do with our preference in the matter and everything to do with the wishes of others.’