by Mary Balogh
“John?” she said.
“That other time,” he said, “when I went to London ahead of you and Jeffrey, I—A few of my former university friends organized a sort of reunion. A dinner, involving a great deal of reminiscing and laughing and drinking. We all regressed several years. Almost inevitably we ended up at that brothel.”
There were always women—ladies—who heard about such exploits, secret as men always believed they kept them. One of those ladies had been eager enough to tell Antonia about it as soon as she arrived in town with her son.
“They teased me,” he said. “I was the only married one among them. They teased me about being in love like a girl, about being tied to my wife’s apron strings. It seemed the thing to do to go along with them and hire a girl. It was the way to prove my manhood, to prove that I was master of my own life. To show that I was still the devil of a dashing fellow. Until I got there and realized how stupidly immature it was to try to prove those things in such a juvenile way. I loved you. I wanted only you. And even if I had not, I had vowed to keep myself only for you for the rest of my life. I sat in the lounge with her, talking, while the others were upstairs. I made the strange discovery that she was a person.” He laughed softly. “Poor girl. And then when the others returned, one by one, I boasted about having had more practice than they, about needing less time—No, the rest does not need to be said.”
“Why did you not tell me?” she said, staring wide-eyed at his profile. But she knew the foolishness of the question even as she asked it.
He turned his head to look at her. “I did,” he said. “Over and over. But you were furious, Antonia, distraught. You did not at all behave as a wife of good ton is supposed to behave. You did not pretend that you did not know. And I was unable to deny that I had been to the brothel.”
Yes, he had told her. He had told her that he had sat with one of the prostitutes, doing nothing but talking to her. She had treated his lies with loud scorn. At least have the decency to admit the truth, she had yelled at him. She had done a great deal of yelling that day. And throwing. She had hurled and smashed several costly ornaments. And so eventually he had—admitted the truth.
Have it your own way, he had said at last, his voice raised to match hers in volume. I took her upstairs and I rutted with her. I made rare sport with her. I went back the next night to try out one of the other girls and the next night to ride yet another. Are you satisfied now? He had stalked from the room, and they had exchanged scarcely a word over the three months following—until she had gone to him to tell him she was increasing.
“We were a pair of jealous fools,” he said. “We had had things too easy. We fell in love at first sight and we loved our way through a betrothal and four years of marriage just as if we fully believed that happily-ever-afters were possible. We lived in a fairy tale. And then came the inevitable test. We failed it miserably. But it was all my fault. I did not sleep with her, but I went there fully intending to do so. And then I allowed hurt and anger to rule me. I lied to you. And forced you into everything that came after.”
“A pair of jealous, lying fools,” she said. “How could we possibly have made each other suffer so much for nothing at all, John? Are we savages? I am frightened by what we were both capable of. Are we still capable of it?”
“Yes,” he said, looking at her. “I think civilization must be fought for every single day—just as love has to be fought for and a marriage. We can be sorry creatures when we give up the fight.”
She swallowed awkwardly.
“Perhaps that is why we have Christmas every year,” he said, “and then Easter so soon after. To remind us. And to assure us that love and decency can prevail despite the odds.”
“John.” She shivered. “Hold me.”
“I have been unfaithful to you,” he said, misery in his eyes.
She shook her head and forced herself to smile. Strangely, it was not difficult after all. She even found there was some merriment in her smile. “But it was horrible,” she said. “She was not me. This is me.” She opened her arms to him.
He was in them then and hugging her to him as if he would make her a part of his own body. She felt all the breath whoosh out of her lungs, but she wrapped her arms about his neck and made no protest. Even when his mouth was hard on hers and his tongue deep inside and she found it even more difficult to draw breath, she did not protest. She clung as if her very life depended upon clinging.
It was a very good thing, he thought, sitting reclined and relaxed on the most comfortable chair in the room, his wife curled on his lap, that no one ever disturbed him when he was in his study. He had taken her on the carpet before the fire with voracious hunger and without any thought whatsoever to where they were or to the fact that the door was unlocked. The realization could make the hairs prickle at the back of his neck when he thought of it now, but they were respectable again if a little disheveled. He laughed softly.
She turned her head and kissed the underside of his jaw. “It must be almost time to change for dinner,” she said. “You would not want to be late.”
“To the devil with dinner,” he said, “if you will excuse my language.”
“I suppose,” she said, “if one is to judge from the sounds of distant merriment, there is still time. No one else seems to have retired yet.”
“Then stay where you are and let me enjoy Christmas,” he said. “I am glad after all that we went back, Antonia, though it was excruciatingly painful, was it not? Now we have an unclouded future ahead.”
“But not a happily-ever-after,” she said. “We are wiser than to make that mistake again.”
“Mm,” he said. “And no more hurled wassail bowls either if it is all the same to you.”
She chuckled and then laughed outright. “You looked like a drowned rat,” she said. “And you should have seen your face.”
He joined in her laughter despite himself. “It was not so much the wetness that was bothersome,” he said. “It was the stickiness. It was horrible punishment, Antonia.”
They subsided into a comfortable quietness again until a slight creaking had him turning his head sharply toward the door. It was opening slowly. Thank heaven, he thought, this had not happened just ten minutes earlier. Whoever it was had not even knocked. A little mop of auburn curls appeared about the door.
“Come on inside, Jane,” he said.
She came, her baby firmly tucked into one bent elbow, Pamela dangling from the other hand. She came toward them, placed her dolls carefully on Antonia’s lap, and then climbed onto his, squeezing between her mother and the arm of the chair. She set her head against his chest and yawned.
“Tired?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Have you had a happy day, sweetheart?” Antonia asked.
Jane nodded again.
“Oh, I say,” another voice said from the doorway. “You are not supposed to be in here, Jane. Uncle George said Mama and Papa needed to be alone. I will take her up to the nursery, sir. Come along, Jane. I will help you put the baby to bed.”
But the earl smiled at his son. “Come on inside,” he said, “and close the door. Come and sit here.” He patted the arm of the chair. “Mama and I want to be alone with our children. Jane is falling asleep, I do believe. Come and tell us if you are enjoying Christmas.”
Jeffrey looked from one to another of them as he obeyed his father. “I am enjoying it,” he said. “I like having a mama and a papa both at the same time. Will it be like this next Christmas too?”
“Next Christmas and every day between now and then,” the earl said. “I have Mama in one arm and my son in the other and my daughter against my chest—not to mention Pamela and the new baby. Why would I be foolish enough not to make every day Christmas Day?”
Jeffrey reached out one arm to set about Antonia’s neck—she was smiling warmly at him. He tipped his head onto his father’s shoulder and sighed. “This is the best Christmas in all the world,” he said.
“Yes,” his father agreed, “you are right there, my son. They do not come any better than this one. Ah, I thought as much. Jane is asleep.”
He bent his head and kissed his wife softly on the lips. They smiled at each other with warm affection.
The Bond Street Carolers
Mary Balogh
The season of Christmas was irrevocably upon them, it seemed. Bond Street in London was crammed with fashionable shoppers, most of whom carried assorted packages and bandboxes and dodged impatiently about those similarly encumbered. Several of them had servants walking a pace or two behind, loaded to the eyebrows with larger, heavier, more unwieldy parcels, and suffering considerable verbal abuse from those whose path they obstructed. Carriages paused to pick up their passengers and were cursed at by impatient coachmen for blocking the thoroughfare. The general mood seemed to be one of irritability.
The rain had stopped for the moment, but the wind that howled along the street as if it were a funnel was damp and chill and cut through fashionable greatcoats and cloaks, setting their wearers to shivering and hurrying—and bumping all the more surely into one another. Both the road and the pavement were wet. Hems of cloaks and dresses were dark and heavy with moisture and boots were muddy. Heedless carriage drivers sprayed passersby with a mixture of dirty water and mud and were roundly berated for their impudence.
There was little evidence of the peace and goodwill for which the season was supposedly renowned.
Yet the group of carolers standing on one corner, red-nosed and bedraggled, exhorted everyone within hearing, the gentlemen in particular, to allow God to rest them merry and let nothing them dismay. The shoppers gave the group a wide berth lest they be importuned to contribute to whatever charity had set the singers to indulging in such blatant self-torture. Most of them appeared not to remember, though instructed to do so by the choir, that Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day. Or if they did remember, there were more important things to occupy their minds for the coming four days—like completing their Christmas shopping so that they might return home and get themselves warm and dry again and rest their sore feet.
It was Christmas—that time of love and laughter and peace and merriment and religious observance. That most blissful of all times of the year. That persistent myth. Roderick Ames, Baron Heath, who was proceeding along Bond Street only because it offered the shortest route from where he had come to where he was going, was as fashionably dressed as anyone else on the street. More so, in fact. His greatcoat boasted twelve capes and his boots and gloves and beaver hat were all new and of the latest design and the most costly materials. But he carried only a silver-topped cane and did not even glance at the shops to either side of him. Their window displays did not entice him. Although he had brothers and sisters and their assorted spouses and offspring for whom to buy, not to mention a resident mistress, he also had a secretary who was perfectly capable of taking the unpleasant task of choosing and purchasing upon himself. He was paid handsomely enough, after all.
Lord Heath disliked Christmas. Traditionally it was always spent at Bloomfield Hall, his seat in Hampshire. His beloved home, except at Christmas, when it was invaded by every last person, he sometimes thought, who could claim some connection with the Ames family, however remote. And every last person’s spouse as well, and all their children—and even occasionally their pets. His family had been remarkably prolific over the past century or so.
It was all a merry romp—or so family mythology described Bloomfield Christmases. By his own observation they were fraught with inebriated, overfed, sleepy, short-tempered gentlemen; demanding, complaining, vaporous, short-tempered ladies; frazzled, despairing, short-tempered nurses and governesses; and shrieking, unruly, petulant, short-tempered children. And himself—counting the days until he might expect to have his home to himself again and decidedly short-tempered in the meanwhile.
But not this year. This year the festivities would proceed without him. He did not believe he would be sorely missed. This year he would remain in town and would recognize no obligation to the season except to send off all the presents to Bloomfield and to host the concert that he usually gave during January. That was to be two days before Christmas. Christmas Day itself he intended to spend blissfully alone in his library with perhaps the indulgence of an afternoon or evening visit to Lucy. It would be a pleasant novelty to be able to make use of the services of a mistress on Christmas Day.
The carolers, he noticed with an inward grimace as he drew closer to them, were singing with surprising enthusiasm considering the inclement weather and the lack of appreciation with which their efforts were being greeted. They were also singing with a lamentable lack of musicality. One mature female voice, predominating over all the others, trilled and wobbled in the higher registers. Someone, Lord Heath guessed, had once told her she had a fine voice. He singled her out with his eyes. A buxom woman of late middle years, she sang with closed eyes as if in an ecstasy. The thin and elderly man behind her sang in a lusty bass voice. It took no connoisseur of music to recognize that the owner of the voice was tone-deaf.
“God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” came to a close just as Lord Heath stepped out into the roadway in order to pass the group. They did have a small audience, he noticed. A lady, holding the hand of a small child, stood and listened to them. Though perhaps, he thought, she was one of them. She was young and doubtless personable, and the child was no more than an infant. Who better to take up the collection between renderings? Who could resist a pretty woman—unless perhaps another less pretty female? And who could resist a tiny child? He lifted one cynical eyebrow and walked on.
But the carolers had begun a new song. Not the whole group. A soloist began singing. “Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,” the voice sang—a soprano voice of such sweet purity that Lord Heath stopped in his tracks and unconsciously held his breath. It was like an angel’s voice, he thought foolishly, and waited for the discordant sounds of the choir to join the voice after the opening lines. But it sang on alone.
A young boy he had not noticed before stood in the front ranks of the group, an open book across his two hands, his eyes directed downward at it. He was muffled up against the cold so that only his downcast eyes, two rosy cheeks, and an equally rosy nose were visible—and his mouth, which opened wide to release the heavenly sounds that held Lord Heath spellbound. He rested the tip of his cane on the wet and muddy curb and forgot everything but the music itself.
And the magic—if such was an appropriate word—of the Christmas story.
Fanny Berlinton was embarrassed—and cold. In equal measures. She was wearing a wool dress with long sleeves beneath her heavy cloak, and she had swallowed her pride by wearing her rather ugly half boots and an unfashionable bonnet with a brim large enough to shield her face from some of the wind’s force, and from the intermittent rain. But Bond Street felt like an icy tunnel and she was unable even to hurry along it in order to build up some heat or duck inside one of the shops. She could not walk at all, in fact. She was forced to stand still.
She was forced to stand close to the carol singers and be associated with them by proximity. They were a group from the church she had attended since coming to live permanently in London at the end of the summer, and they prided themselves on having gone carol singing and raising money for church repairs every year for the past twenty-seven. With two or three exceptions, the members of the group were the same people who had begun the tradition. Fanny seriously doubted that they had ever been a tuneful choir, but she would give them the benefit of the doubt. Miss Kemp, their leader and star attraction, had perhaps had a passably good voice before it began to wobble with advancing age. Mr. Fothergill had perhaps been able to carry a tune before he lost most of his hearing.
If only Matthew had not opened his mouth one Sunday morning at the sound of a familiar hymn and sung like a nightingale, as the vicar had commented immediately afterward before launching into his sermon. Matthew had been surrounded by kindly parish
ioners after the service was over, and Miss Kemp herself had announced that the dear boy really must join the carolers and attend weekly practices, it being October already.
He ought to be singing with the choir at Westminster Abbey or one of the other larger, more fashionable churches, the vicar had added, though he had gone on to say that he hoped Mrs. Berlinton would not deprive them of her son’s heavenly voice.
Matthew, no ordinary child, had not cringed from the idea of being part of an adult choir, as Fanny had rather hoped he would. He had been charmed by the prospect. Singing came more naturally to him than talking, his mother often thought, and he would never willingly pass by the opportunity to share his talent with an audience.
Not that he was conceited. Far from it. Praise appeared to warm him but not to puff him up with any sense of his own importance.
And so here she was, cold and embarrassed. The carolers seemed to be more than usually off-key. Though as usual she felt her heart swell with pride—and apprehension—when Matthew began his solo. How could anyone on busy Bond Street not stop to take notice? she thought. But what if no one did? Would Matthew notice and be crushed by the crowd’s indifference?
She glanced down at Katie, her daughter. She hoped the child was warm. She was certainly bundled up well enough. Katie was a strange mixture of quiet dreaminess and occasional daring boldness. For the moment she was still, content to hold hands and watch her brother’s performance. She set her head against Fanny’s side even as her mother looked down at her.
Christmas would be quiet this year. Fanny had made the decision to let her brother-in-law and his family, with whom she lived because Boris had not left her sufficient funds for an independence on his death, go into the country without her. There would be a large house party there as usual and she had hesitated about depriving the children of the company of others of their own age. But she hated those Christmas parties, during which the adults and children were strictly segregated and the adult festivities consisted of too much eating, far too much drinking, and very much too much kissing and pinching beneath the mistletoe—kissing everyone, that is, except one’s own spouse. For the past two Christmases, ever since coming out of mourning for Boris, Fanny had been kissed enough times to send her scurrying to her room on more than one occasion, feeling somewhat nauseated.
