by Mary Balogh
“I knew you were coming,” he said. “You are safe now, mate. All will be well now.”
Elliott spared him a look of amusement. The child spoke like a mother reassuring her frightened child. Well, he had been frightened too. Perhaps the boy had saved his life.
“Come inside,” the boy said when they were finished, “and have a cup of tea. I don’t suppose you fancy tea much, though.”
Elliott grinned. “At the moment,” he said, “tea would taste like the nectar of the gods.”
He had the instant impression of smallness and warmth and coziness and—peace when he stepped inside the house. It was just a humble country cottage, its kitchen and living room combined in one, its hardened-dirt floor covered with a few woven rugs, its furniture of the most utilitarian. A fire burned in the hearth, giving warmth and cheerful light to the whole room.
It was, he thought foolishly, the loveliest house he had ever seen.
“Here he is, Gran,” the boy said in a piping voice, stepping in behind him and closing the door firmly on the blizzard outside. “I brought the other one.”
A plump and comfortable-looking woman of plain, even drab appearance and indeterminate years stood beside the fire. She looked across the room at Elliott and smiled in a manner that made her appear curiously beautiful.
“Gran!” she muttered softly and chuckled. “Well, so be it. Yes, I can see you have, Joss. Take off your hat and coat, sir, and come and make yourself comfortable by the fire. I will pour you a spot of tea. This makes two of you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You are most kind, ma’am. Your grandson has saved my life this afternoon, I do believe. The storm came from nowhere.”
His hat and coat were off and the boy took them. Someone else must have been caught in the storm too, then, and had taken refuge in the cottage. She had been sitting on the chair at the near side of the fire when he came inside, her back to him. But she was rising now and turning to face him, her eyes wide with bewilderment and shock.
For a moment he did not recognize her. Or else his brain refused to accept what his eyes told him. It had been so long—more than five years. She had been little more than a girl then—only seventeen years old. And he had not expected to see her in this part of the world, only a few miles from his grandfather’s house. She had had plans this year, his grandmother had written. Certainly she was the last person he had expected to encounter here in this country refuge. The coincidence was too mind numbing.
But here she was, still small, still slender yet shapely, her hair still abundant and richly auburn, her eyes still huge and green. A woman now. Still as beautiful as she had been as a girl. More so. Oh, yes, more beautiful.
He heard himself swallow.
“Elliott,” she whispered.
“June.” He was not sure the sound of her name got past his lips.
“Elliott and June,” Joss’s grandmother said kindly, breaking the spell. “You know each other, then. Come and sit down, Elliott. You may sit too, dearie, while I pour you another cup. You will both be warm soon. How lovely, Joss. There will be people to keep the house warmer and more lived-in for Christmas”.
Strangely—there was a very strange quality to this whole situation—they were both seated a minute later, he and June, one on either side of the fire, drinking tea and stealing curious glances at each other. And despite the intense discomfort and embarrassment that he knew she must be feeling and that he should be feeling, he felt seduced by the warmth of the fire and the coziness of the cottage and the smiling hospitality of Mrs. Parkes, who had introduced herself as he sat down. And by the sweetness of his little carrot-headed savior, who was seated cross-legged on the floor before him, his bright head almost resting against the viscount’s knee.
He felt almost—happy.
For five years, he realized, admitting the truth at last, he had longed for a single glimpse of her and had punished himself by keeping himself well out of her sight.
Had she been on her way to Grandfather’s after all? Had they been trying to matchmake, his grandparents? Or rather, trying to patch up a disaster of a long-dead marriage? If he had met her at Hammond, he would have ripped up at the lot of them and stormed out perhaps never to return. He was almost sure that was how he would have reacted. He would have been unbearably ashamed, meeting her before the curious eyes of all his family and hers and all the family friends.
“We are husband and wife,” he found himself saying to Mrs. Parkes, who must be wondering at the strange coincidence of the fact that he and June had the same name. He noticed the slight flush of color that crept into June’s cheeks at his words.
“Ah, yes,” Mrs. Parkes said placidly, hiding the surprise she must have felt. “And you will be able to spend Christmas together after all. It is the best time of all to spend with loved ones.”
He would not know. He had not spent a Christmas with June since she was a child and he a mere boy—before he had purchased his commission and gone off with his regiment to Spain. He had come home finally in July, 1815, after Waterloo, and married her almost immediately. By the beginning of October she had run away from him. And he had not gone after her. Loved ones? Love had died between them a long time ago.
“This will be the best Christmas,” Joss said happily.
“He enjoys a spot of company more than just his old gran,” Mrs. Parkes said with a chuckle.
The boy joined in her laughter. It was a happy sound. June was smiling, Elliott noticed when he glanced at her, though not at him. He was smiling too.
—The best Christmas.
Ah, if only!
It became quickly apparent that they were going to have to stay for the night. She supposed it had been clear from the start, but then she had been too relieved by the safety and warmth and comfort of the cottage to think about it.
It was still snowing heavily outside. The roads were obviously impassable. And soon it was dark. Oh, yes, they would have to stay for the night. And who knew what would happen tomorrow? Perhaps they would not be able to move on then either. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. The day after tomorrow was Christmas Day.
They might be stuck in this isolated little cottage over Christmas. The prospect was unthinkable. And strangely beguiling.
Very strangely.
They sat around the table, the four of them, for an evening meal of thick vegetable stew and freshly baked bread. But before they ate they joined hands to give thanks. Normally June would have been embarrassed—she was used to a more sedate bowing of the head and a quickly muttered prayer. But the hands of Mrs. Parkes and Joss—fortunately she was seated opposite Elliott and did not have to touch him—clasped her own warmly and firmly and she felt the warmth and the comfort all the way up her arms and all the way through her being to the center of her heart.
It was a strange feeling, she thought, one that must have been aroused by her recent rescue from terror and possible death. A strange feeling of gratitude and joy and commitment to life.
What had he been doing on the road to Hammond? The question had been repeating itself in her mind ever since he had stepped into the cottage earlier in the afternoon. Though the answer had been as obvious then as it was now. He had been going to spend Christmas with the family. He must have known that it was her year to go, but he had been going anyway.
And by some strange, bizarre twist of fate they had both been stranded at this same cottage. Why had none of the other guests found their way here? Why just the two of them—she and Elliott?
She caught his eye across the table and lowered her gaze to her plate.
The peculiar thing was that she could not feel the alarm, the horror, the outrage that she would have expected to feel. Had he been on his way deliberately to Hammond—to see her? At last? She had never admitted to herself—and could scarcely do so now—that she had been waiting for longer than five years for him to come for her.
“It is going to be a blessed Christmas,” Mrs. Parkes said, smiling kindly about the table.<
br />
“It is going to be fun, Gran,” the little boy said, his freckled face aglow with the anticipation of it.
“I am afraid,” Elliott said apologetically, “that this snow and your two unexpected guests are likely to spoil Christmas for you. Is the rest of your family any great distance away? How far away is the nearest habitation?”
“Our family is all here about the table,” Mrs. Parkes said, picking up the basket of bread and offering it around again. “And all one needs at Christmastime is family. One’s nearest and dearest.”
Ah, there were just the two of them, then. Joss’s parents must be dead. Just the two of them. It should be sad but was not. He seemed such a happy little boy. His eyes now glowed into his grandmother’s.
“And these are the best guests,” he said. “Aren’t they, Gran? This will be the best Christmas.”
—The best Christmas.
—One’s nearest and dearest.
Ah, if only, June glanced at Elliott again and found his eyes on her, their expression unfathomable.
He had aged. Oh, not in any unpleasant way. Quite the contrary, in fact. Physically he looked more solid. He had lost the thin, wiry, restless look he had had when he came back from the wars. And his dark eyes had lost the haunted, fanatical gleam that had progressively frightened her—among other things—during the three months following their marriage. His dark hair was still thick, but it was cut into a neater style than the one he had worn five and a half years ago. She had thought when she married him that he was as handsome as any man had a right to be. He was more handsome now.
“Tomorrow,” the little boy said, drumming his heels against the crossbar of his chair and speaking in a high-pitched, excited voice, “you and I will go out, mate, to gather greenery and then we will decorate the house with it. And we will carve a Nativity scene out of wood from the shed and set it up by the window. And we will make a star and . . .”
“Wait a minute!” Elliott was holding up one hand and laughing. He was knee-weakeningly attractive when he laughed. “Tomorrow I shall be trying to get my curricle and my horses and my w—, my w-wife on the way to Hammond Park. My grandparents, the duke and duchess, will be expecting us. It will not be Christmas if we do not make it home to our family.”
They were expecting him, then. They knew he was coming. It had been planned. But no one had thought to inform her.
“We will have to wait and see, Joss,” his grandmother said gently. “Wait and see what tomorrow brings.”
June supposed that having unexpected guests must add some excitement to the life of a young boy who lived alone with his grandmother in the country. Especially when one of those visitors was a youngish man, a sort of father figure, who might be willing to do things with him.
“Elliott was always carving wooden figures when he was a boy,” she said, smiling at the child. “He was very talented.”
“Yes,” the child said, bright-eyed. Just as if he thought it impossible that his guest might not have the skill to carve a Nativity scene in the space of one day.
“And June would always create backgrounds for what I carved,” Elliott said. “Meadows of moss for the sheep with pressed daisies. Trees made of twigs for the birds to perch in and a river of painted paper to flow beneath.”
“When we were children,” she said softly, feeling the ache of tears in the back of her throat. Since the breakup of her marriage she had stopped remembering the parts of her childhood that had been shared with him.
When dinner was over, she helped Mrs. Parkes to clear the table and wash the dishes while Elliott helped Joss bring in more wood and build up the fire. Then Elliott sat in the chair he had occupied before while the child sat at his feet, looked up, and asked him to tell the story of Christmas.
Glancing at them occasionally as she dried the dishes, June felt that ache of tears again. The child was looking up with rapt attention as he listened to the Christmas story, and Elliott looked back at him with a softened, almost affectionate expression.
He would have made a good father, she thought. He would . . . But she closed her eyes in sudden pain.
“All will be well, dearie,” Mrs. Parkes said very quietly so as not to disturb the two at the fire. “I promise you all will be well.”
She must have realized by now, of course, that she and Elliott were estranged. Her words were enormously comforting, though why they should be so June could not explain to herself. Could all be made well by a stranger merely through the power of goodwill?
“Ah, the angels,” the boy said on a happy sigh. “Singing to the shepherds. I would like to have been one of them.”
“With a long white gown and white wings?” Elliott chuckled and ruffled the boy’s ginger hair.
The lad looked across the room to his grandmother, who paused in her task of wringing out the washcloth and looked back. June saw the look. It was one of rich and warm mirth, a strange look of equals more than one to be expected between grandmother and grandson.
“Wings!” Mrs. Parkes said before laughing so heartily that they all joined her, the boy more merrily than any of them. “As in all the pictures and sculptures, sir? How would they fly with them, pray? And why would they need them if they are spirit and can move at will?”
“Ah, but you must not spoil our romantic image of angels, Mrs. Parkes,” Elliott said.
“Why would they not appear in the shape of a flower?” Mrs. Parkes said, still chuckling, “or a lamb or a—a boy with red hair and ears that stick out to catch the breeze?”
June glanced quickly at the child to see if he had been hurt by the description, but his face was bright with laughter. “Gran!” was all he said. “Careful now.”
“Very well, then,” Elliott said. “It was a heavenly host of Josses praising God and singing. But the shepherds mistook their ears for wings and so the story has come down the ages.” He ruffled the child’s hair again as they all laughed helplessly.
The evening passed very quickly. Or perhaps it was just that grandmother and grandson kept country hours and night seemed to rush up on them very fast.
There was a loft above the kitchen, where Joss presumably slept. When June’s mind had touched upon sleeping arrangements during the evening, she had assumed that Elliott would share it with him tonight and that Mrs. Parkes would somehow make room for her in the bedchamber. But it seemed that matters were not to be so arranged after all.
“Come, dearie,” Mrs. Parkes said to June when bed had been mentioned by a yawning Joss, “you will need to wash yourself and put on a nightgown I will find for you. I have one tucked away somewhere that will fit you. I shall sleep up with Joss tonight and probably tomorrow night too. You and your husband will be welcome to the bedroom.”
But—she must realize that they were estranged!
June stiffened with shock. “I—I would not turn you out of your bed,” she said.
But Mrs. Parkes smiled her warm, bright, strangely beautiful smile. “It is no trouble at all, dearie,” she said. “I am only too happy.”
The only real trouble was that it was difficult to argue against such kindness and—such love. It did seem almost, June thought foolishly, as if Mrs. Parkes loved her despite the shortness of their acquaintance.
She waited for Elliott to protest, to explain that he would be happy to share the loft with Joss. She waited for Joss to express excitement at the thought of sharing his space upstairs with his new friend.
Neither said a word.
“Thank you,” June murmured, following Mrs. Parkes, first into the bedroom and then beyond it into the small, curtained-off washroom. “You are very kind.”
Mrs. Parkes patted her on the shoulder. “All will be well, dearie,” she said yet again. “Believe me, it will.”
She was wearing a white linen nightgown that covered her to the neck and the wrists. She had let down and brushed out her hair. It hung straight and shining almost to her waist. She was sitting very upright on the edge of the far side of the bed, facing a
way from him. He had been banking up the fire and helping Joss set a guard about it for the night.
He stopped in the doorway and then set down his candle. Her shoulders hunched slightly.
“I will sleep on the floor,” he said quietly. “I shall fetch my greatcoat. I will be quite warm and comfortable.”
She said nothing for a moment as he turned back to the main room.
“No,” she said, her voice stopping him. “The floor is hard and will be cold. It would be foolish.”
He watched her get to her feet, pull back the bedclothes on her side of the bed, climb in, and pull them back up over herself, up to her ears. She did it all without turning fully to look at him. She was lying as close to the edge of the bed as possible.
He had known her for one month as a man knows his wife. Frequently Constantly. Night and day. Until he had finally admitted to himself that the silent and half-hidden tears, the involuntary cringing were just not going to stop. And that he was unwilling to assert himself as her lord and master.
He had been so tired. So very weary. Of life. He had loved her deeply. And had then hated her just as passionately. Until he had turned the hatred against himself.
He wondered what she would do or say now if he suddenly blurted out that the day after she left him he had stood in his study for fifteen minutes, his pistol first to his temple and then—in order to hold it more steadily—in his mouth, trying to summon the courage to pull the trigger. And that afterward, after he had flung the gun away from him, he had cried for longer than fifteen minutes.
Would she move? Say anything? Think anything? Would she care?
He undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots. When he was wearing only his drawers, he blew out the candle, and lay down on his side of the bed. It was not like climbing into a winter bed. It was warm and unexpectedly comfortable. Could her body heat have warmed it already? He lay on his back, one arm over his eyes, trying to hear her breathing.
