Christmas Beau

by Mary Balogh

  And she turned about and was gone up the steps and into the house before he could even return his arms to his sides. He stood for a long time frowning after her.

  ***

  The Marquess of Denbigh was standing in the great hall when the two children came inside alone. He raised his eyebrows and looked at them.

  “We just came home from the village,'' Rupert explained to him. "Aunt Amy is outside with Mr. Cornwell. Mr. and Mrs. Rundle came visiting and Mr. Rundle said he once met my papa. He said that papa liked to watch all the mills outside town, but Mrs. Rundle would not let him tell me about them. I think it was because ladies do not like to watch mills. Do they?"

  "It is not considered a genteel sport for ladies," the marquess said, noticing that the little girl looked tired. She clung to her brother's hand and gazed upward at him with those dark eyes, which were going to fell a large number of young bucks when she was fifteen or sixteen years older. He smiled at her. "They do not derive much enjoyment from watching noses get bloodied. Don't ask me why."

  The little girl had detached herself from her brother's side and was standing in front of the marquess, her arms raised. He picked her up and she set her arms about his neck and rested her cheek against his.

  "Tired?" he asked.

  She yawned loudly.

  "Do you want me to carry you up to the nursery?" he asked.

  She nodded. "Daniel lost his ball," she told him.

  "Did he?"

  "But he found it again."

  "I am glad to hear that," he said.

  "They all play cricket in the summer," Rupert said. He was trotting up the stairs at the marquess's side. "Cricket is a super game. I am going to play on the first eleven when I got to Eton, just like my papa did. Uncle Maurice told me."

  "So did I," the marquess said, ruffling the boy's hair. "It is a noble ambition."

  "Did you?" Rupert said, looking up at his host with renewed respect. "But I would like to play with the boys here. They all say that Joe is the best bowler. Perhaps if we come back in the summer I will be allowed to play with them. I will be almost seven by the summer."

  The boy's hand was in his, Lord Denbigh noticed.

  “I want to play with the dogs when we come back,'' Kate said.

  The marquess allowed Rupert to open the nursery door since he did not have a free hand himself. Judith turned from the window at the far side of the room as they entered. She had obviously been awaiting the return of her children. Her face looked as if it had been carved out of marble.

  “Mama.'' Her son raced toward her. "There was a gentleman at the house in the village who used to know Papa. He said I look just like him. He said he would have known me anywhere."

  She rested a hand on his curls.

  The marquess bent down to set Kate's feet on the floor. But she squeezed his neck tightly before scurrying across to her mother with some other pressing piece of news and kissed his cheek.

  Judith was bending down to listen to her daughter's prattling as he turned to leave the room.

  ***

  Christmas was not quite over, it seemed. The decorations still made the house look festive, and there were still all the rich foods of the season at dinner. And it appeared that the marquess's aunts had busied themselves during the afternoon organizing a concert for the evening.

  ''Everyone is to do something, Maxwell,'' Aunt Edith told him when they were all at table. “Miss Easton was not here, of course, when we made the plans. She was in the village with the dear children. But I am sure she will favor us with a selection on the pianoforte." She smiled at Amy. "And you and Mrs. Easton were out walking." Her smile, echoed by Aunt Frieda and Lady Tushingham, was almost a smirk.

  “I shall read 'The Rape of the Lock,”' Lord Denbigh said. "It always shocks the ladies."

  “But I am sure it cannot be quite improper despite its title if you are willing to read it aloud with ladies present, dear Maxwell," Aunt Frieda said.

  Judith supposed she would sing. Amy would be willing to play for her. She had deliberately seated herself beside Mr. Rockford at dinner, knowing that a few carefully selected questions would keep him talking the whole time. She excused herself as soon as Lady Clancy got to her feet to signal the ladies to leave the gentlemen to their port, promising to return to the drawing room in time for the concert.

  Kate and Rupert were both fast asleep, she found when she looked in at the nursery. She went to her own room. Her heart plummeted when there was a tap on the door almost immediately and Amy came inside. She so desperately wanted some time alone. But she needed to talk with her sister-in-law too.

  "Amy," she said, "I have been meaning to tell you that we must…"

  But Amy did not wait to hear what she had to say. "Judith," she said, her voice agitated, "is it possible that we can leave here tomorrow? Or that I can, perhaps? Is it possible that you can come with someone else later or else that you will not wish to leave at all?"

  Judith had been wondering how her sister-in-law would react to having to leave Denbigh Park a few days earlier than they had planned. She frowned and watched aghast as Amy burst into tears and hurried across the room to gaze out of the window onto the dark world beyond.

  "Amy?" she said. "What is it?"

  "Oh, nothing." Amy blew her nose. "Just homesickness. This was not such a good idea after all, Judith. I have never been away from home at Christmas."

  "Mr. Cornwell?" Judith asked softly.

  Amy blew her nose again. "What a foolish, pathetic creature I am," she said. "I am thirty-six years old and from home for the first time in my life, and I fall stupidly in love with almost the first gentleman I meet."

  "And he with you, if my eyes have not deceived me," Judith said. "He seems very fond of you, Amy. Did something happen this afternoon?"

  "Only good-bye," Amy said. "And the assurance that 'it' would never work-whatever 'it' is. I am a lady, you see, and have been brought up to the life of a lady."

  "Have you ever told him," Judith asked, "how lonely that life was, Amy, and how sheltered from the world you have always been? And have you ever told him how you surrounded yourself with the children and happiness whenever all your family came to visit?"

  Amy did not answer. She sniffed and Judith knew that she was crying again.

  "Oh, Amy." Judith crossed the room and set firm hands on her sister-in-law's thin shoulders. "We live in a cruel world. We women have to wait for the men to make all the moves, don't we? And if they decide not to do something, there is almost nothing we can do about it."

  "Perhaps he does not even want me," Amy said. "Why should he? Look at me, Judith. And I am too old to be starting to bear children-or almost too old anyway. He must have guessed my feelings. It must have been embarrassing to him. I am fortunate that he is a kind man."

  Judith clucked her tongue impatiently. "These things can be sensed, Amy," she said. "If you have felt that he cares for you, then you are probably right.''

  Amy straightened her shoulders and blew her nose once more. "I cannot bear to stay here even one more day," she said. "Will you mind if I leave, Judith? Will Lord Denbigh be offended, do you think?"

  "My things are already packed in the dressing room,"

  Judith said. "I have already sent word that the carriage is to be got ready for the morning."

  Amy turned and looked up at her with reddened eyes. Judith's smile was a little twisted.

  "It seems that it was something of a mistake for both of us," shesaid. "I just wish it were possible to leave tonight, Amy. No!" She held up her hands sharply as her sister-in-law took a step toward her. "Please don't say anything, or ask any questions. Not yet. My control can be very easily broken and there is this wretched concert to be lived through. Perhaps on the journey home I will tell you all about it."

  "But has he not made you an offer?" Amy asked. "I thought… It seemed so obvious that…"

  "No," Judith said. "It was just a Christmas flirtation, Amy, nothing more."

  "O
h, no." Amy frowned. "It was definitely more than that, Judith. He…"

  "I think we should go down to join the ladies," Judith said. "Shall we?"

  Amy sighed. "It was all so perfect until this afternoon, was it not?" she said. "In time, Judith, we will remember that and judge it after all to have been one of the best Christmases ever, perhaps the best."

  "Yes," Judith said. "Perhaps in time."

  ***

  There was much sleeplessness in Denbigh Park that night. Amy stood at her window long after everyone had gone to bed, staring sightlessly out, thinking of Judith's words. It was something that could be sensed, Judith had said from an experience of life that was more extensive than Amy's. If Amy thought he had cared, then he probably had.

  He had cared. She was sure of it. He had wished things could be different. He had wished he were ten years younger and wealthy. He had wished she could find someone who would make her comfortable for the rest of her life.

  He cared.

  Life was cruel, Judith had said. Women had to wait around for men to speak, and if the man never spoke, then the woman remained disappointed. Unfulfilled. Unhappy. Life a dreary waste.

  Tomorrow she would go away with Judith. And she would never see him again, or all those children. In time, Judith would marry again. It was inevitable even if for some strange reason she did not marry Lord Denbigh. And then she, Amy, would go home again. And that would be the end of life until the time, some unknown number of years in the future, when she breathed her last.

  Because she was a woman. Because he was a gentleman and did not believe his way of life suitable for a lady. And because she was a woman and unable to speak up against him.

  She was thirty-six years old. Perhaps she would live for thirty or forty more years. Years of dreariness and uselessness and humiliation-because she was a woman and unable to speak her piece.

  It was a stupid reason. Because she was a woman!

  Well, she thought finally, and the thought sent her to bed at last, if she allowed such a stupid reason to spoil the rest of her life, perhaps she deserved the future that was yawning ahead of her.

  She was going to persuade Judith to put off calling the carriage until noon. If she did not lose her courage with the light of day, she was going to use the morning to speak her piece. If she did not lose her courage…

  She scrambled into bed…

  ***

  Judith lay in bed staring up into the darkness. She could still feel the physical effects of that afternoon's happenings. Her breasts were still tender. There was still an ache where they had coupled. And if she closed her eyes, she could still feel him. And smell him.

  She did not close her eyes.

  The anger, the hatred that had sustained her during the walk home that afternoon, during that brief and unexpected meeting with him in the nursery, and during the interminable evening of cheerful Christmas entertainment, had faded. She was no longer either angry or filled with hatred. She was empty, blessedly free of any violent feelings.

  And she began to live again through the events of eight years before. The very correct, very harsh-looking man who had been her betrothed, who had escorted her to the various ton events of the Season, conversing with her stiffly, never touching more than her hand. Her own frightening awareness of him, which she had naively interpreted as revulsion. And Andrew, handsome, charming, smiling, easy and familiar in his manners.

  And her own dreadful behavior. Unthinkable. Unforgivable.

  And his revenge. He had planned it all, moment by moment. She could clearly see that now. Everything, from that first encounter in Lady Clancy's drawing room, had been directed toward achieving his revenge.

  But why? That was the question that had revolved and revolved in her brain since the afternoon. Wounded pride and consequence? Would that account for all he had done? Would not some public humiliation have been more appropriate to a revenge from that motive? This revenge would surely not be public enough for such a man, even though there were undoubtedly several people who were expecting them to marry. She did not believe that he would make public the fact that she had given herself to him and declared her love for him.

  But if not that motive, then what?

  If he had not changed radically in the past eight years, if he had been then in character what he was now, then what must he have been like beneath the harsh exterior? She had never tried to find out at the time. How must he have felt about his betrothal? About her? He was a man now who loved to give happiness, a man who loved children. He loved her own children even though they were hers-and Andrew's.

  She had not thought him quite human eight years before. And yet even if he had changed in that time, he had still been human then. He had been a man engaged to be married and within one month of his wedding. A man who had since proved himself to be fond of children…

  Judith dashed a tear from her cheek impatiently and continued to stare upward into the darkness.

  ***

  The Marquess of Denbigh sat in his library for a long time after his guests had gone to bed. He was not really thinking. He was just allowing sensation to wash over him and felt too lethargic to drag himself off to bed.

  “I love you,'' she had told him when they had first arrived at the cottage. And during the following couple of hours she had loved him indeed with all of herself, with her body and with the part of herself that had looked at him through her eyes.

  "I love you," she had told him again, lying warm and relaxed in his arms beneath the bedcovers, smiling at him with love and trust and the full expectation that he would return her words.

  A Christinas flirtation! I thought you understood. I am so sorry, Judith.

  And this was what sweet revenge felt like. He had waited eight years for this. This was what it felt like. So empty, so very very empty that there was pain.

  She had smiled at him almost throughout their second loving and teased him about having to watch her. Was he afraid she would run away if he did not keep an eye on her? And she had told him what she liked and had gasped and bitten her lip and smiled again when he had done it.

  "Tell me what else you like," he had told her, "and I will do it."

  "I like all of it," she had said. "All of it. All."

  He had given her all and they had both laughed until passion had taken away the laughter and replaced it with ecstasy.

  He had filled her with his seed-twice. Perhaps even now there was new life beginning in her. His life. Hers. Theirs. A new life. She was going away in the morning. He would be as greedy for news of her as he had ever been. He would want to know, he would need to know if she showed signs of swelling with child.

  And if the news of such came back to him, then what would he do?

  And if no such news ever came, then what would he do?

  He had brought a single candle with him from the drawing room. But he had not lit the candles in the branched candlestick on the mantel with it as he had intended. It stood on his desk, the berry-laden sprig of holly twined around its base giving it a festive glow.

  A Christmas candle. All that was left of Christmas. A single frail light in a dark room. He could snuff it with one movement of his fingers. And then there would be total darkness. No Christmas left at all. Nothing left at all.

  He jerked to his feet and wondered belatedly and in some surprise why he had not touched the brandy decanter.

  He was not the only person in the house still awake, he discovered as he reached the landing at the top of the stairs, holding his single Christmas candle. There was a little figure in a long white nightgown standing there, obviously frightened to stillness by the sight of the approaching light.

  "You cannot sleep?" he asked.

  "I was on my way to Mama," Rupert said. "To see if she was all right."

  "She has probably been asleep for hours," the marquess said. "Will I do instead?"

  "I could not find Papa," the child said.

  "Couldn't you?" The marquess stooped down and picke
d up the little boy, who wrapped his arms about his neck and shivered.

  "He kept going through doors," Rupert said. "But when I went through them, he was not there. And they all said they had not seen him. Some of them said they had never heard of him. But I could see him going through another door."

  The marquess let himself quietly into the nursery. The doors into Kate's and Mrs. Webber's bedchambers were open. Mrs. Webber was snoring loudly. Obviously, she was too elderly a lady to have the night charge of two young children. He went into the boy's bedchamber, pulled a blanket from the bed, and seated the two of them in the nursery again. He wrapped the blanket warmly about the child.

  "I knew your papa," he said. "I saw him many times."

  Rupert looked up at him hopefully. "They said they had never heard of him," he said.

  The marquess smiled. "That was because they were dream people," he said. "Dream people are always remarkably stupid. How could anyone with any sense not have heard of a man who was once on the first eleven at Eton?"

  "Uncle Maurice said he once hit three sixes in one inning," Rupert said.

  "Did he?" The marquess shook his head. "Then he was a greater champion than I ever was. The best I ever hit was one six and two fours."

  "Was I dreaming?" Rupert asked.

  "You were," Lord Denbigh said. "The next time you meet those foolish people in a dream, you can tell them that the Marquess of Denbigh knew your papa very well and envies his record at cricket. And he could skate like the wind too, could he not? I am afraid I can skate only as fast as the breeze."

  The boy chuckled. "Tell me about Papa," he said.

  "Your papa?" The marquess looked up and thought. "Let me see. Did anyone ever tell you how he charmed all the ladies? How he charmed your mama and whisked her away to marry him when I fancied her myself?"

  "Did he?" Rupert asked. "Tell me."