The Last Waltz

by Mary Balogh

  “Yes,” she said.

  Their eyes locked. She almost walked toward him—and toward the mistletoe. She almost acted as much without conscious thought or decision as she had at Mr. Pinkerton’s hut the day before. But she caught herself in time.

  “Come for tea,” he said, breaking a moment of unbearable tension.

  “Yes.”

  He had never really had much of a feel for Christmas. During his childhood it had been an occasion for adults only, a time when his uncle had invited guests, almost exclusively male, for hour upon hour of drinking and carousing. He had always been very careful to avoid his uncle as much as possible during the week or so following Christmas, when the man’s temper had been more volatile even than usual.

  In Canada he had always been invited out for Christmas while in Montreal and had celebrated with other winterers during his three stints in the Northwest. But really the day had always seemed much like many other days of the year.

  This year was very different from any other. It was not just being in the vast comfort of Thornwood and knowing that it was his. It was not just being surrounded by congenial friends and even a few family members. It was not even just the snow and the greenery and the carolers and the rich smells escaping from the kitchen. It was not entirely the anticipation of the following two days in which the celebrations would reach their climax.

  It was everything all combined and something over and above the sum of all the parts. He admitted that to himself as he sat in the earl’s pew in the village church late on Christmas Eve, Margaret on one side of him, his aunt on the other. The church was full. The carolers were not perhaps the most musical choir he had ever heard, but the angel choir outside Bethlehem could not have warmed the hearts of the shepherds more thoroughly than they had warmed his heart earlier in the evening in the gloomy, chilly great hall at Thornwood—which had seemed neither gloomy nor cold with the carolers and all his guests and servants in it and Christina serving the mince pies while he ladled out the wassail.

  Christina. She was seated on the same pew as he. If he leaned forward a little or back a little he could see her in her gray cloak and bonnet, seated next to Rachel, who was next to his aunt. Tess, who had been at her other side, was on her lap now and would doubtless be asleep soon. When he had been her age, he thought suddenly and for no apparent reason, his own mother had still been alive. He had only vague, flashing memories of both her and his father—they had died when he was five. Had he been able to climb upon his mother’s lap when he was tired and curl against her, his head on her bosom, knowing the world to be a safe, nurturing place?

  He would see to it, he thought, that the world was always like that for both Tess and Rachel—until they were old enough to cope with its uncertainties alone. Even if he was at the other end of the earth he would see to it. They would remain here. She would not have to marry again and risk another bad marriage. The marriage to Gilbert must have been bad. He had not missed what she had probably not meant to reveal in her anger during the afternoon—her assertion that children, even legitimate children, did not have to bear the stigma of their paternity.

  He listened to the service, gloried in that warm and wonderful but entirely intangible atmosphere of Christmas that was really so new to him, felt his heart expand with love for the Child who was being born into the world again tonight as He had been at Bethlehem almost two thousand years ago—and rested that love on the small family sitting just beyond his aunt.

  He would never marry now. He would give no other woman a claim to Thornwood. It would be her home in which to bring up her children in safety and peace. And after the children were grown up and married and moved to the homes of their husbands? Well, then, it would be her home to grow old in. She would never have to face the humiliation of being compelled to live with younger relatives, who might not want her. Immediately after Christmas, certainly before he returned to Montreal, he would rewrite his will. Unlike his predecessor, he would see to it that the countess had some private settlement, some modest fortune on which to live in the event that he predeceased her.

  Tess was fast asleep by the time the final hymn came to an end and the church bells pealed joyfully. Rachel was big-eyed with fatigue, the side of her head against her mother’s arm.

  “They will wake up in the fresh air,” Lady Hannah said cheerfully, “poor little lambs. But they will sleep as soon as their heads touch their pillows at home. Would you like to hold my hand, Rachel?”

  Rachel was a polite little girl and would have accepted the offer without a murmur. But it was very clear to the man who had remembered losing his own parents at the age of five that she wanted only Christina tonight.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “Rachel could hold her mama’s hand, Aunt, if I carried Tess.” He looked at Christina. “It would be a shame to wake her, but she is too heavy for you to carry all that way.”

  “Thank you,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

  She had had the forethought to bring a warm blanket. They wrapped it carefully about the sleeping child, and he took her into his own arms, pillowing her head on his shoulder. She was all warm, limp, trusting babyhood. He felt curiously like crying.

  And so they walked home together, he and the countess and her family. He met Lizzie Gaynor’s eyes briefly as he stood up from the pew—they had walked to church together. But she was far too well-bred to show any disappointment she might have felt at seeing him encumbered with a child. She turned and smiled beguilingly at Sam Radway.

  It was not a lonely walk home. All about them were family and guests, some of them conversing quietly and walking as fast as they could in order to get in out of the cold, others laughing and dawdling and resuming some of the games that had occupied them during the morning. And yet it felt curiously like a lonely walk—or at least a lone walk.

  It felt like family—the family he had not known as a child beyond the age of five, the family he had never had as a man because. ..

  Because the woman at his side had chosen to make this family with another man. With his childhood tormentor. She was not his wife. These were not his children. He heard a gurgling in his throat and swallowed.

  “There is not too much farther to go, sweetheart,” she said to Rachel, whose footsteps were lagging. And she opened her cloak, wrapped it about the child, and drew her close against her side. Her eyes met the earl’s. They had not spoken a word to each other since leaving church.

  “If you think you can carry Tess the rest of the way,” he said, “I’ll carry Rachel—if she will permit me.”

  “She is heavy,” Christina warned him.

  He smiled at her. Rachel’s large, overtired eyes were gazing longingly up at him from the folds of her mother’s cloak.

  And so Tess once again changed hands—she did not awake though she grumbled sleepily. And he opened his greatcoat, stooped down, enveloped Rachel in its folds, and stood up with her. She was cold. She snuggled against him and yawned.

  “I suppose,” Christina said as they walked on, “I should have left them at home. But they both wanted to come, and Gilbert always insisted upon it. Besides, tonight seemed— special. I wanted them there with me.”

  She felt it too, then—the specialness of this Christmas?

  “Christmas was always celebrated as a strictly religious occasion,” she said. “There was never any fun, never any real joy.”

  The best thing Gilbert had ever done for her, he thought without even a twinge of guilt, was to die young.

  “This year,” she said, “there is such joy.” And yet she spoke the words with a wistfulness that made her sound more unhappy than joyful.

  “We have been blessed with the perfect setting,” he said. “I am accustomed to winter snow, but I remember how rare it is here, especially at Christmas. Have you noticed the sky tonight, Christina? The moon and the stars seem so close that one might expect to be able to reach up and pluck one.”

  “It is as well we cannot do so,” she said. “Happin
ess cannot be plucked or held and hoarded. It has to be recognized in fleeting moments and accepted wholeheartedly and remembered with gratitude.”

  Had she remembered with gratitude?

  He had suppressed memory with bitterness.

  “I will remember this Christmas,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  It had been a short conversation. It had also been the kindest they had shared in longer than ten years.

  Rachel did not fall asleep. She was still half awake when they arrived back at the house. But the hall was full of chattering, laughing people removing outdoor garments before going up to the drawing room for promised hot drinks. It would seem cruel simply to set her down.

  “I’ll carry her up,” he told Christina, and followed her up the stairs to the nursery.

  He set Rachel down in the bedchamber she shared with Tess. Christina bent over one of the beds, intent on undressing the younger child without waking her.

  “Good night,” he said.

  But before he could straighten up and take his leave, Rachel wrapped her arms about his neck.

  “I wish,” she said, her voice fiercely passionate, “I wish you could stay forever and ever. Mama says your home is far away. I wish it was here. I wish you were my papa.”

  “Rachel!”

  Christina clearly shared the embarrassment he felt. Though there was something stronger than embarrassment in him. He hugged the child and then released her firmly.

  “Any man would be honored to be your papa, Rachel,” he told her, “and Tess’s. I am your papa’s cousin and therefore your relative too. I always will be. When I have gone back home, perhaps your mama will let you write to me occasionally, and I will write to you with her permission. I will always think of you and always love you. But we still have some days together here—all of Christmas. Go to sleep now, and when you awake there will be one of the happiest days of your life awaiting you. Good night.”

  “Good night,” she said—-and yawned loudly.

  Christina, he noticed, had not turned. She was still bent over Tess’s bed. He left the room, passing the children’s nurse in the doorway.

  Chapter 14

  CHRISTMAS morning had always been busy. In Gilbert’s time there had been extended prayers for family and servants early in the morning, followed by visits made to the cottages of the farm laborers and other poor people of the village. The visits had been grand, formal affairs. The family had remained in the carriage for the whole tedious ceremony, while the recipients of the Hall’s munificence had been called from their houses to pay homage in shivering discomfort in exchange for their basket of food.

  This Christmas morning was to be just as busy, if not more so. But whereas Christina had never particularly enjoyed it in former years, this year there was the anticipation of joy beyond the morning and even during it.

  This year there were to be gifts for the children, and Christina hoarded to herself the novelty of the occasion by taking them into her private sitting room and enjoying the luxury of almost an hour alone with them. She had bought them porcelain dolls, which she had dressed herself with meticulous and loving care, as well as books and a few other small items. But there were gifts too from Meg and Aunt Hannah and their nurse—and little fur muffs from the earl.

  Their excitement brought tears to Christina’s eyes. And the tears brimmed over when they presented her with gifts—a bright painting from Tess, who explained that the fat yellow blob with four pink projections, the whole surmounted with a curly black fringe, was her mama, and a linen handkerchief from Rachel, who had embroidered with rather ragged stitches a blue flower in one corner.

  “I could not have done it alone, Mama,” she admitted gravely. “Nurse helped me.”

  Christina hugged them both tightly. “They are the most precious gifts I have ever had,” she said. “I would not exchange them for all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh in the world.” Her children were well versed in the Christmas story.

  But the hour could not be prolonged. There were other duties to be performed. Besides, the children were eager to return to the nursery to show their gifts to the other children and see what they had had.

  There were the guests to greet at breakfast and then the servants to entertain in the drawing room while the earl spoke with each of them and gave each a Christmas bonus— a new experience for them. It was a vast improvement, Christina thought, on the old tradition of prayers, at which the servants had stood at silent attention while the family sat in solemn state. Gilbert’s version of piety had been so very lacking in warmth and compassion. This morning there was not a single prayer or reading from the Bible or reflection on the religious significance of the day. But if what had begun in the stable at Bethlehem had been all about love and hope and joy, then it was being continued this morning, as never before, in the drawing room at Thornwood.

  When the housekeeper finally signaled to the servants that it was time to return to their posts, Christina would have left the room with them. She did not wish to be alone with the earl. She had been considerably embarrassed the night before by Rachel’s words. The worst of it was that she had been weaving fantasies of her own, even if only half consciously. Walking home from church, they had seemed so much like a family—a close and loving family. The sight of him walking beside her, first with Tess in his arms and then with Rachel right inside his greatcoat, had turned her quite weak at the knees. And then his presence with her in the girls’ bedchamber . ..

  And then Rachel’s words!

  “Please stay a moment,” he said now, and she was forced after all to be alone with him in the drawing room. She turned to look at him as calmly as she could.

  “Thank you for the children’s gifts,” she said. “They will thank you themselves, of course, but it was very kind of you.”

  He inclined his head to her. Had he too been embarrassed last night? she wondered. Or horrified?

  “Do you have a spare moment in which to practice magic?” He grinned suddenly and her heart somersaulted— he looked so very like that exuberant boy of her memories.

  “Not this morning,” she said. “There are all the baskets to deliver.” She might have given directions that some of the servants take them, but it was a duty she did not choose to delegate.

  “The baskets?” He raised his eyebrows.

  She explained.

  “I really do not know much about life on a great estate, do I?” he said ruefully afterward. “It is a lovely idea. May I help?”

  “That will not be necessary, my lord,” she said. “Aunt Hannah and Meg have promised to accompany me.”

  But three is an awkward number,” he said. “If you all go together, the task will take just as long as if one went alone. If you form two groups, one person is doomed to be alone. Two groups of two would be better.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “And the deliveries could be made in half the time.”

  “Yes.”

  “We will send Margaret and Aunt Hannah out together, then,” he said. “And you and I will go together. We will need two carriages, will we not? I had better go and see if it is possible to take them out this morning. Will you speak with the other two ladies, Christina, and organize who is to go where?”

  He opened the door for her, followed her out of the room, and then strode off about his own business.

  Less than half an hour later they were on their way, the earl and the countess in one carriage, Margaret and Lady Hannah in the other. But although they had only half the cottages to visit, this particular duty did not take any less time than usual. For one thing the coachman drove at cautious speed through the snow. For another they descended from the carriage at each cottage, stepped inside, and stayed to talk. Wherever there were children, his lordship gave them sixpence each—he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply in the deep pocket of his greatcoat. They left laughter and genuine smiles behind them as they moved on.

  “It has been a pleasant morning,” he said aft
er they had made their last call and were seated inside the carriage again. “One misses a great deal of the warmth of family life in a large home like this when one is—alone.”

  “Yes.” She turned her head away to look out of the window.

  “I often wonder what my life would have been like if my parents had not died when I was so young.” His voice sounded nostalgic, as if he were thinking aloud rather than addressing her. “I was younger than Rachel is now, you know. And then brought up by an uncle of uncertain temper and with two male cousins who resented me for companions—my aunt did not die until I was eleven, when Margaret was born, but she was a shadowy figure. I was almost unaware of her presence. I believe my mother must have been constantly present in my life before she died. There is a feeling of warmth and safety associated with her memory. I believe I spent the rest of my childhood missing her.”

  She could not look away from the window, could not say anything. The urge to reach for him, to try somehow to soothe him for the loss of a mother years and years ago was almost irresistible. He would think she had windmills in her head. She did not want to think of him as a man who was perhaps essentially lonely.

  “You had the love and stability of family life that I missed,” he said. She could tell that he had turned his head toward her now. His voice showed that he was aware of her. “You were older when your mother died. Sixteen, was it not?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “I remember,” he said, “that you still grieved for her when—when we met.”

  “It had been only two years,” she said.

  There was a short silence. “Is your father still living?” he asked her then. “Pardon me for not knowing the answer. And for not asking you about him before now.”