A Christmas Promise (15 page)

“But of course,” she said with another laugh as they approached the pine trees and she remembered how just last summer they had eyes for no one else but each other, how they had held hands whenever they were out of sight of others, and how they had stolen kisses whenever they could. Just last summer. Just a few months before. A lifetime before.

And then they were at the trees and Uncle Harry was organizing them so that the men broke the boughs they wanted from the trees and the ladies dragged them away and heaped them ready for carrying back home. There was much talk and laughter, much hard work. Eleanor, doing her part, watched the Viscount Sotherby smile at Muriel as he handed a bough down to her, and saw from the corner of an eye George and Mabel exchange a brief kiss behind the screen of another bough.

She too might have been stealing glances and kisses, she thought, if the events of the past two months could just be erased. If Papa were still alive. If he had not arranged a marriage between her and the Earl of Falloden. If … If and if.

Her husband had never really known Christmas, she thought. He must have been a lonely child and boy. Christmas had always been just like any other day of the year to him except perhaps a little more depressing. He had a family to whom he had never been close. None of them was at Grenfell Park for this Christmas, while all of her family were. Except Papa. She had not really thought of it until this moment. He had four friends with him but no family at all.

She was swept suddenly by a wave of sadness and longing. But a nameless longing. She could not quite identify its source. She bent to pick out a few smaller, lighter boughs for Davie and Jenny to drag home through the snow and was quite unaware of the burning glances that Wilfred was sending her way.

———

S
IR
A
LBERT
H
AGLEY HAD
not intended to join the party gathering greenery. He had come to Grenfell Park for the shooting and he took it unkindly in the other guests to have changed Randolph’s mind. Not that he blamed his friend, of course. The Transomes were an overpowering lot, to say the least. And then his mood had taken another turn for the worse when he had emerged from a solitary breakfast room and a solitary breakfast to encounter what seemed like several dozen noisy snowmen all pouring in from the outdoors, the Earl of Falloden leading the way, and he realized that he had missed a snowball fight.

Something as undignified as a snowball fight. And Miss Rachel Transome was there with the pack of them, joking and laughing with Harvey Gullis, who was not even a relative of hers if he had got all the relationships straight the evening before, and looking rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed and wet and untidy and altogether as appetizing a little female as he had ever clapped eyes on.

He had been planning to avoid her today. She might be an innkeeper’s daughter and pretty and sensible, and she might have eyes for him as he had for her. But the truth was that the innkeeper was there with her and must weigh eighteen stone if he weighed an ounce. And there were plenty of other relatives there too to defend her honor. Besides, she was a guest in Randolph’s house and a relative of his by marriage. And besides again, he had learned a lesson about women of a lower class from a certain Miss Eleanor Transome, now the Countess of Falloden.

He had planned to give Miss Rachel Transome a wide berth for that day anyway. For if he could not flirt with her and attempt some sort of seduction, his attentions might be interpreted another way and he might find himself leg-shackled to an innkeeper’s daughter sooner than he could wink.

But she smiled at him as she shook her hood free from her damp hair. And she blushed, though he realized later that her cheeks had been rosy from the outdoors and if she had been blushing beneath it all he could not have known it anyway.

The upshot of it all, however, was that he found himself hunting greenery with everyone after all. His excuse to himself was that he could not be the lone male left at the house with the attic-raiding aunts. Doubtless they would have him peering onto cobwebby rafters if he did anything so unwise. He went hunting mistletoe instead.

And of course he walked with Rachel Transome and talked with her and got himself lost among the oaks with her and only realized their lone, unchaperoned state as he descended the trunk of a gnarled oak tree to place some sprigs of mistletoe in her outstretched hand.

And because they were alone, and because she smiled so brightly up at him, and because he was an utter idiot who could not avoid trouble even when his mother and his sisters were not there to push him into it, he kept one small sprig in his hand and raised it above both their heads as he reached the ground and kissed her soft, cool lips.

Lord, he thought, withdrawing his head after the merest touch of temptation and smiling foolishly at the girl. Lord, he should have stayed away. He should have joined his own family for the holiday. He should not have taken pity on Randolph and come to give him moral support with this unspeakably
strange
family. Strange, noisy, boisterous, warm family.

“What do you do at your father’s inn?” he asked her. He pictured her in a mobcap, a feather duster in one hand. He pictured male lodgers pinching her bottom and would have liked to line up all those customers so that he might walk along in front of them all, bashing heads together in pairs.

“I don’t,” she said, smiling. “We live in a house next door to the main inn. Papa owns several, you know. I help Mama with the running of the house. Twice a week I help teach school. Sometimes life is a little dull.” She pulled a face.

Well. So much for the mobcap image.

“We had better find the others,” he said, and she walked beside him, her mistletoe clutched in both hands, and they exchanged stories of school and university. She had attended school. Latin and history had been her favorite subjects. Cricket had been his. They laughed merrily.

He hoped fervently that they would not emerge from the trees to find Mr. Benjamin Transome waving a marriage contract before his nose. But the man, of course, was helping haul in the Yule log. When Sir Albert thought of the probable size of the log, though, he was not much consoled.

But by damn she was a pretty little thing. And sensible and good-humored. And now that it was too late, he wished he had lingered for just a few seconds longer over his enjoyment of her lips.

I
T HAD BEEN A SOMEWHAT EXHAUSTING DAY.
There had been the early business of the morning and the snowball fight—all seeming as if they must have happened days ago. And then the long trudge through the snow out to the woods to bring home the Yule log and the greenery. And luncheon followed by the loud and busy decoration of the drawing room and dining room and hall and stairway, a dozen voices at least giving firm orders and a dozen more contradicting them. It was amazing, the Earl of Falloden thought when it was all over, that it had got done at all and that his house had been so transformed. It looked warm and festive and smelled wonderful.

There was the kissing bough, the proud creation of Aunt Ruth and Jane Gullis, in the center of the drawing room, and sprigs of mistletoe in all sorts of unexpected places so that the most unlikely couples were suddenly finding themselves stranded beneath some while a chorus of voices crowed with delight and demanded a kiss. His wife and Hagley, for example, who had looked startled and uncomfortable enough when they had almost collided in the drawing room doorway and who had both turned a bright pink when they had been forced to peck each other on the lips. And Sotherby and Muriel Weekes at the pianoforte bench, though the earl had a suspicion that perhaps that one was more contrived—as the encounter between George Gullis and Muriel’s sister at the foot of the staircase certainly was.

And as if they had not expended enough energy by the time evening came, they all decided by mutual consent—it was frequently difficult with the Transomes, the earl was finding, to discover just who made an initial suggestion—to play a vigorous and highly competitive game of charades. The earl was surprised to find that he had some skill at the game—which he joined in despite the fact that he
never
played charades and despite the fact that he felt somehow as if his home and his life had been taken over by some alien horde—especially when cheered on by an enthusiastic team, which attributed its resounding victory to his acting abilities.

He was feeling rather pleased with the day and was beginning to wonder if there was not after all something to the fuss other people always seemed to make over Christmas. And his wife was looking rosy and cheerful and lovely. They had not once quarreled all day, he thought, though of course they had not been alone together all day either. He remembered suddenly the teasing of her uncles about the mistletoe over her bed and felt a not altogether unpleasant quickening of his breathing.

He was feeling relaxed, he realized in some surprise. Surrounded by Transomes, not quite master in his own home, not at all sure that he and his friends would ever get out to do some shooting, he nevertheless was feeling—happy. Was it a suitable word to describe his mood? Was he feeling happy?

E
LEANOR WAS NOT FEELING
at all as happy as she was at pains to look. Wilfred had hardly moved from her side all day, and apart from the misery his proximity was causing her, there was the fear that someone was going to notice. Her husband, for example. Everyone else must have known that they had not been indifferent to each other for the past year and more even though they had never shown their affection in public.

He had walked beside her on the way home with the pine boughs, and he had contrived to be the one handing her the ribbons and bows to be twined among the holly wrapped about the banisters on the staircase. He had been part of her team at charades. And now, when tea had been ordered, he had tried to maneuver her to the pianoforte to find a piece of music that had been played the evening before. There was a sprig of mistletoe hanging over the pianoforte.

She could stand no more, she decided. She was ready to burst with the tension of having her husband and the man who was to have been her husband in the same room together.

“We must talk,” she murmured to Wilfred, and she raised her voice to tell those within earshot, her husband included, that she was taking him down to the library to choose a book to take to bed with him. It seemed an unexceptionable excuse, she thought. George and Mabel had already made an excuse to go downstairs to the long gallery—not to look at the paintings, but to gaze out at the snow and stars. But George and Mabel were all but betrothed, of course, and no one made any objection, though Aunt Beryl told Mabel to be back in half an hour.

Eleanor set down the branch of candles she had brought with her on the library desk and turned determinedly to face Wilfred. She wished he had shut the door, but she did not want to walk around him to do it herself. Besides, it was perhaps as well that the door remained ajar. There were servants whose good opinion was important to her.

“Ellie,” he said, striding toward her.

But she set up a staying hand. “Don’t come any closer, Wilfred,” she said. “Please.”

“How can I stay back?” he asked, nevertheless stopping and looking at her, longing in his eyes. “Ellie. My love.”

“I am not your love,” she said firmly. “Not any longer. I am a married lady, Wilfred.”

“But you do not love him,” he said. “You did it for your father’s sake, Ellie. I know you have always despised members of the peerage and of the
ton.
”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “he is my husband.”

“Ellie.” He took another step toward her and stretched out both hands to her.

She looked at them and clasped her own more tightly in front of her. They were cold. She felt cold to the heart. He looked very tall and lean and boyish, though he was only two years younger than her husband, she reminded herself. “If you had written back to say you would marry me even though you had nothing much to offer me,” she said, “I would have argued further with Papa. I would have stayed firm, if need be, until I came of age, though I do not believe Papa would have held out against me. He loved me. Or if you had written to ask me to wait for you until you could offer more and retain your pride, I would have waited. For five years. For ten. For however long it would have taken. You wrote to tell me that you must set me free. You wrote to tell me to do what Papa wanted me to do.”

“You must know,” he said, “how wretched I felt, Ellie, knowing the marriage your father had planned for you and having so little to offer you myself. You must know that I had to make the noble gesture.”

“And yet,” she said, looking at him with eyes full of hurt, “you came here, Wilfred. Was that noble? And you wrote that letter after Papa died and after I was already married. Was that noble? Why did you come?” She desperately wanted there to be a good reason, though there could be none. She was not accustomed to thinking of Wilfred as anything less than perfect.

“How could I stay away?” he asked. “Ellie, it is an agony to see you, to see him, to know that you belong to him. Oh, how could I stay away?”

“Perhaps for my sake,” she said. “Did you think of what it would do to me, Wilfred, to see you here? To remember? And to know how fate played us such a wretched trick? Oh, Wilfred, did you not know of the coming partnership? Did you not suspect? You could have retained your pride and married me after all. But it is too late. Oh, I wish you had not come.”

He took another step closer. “You know you do not mean that,” he said. “You know you still love me. Let me hold you, Ellie. Just once.”

“I am married,” she said.

“But not by your own choice.” His voice was urgent. “Tell me you love him, Ellie, or care for him at least. Tell me that and I will leave here tonight. I swear it. You don’t love him, do you?”

“You know I do not,” she said. “I married him because Papa was so set on it and because he was so very close to death and because there seemed no point in hurting him when you had written that you would not marry me. But my feelings for him have nothing to say to anything, Wilfred. The point is that I consented to marry him and did marry him and can no longer indulge my love for you. You must understand that. Oh, please, you must. You must not continue to look at me as you have been looking all day. You should not have come. Oh, I wish you had not come. I cannot bear it.”