A Christmas Scandal (2 page)

Maggie stiffened, then pushed him gently, but firmly away. “It’s just as well, Arthur. I do believe that you love me, but you obviously don’t love me enough. And I don’t love you at all.” She shouldn’t have hurt him, she should not have lowered herself to such cruelty. But then, he didn’t know anything of what she’d gone through, of what she was going through. If losing her was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, then he had led a pathetically easy life. She should tell him just how awful life could get.

“You don’t mean that,” he said, stricken.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said dully. “Could you please go?”

“How could you say such a thing? How?”

“You hurt me. And I hurt you back. I’m sorry,” she said, sounding more like some sort of automaton than an anguished woman. “Please go,” she repeated.

He bowed his head. “Of course.”

He left the parlor, that ridiculous pink parlor, and Maggie was glad that the last thing he would remember was where she stood when he delivered the final blow to her already miserable life.

Maggie sat at the dining table, waving a fan frantically at her face thinking that if she was wilting from the heat in New York, how would she feel in Savannah?

“The heat never really bothered me,” Harriet said, lying through her teeth, Maggie suspected, for her cheeks were brightly flushed and her hairline damp from sweat.

“I suppose one gets used to it,” she said, stopping the fan for a moment because her wrist was beginning to ache.

“I don’t remember ever being hot as a child,” her mother said, slipping into her gentile southern drawl for affect, and Maggie smiled. Her mother had visited her sister several times over the years, but those visits were always carefully timed to miss the worst of the Northeast’s winters. “I daresay I won’t miss those horrid winters here. Your father would joke and tell me I’d never quite got rid of my southern blood.” Harriet frowned, then gave a little shudder, as if shaking away any sad thoughts.

Maggie always liked winter, or at least the change of seasons. She could not imagine a Christmas without the biting cold or threat of snow. She adored her winter muffs, the way her cheeks would bloom with color. The taste of snow. And she would miss her brother and friends and the hope she’d had of ever having a normal life. Savannah meant more than heat, it meant she would either have to live off her relatives for life, find a husband quickly, or get a job. Though she hadn’t dared tell her mother yet, Maggie’s plan was to become a governess to some wealthy southern family. It would be a fair tragedy to her mother to have Maggie out working, but what other choice did she have? And being a governess was respectable.

If she were a governess she could have the pleasure of being with children even though she would never have her own. It would be a wonderful compromise. She’d find a nice family, one with clean, polite children, hopefully in Savannah so she could be close to her mother, and she would teach those little scrubbed faces. She could become like a second mother to them. And she would have everything any woman could ever want.

She would be old spinster Pierce, whom the children loved.

And everyone else felt sorry for.

Maggie gave herself a mental shake to rid herself of any thought that was the least bit upsetting. “Mama, I have made a decision.”

Harriet gave her daughter an uncertain smile.

“When we reach Savannah, I am going to find a position as a governess. I do not want to be dependent on Aunt Catherine and that would give me a bit of independence.”

“You don’t even like children,” her mother pointed out.

It was true. Maggie had never liked to be with them. She’d never actually spent more than a few minutes with a child, but simply accepted the fact that someday she would have one or two of them running about. Still, she decided to argue anyway. “What kind of person does not like children? Of course I like children.”

“You find them messy and loud and rather silly. And I completely agree.”

“Mother!”

Harriet laughed. “The only children I have ever been able to tolerate were you and your brothers. You were always so quiet and well behaved. Most children are not like that. It is completely out of the question at any rate. I don’t believe I could stand any further humiliation.”

“But what am I to do? I cannot live on the good charity of your sister forever. I must be independent.”

“Why not simply work as a shop girl? Or better yet out in the cotton fields?” her mother asked with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “Haven’t I been through enough without having a daughter as a governess? My goodness, Maggie, it’s almost as if you are contriving to make me more miserable than I am.”

Maggie looked down at her plate, hating to make her mother, who had been through so much, even more unhappy. “I’m sorry, Mama, it’s just that I don’t know what to do.”

“You will get married, of course,” her mother said, instantly happy.

Maggie only felt her dread grow. She could not marry, though she couldn’t tell her mother that. She told herself she would not allow her mother to win this fight, and had had her arguments for independence dancing in her head since the moment Arthur had left the house. Her first thought had been: what do I do now? Her options were woefully limited. She knew only one thing: children, whether she liked them or not, were safe.

“I will not marry.”

Her mother let out a long sigh. “I know right now your heart is broken and you feel as if you will never find another man to love, but you will.”

“But I don’t want to get married. The only reason I was marrying Arthur was to protect us. But your sister…”

“Do you think I want to live under my sister’s roof? To lie to her about your father? To come up with more lies and more lies to explain why we have no funds? As soon as you find a husband, our problems will be solved. Unless you believe a governess’s wages can house and clothe both of us.”

Maggie felt her cheeks flush. Her mother had never spoken to her this way. In fact, she could hardly remember her ever raising her voice. “Of course I don’t believe that. I only wanted to relieve you of some of the burden.”

“How on earth would I explain to my sister why you’ve become a governess?”

Maggie lifted her chin. “You could tell her the truth.”

Maggie watched as her mother’s face, already flushed from the heat of the day, turned livid. “I could
never,”
she said. “You don’t know your aunt as I do. She would pretend to be saddened by our circumstances, but I know she’d be secretly happy. I’m the one who made a good marriage. Your uncle is little more than a laborer. I have never made her feel bad about her decision to marry him, but I know she resents the life I’ve had. Nothing would make her happier than to see how far we’ve fallen. Oh, sometimes I wish your father were here so I could strangle him.”

It was the first time in Maggie’s life that she’d ever heard her mother utter even a hint of criticism against her aunt or her father. Obviously the strain of these last few weeks was wearing on her.

Maggie stood and went to her mother, giving her an awkward hug. “We’ll be fine, you’ll see,” she said, not believing for an instant that she was telling the truth. “I’m sorry, Mama. Everything’s just been so upsetting lately,” she said, giving her mother another squeeze. “I’m not feeling well. Perhaps that’s why I feel so out of sorts. I think it’s the heat.”

“Why don’t you go lie down?” her mother said gently. “Try not to think about anything.”

Maggie left their dining room thinking that she simply could not bear another bad thing happening to her. She wished she could simply disappear, dissolve into the air forever. It wasn’t death she wanted, for she’d never contemplate anything so final. She simply wanted to cease to feel for a while, to lie on a cloud in a crystal-blue sky and stare into space for, perhaps, three years.

“The post, Miss Pierce.”

She looked up to see the sad face of her beloved butler. While she was growing up, Willoughby had been more like a gruff old grandfather than a butler. His wife, the housekeeper, and he were the only servants left in the house. “Thank you, Willoughby,” she said, feeling ridiculously close to tears. They were leaving this house in two days, never to return, and she likely would never see Willoughby again. She took the post without looking at it closely. “I know Mama already thanked you and Mrs. Willoughby for staying on ’til the end,” she said, forcing a small smile. “But I wanted you to know that I will miss you terribly. No house I ever live in will be quite the same without you.”

“Thank you, miss,” he said gruffly, then gave a little bow and walked down the long hall to where his wife was no doubt working to pack their things.

Then she looked down at her letter and smiled genuinely for the first time in weeks. It was from England, no doubt from her friend Elizabeth, the new Duchess of Bellingham. These frequent missives from her were the only normal thing in her life, she realized. Elizabeth wrote to her as if everything were the same, as if they still lived a few blocks apart, as if they were planning to go together to the country dinners she described. Indeed, her letters were so filled with details of her happy life, it was almost as if Maggie were there.

Maggie walked to her room, holding the letter against her chest, hesitating to open it in order to savor it. But when she opened it, she immediately knew it was not from her friend, but from the Duke of Bellingham, her husband.

June 3, 1893

Maggie looked down at the letter, her eyes watering, the finely scrawled letters mere blurs before her. The duke would never know what he had done, how those few words he’d so casually written would completely change her life. She had thought so many, many times in the past few months that she needed something good to happen. How often had she wished for just one thing good among all the bad and horrid things that had happened to her since Elizabeth had gone away? Maggie Pierce, whose life had taken a decidedly desperate turn, knew she held in her hand her only salvation.

England, one month later

Edward Hollings was trying, rather desperately, to think of a single reason why he should not bring his step-aunt and her brood of children to visit Bellewood. Finding reasons to avoid his best friend’s estate had not been an issue until he’d received a happily worded note from the duchess gushing about the imminent arrival of one Miss Pierce.

He’d held that note in his hand and crushed it with a curse. Damnation. His life had been wonderfully bland, filled with the normal pleasures, willing married women, balls, gambling, and overseeing his late uncle’s vast and remarkably astute investments. Unlike many of the peerage, Lord Hollings was fortunate to have inherited a title that was once held by a financial genius. The former earl had been unsuccessful in only one aspect of his life: bearing children. So, finding himself a widower rather late in life, he’d married a woman who had more than proved her fertility by bearing six children in quick succession. Step-aunt Matilda’s fertility ground to a halt the moment her first husband died and she married his now-deceased uncle. And so when Edward’s uncle died, without an heir, he inherited the estate, as well as his step-aunt and her children. A few men had wondered aloud why he was continuing to support an entire family when he had no legal responsibility to do so, but what was he to do? Send a poor family packing to live in some moldering estate in the middle of nowhere? No.

And so his step-aunt and her six children had become part of his bachelor family, which already included a sister who refused to marry. Refuse was likely an exaggeration, for no one had actually asked her yet. But Edward was quite convinced no one had asked her because she had purposefully made herself completely unappealing to every male in all of Britain. He’d threatened to ship her off to America if she persisted in being so absolutely obstinate, something she’d enthusiastically agreed to, much to his frustration. The duchess was no help in that regard, insisting that, even though her own forced marriage had ended wonderfully, no woman should be asked to marry someone she wasn’t completely in love with.

What utter rot.

His sister, Amelia, would point out with sharpshooter precision that she should not be asked to be married when her brother was so apparently opposed to that particular life state. She would also point out, rather gleefully, that he needed an heir and so should be required to marry sooner than she. As far as marriage went, he’d only been tempted once, and had found that particular time so horribly trying he’d vowed to avoid any sort of emotion that could be construed as love.

And now
she
was coming to visit.

Surely, he was being tested by God or played with by the devil.

“So,” his sister Amelia said, waltzing into his study as if she had every right to be there, which she didn’t. It really was as if his sour thoughts had conjured her from nothing. “Are we all going to Bellingham?” she asked, waving a piece of vellum in front of her that looked suspiciously like the one the duchess had sent to him. “It’s always so much fun there. I absolutely adore the duchess and the children do, too.” She lifted the letter up with a flourish and read, “My dearest friend, Maggie Pierce, is arriving within the fortnight, and as Miss Pierce is already well acquainted with your brother, it will be a homecoming of sorts for her.” She lowered the letter, an evil little twinkle in her eye. “You are
well acquainted
with Miss Pierce?”

Edward pretended to look over his own letter, silently cursing the duchess for also writing to his sister. “Yes. We met in Newport. I thought she mentioned it.”

“How well are you acquainted? I only wonder that Her Grace would mention someone so specifically if it would have little or no meaning to you.” In a flash, she changed tactics and jumped down onto his favorite leather chair, her skirts billowing up in her exuberance. “Oh, do tell. Is she
the one?”

“There is no ‘the one,’” he said darkly.

“But I’m quite certain I overheard His Grace and you discuss someone of importance. And you were an absolute ogre when you first returned from America,” she pointed out rather happily. “Everyone thought there could be only one reason for a man to be in such a mood. Love.” She was fairly giddy with her teasing.

Edward let out a beleaguered sigh. “I am so sorry to disappoint you, Amelia, but I have no tragic love story to impart to you. Miss Pierce is Her Grace’s best friend. I am the duke’s best friend. We were thrown together quite a bit, something we both tolerated for the sake of the happy couple.”

Amelia pouted. “And here I was hoping she was something special. You are getting rather old. One never knows when one will meet one’s maker. It’s almost as if you want Frederick to inherit the title.” It was something Amelia often talked about, or threatened, depending on their conversation. His cousin Frederick was, politely put, an idiot, a dandy who spent more money a year on the proper buttons than most gentlemen spent on a good port. Edward had never liked him, something Amelia was well aware of, and so the threat that Frederick would inherit the title should he die prematurely always hit its intended mark—even when Edward pretended it did not.

“Unless you are planning to do me in yourself, I fear I will live a long and healthy life. Certainly long enough to marry and guarantee an heir.”

“As Uncle did?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“Please do not worry about me and my heart, Amelia. We are both doing famously well.”

“I do worry. And I don’t care what you say, you’ve changed since returning from America. If it wasn’t this Miss Pierce, who was it, then?”

“The duties of the earldom weigh heavily,” he said, and nearly chuckled aloud when his sister rolled her eyes. But she accepted his answer, content to wait until he was honest with her, which he would never be. The tragic truth was, he’d very nearly succumbed to Miss Pierce’s charms, finding himself so ridiculously enraptured it was unmanning. He could only congratulate himself that no one, not even Miss Pierce, had ever known quite how far he’d fallen. It would have been a damned embarrassing thing to admit given that their entire relationship had been based on mutual pretense. He had been trying to avoid all those American mamas looking for a title, and she had been trying to avoid marrying a particular someone. Last he’d heard, though, she’d been expecting a proposal any day from the very man she’d said she’d been trying to avoid. Odd, that. Maybe the entire time she’d been pretending to like him merely to make the other gentleman jealous. That thought rankled and he frowned, something Amelia immediately picked up on.

“I am trying to work,” he said, pointedly looking down at a pile of estate papers laid out in front of him.

“You should hire someone to worry about the estate,” she said, becoming bored with him.

“Perhaps I should hire someone to keep you entertained and out of my hair. If you care to stay, I could use someone to look over these rents for me—”

“I’m off,” she said immediately. “I have to help Aunt Matilda get ready for our visit. We are going, are we not?”

Edward let out a sigh. “We are.”

Amelia beamed him a smile, leaving him alone to dread his visit to Bellewood, where he would certainly see Maggie. Perhaps she was traveling to England to gather her trousseau together. Well, good for her. She should find a good man to marry her, someone from her own country. Someone who didn’t find everything she did so completely charming he turned into an absolute fool.

Eyeing the door to make certain his sister was truly gone, he slowly opened the middle drawer of his desk, reaching back so that his fingers touched a small bundle of papers. Usually, it was enough simply to reach inside and touch them. He chose not to think about why he felt the need for this concrete evidence of her. But he didn’t have a photograph or a lock of hair, and for some reason, thinking about the letters, touching them, made her real again. Slowly, he pulled them out, opening one and smiling. Maggie was suddenly there before him, grinning, lively, her brown eyes alight with some secret, probably nonsense.

He chuckled softly, hearing her lilting voice in his head. Without reading further, he refolded the letter and placed it with the others, tying the well-worn ribbon as he had done perhaps a dozen times. With an impatient inward breath, he put them back in the drawer, telling himself he was an idiot.