A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (32 page)

“I would not touch that question with a thirty-foot pole,” he said.

“Wise man, darling.” She nestled her head against his shoulder as they walked.

C
ORA HAD COME HURTLING DOWN TO THE DRAWING
room of the Bristol house, in her usual undignified manner. But she had said only that all was well and that Edgar must go up immediately. When Francis had raised his eyebrows in expectation of more information and Mr. Downes had openly asked for it, she had smiled dazzlingly and asked her brother if he was about to faint.

He had stridden from the room without further ado and taken the stairs to the bedchamber two at a time—even though there
was
a strange buzzing in his head and the air in his nostrils felt cold.

All is well
, Cora had said.

His father’s new wife came bustling toward him when he opened the bedchamber door, the doctor at her heels, bag in hand. Letty beamed at him and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek; the doctor bowed and made his exit with her.

Edgar was left alone. Though not quite alone. Helena was lying on the bed, pale and silent, her eyes closed. Beyond her was a small bundle that had him swallowing convulsively. It was moving and making soft fussing noises. But it was not his main concern. She looked too still and too pale for all to be well—and she had labored
for all of fourteen hours. He took a few fearful steps toward the bed. Was it possible that she was …

“Damn you, Edgar,” she said without opening her eyes. Her voice sounded strangely normal. “If I had known—though I might have guessed, of course—that you would beget such large children, I would not in a million years have seduced you.”

He could feel no amusement. Only relief—and guilt. It had been unbearably hard to pace downstairs, his father and Francis in tow, for fourteen hours. What must it have been like …

“You had a hard time,” he told her just as if she did not know it for herself. “I am so sorry, Helena. I wish I could have suffered the pain for you.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “He well nigh tore me apart,” she told him.

He winced even as one of her words caught him like a blow low in his stomach. “
He
?” He swallowed again. “We have a son, Helena?” Not that the gender mattered. He had rather hoped for a daughter. What he really meant was—
we have a child, Helena
? Fruit of his body and hers? Product of their love? Their very own baby? The miracle of it all left him feeling paralyzed.

“Are you pleased that I have done my duty like a good wife?” she asked him. “I have presented you with an heir for the Downes fortune.”

“To hell with the Downes fortune,” he said, forgetting himself in the emotion of the moment. “We have a child, my love. A baby.”

She smiled fleetingly. He could see that she was desperate with weariness.

“Meet your son,” she said, and she turned to draw back the blanket from the moving bundle. A red, wrinkled, ugly little face, its eyes gazing vacantly about it, was revealed to his view—for a moment. Then he lost sight of it.

“Foolish Edgar,” his wife said. “How bourgeois to weep at sight of your newborn child. You are supposed to look closely for a moment to assure yourself that he has the requisite number of eyes, noses, and mouths, all in the appropriate places, and then you are supposed to return to your brandy and your dogs and your hunting.”

“Am I?” She was lifting the bundle and then holding it up to him. He did not dare. He would drop it. How could human life be so small? “But I am bourgeois, Helena, and so I will cry at the sight of my son.” He took the bundle gingerly into his own arms. It was warm and soft and alive.

“Is he not the most beautiful child ever born?” Her voice had lost its mocking tone.

“Yes.” He lifted the bundle and set his lips lightly to the soft, warm cheek of his son. “At
least
the most beautiful. Thank you, my love.” He reached over her to set the child back on the bed before he could drop it in his clumsiness. He smiled at her. “You must rest now.”

“Oh, damn you,” she said, lifting one hand to dash across her cheeks. “Now you have started me weeping. It is because I am tired after all that damnable
work
. I would not do it otherwise.”

But she grabbed for him as he would have straightened up and moved away. She wrapped her arms tightly about his neck and hid her face against his neckcloth. “Edgar,” she said fiercely, “we have a
child
. At the age of seven-and-thirty!”

“Yes.” He kissed the top of her head. “And Priscilla and Gerald have a new daughter. A letter came just this morning. All is well, my love.”

She said nothing, but she sighed aloud against him and relaxed. She had forgiven herself for the past, he knew, and had set up a close relationship with her former stepson and his wife. But a part of her would always
yearn to know that they were eternally happy, that what she had done no longer had any negative effect on their lives.

“All is well,” he whispered again.

And all
was
well, he thought as he kissed her, got up from the bed, and crossed quietly to the door. Their marriage, begun under such inauspicious circumstances, was bringing them more joy than they could possibly have expected; his father and Letty were contentedly married; Gerald and Priscilla were being accepted by society; the business was prospering; and he was a father.

He was a father!

“I love you, Edgar Downes,” she said as his hand closed about the knob of the door. Her eyes were closed again, he saw. But there was a smile on her pale face. “And if I had everything to do over, I would seduce you again. I swear I would.”

He grinned at her even though she did not open her eyes. “It
was
a night to remember,” he said, “in more ways than one. But it can be repeated and will be. Not now. Not soon. But it will happen—with me as seducer. I owe it to you—and to myself. You have been given fair warning.”

He could hear her chuckling softly as he let himself out of the room and shut the door behind him before going back downstairs to rejoice with his family.

He and Helena were parents. They had a child.

He took the stairs down two at a time.

Christmas Beau

I
T FELT STRANGE TO BE DRESSING UP TO GO OUT
again. And strange to be wearing a blue gown. She had gone straight from black to colors when her year of mourning had ended the week before, with no intermediate stages of gray or lavender.

Not only strange. It felt somehow wrong to be dressing to go out to enjoy herself with the children in bed in the nursery. Especially since she had during the past week denied them what might have brought them great pleasure. She had refused to go to Scotland with her parents in order to spend Christmas with her sister. The journey would be too tedious for the children, she had decided, especially Kate, who was scarcely three years old.

A whole month before that she had refused an invitation to spend Christmas with Andrew’s family at Ammanlea, although there was the country estate for the children to run free on and several other children for them to play with. She had refused because she had always felt almost as if her identity was swallowed up by their large numbers. And because she did not particularly want any reminders of Andrew.

The thought brought further guilt. He had been her husband, after all, and father of her two children.

It seemed that they would be spending Christmas
alone together in London, the three of them, with Amy. It was a bleak prospect, though preferable to either of the two alternatives.

Blue. Judith Easton ran her hands lightly over the soft silk of her new evening gown and looked down at the flounces at the hem and the blue silk slippers beneath. Her favorite color. How very delightful it was to look down and not see unrelieved black. Even after a week the novelty of being out of mourning had not worn off.

Her fair hair had been looped down over her ears and dressed in ringlets at the back of her head. It was an elegant style, she thought, though perhaps she should be donning a turban as more in keeping with her age and widowed status.

She was twenty-six years old. Did she look it? she wondered, glancing in the mirror. She did not feel that old. Being back in London again and living in her parents’ home while they were in Scotland, the years seemed to roll away. It did not seem as if almost eight years had passed since her come-out Season. Though there were two children in the nursery to prove that it was indeed so.

She turned from the mirror and picked up her cloak and fan. She did not want to think of her come-out Season. The memories made her shudder with shame and embarrassment. The only consolation had always been that she had escaped from a dreaded marriage. But then, the one that had replaced it had quickly brought disillusion and heartache.

She tiptoed into the nursery, but Rupert was sitting up in bed frowning over a book, and even Kate was still awake, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes wide.

“Mama,” she asked, her lower lip wobbling, “don’t be gone long.”

“By the time you wake in the morning,” Judith said, bending over the child to kiss her, “I shall have been
home a long time. Nurse will be close by. You have nothing to fear. And Aunt Amy will be in the house.”

“Mr. Freeman will not still be here tomorrow, Mama, will he?” Rupert asked with a frown, looking at her over the top of his book.

“He is being obliging enough to escort me to Lady Clancy’s this evening,” Judith said, crossing to her son’s bed and kissing the top of his head. “That is all.”

“Good,” Rupert said, ducking his head down behind his book again.

Claude Freeman was a former acquaintance of Andrew’s, who had come to pay his respects to her when she came to London two months before and had called at regular intervals ever since. He was a large man with a pompous manner. Unfortunately, his overhearty efforts to befriend her children had met with no success.

“I must go,” Judith said, straightening up and smiling at both children. “Mr. Freeman will be waiting downstairs for me. Sleep well.”

“Mama,” Kate said, “you look pretty.”

Judith smiled and blew a kiss.

She still felt guilty as she went down the stairs. She and Andrew had lived in the country for all of their married life. The only social occasions she had known for several years had been the dinners and assemblies there, and they had not been numerous. Though it would be more accurate to say that
she
had lived in the country all that time. Andrew had frequently spent weeks and even months alone in town.

Claude was in the hallway, looking large and imposing in his evening cloak and silk hat. He looked even larger in comparison with Amy, who was tiny and birdlike. A battle with smallpox as a child had left her pale and undergrown, her complexion marred by a few pockmarks. She had been made for marriage and motherhood, Judith had always thought, but both had
eluded her thanks to the cruelty of fate. She was Andrew’s elder sister. Judith had invited her to live with them after his death since no one else in the family appeared to want her. Amy had accepted with unexpected eagerness.

“Judith,” Amy said as Claude took her cloak from her hands and wrapped it about her shoulders, “how lovely you look again. Black is really not your color.”

Nor was it Amy’s. She did not need black to sap her of the last vestiges of color. Even her hair was a faded blond. Amy must be thirty-six years old, Judith thought. Time marched on.

“My sentiments exactly, Mrs. Easton,” Claude said, standing back and making her an elegant bow. “I shall be the envy of the
ton
this evening.”

Judith smiled. There was a definite excitement about going out again to a
ton
event, even if it was only a soirée and not a full ball. She had had a few invitations during the past month. She had chosen her first appearance with care.

Yes, there was a lifting of the spirits. There was no denying it. But there was also an apprehension that was making her stomach churn rather uncomfortably. She supposed that such a feeling was natural for someone returning to society after nearly eight years away. But there was more to it than that.

Would the old scandal be remembered? she wondered. Would she be snubbed? She did not really believe it would be quite as bad as that. Surely she would not have had any invitations at all if she were still considered to be in disgrace. And Claude would not be so eager to escort her if she was to be ostracized.

But there would doubtless be some who would remember that she had been formally betrothed for all of two months during the Season seven and a half years ago and that she had broken off that betrothal abruptly
and without any public announcement—or any private explanation to her betrothed—in order to run off to the country to marry Andrew.

She had acted very badly. Even at the time, she had known that. But she had been so young, so terrified, so bewildered. She had found herself quite unable to face the consequences of her change of heart—no, there had been no change of heart since there had been no love or even affection involved in that betrothal. But however it was, she had been unable to do things properly. She had fled with her sister and her maid, leaving her parents to find the note she had left behind and to smooth things over as well as they were able before following along after her.