A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (38 page)

Judith smiled at her.

“There can be nothing but good ahead for you, ma’am,” the marquess said gallantly.

Amy stepped inside the dark tent and gazed about, fascinated. Oh, she had always loved fairs, though more often than not after her early girlhood she had been refused permission to go.

She sat down before the gaudy, veiled figure of the fortune-teller with her crystal ball and waited expectantly, feeling like a hopeful girl again and smiling inwardly at the thought.

But she was feeling disappointed a minute later—the fortune-teller must have mistaken her age, she thought—but only a little disappointed. She was in the land of make-believe and she refused to allow reality to intrude too chillingly.

Romance, the fortune-teller had predicted. With a gentleman she had not met yet but would meet soon. And children—lots of them. That was the detail that was most disappointing, since it was so obviously the most impossible.

But no matter. She would dream of her gentleman in the coming days and laugh herself out of melancholy
when he failed to put in an appearance in her life. There was a whole fair waiting to be enjoyed outside the tent.

“Thank you,” she said formally, getting to her feet.

“How very foolish,” she said, laughing and blushing when she rejoined the others. “I am to find love and romance soon, it seems, with a gentleman I have never before set my eyes on, and am to live happily ever after. I wonder if she ever says anything different to any lady who is unmarried. One would, after all, feel that one had wasted one’s money if one were told that there were only misery and loneliness ahead.” She said nothing about the many children.

“Perhaps we should put the matter to the test,” the marquess said. “Mrs. Easton must have her fortune told, too.”

“I have no wish to waste money on such nonsense,” Judith said.

“Then I shall waste it for you,” he said. “Come, we must find what delights life has in store for you.”

“Yes, Mama,” Rupert said, jumping up and down on the spot. “Go on.”

“Go, Mama,” Kate said.

She looked rather as if she were going to her own execution, the marquess thought, but she went. He in the meanwhile swung Rupert up onto his shoulders when the boy complained that he could not see for the crowds.

“You were quite right, Amy,” Judith said when she came out of the tent. “My own fortune was remarkably similar to yours. As if I am looking for love and romance at this stage of my life!” Her tone was scornful.

“And what is he to look like?” Amy asked.

“Oh, tall, dark, and handsome, of course,” Judith said, flushing. “What else?”

“Well, there our fortunes differ,” Amy said. “Now it is your turn, my lord.”

“It would be interesting, would it not?” he said. “I
wonder how many tall, dark, and handsome ladies there are in England?”

Amy laughed.

“Down you go, then, my lad,” the marquess said, setting Rupert down on the ice again. “I shall take you up again when I come out.”

“I see much darkness in your life,” the fortune-teller told him a few moments later. “And a great deal of light, too. A great deal of light. But the darkness threatens it.”

Lord Denbigh had never been to a fortune-teller before. He supposed that there were a few fortunes to be told and that each listener could be relied upon to twist the words to suit his own case. One merely had to be clever with vague generalities. He was amused.

“Ah,” the fortune-teller said, “but Christmas may save you if you keep in mind that it is a time of peace and goodwill. I see a great battle raging in your soul between light and darkness. But the joy of Christmas will help the light to banish the darkness—if you do not fight too strongly against it.”

Well. That was it? Nothing about romance and love and marriage and happily-ever-afters? That was to be reserved exclusively for the female customers? He rose and nodded to the fortune-teller. It would be a kindness to tell her, perhaps, that if all her women customers were to find the romance she promised them, then men should be alerted to their needs.

“Nothing,” he said to the ladies when he went outside again. “There is to be no romance in my future, alas. Only the promise of a happy Christmas if I do not do something to spoil the occasion.”

“Ah,” Amy said. “How disappointing, my lord. But I am glad that you can expect a good Christmas.”

He leaned down and swung Rupert up onto his shoulders again. Judith watched him, her lips tightening.

The marquess bought the children each a tart and all
of them a hot drink of chocolate. And when Kate spotted a stall that sold ribbons, he bought her long lengths of green and red over Judith’s protests and Amy’s exclamations on his kindness.

“It amazes me,” Amy said when they paused to watch the portrait painter draw his likenesses, “how he can hold the charcoal and wield it so skillfully without freezing his fingers off. But the portraits are quite well done.”

“Have your picture drawn with your good lady, guv’nor?” the artist’s assistant asked, looking from the marquess to Judith. “And with the lovely children, too, if you want, guv. ’Alf a sovereign for all four of you.”

“No, thank you,” Judith said quickly.

Rupert shouted with glee from his perch on the marquess’s shoulders. “He is not our father,” he exclaimed to the assistant.

Kate was tugging at Judith’s cloak.

“Mama,” she said when Judith looked down, “may I have my pictures?”

“Your portrait done?” Judith said, smiling down at her and passing a hand beneath her chin. “You would have to sit very still and would get very cold.”

“No longer than five minutes, mum,” the assistant assured her briskly. “The child’s likeness in five minutes, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Two and sixpence for the child, mum.”

“A shilling,” the marquess said. “One and sixpence if it is a good likeness.”

“Done, guv,” the assistant said. “And worth two shillings it will be if it’s worth a penny. Let the little lady take a chair.”

Kate smiled wonderingly up at the marquess and her mother and aunt and allowed Judith to seat her on the chair indicated. And she sat very still, her feet dangling a few inches above the ice, her hands clasped in her lap, only her eyes moving.

“How sweet she looks,” Amy said. “Would you like to be next, Rupert?”

“Pooh,” the boy said. “I don’t want to sit for my picture.” But he did squirm to be set down so that he could walk around to the side of the artist and watch the progress of the portrait.

Judith wandered to a book stall a few feet away after a couple of minutes. But she was not to be allowed to browse in peace. A man with one arm outstretched and draped from shoulder to wrist in necklaces of varying degrees of gaudiness accosted her and tried to interest her in his wares. Another man came up on her other side with a tray of bangles.

The marquess watched her laugh and shake her head, looking from one to the other. They moved in closer on either side of her, pressing their wares on her. Her reticule dangled from her right arm.

He walked toward her and set one hand lightly against the back of her neck. “You are not considering buying more baubles, are you, my love?” he asked, at the same time picking up her reticule and tucking it into the crook of her arm.

She looked around at him, her eyes wide and startled.

“These pearls for the lidy, guv?” the necklace seller asked. “Real pearls wiv a real diamond clasp? A bargain they are today, guv.”

“I am sure they are,” the marquess said. “Unfortunately the lady already has three different strings of pearls.” He held up a staying hand. “And all the other jewels she could possibly wear in a lifetime.”

The bangle seller had already faded away.

“You’re missin’ the bargain of a lifetime, guv,” the hawker said, and he turned and made his way to a group of three ladies who had stopped nearby.

The marquess removed his hand from Judith’s neck.

“That was one reason why you needed a male escort,” he said.

“They were harmlessly trying to sell their wares,” she said stiffly. “I did not need your interference, my lord.”

“You would have been easy prey,” he said. “They would not even have had to draw attention to themselves by racing off with your reticule. The bangle seller was lifting it so skillfully off your arm that you probably would not even have missed it until they had disappeared among the crowds.”

She looked down at the reticule she now held against her side. “That is ridiculous,” she said. “They were merely selling their wares.”

“They were merely thieving,” he said. “However, since no harm has been done, I suppose it does not matter if you do not believe me. But do be careful. This type of scene is a pickpocket’s heaven.”

“He was really about to steal my reticule?” she asked, frowning.

“As surely as the clasp on that pearl necklace was glass,” he said.

She was looking directly into his eyes. He had never quite been able to put a name to the color of her eyes. They were not exactly green, not exactly gray. They were certainly not blue—not altogether so, anyway. But they were bright and beautiful eyes, the colored circle outlined by a dark line, almost as if it had been drawn in with a fine pen. He had once fancied it possible to drown in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. She did not smile. He knew that it had taken her a great effort to acknowledge her gratitude. She turned abruptly to the portrait painter’s booth.

The portrait was finished and Kate was holding it in her hands and gazing at it wide-eyed. Her aunt was
exclaiming in delight over it while Rupert regarded it critically, head to one side.

“Look, Mama.” Kate held out the portrait for her mother’s inspection. Judith took it and the marquess looked at it over her shoulder. A little girl sat stiffly on a chair, her feet dangling in space, her hands in her lap. Two large dark eyes peeped from beneath the poke of a bonnet. It could have been any child anywhere.

“Oh, lovely,” Judith said. “I will have to find a frame for it at home and hang it in my bedchamber. How clever of you to sit still all that time, Kate.”

The marquess paid the assistant one shilling and sixpence. Kate was pulling on the tassel of one of his Hessian boots as he put his purse away in a safe inside pocket.

“Yes, ma’am?” he said, looking down at her.

She pointed upward and smiled at him. He stooped down closer to her.

“Ride up there,” she said.

She weighed no more than a feather. He swung her up onto one shoulder and wrapped an arm firmly about her. She put one arm about his head beneath his beaver hat and spread her palm over his ear. And she sat very still and quiet.

It was his one regret. No, perhaps not the only one. But it was one regret of his life that he had not had children of his own. He had dreamed of it once, of course. When he was twenty-six years old he had been very eager to marry and begin his family. He had hoped that Judith would want several children. He had suffered too much loneliness himself from being an only child.

He should, he supposed, have shaken off his disappointment and his heartache more firmly and chosen again. He might still have found contentment with another woman and he might certainly have had his family.

But it seemed too late now at the age of thirty-four to
begin the process of finding a woman with whom he might be compatible. He had loved once, and the experience seemed to have sapped all his desire to search for love again.

Rupert was holding his free hand, he realized suddenly, and telling him in his piping voice how he would skate like the wind if he only had skates with him. Faster than the wind. He would skate so fast that no one would even see him.

Judith walked to his side, her eyes on her children, almost as if she believed that he would disappear with them if she relaxed her vigil for one moment. Amy walked at his other side, still gazing about her with bright interest.

“I’m cold,” Kate announced suddenly.

They were strolling back toward the bridge where the carriage was to meet them, and the slight movement of air was against their faces.

“It is chilly,” Amy agreed, “though you were quite right in what you said earlier, my lord. The excitement of the occasion makes one almost forget that it is a cold winter’s day.”

“We will warm ourselves at the roasting fire,” the marquess said, leading the way there.

And indeed the heat from the flames was very welcome. While Rupert dashed forward, his hands outheld, Lord Denbigh lifted Kate down carefully from his shoulder, stooped down behind her and unbuttoned his greatcoat to wrap about her, and held her little hands up to the blaze.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. He took her hands and rubbed them firmly together and then held them to the blaze again. He looked up at Amy.

“It feels good, does it not?” he said.

“Wonderful,” she agreed.

He looked up at Judith. “Warm again?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said.

“Only those wot’s buyin’ meat is welcome to warm their ’ands, guv,” the man who was tending the cooking said, and he stretched out a hand to catch the shilling that the marquess tossed to him.

“Is that better?” the marquess asked Kate after a couple of minutes, rubbing her hands together again.

She nodded once more to him, turned, and raised her arms to him. He wrapped his coat more firmly about her and lifted her.

“I think the carriage will be waiting by the time we have strolled back to the bridge,” he said. “Has everyone seen enough?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Amy said. “This has been very wonderful, my lord.”

“This has been the best day of my life,” Rupert said.

“May I take Kate, my lord?” Judith asked. “She must be getting heavy.”

“As light as a feather,” he said, glancing down and realizing that the child had fallen asleep against his chest.

He had a strange feeling, almost as if butterflies were fluttering through his stomach. She was warm and relaxed inside his coat. He could hear her deep breathing when he bent his head closer. No, it was more than butterflies. He felt almost like crying.

She might have been his, he thought, if only things had turned out differently. She might have had his dark hair or her mother’s fair coloring. He swallowed and shook off the thought.