A Christmas Promise (10 page)

“Lady Falloden,” Lady Lovestone said, “I pray you to remember that my daughter is present.”

“I do beg your pardon.” Eleanor smiled warmly at the girl and then at her mother. “But since you introduced the topic, ma’am, I assumed that you considered it a suitable one for your daughter’s ears.”

They talked of the weather for five minutes before Lady Lovestone rose to her feet and signaled to her daughter and they took their leave a full ten minutes before it would have been polite to do so.

They went away satisfied, Eleanor thought, sitting down straight-backed in the chair she had vacated in order to take leave of her visitors. All their suspicions had been confirmed. The Earl of Falloden had married the enormously vulgar daughter of a cit—for her money. They could boast forever that Dorothea would have been his choice if only Sir Hector could have been prevailed upon to overlook his penniless state and his monumental debts. They could now be happy. She had made their day complete.

She raised her half-empty cup of tea to her lips, but set it back in the saucer again untasted. Her hand was shaking. So he had a mistress, did he? She might have known it. He was, after all, a member of the decadent aristocracy. He could not be expected to have any of the stricter moral values of her own class. And he was certainly getting no sexual satisfaction from his wife.

She did not care. She really did not. Let him do those terrifying and painful things to someone who was paid well to endure them. Let him spend as many evenings as he wanted with his mistress. That would leave her free to be alone in her own domain. She did not care.

But her thoughts turned immediately to Aunt Beryl and Aunt Ruth and her cousins and her reasons for choosing them to invite to spend Christmas at Grenfell Park. She would be damned, she thought, anger rising to fury within her, before she would invite guests only on the grounds that they would be least likely to disturb her husband’s sensibilities and those of his guests.

Oh, she would be damned before she would choose thusly.

She had asked him how many of her own guests she might invite, and he had replied that she might ask as many as she wanted. Well, then. He had had a chance to put a limit on the number, but he had unwisely neglected to do so.

Eleanor got to her feet, a rather grim smile on her lips. The escritoire and the writing paper and pens were in the morning room. She had a busy few hours ahead of her.

H
E WAS RATHER LOOKING FORWARD TO CHRISTMAS
, the Earl of Falloden realized with some surprise. He had never particularly enjoyed the season. Even when he was a boy, when his parents were still alive, nothing much had been made of Christmas. He had had no brothers or sisters and his parents had liked to stay at home rather than seek out parties or invite guests. And when there had been guests, they had always been exclusively adult and he had been confined to the nursery. With his grandparents things had been much the same.

In more recent years he had gone wherever he was invited, sometimes to parties in the country homes of his friends, sometimes merely to dinners and balls in town. But he had always been glad when it was over. For some reason he had always felt lonely at Christmas, as if there should be a great deal more to it than he had ever experienced.

But this year he was looking forward to it. He would be at Grenfell Park, and he would be able to look around him and know that it was all his, without conditions attached, and that he could dream of all he wanted to do for the house and the park and the farms with the knowledge that at last he could make his dreams reality. He had spent many childhood holidays at Grenfell with his grandparents and had lived with them after his fourteenth year, after the death of his parents within a year of each other. He loved Grenfell.

And he was not sorry that he had invited guests when in his cups the week before his wedding. Bertie was coming, as were Lord Charles Wright; Jason, Viscount Sotherby; and the Honorable Mr. Timothy Badcombe. He had never had guests for Christmas. Perhaps their presence would make the season more enjoyable.

And strangely enough—very strangely—he was not averse to the prospect of being in the country with his wife. There had been a cautious peace between them since the morning after her father’s death. They had not quarreled or spoken bitingly or with sarcasm to each other, except on very rare occasions, when the offending words were almost always followed immediately by an apology.

There was no affection between them, no friendship, no closeness at all. And yet the hostility had gone or at least had been pushed into the background. He had hopes that they could live together with civility for what remained of the first year of their marriage. And perhaps for longer. For he made a disturbing discovery during the first month of his marriage, and that was that he could not ignore the new state of his life. He could no longer feel like an unmarried man. And it was not just her presence in his home. It was her presence in his conscience.

After her father’s funeral he took to going to White’s each evening. But instead of enjoying himself there, as he had always used to do, he found himself thinking about the unfairness of life. His wife, being a woman, had no choice but to stay home alone since he was not escorting her anywhere. Her evenings must be unutterably dreary, he thought.

Twice he went to Alice’s, and bedded her both times. The second time he took her a gift, a ruby-studded bracelet, which he knew she would like. He had never before been able to buy her expensive gifts on whim. But guilt lay heavy on his heart as she exclaimed over it and had him clasp it about her wrist. It had been bought with money he had acquired with his marriage. And his wife was sitting home alone.

“It is a parting gift,” he told Alice abruptly. And realized as he waited for dismay to overtake him at speaking so impulsively that he did not feel dismay at all. Only relief.

He had not bought his wife any gifts at all. Eleanor. Somehow he found it difficult to think of her by name. He could not bring himself to call her by name.

They were going to go into the country together for Christmas. They were going to stay there for the better part of a year. Perhaps, he thought, he would make a real effort to get to know her, to discover if there was anything but coldness and waspishness behind the calm, unsmiling appearance she always presented to him. Perhaps he would even begin to live with her as his wife, though it would be difficult to go to her bed again when he had not done so since their wedding night.

If his promise to her father compelled him to spend a year with her anyway, he thought, then he might as well use that time getting his heir on her if he could. If he could get her with child within the year, and if the child turned out to be a boy, then there would be no further necessity for them to live together if he found after all that nothing could be made of their marriage.

He was going to give it a try anyway. And what better time was there to try to inject a little warmth into their relationship than Christmas? He only hoped that she had invited a friend or two. It might be a difficult situation otherwise—five men and one lady.

“We will leave for Grenfell Park next week,” he told her one evening when they were sitting, as they had done for five evenings in a row, in the library after dinner. He might even have enjoyed those evenings, he sometimes thought, except that he could never think of any topic of conversation that might have drawn them into a cozy chat. They never chattered, only conversed very deliberately on impersonal topics. “I will need to inform the housekeeper how many guests will be expected for Christmas.”

She raised her eyes from her book. And raised her chin a notch in a gesture he recognized from earlier days. Then it had usually been the herald to some sarcasm or some defiance.

“I hope you have invited a friend or two,” he said.

“One or two?” she said. “You did not impose a limit on the number I might invite, my lord.”

“You have invited more, then?” he said. “Good.”

“You are not afraid,” she asked, “that your friends will object to sharing your home with people from my world?”

She looked and sounded as if she were on the verge of quarreling with him again, he thought. Just like a hedgehog.

“If they do,” he said, looking steadily back at her, “then they will have me to deal with. You are my wife.”

“And any slight to me would be a slight to you,” she said. “Of course. I am honored.”

“That was uncalled for, my lady,” he said.

“Yes.” She looked down at her book again.

“Whom have you invited?” he asked. “How many?”

“My family,” she said, glaring at him suddenly, daring him to object, the color high on her cheekbones. “We have always spent holidays together whenever possible. And this is a special holiday. It is the first Christmas without my father. And I promised him that I would make it a wonderful one. But doubtless you will think it inappropriate to have a family celebration less than two months after his death.”

He wondered with the beginnings of unwilling anger how many other fictitious promises to her father she would invent over the coming weeks and months. Obviously she was a woman who craved a life of gaiety and was not going to allow respect for a dead father to get in her way. “We can celebrate in a subdued manner,” he said.

“Not with my family,” she said, “They are the loudest, most boisterous—most vulgar—crowd you could possibly imagine.”

The anger built. “Exactly how many are we talking about?” he asked.

She was silent for a few moments, her eyes lowered. But he could tell by the slight movement of her fingers that she was counting, doing a mental review of the relatives she had invited.

“Twenty,” she said, looking back up at him coolly, “counting Cousin Tom’s two children. Is that too many, my lord? Should I have assumed when you said that I might invite any number that you meant no more than four?”

“Twenty,” he repeated.
Good God.

“It is a dreadful prospect, is it not,” she said, “to think of Grenfell Park, seat of the Earl of Falloden, being overrun by businessmen and merchants and farmers? Rather like cattle being let loose in the nave of a cathedral. But you must remember, my lord, that Grenfell Park has been paid for and will continue to be paid for with a merchant’s money.”

He stayed in his chair. If he got to his feet, he thought, he might show his fury in deeds as well as in words.

“I am not likely to forget it this side of the grave, my lady,” he said. “Not with a shrew of a wife to remind me constantly.”

“Well,” she said, “you can always escape from me, my lord. You can always take yourself beyond the range of my shrewish tongue. I am told she is refined. That must be a comfort to you.”

“
Who
is refined?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Your mistress,” she said. “The woman with whom you take your pleasure.”

“Ah,” he said. “And who was kind enough to inform you that she is refined, pray?”

“The mother of the girl you loved—or love, perhaps—and were too impoverished to marry.”

“Lady Lovestone,” he said. “Yes, I loved Dorothea and would have married her if circumstances had been different. She is beautiful and sweet and tenderhearted.” He felt a pang of longing for the sweetness and refinement he might have had in a wife.

“All the things I am not,” she said.

“The words are your own,” he told her coldly.

“And doubtless you would have given up your mistress for her and lived happily ever after,” she said. “How unfortunate that you are a spendthrift, my lord, and like to play deep at gaming and have not a great deal of good luck. And how fortunate for me. I might never have won myself such a noble husband if you had learned to live within your means.”

“Fortunate you might call it,” he said, getting to his feet at last. “You have my title and all that comes with it for the rest of your life. But you will never have one corner of my heart or my liking or my respect. Or my company, either, whenever I can help it.” He bowed deeply to her. “Enjoy your triumph, my lady. I hope—I sincerely hope—it will prove to be an empty one.”

“And I hope,” she said through her teeth as he strode toward the door, “that my father’s money brings you not one ounce of happiness, my lord. I sincerely hope it.”

Something smashed violently as he closed the door of the library behind him. He guessed that in her passion she had hurled something, probably the porcelain figurine from the table beside her, across the room.

“My coat and hat,” he said curtly to the footman in the hall.

“Shall I send for your carriage, my lord?” the man asked with a bow.

“I shall walk,” he said, restraining the urge to bark at the man, who had done nothing to offend, and he strode out through the door one minute later, his greatcoat still unbuttoned despite the evening chill and the brisk wind. But he could not even go to Bertie to pour out his venom and his frustration, he realized. She was his wife and this was his marriage. A private business. Not one he could discuss with a friend. He thought of Dorothea again as he buttoned his coat and pulled on his gloves hastily. He could not remember ever having felt more lonely than he felt at that moment.

T
HERE WERE FEWER THAN
two weeks left before Christmas, she told herself, gazing out of the carriage window on unfamiliar countryside made drab by a heavy gray sky and a semi-dusk despite the fact that the afternoon was no more than half gone. There was no feeling of Christmas. Usually there was. Usually she took a maid and went shopping several times, not so much because she could not have purchased everything all at once, but because she liked the atmosphere of the shops and streets. She had always particularly liked Oxford Street at Christmas.

Perhaps it was because her father was recently dead, she thought. Undoubtedly that was the reason. And thinking about him, she felt the now-familiar aching in her chest and throat and the equally familiar sense of guilt. She had been unable to mourn for him. She had not once cried for him. She looked down at her blue velvet cloak, the one she had worn at her wedding. She had even put off her black mourning clothes when they left London. So had her husband, but she noticed that he wore a black armband. She did not. Tomorrow Papa would have been dead one month.