A Christmas Promise (12 page)

But there was not much time to brood. While there was still time before the arrival of the guests and the close approach of Christmas, he spent time with his steward, going over the books with him and traveling about his farms. It was work that he suddenly enjoyed because it was all his now with no fear of loss, and he could listen to the complaints and suggestions of his steward and tenants with an open mind. He could agree to make improvements where they were needed, knowing that he had the money to cover the costs. He could even make a few suggestions of his own. And when he reviewed the rents paid by some of his poorer tenants, he could agree to lower them.

There were calls to be made and some to receive, sometimes alone and sometimes with his wife. They did not see a great deal of each other—not because they deliberately avoided each other, he felt, but because she was as busy as he. The schoolteacher wanted her to visit the school and listen to the children read. Their neighbors wanted to entertain her and to visit her. The vicar’s wife wanted her to help with the children’s Christmas concert.

And she wanted to spend time with the housekeeper, learning the workings of the house, learning to take charge of its running herself. She wanted to find out who the elderly and the sick were so that she might visit them regularly and take them Christmas hampers. She wanted to take Christmas hampers to all his farm laborers and their families.

He was impressed. She was behaving almost as if she had been brought up to know the life and duties of a lady. And he was intrigued to find her well received in the neighborhood and in the house. The servants all appeared to adore her after she had spent longer than an hour on their arrival speaking with each one of them, even Sally the scullery maid, who limped and had a speech impediment. She had talked softly to Sally and smiled a great deal. He had not known until the day of their arrival that she could smile. And that she looked incredibly lovely when she did so.

He was glad, he thought after a few days, that they had come into the country. It seemed to suit them both. He had been afraid that, creature of the city as she was, she would be unable to settle at Grenfell. But the outdoor walks and drives she took every day soon brought a glow to her cheeks, and he was reminded of how confined to home she had been after the death of her father.

Of course, the thought reminded him that she was showing precious little grief for her father. But that thought aside, he began to have cautious hopes that they would be able to live together for a year almost amicably. If only the arrival of her family and his friends did not upset matters. He dreaded their arrival, if the truth were known.

He almost decided to go to her on the night of their arrival. It would be an appropriate time, he thought, to turn over a new leaf and resume their marriage in its full sense. It would not seem odd, perhaps, to go to her now when everything was strange and different from the way it had been since their wedding. And he did not find the idea of bedding her repugnant. Rather the contrary. He wanted her, he realized with some surprise. He desired his wife. He remembered the passion of their wedding night with quickened breath.

But as he stood with his hand on the knob of the door that connected their dressing rooms and lifted the other hand to knock, he heard her talking with her maid at the other side of the door and even laughing. She sounded happy. It was a strange sound. He could not quite picture his wife laughing and happy. Perhaps, he thought suddenly, she had been like that all the time before he married her. Perhaps it was he who had taken away her warmth and her laughter—or else her ambition to ally herself with an available peer of the realm.

He would wait, he thought at first, until her maid had left. He set his forehead against the door and closed his eyes, trying to imagine how she would receive him. With gladness? Hardly that. With indifference? He would be chilled by indifference. With hostility? Would he see her chin come up and the martial gleam leap to her eyes? And would he then know that she awaited any opportunity there might be to say something scathing, to quarrel with him until he retaliated with cold insults? And would the result of it all be a repetition of what had happened on their wedding night—a fight for mastery on his part and for he knew not what on hers?

It would be a dreadful beginning to their new life in the country. A dreadful herald to Christmas. Perhaps they would not be able to recover from another quarrel in time to be hospitable to their guests. And that was going to be difficult enough, heaven knew. He would leave it, he decided at last. Perhaps after Christmas. Perhaps when all their guests had left and they were quiet and alone together again, it would seem almost natural to make of their marriage a more real thing. He turned reluctantly back to his bedchamber and lay awake and restless for a long time before falling asleep.

But on the whole, he thought before their guests arrived, things were going quite reasonably well. His marriage was not quite the nightmare it had started out to be.

T
HE GUESTS ARRIVED BEFORE
the snow. And the imminence of snow took them by surprise.

“Look,” her husband said that morning at breakfast, gazing toward the windows, “those are snow clouds, I am sure. We are going to have snow for Christmas.”

“Oh,” she said, her gaze following his, “do you think so? But it never snows for Christmas. Early in December, maybe, and certainly in January. But never for Christmas.”

“This year will be the exception,” he said. “I would wager on it. But I hope everyone gets here first.”

“It will be brown slush by tomorrow anyway,” she said.

He looked at her and smiled. “This is the country, my lady,” he said, “not London. Here the snow remains white as it is meant to be. And it hangs on the trees and blows into snowbanks to the delight of children of all ages and can be traversed only by sleigh—with jingling bells, of course.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” she said wistfully. “Are you sure they are not rain clouds, my lord? Are you ever wrong?”

“I am infallible,” he said. “Next only to God.”

It was the only time he had said anything remotely playful to her. She smiled at him a little uncertainly.

But the guests arrived during the afternoon, and the snow did not begin to sift down until the evening and did not empty its load in earnest until the night.

Sir Albert Hagley arrived first with Viscount Sotherby. The viscount took her hand in his after her husband had introduced them and smiled at her and raised her hand to his lips.

“How kind of you to be willing to have us here with your family, Lady Falloden,” he said. “My own family is very far away, I’m afraid.”

She liked him immediately and breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least one of her husband’s aristocratic friends was not going to look along the length of his nose at her. Sir Albert Hagley did not quite do that, of course, but she thought that they were probably both conscious of the time at that disastrous summer party when he had tried to flirt with her, even going so far as to allow his arm to brush against her breast when they were out walking, and she had told a slightly improper story one of her father’s associates had once been scolded for telling in her presence. She had told it with a loud and broad cockney accent and laughed uproariously afterward. He had kept his distance for the rest of their time there, but she had not dropped either the cockney accent or the loudness. He was not the only gentleman who had tried to take liberties with her.

He greeted her now as he had greeted her on her wedding day, with eyes that did not quite meet hers, and with exaggerated courtesy. And he turned in some relief to greet her husband more heartily. She wished that he had found some excuse not to come. But he was her husband’s friend—and she was not going to allow his presence to dampen her spirits. Certainly not. She lifted her chin.

Uncle Sam Transome, Papa’s eldest brother, arrived next with Aunt Irene and Cousin Tom and his wife, Bessie, and their two children, Davie and Jenny. Uncle Sam grew larger and rounder and more florid of complexion every time she saw him, Eleanor thought, exclaiming in delight when they all came up the house steps and into the great hall and he spread his arms to hug her and squeezed until she thought every last ounce of air must be gone from her lungs.

“Ellie!” he boomed. “As pretty as a picture and as elegant as any lady. And a lady indeed. Am I to call you ‘my lady’ now and curtsy to you, heh? Eh, Irene? What’s that? Speak up. Oh, ‘bow,’ is it? I am to bow to you, Ellie? I am sorry about your papa, girl. More sorry than I can say. A fine man was Joe, and the most successful of the lot of us. And generous, Ellie. Always generous. I miss him sorely.” He hugged her tightly again.

They were not wearing mourning, Eleanor noticed in relief as she relaxed into his embrace and breathed in the familiar scents of leather and pipe tobacco. They had acceded to her express wish and Papa’s.

She extricated herself finally and raised a flaming face to her silent and impassive husband. What must he be thinking? She made the introductions. “Uncle Samuel is a butcher, my lord,” she added with a small lift of the chin. “He has probably the most successful butcher’s business in Bristol.”

“That I do, lad, that I do,” Uncle Sam said modestly, taking her husband’s hand in his large paw and wringing it. “And ‘my lord,’ is it?” He winked ostentatiously. “I’ll wager it’s not always that when you are private together, eh, lad?”

Eleanor felt the inappropriate urge to giggle and wondered when her husband had last been addressed as a lad. He talked courteously with Aunt Irene and Tom and Bessie and exchanged a word with each of the children before turning them over to Mrs. Turner, a temporary nurse recruited from the village.

And then everyone else seemed to arrive together, so that the afternoon was swallowed up with greetings and smiles and shaking hands and treks upstairs with the housekeeper and down again eventually for tea in the lower salon.

The Honorable Mr. Timothy Badcombe was a thin and serious young man, who nevertheless did not seem too disconcerted to find himself in the great hall at the same time as Uncle Ben Transome and Aunt Eunice and Cousin Rachel. Uncle Ben was almost as large and almost as loud as Uncle Sam, though his claim was always that he could never get in a word edgewise when Aunt Eunice was around. Uncle Ben was the innkeeper of a prosperous posting inn outside Bristol.

He too hugged Eleanor as if to break every bone in her body and murmured sympathy in her ear for the loss of her father. Aunt Eunice kissed her and Rachel took her hand and squeezed it.

“Papa cried dreadfully, Ellie,” she whispered. “And so did Mama and I. Uncle Joe was my very favorite uncle even though I love Uncle Sam dearly too. Poor Ellie. But what a splendid marriage.”

Eleanor squeezed her hand in return. There was no chance for a lengthier exchange with her favorite cousin.

Lord Charles Wright arrived at almost the same moment as Aunt Beryl Weekes and Aunt Ruth Transome, sisters of Eleanor’s father, and Cousins Muriel and Mabel Weekes. Aunt Ruth, who had obviously got herself into a taking at the grandeur of being an invited guest at the home of an earl, mistook Lord Charles for her host, and a great number of voices, each pitched slightly louder than the one before, were necessary before she discovered who was the true Earl of Falloden and husband of her dear Ellie. Then she proceeded to weep in Eleanor’s arms for the best brother in all the world.

“And, I will be bound, the dearest papa too, dear,” she said.

Aunt Beryl explained in strident tones that Aunt Ruth had had palpitations that very morning at the thought of coming to Grenfell Park, though why she should have taken on so when they had been accustomed to dining with Lord Sharples while the late Mr. Weekes had been one of his more prominent tenant farmers Aunt Beryl could not explain.

Eleanor glanced several times at her husband, her chin lifted, expecting his contempt. But there was nothing except careful courtesy in his expression.

And then, just a little later, Aunt Catherine Gullis, sister of Eleanor’s mother, arrived with Uncle Harry and Cousins George, Susan, Harvey, and Jane. Uncle Harry was a very successful cloth merchant in Bristol and almost as wealthy as Papa had been. His grandfather was a baronet and he had taken with the greatest good humor a good deal of ribbing for the fact from Papa and Uncle Sam and Uncle Ben. Aunt Catherine held Eleanor wordlessly in her arms.

“Poor Ellie,” she said at last. “A brilliant marriage and the passing of your poor papa all at once, dear. It must be very bewildering.”

And then on their heels came Cousin Aubrey Ellis, a tenant farmer—actually Papa’s cousin, who had grown up almost as a brother to him. Cousin Aubrey was a widower. But he had not come alone. And after all there were to be twenty-one members of her family as guests. Cousin Aubrey’s son had come uninvited.

Wilfred. Looking tall and slim and very blond. With fire burning in his eyes as he took her hand in his and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

“I thought you would not mind my coming, Ellie,” he said rather loudly, “since the family is always together on such occasions. Indeed, Papa and I agreed that your invitation was probably intended to include me.”

“Of course it was,” the earl said, holding out his right hand. “We fully intended that every member of my wife’s family be here to celebrate Christmas with us.” He looked inquiringly at her.

“Wilfred Ellis, my lord,” she said. “My second cousin. A shipping clerk in Bristol.”

“Oh, no longer anything so lowly, Ellie,” he said, setting his hand in her husband’s. “I have been given a partnership. Did you not know?”

“No,” she said. “I did not know. Congratulations, Wilfred.”

Too late. Not quite two months too late. Had this happened two months before, he would have answered her letter differently. He would have had the position and the income as a partner in the company to make her his bride. She felt as if she were suffocating. She thought of the kisses they had shared and the love promises they had exchanged during the summer at Muriel Weekes’s coming-of-age party. She willed her mind to blankness and looked at her husband, who was turning over the last of the arrivals to the housekeeper’s care with all the graciousness of his rank.