A Christmas Promise (23 page)

And the next moment Sir Albert’s expression turned first to surprise and then to pain as a fist connected sharply with his jaw. He staggered backward, stepped awkwardly, and went sprawling on the floor.

“If you want to make something of it,” the earl said, “you can slap a glove in my face, Bertie. I’m sure we can both find seconds here and settle the matter well away from the house and the ladies.”

Sir Albert flexed his jaw and felt it gingerly with the tips of two fingers. He frowned up from his sitting position on the floor.

“Growing fond of her!” he said in disgust. “You’re bloody in love with her, Randolph. That’s the first time—and the last, I hope—that I have been punished for a two-year-old crime.”

“Do you want satisfaction?” the earl asked.

Sir Albert reached up a hand. “Help me up,” he said. “It is the least you can do. Now I suppose I’ll have a bruise to explain away to a couple of dozen curious people. I walked into a door. That is the easiest explanation, is it not? And the most humiliating. Devil take it, Randolph, when you throw a punch, you hold nothing back, do you? My head is going to be pounding for a month.”

The earl hauled his friend to his feet and then extended his hand again in silence. Sir Albert looked at it and took it without another word. They left the gallery together.

E
LEANOR LOOKED ABOUT HER
in some satisfaction. The ballroom, which she had thought a rather large, bare, cheerless room the first time she saw it, now looked festive enough for a ball. The children, she felt, would be delighted, and their parents too. She planned to be on hand to greet the parents when they began to arrive. She guessed that for some, if not all, coming to Grenfell Park would be as much ordeal as pleasure. She wanted to set them at their ease. She was, after all, plain Eleanor Transome, or had been until less than two months before.

She smiled as she watched her family doing much what she was doing, admiring their own handiwork. Her husband had expected that she would set the servants to decorating. He had offered his help. It seemed he still did not know her family well. One word at luncheon and they had all set to with a will. Half of them had trudged outdoors, even though the storm had only just been dying down, to bring home more greenery. Aunt Beryl and Aunt Ruth had climbed up to the attic again to bring down the decorations that had not been used, though they both declared that there were not many left. Lord Sotherby had suggested going into the village to buy more ribbon, and Muriel, Mabel, and George had gone with him.

And then, of course, they had all decorated with enthusiasm. There was more than an hour left before anyone could be expected to arrive for the concert, an hour in which to wash and change.

“Well, Ellie,” Uncle Sam said, sketching her an exaggeratedly elegant bow, “shall we waltz?”

She shook an imaginary fan before her face. “But Uncle,” she said, “my card is full. I am so sorry.”

They both chuckled and he set a comradely arm about her shoulders. “Happy, Ellie?” he asked.

She nodded. Her husband and Mr. Badcombe were holding the long ladder while Sir Albert Hagley, perched precariously on it high above them, was hanging stars from the chandeliers. All three of them were in their shirtsleeves. She doubted if any of the three had ever done anything like this before.

“He is a fine man, Ellie,” her uncle said. “Joe chose well. Though if I know you, lass, you helped choose too. Love him, do you?”

She nodded. Yes, she did. She had realized it fully and consciously only the night before when she had woken to find him making love to her and had known somehow that she was making love to him too. Perhaps she had even started it. She had had the feeling that perhaps she had. But it had not mattered. They had loved. It had been the sexual act, the marriage act, the physical union of their bodies. But it had been far more than that. It had been what she had yearned for the night before without knowing quite what it was she wanted.

They had loved. There was no other way of describing what had happened. Physically it had been more than wonderful, for he had taken her beyond tensions and aches into a world of relaxation and peace whose existence she had never even suspected. Emotionally it had been—oh, there were not words to describe what it had been.

Yet today there was a certain flatness and uncertainty. She had woken early when he had turned her from her comfortable warm and living bed on top of him to set her on the mattress. And when he had withdrawn from her body with which he had still been coupled. But he had said nothing, though she had opened her eyes. He had only got up from the bed and turned back to tuck the blankets warmly up under her chin and to look for a lingering moment into her eyes. And today they had looked at each other and spoken to each other with amity, with none of the old coldness or hostility. But with nothing else.

Nothing to indicate that they had become lovers the night before, not just husband and wife engaged in the conjugal act. Perhaps she had imagined it? Perhaps he had not shared her feelings? Perhaps only she had made love.

“Yes,” she said again. “I love him, Uncle Sam. I just wish Papa were here.” And there was a pain and an emptiness suddenly, an ache in the back of her throat. Her father’s absence from the ballroom, from their family gathering, was almost a tangible thing.

He squeezed her shoulder. “Me too, lass,” he said.

Her husband was coming across the room toward them, smiling and brushing dust from his hands. “Rather splendid, would you not say, Uncle Sam?” he asked.

“What can I say, lad?” Uncle Sam said, releasing Eleanor’s shoulder to spread his large hands expressively. “It has the Transome touch. Are you Ellie’s next partner? She cannot dance with me, she says, because her card is full.”

“Is it?” the earl said. “But she can hardly deny me, Uncle Sam. I am her husband. A waltz, is it?”

She laughed. “So Uncle Sam says,” she said. “For myself, sir, I am having such a dizzyingly wonderful time at this ball that I hardly know which dances are coming up.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

He took her hand in his and turned his head, looking about the loudly chattering crowd of her relatives until he saw the person he was searching for.

“Jason!” he bellowed. “A waltz tune, if you please, on the pianoforte. You are the accompanist for this ball, are you not?”

Lord Sotherby looked at him blankly for a moment, his conversation with Aunt Catherine and Aunt Beryl interrupted. “Just taking a little break, my lord earl,” he said. “I am on my way back to work, and a waltz it is.”

The sheer unexpected absurdity of it was its magic, Eleanor found over the next ten minutes as Lord Sotherby seated himself at the pianoforte and without the aid of sheet music began to play a waltz. Her husband bowed before her far more elegantly than Uncle Sam had done and extended a hand for hers.

“Ma’am,” he said. “My dance, I believe?”

She consulted her imaginary card. “And so it is, my lord,” she said, dropping into a deep curtsy.

Then they were waltzing, a dance she had never performed outside the schoolroom, and she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they were dancing on air. And she was smiling into his eyes and he into hers and there was a welling of happiness in her. He must have felt it too, then, the night before. It must have been mutual. Oh, it had never been like this between them.

“Quite a squeeze, is it not, ma’am?” he said, and she looked about her to discover that almost everyone else was dancing too. Even Aunt Ruth was being twirled about by Mr. Badcombe and looking as if she might break into shrieks at any moment.

“Christmas,” the earl said, laughing down at her. “It makes the sanest people mad, does it not? I daresay we will all return to sanity next week.”

Was that all it was, then? Was it just Christmas? All of it? Would the magic go next week? Vanish without trace? Would there be no more friendship and teasing—no more imaginary balls—next week? No more lovings?

“I hope not,” she said, and watched a light leap into his eyes for a moment before he looked away suddenly as the music came to an end.

The noise level in the ballroom increased tenfold and there was a great deal of laughter.

“We had better retire and get ready for this concert,” the earl said, raising his voice and somehow making himself heard above the hubbub. “Those who wish to attend it, of course.”

Everyone wished to attend it, and they all told him so in voices raised to be heard above those of their neighbors. The earl grinned.

Eleanor turned when a hand came to rest on her arm.

“Ma’am,” Sir Albert Hagley said, “may I take five minutes of your time? May I speak with you?”

She would really rather not. She always felt a great deal of embarrassment in his presence and avoided him whenever she could. She had been under the impression that he shared her feelings.

“Of course,” she said warily. “Shall we stroll into the conservatory?”

She led the way from the ballroom.

“T
HE WEATHER HAS IMPROVED,”
Sir Albert said, fingering the velvety leaf of a plant and strolling over to the windows, which made up three sides of the conservatory.

“Yes,” she said. “I am so glad for the sake of the children and their parents. And for our sakes. Now we will all be able to go to church this evening.”

There was an awkward little silence. Why had he asked to speak privately with her? she wondered. He was the last person she would have expected to do so.

“I owe you an apology, ma’am,” he said abruptly, turning resolutely from the window and looking directly at her.

She returned his look with some surprise. He had done nothing to offend her. And unexpectedly she remembered how she had thought him attractive at first at Pamela’s party—but only at first. He was rather slight of build, his face narrow, his eyes dark, his hair a mid-brown. She could understand why Rachel liked him. And Rachel had used the word “attractive” to describe him.

“At long last,” he said. “My behavior was unpardonable. Both at first and later. Sometimes the surest way to deflect the humiliation of rejection and the discomfort of guilt is to turn contemptuous. That is what I did, and I recall that I turned everyone else with me. It must have been a very distressing time for you.”

Good heavens, he was talking about what had happened two years ago. She felt herself flushing. “Yes, it was,” she said. “Though I made certain that no one else knew it at the time.”

There was a dull flush on his face too. “The cockney accent,” he said. “You do it well. And the loud laughter. I did not suspect that it was all an act, that in reality you are as refined as any l—. As any lady. You
are
a lady, ma’am.”

She was suspicious suddenly. “Did my husband demand this apology?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Though he did bring the matter up this morning when he spoke with me about Miss Transome. Miss Rachel Transome.”

She bit her lower lip.

“You need not fear a repetition of what happened two years ago,” he said. “With your cousin, I mean. And I do sincerely beg your pardon for that, ma’am. There should have been someone there at the time to give me a good thrashing.”

She smiled slowly. “Thank you,” she said. “You are my husband’s closest friend, are you not? I have wished that it were not so. I have felt all the awkwardness of having to be in company with you frequently.”

“Yes,” he said. “I have felt it too.” He walked toward her and reached out his right hand. “Will you take my hand, ma’am? Can we be friends too?”

“I would like that,” she said, setting her hand in his and returning the pressure of his handshake. Her eyes strayed to the bruise on the left side of his jaw and she remembered the merciless teasing he had had to parry at luncheon. “That door you ran into,” she said. “Was it my husband’s fist?”

He looked at her and pursed his lips.

“Because of Rachel?” she said. “Oh, but he should not have.”

“Because of you,” he said. “Because I did not show you the proper respect two years ago.”

“Oh.” One hand strayed to her mouth, but she could not stop it from smiling behind the hand. And she could not stop her eyes from dancing. “Oh,” she said again.

“And you are pleased about it,” he said, “even though my jaw still hurts like the very devil. Pleased that he hit me, ma’am? Or pleased that he cared enough to do so?”

The latter. Oh, the latter. “Sir Albert,” she said, “I am so sorry about your poor jaw. But don’t you think Christmas is a wonderful time of the year? Don’t you?”

“I have had better days, I must admit,” he said. “But I suppose this one might improve. There is still a good deal of it left. And may I say that for the first time I am glad that Randolph’s cousin was the way he was?”

She looked at him in incomprehension.

He raised his eyebrows. “Because if he had not been,” he explained, “then Randolph would not have met and married you. Did you not understand my meaning?”

“His cousin?” she said, staring at him blankly. “Have I missed something? What are you talking about, please?”

“His cousin, the former Earl of Falloden,” he said. “The devil of a dissipated apology for a man, if you will excuse my language, who beggared the estate and ran up debts so high—mostly from gaming—that everything would have been lost if he had not had the good fortune to die first. Randolph inherited the debts, though he might have repudiated the personal ones. Your father bought them all and the mortgage on Grenfell Park. You must have known. Didn’t you? Oh, good Lord, what have I said now?”

She set a hasty hand on his arm. “Yes, I did,” she said. “I knew about the debts and his reason for marrying me. Except that I assumed that the debts were all my husband’s.”

“Randolph’s?” he said with a laugh. “That is rather comical actually. When we were at university, and afterward too, he was the only one of the lot of us who always managed to live within his income, though it was probably one of the smallest. This is all new to you, is it? Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No.” She looked up at him and smiled radiantly. “No. Oh, thank you, my friend.” And she bit her lip and continued to smile. He had tried to tell her the night before. She realized that instantly, though why he had not told her long ago she had no idea. But she had stopped him the night before. She had wanted to make love with him and she had not wanted her ardor to cool—it had been in danger of doing that as soon as he had reminded her that he had married her for money. In fact, it had done so. She remembered her passivity during their first loving—her refusal to show him that she wanted him, that she enjoyed what he did to her. Oh, she should have listened. She should have heard this from his own lips.