The Christmas Secret (3 page)
Edward laughed. “
You
will marry her, Tolly? Come now, I thought better of you! You cannot demean yourself to marry her—she is ruined,” he said, as if explaining why Mr. Tolly should prefer whiskey over gin.
“
No,
Mr. Tolly,” Olivia said quickly. Her heart was pounding frantically now. “It is a truly noble offer, but—”
“I won’t marry him!” Miranda wailed. “I cannot marry him, I do not love him!”
Mr. Tolly put his hand under Miranda’s chin and forced her to look up at him. “Please listen to me, Miss Hastings,” he said quietly. “For now, we shall say we are to be married, until we can devise a plan that protects you and the Carey family from certain scandal.” Miranda started to shake her head, but he dipped down a little and looked her in the eye. “Be strong now, lass,” he said kindly. “Now is the time you must think of the child you carry and be strong.”
Miranda’s hand fluttered to her abdomen. She seemed to consider what he said as she sniffed back her tears. She conceded by sagging helplessly against Mr. Tolly, looking as if the slightest touch would cause her to collapse into pieces.
“Tolly, you astound me,” Edward said, almost cheerfully. “I do believe there is little you won’t do to protect the good Carey name, but in this case, I think you are a fool. She will do as well in an Irish convent as she will do as a wife to you.”
Mr. Tolly did not smile. He looked as grave as Olivia had ever seen him. “If you will permit me, my lord, I shall address this unfortunate complication so that you may turn your attention to more pressing issues.”
Edward gazed skeptically at Mr. Tolly for a long moment, but Mr. Tolly steadily held his gaze, not the least intimidated. Edward finally shrugged and turned away. “Do as you wish. But keep her out of my sight,” he said. “I don’t want to be reminded that I have a slut wandering about Everdon Court.”
“My lord,” Mr. Tolly said, and wheeled Miranda about, moving her briskly to the door.
Olivia tried to follow, hoping to reason with Mr. Tolly—but Edward stopped her with a hand to her arm. “Lady Carey,” he said sternly. Olivia closed her eyes a moment before she turned back to him. “I did not give you leave,” he said, then settled back against the desk, his arms casually folded over his middle. “Go on with you now, Tolly,” he said dismissively. “Take her from my sight.”
Olivia glanced over her shoulder at Miranda, but it was Mr. Tolly’s gaze that met hers, and she thought, as he ushered her sister out, that she saw a flash of anger in his eyes.
The door shut behind Mr. Tolly and Miranda, leaving her alone with Edward.
Edward gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes wandering over the peach-colored gown she wore. “How is it,” he said at last, “that your sister is with child after spreading her legs to God knows who in Spain, and you are not?”
The question did not surprise Olivia in the least, but it nonetheless snatched her breath as it always did. He spoke to her as if there were some defect in her, something less than human. He never considered that he could be the reason they had yet to produce a child.
“I asked you a question, madam.”
“I cannot say,” she said tightly.
“Perhaps it is because you take some elixir to abort my seed,” he suggested. “Brock said some old crone called on you recently.”
Confused, Olivia thought back to her recent callers and remembered Mrs. Gates, who had come on behalf of the charity they had begun for the poor. She was elderly, with a shock of gray hair that seemed as unruly as her wards. “If you are referring to Mrs. Gates, she is a patron of the parish workhouse.”
“She is a crone.”
“She is not a crone. And she did not bring me an elixir. I find that accusation absurd, Edward. You must know that I would never indulge in such tactics; I cannot bear to even hear you speak of it. I want a child every bit as much as you do.”
He laughed at that and shoved away from the desk, coming toward her. “Do you indeed want a child, Olivia? One might ask, if you desire one so completely as you would have me believe, then why on earth have you not borne one? Do you know what I think? I think you deceive me every day,” he said casually as he studied her face. “I think you seek to vex me in any way you might. You are surrounded by riches and staff, yet you never bring me joy, Olivia. You burden me with the troubles of your orphaned sister and expect me to somehow make them go away, as if by magic. You tricked me into marrying you, and the one thing I have asked of you, the
one
thing I have required for all the generosity I bestow on you, is to give me an heir. That is all I ask. An heir. Yet you do not conceive, and when you do, you abort them.”
Olivia felt her knees bending a little with that last remark. “How dare you say such a vile thing,” she said roughly. “Dr. Egan said that I have done no harm to my body. I am an obedient wife—”
“Obedient?” Edward said, surprised. He grinned. “Is that what you would call your performance in our marital bed? Obedient?”
Olivia’s belly began to churn with her nerves. She wisely said nothing and tried to focus on a painting just over his shoulder. It was of an ancestor, sitting on a rock, staring at the artist while his dog gazed up at him. Olivia felt like that dog. She had to be ever vigilant, to watch everything Edward did.
“I don’t find you the least bit obedient,” Edward observed. “I think you plot to remove my seed from your body.”
Her trepidation was making her nauseous. “How can that be? You make me lie there and watch me so that I don’t move. How could I remove it?”
“Women have a bevy of tricks at their disposal,” he said. His gaze began to wander her body. “Perhaps I have gone about this the wrong way,” he added thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am not seeking my marital rights as your husband as determinedly as I ought.” His gaze lingered on her bosom, and Olivia resisted the urge to cover her breasts with her arms. “Perhaps I have not been as forceful as is required.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked, alarmed.
He slowly lifted his gaze. “I mean, wife, that perhaps I have been too gentle in my desires. Perhaps you would make a more
obedient
wife if I were a more insistent husband.”
Olivia’s heart leaped with fear. She looked to the door, gauging her chance at escape.
Edward startled her with a caress of her cheek and then a hand to her shoulder and neck. “If your sister can get a child in her, there must be some way to put one in you.” He pressed his thumb lightly into the hollow of her throat. “If it is your desire that I do not turn your sister out, as I have every right to do, then you will find a way to give me an heir, Olivia. Do not think to defy me, either, for who will take the two of you in once I am done with you? Who? Your cousin in Wales with four mouths to feed? Your mother’s brother, who languishes in debtor’s prison? Think on that when you take your elixirs and herbs,” he said quietly, then released her with a shove backward. “Now go. I have work to do.”
Olivia stumbled, catching herself on the arm of a chair. She watched Edward walk casually around to the chair at his desk, then hurried from the room before he could humiliate her further.
The Christmas Secret
SECRETS OF HADLEY GREEN
Julia London
Pocket Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination
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Copyright © 2011 by Dinah Dinwiddie
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ISBN 978–1–4516–6934–3
Contents
Excerpt from
The Revenge of Lord Eberlin
Excerpt from
The Seduction of Lady X
The Christmas Secret
ENGLAND
CHRISTMAS SEASON, 1808
As a boy growing up on the banks of the Hudson River in New York, Henry Bristol had dreamed of sailing the world on a merchant ship, or residing on a farm with packs of dogs and herds of horses to keep him company. As a man, he did indeed possess four fine hunting dogs and a herd of horses. But regrettably, on a voyage from America to England, he’d discovered, in the cruelest manner, that he would never be a sailor. He’d spent most of the monthlong voyage in his bunk, green as a toad and quite ill.
Henry had never dreamed that he, of all men, would be struck by such a debilitating malady as seasickness. He’d been made strong and robust from the years spent working on his family’s vast farming operations while his brother, Thomas, had managed the family brickyard. Henry had liked his living and the physical work. But Henry had liked horses more, and at the age of twenty-six, there had arisen an opportunity for him to train under one of the premier horse breeders in all of Europe. He’d convinced his family that he was destined for horse breeding greatness, and on a sunny summer afternoon, he’d sailed from New York for England on the biggest ship he’d ever seen.
The ship had scarcely cleared the harbor when Henry had felt the first sickening roil in his belly.
There had been no end to the illness; he’d fought it for a full month of the voyage. He’d never been so grateful to the Almighty as he’d been when the ship reached England and he’d been on terra firma once more.
With his legs firmly under him, Henry had made his way to London as had been prearranged, only to find a letter at his hotel: Declan O’Conner, the Earl of Donnelly, the unparalleled horse breeder who had agreed to tutor Henry, was in the midst of breeding a horse for a Danish count and could not commence his instruction for a month or more. That was quite all right with Henry; he proceeded to recover from his horrible passage by enjoying the fruits the vibrant town of London had to offer—which, frankly, were many when one had letters of introduction from families with footholds in both the New and the Old Worlds.
The fact that Henry was an American, and therefore something of a curiosity, meant that he was soon besieged with invitations to fine salons, to hunts, to horse races with purses that astounded him. Henry was introduced to beautiful women and learned the steps to the most popular dances. He was just beginning to feel at home when he was informed that Lord Donnelly had rushed back to Ireland in advance of some scandal so astonishing that Donnelly’s retainer, a small man named Fish, could scarcely speak of it.
“But I have paid handsomely for this opportunity,” Henry said with a bit of exasperation as a small curl of panic unfurled in his belly. “Does the earl intend to renege on our agreement?”
“Certainly not,” Mr. Fish said, as if the suggestion had been ludicrous, even in light of this astonishing scandal that had forced the earl to flee to Ireland. “Nevertheless, it is not convenient for his lordship at this time.”
Henry attempted to be cross and disappointed, but he could not manage it. As it happened, London was convenient for him, and he merrily joined his new friends in the gentlemen’s clubs that seemed to stand on every Mayfair corner. He became a rather good gambler. He courted a pair of cousins from a prominent family and he forgot about horse breeding.
One morning several weeks later, when Henry returned to his hotel bleary-eyed and reeking of whiskey after a particularly memorable night spent in a Southwark gaming hell, the concierge extended a silver tray to him upon which lay a folded vellum. It bore the seal of Ballynaheath in Ireland, and a gentleman had written that the Earl of Donnelly would receive Henry now, in December of 1808.
Henry grinned. At long last, he would meet the man who, everyone in London agreed, bred the best horses in Europe. Henry packed his bags, called for a coach, and very soon thereafter, he set off across the lovely English countryside for Wales, where he would board a ship for what a fellow gambler had assured him was a mere “skip and a hop” across the Irish Sea.
But the moment Henry arrived in the quaint little Welsh village of Holyhead, the salty smell of the sea and fish reminded him of his ordeal in coming to England and rendered him a bit queasy. To make matters worse, a storm was brewing on the horizon into which they’d be sailing.
“All aboard, sir,” the steward said to Henry.
Henry glanced uneasily at the sailor. “Do you mean to sail into that storm?”
The sailor gave the horizon a casual look. “She’ll blow by, aye,” he said. “All aboard, if you please.”
Henry looked suspiciously at the vessel and then cast his gaze for the land he’d been led to believe was practically visible from England’s shores. It was not.
“Come on then, gent,” the sailor said impatiently.
“Yes, all right,” Henry said. He drew as deep and steadying a breath as he could manage, adjusted his hat, shifted his bag onto his shoulder, and stepped onto the gangplank.
As the sails unfurled, the ship was at once greeted with lashing rains and icy winds, and Henry could do nothing to help himself. He found a seat near the railing, beneath wooden awnings that protected passengers from the elements, and prayed for deliverance.
He was delivered of his supper almost straightaway, and his physical state went from frightful to disastrous. As the sailor said, the storm eventually blew past them, but the winds remained high, and the ship creaked and moaned and surged up, then crashed down, over and over again, until Henry’s illness was entrenched in his marrow. He thought it cruel that the stars twinkled serenely overhead as the world seemed to twist and turn, tossing him about as if he were a small child instead of the strong and sturdy man he’d always fancied himself to be.
In the midst of his personal calamity, an angel descended from grace to him. Henry felt hardly conscious, but he suddenly smelled roses. Then someone soothed his face with a cool cloth. A handkerchief, he discovered when she pressed it into his hand. White linen, scented with rose oil.
“You must stand up, aye?” she said soothingly. Her voice had a soft lilt to it. “If you do not stand and look at the horizon, the illness will not leave you.” He felt delicate hands on his arm, tugging him up. Somehow, Henry got to his feet. Somehow, he put both hands on the railing and opened his eyes. He thought there could be nothing worse, nothing more horrifying than to lose his stomach in front of this sweet-smelling angel.
“Look there,” she said, her voice coming from somewhere below his shoulder. He saw her outstretched hand, the pointing of her slender finger, and made himself look in that direction. In the light of the full moon, he could see stars twinkling above the lift and fall of the sea. Henry could feel that lift and fall in his belly. He must have groaned, for she put a steadying arm about his waist and held him up. “Don’t look at the waves, sir,” she said. “Look at the sky above them. Keep your eyes on something that does not move.”
Swallowing hard, he did as she instructed. A moment or two passed. His belly roiled, but not as violently as it had.
“Grandmamma believes that consuming a raw potato soaked in good Irish whiskey will keep the sickness away, yet I cannot bear to eat such a thing. I have found a glass of warm ginger beer to do quite nicely.”
Henry risked looking at his angel of mercy. She was pretty. A wisp of dark hair peeked out from beneath the hood of her cloak and fell artlessly across her brow. Her eyes, rimmed with thick lashes, seemed almost crystalline blue in the moonlight. And her plump lips, turned up in a soft smile of sympathy, were dark ruby in color. He meant to ask her name, but the ship surged upward, and Henry’s belly with it. He turned quickly to the bow and the horizon beyond, fighting down the nausea.
“Keep your gaze on the sky, and we’ll be in Dublin before you realize it.”
He prayed that she was right and fixed his gaze on one star that seemed brighter than all the others. When he looked back for the woman, she had gone, disappearing into the night. An angel, he thought as he focused on the horizon. An angel come down from the heavens to save him. He glanced down, to the linen handkerchief he’d crushed in his fist. Neatly embroidered on the scalloped edge were her initials, in the same blue as her eyes:
E.O.