The Christmas Spirit (11 page)

Recalling the humiliation of that day, Matthew was surprised by how little it bothered him now.

More of Faye's influence?  He gave a wondering smile.

After a few minutes, the door was opened again, and the footman eyed him cautiously. "The mistress says she will receive you." He bowed.

As Matthew passed him in the vestibule, the footman added, "But no tricks, mind."

"You have my solemn word."

Strange, but he felt like laughing, as if a footman's insolence should be a cause for amusement. But Matthew had suffered much worse at the hands of lower beings than this poor servant. He applauded the lad's stance.

He was shown into a drawing room he vaguely recalled as being decorated with a mixture of female furbelows with only the occasional sign of a male presence. Its fragile chairs with crimson damask had been chosen for the fashionable statement they made rather than for comfort, he discovered when he sat in one of them. Taking a look around, he wondered how differently Helen would have furnished her drawing room if she had been married to him.

Though, Matthew acknowledged with a rueful grimace, he need not have wondered. He would have insisted upon having everything his way even if it meant that Helen would have spent a great portion of her days in a room designed to please him.

Before he could ask himself the next logical question, how Faye would wish to arrange her drawing room, the door swung open, and he stood.

Helen paused on the threshold. The past few years had not changed her much. Her pale blond hair was gathered simply in a chignon, just as he remembered it. Her eyes were still a gentle blue. The dignity of her gaze, which had first attracted him to her, seemed still to linger beneath her present wary glance. The only change Matthew could detect at all was a slight thickening at her waist and a certain heaviness in her step.

She hesitated, nervously fingering the doorknob, as if she might wish to flee.

Matthew hid his annoyance to make her a leg. It was one thing for the footman to think him a lunatic, quite another for someone who had known his kindness to fear him so.

"Helen." He invited her into the room with a questioning note.

"Matthew . . ." She moved forward to give him her hand, then withdrew it quickly. "I must admit your visit comes as a surprise."

"I am certain it does. I hope, however, that you will not find it too unpleasant. I promise you, I mean no harm. To you." He had to qualify that last statement for she would not believe he was in charity with her husband, not after the accusations Sir Julian had made.

Helen flushed and begged him to be seated. Once they were settled across from each other, she had difficulty meeting his eye.

As the silence between them stretched, she began to speak in a wavering voice. "Julian informed me that you made an appearance at the Association meeting last Saturday."

"Yes, I did." Matthew frowned. "I confess to being somewhat surprised that he mentioned it to you, however."

"Oh, Julian and I have no secrets from each other."

"You are most fortunate," Matthew said wryly, and he saw her flush again.

"Julian said--“ Helen hastened her speech--"that you had a remarkably beautiful young lady with you."

"Yes, I did. Her name is Faye Meriwether, but perhaps you have met her."

"No."

"She does not often indulge in society's pleasures, or so she tells me."

"Then, it is you who is fortunate."

Helen's statement caught him off guard. "I beg your pardon?" Matthew asked.

"Oh, Matthew . . . have you forgotten what you were like? Always so ungracious about my desire for society. I am happy you have found someone who shares your taste."

Matthew was astonished to feel himself coloring up. "Oh, as to that--nothing has been settled . . ."

"But from what Julian told me, Miss Meriwether is plainly in love with you."

The jolt of Helen's statement sent Matthew's head ringing. This was not why he had called and not the way the conversation was supposed to go.

But how
was
it supposed to go?

"Tell me truly, Helen." He took the direct approach to clear his head. "Was that why you jilted me? Because I had no liking for balls?"

His use of such brutal words made her flinch, but she quickly squared her shoulders.        "No! I would not have married Julian if I had believed you were still alive, though I am heartily glad I did. But--two years, Matthew. Surely that was more than long enough to wait. And then, when Julian came back and informed us all that he feared you had died and under what circumstances--"

At Matthew's angry look, Helen's recital broke off. She resumed, "But regardless of the circumstances, I believed you were dead. What was I to do? Stay a spinster? Give up every chance for a life?"

"Did you not have a life without marriage?"

"Certainly not. What woman does?"

Faye does, Matthew thought, though he did not speak the words aloud, for he sensed how unfair they were. It was useless to compare Helen to Faye, even though he had not realized before what a coward Helen was. And even that last thought was grossly unfair.

Helen was neither more nor less than most of her kind. She was precisely what she had been raised to be. Whereas Faye--

Faye was as eccentric and boundless as he was.

The sudden realization that they were meant for each other elated him, and he wanted to kiss Helen for it.

Just then, however, the drawing room door flew open, and Sir Julian burst inside.

"If you have harmed one hair on her head--" He broke off at the sight of them sitting in civilized converse.

Helen's shock turned instantly to dismay. "Julian, dear--"

Matthew folded his arms and settled back into his chair.

"Hello, Speck," he said with distaste.

Chapter Seven

"What do you mean by this, Dunstone?" Sir Julian stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, never taking his eyes from Matthew's face.

He made the perfect picture of sartorial elegance in Brummell's dictated black. "I will not have you coming here and upsetting my wife."

Helen had risen to move near him. "It is quite all right, Julian. I do not think Matthew came to cause trouble."

"Not with you, Helen, at least." Matthew kept to his chair. "I found our conversation most illuminating, and I thank you for it."

Sir Julian's gaze flew back and forth between them, fear turning his visage white. Finding nothing in either face, however, to suggest a conspiracy, he relaxed just long enough to put his arm about Helen's shoulders and draw her to his side. "If you have had your say," he said to Matthew, "then I must ask you to leave."

"Oh, but I haven't," Matthew assured him. "One of my purposes in coming may have been to discover just why my fiancée jilted me, and that has been satisfied. But I am far from through with you."

"Why, you--"

"Please, Matthew," Helen said. "I implore you not to cause a fight."

"I am far too weak from malaria to be a worthy opponent for anyone," Matthew said, softening his tone for her sake, "and though you might not suspect it of me, I have learned enough to choose my moments wisely. You have my word, Helen, that I shall not challenge your husband. But we do have some unfinished business to discuss."

In the silence that followed his speech, Julian looked down into his wife's face, and Matthew was stunned by what he saw in that gaze. A desperate love, and a stark terror of losing it.

Such blatant feelings rocked Matthew, and, for an instant, he almost pitied Speck. His discomposure was enough to make him repeat in an impatient voice no one could doubt, "I have given you my word."

Helen turned back to him and hid her reluctance with the dignity she had always possessed. "Then, I shall leave you two alone."

Matthew stood as a courtesy as she retired. Helen's dignity, which at one time had meant so much to him, he now saw as merely well-schooled manners, not proof of the independence or courage he had believed her to possess. She was still a pleasant woman, but he was almost relieved to see her leave the room. Though, thankfully, none of his former feelings for Helen had been reawakened this morning, he did not particularly want her to hear what he had to say to her husband. From the uneasy glance Julian threw his way, Matthew could tell he felt the same.

When the door was closed behind her, the two men stood and faced each other. Julian was the first to look away.

"Very well, Dunstone," he said. "Let's have it out. You've got a nerve coming here, so why have you done it?"

Matthew's anger flared. "Can you truly not imagine why I've come?"

"It will be useless for us to discuss anything if you insist upon taking that tone. However, since it is the same you've always used with me, I suppose I should not be surprised to hear it."

"What the devil do you mean?"

Julian gave a short laugh before strolling to a table where wine and glasses had been set out. He poured himself a drink, but, after one look at Matthew, had the sense not to offer him one.

"Such arrogance always. The great Sir Matthew Dunstone, famed explorer of the Nile."

No matter how much contempt Matthew had for Speck, his jealous words still cut.

"You were ever full of envy." That much had become evident soon after the outset of their journey together. Julian Speck had resented Matthew's ease with the natives who accompanied them. He had objected to Matthew's use of Arabic when he conversed with Ahmad. And he had derided every skill Matthew exercised that he did not himself possess.

The fact that Matthew had found such pettiness unreasonable and unforgivable had not endeared the two men to each other. He had felt his partner to be a millstone about his neck, always objecting and ever arguing about the route they should take, when Matthew's superior experience should have been the final authority. Only a few months into their expedition, they had discussed splitting up.

"Arrogance, Speck? Perhaps I do possess a degree of arrogance, but I will not be branded a coward by a man who, when the first bit of trouble arose, turned tail and left me surrounded by brigands."

"Me! It was you who ran off and left me lying alone in the middle of the desert!"

Matthew spoke through clenched teeth. "I suppose you have told that story so often you have started to believe it, but don't forget that I was there." His memories of that day were clearly etched on his mind: their camp at the oasis; the group of horsemen who had suddenly ridden out of a cloud of sand; the crackle of shots; the shouts of their porters.

"When I gave the order to attack the robbers, you held back instead and took off while the blackguards surrounded me."

Julian sneered. "You will have to do better than that, I'm afraid. You saw I'd been wounded, yet you and that heathen friend of yours turned and ran."

"Ahmad is not a heathen," Matthew said, taking a threatening step forward. "As you know perfectly well, for you saw him at his devotions every day, twice a day, quite unlike either you or me. But I see that this is how you twist the truth."

The scorn in Matthew's voice made the other man flinch. With a quivering hand, Julian raised his glass to his mouth and tossed it off. After a moment of silence, he bowed his head, not meeting Matthew's gaze. "My apologies to Ahmad. Whatever the quarrel between us, I should not have said what I did."

Matthew was more astonished by this admission than he'd been to see the love for Helen on Julian's face. In his anger at them both, Matthew had assumed that his rival had stolen his fiancée out of spite, and it was unsettling to discover the reverse. That, perhaps, Julian's desire for Helen had been the cause of some of the trouble between them.

"What became of the porters?"

Julian started, a second wineglass half way to his lips. He stared at Matthew and frowned. "They followed you. And your orders. You shouted something to them in that accursed Arabic of yours and they rode off with all the horses."

A sudden thought took Matthew's breath away. "I gave the order to attack. They disappeared."

The two men stared at each other, both thunderstruck. Matthew could not doubt that Julian's astonishment was as genuine as his own.

He thought back to the scene at their camp, to the confusion reigning. Had he given the order to attack in Arabic, a language Julian did not understand? But there had been so little time, and he had had to take command, and the porters were all Somals . . . .

He did not recall seeing Julian at all, but the winds had blown, and sand and smoke had formed a thick screen. It was possible . . . .

Matthew looked at his former partner and saw the same doubts flickering across his face.        Matthew put a hand to his brow and dug his fingertips in.

"I think you had better poor me a glass of that wine before you drink it all," he said, awash with weariness.

They sat in Helen's drawing room until well after mid-day, straightening out the tangle of events that had come between them. Julian, it appeared, had taken a ball in the shoulder almost as soon as the fighting had commenced, and since he had been within sight of Matthew at the time, he had assumed Matthew had seen.

But Matthew's attention had been entirely taken up by the marauders, and by the time he had given a glance back at the camp, the air had been too thick to penetrate.

He and Ahmad had been surrounded, struck down, and led off in chains to a rebel village from which they ultimately had escaped. Julian had awakened to find everyone gone, the camp in shambles, and the horses either stolen or frightened off. Weakened by a loss of blood, he had tried to make his way on foot and had fortunately come across a caravan, heading for the coast. Matthew had expressed such disgust for him before this misadventure as to convince Julian he had been purposely left to die.

He had sailed for England, where he had let it be known that Matthew had deserted him to go on alone. Then, when Matthew had never returned, it was assumed he had died somewhere in the interior.

Matthew
had
gone on, months later, determined to find the source of the Nile even without his instruments or his guides. He and Ahmad had traveled by whatever means they could devise, in whatever guise was needed, but they had failed. Months of captivity at the court of a native chief, heat, exhaustion, and disease had defeated them. Matthew had barely made it back alive.