by Mary Balogh
“Gerald—” Lady Stapleton began, but he held up a staying hand.
“She is not to be pitied,” he said. “Neither am I. Priss is the love of my heart and I am by now confident in the conviction that I am the love of hers. I am not in the habit of airing such very private feelings in public, but I have seen from your manner and have heard from your husband that you have bitterly blamed yourself for what happened between us and have steadfastly refused to forgive yourself or allow yourself any sort of happiness. I thought I was still bitter. I thought I would never forgive you. But I have found during the past day that those are outmoded, petty feelings. You were young and unhappy—heaven knows I was never happy with my father either. And while youth and unhappiness do not excuse bad behavior, they do explain it. To hold a grudge for thirteen years and even beyond is in itself unpardonable. If it is my forgiveness you want, then, Helena, you have it—freely and sincerely given.”
No. It could not possibly be as easy as that. The burden of years could not be lifted with a single short speech spoken in that gentle, well-remembered voice.
“No,” she said stiffly. “It is not what I want, Gerald. It is not in your power.”
“You will send him away still burdened, then?” Priscilla asked. “It is hard to offer forgiveness and be rejected. It makes one feel strangely guilty.”
“It is Christmas.” Edgar stepped forward. He had been a silent spectator of the proceedings until now. Helena deeply resented him. “We are all going to spend it here at Mobley Abbey. Together. And it is teatime. Time to go up to the drawing room. I wish to introduce you to my father and our other guests, Stapleton, Lady Stapleton.”
They had not been introduced? Lady Stapleton had not yet been introduced to the Duke and Duchess of Bridgwater, the Marquess and Marchioness of Carew, the Earl and Countess of Thornhill, and everyone else? She would be cut. And she must know it. She must have known it before she came. Why had she come, then? For Gerald’s sake? Did she love him so much? Would she risk such humiliation for his sake? So that he, too, might find a measure of peace? But Gerald had done nothing to regret. Except that she had refused to accept his forgiveness.
“Take my arm, Priss.” Gerald’s voice was tense with protective fear.
“No.” Helena stepped forward and took the woman’s arm herself. Gerald’s wife was smaller than she, daintier. “We will go up together, Priscilla. I will present you to my father-in-law and my sister-in-law and my aunt. And to all our friends.”
“Thank you, Helena,” Priscilla said quietly. If she was afraid, she did not show it.
“I must show everyone what a delightful gift my husband has brought me on Christmas Eve,” Helena said. “He has brought my stepson and his wife to spend Christmas with me.”
“And our son,” Priscilla said. “Peter. Thank you, Helena. Gerald has told me what a warm and charming woman you were. I can see that he was right. And you will see in the next day or two what a secure, contented man he is and you will forgive yourself and allow him to forgive you. I have seen enough suffering in my time to know all about the masks behind which it hides itself. It is time we all stopped suffering.”
And this just before they stepped inside the drawing room to what was probably one of the worst ordeals of Priscilla’s life?
“I can certainly admire courage,” Helena said. “I will take you to my father-in-law first. You will like him and he will certainly like you.”
“Thank you.” Priscilla smiled. But her face was very pale for all that.
17
EDGAR GAZED UPWARD THROUGH THE WINDOW OF his bedchamber. By some miracle the sky was clear again. But then it was Christmas. One somehow believed in miracles at Christmas.
“Come here,” he said without turning. He knew she was still sitting on the side of the bed brushing her hair, though her maid had already brushed it smooth and shining.
“I suppose,” she said, “the Christmas star is shining as it was when we walked home from church a couple of hours ago. I suppose you want me to gaze on it with you and believe in the whole myth of Christmas.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Edgar.” He heard her sigh. “You are such a romantic, such a sentimentalist. I would not have thought it of you.”
“Come.” He turned and stretched out one arm to her. She shrugged her shoulders and came. “There.” He pointed upward unnecessarily. “Wait a moment.” He left her side in order to blow out the candles and then joined her at the window again and set one arm about her waist. “There. Now there is nothing to compete with it. Tell me if you can that you do not believe in Christmas, even down to the last detail of that sordid stable.”
She nestled her head on his shoulder and sighed. “I should be in Italy now,” she said, “cocooned by cynicism. Why did I go to London this autumn, Edgar? Why did you? Why did we both go to the Greenwalds’ drawing room that evening? Why did we look at each other and not look away again? Why did I conceive the very first time I lay with you when I have never done so before?”
“Perhaps we have our answer in Christmas,” he said.
“Miracles?” The old mockery was back in her voice.
“Or something that was meant to be,” he said. “I used not to believe in such things. I used to believe that I, like everyone else, was master of my own fate. But as one gets older, one can look back and realize that there has been a pattern to one’s life—a pattern one did not devise or control.”
“A series of coincidences?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Something like that.”
“The pattern of each of our lives merged during the autumn, then?” she said. “Poor Edgar. You have not deserved me. You are such a very decent man. I could have killed you this afternoon. Literally.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
She turned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “She is very courageous,” she said. “I could never do what she did today. She did it for him, Edgar. For Gerald.”
“Yes,” he said, “and for their son and their unborn child. And for herself. For them. You were wonderful. I was very proud of you.”
She had taken Priscilla Stapleton about in the drawing room at teatime, introducing her to everyone as her stepson’s wife, her own manner confident, charming, even regal. She had scarcely left the woman’s side for the rest of the day. They had walked to and from church with Sir Gerald and his wife and shared a pew with them.
“But I did nothing,” she said. “Everyone greeted her with courtesy and even warmth. It was as if they did not know, though I have no doubt whatsoever that they all did. She—Edgar, there is nothing vulgar in her at all.”
“She is a lady,” he said.
“Gerald is happy with her.” Her eyes, he saw, had clenched more tightly shut. “He is happy. Is he, Edgar? Is he?” She looked up at him then, searching his eyes.
“I believe,” he said, “the pattern of his life merged with the pattern of hers in a most unlikely place, Helena. Of course they are happy. I will not say they are in love, though I am sure they are. They love deeply. Yes, he is happy.”
“And whole and at peace,” she said. “I did not destroy him permanently.”
“No, love,” he said. “Not permanently.”
She shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
“But I might have,” she said, “if he had not met Priscilla.”
“And if she had not met him,” he said. “They were both in the process of surviving, Helena. We do not know how well they would have done if they had not met each other. Perhaps they were both strong people who would have found their peace somehow alone. We do not know. Neither do they. I do believe, though, that they could not be so happy together if they merely used each other as emotional props. But they did meet, and so they are as we see them today.”
She withdrew from him and rested her palms on the windowsill as she looked out. “I will not use you as an emotional prop either, Edgar,” she said. “It would be easy to d
o. You organize and fix things, do you not? It comes naturally to you. You have seen that my life is all in pieces and you have sought to mend it, to put the pieces back together again, to make all right for me. You took a terrible risk today and won—as you almost always do, I suspect. It would be easy to lean into you as I was just doing, to allow you to manage my life. You can do it so much better than I, it seems. But it is my life. I must live it myself.”
He felt chilled. But he had said it himself of her stepson and his wife—they could not be happy together if they depended too much upon each other. And he had spoken the truth. He could not be happy as the totally dominant partner in a marriage—even though by his nature he would always try to dominate, thinking he was merely protecting and cherishing his wife.
“Then you will do so,” he said, “without my further interference. I am not sorry for what I did yesterday and today. I would do it again given the choice—because you are my wife and because I love you. But you must proceed from here, Helena—or not proceed. The choice is yours. I am going to bed. It is late and I am cold.”
But she turned from the window to look at him, the old mocking smile on her lips—though he had the feeling that it was turned inward on herself rather than outward on him.
“I was not quarreling with you, Edgar,” she said. “You do not need to pout like a boy. I want to make love. But not as we have done it since our marriage. I have allowed you your will because it has been so very enjoyable to do so. You are a superlative lover, unadventurous as are your methods.”
He raised his eyebrows. Unadventurous?
“I want to be on top,” she said. “I want to lead the way. I want you to lie still as I usually do and let me set the pace and choose the key moments. I want to make love to you.”
He had never done it like that. It sounded vaguely wrong, vaguely sinful. He felt his breath quicken and his groin tighten. She was still smiling at him—and though she was dressed in a pale dressing gown with her hair in long waves down her back, she looked again in the faint light of the moon and stars like the scarlet lady of the Greenwalds’ drawing room.
“Then what are we waiting for?” he asked.
He stripped off his nightshirt and lay on his back on the bed. He was thankful that a fire still burned in the grate, though the air felt chill enough—for the space of perhaps one minute. She kneeled, naked, beside him and began to make love to him with delicate, skilled hands and warm seeking mouth. The minx—of course she was skilled. He did not wish to discover where she had acquired those skills—though he really did not care. He had acquired his own with other women, but they no longer mattered. Just as the other men would no longer matter to her. He would see to it that they did not.
It was difficult to keep his hands resting on the bed, to submit to the sweet torture of a lovemaking that proceeded altogether too slowly for his comfort. It was hard to be passive, to allow himself to be led and controlled, to give up all his own initiative.
She came astride him when he thought the pain must surely soon get beyond him, positioned herself carefully, her knees wide, and slid firmly down onto him. His hands came to her hips with some urgency, but he remembered in time and gentled them, letting them rest idly there.
“Ah,” she said, “you feel so good. So deep. You have not done this before, have you?”
“No.”
“I will show you how good it feels to be mastered,” she said, leaning over him and kissing him open-mouthed. “It does feel good, Edgar, provided it is only play. And this is play—intimate, wonderful play, which we all need in our lives. I do not wish to master you outside of this play—or you to master me. Only here. Now.”
He gritted his teeth when she began to move, riding him with a leisurely rocking of her hips while she braced her hands on his shoulders and tipped back her head, her eyes closed. Fortunately the contracting of inner muscles told him that she was at an advanced stage of arousal herself. It was not long before she spoke again.
“Yes,” she whispered fiercely. “Yes. Now, Edgar. Now!”
His hands tightened on her hips and he drove into her over and over again until they reached climax together.
“Ah, my love,” she said in that throaty, velvet voice that most belonged here, in their bed. “Ah, my love.” Her head was still tipped back, her eyes still closed.
He would perhaps not have heard the words if they had not sounded so strange and so new to his ears. He doubted that she heard them herself.
She did not lift herself away. She lowered herself onto him and straightened her legs so that they lay on either side of his. She snuggled her head into the hollow between his shoulder and neck and sighed.
“Do I weigh a ton?” she asked as he contrived somehow to pull the covers up over them.
“Only half,” he told her.
“You are no gentleman, sir,” she said. “You were supposed to reply that I feel like a mere feather.”
“Two feathers,” he said.
“Good night, Edgar. I did enjoy that.”
“Good night, love.” He kissed the side of her face. “And I enjoyed being mastered.”
She laughed that throaty laugh of hers and was almost instantly asleep.
They were still coupled.
It was going to be an interesting marriage, he thought. It would never be a comfortable one. It might never be a particularly happy one. But strangely, he felt more inclined to favor an interesting marriage over a comfortable one. And as for happiness—well, at this particular moment he felt thoroughly happy. And life was made up of moments. It was a shame that this one must be cut short by sleep, but there would be other moments—tomorrow or the next day or the next.
He slept.
CHRISTMAS DAY WAS one of those magical days that Helena had studiously avoided for ten years. It was everything that she had always most dreaded—a day lived on emotion rather than on any sane rationality. And the emotions, of course, were gaiety and love and happiness. The Downes family, she concluded—her father-in-law, her husband, her sister-in-law—used love and generosity and kindness and openness as the guiding principles of their own family lives, and they passed on those feelings to everyone around them. It seemed almost impossible that anyone not have a perfectly happy Christmas in their home.
And it seemed that everyone did.
The morning was spent in gift-giving within each family group. For Helena there was a great deal more to do than that. There were the servants to entertain for an hour while Mr. Downes gave them generous gifts, and there were baskets to be delivered to some of the poorer families in their country cottages and in the village. Cora and Francis delivered half of them, while Helena and Edgar delivered the others.
It felt so very good—Helena was beginning to accept the feeling, to open herself to it—to be a part of a family. To recognize love around her, to accept that much of it was directed her way—not for anything she had ever done or not done, but simply because she was a member of the family. To realize that she was beginning to love again, cautiously, fearfully, but without resistance.
She had decided to enjoy Christmas—this good old-fashioned English Christmas of her father-in-law’s description. Tomorrow she would think things through, decide if she could allow her life to take a new course. But today she would not think. Today she would feel.
The young people had contrived to find time during the morning to walk out to the lake to skate. They were arriving back, rosy cheeked, high spirited, as Helena and Edgar were returning from their errands. Fanny Grainger and Jack Sperling were together, something they had been careful to avoid during the past few days.
Fanny smiled her sweet, shy smile. Jack inclined his head to them and spoke to Edgar.
“Might I have a word with you, sir?” he asked.
“Certainly,” Edgar said, indicating the library. “Is it too private for my wife’s ears?”
“No.” Jack smiled at Helena and she adjusted her opinion of his looks. He was more than just mildly g
ood looking. He was almost handsome. He offered his arm to Fanny and led her toward the library.
“Well.” Edgar looked from one to the other of them when they were all inside the room. “The hot cider I asked for should be here soon. What shall we toast?”
“Nothing and everything.” Jack laughed, but Helena noticed that his arm had crept about Fanny’s waist and she was looking up at him with bright, eager eyes.
“It sounds like a reasonably good toast to me.” Edgar smiled at Helena and indicated two chairs close to the fire. “Do sit down, Miss Grainger, and warm yourself. Now, of what does this nothing and this everything consist?”
“I have been granted permission by Sir Webster Grainger,” Jack said, “to court Miss Grainger. There is to be no formal betrothal until I can prove that I am able to support her in the manner of life to which she is accustomed and no marriage until I am in a fair way to offering her a home worthy of a baronet’s daughter. That may be years in the future. But F—Miss Grainger is young and I am but two-and-twenty. Waiting seems heaven when just a few weeks ago we thought even that an impossibility.”
Helena hugged Fanny. She was not in the habit of hugging people—had not been for a long while. But she was genuinely happy for the girl and her young man. And she was happy for Edgar, who must have felt guilty about the expectations he had raised in the Graingers.
“Well.” Edgar was smiling. “The long wait can perhaps be eased a little. Since you have become a close friend of my family, Miss Grainger, and you are to be a favored employee, Sperling—provided you prove yourself worthy of such a position, of course—I daresay the two of you might meet here or at my home in Bristol with fair frequency.”
Fanny bit her lip, her eyes shining with tears.
“I thank you, sir,” Jack Sperling said. “For everything. We both do, don’t we, Fan?”