A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau

by Mary Balogh

  “I have been afraid of being a mother,” she told him.

  “Do not be.” Their roles had been reversed, she realized suddenly. He was the comforter, the reassurer, the one to convince her that she was capable of love and worthy of love. “All the little children here adore you, Helena, including Peter, who is shy of almost all adults except Priss and me. He fought with the rest of the children this afternoon to be the one to hold your hand in their circle games. You will be a wonderful mother.”

  “I am so old,” she said, pulling a face.

  “God—or nature if you will—does not make mistakes,” he said. “If you are able to be a mother at your age, then you are not too old to be a mother. Enjoy it. Parenthood is wonderful, Helena. Exhausting and terrifying and wonderful. Like life.”

  “Gerald,” she said. But there was nothing more to say. Some feelings were quite beyond words. And hers at this particular moment ran far too deep even for tears. “Oh, Gerald.”

  He smiled.

  “YOU WANT TO do what?”

  Edgar bent his head closer to his wife’s, though he had heard her perfectly clearly. The ball was over, the guests who were not staying at the house had all left, the house guests had begun to drift away to bed, the servants had been instructed to leave the clearing away until morning. And he was eager to get to bed. Helena had glowed all evening—especially after the waltz which he had wanted, but which she had danced with her stepson. She looked more beautiful even than usual. Edgar was feeling decidedly amorous.

  “I want to go skating,” she told him again.

  “Skating,” he said. “At one o’clock in the morning. After a dizzyingly busy day. With a mile to walk to the lake and a mile back. In arctically cold weather. When you are pregnant. Are you mad?”

  “Edgar,” she said, “don’t be tiresome. It is so bourgeois to feel that one must go to bed merely because it is late and one has had a busy day and it is cold outside.”

  “Bourgeois,” he said. “I would substitute the word sane.”

  But she whirled about and with a single clap of the hands and a raising of arms she had everyone’s attention.

  “It is Christmas,” she said, “and a beautiful night. The ball is over but the night is not. And Christmas is not. Edgar and I are going skating. Who else wants to come?”

  Everyone looked as stunned as Edgar had felt when she first mentioned such madness. But within moments he could see the attraction of the idea take hold just as it was doing with him. The young people were almost instantly enthusiastic, and then a few of the older couples looked at each other doubtfully, sheepishly, inquiringly.

  “That is one of the best ideas I have heard today, Daughter,” Mr. Downes said, rubbing his hands together. “Letitia, my dear, how do you fancy the thought of a walk to the lake?”

  “I fancy it very well, Joseph,” Mrs. Cross replied placidly. “But I hope not just a walk. I have not skated in years. I have an inclination to do so again.”

  And that was that. They were going, a large party of them, with only a few older couples wise enough to resist the prevailing madness. At one o’clock in the morning they were going skating!

  “You see, Edgar?” his wife said. “Everyone is not as tiresome and as staid as you.”

  “Or as bourgeois,” he said. “I should not allow you to skate, Helena, or to exert yourself any more today. You are with child. Can you even skate?”

  “Darling,” she said, “I have spent winters in Vienna. What do you think I did for entertainment? Of course, I skate. Do you want me to teach you?”

  Darling?

  “I shall escort you upstairs,” he said, offering his arm. “You will change into something warm. We will walk to the lake at a sedate pace and you will skate for a short while with my support. You are not to put your health at greater risk than that. Do you understand me, Helena? I must be mad, too, to give in to such a whim.”

  “I said I would lead you a merry dance, Edgar,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “The word merry was the key one.” She slipped her arm through his. “I will not risk the safety of your heir, never fear. He—or she—is more important to me than almost anything else in my life. But I am not yet willing to let go of Christmas. Perhaps I never will. I will carry Christmas about with me every day for the rest of my life, a sprig of holly behind one ear, mistletoe behind the other.”

  She was in a strange mood. He was not sure what to make of it. The only thing he could do for the time being was go along with it. And there was something strangely alluring about the prospect of going skating on a lake one mile distant at something after one o’clock of a December morning.

  “The holly would be decidedly uncomfortable,” he said.

  “You are such a realist, darling,” she said. “But you could kiss me beneath the other ear whenever you wished without fear that I might protest.”

  He chuckled. Darling again? Yes, life with Helena really was going to be interesting. Not that there was just the future tense involved. It was interesting.

  SHE HAD MARRIED a tyrant, Helena thought cheerfully—she had told him so, too. The surface of the ice was, of course, marred by an overall powdering of snow which had blown across it since it had last been skated upon. And in a few places there were thicker finger drifts. It took several of the men ten minutes to sweep it clean again while everyone else cheered them on and kept as warm as it was possible to keep at almost two o’clock on a winter’s night.

  Edgar had flatly refused to allow Helena to wield one of the brooms. He had even threatened, in the hearing of his father and everyone else present, to sling her over his shoulder and carry her back to the house if she cared to continue arguing with him. She had smiled sweetly and called him a tyrant—in the hearing of his father and everyone else.

  And then, as if that were not bad enough, he had taken her arm firmly through his when they took to the ice, and skated with her about the perimeter of the cleared ice just as if they were a sedate middle-aged couple. That they were precisely that made no difference at all to her accusation of tyranny.

  “I suppose,” he said when she protested, “that you wish to execute some dizzying twirls and death-defying leaps for our edification.”

  “Well, I did wish to skate, Edgar,” she told him.

  “You may do so next year,” he told her, “when the babe is warm in his cot at home and safe from his mother’s recklessness.”

  “Or hers,” she said.

  “Or hers.”

  “Edgar,” she asked him, “is it horridly vulgar to be increasing at my age?”

  “Horridly,” he said.

  “I am going to be embarrassingly large within the next few months,” she said. “I have already misplaced my waist somewhere.”

  “I had noticed,” he said.

  “And doubtless think I look like a pudding,” she said.

  “Actually,” he said, “I think you look rather beautiful and will look more so the larger you grow.”

  “I do not normally look beautiful, then?” she asked.

  “Helena.” He drew her to a stop, and four couples immediately zoomed past them. “If you are trying to quarrel with me again, desist. One of these days I shall oblige you. I promise. It is inevitable that we have a few corkers of quarrels down the years. But not today. Not tonight.”

  “Hmm.” She sighed. “Damn you, Edgar. How tiresome you are.”

  “Guilty,” he said. “And bourgeois and tyrannical. And in love with you.”

  This time she heard and paid attention. This time she dared to consider that perhaps it was true. And that perhaps it was time to respond in kind. But she could not say it just like that. It was something that had to be approached with tortuous care, something to be crept up on and leapt on unawares so that the words would come out almost of their own volition. Besides, she was terrified. Her legs felt like jelly and she was breathless. It was not the walk or the skating that had done it. She was not that unfit.

  “If we are not to sk
ate even at a snail’s pace, Edgar,” she said, “perhaps we should retire from the ice altogether.”

  “I’ll take you home,” he said. “You must be tired.”

  “I do not want to go home,” she said, looking up to see that the stars were no longer visible. Clouds had moved over. “We are going to have fresh snow. Tomorrow we will probably be housebound. Let us find a tree behind which we can be somewhat private. I want to kiss you. Quite wickedly.”

  He laughed. “Why waste a lascivious kiss against a tree,” he asked, “when we would be only somewhat private? Why not go back home where we can make use of a perfectly comfortable and entirely private bed—and do more than just kiss?”

  “Because I want to be kissed now,” she said, wrestling her arm free of his grip and taking him by the hand. She began to skate across the center of the ice’s surface in the direction of the bank. “And because I may lose my courage during the walk back to the house.”

  “Courage?” he said.

  But she would say no more. They narrowly missed colliding with Letty and her father-in-law. They removed their skates on the bank. They almost chose a tree that was already occupied—by Fanny Grainger and Jack Sperling. They finally found one with a lovely broad trunk against which she could lean. She set her arms about him and lifted her face to his.

  “You are quite mad,” he told her.

  “Are you glad?” she whispered, her lips brushing his. “Tell me you are glad.”

  “I am glad,” he said.

  “Edgar,” she said, “he has forgiven me.”

  “Yes, love,” he said, “I know.”

  “I have loved during this Christmas season and have been loved,” she said, “and I have brought disaster on no one.”

  “No,” he said, and she could see the flash of his teeth in the near darkness as he smiled. “Not unless everyone comes down with a chill tomorrow.”

  “What a horrid threat,” she said. “It is just what I might expect of you.”

  He kissed her—hard and long. And then more softly and long, his tongue stroking into her mouth and creating a definite heat to combat the chill of the night.

  “You have brought happiness to a large number of people,” he said at last. “You are genuinely loved. Especially by me. I do not want to burden you with the knowledge, Helena, and you need never worry about feeling less strongly yourself, but I love you more than I thought it possible to love any woman. I do not regret what happened. I do not regret marrying you. I do not care if you lead me a merry dance, though I hope it will always be as merry as this particular one. I only care that you are mine, that I am the man honored to be your husband for as long as we both live. There. I will not say it again. You must not be distressed.”

  “Damn you, Edgar,” she said. “If you maintain a stoic silence on the subject for even one week I shall lead you the unmerriest dance you could ever imagine.”

  He kissed her softly again.

  “Edgar.” She kept her eyes closed when the kiss ended. “I have lied to you.”

  He sighed and set his forehead against hers for a moment. “I thought we came here to kiss wickedly,” he said.

  “Apart from Christian,” she said, “I have never been with any man but you.”

  “What?” His voice was puzzled. She did not open her eyes to see his expression.

  “But I could not tell you that,” she said. “You would have thought you were special to me. You would have thought me—vulnerable.”

  “Helena,” he said softly.

  “You were,” she said. “I was. You are. I am. Damn you, Edgar,” she said crossly, “I thought it was men who were supposed to find this difficult to say.”

  “Say what?” She could see when she dared to peep that he was smiling again—grinning actually. He knew very well what she could not say and the knowledge was making him cocky.

  “I-love-you.” She said it fast, her eyes closed. There. It had not been so difficult to say after all. And then she heard a loud, inelegant sob and realized with some horror that it had come from her.

  “I love you,” she wailed as his arms came about her like iron bands and she collided full length with his massive body. “I love you. Damn you, Edgar. I love you.”

  “Yes, love,” he said soothingly against one of her ears.

  “Yes, love.”

  “I love you.”

  “Yes, love.”

  “What a tedious conversation.”

  “Yes, love.”

  She was snickering and snorting against his shoulder then, and he was chuckling enough to shake as he held her.

  “Well, I do,” she accused him.

  “I know.”

  “And you have nothing better to say than that?”

  “Nothing better,” he said, putting a little distance between them from the waist up. “Except a tentative, tiresome, bourgeois suggestion that perhaps it is time to retire to our bed.”

  “Tiresome and bourgeois suddenly sound like very desirable things,” she said.

  They smiled slowly at each other and could seem to find nothing better or more satisfying to do for the space of a whole minute or so.

  “What are we waiting for?” she asked eventually.

  “For you to lead the way,” he said. “You will start damning me or otherwise insulting me if I decide to play lord and master.”

  “Oh, Edgar,” she said, taking his arm. “Let us go together, shall we? To the house and to bed? Let us make love together—to each other. Whose silly idea was it to come out here anyway?”

  “I would not touch that question with a thirty-foot pole,” he said.

  “Wise man, darling.” She nestled her head against his shoulder as they walked.

  Epilogue

  CORA HAD COME HURTLING DOWN TO THE DRAWING room of the Bristol house, in her usual undignified manner. But she had said only that all was well and that Edgar must go up immediately. When Francis had raised his eyebrows in expectation of more information and Mr. Downes had openly asked for it, she had smiled dazzlingly and asked her brother if he was about to faint.

  He had stridden from the room without further ado and taken the stairs to the bedchamber two at a time—even though there was a strange buzzing in his head and the air in his nostrils felt cold.

  All is well, Cora had said.

  His father’s new wife came bustling toward him when he opened the bedchamber door, the doctor at her heels, bag in hand. Letty beamed at him and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek; the doctor bowed and made his exit with her.

  Edgar was left alone. Though not quite alone. Helena was lying on the bed, pale and silent, her eyes closed. Beyond her was a small bundle that had him swallowing convulsively. It was moving and making soft fussing noises. But it was not his main concern. She looked too still and too pale for all to be well—and she had labored for all of fourteen hours. He took a few fearful steps toward the bed. Was it possible that she was …

  “Damn you, Edgar,” she said without opening her eyes. Her voice sounded strangely normal. “If I had known—though I might have guessed, of course—that you would beget such large children, I would not in a million years have seduced you.”

  He could feel no amusement. Only relief—and guilt. It had been unbearably hard to pace downstairs, his father and Francis in tow, for fourteen hours. What must it have been like …

  “You had a hard time,” he told her just as if she did not know it for herself. “I am so sorry, Helena. I wish I could have suffered the pain for you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “He well nigh tore me apart,” she told him.

  He winced even as one of her words caught him like a blow low in his stomach. “He?” He swallowed again. “We have a son, Helena?” Not that the gender mattered. He had rather hoped for a daughter. What he really meant was—we have a child, Helena? Fruit of his body and hers? Product of their love? Their very own baby? The miracle of it all left him feeling paralyzed.

  “Are you pleased th
at I have done my duty like a good wife?” she asked him. “I have presented you with an heir for the Downes fortune.”

  “To hell with the Downes fortune,” he said, forgetting himself in the emotion of the moment. “We have a child, my love. A baby.”

  She smiled fleetingly. He could see that she was desperate with weariness.

  “Meet your son,” she said, and she turned to draw back the blanket from the moving bundle. A red, wrinkled, ugly little face, its eyes gazing vacantly about it, was revealed to his view—for a moment. Then he lost sight of it.

  “Foolish Edgar,” his wife said. “How bourgeois to weep at sight of your newborn child. You are supposed to look closely for a moment to assure yourself that he has the requisite number of eyes, noses, and mouths, all in the appropriate places, and then you are supposed to return to your brandy and your dogs and your hunting.”

  “Am I?” She was lifting the bundle and then holding it up to him. He did not dare. He would drop it. How could human life be so small? “But I am bourgeois, Helena, and so I will cry at the sight of my son.” He took the bundle gingerly into his own arms. It was warm and soft and alive.

  “Is he not the most beautiful child ever born?” Her voice had lost its mocking tone.

  “Yes.” He lifted the bundle and set his lips lightly to the soft, warm cheek of his son. “At least the most beautiful. Thank you, my love.” He reached over her to set the child back on the bed before he could drop it in his clumsiness. He smiled at her. “You must rest now.”

  “Oh, damn you,” she said, lifting one hand to dash across her cheeks. “Now you have started me weeping. It is because I am tired after all that damnable work. I would not do it otherwise.”

  But she grabbed for him as he would have straightened up and moved away. She wrapped her arms tightly about his neck and hid her face against his neckcloth. “Edgar,” she said fiercely, “we have a child. At the age of seven-and-thirty!”