by Mary Balogh
Most of the people who had come to drink toasts to her health and her husband’s and to eat cakes were the village businessmen—the butcher, the blacksmith, the haberdasher, and others. Eleanor gradually relaxed when she realized that there was nothing at all threatening about these people, that they were prepared to like and even admire her. Even if they knew her origins, she thought, they seemed not to care. Perhaps they liked the idea of having a countess who might be more accessible to them than the daughter of a peer might have been.
She slipped her hand from her husband’s arm and engaged the butcher and a farmer and their wives in conversation. And then she was talking with the spinster daughter of a former vicar and the schoolteacher and Mrs. Blodell, and then with another group of people.
Suddenly she felt very happy. Almost deliriously so. She felt as if she was coming home, even though she had never been to this place before or seen any of these people. And even though she had not yet seen Grenfell Park. And she was glad that they were to stay there for a year, that they would not be returning to London after Christmas. Even though London had always been her home and she had thought that she could not possibly be content anywhere else for very long, she no longer wanted to be in London. She had been unhappy there for the past month.
Perhaps, she thought with a hope born of the moment, things would be different now they were in the country. She glanced across the room at her husband, who was laughing at something the innkeeper was telling him. She could not remember seeing him laugh before. He looked boyish and carefree and very, very handsome. Something inside her turned over, painfully and unexpectedly.
They were on their way again eventually, leaving behind the village and turning almost immediately between massive stone gateposts and past twin gatehouses and proceeding along a winding elm drive through a heavier dusk.
“I should have warned you,” her husband said from beside her. “But I had no idea the old custom would still be observed. The last bride to be brought here was my grandmother. I hope you were not dreadfully embarrassed. You did well.”
Condescension again. Had he not expected her to do well? “They were my kind of people,” she said. But she heard the sarcasm in her voice and regretted it. Perhaps she really would turn into a shrew if she were not careful, she thought. “I like them, my lord. They were very kind.”
“Well,” he said, “you had better not relax too much, my lady. If preparations were made for an elaborate welcome in the village, I am quite sure the same will hold true of the house. The servants will doubtless be lined up in the great hall and we will be expected to inspect them and to stop and speak with some of them. There will be more cheers and applause. Don’t put your smile away just yet.”
She looked at him, but he had the side of his face almost against the glass and was gazing ahead—probably for the first sight of the house. All the servants of a grand house to greet? There was a fluttering of nervousness in her stomach. And a certain welling of excitement too.
For one moment she felt a deep regret that theirs was not a normal marriage, that he could not share with her his excitement at seeing his home again, that she could not share with him her excitement at discovering that this new home of hers felt like home even before she had seen it. It would have been lovely to be able to hold hands and smile at each other.
But at least, she thought, his words earlier had restored the civility to their relationship. She must be thankful for small mercies.
And he no longer had a mistress. And had apologized for having one at all after his marriage to her.
7
ALL THEIR GUESTS WERE TO ARRIVE FOUR DAYS before Christmas. The earl’s own friends were to have come a week before, but he had put them off. He had even given them the chance to withdraw altogether, being careful to explain that Christmas at Grenfell was to be a large family gathering—his wife’s family. And yet, incredibly, all four of them were still planning to come.
“After all, Falloden,” Lord Charles Wright had said, more honest than the other three, “none of us has anywhere else to go, and Christmas is the most dreary time of year to be alone.”
He was right. It was the worst time of all. Lord Charles had no family to speak of, certainly none that would welcome him for the holiday. Bertie had a mother and sisters, but their lives centered around their children, he always said. He always felt out of place and wary of their matchmaking energies turning on him. Badcombe had quarreled with his father and brother years before and had been told never to come home again. Sotherby had been married for two years when his wife died in childbed. His family lived close to the Scottish border.
Only Bertie had seemed a little wary of coming. “Perhaps your wife won’t like it, Randolph,” he had said. “Newly married and all that.”
“But she knows of my four guests,” the earl had said, “and has invited twenty of her own.”
Sir Albert had looked taken aback. “I don’t know,” he had said. “Perhaps I had better lay my head on the chopping block before Mama and the girls this year after all.”
“Bertie,” the earl had said, “don’t desert me in my hour of need. Four against twenty. Think of it. And you are supposed to be my best friend.” It was the closest he had come to breaking the confidentiality of his marriage and admitting that all was not well. “She obviously was not Pamela Hutchins’s vulgar friend after all, by the way, was she?”
“No,” his friend had said vaguely. “These twenty people are your wife’s family, Randolph? I didn’t know she had brothers and sisters.”
“Aunts and uncles and cousins, I gather,” the earl had said. “Apparently they are a close family, Bertie. They spend holidays together and all that. I am looking forward to meeting them all,” he had added gallantly and not quite truthfully. “All twenty of them, including two children.”
“Lord.” Sir Albert had winced and scratched his head. “They will probably all be asking favors of you, Randolph. It must seem a grand thing to them that one of their number has crashed into our ranks. There are probably all sorts of eligible and hopeful female cousins among their number.”
The earl had stiffened. “It must be remembered,” he had said, “that my wife’s father gave me Grenfell, Bertie, and a great deal besides.”
“Ho.” His friend had eyed him with interest. “Prickly, are you, Randolph? Touchy on the subject? Sorry, old chap.”
“She is my wife,” the earl had said. “My countess, Bertie.”
Sir Albert had exhaled loudly. “It is important to you that I come, then, Randolph?” he had asked. “And I did promise, did I not? Oh, well, it will be an experience, I suppose.”
It was not exactly an enthusiastic acceptance, but the earl felt the need of those four friends of his, especially Bertie, his closest friend. And it should indeed be an experience, he thought in the days leading up to the arrival of their guests. Loud and boisterous, she had called them. And vulgar. Sometimes he felt almost panic-stricken.
But there was not much time to brood. While there was still time before the arrival of the guests and the close approach of Christmas, he spent time with his steward, going over the books with him and traveling about his farms. It was work that he suddenly enjoyed because it was all his now with no fear of loss, and he could listen to the complaints and suggestions of his steward and tenants with an open mind. He could agree to make improvements where they were needed, knowing that he had the money to cover the costs. He could even make a few suggestions of his own. And when he reviewed the rents paid by some of his poorer tenants, he could agree to lower them.
There were calls to be made and some to receive, sometimes alone and sometimes with his wife. They did not see a great deal of each other—not because they deliberately avoided each other, he felt, but because she was as busy as he. The schoolteacher wanted her to visit the school and listen to the children read. Their neighbors wanted to entertain her and to visit her. The vicar’s wife wanted her to help with the children’s Christmas concert.
And she wanted to spend time with the housekeeper, learning the workings of the house, learning to take charge of its running herself. She wanted to find out who the elderly and the sick were so that she might visit them regularly and take them Christmas hampers. She wanted to take Christmas hampers to all his farm laborers and their families.
He was impressed. She was behaving almost as if she had been brought up to know the life and duties of a lady. And he was intrigued to find her well received in the neighborhood and in the house. The servants all appeared to adore her after she had spent longer than an hour on their arrival speaking with each one of them, even Sally the scullery maid, who limped and had a speech impediment. She had talked softly to Sally and smiled a great deal. He had not known until the day of their arrival that she could smile. And that she looked incredibly lovely when she did so.
He was glad, he thought after a few days, that they had come into the country. It seemed to suit them both. He had been afraid that, creature of the city as she was, she would be unable to settle at Grenfell. But the outdoor walks and drives she took every day soon brought a glow to her cheeks, and he was reminded of how confined to home she had been after the death of her father.
Of course, the thought reminded him that she was showing precious little grief for her father. But that thought aside, he began to have cautious hopes that they would be able to live together for a year almost amicably. If only the arrival of her family and his friends did not upset matters. He dreaded their arrival, if the truth were known.
He almost decided to go to her on the night of their arrival. It would be an appropriate time, he thought, to turn over a new leaf and resume their marriage in its full sense. It would not seem odd, perhaps, to go to her now when everything was strange and different from the way it had been since their wedding. And he did not find the idea of bedding her repugnant. Rather the contrary. He wanted her, he realized with some surprise. He desired his wife. He remembered the passion of their wedding night with quickened breath.
But as he stood with his hand on the knob of the door that connected their dressing rooms and lifted the other hand to knock, he heard her talking with her maid at the other side of the door and even laughing. She sounded happy. It was a strange sound. He could not quite picture his wife laughing and happy. Perhaps, he thought suddenly, she had been like that all the time before he married her. Perhaps it was he who had taken away her warmth and her laughter—or else her ambition to ally herself with an available peer of the realm.
He would wait, he thought at first, until her maid had left. He set his forehead against the door and closed his eyes, trying to imagine how she would receive him. With gladness? Hardly that. With indifference? He would be chilled by indifference. With hostility? Would he see her chin come up and the martial gleam leap to her eyes? And would he then know that she awaited any opportunity there might be to say something scathing, to quarrel with him until he retaliated with cold insults? And would the result of it all be a repetition of what had happened on their wedding night—a fight for mastery on his part and for he knew not what on hers?
It would be a dreadful beginning to their new life in the country. A dreadful herald to Christmas. Perhaps they would not be able to recover from another quarrel in time to be hospitable to their guests. And that was going to be difficult enough, heaven knew. He would leave it, he decided at last. Perhaps after Christmas. Perhaps when all their guests had left and they were quiet and alone together again, it would seem almost natural to make of their marriage a more real thing. He turned reluctantly back to his bedchamber and lay awake and restless for a long time before falling asleep.
But on the whole, he thought before their guests arrived, things were going quite reasonably well. His marriage was not quite the nightmare it had started out to be.
THE GUESTS ARRIVED BEFORE the snow. And the imminence of snow took them by surprise.
“Look,” her husband said that morning at breakfast, gazing toward the windows, “those are snow clouds, I am sure. We are going to have snow for Christmas.”
“Oh,” she said, her gaze following his, “do you think so? But it never snows for Christmas. Early in December, maybe, and certainly in January. But never for Christmas.”
“This year will be the exception,” he said. “I would wager on it. But I hope everyone gets here first.”
“It will be brown slush by tomorrow anyway,” she said.
He looked at her and smiled. “This is the country, my lady,” he said, “not London. Here the snow remains white as it is meant to be. And it hangs on the trees and blows into snowbanks to the delight of children of all ages and can be traversed only by sleigh—with jingling bells, of course.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” she said wistfully. “Are you sure they are not rain clouds, my lord? Are you ever wrong?”
“I am infallible,” he said. “Next only to God.”
It was the only time he had said anything remotely playful to her. She smiled at him a little uncertainly.
But the guests arrived during the afternoon, and the snow did not begin to sift down until the evening and did not empty its load in earnest until the night.
Sir Albert Hagley arrived first with Viscount Sotherby. The viscount took her hand in his after her husband had introduced them and smiled at her and raised her hand to his lips.
“How kind of you to be willing to have us here with your family, Lady Falloden,” he said. “My own family is very far away, I’m afraid.”
She liked him immediately and breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least one of her husband’s aristocratic friends was not going to look along the length of his nose at her. Sir Albert Hagley did not quite do that, of course, but she thought that they were probably both conscious of the time at that disastrous summer party when he had tried to flirt with her, even going so far as to allow his arm to brush against her breast when they were out walking, and she had told a slightly improper story one of her father’s associates had once been scolded for telling in her presence. She had told it with a loud and broad cockney accent and laughed uproariously afterward. He had kept his distance for the rest of their time there, but she had not dropped either the cockney accent or the loudness. He was not the only gentleman who had tried to take liberties with her.
He greeted her now as he had greeted her on her wedding day, with eyes that did not quite meet hers, and with exaggerated courtesy. And he turned in some relief to greet her husband more heartily. She wished that he had found some excuse not to come. But he was her husband’s friend—and she was not going to allow his presence to dampen her spirits. Certainly not. She lifted her chin.
Uncle Sam Transome, Papa’s eldest brother, arrived next with Aunt Irene and Cousin Tom and his wife, Bessie, and their two children, Davie and Jenny. Uncle Sam grew larger and rounder and more florid of complexion every time she saw him, Eleanor thought, exclaiming in delight when they all came up the house steps and into the great hall and he spread his arms to hug her and squeezed until she thought every last ounce of air must be gone from her lungs.
“Ellie!” he boomed. “As pretty as a picture and as elegant as any lady. And a lady indeed. Am I to call you ‘my lady’ now and curtsy to you, heh? Eh, Irene? What’s that? Speak up. Oh, ‘bow,’ is it? I am to bow to you, Ellie? I am sorry about your papa, girl. More sorry than I can say. A fine man was Joe, and the most successful of the lot of us. And generous, Ellie. Always generous. I miss him sorely.” He hugged her tightly again.
They were not wearing mourning, Eleanor noticed in relief as she relaxed into his embrace and breathed in the familiar scents of leather and pipe tobacco. They had acceded to her express wish and Papa’s.
She extricated herself finally and raised a flaming face to her silent and impassive husband. What must he be thinking? She made the introductions. “Uncle Samuel is a butcher, my lord,” she added with a small lift of the chin. “He has probably the most successful butcher’s business in Bristol.”
“That I do, lad, that I do,” Uncle Sam said modestly, taking her husband’s hand in his large paw and wringing it. “And ‘my lord,’ is it?” He winked ostentatiously. “I’ll wager it’s not always that when you are private together, eh, lad?”
Eleanor felt the inappropriate urge to giggle and wondered when her husband had last been addressed as a lad. He talked courteously with Aunt Irene and Tom and Bessie and exchanged a word with each of the children before turning them over to Mrs. Turner, a temporary nurse recruited from the village.
And then everyone else seemed to arrive together, so that the afternoon was swallowed up with greetings and smiles and shaking hands and treks upstairs with the housekeeper and down again eventually for tea in the lower salon.
The Honorable Mr. Timothy Badcombe was a thin and serious young man, who nevertheless did not seem too disconcerted to find himself in the great hall at the same time as Uncle Ben Transome and Aunt Eunice and Cousin Rachel. Uncle Ben was almost as large and almost as loud as Uncle Sam, though his claim was always that he could never get in a word edgewise when Aunt Eunice was around. Uncle Ben was the innkeeper of a prosperous posting inn outside Bristol.
He too hugged Eleanor as if to break every bone in her body and murmured sympathy in her ear for the loss of her father. Aunt Eunice kissed her and Rachel took her hand and squeezed it.
“Papa cried dreadfully, Ellie,” she whispered. “And so did Mama and I. Uncle Joe was my very favorite uncle even though I love Uncle Sam dearly too. Poor Ellie. But what a splendid marriage.”
Eleanor squeezed her hand in return. There was no chance for a lengthier exchange with her favorite cousin.
Lord Charles Wright arrived at almost the same moment as Aunt Beryl Weekes and Aunt Ruth Transome, sisters of Eleanor’s father, and Cousins Muriel and Mabel Weekes. Aunt Ruth, who had obviously got herself into a taking at the grandeur of being an invited guest at the home of an earl, mistook Lord Charles for her host, and a great number of voices, each pitched slightly louder than the one before, were necessary before she discovered who was the true Earl of Falloden and husband of her dear Ellie. Then she proceeded to weep in Eleanor’s arms for the best brother in all the world.