by Mary Balogh
A man and woman were walking toward them, their arms entwined, a small child up on one shoulder of the man, clinging to his wildly curly hair. The man wore no hat. The woman was carrying it in her free hand. All three of them were laughing and watching the swans on the Serpentine.
Christopher looked across at the tense pale face of his former wife and down at the shy face of his child. He noted again the distance between them.
“Would you like to ride up on my shoulders?” he asked his daughter. But he wished he could recall the words. She drew closer to Elizabeth and shook her head slightly. He looked ahead and tried not to feel hurt. Perhaps it was just that she felt herself too big for such a thing.
“Yes,” a little voice said suddenly. “Yes, please, sir. May I, Mama?”
His eyes locked with Elizabeth’s. Please, he begged her silently.
“Of course,” she said, “if Lord Trevelyan is willing.”
He stooped down and picked up the child and settled her on one shoulder. She was lighter than a feather. She giggled suddenly and he felt one warm little hand circle around the back of his neck and come to rest over his ear. “Don’t drop me,” she said.
“I’ll guard you with my life, Christina,” he said.
“I’m wearing new shoes,” she announced.
“And very handsome ones they are too,” he said. He moved to Elizabeth’s other side so that he could see her. He stepped closer to her and offered his arm. She took it after a moment’s hesitation.
There, he thought, though he did not speak aloud, a family. We are a family. His child was soft and warm and small. Elizabeth was graceful and beautiful.
There was a tightness and an aching in his chest. He found himself having to fight tears.
Chapter 18
ELIZABETH felt like crying. He had set Christina down some time after an elderly couple had smiled and nodded at them, suggesting that they looked like a close and contented family. They were strolling away from the Serpentine, their daughter between them, holding to a hand of each. She had reached for Elizabeth’s hand as soon as she had been set down on the ground, and when Christopher had stretched out a hand to her, she had looked at it, looked up at him, and taken it.
There had been so many dreams. Dreams of his hovering over her as she nursed Christina at her breast, gazing in wonder at their child; dreams of him sitting in the nursery, Christina on his lap, telling her stories; dreams of lying in his arms and being separated from him by the worming body of their child, come to wake them up in the morning. So many dreams over the years—even recently. The dreams had never stopped. But they had all faded when she had awoken.
Sometimes she had known even before she woke that they were only dreams.
And now he was there, walking beside her, Christina between them. None of them spoke much. But Christina must not be feeling as uncomfortable as Elizabeth expected she might. After a few minutes she resumed the skipping she had been doing before they met Christopher and she started to hum a tune quietly to herself.
Elizabeth’s eyes met Christopher’s briefly. They both looked away again. Neither spoke. The need to cry was almost a pain. He was looking down at Christina, she saw, and actually smiling. A warm and tender and rather sad smile. And then he felt her gaze on him and looked up. His eyes were bright—with tears?
I love her, he had said the evening before. Without ever having seen Christina, he had claimed to love her. Did he?
Could he?
“We are going to be late home for tea,” Elizabeth said to her daughter. She was aware that her voice was too bright, too different from normal. But there was nothing normal about this afternoon.
“Grandpapa will be waiting for us, sweetheart. It is time to say good-bye to Lord Trevelyan.”
Please accept it, she begged him silently without looking at him.
Please realize that anything else would hopelessly complicate our lives.
“Would you prefer tea with your grandfather or ices with me, Christina?” Christopher asked.
Christina looked up at him with solemn eyes and then across at Elizabeth. “Ices, Mama?” she said. “May we?”
“Grandpapa will be disappointed,” Elizabeth said.
Christina set her head to one side and considered. “He can have tea with Uncle Martin and Uncle John,” she said.
Elizabeth looked accusingly at Christopher. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.
And so a short while later they found themselves seated at Gunter’s, eating ices, and talking. At least, Christopher was talking.
“I was a grown man before I tasted my first ice,” he was telling Christina. “I grew up in a place where no one had even heard of ices. A long way from here. A place called Penhallow. The house is within a short walk of the sea. Have you ever been to the seaside, Christina?”
The child looked up at her mother and then shook her head.
“It is wonderful,” he said. “From the house you walk up to a high cliff with a sheer drop to a beach of golden sand. There is a steep path down. You have to take your heart in your throat and walk down very carefully.”
“Did you ever fall?” Christina asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “Though sometimes I broke the rules and ran. My father would have thrashed me if he had ever known. My sister used to scold me. She looked a little like you except that her hair was always long.”
Don’t you dare, Elizabeth told him with her eyes. You wouldn ‘t dare!
“There is nothing like running on sand,” Christopher said. “It is soft and firm beneath your feet all at the same time. Your bare feet, that is. Only bare feet will do on sand. You can write in it or build castles with it. And you can walk into the sea and watch the waves break over your feet and sometimes over your breeches too. Another broken rule.” He smiled.
Christina was listening as intently as she listened to stories at home. “I wish Grandpapa lived close to the sea,” she said.
“Perhaps you will be able to spend some time close to it one of these days,” he said. “Every boy or girl should have the chance to run along a beach at least once. You can smell the salt from the sea and almost taste it. And you can hear the roar of the water and the crying of gulls.”
“I have a pony,” Christina said. “I can ride him without a leading rein.”
“Can you?” he said. “And you are only six years old? You are going to be an accomplished horsewoman.”
“Uncle Martin won’t let me ride in his curricle,” the child said.
“But Uncle John says I can go in his one day soon.”
Christina was normally shy with strangers. But sometimes if she felt comfortable enough, she could begin to prattle. She was about to do it now, Elizabeth thought.
“You have finished your ice, sweetheart?” she asked. “We really must be going. Grandpapa will be calling out the militia.”
“How would you like to ride in mine tomorrow?” Christopher asked. “You and your mama?”
Elizabeth’s head shot up. “You have a curricle?” she asked. It was a foolish question when there were so many other things she might have said. A very firm no, for example.
He looked steadily back at her. “I will have, Elizabeth,” he said.
He was going to purchase a curricle by the next day merely so that he could take Christina for a ride in it? Elizabeth felt suddenly afraid.
And she knew that she had been fooling herself, trying to persuade herself that he would be satisfied to see their daughter once.
Papa was going to find out about it, she thought. And Manley was going to be angry and justifiably so. She should have listened to Martin and gone to Kingston straight from Devonshire. She would have been safe there. And Christina too. But she pushed the thought away. She would not run from him. Not any longer. She would face whatever had to be faced.
“You would like to drive in the park with me tomorrow?” he asked, his eyes returning to Christina.
She nodded, big-eyed.
�
�Then it is settled,” he said briskly. “I shall escort you home to Grosvenor Square now and I shall come for you there tomorrow afternoon.”
Elizabeth got to her feet and said nothing. He was issuing the larger challenge, then. He was coming to Grosvenor Square. He was telling her in so many words that he was not afraid of her father, that he was not going to hide from him. He was telling her that this meeting with their daughter was not an end to anything but perhaps only a beginning.
When they were outside Gunter’s, Christina raised both hands, one to her mother and the other to the gentleman who had walked in the park with them and carried her on his shoulder just like that little boy’s father had been doing for him, treated her to an ice, and given her dreams of one day running along a sandy beach and wetting the hem of her dress in the tide and building castles.
Martin paid a call on Lord Poole the same afternoon. He was not happy. Why did she have to bring suffering on herself all the time?
Why must she force him to make that suffering worse before he could make it better? Could she not see that there was only one course open to her if she wanted peace in her life? And yet she was becoming entangled with Trevelyan yet again. And she was continuing with her betrothal.
Lord Poole was ready to go out when Martin arrived and appeared more cheerful than he had been the evening before. “The Regent was booed in the streets this morning,” he said. “It seems that the people of London will not stand for his shabby treatment of his wife any longer. The powers that be are not going to allow her to be received anywhere during the state visits that start next week, you know. The queen has made that very clear.”
“Yes, well,” Martin said, “they have to support their own. Everyone knows that the Regent’s life is many times more immoral than the princess’s has ever been, but he is British royalty. She is only German.”
“We are going to advise her to force the issue,” Lord Poole said, his eyes alight with an almost fanatic gleam. “Let her appear somewhere they cannot make her stay away from—the theater or the opera, perhaps. Devil take it, Honywood, the King of Prussia is her own uncle, yet she is not to be allowed to welcome him to the country in which she is wife to the heir to the throne.”
“It is not right,” Martin said. “The theater idea sounds like a good one. I assume that you mean her highness to attend on a night when the Regent will have some of his guests there?”
“And then we will see for whom the crowds will cheer,” Lord Poole said, nodding. “And what the foreign guests think.”
“It will be a golden opportunity for your party to curry favor with the people,” Martin said. “You will pay your respects to her in public, I assume?”
“By Jove, and so I will,” Lord Poole said, looking as if the idea were new to him.
“With Lizzie on your arm,” Martin said. “The daughter of a good Tory. It will be excellent. She will respect you for it, Poole.”
Really, Martin thought a short while later as he headed in the direction of the Pulteney, Poole had made his task remarkably easy.
Elizabeth would not enjoy being drawn into the rather nasty and sordid squabble between the Princess of Wales and her followers on the one hand and the Prince of Wales and the queen, his mother, on the other. She would not like having to pay her public respects to the princess. She might well find her betrothal no longer to her liking and London an uncomfortable place in which to be living.
A start had been made, anyway.
Martin turned his footsteps toward the Pulteney. He must see what he could accomplish in that direction. He asked the receptionist what suite Lord Trevelyan was occupying and went upstairs to knock on the door. A maid answered it—the same little blond maid who had reminded him of Elizabeth when he was at Penhallow but who had turned out to be nothing but a sniveling slut. He looked her over now as her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed and could not understand how he had seen any resemblance at all. Neither Trevelyan nor Lady Nancy was at home. He told the girl he would wait downstairs.
He saw Lady Nancy go up a short while later. He did not show himself. She had been out alone, had she, without even her maid as a chaperone? Well, it was no worse than he would expect of her. He remembered the time when she had wandered off alone more than once at Kingston with John, and once with him down by the river among the trees. And then she had had the effrontery to squawk about proper gentlemanly behavior.
Christopher came in eventually, very late. Martin beckoned to him and they went to sit at a table on the far side of the dining room, empty at that time of day.
“John came before I went to meet her,” Christopher said, “and you after I return. She is fortunate to be so well protected.”
“John came too?” Martin said. “Can you blame us for being concerned, Trevelyan? She has suffered a great deal in the past and there was that nasty shock just a month ago and an aborted wedding. Of course we are anxious to see that she does not suffer any more.”
“It was decent of you not to say anything last evening, Martin,” Christopher said. “I’ll not forget that I owe you for that. I’ll not harm Elizabeth. Or Christina. Though I don’t believe Elizabeth likes having me here.”
“I’m glad you came,” Martin said earnestly, looking down at the table and drawing an invisible pattern on the white tablecloth with his finger. “Of course she is not happy about it, and you know that her happiness has always been important to me. But I don’t believe she can be happy without you either.”
Christopher did not reply.
“I don’t know about all that business in the past,” Martin said. “At the time I believed you and then I didn’t. And now?” He shrugged. “But whatever the truth of the matter is, it is long in the past. And I think Lizzie feels that too, though she won’t admit it even to herself. What did you think of Christina?”
“Such feelings cannot be put into words,” Christopher said.
“Keep insisting on seeing her,” Martin said. “And seeing her will mean seeing Lizzie too, of course. Force her hand if you must.”
“Force her hand?” Christopher raised his eyebrows.
“Maybe hint to a few people that your return to England and her abduction were somehow connected,” Martin said. “Let people start guessing, putting two and two together. Make it too uncomfortable for her to continue the connection with Poole. Give her only one choice of what to do with her life.”
“You wish to see her publicly embarrassed?” Christopher asked.
“Of course not,” Martin said, flaring. “I want to see my sister happy. And God curse me for a fool, but I want to see you happy too, Trevelyan. Don’t ask me why. You have not acted in the noblest of manners during the past month.”
Christopher looked at him consideringly. “I am not sure you are giving me the wisest advice,” he said. “But your motive is sound. Thank you for that, Martin.”
Martin shrugged and got to his feet. “She is not going to be happy with Poole,” he said. “His political ideas are becoming rather radical. I do believe he is thinking of publicly espousing the cause of the Princess of Wales. That will be an embarrassment to Lizzie if it happens. Besides, he is not overfond of Christina.” He held out his right hand to Christopher. “Good luck.”
Christopher shook his hand. “I am taking them out again tomorrow,” he said. “Christina wants to be driven in a curricle. I am calling at Grosvenor Square for them. I don’t know if your stepfather will blame Elizabeth as well as me. Can you shield her from her share of his wrath?”
Martin nodded. “You can depend upon it,” he said and withdrew his hand. .
“Thank you,” Christopher said again before Martin turned and left the hotel.
It was dangerous, Martin thought. If Trevelyan followed his advice, which he might well be planning to do anyway, there was the chance that Lizzie would ultimately take him back. She had seemed besotted with the man while her memory was gone. And he knew that she had no strong emotional attachment to Poole. But there was the chanc
e that she would turn from Trevelyan in disgust and horror if he tried to be too forceful or if he did anything deliberately to destroy her reputation.
It was something to work on anyway, Martin decided. It was worth the risk. Lizzie was worth the risk.
Antoine Bouchard was in the earl’s dressing room hanging up shirts that had just been returned from the laundry when the door crashed inward and a small figure hurtled toward him and clawed at his sleeve.
“Winnie!” he said, turning to wrap his arms about her. “Winnie, ma petite. Ah, but your ‘eart is beating like an ‘ammer. What is it?”
The little maid had seemed to be almost herself again since their arrival in London. She had even been out alone on errands for Lady Nancy. Antoine had accompanied her whenever he could. Duties were not arduous for either of them in London.
“What is it, ma petite?” he asked again as she whimpered and burrowed against his chest.
“Didn’t you hear the knock?” she said. “I answered the door. And it was him, Mr. Bouchard.”
“The diable ‘imself?” he said. “ ‘Onywood? ‘E did not come in?”
“He wanted Lord Trevelyan,” she said. “He said he would wait downstairs. He took my clothes off with his eyes. I was so scared I couldn’t even hear what he was saying to me until he said it twice.”
“Ah,” he said. “But you were safe, my little one. Antoine was ‘ere and would ‘ave ‘eard if you ‘ad called out. You must always remember that you are safe when Antoine is close, non?”
She looked up at him with miserable eyes. “I was too terrified even to think of you until after he had gone,” she said. “I hate being like this. I used to enjoy living, Mr. Bouchard. I used to feel that perhaps I was a little bit pretty. I used to think that some handsome fellow would want to marry me one day. I used to—oh, life is not fun any longer.”