by Mary Balogh
A head nodded against Emma’s shoulder.
“Yes,” he said. “It would not be Christmas without the church service, would it? Miss Milford?”
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “I shall go with Peter and Sophia and my aunt.”
“Oh, my lord,” a sweet light voice said from behind them, “the carolers have come and are in the great hall preparing to sing. Adrian was wrong, you see, and they have come despite the snow.” She laughed merrily. “I believe you won that wager. Will you come?”
“Yes,” he said, straightening up. “I will lead you out there if I may, Miss Chadwick.” He extended an arm for hers. “Anna?”
“Oh, yes,” Roberta said, her eyes sparkling. “Do come along and hear the singing, Anna, dear. Will you take my hand?”
But Anna shook her head and clung to Emma’s skirt. She watched her papa’s jaw tighten and knew that he was annoyed with her. But she knew too with all the optimism of childhood that it would be a perfect Christmas after all. She had felt it moments before when Papa and her new mama had been stooped down on either side of her and the three of them had gazed at Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus—one family gazing at another.
She had felt that she was as happy as Jesus, and the little matter of some brittle straw tickling her skin would not mar her joy either. She had felt that her new mama was hovering over her with as much warmth and love as Mary was lavishing on Jesus. And she had felt that Papa was there like Joseph, loving the two of them, protecting them from the world.
Papa was angry and he was walking into the great hall with Miss Chadwick on his arm while Anna walked behind, her hand in her new mama’s. But she was not worried. Although her wish had been granted already, it was not quite Christmas yet. Tomorrow was Christmas.
Tomorrow would be the best day in all the world. The best day ever.
Emma was in the bedchamber beyond the nursery that was shared by Anna, Harriet, and Julie. Harriet and Julie were in the nursery listening to Marjorie Fotheringale tell a story, despite the lateness of the hour—it was past midnight. But Anna had not wanted to listen. She had wanted Emma to undress her and tuck her into bed.
Emma did not know whether to give in to the temptation to hug to herself this rare day of joy or to feel all the embarrassment of what had happened since her arrival at Williston Hall.
Anna had not left her side all evening. They had stood hand in hand listening to the carolers in the great hall and watching the cider and hot punch and wassail being handed around afterward while everyone chattered and laughed even more gaily than they had at dinner. Emma had felt guilty. The child should have been with her father and Miss Chadwick, to whom he appeared to be paying court. And Miss Chadwick had looked to Anna kindly and spoken sweetly to her.
Emma had felt even more guilty when it came time to go to church and Anna had stubbornly refused to go with her father in Mr. Shelton’s carriage. She had clung to Emma’s hand even when Emma had stooped down and assured her that she would see her in church.
It had ended up with Emma’s riding in the Shelton carriage too, Anna on her lap. To say she had felt uncomfortable was to understate the case. And somehow Lord Radbrook had been separated from Miss Chadwick outside the church and he had entered with Emma, Anna between them, clinging to a hand of each. They had sat side by side and knelt side by side throughout the service, the world shrunk to a small space, Emma’s awareness of father and child overwhelming even the much-loved atmosphere of the Christmas service.
And then when they had arrived home and the overtired, overexcited children had been shooed up to bed by Marjorie, who usually took the lead in such matters, Anna had shaken her head when her father had stooped down to pick her up and had turned to lift her arms to Emma.
“My dear Emma,” the countess had said with a laugh, “I have never seen Anna so enchanted with anyone except Edwin. Do carry her up, if you would be so good, dear. There will be warm chocolate awaiting you in the drawing room when you come downstairs.”
Her words had been drowned out by a shriek from Miss Chadwick and a great deal of laughter from several others as that young lady was caught beneath the sprig of mistletoe in the great hall by Viscount Treadwell and soundly kissed.
Emma was at a loss to know what her appeal was to Anna. She wished that it could have been some other child. But even so, there was an ache of something in her heart as she undressed the child and clothed her in a warm flannel nightgown and turned back the bedclothes. Anna’s regard was a Christmas gift she would not ignore or easily forget.
Anna handed her a brush and settled herself before the narrow mirror of the small dressing table beside the bed.
Emma brushed through the soft ringlets until the child’s hair was smooth and free of tangles. In the mirror she looked suddenly far more like the tiny, fragile child she was. Emma brushed the hair back from the child’s face and gathered it into one hand at the nape of her neck.
“It would look very pretty braided,” she said. “You have lovely shiny hair, Anna.”
The child looked at her in the mirror with large bright eyes. Emma smiled, though the smile faded when another figure appeared behind her.
“Time for bed, Anna,” he said firmly. “You have kept Miss Milford from the drawing room long enough.”
Anna jumped to her feet and dived into bed. Emma turned away as Lord Radbrook leaned over the bed, tucking the blankets up about the child. But his voice stayed her.
“Anna wants to say good night,” he said, without turning his head toward her.
When she looked back it was to see his daughter, her arms held out toward her, her eyes eager, her cheeks flushed with tiredness.
“Good night, Anna,” she said, bending past the still figure of the father, embarrassed again, feeling the child’s arms close about her neck. “Happy Christmas.”
But she was not to be released so easily. Anna clung as she raised her head, and her puckered lips coaxed Emma’s head down to kiss them.
“Sleep tight,” she whispered, and turned and fled out through the nursery and along the upper hallway and down the stairs to the safety of the other adults’ company.
But he caught up to her just before she reached the drawing-room doors. His hand clamped on her wrist was not to be denied. He drew her past the drawing room without a word, past the doors of the music room, and on to the library. He drew her inside and closed the door behind them before releasing her. There was a fire in the grate and a single branch of candles on the mantel.
He leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “What is going on?” he asked. His voice was tight and cold.
“With Anna?” She turned to face him. “I don’t know. She seems to have taken a fancy to me for some reason. She will have forgotten by morning. I am sorry, my lord.”
“Anna does not take fancies to people,” he said. “Since her mother died she has clung to me for comfort and reassurance.”
“What can I say?” she asked after a short and tense silence. “You must have seen that I did nothing to lure her away from you. Why would I do such a thing, anyway?”
He pushed away from the door. “She might have been yours,” he said harshly. “You might have had a right to her affection. But you would have none of me nine years ago. You did not even answer my letters. And now you want to take my child?”
“Edwin!” she said, shocked. “I refused your offer—twice. I gave you my reason. It was improper of you to write afterward. It would have been improper for me to answer.”
“Propriety!” he said, his voice a sneer. “Did you ever do anything spontaneous in your life, Emma? I was mistaken in you. Youth and beauty and the summertime and the nuptials of my sister and your brother deceived me into thinking you a warm and a vibrant girl capable of love and laughter. I had a fortunate escape. Look what you have become!” His eyes moved over her.
She clasped her hands tightly in front of her and swallowed the lump in her throat. “I have become a twenty-seve
n-year-old spinster,” she said. “Not a creature to be scorned, Edwin. I told you that I must remain with my parents, that they could not get along without me. That is what I did.”
“You were cold, heartless,” he said. “Without backbone. You would not see that they used you, that had they loved you they would have gladly given you over to the care of someone who fancied himself in love with you and had the means to support you. Though I suppose you would have fought them hard enough if there had been even half as much life and love in you as I thought I saw. I was a fool.”
“And I was young,” she said, stung. “I was barely eighteen. You were the first man I had ever been acquainted with. I was frightened, bewildered by the feelings you aroused in me. It was safer to cling to the life I knew.”
“The first man!” he said, raking her from head to toe again with his eyes. “The only man, Emma. You are as cold as the grave, aren’t you?”
She swallowed several times but could not trust her voice. She wondered again what had been in those three letters he had written. Her father had told her about them, but they had been unseemly, he had said. He had destroyed them. She had ached over the years to have just one of those letters to keep.
“We are off the point,” he said. “I married Marianne two years after your rejection. She was my wife, Emma, for four years. We had Anna together. I have lived through the agony of her death, when she foolishly tried to rescue Anna’s ball from the river, knowing that she could not swim. You are so far in my past that you count for nothing at all with me. Nothing! Do you understand me?”
“Why must you say this?” she asked. “It was many years ago, Edwin. I refused you. Why would I expect you to feel anything for me now? What is it I am to understand?”
“I don’t know how you are doing it,” he said, “but you are trying to get to me through Anna. It cannot be done. I would not touch you now with a ten-foot pole if you were the only woman left on earth.”
Her chin came up. “And I would not allow you to,” she said, “if you were the last man. Do you really believe that I have come here to snare you? Do you think I am bursting with frustrated emotions just because I am twenty-seven years old and have never known a man? I chose my course in life nine years ago and have never regretted it. I am content.” Oh, liar, her heart told her.
He strode toward her and took her shoulders in a bruising grip, a fact that made mockery of his statement about ten-foot poles, one part of her mind told her.
“Leave Anna alone,” he told her. “I don’t want you near her, do you understand me? You might have been her mother, but you chose not to be. Her mother was Marianne. I was fond of her. And when it comes time for Anna to have a new mother, then I will choose her with care. I will choose someone who can bring light and youth into her life. Not you, Emma. You had your chance and you chose to scorn me.”
“I did not scorn you,” she said. “Never that. You know I did not, Edwin. I was eighteen years old. Can you not use that fact to soften your hatred of me?”
“Hatred?” he said. “You flatter yourself, Emma. I have no feelings for you at all. None. I don’t want you in my life or in my daughter’s life.”
His hands felt as if they were about to break bones.
“I shall stay away from Anna tomorrow,” she said quietly. “You are hurting me, my lord.”
He released her immediately.
“Emma,” he said. His voice sounded hurt. “It lasted only seven years, your chosen course. Your father died within a year, your mother within seven. At the age of twenty-five you were all alone with a lifetime yawning ahead of you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why have you not married?” he asked. “Twenty-five was not such an advanced age. Neither is twenty-seven, despite the spinster disguise you have put on.”
“As you just said,” she replied, “it is my chosen course.”
“Well,” he said, his face and his voice weary, “it is your life, I suppose. I never did understand you, although I thought I did for that month. It was foolish to believe after little more than four weeks that I knew you well enough to pledge you my heart for the rest of a lifetime.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I suppose we were both too young to handle the situation sensibly,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You must be ready for a warm drink,” he said. “Go along to the drawing room, Emma. Forgive me if I do not escort you. I am going to remain here for a few minutes to see if I can recover my temper.”
She left the library without another word. But she climbed the stairs to her room rather than enter the drawing room, from which sounds of merriment were still coming.
Lord Radbrook was feeling somewhat more cheerful the following morning, even though he had slept poorly. He had successfully avoided both Emma and Roberta Chadwick at breakfast and had had a satisfying conversation with Colonel Porchester.
By the time breakfast was over, all the children were up despite the fact that they had been so late to bed. It was ever so on Christmas morning, though, he recalled from his own childhood. On Christmas Eve one always fell asleep almost ill with anticipation and quite convinced that one would not sleep a wink at all. And then came the relief of waking in the morning to find daylight pushing past the curtains and of knowing that the long wait and the interminable suspense were finally at an end.
Yes, the children were up, of course. And sending urgent messages downstairs to announce the fact. The custom was for them to be taken into one of the salons with their parents and grandparents for the opening of their gifts. Lord Radbrook could, therefore, look forward to that particular ceremony. He would have his daughter indisputably to himself. His anger of the night before, he admitted ruefully, had been occasioned as much by jealousy as anything else. It was a disturbing admission. Would he have been jealous of Marianne had she lived?
Anna was waiting for him in the nursery and held her face up for his morning kiss.
“But what is this?” he asked her, laughing and turning her about to see the back of her head. Her hair was combed smoothly back from her face and coiled into a braided coronet about the crown. Unexpectedly, considering the plainness of the style in contrast to her usual ringlets, she looked pretty.
“She would insist on it, my lord,” Anna’s nurse said, flustered. “She would not let me near her with the curling rod. She showed me what she wanted done. I shall do it again quickly the right way if you wish, my lord, but you must tell her so. Miss Anna can be as stubborn as a mule when her heart is set on something, voice or no voice.”
Lord Radbrook picked his child up and kissed her cheek. “No,” he said. “Anna looks quite beautiful the way she is.”
As his daughter’s dark eyes settled on his, he had a sudden memory of Emma’s holding back the child’s hair the night before and brushing it smooth at the front. Was this her influence? But he pushed the thought away. Nothing was going to spoil his Christmas morning.
Anna sat quietly on his lap in the salon while her cousins tore wrappings from their gifts and exclaimed excitedly over their contents. She opened her own gifts more carefully and gazed up at him as each was revealed. She clutched them all in her arms, refusing to allow him to set them on the table beside the chair.
She seemed pleased. She seemed not to be looking about her for more. He breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow he must have guessed her Christmas wish and satisfied it. It was the doll probably. She had kissed it when she unwrapped it and set it carefully on her lap. She kept touching its crisp orange curls with one finger.
“Have you had what you wished for, sweetheart?” he asked her softly as Peregrine unwrapped his tin soldiers and whooped with delight.
She nodded solemnly and reached up one arm to catch at his neck. He lowered his head to kiss her puckered lips.
She pushed herself off his lap and he watched, amused, as she slid her new fur muff up one arm almost to the shoulder, arranged the ribbon of her new parasol over her wrist, fold
ed her new blue satin dress over her arm, and settled the doll comfortably against the inside of her elbow. And then she reached up with her free arm and took him by the hand.
“Where are we going?” he asked, laughing as he got to his feet. “To show Grandmama?”
But she led him to the door and from the room. She wanted to go back to the nursery? Already? On Christmas Day, when the children drew out all the tricks in their not-inconsiderable arsenal to stay away from it?
But he knew almost immediately that he had guessed wrongly. And he knew where they were going. For one moment he considered stopping her, picking her up, taking her back to the salon, thinking of some way to distract her attention. But how could he? It was Christmas. Day. It was her day. And he loved her to distraction.
Most of the guests were in the morning room, chattering brightly. One table of cards was in progress.
“Ah, there is Lord Radbrook,” Roberta Chadwick said gaily. She looked extremely pretty dressed in warm pink. “Everyone is saying that we can go for sleigh rides later, my lord. But the snow is deep and very fresh. I say a sleigh will tip and hurl us all into a snowbank. What is your opinion?”
He grinned. “That would be a disaster only if one were hurled in alone or with the wrong company,” he said outrageously.
But he was not allowed to pause to join in the laughter that greeted his words. He was drawn by his daughter’s hand across the room to the window, where three ladies were talking quietly together.
Anna released her father’s hand and held up her doll for Emma’s inspection.
Emma looked up sharply and met the inscrutable eyes of the child’s father.
“A doll,” she said. “How very beautiful she is. She has ringlets just like yours. But, Anna . . .” She looked more closely at the child and smiled despite herself. “You do not have your ringlets today. You have a braided coronet. How very lovely you look, for sure.”
Anna held up the doll until Emma took it. And then she laid the dress across Emma’s lap and wrestled with the parasol until she had opened it.