by Louise Allen
‘Let me think.’ Alex leaned back against the edge of the long table. ‘That he’d severely wounded my feelings? That his temper tantrum ended up with a young man blowing his brains out? That your seventeen-year-old brother didn’t take kindly to having his manhood called into question? And I could have been easily seen if you’d bothered to look. There was no secret about where I was, and I’ve never been out of contact with our mother.
‘You could have come and visited me in London any time you chose, when I was in the country. Or did you think the house would be full of macaronis and fops and we’d drag you off to some molly house and make you wear macquillage?’
‘Er, yes, more or less.’ Matthew got to his feet and showed admirable common sense, in Alex’s opinion, by putting the width of the table between them. ‘At least, thought it might be damned embarrassing.’
‘Have you ever been to London?’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Long past time you did, then. Come and stay for the Season and I promise I’ll protect your virtue.’
‘Don’t need it protecting.’ Matthew hunched a shoulder, then burst out, ‘I wanted to go, but the old devil wouldn’t let me. Says there’s nothing there for real men, no decent sport, just a lot of fancy balls and boring crushes.’
‘Our father has an eye to his pocketbook. You’d enjoy London. I’ll put you up for a couple of my clubs, introduce you around, get you some decent boots—’
‘Hoby?’ Matthew looked as though someone was waving gold coins in front of his nose.
‘Hoby,’ Alex agreed. ‘Gentleman Jackson’s, Purdey’s or Manton’s, some of the less stuffy places of entertainment. Just don’t get into the claws of some Captain Sharp in gambling dens, because I’m not covering your vowels if you do.’
There was dead silence. Matthew opened and closed his mouth, then managed, ‘I’ve been a bloody fool.’
Alex shrugged. ‘So have I, I suspect. But I had a good time while I was at it and I don’t think you have.’ Matthew was growing up, wanting to achieve something of his own and emerge from under the shadow of his parent.
‘Father approves of your sporting prowess, he thinks you are a real man in his image, but I’ll wager he makes you feel you’re second best because you aren’t the heir.’ His brother’s face darkened. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? He’s obsessed with having an heir who is just like him. I’m not a sporting Nonpareil and you can never feel for the earldom as I do. Both of us miss being what he wants.’
Matthew stared at him, growing comprehension on his face. ‘You’re right. Damn it, I never could work out why nothing ever seemed to be quite good enough. And I’m bored here. I want something that’s my own. And when he said you suggested just that, I suppose…’
‘You were angry because I’d suggested it and it wasn’t his idea? I think we had both better stop hoping that one day our father is going to declare himself proud of the pair of us. I suggest we just get on with our lives the way we think we ought to live them.’
He had surprised himself by how calm he felt when the realisation came into his head, and it seemed he had surprised Matthew, too. ‘What has come over you? You have to be angry about the way you’ve been treated in the past and you’ve had a damn unfriendly welcome home from Father and me. Why are you being so forgiving?’
‘I’m not, not about Peter. But…I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Christmas spirit, I suppose.’ Tess’s influence is more likely.
‘The love of a good woman?’ Matthew said with a grin. ‘Miss Ellery’s a very pretty girl, you lucky devil.’
She’s more than that. The odd pain under his breastbone was aching again, as though something was tight and fearful inside him. ‘You know perfectly well I’m expected to make a good match.’
Matthew’s grin became wicked. ‘Who said anything about—?’
His brother flinched when he saw Alex’s expression. ‘Do not say it. Do not think it. Miss Ellery is a guest under our roof.’ Perhaps the pain was simply his conscience.
‘Yes, of course. Sorry. Shall we have a look at the estate plans? If I can really choose one of the unentailed manors, I’ve got some ideas.’ Matthew began to unroll the maps from the end of the table and weight the corners with books. ‘I’d appreciate your advice.’
Alex found, suddenly, that it was difficult to speak. His brother wanted his advice, wanted what he had been able to give him, wanted to work with him. He had thought he had all the friendship and companionship he would ever want or need but this, he discovered, was different. This was family.
‘Sorry, frog in my throat. Yes, of course, although you know far more than I do, I’ve no doubt. Is this the one you favour?’
*
‘There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.’ Tess kept her voice cheerful as she bustled into the library. Alex’s silhouette against the darkening grey sky beyond the wide windows looked bleak and brooding, and she made herself straighten her suddenly sagging shoulders as the flame of the candle she carried dipped.
She had been worrying about Alex and what was happening between him and his brother all afternoon, braced for the sounds of a fight or even, in her more anxious moments, a gunshot.
But as she touched the flame to the wicks of the unlit candelabras that stood around the room he turned and smiled at her, and the relief was enough to make her sit down with a thump on the nearest chair.
‘I’m sorry, I have been neglecting you.’
‘Not at all, only I have so much to report about my discussion with Garnett, Mrs Garnett and Cook that I wanted to tell you as soon as possible. I have a list, but essentially they think it an excellent idea and the staff are very enthusiastic. I spoke to your mother again and promised I would help organise the buffet upstairs in the evening, but we will have plenty of time to spend with our people. I mean your people.’ Lord, what a slip to make! ‘Handing out presents and so forth.’
She produced a notebook and Alex came over and sat next to her. ‘Ah, the infallible notes.’ Tess passed it over and watched him covertly while he read. He looked different, she realised. Younger almost, as though years had been lifted away.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘With this? Yes, excellent as far as I can tell—you know I have no recent experience of Christmas festivities. I have no doubt everyone will have a splendid time. You are a born organiser, Tess.’
‘I meant with your brother. I was rather worried. He seemed so angry.’
Alex gave a snort of laughter. ‘A masterpiece of understatement given that he made a spirited attempt to spit me on a blade. Yes, everything is all right with Matthew. I’ve found my way back to my little brother, Tess, and he needed me.’
‘I am so glad. Oh, Alex, that is such good news.’
‘It is all because of you, little nun.’ His smile was decidedly lopsided now, as though he was attempting to cover deep emotion with a joke. ‘You’ve infected me with your Christmas spirit. I am probably doomed. It will be handbell ringing and carol singing next and then I will be beyond help.’
‘You are such a good man.’ Tess leaned over to emphasise the warmth of her praise with a kiss on Alex’s cheek just as he turned his head towards her. She found herself on his knee, twined in his arms, his mouth on hers, not returning the warm affection she had intended, but with the hard demand of a lover.
It seemed a very long time since he had taken her back to her bedchamber in the pre-dawn gloom. It seemed an endless evening stretched before they could be alone together again.
‘I’ll come to your room tonight, if you still want me to.’ Alex traced the line of her eyebrows. ‘Don’t frown at me, little nun. If you don’t want me I will stay away. My heart will break—’
‘I am not a nun and your heart will do no such thing,’ Tess snapped. She got up and paced down the library. ‘Don’t give me all that flummery. There is a mutual attraction, that is all it is. I am not one of your society flirts who needs seduction wrapped up in sparkly ribbons.’ Of course I want you, you d
arling man. Are you blind? And I want your heart, not your teasing. And if I got it I would have to give it back, she thought drearily.
Safely on the other side of the table she took a deep breath and found a smile. ‘Now, we haven’t talked about all the details for the Christmas arrangements. We require a cartload of evergreens and then I’ll need to know when you’ll be coming downstairs to give your staff their presents. Do you think your family would enjoy it if they came upstairs at some point and sang carols? They’ve been practising.’
‘If you need evergreens, ask Matthew.’ Alex was on his feet, his face stony. ‘I don’t imagine for a moment that the staff want me down there, they’ll have much more fun if left to their own devices, and if you organise carol singers then don’t expect me to stay and listen to the caterwauling.’
‘Then, that will be your loss. I will go and speak to Mr Tempest.’ Pull yourself together, Tess, she scolded as she picked up her candle and left, managing not to sniff until she was outside the door. You knew he only tolerated your interference to be kind. Lady Moreland had been enthusiastic about the idea of evergreens and this was her house. She set out to look for Matthew.
Chapter Eighteen
Alex arrived five minutes late at the dinner table in a mood that more than matched his father’s.
‘You are late,’ the earl snapped.
Alex inclined his head to his father and smiled at his mother. ‘My apologies, Mama, ladies.’ He took his seat and slapped his best amiable mask over an inner scowl. An afternoon of mingled sexual frustration, irritation, awareness that he had blundered with Tess and the necessity to write a ream of instructions to his secretary was enough to both kill his appetite and leave him longing for the brandy bottle.
Tess spared him a glance and a smile, then turned back to Matthew, with whom she was apparently deep in discussion about holly.
‘I gather we’re to have a traditional Christmas.’ His father regarded Tess from under lowered brows and, as she answered, Alex braced himself to come to her rescue.
‘Only if it will not disturb you, Lord Moreland.’
‘Not at all, my dear.’
My dear? What had come over the old curmudgeon? It appeared he approved of Tess.
‘The best berry-bearing holly are those trees along the west boundary of Tom’s Covert,’ his father said to Matthew. ‘You should find something for a yule log in that area—three oaks went down in the big storm last year.’ He stared down the table at Alex. ‘What are you snorting about?’
‘Was I? I am sorry. But yule logs, Father?’
‘If Miss Ellery wants a proper traditional country Christmas, then we need a yule log. I gather she’s not seen one in all that time she’s been in Ghent. Don’t do these things properly over there. Foreigners.’
‘Their traditions are simply different, Father.’
‘I suppose it is too much to expect you to be getting your expensive boots dirty.’ Alex resisted the temptation to produce an artistic shudder. ‘You can go and tell the vicar he’s welcome to bring the carol singers round on Christmas Eve, that’ll liven the place up.’
‘And the handbell ringers, too, I suppose? Father, you should be resting, not having half the village in to create a racket.’
‘We haven’t had a proper traditional Christmas since you left. I think I’d like one this year.’
As if they were days of joy and harmony before! Alex took in the set of his father’s mouth and realised this was more than the desire to give orders. Hell, he thinks it will be his last one. ‘Of course, sir, if it would please you.’ He was rewarded by a speaking look from his mother and warm smiles from Maria and Tess. He still thought it sentimental nonsense, but if it gave his family pleasure he would smile and pretend. Which might put Tess back in charity with him, too.
*
Alex scratched on Tess’s bedchamber door as the clock struck one, slipped inside and braced himself for a thrown slipper.
‘Alex?’ She had blown out all the candles and the room was lit only by the glow from the banked fire. It turned the white bedcovers patchily to rose and gold and threw her shadow flickering across the bed hangings.
‘No, the headless ghost of the first earl. Who do you think?’ He turned the key in the door and padded over to the bed.
Tess gave a little snort of amusement and sat up. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come after we quarrelled.’
‘Was that what it was? A quarrel? I thought I was being chastised for insensitivity and a lack of Christmas spirit.’
‘And I was being snappish. You were kind to your father at dinner tonight.’
‘He may not see another New Year. I’m still angry with him, but barring the door to carol singers isn’t going to bring Peter back.’
‘Peter?’
Hell and damnation, she doesn’t know why I left home. She doesn’t know about Peter. ‘He was a friend of mine and he had a secret, rather a dangerous one. When I left home my father said things about him that led him to commit suicide.’
‘No. How dreadful.’ Tess reached out and caught his hand, tugged him towards the bed. ‘But what on earth could the earl have said for him to do that? Had he committed some crime?’
‘No, but he had wanted to. Tess, I can’t explain.’ He looked down on her bent head as she studied their joined hands and felt her concern and kindness like a caress.
‘Was he in love with you?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Alex realised he had almost shouted it and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What did you say?’ He tried to tug his hand away, but Tess held tight.
‘There was a scandal last year, the brother of one of the boarders. He wrote a very indiscreet letter to his sister and told her what had happened. He ran away to Italy with his friend.’
‘I had no idea sheltered young ladies knew about such things.’
‘Some of us do, and we aren’t idiots, Alex. It makes sense of the way Matthew was goading you. But they were wrong, weren’t they? I mean, you and I…’
‘Yes, they were wrong. My father’s an intolerant old bully and I was too artistic, too neat and precise for his liking. Then when he realised what Peter felt—which was more than I did in my innocence—he put two and two together and made fifty. I stormed out full of thoroughly embarrassed righteous indignation, stopped on the way to rant at Peter about the stupidity of my father, then left for Oxford without any idea of the bombshell that I’d dropped at his feet.’
‘If that hadn’t happened, then both you and your father would have calmed down, reconciled,’ Tess said.
The sadness in her voice was like a jab in the solar plexus. What had she to be sad about? Was he just another of her lame dogs to be taken in and cared for? It was his grief, his anger, and he hadn’t asked her to care, certainly hadn’t asked a sheltered young woman to understand variations of sexual preference that should have sent her into strong hysterics. Alex found he was becoming weary of maintaining an unruffled front, of not revealing his feelings, of appearing tolerant and self-assured and all the things that right at that moment he most certainly did not feel.
‘Are we going to bed or am I going to stand here all night discussing my family?’
Tess blinked at him, obviously startled by the harsh edge to his voice. Well, damn it, it was about time she realised that he wasn’t a nice man hiding bounteous goodwill to all God’s creatures behind a cynical exterior. Nor was he some hapless victim of cruel fate. Just at that moment he was a man who wanted a woman and who was on the edge of losing his temper for reasons he was not at all sure he understood.
‘Yes, of course.’ Tess flipped back the covers and moved across. She was wearing a nightgown tonight, he saw. A prim and proper flannel abomination, tight to the throat and the cuffs without a single frill or ornament to its cream plainness. ‘I hoped you would come,’ she added as he tossed his robe aside.
Her eyes widened. Had she seen him erect last night? Surely she had. Was she frightened? Then Tess ran the tip of her
tongue over her lips and a surge of primitive power jolted through him. When he joined her on the bed she reached for the hem of her nightgown and pulled it over her head without hesitation, turned into his arms and lifted her face for his kiss. No, not frightened.
He took the lips that were offered to him, caressed the quivering, urgent body, found, without conscious intent, that he was already over her, nudging against the wet heat that was so ready for him. There was a rushing in his ears, a thunder of blood mingling with their panting breaths. Her mouth was open to him, sweet and fierce, her body closed around him, urgent, yielding, demanding. He surged in her, riding the pleasure like a wild horse, focused only on the turmoil of their two bodies, heard her cry and, somehow, found the focus to pull from her body before he crashed into his own shattering climax.
*
Pleasure, exhaustion, sticky heat, softness, the beat of a heart under his. Alex lay still, let his lax body come to itself while he gathered his wits, rubbed his cheek against the soft one next to it.
Gradually the human part of his brain gained some ascendancy over the triumphant, sated, animal part. He was sprawled with all his weight on the slender figure beneath him.
Tess. God, what have I done. He rolled off with a contraction of muscles that almost sent him off the far side of the bed. She was as near as, damn it, a virgin, and I used her like a courtesan.
*
‘Alex?’ Tess blinked her eyes open onto a chilly world where the lovely, big, muscled body that had been squashing her so deliciously was gone. Alex’s lovemaking had been a revelation. The excitement, the urgency, the sheer vibrant sexuality of it, had shaken her in a different way to his tenderness and care the night before. That lovemaking could be so varied had never occurred to her. What would it be like tomorrow?
He was staring at her across the width of the bed. ‘Tess, I am sorry. I hurt you.’
‘No, not at all.’ Why wouldn’t her come to her, hold her?