“Perhaps we should think about bed,” Sarah said. “Or at least you should,” she amended, glancing up at the earl.
The flush that suddenly marked her cheeks had nothing to do with the cold. The laughter, however, seemed still caught in the midnight blue of her eyes. Perhaps that was simply a trick of the candlelight, Justin thought. Or a reflection of the sapphire satin of her gown.
Sarah had left off her cap tonight, he noted with amusement. She had adorned her hair instead with a simple diamond-and-sapphire band that caught the candlelight whenever she turned her head. And she had never been more beautiful.
Realizing he was still holding her gaze, he turned his head as if searching for the decanter of port that stood on the wine tray the butler had brought in. He had not yet indulged, but if Sarah was going to go to his head, then it might be safer to clear it with strong drink.
After all, he had made this same mistake once before. The mistake of believing that what he saw in Sarah Spenser’s eyes matched what he felt for her. His emotions tonight were nothing more than the product of his loneliness and long isolation.
It wasn’t surprising he had had such a strong physical response to Sarah’s beauty. It had been months since he had been with a woman. Since before he was wounded, of course.
Despite his injury, despite his natural reluctance to expose his mutilated body to anyone, much less to the delicate sensibilities of a woman, his physical needs and desires had not disappeared. With the long denial, they had sharpened instead. And they would continue to do so, he thought, taking a deep swallow of the wine, if he spent more time around his wife.
His wife. A wife whom he had not touched in the long weeks of their marriage. He had not even touched her fingertips, he realized, except perhaps accidentally. Nor had she touched him.
He watched her hands now as she cut the Christmas pudding, putting a slice on a plate for Andrew and another for him, he supposed. They moved over that simple task with the same grace and economy of motion as they did over all others, whether ink stained from writing in the estate books or gently smoothing Andrew’s hair.
He had watched their easy interaction tonight. Drew leaning against her knee, listening to every word she said. Sarah’s hand cupped around the child’s cheek. And Justin was ashamed to admit he had been jealous of their open affection. The same jealousy that had drawn him down here tonight—out of his lonely room and into the light of their acceptance.
An acceptance of who and what he now was. Sarah’s seemed as genuine as Drew’s. She had not once by word or deed reminded him of the debt he owed her. Or indicated that she found him to be less than the same man she had known five years ago.
“Good night, dear Wynfield,” Drew said. “Happy Christmas.”
He looked up from his empty glass to find the little boy standing by his chair. Without thinking, he leaned forward and pulled the child to him, holding him close.
“Happy Christmas, Drew,” he whispered.
The child rested contentedly against his chest a moment before he leaned back to look up into his face. “I have a present for you,” he said. “It is something I made myself.”
“Did you?” Justin said, smiling.
“Have you...?” Drew paused, glancing nervously over his shoulder to where Sarah was watching, knowing full well that to ask the question he wanted to ask was forbidden. “That is...” he began anew, his voice much softer. Again he hesitated, his eyes probing Justin’s.
“Have I a present for you?” the earl asked for him.
Drew nodded.
“A small one,” Justin confessed. “I wasn’t sure exactly what you wanted.”
“Sarah says you aren’t supposed to tell people what you want, but I don’t know how they should know if you don’t tell them,” Drew said reasonably.
“Nor do I,” Justin agreed, smiling.
“I have made you a marker for your books,” Drew whispered, “but I can’t give it to you until tomorrow.”
“I’m sure it’s very fine,” the earl said, almost as softly.
“It’s so you will always know where you have left off reading.”
Justin nodded, his throat thick.
“Sarah suggested it,” Andrew confessed, “but I made it myself. And I have drawn Star on it. I thought you would like that because I’m sure you miss him.”
“I will like that above all things,” Justin said.
“Did you make my present yourself?”
“Not... all of them,” he admitted, remembering the toy and the sweets his man had chosen. Justin had known in his heart they weren’t right, but he hadn’t known why. Now, of course, he did.
Drew nodded. “I’m sure they are very fine, all the same,” he said comfortingly. “And have you something for Sarah? Brynmoor doesn’t remember Christmas, you know. She has only what I give her. And the servants’ Christmas wishes, of course.”
Justin realized he had never thought about a present for Sarah. They were adults. And too much lay between them. Too much that was painful. Too many things Drew could never understand, of course.
“It will mean more if you have made it yourself,” Drew advised. “Sarah loves presents you make yourself because they have some part of you in them.”
Justin nodded, wondering as he did at his willingness to lie to this child. Somehow the little boy’s words, obviously an echo of what Sarah had told him, struck a blow to his conscience.
Sarah really did have no one. A mad father who didn’t know the year, much less the day. A child too young to understand all the intricacies of the adult relationships that surrounded him. And a husband who had not considered that he should offer her a Christmas gift, not even after all she had done for him.
“Bedtime, Drew,” Sarah said softly.
They both looked up, startled by her voice, to find her standing near Justin’s chair.
“I’ll take you up and tuck you in tight,” she said. “And when you wake, it will be Christmas Day.”
She was smiling at the little boy, her eyes carefully avoiding his, Justin thought.
“Good night,” he said to Drew.
Unable to resist, he touched his fingers against the fullness of the child’s cheeks, provoking a smile. Then Andrew took his mother’s hand and followed her out of the room. Justin could hear Drew chattering as they made their way up the stairs.
He poured another glass of port from the decanter the butler had thoughtfully left near his chair. Strong drink and a restless sleep, or thoughts of Sarah circling in his head all night. Given those options, he raised the glass to his lips and drank the wine down in one draught, almost like a dose of medicine. Maybe it was. At least a preventative.
Justin couldn’t get Drew’s words out of his head. Nor could he destroy the images they had produced. Sarah alone. Rationally, he didn’t know why he should feel sorry for Sarah Spenser. She was one of the wealthiest heiresses in England. She could certainly afford to buy whatever she wanted or needed.
And knowing his circumstances better than anyone other than his man of business, she would not be expecting presents from him. She wouldn’t be disappointed. She understood the boundaries of their relationship as clearly as he did. Drew, however...
Drew would be disappointed, he admitted. On Sarah’s behalf, of course. And disappointed in him. Justin knew that, and it troubled him even more than the thought of the years when Sarah had had no one to give her a Christmas present.
Which had been by her choice, he told himself bitterly. But after the evening that had just passed, the reminder of her infidelity rang hollow. Without force. And it seemed, somehow, not a good enough excuse for what he had not thought to do. It was too late, however, to correct his oversight tonight.
Sarah loves presents you make yourself because they have some part of you in them. It was too late for that as well, he realized, glancing at the clock on the mantel, which indicated it was well after midnight. Too late, even if he knew of something he could make for her. Or for Drew
.
His eyes found the trinkets Peters had bought. The shop had wrapped them in a small piece of colored silk and tied the bundle with a ribbon. They weren’t good enough, of course. They never had been, but until Andrew had explained it to him, Justin hadn’t really understood why.
Some part of you in them... The phrase seemed to haunt him. There was nothing he could make, but perhaps there was still something he could do. There were things here, in this house, that had some “part of him” within them. At least some part of what he had once been. A little boy just like Drew.
Standing, he fitted his crutch under his arm and crossed the room. When he opened the door, the hallway outside was dark. Even the servants had gone to bed, and what he sought was on the top floor. The night nursery and the schoolroom were both there. Those rooms were where he and Robert had spent most of their time when his family had been in residence here. They were the places, therefore, where he was most likely to find something of his own childhood that Drew would like to have.
He began to move toward the back stairs. They were narrow and steep, far more difficult for him to negotiate, but there was also less chance he would encounter anyone. He had gone only a few feet down the hall toward them when he realized he was beside the door to his mother’s room. A room he hadn’t entered since her death, more than ten years ago.
Acting on the same impulse that had driven him out of his room, he put his hand on the knob and turned it. For some reason, he expected the door to be locked. It wasn’t. It swung inward, revealing his mother’s boudoir, which appeared unchanged.
It even smelled of her, the faint scents evoking memories of his childhood. Sometimes he had been allowed to sit here and watch her dress for a ball. He would visit with her as her maid powdered her hair and helped her choose a patch from the ornate box in which they were kept. Once she had allowed him to choose the one she would wear. He could even remember it—a small black heart, which, smiling at him in the mirror, she had pressed at the corner of her mouth.
And when she had turned around for his inspection, he had thought she was the most beautiful creature in existence. He took a deep breath and could almost sense her presence in the faint, lingering essences of hair powder and lavender. Almost as if her ghost were still here.
He smiled at his foolishness. Too much port, he thought, moving across to her dressing table. There would be nothing here but baubles, he knew. Robert or his father would have sold whatever was of value long ago.
He lit the candles that stood beside the mirror and then opened the drawer of the table, his long fingers pushing through the gewgaws. A paste broach she had once worn to a masquerade. A pair of ivory hairpins, which had been lovely in his mother’s dark hair, but would not serve for Sarah’s. A ring of twisted dolphins he did not remember at all, its base metal green with time. And a strand of small, misshapen pearls.
His hand hesitated, and then he fingered them out of the heap, pulling them up so that they gleamed softly in the candlelight, more gray than white. He had bought these for his mother’s birthday, he remembered, a little surprised at the clarity of his recollection.
He had been older than Drew, he imagined, but not much. And he had purchased them from a street vendor using his own pocket money. He had thought the necklace was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, especially when his mother had worn it looped loosely about her slender, white throat when she had come into the nursery the next night. She was already dressed for a dinner party, and she had been wearing his pearls.
He knew now that she had almost certainly taken them off as soon as she stepped out of the nursery. At the time, however, he was certain she valued them as much as she did the diamond-and-ruby set his father had had made up for that same birthday. Certain she had worn them proudly to the party. And that she had been the most beautiful woman in attendance.
Smiling at the memory, Justin began to allow the strand to coil back into the drawer. Then his fingers hesitated again, before they caught the rest of the small uneven beads with a quick upward toss. He held the necklace out on his palm a moment before he dropped it into the pocket of his waistcoat. He had left his coat in his room. At this hour, of course, there was no one about to be shocked by his shirtsleeves.
He swung back across the room, closing the door carefully behind him. Shutting out memories that were not unhappy, but were simply faded, like a beloved fabric, well used and well loved. Whatever troubles his father had faced financially, and he knew now that there had been many even then, he and Robert had been insulated from their effects by their mother’s love.
Just as Sarah tried to protect Drew. From the gossip. From learning the truth of his parentage. Now Justin had become a member of that conspiracy. And he couldn’t begrudge Drew what he himself had enjoyed. A childhood as free from worry as the adults in his life could manage.
With the thought of Drew, he remembered why he had begun this journey. Surely there would be something suitable to give the child in the rooms upstairs. A book he had loved, if nothing else. Soon Drew would be old enough for a tutor. Until that time, he might enjoy being read to aloud. He wondered if Sarah did that. And if Drew would like for him to.
Whether it was the darkness, or the fact that in his hurry to make his search, he was paying too little attention to the placement of his crutch on the stairs, he could never be sure. There was no railing, of course, given the narrowness of the steep steps, and when the tip of the crutch slipped off the edge of the one he had carelessly placed it on, there was nothing he could do to stop his fall. He had only climbed about a third of the way up, so there was no danger of injury, at least none beyond some bruising. And a massive blow to his pride.
When his quick downward passage had stopped, he was sprawled at the foot of the staircase, his upper body propped on the steps themselves. His crutch had clattered noisily past him, out of his reach, onto the wooden floor.
“Bloody hell,” he breathed, more angry than hurt.
He automatically took stock of the aches and pains. All of them seemed minor. At least not a setback to what had already been his frustratingly slow convalescence. He would never have forgiven himself if he had delayed his recovery.
“Are you hurt?”
The whisper was so unexpected he pushed his upper body up, his hands on the step behind him before he answered.
“Only my pride,” he said truthfully.
Sarah walked across the hall and set the candelabra she was carrying down on the hall table. Then she stooped down beside him. In the wavering candlelight, he could barely see the contours of her face. He hoped she could see him no better.
He pushed up again, lifting his hips onto the bottom step and then onto the next, so that at least he was sitting up and not lying in a heap at her feet.
“What happened?” she asked.
Her gaze moved up the narrow staircase and then came back to his. He could see her now. Her face was calm, and she hadn’t offered to help him up. For which he was eternally grateful.
“I finished the port,” he said. And watched her lips tilt.
“Foxed,” she offered, smiling at him.
There was a touch of relief in her voice as well as in her smile. Either because he was unhurt or because he hadn’t retreated behind the same boorishness with which he had responded to her initial concerns about his health.
“Properly,” he lied.
“But what were you doing out here?” she asked, her eyes again moving up the narrow stairs.
“Looking for more port?” he suggested.
This time she laughed, and the hard knot of mortification that had been aching in his chest since he had recognized her voice eased. At least he could still make Sarah laugh. And if she did, she might never suspect how humiliating it was to have her find him like this.
“It’s customary to ring for your servants if you need something,” she said. “You are the earl, you know. And I think that now they would probably even respond.”
Her
tone was light. She put her hands together in her lap, sitting back on her heels. Not before he had noticed they were shaking. Apparently, if he could pretend, so could Sarah.
“I prefer tippling in secret,” he said. “Much less gossip, you know.” And realized from her quick intake of breath that was the wrong word. Wrong at least for this woman. Gossip was a cruel and hurtful subject to her. Not something for jest.
“Your servants are too well trained to gossip,” she said.
She rose, her movements graceful in spite of the voluminous nightgown she was wearing. Because of the cold, it was high necked and long sleeved. It was thin enough, however, that since she was now standing between him and the candles, Justin could clearly see the outline of her body. Still as slender as a girl’s, despite the fact that she had borne a child.
Again, his body reacted, his arousal immediate. Disgusted with his lack of control, he also stood, finding his balance carefully, one hand on the wall beside him.
Sarah bent down and retrieved his crutch from where it had fallen. She stepped nearer, holding it out to him. He hesitated a moment, searching her eyes for any sign of disgust. Finding none, he took the crutch, fitting it under his arm before he removed his hand from the support of the wall. Then, almost of its own volition, that same hand reached out and fastened around her upper arm.
Sarah looked down on his fingers, their darkness a contrast to the white of her night rail. Slowly, her eyes lifted to his. They were wide and dark, but still there was no revulsion in them. No pity. Nothing of what he had expected if he ever dared touch a woman again.
He pulled her toward him, and she took the step that was required to bring her near enough to allow his mouth to lower over hers. And there was no hesitation in her response.
It seemed to him he had always known he would kiss Sarah again. And that it would be the same. That it would send this scalding rush of heat through his body, just as it had the first time he had kissed her. A kiss just as stolen, and almost as frightening, as this one.
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