Once Upon a Christmas

by Diane Farr

  Celia stared, completely nonplussed. He did not look angry. He did not even look particularly crazed. He looked, in fact, perfectly amiable. But the things he was saying were so contrary, they were actually belligerent! What should she do? How could she soothe this poor, witless young man? He surely had no idea how impossible he was being.

  Another silence fell while Celia hoped in vain for a topic of conversation to arise naturally. Lord Lynden merely looked at her, and waited for her lead. She tried again. “Delacourt is a lovely place.”

  His lip curled in something like a sneer. “Of course it is.”

  Indignation rose, and she again choked it back. But this was terrible. She was strongly tempted to leave him to his disordered thoughts and join Lady Elizabeth. Would he even notice her departure? But just as she opened her mouth to make some excuse, the marquess unexpectedly spoke.

  “Tell me, Miss Delacourt—what brings you here?”

  His tone was definitely hostile. She looked apprehensively at him, and saw that his gaze had become as keen as his mother’s. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Her Grace had informed her that her son did not expect to find her here, and had no idea of his mother’s plans to promote a match between them. Whatever the root of his animosity, it could not be that he suspected anything of that nature. But madmen saw imaginary enemies everywhere.

  She smiled gently at him and spoke soothingly. “I am here at the invitation of your mother.”

  “That does not surprise me,” he said bitterly, although the source of his sarcasm remained a mystery. “I daresay she is immensely gratified that you like Delacourt so well.”

  “I hope she is. But everyone must admire Delacourt.”

  “Has she, by any chance, encouraged you to make a lengthy stay?”

  Celia blinked. “Why—why, she has—she has told me that I may consider Delacourt my permanent home.”

  At that, Lord Lynden’s antagonism vanished in a look of pure surprise. “Has she, by Jove! I never knew Mother to rush her fences.”

  For the first time, his voice sounded completely normal. But his words had made no sense. Puzzled, Celia considered whether she ought to ask for an explanation. Might it worsen his symptoms, to be forced to examine them? The last thing she wanted to do was excite or distress the poor, deranged creature.

  His eyes flicked over her black velvet gown, and a different sort of frown creased his handsome forehead. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you why you are in mourning?”

  Celia tensed. It was a trial to speak of her loss under any circumstances, and to expose her private grief to an addlepated and hostile young man was an extremely distasteful prospect. But his face had lost that guarded, strange expression, and was suddenly so compassionate, she had to look away. She stared down at her hands and swallowed past the lump that had formed in her throat. “I am in mourning for my family,” she said tonelessly.

  She closed her eyes, praying miserably that he would ask no more questions. There was a terrible moment while she waited, dreading his inevitable exclamation of sympathy or curiosity. But her prayers were answered. When he finally spoke, all he said was, “I am sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling she could breathe again. He immediately launched into a lively story of some mishap he had encountered in his journey from London, forcing her to look up and regain control over herself.

  She was deeply grateful for this tactful gesture—although more puzzled than ever. His instantaneous transformation from a bellicose madman to an affable, immensely attractive young gentleman, was the weirdest manifestation of his illness she had yet seen.

  He underwent several more transformations in the next three quarters of an hour. If she hadn’t known better, she might have suspected that his madness was feigned. It almost seemed that he caught himself conversing normally from time to time, became vexed with himself, and then went out of his way to say or do something outrageous. It was most strange. By the end of an hour, Celia was exhausted. She sincerely pitied the unfortunate marquess, but his company was trying. The kinder one tried to be to him, the ruder and sillier he became. She took her cue from the duchess, and, pleading fatigue, made an early escape from the drawing room.

  Jack watched her go, feeling almost ashamed of himself. It was shocking, the way he had treated her. Still, he reminded himself firmly, he had rather play the fool for a week or two than find himself bullocked into marriage. He had no wish to marry a girl who conspired with his mother. Not even a sweet-faced, rather lost looking girl.

  But the sight of her tired little face, pale above the somber black of her gown, tugged at his conscience. She left the room so quietly, too—clearly not even expecting acknowledgment of her departure from his self-absorbed sisters. How long had she been living here? he wondered. And why did she accept her status as a cipher in this house, if she thought herself destined to rule it one day? Odd, that.

  He noticed that his sister Elizabeth was regarding him, her eyebrows wryly lifted. He grinned, and left the fire to sweep her a magnificent leg. “Admiring my lilac unmentionables, sister?”

  “Your entire outfit is unmentionable, in my opinion,” she replied tartly. “I have been wanting all evening to ask you what you are about.”

  “Mother doesn’t care for my new tailor.”

  “No sensible person could. Really, John! I suppose you think you are amusing, but you are not.”

  He straightened, laughing. “How would you know? You haven’t any more sense of humor than this footstool.”

  She flushed. “Just because I don’t care for undignified silliness—”

  Jack, instantly contrite, reached over and gave her shoulder a friendly shake. “Sorry. Sorry! That was a wretched thing to say, and I ought not to tease you. Forgive me! It’s been a long day.” He dropped into the chair across from her. “Besides, I did not don this finery for your amusement.”

  Elizabeth’s angry flush faded. “Well, there are worse things you could accuse me of than having no sense of humor,” she allowed. “It’s true that I have never shared your admiration of laughter for its own sake. Nor your fondness for hilarity. And indeed, you must know I do not entirely approve of it. Your sense of the ridiculous has often led you to go too far.” She looked pointedly at Jack’s attire.

  “Has it? Then I hope it has done so again.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Pray do not talk in riddles.”

  “Very well. How have you been? It seems to me there is less of you today than when I saw you last.”

  Elizabeth’s face went still and shuttered. “I have been well enough.”

  He regarded her gravely. She looked, in fact, as if she were unhappy, and as if she had been unhappy for some time. She had always been slender, but now she was almost too thin, and her fair skin was nearly translucent in its paleness. No lines marked her face, and she was still a good-looking woman, but whatever traces of girlishness she had once had were gone forever. She was twenty-six, and looked it.

  But Elizabeth was not the only family member whose appearance troubled him. “Tell me, how has Mother been?”

  Elizabeth seemed almost amused by the question. “Need you ask? Mother is always the same.”

  Jack leaned back skeptically and crossed one leg over the other. “Well, then something’s up with Monsieur Andre. Is he not feeding you enough? If he’s trying to help Father, he’s missing his mark.”

  “Has Mother lost weight? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I daresay when you see her every day, the changes are not apparent, but I was struck by it. And why does Hubbard shadow her everywhere she goes?”

  “Pooh! She has done so for years.”

  Jack looked unconvinced. “Has she? Well, I never knew Mother to take to her bed before ten o’clock. Although,” he admitted, “she may have had other reasons for doing so tonight. Wanted to get herself out of the way, I suppose.”

  Before Elizabeth could ask him his meaning, their father came rolling up to pounce on Jack. Eli
zabeth moved off to join Augusta, and Jack spent the next hour listening with a good grace to the duke’s wheezy, and increasingly boozy, sporting anecdotes. It bored him, but it seemed the least he could do to ease his parent’s burdensome existence.

  His father’s misery, reflected Jack grimly, provided a useful object lesson in why a man should not allow his parents to choose a bride for him. The Duke of Arnsford was probably the least well-equipped man in England to be cooped up willy-nilly with a set of elegant and powerful females. His intellect was even weaker than his eyes, and in every respect that mattered—personal appearance, manner, education, strength of will, and authority—he was dramatically inferior to his wife. As a result, he had lived under the cat’s foot from the day of his wedding forward.

  Jack was the third person to plead fatigue and make an early escape from the drawing room. He took a candle, although the route was so familiar to him he could make his way blindfolded if need be. Still, it was a good thing he had a little light; a flash of pale fur against the dark wood of the wainscoting in the passage alerted him to Manegold’s presence before the cat succeeded in tripping him.

  “Manegold, old friend!” said Jack fondly, as the animal wound himself adoringly around his ankles. “How’ve you been, chappie, eh? How’ve you been, then?” He reached down, balancing the candle carefully in his other hand, and thumped the enormous kitty’s ribs as if it were a dog. Manegold chirped joyously at this rough treatment and collapsed on the carpet, showing Jack his belly invitingly. Jack laughed. “No, I’m not going to stop in this deuced cold corridor. Come on, mate. Let’s go and see whether young Will managed to stay awake.”

  The cat trotted at his heels as Jack proceeded to his rooms. They found Will manfully waiting up for his new master, although his eyelids seemed rather heavy. He assisted Lord Lynden out of his outlandish garb and into his night gear while Manegold bathed before the fire. As soon as Will had finished his duties and stumbled off to bed, Jack picked up the enormous cat, who immediately went limp in Jack’s hands.

  “Oof! Here’s one member of the family who hasn’t lost any weight,” remarked Jack. He settled into a deep-bottomed chair before the fire and settled the cat comfortably in his lap. Manegold began to purr.

  “I’ve missed you, old chum,” said Jack. “I wish I could keep you in London with me, but it’d be a cruelty to take you there.” He scratched Manegold’s ears. The cat surrendered to bliss and began kneading Jack’s thigh with his huge paws. Jack automatically stuffed a fold of his dressing gown beneath the cat’s front feet, cushioning his skin from the rhythmic appearance of Manegold’s claw tips. “Easy, mate! You don’t know your own strength.”

  Manegold tilted up his face, eyes almost closed, and fixed an unfocused gaze on Jack, his purr rumbling loudly. Jack chuckled. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said. “Are you ready to settle in for the night, then? Eh?”

  A faint whistle sounded out in the hall. Jack looked up, surprised, and Manegold’s purr stopped as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown in the animal’s brain. He was suddenly the picture of eagerness. He leaped lightly down off Jack’s lap and trotted to the closed door where he sat, tail twitching, and stared earnestly at the door handle.

  “What is it?” asked Jack.

  Manegold patted the door with one paw, then looked back over his shoulder at Jack.

  “You want me to let you out?”

  The whistle sounded again, faint and sweet. “Row,” said Manegold plaintively.

  Mystified, Jack crossed to the door and opened it. The cat was through it in a flash, disappearing into the darkness down the hallway. Jack stepped out to follow his pet with his eyes, and saw a bar of light far down the passage where someone’s door was partially open. He could not think whose door that was for a moment; no member of the family was placed so far down the passage. He had just realized whose door it must be when Manegold appeared in the light, tail high in greeting, head tilted back on his neck to gaze ecstatically at the face of the person opening her door to him.

  A small, barefooted figure in a white nightgown slipped partially into view. The murmuring of high-pitched, inarticulate blandishments reached Jack’s ear. Manegold stamped his feet in a blissful dance of love, pressing his furry body against Celia’s slim legs, tail quivering with joy. Her low laughter sounded then, musical and warm with affection. The sound of it made Jack catch his breath. He saw the tableau only for a moment—his cat, apparently in love with Another, which gave him an odd feeling of loss—and his cousin Celia, unaware that she was being watched, her unconscious sweetness giving him an odd feeling of discovery. Then they were both gone, slipping into Celia’s room, and the bar of light disappeared as the door closed behind them.

  Jack let his breath go. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he told the empty hallway. He didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. Manegold’s defection was bad enough, but to lose one’s pet to the charms of a mercenary was worse.

  “I always thought you a good judge of character, my furry friend,” he murmured to the absent cat. “But I’m afraid you’re mistaken, this time. Only the most determined of fortune-hunters would have put up with the treatment I dished out tonight.”

  Still, he reflected as he closed the door, he could see the attraction. There was something about Celia that made one forget why she was there, and whose game she was playing. Several times during the course of the evening he’d been lulled, himself, into liking her. It was difficult to bear in mind, somehow, that she was scheming with his mother to trap him into marriage. Her eyes were so direct, her expression so sweet, her whole person so soft and unassuming …why, a man just couldn’t believe that a girl like that would marry for any reason but love.

  The picture of her in her nightrail, so fleetingly glimpsed, returned to tantalize him. Her bare feet had looked so small and white and—defenseless.

  Defenseless! What the devil did he mean by that? He gave himself a mental shake, disgusted by his own gullibility. Yes, little cousin Celia was dangerous. He could hardly blame his infatuated cat. He was rather fascinated with her himself.

  Chapter 7

  Jack had just blown out the candle when a soft tap sounded on his door. “Yes? What is it?” he called.

  The door did not open, but a voice he recognized as Hubbard’s replied, sounding muffled and apologetic. “Beg pardon, milord, but have you gone to bed?”

  He had, of course, but immediately threw back the comforter and picked up his dressing gown. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he told her, hastily making himself decent.

  His first thought was that something was wrong with Mother, but of course that was nonsensical. Nothing was ever wrong with Mother, and if it were, a physician, not her son, would be called to her bedside. Noticing her weight loss had made him fanciful. He supposed, in reality, her loss of weight was probably deliberate. Most of Mother’s actions were. She had doubtless decided she was growing plump, and had rectified the situation with her usual ruthless efficiency.

  When he opened the door, he found Hubbard standing there, lamp in hand, her strange features making her look like a gargoyle lit from below.

  “What is it? Is Mother all right?”

  A surprised expression flitted across her homely face. Jack had the oddest sensation that Hubbard, of all people, longed to confide in him. She did not, however, but merely said, “She’d like to speak with you, sir, if you have the time.”

  He grinned ruefully. “You’re very polite! That’s not Mother’s wording, is it?” Hubbard looked a little embarrassed at this, so he took pity on her. “Never mind,” he assured her. “I’ve all the time in the world.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Hubbard in her usual gruff monotone. She lit the way for him back to his Mother’s sitting room, announced him, then vanished into the adjacent dressing room.

  The duchess was seated before the fire in her dressing gown and cap, a shawl draped round her shoulders and a most fierce expression on her face. It made her look ol
der, somehow, and frail. When her eyes fell upon her son, she bent upon him the glare that had always reduced him to abject groveling when he was a child. It no longer struck terror into his heart, but it did make him feel a bit chastened.

  Well, he hadn’t supposed she’d called him in for a comfortable little gossip. He strolled forward with an inward sigh and dropped a quick kiss on her unresponsive cheek before the scold began.

  “Hallo, Mother,” he said cheerfully. “Looking forward to Christmas?”

  Her forbidding expression did not alter. “I have not called you in here at this hour to discuss Christmas,” she informed him icily.

  “No? Well, frankly, I didn’t suppose you had,” he admitted. “I thought you went to bed hours ago.”

  Her eyes flashed balefully. “I am fatigued, but not so fatigued that I could sleep peacefully while you prepare to humiliate us all. Really, John, I am so displeased with you, on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin! What was that disgraceful outfit you were wearing called? Or had it a name?”

  He blinked. By George, he had forgotten all about that. But then, he was the only one who hadn’t had to look at himself all night. “Do you mean my dinner ensemble? I could see you didn’t like it, but as for humiliating the family—no, no, that’s going too far!”

  She shuddered, and pulled her shawl a little closer round her shoulders. “I can scarcely credit the monstrosities that pass for fashion nowadays,” she complained. “I suppose you will tell me it is de rigueur in London to come to dinner dressed all by guess, but I will tell you, John, that it is not the fashion at Delacourt! While I am mistress under this roof, you will dress with sobriety and decorum, or by heaven, you will eat from a tray in your room.”

  Jack looked thoughtful. Here was something he hadn’t bargained for. He wondered if it might thrust a spoke in Celia’s wheel if he vanished at mealtimes. After all, that would be the only portion of the day when he could not avoid her. Delacourt was so enormous, it would be child’s play to make himself scarce the rest of the time.