by Mary Balogh
They were both in the main room of the nursery, she discovered a short time later, with a whole horde of other, incredibly noisy children. Antonia looked at them all and recognized a few, but not many. Children could change beyond all recognition in three and a half years. Two little boys were talking to a wary-looking Jeffrey. Jane was standing close to her brother, half hidden by him, her doll clasped in one arm.
“My Christopher, and Penelope and George’s Wilfred,” a voice said from beside Antonia and she turned, startled, to look at the lady who had approached her unseen and was nodding in the direction of the two children with Jeffrey.
“Margot,” she said to Lady Sugden, her husband’s sister, “how are you?”
“The better for seeing you here this year with the children,” her sister-in-law said, taking her arm. “I do not know what happened, Tony. John’s lips have been very tightly buttoned, but Vernon and I—indeed the whole family—were more shocked that I can possibly say. If you two of all people could break up, what hope was there for anyone’s marriage, we all thought. But you are back. Jeffrey has grown from babyhood to boyhood and is going to be every bit as good-looking as John. Jane is just adorable—those eyes and those curls!”
Antonia smiled uncertainly. John had said nothing? No one—not even his sister—knew why their marriage had fallen apart? Somehow she had imagined that she would be a pariah here. She had imagined that he would have severely blackened her name. But of course, pride would have kept him from doing that. No man would openly admit to being a cuckold. No man would want to admit to having acknowledged in name, if nothing else, the bastard child his wife had borne. She had John’s pride to thank for the fact that her daughter was Lady Jane Beattie. And that everyone believed she had every right to that name—except for John Beattie, Earl of Wyndham, of course.
“Come,” Margot said, “and introduce me to your children. I will reintroduce you to mine. Doubtless they will all look very different to you. You have grown your hair, Tony. How long is it when it is down?”
Antonia spent half an hour in the nursery, though very little of it was with her children. The temptation was to snatch them away, to be private with them, to enjoy every moment with them that was left—but that was a thought she did not care to pursue. She realized, though, the necessity of leaving them alone to make the acquaintance of their cousins and of the other children. They had enough of solitude at Lanting House. Jane was going to be unbearably lonely . . .
After half an hour Margot bore her off downstairs to breakfast. It was something Antonia would have preferred not to do. But it had been her choice to come to Wycherly. Having done so, it would be foolish to cower in her rooms or in the nursery. He had said last night that in public he would accord her the deference due his countess. Besides, if Margot was to be believed, no one knew the truth behind their estrangement—or the perceived truth. Despite the opening scene last evening, to which Margot had tactfully made no reference, perhaps everyone would believe that she had been invited. Perhaps she would not be snubbed.
She overcame her dismay at finding the breakfast room full of people by concentrating on the relief of finding that he at least was not present. She looked about the table and smiled.
Miss Matthews was in the nursery, talking with the nurse the earl had hired for Christmas to help the others who would come with the various children. Jeffrey was in one corner with Margot’s Christopher and a few other children. They were playing with a spinning top, he could see. He summoned the governess to him with a lift of his eyebrows. She came hurrying toward him and curtsied.
“You will show me which is my son’s bedchamber,” he said to her, “and then send him to me there, if you please.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “This way.”
He might have guessed, of course, that the room that had been his as a child was now his son’s.
“Miss Matthews,” he said, before the governess returned to the nursery, “the children at Wycherly need very little supervision over the holiday. They entertain one another and there are always parents and other relatives to keep an eye on them. Be sure to enjoy the holiday yourself belowstairs.”
“Thank you, my lord,” She made him another curtsy and looked openly surprised. Doubtless Antonia had prepared her to meet an ogre.
He was being selfish, he realized. Jeffrey was playing with other children. He was just getting to know them. He should have been left to continue doing so. But soon it would be time to go out to gather the Christmas greenery and although the rest of the day would be full of activities to involve the children as well as the adults, there would be precious little chance for private moments. He yearned to be alone with his son.
The boy came a minute or so later. He was a small child, slender, good-looking. His eyes were very blue, his hair dark. There was no mistaking his paternity at least. He had lost some of his baby looks since the last time. He came to stand before the chair on which the earl had seated himself. He stood quietly and he looked steadily into his father’s eyes. But he was afraid. The earl pushed aside annoyance. His annoyance was not for the boy anyway.
“Jeffrey,” he said, “did you sleep well?”
“Yes, thank you, sir,” his son replied.
Sir. It was difficult not to be formal. It was difficult not to feel awkward and tongue-tied. He leaned forward and set a hand lightly on the boy’s head. “Jeffrey,” he said, “how are you, my son?” But even that would not do. He picked the boy up and set him on one of his knees.
“Well, thank you, sir,” his son said, sitting stiffly there, his eyes downcast.
“Has your mother instructed you to call me sir?” he asked.
“N-no,” Jeffrey said. “Mama always calls you Papa.”
Papa? Always? Did she talk about him sometimes, then? He felt a strange ache in his throat.
“That is who I am,” he said. “Papa. You are my son, my little boy, and I love you. As your mother—as Mama loves you. Tell me about yourself. Do you read and write?”
He was hungry—hungrier than he had realized—to know his son, to know all the small, unimportant details of his life that he would have known intimately if the boy had always lived with him. He ached with unspent love.
His son answered all his questions. He even began to relax after a few minutes and sometimes raised his head to look into his father’s face. This was Christmas, the earl thought. Just this. This was the gift of all gifts, this son given at Christmas. Or taken at Christmas. He had tried to take the boy from his mother. He felt that ache again.
And then he became aware that the door was opening slowly. He raised his head and watched a small child enter, one he did not know. A tiny little girl in a pretty green dress and white pinafore. A little girl with hazel eyes far too large for her face and a halo of auburn curls about her head. She was clutching an old doll in one arm.
His stomach felt as if it dropped several inches before doing a complete somersault and settling painfully into place again. He wanted to tell the child to go away. He wanted to tell her to go back to the nursery to the other children. Instead he watched her cross the room to stand a foot from his knees. She had watched Jeffrey the whole time, but when she stopped, she changed the direction of her gaze.
Oh God! There seemed not enough air in the room.
His son was looking at him, his eyes somewhat troubled. “Jane, Papa,” he said.
Yes. Oh God. She looked very like Antonia except for the curls. “Yes,” he said. He closed his eyes briefly, but he could still feel the child’s gaze. And he realized something in a flash. She was a child. A real child. He had always absurdly thought of her as a thing—a child, it. She was a child, a little innocent, in no way to blame for the ugliness that had given her existence.
“Come,” he said, reaching out the arm that was not about his son. He hoped desperately that she would be frightened away, that she would go scurrying back to the nursery. He had not wanted to see her. He did not want to know of her existenc
e.
She took the extra few steps forward and climbed onto his unoccupied knee. She sat there very upright and turned her head to gaze into his face. She weighed nothing at all, he thought. She was like a little piece of air—of fragrant air. She smelled of the same soap as Antonia used.
“That is a pretty doll,” he said, noticing the chipped paint of the doll’s hair and the crack across its face, cutting directly through one of its staring eyes.
“Pamela,” a sweet and tiny voice told him. She had not shifted her gaze from his face.
“That is her name?” he said. “Pamela is a pretty doll.”
But he did not want to talk to her. He did not want her there. He did not want those big eyes gazing into his face. He returned his attention to his son and continued asking questions about his life. How did he best like to spend his time? Did he like the outdoors better than the indoors? Did he have friends? What made him laugh? What made him cry? No, he assured his son, it was not unmanly to cry if the occasion warranted tears.
He held the other child and tried to pretend that she was not there. But he was relieved when she looked down at last in order to lay her doll very carefully across her knees.
“Sh,” she whispered. “Go sleep.”
And then her face turned in toward his chest, and a quick glance showed him only the shining curls on top of her head. Her hands were working at the long row of buttons down the front of his embroidered waistcoat, opening them laboriously one at a time. He ignored her and went on talking to his son. She opened every single button and then started to do them up again with just as deep a concentration. She was halfway through the task when the door opened again, rather more hurriedly this time.
His wife stopped short. Her eyes closed and her mouth opened before she lifted both hands and pressed them to it.
The child wriggled off his lap and crossed the room to her mother. She lifted both arms, her doll clutched in one hand. Antonia swept her up and held her close, her cheek pressing against those shining curls. She closed her eyes again for a moment.
“Mama,” Jeffrey said, “I have been telling Papa about how we go on picnics in the summer. And I met Christopher and Wilfred and Simon this morning and they let me play. They let Jane play too, but I had to spin the top for her. You should see all the colors when it spins. Simon is having soldiers for Christmas. We are going to play with them tomorrow.”
Her eyes were on his half-buttoned waistcoat. His eyes were noticing that she really was slimmer. Thinner, paler, though just as beautiful. Madonna and child, he thought—a thoroughly irreverent thought under the circumstances.
“And today,” he said, lifting Jeffrey off his knee and standing up, “there is work to be done. Lots of it, and we need every available hand, from the smallest to the largest. There is holly to be gathered and ivy and mistletoe and pine boughs. There is a house to be decked out for Christmas. And there is snow outside to be waded in and rolled in, snow to be thrown at the unwary and to be built into snowmen. If we do not hurry, we will be left behind and will miss all the fun.”
He felt happy suddenly, for no reason he could fathom. He grabbed his son impulsively and swung him up to toss him toward the ceiling. For the first time he heard the boy laugh. He laughed with him. He tossed him once more.
“And Jane too,” his son cried excitedly. “Jane too, Papa.”
The child had turned in Antonia’s arms and was watching, big-eyed. She reached out her arms now. His wife frowned and turned hurriedly toward the door, but he stepped forward and took the child from her. She was an innocent baby. He tossed her upward, not as high as he had thrown Jeffrey. She looked frightened and clung to his neck when she had come down again.
“More,” she whispered in his ear.
The second time she giggled. A sweet sound of innocence and happiness and trust. He handed her to Antonia.
“Get them ready,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes. “Everyone will be meeting down in the hall within the next half hour or so.”
He left the room without another word and hurried in the direction of his own apartments. Them, he had said. Get them ready. Well, she was only a baby. Why should she be punished for her mother’s sins?
Madonna and child. He thought unwillingly of a man who during this season they were celebrating had accepted a child who was not of his own seed. A man named Joseph. But the comparison seemed hardly appropriate.
Everyone appeared to have forgotten the task at hand. They had stepped outside, a footman told Antonia with an almost exaggeratedly deferential bow when she went downstairs with the children. She was afraid they had been left behind and would not know what direction the others had taken. For herself and for Jane she would not have minded. But Jeffrey would have been disappointed.
However, there was nothing to fear. There were masses of people both visible and audible as soon as the doors were opened. A group of young people, shrieking and laughing, were hurling snowballs at one another. A few small children, helped by mothers and one father, were building a snowman. A group of little girls was making angels in the snow. Most of the boys, several of the men, and a few of the bolder girls were making a long slide down the path that sloped to the sunken garden. Other men and a group of women watched and laughed and called encouragement.
John was among them, looking tall and distinguished in his many-caped greatcoat and his beaver hat and topboots. But his attention obviously was on the door. He came striding toward them as soon as they appeared on the steps. He was looking tense again and rather morose. She was glad of it. She had been shaken by the sight of him this morning, looking relaxed and paternal with both Jeffrey and Jane on his knees—Jane had been opening the buttons of his waistcoat. She had been even more disturbed by the sight and sound of his laughter as he had tossed Jeffrey toward the ceiling. He had looked younger. He had looked like—like the man she had once loved.
“We will be going to the lake soon,” he said, his eyes sweeping over her but not quite meeting her own. “We will find all we need there for decorating the house. There will be a bonfire after we have finished and chocolate to drink.”
As usual. Everything was traditional about Christmas at Wycherly. The young people in particular enjoyed the search for greenery among the trees surrounding the lake. There were any number of chances for a brief tête-à-tête, and good excuses for a little more if mistletoe had been found. She could remember John kissing her hotly against the trunk of a tree one year, his hand holding a sprig of mistletoe above their heads. The year of their betrothal.
I want you, he had whispered against her lips, shocking and thrilling her. God, I want you.
“That will be pleasant,” she said now.
“But first the children have to be allowed to play,” he said. “The children of all ages, that is. Come and slide, Jeffrey.” He held out a hand for his son’s. He did not glance at Jane.
She watched them for a while, zooming dangerously down the path made slick with hard-packed snow. The men were enjoying themselves as much as the children and fell just as often. Jeffrey was soon one of the group. She had worried about him. He was a quiet, somewhat timid child. She had hoped he would mingle well with his cousins. He appeared to be doing so. He needed a man’s influence in his life. She had known that. He needed a father. And now he had a father and would be without a mother’s influence. She shivered.
But she was being hailed by Margot and Penelope and took Jane to see the snowman and to make a tiny snow angel. Margot taught her how.
“Oh, what a darling you are,” she said after dusting Jane off and catching her up in a close hug. “And how fortunate your mama and papa are to have a little girl. All I have is four boys. Four!” She pulled a face so that Jane chuckled and Antonia smiled.
But the smile faded quickly. John was standing just behind her shoulder.
“It is time to work,” he said, raising his voice. “We are going to the lake.”
There was a loud groan followed by laughter as
the snowman’s head rolled off its shoulders and landed with a thud in the snow.
“Take my arm, my lady,” he said, looking stony-faced at Antonia. She knew he had heard what Margot had just said. She knew too that he was doing what he had promised to do—he was treating her with the courtesy due his countess for all to see. “Jeffrey is with the other boys. It is where he belongs.”
She took his arm and reached down her free hand for Jane’s. She smiled at her. They walked in silence, surrounded by noise and laughter and darting children. Forever had lasted such a short time, she thought.
I love you, he had said against her mouth on their wedding night, after he had finished consummating their marriage. I love you so much it hurts. I am going to love you forever. Be warned. He had laughed softly. Forever and ever, amen.
Forever had lasted for four years. Then he had started amusing himself with whores.
They separated at the lake. He took Jeffrey and Margot’s eldest, a lanky lad of sixteen, and several other smaller boys and girls in search of mistletoe while she went trudging off with Jane and Vernon and George and several others to gather holly. It was not a disciplined work party. Several times snowball fights broke out and Vernon had to whistle everyone back to business. George, plumper and ruddier of complexion than he had been three years before, spotted an auburn curl peeping out from beneath Jane’s hood and threatened to cut if off to wear on his fob chain. He came toward her with his gloved fingers working like scissors and Jane hid behind her mother, giggling. George laughed heartily.
“She is fortunate enough to have her mother’s coloring, but those are her father’s curls right enough,” he said.
None of them knew why the marriage had broken up. John really had kept his mouth shut. George was one of his favorite cousins, the brother he had never had.
“It is good to see you back home, Tony,” George said, smiling kindly before turning and bellowing in feigned wrath at a small group of lads and girls who were slacking off.