by Mary Balogh
They were all chilled by the time they gathered about the fire, built and kept bright and hot by a couple of the gardeners. It was the part of the morning everyone always enjoyed most. The greenery was piled in a great circle behind them, ready to be hauled back to the house, while they all basked in the glorious warmth of the fire and the blessed heat of the chocolate in their mouths and stomachs. They always tended to stand in family groups about the fire. The earl came to stand by his wife, bringing their son with him. Inevitably, Uncle Horace began the carol singing—because someone had to do the dirty job of being leader, as he always said—and they all joined in with varying degrees of musicality.
Jane gazed big-eyed into the fire and held her cup with both hands. Jeffrey was happy and excited and looked about at all the playmates who were already making this the best Christmas ever for him. Antonia felt a pang at the realization. She had tried so hard to be everything to her children. But when all was said and done, she could be only a mother.
Jane had wandered away, she realized when the fire was beginning to die down and the chocolate had all been drunk and the trek back to the house was about to begin. And John had moved from her side. She turned in sudden anxiety. There were so many trees among which to get lost.
But the child had not gone far. She was standing beside a pile of holly, gazing down at one white woolen glove and at the red stain on one forefinger. Her lower lip was wobbling. John was in the process of going down on one knee in the snow and taking the little hand in his. He eased off the glove. Antonia stood where she was, unconsciously holding her breath.
“Wicked holly,” he said. “It loves to do that” He reached into a pocket of his greatcoat and came out with a large white handkerchief. He dabbed it gently at the little bead of blood on the tiny forefinger while Jane looked up into his face, her lip still trembling. It took a great deal to make Jane actually cry.
“Kiss it better,” she said.
Antonia closed her eyes and bit her lip. When she looked again, he was holding the finger against his lips.
“It will stop bleeding in no time at all,” he said. “We will just wrap the handkerchief about the finger like this and then about the hand. By the time you get back to the house it will be all better. The kiss will have done the trick.”
Jane gazed into his face.
“You are cold,” he said, holding her bandaged hand between both of his. He looked at her rosy cheeks and red nose.
Antonia took one step forward, but then she stopped again. He was unbuttoning his greatcoat. Before she fully realized why, he had opened it up, drawn the child against his chest, wrapped the heavy folds of the coat about her, and stood up with her. His eyes met his wife’s, hard and bleak.
“I suppose there are enough people here to carry the loads,” he said. “She is chilled.” And he strode off through the trees, Antonia beside him, while the others made a great noisy to-do about scooping up the greenery.
Antonia felt very much like crying. He was holding Jane. He had her cradled against him, warm against his chest and beneath the bulk of his greatcoat. Because she was cold and tired and because she had pricked a finger. She fought her tears. How foolish he would think her. How foolish she was. In three years he had shown the child no kindness at all.
Jane was sleeping by the time they arrived back at the house. Antonia held out her arms to take her when they were inside the hall.
“No,” he said. “Where is her bedchamber?”
“Jeffrey’s,” she said. “They are in the same room. They are strangers here and far from me. They need to be able to see each other and talk to each other.”
“You do not need to justify yourself to me,” he said and turned to lead the way to the stairs.
No, she had never been able to do so anyway. He had always believed what he wanted to believe of her. She was sorry she had felt the necessity of explaining.
He set the child gently down on her bed while Antonia eased off her boots and then set her doll on the pillow beside her. She had expected him to stride from the room as soon as he had set down his burden, but she was aware of him standing quietly behind her as she folded a quilt over her sleeping daughter.
“She is a beautiful child, Antonia,” he said.
The tears came then, much as she despised them, and she bit hard on her upper lip. She could say nothing. He had left the room before it became necessary to turn to face him.
The two sleighs had been prepared and hitched to horses. They had been in constant use all afternoon while at the same time the hall and staircase, the dining room and the drawing room were being transformed into a Christmas wonderland with greenery and bells and silk bows and kissing boughs. Suddenly there were all the sights and smells of Christmas, the distinctive smell of the pine boughs vying with the aroma of puddings and mince pies escaping upward from the kitchen.
And finally dusk came and then darkness. The children, who had been loose in the house and the outdoors all day, were herded back to the nursery after tea, where there would be games and supper before bedtime. None of the children were ever reluctant to go to bed on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow there would be church followed by the presents. The children all knew that going to bed and to sleep was the fastest way of bringing on that supreme moment of the year.
The Earl of Wycherly had had a busy day, with no time at all for relaxation. During the afternoon he had supervised and helped with the decorating, slipped away to the town five miles away and back again all within two hours, and played some energetic games with the children just before tea. It was time he took a short while just for himself. He wandered down to the hall, where his head groom had been organizing the sleigh rides all afternoon and ensuring that the horses were changed frequently. The earl had a word with him and went to find his wife in the drawing room, where she was being entertained to one of Great-Aunt Edith’s interminable monologues. He waited politely for her to stop to draw breath.
“I will take you for a sleigh ride, Antonia,” he said. “One of the sleighs should be back within ten minutes. Wear something warm.”
It was hard not to be abrupt with her. He felt as if he had been on stage all day. He had been fully aware of the avidly curious glances of his family and friends. Perhaps he should have asked her to ride with him, he thought, instead of telling her. He was glad there was no wassail bowl within easy reach. But she got up quietly enough after looking at him in open surprise, and left the room.
He had been coming to a decision all day. He had no idea if it was the right one. He did not know if he would feel the same way tomorrow or the day after. Christmas had a damnable way of distorting one’s vision and making the impossible seem altogether possible. Perhaps he should wait out the week. He had told her, after all, that he would send her back to Lanting House on the day after New Year’s Day. It was even longer than a week.
She was waiting for him in the hall when he went down again. She was wearing the green, fur-trimmed cloak she had worn the night before, with brown half boots and leather gloves. He looked deliberately to see if she carried a muff, but she did not. A muff would have made the sleigh ride cozier for her.
“The sleigh is waiting, my lord,” his groom said with a bow.
The snow had stopped falling hours before though the temperature was low enough to prevent it from melting. The air was still. The sky was bright with starlight. It was a perfect evening for sleighing. Far more magical than the afternoon.
They sat side by side in the sleigh after he had handed her in and covered her legs with a warm rug, listening to the muted thuds of the horses’ hooves on the snow, the metallic squeak of the sleigh’s runners, the jingling of the harness bells. Neither of them spoke for a long time. He could remember bringing her out like this the year of their betrothal. He had stopped the sleigh beside the lake in order to kiss her. He could remember slipping his hand beneath her cloak after first removing his glove, and cupping her breast through the wool of her dress and rubbing his thumb over her
hardening nipple. He could remember fighting for decency and control. He could remember realizing that she did not fully understand the danger. He had felt very protective of her.
God, he had loved her.
“John?” She broke the silence at last. Her voice was tense and breathless.
“Yes?” He turned his head to look at her. She was staring straight ahead, her chin lifted, her hands twisting in her lap.
“I have been a good mother,” she said. “I spend time with them, I listen to them, I make sure that they learn manners and morals and that Jeffrey learns his lessons. I make sure that when necessary they are disciplined. I tell Jeffrey about his father and about this place and about the life he will live and the duties that will face him when he grows up. I take them to church. I—I have been a good mother. I have tried.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said. “You were a devoted mother to Jeffrey when he was very young.”
“I know he cannot stay with me forever,” she said. “I know that more is demanded of his education as a gentleman and as your son than I can provide. But he is only six.”
“He is no longer a baby,” he said.
Her voice was shaking almost beyond control when she spoke next. “Just two or three years,” she said. “Even one. He can come to you now and then for a few days. Perhaps more often than he has done in the past. But let him come home with me. Please. I—Please.”
“He will not be leaving here,” he said quietly.
She was very still. He saw when he glanced at her that her eyes were closed. “How can you be so cruel?” she said as quietly as he had spoken. “How could I have been so deceived in you? I thought you were not only my husband and my lover. I thought you were my dearest friend. You took from me all my happiness and all my dreams. Will you now take my son too?”
“It seems to me, ma’am,” he said, and he could hear the deadly chill of his own voice, “that you dashed your fair share of dreams—most of them mine. You have a devastating way of effecting revenge.”
She did not retaliate. They moved on in silence for a while, the beauty of the scenery on the far side of the lake lost on them, the gaiety of the bells mocking their dark, bruised thoughts. No, he thought at last, he would not wait another week. He did not believe he would change his mind. Everything had changed since last night, when his heart had leaped with gladness at the sight of his son and then he had seen her too. Nothing could change back again.
“You will be staying here too,” he said abruptly. “My son needs both a mother and a father. And we have established that you are a good mother. You have also pointed out that he is still young. You will remain here. I shall send to Lanting House to have your possessions brought.”
For a long time she was silent. “And Jane?” she whispered at last.
Did she think him a total monster? He felt thoroughly irritated. Now that the words were out, he was not at all sure that he was doing the rational thing. How could they live together in the same house? How could he look at her day after day, picturing another man . . .
“Your daughter will stay here too, of course,” he said. “She has my name. She always has been under my protection, has she not?”
“Why have you never believed me?” she whispered. “John—”
But they had returned to the house, and his youngest cousin was out on the terrace with the young lady on whom he had fixed his interest this year, the daughter of one of the earl’s older friends. They were both laughing and stamping their feet and impatiently awaiting their turn in the sleigh. Parents were always remarkably indulgent about chaperonage at Christmastime, the earl thought as he jumped down into the snow and reached up his arms to lift his wife down. Anything could happen despite the half-hour limit his rules imposed for each ride and despite the coldness of the night. Everything had almost happened between him and Antonia, after all, during that long ago year of their innocence.
The cousin and his young lady drove off into the darkness, their shoulders touching.
“Well?” The earl turned back to his wife and paused with her on the lowest step before going inside. “Does it please you that you will be staying here? Or would you prefer that I send you back to Lanting?”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked.
He had not given her a choice three and a half years ago. “Yes,” he said.
She looked steadily at him for several seconds. “My daughter and I will stay here with her brother and my son,” she said at last and turned to climb the steps alone.
He stood looking after her. He felt rather as if she had thrown spiced wine in his face again.
She had scarcely slept at all the night before. For the two nights before that she had been on the road. Inn beds were never conducive to sleep. And for many nights before that she had slept fitfully, terrified by her decision to go with Jeffrey to Wycherly.
She stood at her bedroom window for all of half an hour after coming to bed, looking at the bright sky. The Christmas sky. She could not decide whether it felt like Christmas or not. Certainly there was limitless joy in the knowledge that after all she was not to be separated from her son, that her children were not to be separated from each other. But somehow there was the same loneliness that had made bleak memories of the past three Christmases. Loneliness amid the crowds.
But she was too weary to be kept awake by loneliness or anything else. She lay down and was fast asleep within minutes.
His mouth was warm and gentle on hers with the faint taste of wine. She loved his gentle kisses. But then she loved his passionate kisses too. She sighed with contentment.
“Antonia,” he was saying. He had never called her Tony, as her parents had always done and almost everyone else who was on a first-name basis with her. He would never call her Tony, he had told her once. He loved her full name better. It was beautiful and feminine. “Antonia.”
“Mm,” she said. She wanted his mouth back on hers. And she was aware, as she so often was when he kissed her and caressed her and spoke soft words of love, that she dreamed. She willed the dream to go on. She fought not to wake up and not to fall more deeply asleep. In her dreams he never went beyond kisses and mild caresses. She wished dreams could be shaped into the form one wished them to take.
“Antonia,” he said, his breath warm and wine-scented. “Don’t say no.” He kissed her with the same light gentleness. “Don’t say no.”
He was sitting on the side of her bed, wearing a white nightshirt. He was leaning over her, his hands on either side of her pillow. She was not—she tested the thought warily—she was not dreaming.
“Don’t say no,” he said again.
Would he go away if she did? She had never said no to him until that dreadful night after all the terrible bitterness had started. He had gone away then. He had never come back. Yes, the choice was hers just as the choice of staying or going back to Lanting House had been hers.
“Let me come into your bed,” he said.
She watched her hand reach up in the semidarkness to touch one of his dark curls. Perhaps she was not awake after all. Perhaps she could pretend she was still asleep, still dreaming. All responsibility for what happened would be taken away from her if she could convince herself. She wanted him. Deep in her womb she could feel the throbbing she had had to fight over and over again during the past three years and longer. But she was awake.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He pulled his nightshirt off over his head before drawing back the bedclothes and lying down beside her. He had always slept naked with her, even the very first time. She had been shocked and frightened, and her reaction to what he had proceeded to do to her had been violent and uncontrolled and wonderful beyond imagining.
She had forgotten so much, she thought, shocked again now as his hands and his mouth went to work on her. Oh no, she had not forgotten exactly. With her mind she had remembered. She had relived his lovemaking more times than she cared to admit during the lonely years. She had remembered clearly w
hat he did. But she had forgotten quite how it felt. She had forgotten the stark carnality of it—the feel of him, the taste of him, the smell of him, the sounds of his breathing and her own.
He worked on her with skilled patience until her body was humming with desire, until she was taut and wet with need, until her breath came in gasps. She did not even notice the moment at which she finally lost her nightgown and was flesh to flesh with him. She throbbed for him with deep pulsings of anticipation. Not with emptiness, as she had throbbed so often over the past years, but with the knowledge that soon she would be filled.
He was coming over her, lowering his weight onto her, pressing her legs wide with his own. His hands slid beneath her to hold her steady. But she struggled to clear her mind, and set her hands against his already damp chest. He paused and looked down into her eyes.
“I will not share you,” she said, gasping to control her breathing. “I will not share you.”
“And I,” he said, “will not share you. Not ever again. This is mine for the rest of our lives. And this is yours.” He penetrated her body with one deep, hard thrust while they still looked into each other’s eyes.
Ah, she had forgotten the sheer physicalness of it. And yet it was achingly familiar.
He held deep in her while he slid his hands from beneath her and found her own hands. He twined his fingers with hers, palm to palm, and stretched her arms wide on either side of her head. She lay spread-eagled beneath him, helpless against the pleasure he began to give and take. Slowly as he had always conducted their foreplay, he had always taken even longer over the union of their bodies. He did so now, pumping firmly and deeply into her with a steady rhythm that suggested strength and control and an infinite power to prolong pleasure and take it to its utmost limits.
She reached the heights before he did, clenching tightly and convulsively about him with inner muscles, tautening in every muscle in her body until the final stabbing of erotic pain sent her shattering downward toward formless, mindless relaxation. She felt him thrusting against her pain, against her fall, until that most exquisite moment of all, when she felt the heat burst at her core and all his relaxed weight bore down on her.