“Who is Mrs. Fortesque?” Delilah asked Beryl.
“The cook.” Beryl reached for a piece of molded gingerbread. “I might well wish to hire her myself.”
“He said it wouldn’t be fair, as my resources were so much more extensive than his, and therefore we should agree to offer her the same wages.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Why wouldn’t he want me to know he had money?”
“Perhaps he thought as it made a difference then . . .” Beryl said cautiously.
“Don’t be absurd.” Camille scoffed. “It made no difference then.”
“But did he know that?”
“Oh, there was a comment about how I would marry him if he had money, and how, as he didn’t, it didn’t matter. Something like that.” She shrugged. “But he should have known me better.” Aside from everything else, that was one part of this that had always angered her. “He should have trusted me.”
“He was a boy in love.” Mother shrugged. “They are even more stupid than men in love.”
“I couldn’t have married him, anyway.” She narrowed her eyes. “Not that he asked me.”
“The beast,” Beryl mumbled around a mouthful of gingerbread. She looked at Delilah. “This is exceptional.”
“Isn’t it?” Delilah nodded. “Try the scones.”
“Why not?” Mother said, then glanced at her youngest daughter. “The scones you say?” Delilah nodded.
Camille stared at her mother. “What do you mean, ‘why not?’ For one thing, he didn’t ask me. For another, I was to marry Harold the very next day. What was I supposed to do?”
Mother shrugged. “It would have been most distressing, but you could have called off your wedding.”
“I know I was rather shocked when I heard the story that you hadn’t done exactly that,” Delilah said, “given your penchant for impulse.”
“People call off weddings at the last possible moment all the time,” Mother added. “Ask Lord Stillwell.”
“And done what? Chase after a man who makes a grand announcement about love and then runs off?”
“Odder things have happened,” Mother said.
“You were expecting me to marry Harold!”
“Oh no, Camille.” Mother shook her head. “Do not place the blame at my feet. I encouraged you, but I never forced you to marry Harold. Nor did I force Beryl to marry Charles, or Delilah to marry Phillip. Admittedly, I was in favor of those matches, but I have never been able to make any of you do something you did not want to do. It is a shame all three of those charming gentlemen have passed on. . . .” She met Camille’s gaze firmly. “However, none of you were unhappy in your marriages. None of your husbands treated you unkindly. And all three of you now are in control of your own fortunes, your own fate—even Beryl, who was clever enough to make appropriate legal arrangements before marrying Lionel. You will never have to worry about how you will feed yourself and your children, should you have children. You will never have to be dependent upon the fickle whims of a husband who is more boy than man. You may thank Harold for that, and you may thank me as well. But I never forced you to do anything. Although, admittedly, on the day before your wedding, I did indeed expect you to marry Harold.” She nodded and reached for a scone.
Camille stared at her mother for a long moment. She had never really considered that while there had been expectations and encouragement, her mother had never told her what she could or could not do when it came to marriage. “No, I suppose you didn’t, really.”
“I was simply a practical woman,” Mother said with a shrug.
“You’ve grown out of it,” Beryl noted.
“I have earned that right.”
“He’s come back to throw it in my face, hasn’t he?” Camille said abruptly. “That’s it. That’s exactly what he’s done! He’s gone off. He’s made his fortune. Now he’s come back to throw it in my face.”
“I’ve never trusted him,” Beryl said.
“To what end, dear?” Mother studied her closely. “What would be the purpose?”
“Who knows?” She resumed pacing; thoughts raced through her head. “I have no idea, but then he’s a man, and who knows what goes through their minds?”
Delilah nodded. “There is that.”
“Revenge, perhaps?” Camille stopped and glared. “Do you know he claims I broke his heart?”
“When it was so clearly your heart that was broken.” Beryl nodded.
“Indeed, it was.”
“But, surely, it would wound a man deeply to think the woman he loves won’t marry him because he does not have enough money,” Delilah said.
“He should have known I was too stunned to make any sense whatsoever. He told me he loved me. Something I had longed to hear very nearly since we first met, but I had completely pushed it out of my head because I knew it wasn’t possible. Because I was expected to make a brilliant match.”
Mother sniffed. “I will not apologize for that.”
“Yes, and it scarcely matters now. The past is the past.” Camille waved away the comment. “It’s over and done with.”
“Darling, the past is never over and done with,” Mother said. “It’s always there lurking.”
“I suppose so.” Still, she had thought it was over and done with. Or perhaps she had simply hoped.
“Perhaps Grayson thinks you will fall into his arms now because he is a wealthy man?” Delilah suggested.
“Because I am nothing more than a fortune hunter from a family of fortune hunters?”
All three women stared in shocked silence.
“Come now, Camille,” Mother said coolly. “Fortune hunters rarely have money of their own, nor do they have a respectable lineage. We have both.”
“That’s when he does it, you know. When you fall into his arms.” Beryl nodded. “That’s when he will throw his wealth in your face.”
“Well, he has a long wait ahead of him!”
“Or perhaps he hasn’t mentioned his money because he doesn’t want it to interfere in your feelings one way or the other,” Delilah said.
“Good God!” Camille gasped. “Then this is a test!”
“Goodness, dear, I wouldn’t leap—”
“Of course it’s a test.” She thought for a moment. “To see whether or not I will love him enough to ignore the state of his finances.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s probably why he pushed his way into staying here as well. He wants to be my friend, he said. Lend me his assistance. He only wants me to be happy. Hah!” A thought struck her and she paused in midstep. “Perhaps I need to reconsider my decision about Nikolai. Why, I still haven’t kissed him. I should do that immediately.”
“Oh, and that would certainly serve Grayson right.” Beryl cast a reluctant look at her gingerbread, set it on her plate, then wiped her fingers. “I am all in favor of teaching Grayson a lesson he admittedly deserves, not just for this but for everything else as well. However, I don’t think marrying Nikolai is the way to go about it.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Besides, you haven’t told Grayson of your change of heart regarding Nikolai, have you?”
“No.” Camille shook her head.
“Then let him continue to believe that,” Beryl said.
Camille stared. “That’s not a plan. How does that teach him a lesson?”
“You don’t see?”
“Nor, I’m afraid, do I,” Mother said.
“Camille continues to allow Grayson to believe Nikolai is what she wants. It will drive him mad. Eventually, if what he wants is to win you over, he will tell you everything.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea.” Beryl shrugged. “But men tend to do that sort of thing when they are trying to declare how much they love you. They confess all their sins. Pity that they expect you to confess yours too. Admittedly, that can be awkward.” She grimaced. “At that point, he’ll confess that he has money and why he didn’t want you to know.”
“I would thin
k the very fact that he hasn’t thrown his success in your face is quite significant,” Mother said thoughtfully. “If that is his purpose, one does wonder what he is waiting for.”
“Why, he’s obviously waiting for me to tell him that I still love him.” She continued to pace. “That I’ve always loved him. Which is why mine was the heart that was broken.” She stopped and glared at her family. “The blasted man gave me hope and then snatched it away. For one moment, he held out to me everything I had ever wanted. Admittedly, I was too shocked or perhaps too stupid to grab on to it. But one would think if a man truly loves a woman, he wouldn’t make a grand announcement and then vanish. He would do everything in his power to win that woman!”
“Well, yes, one would think . . .”
“Whatever you do, do be careful,” Beryl said. “I would hate to see him hurt you again.”
“As would I,” Camille snapped.
“I saw him hurt you once, and I think that’s why I had been so unwilling to allow myself to fall in love. It very nearly ruined my life.”
“Good Lord, Beryl, what utter nonsense. My broken heart did not ruin your life.”
“I thought it sounded rather plausible.” Beryl picked up a morsel of biscuit and popped it into her mouth.
“This is not about you!” Camille’s voice rose.
“No, it’s not, but it’s left to the rest of us to pick up the pieces, isn’t it?” Beryl glared. “This charade of yours is a perfect example. You’ve gotten us all into this mess and now it’s up to us to make certain we do not come out of it as the laughingstock of England!”
“Well, at least she doesn’t have a tart playing you,” Delilah said sharply. “I don’t know what you were thinking, Camille. That actress, and I use the term loosely, doesn’t behave at all like me.”
Camille stared. “If you weren’t quite so stuffy—”
“But then you don’t think, do you?” Delilah glared.
“Come now, Delilah,” Mother said. “The woman playing you is at least close to your age, whereas Mrs. Montgomery-Wells is positively elderly.” She leveled a hard look at Camille. “I’m not at all pleased to have a woman who cannot remember her own name pretending to be me.”
“Perhaps if I had a mother who didn’t fill the house with every lost European exile who came along, not to mention a parade of lovers,” Camille said sharply, “someone whose behavior was more fitting of her position, then I wouldn’t have had to hire a proper family in the first place!”
Mother huffed. “They’re scarcely an improvement. Why, your Mr. Henderson made a most improper suggestion—”
“When you were being Juliet to his Romeo, no doubt.” Camille sniffed. “What do you expect?”
Mother continued as if Camille hadn’t said a word. “And if Miss Murdock is sleeping alone at night, it’s not by choice.”
“This is not Mother’s fault, Camille.” Beryl rose to her feet. “You’ve done what you always do. You’ve jumped into something without due consideration. I told you it was absurd!”
“Yes, yes, you told me, and God knows, you will never let me forget—”
“It’s Brighton all over again,” Delilah muttered.
“It’s not the least bit like Brighton,” Camille snapped. “And you needn’t keep throwing that in my face!”
“Perhaps, dear”—Mother stood—“if you learned from your past mistakes—”
“Brighton!” Beryl fairly shot the word.
“Stop that!” Camille cast an angry look at her family. “All of you! What I don’t need at the moment is recriminations and accusations. It does no good, whatsoever.” She drew a calming breath. “I am well aware that acting without due consideration has on occasion—”
“ ‘On occasion’?” Delilah scoffed.
“Proven to be a problem,” Camille finished.
Mother snorted.
“The irony of all this”—Beryl’s narrowed gaze met her twin’s—“is that the one time in your entire life when you should have thrown caution to the wind, you should have acted without thinking, you should have surrendered to impulse, and you didn’t, is when Grayson told you he loved you!”
Camille gasped. “So everything that has gone wrong in the past eleven years is my fault?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Mother said sharply. “That’s not what she said!”
“But this . . . this Christmas pageant of yours, which we are trapped in, the specter of scandal now hanging over our heads”—Delilah’s voice rose—“is indeed your fault!”
Camille clenched her fists. She couldn’t remember ever having been this angry with her family. Indeed, she couldn’t remember ever having been truly angry with them at all. Certainly, they had disagreements and even quarrels on occasion, but they were usually such a congenial group.
Not today.
“If you will excuse me, there are matters I need to attend to before dinner.” She nodded and swept out of the parlor.
The last thing she needed or wanted was to have her entire family angry with her. Admittedly, for the most part, they hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. But her ideas always seemed so brilliant when they first occurred to her, and hadn’t hiring a family for Christmas seemed nothing short of inspired? And, indeed, wouldn’t it all have gone rather uneventfully, had it not been for the unexpected? Her mother and sister returning home, and . . .
And Grayson!
Why, if Grayson hadn’t appeared dragging the past along with him, wouldn’t she still want marriage to Nikolai? Although, possibly, she might have come to her senses about him even without Grayson’s interference. Still, he had made this farce of hers much more complicated and confusing. She didn’t know what she wanted now. Nor did she know what he wanted.
What was he up to? Why hadn’t he told her he had money? What did he really want?
Past time to find out.
Twenty
“Camille.” Nikolai took her elbow and steered her into the hall. The others were moving from the dining room into the parlor. “I must speak with you alone.”
“Very well.” She cast him her brightest smile, knowing full well Grayson lingered a bit behind the rest of the group. While he was subtle, he was definitely watching them both. But then she had noticed she was never out of his sight or Beryl’s. One might think they were conspirators of some sort, which was nothing more than the oddest of notions. Beryl would willingly cut her arm off before she cooperated with Grayson in anything.
While the food at dinner had been excellent, the same could not be said of the company. Thank God, her actors had done their part. Between Mrs. Montgomery-Wells’s reminiscences of who knew what, and Mr. Henderson’s endless anecdotes, and Miss Murdock’s relentless flirtation—equally divided between Nikolai and Grayson—it was easy to overlook the fact that neither she nor her mother and sisters said much of anything beyond an occasional overly polite comment. The tension in the air seemed to her thick enough to cut with a knife. Hopefully, Nikolai did not notice; although Grayson obviously did, given the way she caught his speculative gaze on her every time she happened to look at him.
“What is it, Nikolai?” She smiled up at the prince.
His brow furrowed in obvious displeasure. “All is not going as I had hoped.”
“Oh?”
“Between your family and the preparations for Christmas, I have scarcely had any time alone with you at all.”
“I know and I do regret that.” She heaved a heartfelt sigh. “But you must understand, with the entire family in residence, well . . .” She shrugged apologetically.
“Someone is always with us.” He huffed in frustration.
“It does seem that way.” She chanced a quick look into the dining room; Grayson had at last gone into the parlor.
“It is most annoying.”
She shook her head. “There is nothing to be done about it, I’m afraid.”
“Meet me tonight.” Urgency sounded in his voice. “Come to my room. We have much to talk abou
t and to settle between us. There are questions that need to be asked, the future to be decided.”
“I quite agree, but I can’t come to your room.” She adopted a note of regret. “It would be scandalous, and with all these people . . .”
“You do not trust them?” He frowned. “This family of yours?”
“Oh, of course I trust my family,” she said quickly. “But the servants, well, they do tend to gossip.”
“Yes, of course. I . . .” He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I did not wish to worry you with such things, as I did not want to spoil Christmas. But before I arrived, I had word from my country.” He shook his head. “There are events unfolding that require me to return sooner than expected.”
“Oh, dear.” How convenient. “Perhaps it would be best if you were to return at once.”
“I am not overly concerned as of yet. Besides, Christmas is the day after tomorrow.” His gaze met hers. “I wish to have matters settled between us by then. Possibly even an announcement?”
A heavy weight settled in her stomach, but she forced a light laugh. “Possibly.”
“I warned you, I am not a patient man.” A hard note sounded in his voice. “And what little patience I have is growing thin.”
“Perhaps . . .” She chose her words with care. “It might be wiser, given how crowded the house is, and all that I have to see to, Christmas and everything that goes along with it, if we wait until the new year to make any decisions—”
“No. That will not do. Especially now. I know what I want, Camille, and I think you know as well.” He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms.
“Goodness, Nikolai, this is neither the time nor the place.” She pushed against him. Good Lord, it was tiring to walk this fine line between flirtation and avoidance.
“Perhaps this is not the time.” He chuckled and glanced upward. Her gaze followed his. Mistletoe! Of course. It was all over the house. She’d noticed it on her way to dinner. Grayson’s doing, no doubt, although this was obviously not what he’d had in mind. “But it is most certainly the place.”
What Happens At Christmas (Millworth Manor series Book 1) Page 26