by Mary Balogh
It was all a momentary impression. But in that moment Christina felt as if she were gazing on a stranger, one for whom she felt an instinctive dislike—and perhaps a certain degree of fear. She and her daughters were dependents of this man, who had very little reason, except common decency, to treat them kindly.
And then his eyes met hers for a brief, timeless moment.
He was so very different, she thought. She might have passed him on a deserted street and not recognized him. And yet he was so very much the same. Her heart pounded its recognition. He might have been hidden at the opposite end of a crowded room and she would have felt his presence.
Gerard.
His bow included all three of them. “My lady?” he said. He had already turned his eyes away from her. “Ma’am— Aunt Hannah, is it not? And Margaret?”
He spoke and behaved as if she were a stranger to him, someone to whom he was paying his formal, distant respects for the first time. And yet for that single moment he had gazed at her surely as she had gazed at him—down the years, pausing and pondering, stripping away layers of change. Stripping away the years.
Aunt Hannah and Margaret were already curtsying and smiling and greeting him. Christina realized in some mortification that she was still seated. She set her work down beside her, got to her feet, and sank into a deep curtsy.
“My lord,” she said.
She was in the presence of a stranger, of a man she had never seen before, yet one she had known all her life and perhaps even before that.
The worst was over, she told herself. He was quite simply a stranger.
Christina was thankful for the fact that the other three were inclined to converse at dinner. She did not feel so inclined herself. For one thing, she felt unduly upset by what had happened after the butler had come to the drawing room to announce dinner.
“His lordship has not had time to change yet, Billings,” she had said. “Have dinner kept for another half hour, if you please.”
“It will be served immediately,” the earl had said briskly. “Everyone has waited long enough. May I escort you to the dining room, ma’am?” He had offered his arm to his aunt.
Christina had felt foolish and even a little humiliated— she had given the command without a thought to the fact that she no longer had the right to do so. She should have waited for him to respond to the announcement. But as if that were not bad enough, he had turned his eyes on her and spoken again.
“Unless, that is,” he had said, “you take exception to my appearance, my lady?”
Her eyes had swept over him, taking in his slightly creased coat, his loosely tied cravat, his breeches and top boots, which had become filmed with dust at some time during the day.
“Not at all, my lord,” she had assured him with all the civility of which she was capable. Gilbert would not have allowed anyone to the breakfast table so dressed.
He had said no more and had proceeded to the dining room with Aunt Hannah on his arm—but only after staring at her coolly a little longer than was necessary, an unreadable expression on his face. Mockery? Triumph? Dislike? All three?
He had left Christina with the feeling that she had been subtly but very firmly put in her place. It had left her with the uncomfortable conviction that perhaps the worst was not yet over after all. He had taken the chair at the head of the table, of course. There had been no question of that. But it was where Gilbert had always sat, where she herself had sat since his death. She sat facing him along the length of the table, feeling the full reality of her subordinate, dependent position.
He was very different from what she had expected. She had expected—what? Signs of age? He was only one-and-thirty. He was older, but it was no negative thing. He was no longer the slender boy of her memory, but a mature, well-built man. Signs of moody restlessness to replace the eagerness with which he had faced life as a young man? He was a confident, self-assured, even arrogant man. Signs of dissipation? There were none. There was nothing in him—yet, at least—with which to comfort herself and her conscience. Nothing visible with which she might tell herself that yes, she had been wise, she had been right.
She could sense his dislike, as she could feel her own.
“London was more crowded than I expected it to be,” he was saying in answer to Margaret’s question, “considering the fact it has been only the Little Season and not the spring squeeze.”
“Ah.” Margaret sighed. “How wonderful that must have been.”
“Not as wonderful as your come-out Season was, I daresay,” he said. “Did you enjoy it?”
Margaret pulled a face. “What come-out Season?” she asked. “I have never been farther than ten miles from Thornwood.”
He raised his eyebrows and his eyes met Christina’s along the length of the table. She read both surprise and accusation in them.
“Gilbert died last summer, when Meg was but nineteen,” she explained. “We were still in mourning this spring. A Season was out of the question.” She resented the feeling she had of being on the defensive. She was not giving a true explanation anyway. Why did she not simply tell him the truth?
“Yes,” he said curtly. “I see.”
“Do tell us about some of the balls and routs and drums you attended, Cousin Gerard,” Margaret begged. “Were they very, very splendid affairs?”
“I would prefer to hear about your life in Canada, Gerard,” Lady Hannah said. “We hear so little about the colonies.”
“Oh, yes,” Margaret agreed. “Did you live among savages? Did they wear war paint and feathers? Did they shoot at you with arrows?” She laughed at the foolishness of her own questions, a delightful, lighthearted sound so rarely heard at Thornwood.
He told them about Montreal and made it sound like a flourishing, dynamic, but perfectly respectable city. There were families there of taste and education with whom to mingle socially. He told them briefly of his long journeys by canoe inland from Canada to the interior of the continent, where the furs were trapped and traded. He told them about the long, frigid winters spent there.
“I should simply die,” Margaret commented, but her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were wide, and she was clearly hanging on his every word.
“Yes.” He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. “I do believe you might, Margaret. No white women ever go inland.”
“But white men go there for months, even years at a time?” Lady Hannah said. “Dear me, how lonely they must be.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, but his eyes met Christina’s again as he said it, and there was a knowing, half amused look in them. She found her cheeks flushing. No white women, he had said. It was not quite the same thing as no women. Yes, of course there would have been women.
But the conversation inevitably came back to England and London and balls and parties. Margaret had an insatiable hunger to hear about such things.
“I suppose,” the Earl of Wanstead said finally, “you have plans for a Season next spring, Margaret? If her ladyship can be persuaded to exert herself to take you to town and sponsor you, of course.”
Christina looked sharply at him. What exactly did he mean by that? Was he accusing her of laziness, of unwillingness to exert herself on her sister-in-law’s behalf? She was not imagining the antagonism in his manner, she realized. It had not been apparent in anything he had said to the other two even though he must have found their insatiable questions tiresome.
“A Season is expensive, my lord,” she said tartly.
“And so it is." He raised his eyebrows. “But not beyond the means of the daughter and sister of an earl, surely?”
She could feel her breath quickening. “That is a question for you to answer, my lord,” she said, “not us.”
He looked arrested for a moment until he was distracted by the appearance of the servants to remove the covers ready for dessert. He leaned back in his chair.
“You are quite right, my lady,” he said. He turned to smile at his cousin. “But I believe I can offer s
omething for your amusement sooner than next spring, Margaret. I will be staying here for Christmas. There—”
“Oh, will you?" Margaret leaned forward in her chair, her hands clasped to her bosom. “I am so glad. We feared that you were coming merely for a few days, just to look around. But you will stay for Christmas? Perhaps we can invite some of the neighbors for a party one evening. May we? It is an age since there was a truly grand occasion at Thornwood.”
“Meg—” Christina said.
“Perhaps we should allow Gerard a day or two in which to catch his breath, Meg,” Lady Hannah said with a laugh. “But we are all delighted, Gerard, that you will be staying for Christmas. Are we not, Christina?”
“Of course,” she said coolly as his eyes met hers again. That look was back in them—the look that might have been mockery and was definitely dislike.
“You did not allow me to finish,” he said, turning his attention back to Margaret. “I have invited a number of friends to spend Christmas here with me. There will be a houseful.”
Lady Hannah exclaimed with delight; Margaret was ecstatic; Christina merely stared. House guests? A house party? Noise and jollity at Thornwood? It seemed like a contradiction in terms. He had invited a houseful of guests for Christmas—only a week and a half away—without even consulting her? But why should he consult her? She was no longer mistress of Thornwood. Sometimes it was hard to digest that fact.
“I hope this will not upset any of your own plans, my lady?” he asked her.
“I have none, my lord,” she said, “beyond the intention of spending a quiet Christmas with Aunt Hannah and Meg, Rachel, and Tess.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“My daughters,” she explained.
“Ah, yes. Your daughters.” There was that disturbing suggestion of a smile again. “There will be other children among my guests. Perhaps yours will enjoy their company for the holiday.”
Christina inclined her head but said nothing.
“I believe,” he said, looking back at Margaret, “we should organize a ball for Christmas. Not on Christmas evening— most people like to spend the whole of that day with their families. On the evening after, perhaps. Would you like that?”
But Margaret did not respond with quite the ecstasy he might have expected. She darted glances at her sister-in-law and her aunt. “A ball?” she said. “Here, Cousin Gerard?”
“I assume,” he said, “that the ballroom has not burned down since my day?”
“No,” she said hastily. “No, it is still here. But there has never been a ball here—not since I was a very little girl anyway. Oh, this is famous. You do not believe it is wicked to dance?”
“Wicked?” He looked at her with raised eyebrows. “As in evil and sinful? Should I?”
Margaret tittered. “I do not believe dancing is wicked, either,” she said. “Is there really going to be a ball here? Promise?”
“Meg—” Christina said, but she felt herself impaled by that cool blue glance.
“There will certainly be a ball,” he said. “I suppose that means a great deal of planning. I suppose the whole house party will involve much planning. I had not thought a great deal about it. I will need assistance.”
“Oh, I will help,” Margaret assured him eagerly. “I will write the invitations.”
“And I will certainly help in whatever way I can,” Lady Hannah said.
His lordship looked at Christina.
“I suppose, my lord,” she said, “the servants have been informed of your plans? It is invariably the servants who do most of the work when their betters set themselves to play.” She knew that the servants had not been informed—not about the house party, not about the ball. She would have heard. How typically thoughtless of him. He was as foolishly impetuous as ever, then. It was a comforting realization.
He set his elbows on the table, his dessert finished, and rested his chin on his clasped hands. “The servants have not been informed, my lady,” he said. “But I suppose having guests arrive here for a week or so of celebration will disturb their normal routine, will it not? And yours. You will need to direct them in what is to be done—unless you choose to leave everything to me. Do you feel yourself equal to the task?”
She had no idea. She had lived quietly in the country since her marriage. They had rarely had any guests at all. They had never had a houseful. They had never hosted a house party. They had never hosted a ball. And there was so little notice—only a week. How dared he do this to her!
But he dared, she thought, because he was the Earl of Wanstead. Because he was master of Thornwood. Because he had the right to do here whatever he pleased. And because she was merely a dependent, an encumbrance most of the time, a convenience now. If she said no, he had implied, he would do everything himself. He would humiliate her by ignoring her and behaving as if Thornwood had no mistress at all. As it did not—not by right.
She wondered if he enjoyed the feeling of power he had over her. Or if he simply did not care. He was accustomed to the exercise of power, after all.
“I do, my lord,” she said coolly in answer to his question, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.
“We will discuss details in the morning, then,” he told her. “Shall we say after breakfast, in the library?”
“I shall be there,” she said.
She always spent the mornings with her daughters. She had the household routine organized in such a way that nothing would interfere with that sacred time. And they kept country hours, dining early so that she could spend an hour with the girls before they went to bed. Tonight they had dined late. She got to her feet. “Aunt Hannah? Meg?” she said. “Shall we leave his lordship to his port?”
But he chuckled and got to his feet too. “If his lordship is left alone with the port this evening,” he said, “he may well fall asleep over it. I will come to the drawing room with you.”
He escorted Lady Hannah again, but when they reached the drawing room, she crossed to the pianoforte with Margaret in order to find suitable music for her to play. Christina seated herself in her usual chair by the fire and reached for her embroidery.
The Earl of Wanstead stood before her. “You were disappointed,” he said. “You wished me to stay to imbibe port. Perhaps what you really wished was that I had stayed in London—or Montreal.”
She looked up at him, stung. “We dined almost an hour later than usual, my lord,” she said. “My daughters are within—five minutes of their bedtime.” She had glanced at the clock on the mantel. “And I am not with them.”
“And I am stopping you?” he asked her quietly. “By all means go to your children. Why would I wish to detain you? Because your company is so fascinating?”
Or perhaps because as master of the house he might require her to preside over the tea tray when it arrived, she thought. Gilbert had never allowed her to go up to the nursery until his second cup had been poured.
She ignored the insult, the quite open expression of dislike, got to her feet, and curtsied to him. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.
She was aware that he watched her as she left the room. Margaret was beginning to play Bach.
If only Rodney had survived, she thought as she climbed the stairs. If only there had been another male cousin between Gilbert and him. If only she had not gone to London for that particular Season when she was eighteen. If only she had not attended that particular ball at its start. If only ...
But life was made up of seemingly small, unimportant, chance events that together created the pattern of one’s existence. There was no changing the pattern of hers. It had led her to this very difficult moment. She was a dependent of the Earl of Wanstead—such a familiar title. But the man with the title was no longer Gilbert. He was Gerard Percy.
If only he had been any other man in the world.
But he was not and she was going to have to live with the fact. And with his presence at Thornwood over Christmas.
Chapter 3
THE Ea
rl of Wanstead wondered if after all he had not made a mistake. The idea had come to him, or had been presented to him—he still could not clearly remember which—on the spur of the moment. He had proceeded to send out invitations according to the list his friends had helped him draw up. It had all been surprisingly easy—only two refusals, from people who regretted that they already had other plans. But Jeannette and Andrew Campbell had been delighted, as had Colin and Geordie Stewart, two brothers and former partners in the fur-trading company, now both retired. Miss Lizzie Gaynor had been ecstatic, or so her rather gauche younger sister had assured him, and was to come with the sister and their widowed mama. There were to be twenty guests altogether, plus four children.
He had felt rather pleased with the plans for both the house party and the leisurely opportunity it would give him to consider taking a bride—until he had arrived at Thornwood and been oppressed with a sense of gloom.
But it was too late now to regret what he had done.
His lordship rose when it was still dark, having spent a somewhat restless night in the earl’s grand bedchamber. The door leading from his dressing room into the countess’s was locked, his valet had informed him when he had asked. He had not also asked if the countess still used that dressing room and the chamber beyond it, but the possibility that she did had disturbed him. He had kept thinking of her undressing there, lying in bed there. And he had kept remembering that he had found every opportunity last evening to be rude to her. It was not like him to be uncivil to women, even those he disliked.