by Mary Balogh
It was clear to see that Miss Gaynor was very eligible indeed. So were Miss Susan Gaynor, Miss Clara Radway, and Miss Winifred Milchip. And if Jeannette Campbell was not quite so eligible by ton standards, her father being in business though he was a gentleman, she was certainly not ineligible. And she appeared to have the advantage of Gerard’s regard in addition to good looks and pleasing manners. And of course she came from the world with which he had been familiar for the past ten years. Even Margaret was not an impossibility, though Christina felt a nasty lurching of the stomach at the very thought. Surely not Meg!
Soon, then, he might be expected to marry. And if he did so, unless his bride was Miss Campbell, he could be expected to remain in England and make Thornwood his home. That would relegate her, Christina, to the rank of dowager countess. She would be even more of an encumbrance than she was now. She would be a hanger-on in the home he shared with his wife.
The prospect was enough to make her feel somewhat light-headed.
Lady Milchip and a few of the other guests had been conversing around her unheard. She had merely been smiling and giving mechanical answers to any question directed her way. But she suddenly heard one question quite clearly.
“Lady Wanstead,” Lady Milchip said, “I can remember your come-out year. You are Lord Pickering’s daughter, are you not?”
“Yes,” Christina said. “Yes, I am.”
“Ah, I was sure of it,” Lady Milchip said. She smiled about the group, including everyone in her remarks. “Such a very charming gentleman he was. And so very dashing and handsome as a young man—you have inherited his dark good looks, Lady Wanstead. There was scarce a young lady in my time—myself included—who did not have a soft spot for him, though he was an unconscionable rogue.”
There was general mirth over her admission. Christina laughed with everyone else.
“I could tell a story or two about Lord Pickering,” Lady Milchip said, wagging one finger. “And I would do so too if I did not think the telling would put Lady Wanstead to the blush. I have not seen him in an age. Whatever has become of him? And I do hope that is not a dreadfully tactless question.”
“Not at all,” Christina assured her. “He is still alive and in good health. But he lives quietly at home most of the time now.”
“Ah, a shame.” Lady Milchip sighed. “Though I am glad to hear that he is alive and well. Perhaps you would send him my regards the next time you write to him. Though maybe he will be coming here for Christmas?” She looked hopefully at the countess.
“No, ma’am, unfortunately not.” Christina smiled. “He has other plans, I am afraid.”
Lady Milchip proceeded to reminisce about her youth for the amusement of her audience. She had grown up in an age when young people had known how to enjoy themselves, she would have them know.
He had been alive at least when she had written a year ago and again six months ago, Christina was thinking. Her father’s name was another that Gilbert had forbidden her to mention after their marriage. More than that, he had forbidden her to write or to receive letters or otherwise to communicate with him. Again she had not argued or felt any inclination to do so for a long time. But the ties of blood were stronger than she had ever suspected—she had discovered that even before Gilbert’s death. Her father was alive and living quietly at home, just as she had just told Lady Milchip. Or so the replies to her letters had stated without adding any explanatory detail. Both replies had been written in the same strange hand and signed “Horrocks.” There had been no explanation of who Horrocks was. She had not tried to find out.
And then she caught the eye of the earl across the room. He was looking intently at her almost as if he could read her thoughts. For a moment, caught unawares, she felt the connection there had always used to be between them. She felt breathless. And then he raised his eyebrows and she recognized his look as a signal. The butler had come into the room to announce dinner, and according to a prearranged plan he was to lead Lady Milchip in tonight while she was to take the arm of Sir Michael.
How foolish of her to have fallen into a dream. She was the Countess of Wanstead, his cousin’s widow. And for this week only, his hostess.
Chapter 8
THE seating arrangement at the dinner table was to change each evening. That had been decided and planned at one of the meetings with the earl. Christina, in her permanent place at the foot of the table, had Sir Michael Milchip on her right for this evening and Mr. Geordie Stewart on her left. The table was too long and the guests far too many for the conversation to be general. She set herself to leading the conversation at her end of the table.
Mr. Stewart she found to be an interesting gentleman. He and his brother had lived in Montreal for several years before retiring from active involvement in the fur trade. He was a widower, whose wife had not long survived their return from Canada. He was a pleasant-looking gentleman whose sandy hair was thinning and receding from his forehead. Without in any way committing the social error of dominating the conversation, he entertained Christina and some of the other guests at their end of the table with stories about Canada and about the year-long, arduous journey into the interior and back that all partners were expected to make at least once in their lives.
“Though Percy—the Earl of Wanstead, that is,” he said, “has done it three times in all, I believe. But then he was always a man to do his duty twice over and once more for luck.”
Was he? Was that what Gerard had always been like? Christina had grown so accustomed to thinking just the opposite of him—she had needed to believe the opposite. Had she misjudged him all those years? She looked down the length of the table to see him conversing politely with his neighbors.
When the last cover had been removed Christina stood to signal the ladies that it was time to adjourn to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port.
The evening was going rather well, she thought by the time the gentlemen joined the ladies half an hour later. She had hated the prospect of the house party at first, partly because she had no experience at organizing such events, but mainly because she had feared that the earl’s guests would be as wild and rakish as he. It had not taken her long, of course, to realize that he was no longer either wild or rakish himself. He had changed. He had matured. And he had prospered. They were all somewhat bitter realizations.
Or perhaps he never had been irresponsibly wild. Perhaps she had only needed to believe that he was. Perhaps she had rationalized her own decision. She felt almost ashamed of the fact that just over a week before, when she had been awaiting his arrival, she had hoped to see evidence that she had been right to do what she had done.
The guests were a pleasant group of people, she thought now. And the young people were eager for some gaiety. Margaret, who at Christina’s suggestion had taken the shy Miss Milchip under her wing, was turning the pages of the sheet music while that young lady played the pianoforte, and the elder Miss Gaynor and Miss Radway had joined them at the instrument. Lady Gaynor and Lady Milchip had settled on either side of the fire at Aunt Hannah’s bidding.
“We will set up the card tables,” the earl announced as soon as everyone was gathered in the drawing room.
“Splendid, dear,” Lady Hannah said.
“Ah.” Baron Langan rubbed his hands together and smiled genially at his host. “You fleeced me of a fortune just two weeks ago, Wanstead. I shall have it back with interest tonight, I’ll wager.”
“No!” Christina spoke sharply before she had time to think. “No cards at Thornwood. There will be no gambling beneath my roof.” She listened, appalled, to her own words and the arrested silence that succeeded them, but it was too late to recall them. All eyes had turned her way, including the icy blue ones of the earl. She smiled before the moment could turn from awkwardness to disaster. “Not tonight, I beg you, my lord. We ladies have been waiting with as much patience as we could muster for the gentlemen to come and dance with us. Shall we have the carpet rolled back? Aunt Hannah, ca
n you be prevailed upon to play for us?”
Fortunately she appeared to have hit upon just the right form of entertainment for this first evening. There was a general murmuring of enthusiasm and Miss Lizzie Gaynor clapped her hands.
“Oh, yes, please, my lord,” she said, addressing herself to the earl. “Do say we may dance. And do say there are enough willing gentlemen to partner us.”
“I claim Lady Margaret’s hand,” Mr. Frederick Cannadine said, “provided it is a country dance and the steps not too difficult.”
There was general laughter, and Margaret flushed with pleasure.
His lordship inclined his head to Miss Gaynor. “Then dancing it will be,” he said, “and we will reserve cards for another evening. You will honor me, Miss Gaynor?”
In no time at all, it seemed, the carpet had been rolled back to clear a space large enough to accommodate a set of dancers. Lady Hannah had taken her place at the pianoforte and the gentlemen had chosen their partners. The chairs had been arranged so that those who chose not to dance could watch.
“Oh, thank you, no,” Christina said when Viscount Luttrell solicited her hand. “I do not dance, sir.”
Inevitably he raised his quizzing glass to his eye. “Ah, pardon me, ma’am,” he said, surveying her through it. “Now that I can see you better, your reason for refusing is instantly apparent. Your advanced years have given you a stiffness in the joints, I gather? Do say yes. One would hate to have to conclude that there is something objectionable about one’s person.”
Christina laughed. “How absurd you are, my lord,” she said. “I am quite sure any one of the young ladies would be quite delighted to be partnered by you. And indeed I am a woman of advanced years.”
“Dear me,” he said, his glass sweeping over her before he lowered it. “If it were not ungentlemanly to say so, ma’am, I would be forced to declare that you lie. Come and sit by me, then, if you will not dance with me. I shall lend a sympathetic ear to a recitation of all your aches and other elderly woes.”
She sat beside him while the music began and the dancers performed the intricate steps of a country dance. They kept up a flow of easy chatter, all of it nonsense, all of it blatant flirtation on his part and laughing banter on hers.
She should be feeling annoyed, she thought, to have been made the object of a rake’s gallantry. But she could feel only genuine amusement and even pleasure. The days of her youth seemed so very long ago. She really did feel quite elderly in comparison with all the ladies who were dancing. Ten years—almost eleven—had passed since that one come-out Season she had had. How she had enjoyed it, she remembered now. How exhilarating it had felt to be young and passably pretty, to participate in all the busy whirl of a Season, to be admired and flirted with and—loved.
Her eyes watched the Earl of Wanstead as he made an arch with Lizzie Gaynor’s hands clasped in his and the other dancers passed beneath it.
He had loved her as she had loved him. A foolish youthful emotion that was as insubstantial as a dream—and that left enough pain in its wake to cripple one for a lifetime. Gerard. Could she ever have imagined in those few golden months that one day they would be in a room together, separated as if by a thousand miles?
“It would be a challenge worth undertaking, I do declare,” Viscount Luttrell said, “to rid your face of that look of longing, ma’am, and to replace it with a look of—something else.”
She turned her head sharply toward him. Light flirtation was in danger of giving way to something less comfortable. But before she could think of a suitable rejoinder to set him in his place, he spoke again.
“Of course,” he said, “any of my friends would tell you, ma’am, that I am far too indolent to undertake anything as challenging as a challenge.” His eyes laughed lazily at her.
Christina pitied any raw young girl on whom he chose to turn that practiced charm. She would stand no chance at all. But then, she realized with a flash of insight, he would not behave thus with any raw girl. He thought she was his equal in experience with flirtation and dalliance. She was eight-and-twenty, after all, and a widow after a nine-year marriage. He could not know that she had lived in a cocoon for ten years and was just beginning, very tentatively, to break free of it.
But for all that she would not be easy prey. To light flirtation, perhaps. To anything else—well, surely he could not seriously mean anything else.
“Then perhaps, my lord,” she said, “I should give thanks in my prayers tonight for your indolence.”
He laughed appreciatively. “I must at least exert myself to dance,” he said as the music ended and there was a smattering of applause from dancers and spectators alike. “Perhaps your young sister-in-law will not claim creaking bones as an excuse for refusing me.”
Margaret clearly claimed no such infirmity. Already flushed and smiling, she fairly sparkled when Viscount Luttrell bowed elegantly before her.
The Thornwood drawing room looked like a different room from the one with which she was long familiar, Christina thought over the next hour as she watched the dancing and conversed with those who did not participate. She had always thought it a gloomy, oppressive room, too large for family gatherings, though they had dutifully sat in it every afternoon and evening of her married life rather than in a smaller, cozier salon. Now it looked bright and cheerful and almost too small for the impromptu dance with which they were amusing themselves.
The tea tray arrived far too early for the liking of the young people, who protested that it could not possibly be almost time for bed yet. The earl assured them that they were welcome to stay up all night if they wished and if they could persuade his aunt to continue playing that long. But Lady Gaynor reminded her daughters, and in the process everyone else, that there were still three days to go before Christmas, not to mention the days of Christmas itself. They must not recklessly use up all their energies on the very first evening.
“Oh, yes,” Susan Gaynor agreed, though with obvious reluctance. “And I look positively hagged if I do not have a good night’s sleep.”
“I do not believe you could look hagged,” her partner, Mr. Radway, said gallantly, “if you tried from now until doomsday, Miss Susan.”
But Lady Hannah had been summoned from the pianoforte to drink her tea, and it was generally agreed that it had been a long, busy day and that it was time to retire for the night.
“Perhaps tomorrow evening,” Christina said as she bade everyone good night, “we will have dancing again.”
But her own day was not yet quite at an end, she discovered as she was about to leave the drawing room, the last of the ladies to do so. The earl had moved close to her and laid a hand on her arm.
“I will have a word with you in the library before you retire, my lady,” he said quietly in her ear. “There is a fire in there and candles burning. Wait for me there, please. I will not be long.”
There was nothing in his voice to indicate the purpose of such a meeting. It was very likely that some plans needed to be discussed for the morrow. But her stomach muscles knotted and she felt breathless. Suddenly and quite unreasonably she was terrified. It had not been a request, after all. It had been a command.
“Very well, my lord,” she replied coolly.
Several of the gentlemen settled in the drawing room for a last drink and some male conversation before bed. Fifteen minutes passed before the earl could decently leave them and go to the library. He half expected when he arrived there that Christina would be gone. But she was not. She was standing close to the fire, facing the door. She took a few steps toward him when he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
She looked quite stunningly beautiful in that emerald green gown, was his first foolish thought. His next was even more foolish. If things had been different, he might have been coming to her now in her boudoir, ten years of marriage behind them. That slender, shapely body and the very essence of her might have been as familiar to him now as his own person. He repressed the wayward thoug
hts and strode across the room until he was within arm’s length of her.
“No cards at Thornwood,” he said softly, quoting her. “There will be no gambling beneath my roof.”
He raised his right arm to gesture to the chair behind her, intending to instruct her to be seated. But both her hands shot up, palms out, to shield her face, which she turned sharply to one side. He froze, his arm still upraised. She lowered her own arms slowly and looked warily at him.
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said.
He continued to stare at her for several moments. “My God, Christina,” he said at last, “did you believe I meant you violence?”
She merely stared back at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly.
He had been feeling angry for most of the evening— angry at what she had said, angry that she would not dance, though he had not asked her himself, angry that her shimmering satin gown and the elegant figure inside it had made it impossible for him to concentrate his attention on anyone else, angry that she had sat talking with the older guests just as if she were a staid dowager and not a young and lovely woman. And angry that she had sat out the first set with Luttrell, clearly eating up his flatteries and giving as good as she had got—as if she were anything but a staid dowager. She had looked smiling and young and carefree—as she had never looked for him, except when they had waltzed. He had come to the library with a biting speech to deliver. But it seemed to have disintegrated in his mind. Did she think that badly of him that she feared he might strike her? How dared she!
“Sit down,” he told her curtly. “Would you like to ring for more tea?”
“No,” she said, seating herself with her usual uncompromising straight-backed posture. “No, thank you, my lord.”