by Mary Balogh
“Since there is plenty of wassail left in the bowl,” Alex said, raising his voice above the slightly diminished hubbub after the doors had closed behind the departing villagers, “and since it must be six or seven hours since we last toasted the health and happiness of the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester, I suggest we do so again before we all retire for the night. Wren, where are you? You may pass around the glasses as I fill them, if you will.”
Viola, once the Countess of Riverdale, now Viola Lamarr, Marchioness of Dorchester, was looking remarkably happy. Indeed, she glowed like the new bride she was. And the marquess was looking down at her with a gleam in his dark eyes that left Elizabeth feeling slightly breathless and . . . jealous?
But no, not that. She would never begrudge Viola her happiness. Envy, then. She was envious. And lonely again.
There had been a number of marriages in the family during the past couple of years or so, beginning with Anna’s to Avery. Anna had lived with Elizabeth for a short while after she came to London from the orphanage where she had grown up, unaware that she was the daughter of the Earl of Riverdale—the legitimate daughter. Elizabeth had lived with her to help her adjust to her new life and feel less bewildered and alone. She and Avery’s secretary had been the lone witnesses at their wedding. Then Camille, Viola’s elder daughter, had married Joel Cunningham in Bath, and Alex had married Wren in London. Now Viola, who was in her forties, had married the marquess here at Brambledean. And the four family marriages appeared to have one thing in common, as far as Elizabeth could judge from the outside. All four were love matches. All four stood a good chance of remaining happy on into the future.
“Ladies?” Colin said. He had gone over to the wassail bowl with Wren and had returned with a glass in each hand, one for Elizabeth and one for Anna. “But no drinking before everyone has been served and the toast has been proposed.”
“Tyrant,” Elizabeth said. “Not even one tiny sip?”
“Not even,” he said, but his eyes twinkled at her. “Alexander’s orders. Lord of the manor and all that.”
“I wonder what the penalty would be for disobedience,” Anna said.
“You would not want to know,” he told her, and winked before moving back to the bowl to help distribute the glasses.
“How very glad I am that Lord Hodges and Wren found each other again,” Anna said. “Families really ought not to be kept apart for long years.”
Elizabeth smiled sympathetically at her and noticed that Avery had slipped an arm about her waist. And envy assailed her again. And loneliness. It was something she really must do something about. She was thirty-five years old. Not young, but certainly not old. And she had prospects. During the past two Seasons, which she had spent in London with her mother, she had met a few gentlemen, both new acquaintances and old, who had shown signs of interest. It was possible she could marry again. She had been adamantly against remarriage after Desmond’s death. Marriage to him had given her a healthy respect for freedom and independence. But not all men were like him. Not all marriages were unhappy or worse. And there were attractions to marriage.
One of those gentlemen, indeed, had expressed a very definite interest. Sir Geoffrey Codaire had first proposed marriage to her many years ago, just after she met Desmond. He had renewed his acquaintance with her during the past two years. He was as solid of build and of character as he had always been, neither particularly handsome nor especially vibrant of personality, but—well, solid and worthy. He was someone with whom she could expect a quiet and comfortable companionship. He was someone upon whom she could depend. More and more lately she had considered accepting the offer he had made again back in the spring. She had said no, but when he had asked if he might renew his addresses sometime in the future, she had hesitated, and he had insisted upon taking that as a hopeful sign and urged her not to answer his question. She had not done so, and they had left it at that. Perhaps this coming spring, if he asked again, she would say yes.
Maybe next Christmas she would no longer be here alone. Perhaps that core of melancholy she could not quite shake off would be banished by a new marriage, her own this time. She might even be with child, as Wren was this year. Sometimes she ached for the experience of motherhood.
The Reverend Michael Kingsley, Viola’s brother, had been called upon to propose the toast, and silence descended upon the great hall as Alex tapped the ladle against the side of the wassail bowl.
Colin had joined the young people, Elizabeth could see, and stood with Jessica on one side and young Bertrand Lamarr, the Marquess of Dorchester’s son, on the other. His free hand, the one that was not holding his glass, was resting upon ten-year-old Winifred’s shoulder—the youngsters had been allowed to stay up late tonight. He was looking happy. He was where he belonged.
The Reverend Kingsley cleared his throat, and Elizabeth turned her attention to the toast he was about to propose.
* * *
• • •
Christmas Day began early with breakfast and gift giving, most of the latter done in small, individual family groups. Colin was invited to join his sister and brother-in-law and Mrs. Westcott and Elizabeth in Wren’s private sitting room, where he received an exquisite multicolored glass mug from Wren’s glassworks, engraved with his name, and a new fob for his watch from Mrs. Westcott, and a muffler of soft, bright red wool from Elizabeth. He had bought matching leather-backed blotters and pen holders for Wren and Alexander, a paisley shawl for Mrs. Westcott, and a leather-bound notebook with a small attached pencil for Elizabeth. Exchanging gifts really was a delight, he discovered, accompanied as it was with exclamations of delight and effusive thanks and even hugs. It was something new to him. He had brought gifts for the children too.
Most of the family ended up on the nursery floor, where the children opened their presents and displayed them for adult admiration and played with them, though young Jacob, it was true, was more interested in flapping his hands at his mama and papa’s smiles than in appreciating the new stuffed animals they waggled before his face and the rattle about which they curled his fingers. One-year-old Sarah Cunningham, on the other hand, dashed about the nursery, shrieking with joy as she placed her new doll on her mama’s knee before snatching it off in order to hug it and pet it before placing it upon someone else’s knee. Winifred Cunningham thanked everyone solemnly for hair ribbons and muff and bracelets and rings and then dived into one of her three new books and was lost to the world. Josephine Archer bounced on the Duke of Netherby’s knee and tried to bite one paw off a stuffed dog.
Lord Molenor’s three sons, who were all in their teen years and therefore ought not to qualify for gifts from everyone, according to their father, exclaimed over cricket bats and balls and boots and mufflers and telescopes and books—which last items did not tempt any of them to dive in immediately. Boris obligingly rocked Sarah’s doll and was rewarded by a hug and a kiss before she snatched it away, hugged it herself, and thrust it upon her grandmama.
Everyone convened in the drawing room after that for the distribution of gifts to the servants, the first such ceremony for many years. And, amazingly when one considered the apparent chaos of the morning and the depth of the snow, which was still falling intermittently, they all trekked to church in the village in time for the eleven o’clock service.
The ancient sleigh, spruced up to look almost respectable and decked with bells, which jingled when it was in motion, made two journeys to take the older folk. Everyone else walked—or waded. Any horseplay—Lord Molenor’s term—was strictly forbidden on the way there. He bellowed with terrible ferocity when one of his sons slid a handful of snow down the back of his brother’s collar and the victim spun about with a roar to retaliate. There was no further incident beyond an inelegant skid that sent Lady Estelle Lamarr sprawling in the snow. When her twin hauled her to her feet she looked like a living snowlady. Captain Westcott helped brush her down while she giggled i
n embarrassment and her cold-flushed cheeks turned surely a brighter shade of scarlet.
Colin walked with Camille and Joel Cunningham and carried young Sarah and her doll most of the way, Cunningham’s arms being occupied with his infant son while Winifred clung to Camille’s hand. He sat with them at church, which he was surprised to find full of parishioners. He could not recall any Christmas when his own family had attended church. They had thereby missed perhaps the most heartwarming service of the year with its emphasis upon birth and hope and love and joy and peace. On Christmas Day one could believe in them all, or at least in the possibility of them. Camille held Sarah, who was soon snuggled against her, doll and all, asleep, while Winifred leaned against her mother’s arm with utter trust in the power of her family to love and protect her. Joel jiggled young Jacob gently on his knee when the baby began to fuss and was rewarded with a toothless smile and gradually closing eyelids.
It was surely time, Colin thought, to trust the idea of family. Or, rather, to trust his own ability to create one and perhaps even draw into it the members of the family with whom he had grown up. Wren was already a part of it. So were his sister Ruby and her husband, Sean, and their four children, even though they lived in Ireland and he did not see a great deal of them and Ruby was not the world’s most prolific letter writer. But there were still his mother and his eldest sister, Blanche, and her husband. He would not think of them today, however. He did not want his heart to grow heavy.
He walked between Lady Overfield and Mrs. Althea Westcott, her mother, on the way home, the latter leaning rather heavily on his arm lest she slip and fall and make a cake of herself—her words. But she was taken up by the sleigh on its second journey from the church to the house, and Elizabeth took his arm when he offered it, first drawing her gloved hand free of her muff. She looked very fetching in her red cloak and red-brimmed bonnet, a vivid contrast with the whiteness of the snow and the hoarfrost on the branches of the trees.
“Fashionable half boots are woefully inadequate in all this snow, I am discovering,” she said ruefully. “One can only hope they will dry out by this afternoon.”
“You are still dreaming of snowball fights and sled races and other outdoor horrors, then, are you?” he asked. “Even though we are about to have our Christmas dinner and are almost bound to overindulge?”
“For that precise reason,” she said. “I suppose you are still dreaming of a quiet fireside and a comfortable chair.”
He laughed. Her eyes were sparkling with pleasure at the anticipated delight of freezing herself with snow frolics. “Have you ever considered marrying again, Elizabeth?” he asked.
She turned her face sharply toward him, her eyebrows raised.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “That was probably a hideously unmannerly question, not to mention abrupt. But Christmas puts one in mind of family and children and togetherness, and—well, forget I asked, if you please. I have embarrassed myself. And doubtless you too.”
But she laughed again. “I am not embarrassed,” she said. “And, yes, I have considered remarrying. For a long time I did not. I thought I would be content to live out my life as a dutiful daughter to my mother in her old age. Alas, she will have none of it. And I must confess to feeling a mite relieved. I have started to look about me.”
Two of Molenor’s boys had made a chair of their interlaced hands, Colin could see, and Winifred was riding on them, her arms about their shoulders. She was laughing—something that was surely rare with her. She was a serious, studious, somewhat pious young girl, who had grown up in an orphanage in Bath before Camille and Joel adopted her along with Sarah last year when they married. Colin wondered if she realized she was bound to be dropped into the snow accidentally on purpose before they reached the house.
“With any success?” he asked Elizabeth.
“Yes, I believe so,” she said after hesitating. “A gentleman I have known a long time made me an offer earlier this year. I said no at the time, but he asked if he might renew his addresses at some future date, and I did not say no.”
“It sounds like a grand love story,” he said, turning his head to grin at her. But really, why would she marry for any other reason than love? She was surely made for love with a man who would adore her and count his blessings for the rest of his life
“Well, it is not, of course,” she said. “Perhaps I am a little too old for romantic love. Or perhaps I do not trust it as much as I once did.”
“Now, that sounds purely sad,” he said. And he meant it. I do not trust . . . ? Had love let her down? Perhaps because it had let her husband die? “And too old for romance? Tell that to those two.”
He nodded ahead to the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester. Abigail Westcott was at Dorchester’s other side, Lady Estelle Lamarr on his wife’s. The four of them walked with their arms linked. There had been a look about the newlyweds this morning that had made Colin feel a little hot under the collar, though there had been nothing remotely improper in their behavior, just a glow about her person and an intensity about his eyes that could not be put into adequate words but spoke volumes.
“They do look happy,” Elizabeth agreed, “after all of twenty-five hours of marriage. And yes, they are both over forty.”
“I have always thought that I need not consider anything so drastic as marriage for years yet,” he said. “I have only recently turned twenty-six, after all.”
“Drastic?” She chuckled. “Leg shackles and tenants for life and all the other clichés you gentlemen like to use?”
“And establishing a family,” he said, “and setting the tone I would want it to have. Taking up residence somewhere and making a home of it. Deciding where that would be. Making a choice of bride, knowing that I must live with my choice for the rest of my life—and that she would have to live with hers for the rest of her life. Being head of my family. Taking on the responsibility for it. Becoming a man.”
He stopped in sudden embarrassment, especially at those final words. And she had not missed them.
“Do you see yourself as less than a man now, then?” she asked.
“I do not know quite what I meant,” he said. “Becoming decisive, perhaps. Setting down my feet and taking a firm stand, perhaps. Knowing who I am and where I am going. Where I want to go. Where I ought to go. You will be thinking me an utter idiot. And you will probably be right.”
“I think no such thing,” she protested. “Many young men, and young women to a lesser degree, believe they know it all and blunder onward through life reinforcing their opinion of themselves with every ignorant action and never achieving their full potential as men and women and human beings. I think there are definite advantages to knowing early that really one knows very little and must be ever open to learning and changing and adjusting. Oh goodness, listen to me. Or, rather, ignore me, please. Do you have anyone in mind now that you are perhaps maybe beginning to turn your thoughts toward matrimony? Or is it to be a case of tossing a coin to choose among the three you were considering last evening?”
“I have never yet seen a three-sided coin, alas,” he said. “There was someone last Season, the sister of a friend of mine. She was shy and did not take well with the ton. I offered her my company on a few occasions and found I liked her. I believe she liked me. But I had a letter from her brother just a week or so ago in which he informed me that her betrothal to a gentleman farmer she has known all her life and apparently loved for years is to be announced over Christmas. So mine was no grand love story, either.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “Were you hurt?’’
“I am almost ashamed to admit I was not,” he said. “I was pleased for her and relieved for myself, to be perfectly honest, since I had never intended my attentions to be misconstrued as courtship. Obviously they were not, however. We are a sad, pathetic pair, Elizabeth. Perhaps we should put ourselves out of our misery and marry each other.”
He said it as a joke. Even so, he felt instantly embarrassed at his own presumption. He and Elizabeth?
“Now there is an idea worth considering,” she said, all good humor. “You said you are twenty-six? I am thirty-five. Only a nine-year difference. No one would even remark upon it if it were the other way around—if you were nine years older than I, that is. But I fear it would very certainly be remarked upon this way around. I had better not take you up on your kind offer immediately. I will, however, put you on a list with a few other remote possibilities. I may even use my new leather-bound notebook and pencil for the purpose.”
“Remote?” he said. “Ouch.”
They looked at each other sidelong and both laughed. And oh, he liked her.
“Of course, I was fully aware of the age difference,” he said. “I offered you my arm only because you are old and doddering. All of nine years older than I am. Oh, and I offered my arm because I enjoy your company too. There are certain people with whom one feels an instant affinity, a total comfort, an easy ability to talk upon any subject, even absurdities, without having to resort to the weather and the health of all one’s acquaintances.”
“And I am one of those people?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “In all sincerity, Elizabeth.”
“I am touched,” she said. “In all sincerity, Colin.”
They laughed again, but the wonder was that both of them did mean it. He had never had a female friend before. Friendly acquaintances, yes, but not . . . Well, there had been no one like Elizabeth.
He wondered if she had always been as she was now. Serenity seemed to hover about her. Even when she was joking and laughing it was there. Perhaps she had been born this way, able to weather the storms of life without succumbing to disillusionment or despair. Even as he thought it, however, he remembered her saying just a few minutes ago that perhaps she did not trust romantic love as much as she once had. And he thought of what she had just said about living and learning and changing and adjusting. Perhaps she had had to earn that inner peace she seemed to have achieved. But how? What disturbing experiences were in her past, apart from the loss of her husband, that was? How had she learned to cope with them?