“Oh, I am done with the puppets, my lord,” she said, her cheeks pinkening as she moved away from the table so he could see past her.
He glanced, then looked again and chuckled despite his awkwardness near her. Papier-mâché puppet heads clearly recognizable as Aurelius, Reginald, Parlia, Calista and the ugly girl, Hepzibah, were lined up on the table. Aurelius had crisp brown hair and blue eyes, while Calista was a stunning blonde with violet eyes. The ugly girl who was being betrothed to Prince Aurelius was hook-nosed and snaggletoothed with a wart on her nose. The clothes for Aurelius and his queen, laid out in front of each puppet head, were very regal, fit for forest royalty, in shades of green and brown. Scraps of lace adorned the queen’s dress.
“Very good, Miss Simons. I only hope the play is up to the standards of the players.” He handed her the sheaf of papers and turned to go. He turned back before he got to the door but did not meet her gaze. “The, uh, Calista puppet though; she should have gray eyes. And, uh, brown hair. Very long brown hair, silky and beautiful. And freckles.” His voice was husky, and he cleared his throat. “I find I have a certain fondness for large gray eyes and freckles.”
• • •
“I wish you would let me help you, my dear,” Emily said to her niece as the governess got ready in her aunt’s chamber.
“Hmm? Help me?” Celestine turned around in front of the cheval glass, examining her lavender dress, making sure it was absolutely tidy.
“Yes, help you. Financially. So you won’t have to stay a governess forever. You could even have a long-delayed London season, if you wished,” Emily answered in frustration. Her niece was the most infuriating person on earth. Thanks to a brilliant marriage many years ago, and a separation settlement with an ample allowance from her husband, the Marquess of Sedgely, she had more money than she knew what to do with.
And shut away in self-imposed exile in Yorkshire she had very little to spend it on. Her gowns were several years out of date and she had not bought anything for herself for quite a while. She would have loved to spend some of her bounty on her niece. But Celestine had never been willing to accept more than the smallest trumpery gifts. Emily wanted to make her independent—settle some money on her, give her a dowry—but the girl refused. She watched her fussing over her plain lavender gown and simple heart locket, her only adornment, getting ready for the Christmas pageant concert at the church that evening.
Celestine was a serious woman, even as she had been a serious, steady girl. She needed some fun in her life. Instead, from the time she was sixteen she had nursed her seriously ill father, and then after his death had immediately taken on the job of governess to the Langlow children. And yet, under that serious, calm, intelligent façade, Emily had always sensed a wild, passionate side that only came out when Celestine sang. Then one could hear the longing, the untamed turbulence of her soul, keening in high, lovely tones sad enough to make an angel weep. Celestine was an example of what happened when a strong character set all its effort on taming and subduing the ferocious desire and tremulous longing of a wild heart.
Was she imagining things? Was Celestine’s outward serenity a reflection of inner tranquility? She thought not, but her niece was reticent and Emily was loath to pry. Sometimes all a woman had was her inner life. Beyond that one momentous admission that she had fallen in love with St. Claire, Celestine had said nothing. She had retired that night without another word to anyone and Emily had left her in peace, to recover from her fractured heart as best she could. No one else could help you; Emily knew that by bitter personal experience over the last five years of separation from a husband whom she had loved always.
She watched in concern the stiffness of Celestine’s movements. “Are the hot baths no longer helping, my dear?”
“I . . . I am no longer taking the baths.”
“What? Why not?” Emily, angry, rose from her chair to stand in front of her niece. “Do you want to be crippled? Those baths are the only thing that will get you through the rest of the winter in comfort. My dear, you were improving! Why would you stop taking them?”
Celestine colored and fiddled with the locket. “I did not cancel them. The marchioness did.”
“Why? Was she not the one who instigated them in the first place?”
Celestine turned away but Emily took her shoulder and turned her back to face her, searching her expression for clues.
“No, apparently it was neither the marquess nor Lady Langlow who ordered that I be provided with a hot bath every morning.”
“Then who?” Emily’s elegant brows arched in puzzlement.
“It was Lord St. Claire Richmond.”
Emily was stunned. She knew St. Claire; he was a pleasant enough fellow but the epitome of a tonnish rake. He was elegant and lazy and charming. He was also without scruples or morals as far as women were concerned, only kept from seduction of innocents by his lack of desire for marriage and horror of being shunned in society. Or at least so she had always deemed him.
And this was the fellow who had ordered that a plain spinster governess in his brother’s employ was to have a hot bath every morning to ease her arthritic joints? It seemed unlikely and she questioned Celestine closely, but it was the maid who informed her of the fact, apparently, in the presence of the marchioness. The misunderstanding had occurred because Celestine, learning that it was his lordship who had ordered the bath, had assumed the marquess was meant, natural enough since it was his house, and his authority to order the servants around.
Emily sat back down in her chair by the fireplace as Celestine prepared to go to the church before everyone else. This required some thought. Any time someone did something completely out of character, it required thought. St. Claire, bothering about the comfort of a governess? It definitely needed contemplation.
• • •
“Not that way, Dooley!” St. Claire ripped another cravat from his neck and flung it on the floor. He grabbed one and tried it himself but failed, and finally resigned himself to his valet’s competent ministrations.
“I suppose that will have to do,” he said finally, fastening a ruby stickpin in the folds and surveying his reflection in his mirror. He caught the grimace on his man’s face. “I know I’ve been a bear, Dooley. My apologies, old man.”
“Not necessary, my lord.” He picked up St. Claire’s hat, gloves and stick and handed them to him, then retired to pick up the half dozen spoiled cravats on the floor.
“Yes, it is necessary. You know, there is a saying that no man is a hero to his valet. I suppose that is true, for at the end of the day we are all just men, and we have our moods and our fits and our weaknesses. A valet sees them all, perhaps more than even a wife. I am sorry if I have been impossible lately, Dooley.” He turned to glance at the thin, colorless man behind him as he pulled on his gloves.
Dooley straightened. “May I say, my lord, that it has always been a pleasure to serve you. You are normally the most equable of men, but each man is fallible.” A ghost of a smile flitted across his bony visage. “My Bessy has to put up with my frightful moods and is marvelous sweet about it, sir.”
For the first time St. Claire gazed at Dooley and saw a man, a tired, thin, aging man who provided for his small family by being valet to a spoiled aristocrat. Dooley, unusually for a valet, was a husband and a father, and yet year after year St. Claire pulled him away from London and his wife and children at Christmas so that he could be dressed and pampered in his accustomed luxury. It would not do. “Dooley,” he said casually, “I think you should start training a younger man for your job. A likely young ’un who is looking to step up.”
Dooley looked startled and then alarmed. “S-sir? Have I said something to offend? If so, I ap-p—”
“Don’t be a dolt, Dooley. I am merely thinking that next year it would be nice if you could stay in London with your family at Christmas instead of traipsing across the countryside with me. You could stay and look after the London house so Sanderson can go home to Hampsh
ire for a week or two. House doesn’t need a butler when there’s no one to butle, and Sanderson rarely gets the opportunity to visit his family!”
Dooley looked stunned and silently bowed over his armload of cravats. St. Claire, whistling a tune and cheerier than he had been in days, exited the room.
• • •
All the villagers and country folk for miles around came to the concert, as well as the gentry. It was a festival of seasonal music, with a pageant consisting of the retelling of the story of Jesus’s birth. It was a scene doubtlessly replayed an endless number of times around the country and greeted with the same enthusiasm by the congregation, family and friends of the participants.
The Ellerbeck choir was neither very good nor very bad, and they wended their way through a program of music made bearable by a decent organist and a concertmaster with a good ear and a realistic appreciation of what his choir was capable of. The concert wound down, and the angels, shepherd and wisemen filed out of the church, followed by Joseph and Mary carrying the holy babe. A final piece was on the schedule for the choir, and St. Claire steeled himself. It was the piece that had emotionally shattered him when he had heard them rehearse it. The piece with Celestine’s solo.
The choir started. He was in the family box along with his brother, sister-in-law and their houseguests. Lady van Hoffen had managed to maneuver it so she was beside him, and she chose that moment to place her hand on his thigh. He jumped and threw her a look. She chose to see it as encouragement and her gloved hand began to trail up his thigh until she brushed against his groin, letting her fingers delicately flick over him. He cast another beseeching look her way, but she merely responded by squeezing and licking her lips provocatively.
He moved, pushing her hand away. If she thought she was being titillating, she had spectacularly poor taste. They were in a church with his family! Surely she could see the inappropriateness of her conduct!
Then Celestine’s solo started, and he had no attention for anything else. He found himself on the edge of his seat, not daring to even breathe. He hadn’t just imagined it the first time, this power she wielded over his senses. Even with a restless crowd around him, the smell of hundreds of people, the presence of his family, her voice lifted him up. The crowd hushed in deference to the first truly beautiful thing they had heard all evening, and he closed his eyes.
He was at the height of the high, vaulted ceiling again, chills running down his back like light fingers. The sweet, agonizingly lovely tones throbbed through his body and he was conscious of nothing but Celestine. He thought back on their awkward friendship, if that was what it could be called.
From the first moment he had determined to seduce her, if not in body, then in mind. It had been a goal to while away a boring tenure in Cumbria, something to do until he could go back to London. Justify it to himself as he might, that he intended to strike a blow for freedom against Elizabeth’s tyranny, still it had been a game. Instead, he had become aware of how fine she was, how achingly beautiful her soul. She gave of herself; she sublimated her passions and needs, sacrificing them to the wants and needs of others, taking joy from giving.
But there was a fierce intelligence and spirit behind those calm gray eyes. It was as though her calm exterior was a crucible, containing the molten elements of the earth. He had touched it only when he kissed her and felt her melt to liquid fire against him. What other man would recognize that heat and passion within her and care enough to bring it out?
He knew that many men felt that any exhibition of passion from a lady was nigh unto admitting that she was tainted, a whore in spirit if not in reality. Women were supposed to be void of those feelings, with spirits that lifted them above earthly passion. But those poor, misguided sots mistook passion for the lewd groping of a woman like Lady van Hoffen. That wasn’t passion, that was lust, a single element of the higher feeling. Passion, he had come to believe over the past weeks, had a spiritual element, a refined, sweet aspect involving longing and sacrifice, giving and . . . love. Love?
St. Claire swallowed hard, his hands gripping the edge of the wood bench as he listened to the song Celestine sang, and then the choir’s voices joined her and she was lost in the chorus. The music swelled, filling the small church with a joyful noise that must surely shatter the gorgeous stained glass windows.
And then it was over, and August and Elizabeth were leading the way out of the church into the chilly night air. St. Claire, numb and bewildered, went through the motions expected of him, joining his family in speaking to the vicar and the choirmaster, the little popinjay named Jenks. But he paid little attention to what was going on around him. He felt like he was on the precipice of something important and wished he could just get away for a while and think. But this was a most inopportune time for introspection. Charlotte Stimson was clutching his arm on one side and her sister took the other arm, and he was hauled down the church steps without even a chance to look for Celestine, to see if she was close by.
There was to be a reception at Langlow for all the choir and their families. It was the most plebeian event of the year, along with the summer festival held at Langlow, reflecting the more informal manners of the country. A veritable caravan of carriages, carts and horses wound their way in the sparkling moonlight up to the “big house,” as Langlow was known in the village.
The ballroom was open for the party and St. Claire circulated among the crowd, still lost in thought after what he had been contemplating in church. What did it mean? What had happened to him that he was suddenly lost in high-flown contemplation of love? He had been wont to describe love as a trap for men and a sop for women. It trapped men into conceiving and caring for families and it made up to women for all the power they lacked in the world. But it had not escaped his attention over the years that his brother’s marriage was a love match, and he had never seemed trapped.
St. Claire could not understand the feelings August appeared to have for Elizabeth. She was beautiful, it was true, but she was bossy, managing and sharp-tongued. And yet August doted on her. That must be love for his sensible, intelligent brother to overlook the failings of the woman and think she was perfect in spite of myriad faults.
But love just wasn’t right for him, even if it did exist. He was not made to cleave to one woman, and his inherent sense of fairness would not allow him to take a wife and then cheat on her. He had thought to take a wife when all the wenching was out of his system, if that day ever came. He never expected to “fall in love,” though women seemed to fall in love with him every time he asked one to dance.
Was love, if it existed, a female trait? Were men formed only for sexual conquest? His lovers and mistresses had all been willing to lie with him, some professing to love him, their love soon enough turning cold when the baubles stopped coming. The debutantes he had flirted with had all recovered from their disastrous “love” for him as quickly as they realized he had no intention of vying for their hand, and each had gone on to other men, and marriage.
But Celestine . . . she had burned in his arms like an ember. His moments with her had been different from anything he had ever experienced. For a time he had been sure his feelings were entirely sexual. He was convinced that to bed her would be like loving fire, the heat consuming him before his hunger was sated; he would not survive it unscorched. But now he didn’t know what to think. There were moments when he had no desire to have sexual intercourse with her, times when what he wanted was to talk to her and watch her, or even just to be with her.
She was across the room with an elderly woman from the village, bringing her a glass of punch and bending over to speak to her. Was Celestine plain? He remembered thinking so, disparaging the freckles, the pale complexion, the nondescript hair color. Now all he could see was her graceful movement and slender litheness. He knew what her hair looked like unbound, how it caught light and became a river of shining silk. He had felt how she molded to him until their two bodies became one, even through cloth, so close he could fe
el her heart beat.
But more than that, he had felt their souls reach out and touch, even in the church, while she sang. It was as if something inside of her broke free and soared, taking him with her, swirling and diving, unbound and glorious. Would the good, dull reverend ever understand Celestine, ever appreciate her rare magic? As he thought about the vicar and his avowed intention of marrying Celestine, he saw Mr. Foster wend his way through the crowd and take her aside. She nodded at something he said, a serious expression on her face, and disappeared with him out the doors into the hall.
What were they doing? Where were they going? It was obvious to St. Claire. He had as good as stated his intention to ask her to marry him. What better place to make the announcement than at the party celebrating Christmas?
Without thinking he followed. He saw the reverend’s sober black coat disappear behind the drawing room door, and the door closed quietly behind him. St. Claire paced uncertainly in the hall. Should he break it up? But that would only put off the inevitable; there was no point to that. And why should he want to, anyway? Should he not want what was best for Celestine? Surely a good marriage was better than life as a governess. He tossed back the glass of brandy he held and set it down on a table.
As he paced up and down in the chilly hall, he saw the door open and he stopped, frozen in indecision. Foster came out and quietly closed the door behind him. He didn’t notice St. Claire standing by a large potted palm and strolled by with a thoughtful expression on his face.
St. Claire waited for Celestine to emerge as well. She didn’t. What was she waiting for?
Impatiently, St. Claire finally paced over and opened the door. Her back was to him and she ran her fingers over the keys of the piano. She sat down at the bench, still oblivious to St. Claire’s presence, and touched her fingers to the keys again, then rubbed them, the swollen knuckles paining her, perhaps.
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