A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (12 page)

Peace! What a ridiculous hope. Her last chance for any kind of peace had disappeared over a year ago with the marriage of another man.

She decided to accompany her aunt to the library one morning, despite the fact that she felt not only nauseous but even dizzy at breakfast, and even though her aunt urged her to go back to bed for an hour. She would feel better for a little fresh air, she replied.

She did not feel better. She sat with a newspaper while her aunt chose a book, but she did not read even the headlines. She was too busy imagining the humiliation should she vomit in such a public place. She mastered the urge as she had done on every previous occasion, even in the privacy of her own rooms.

But a wave of dizziness took her as they reached the door on their way out. It was so strong that her aunt noticed and became alarmed. She took Helena’s arm and Helena unashamedly leaned on her for support. She drew a few deep breaths of the cold outside air, her eyes half closed. And then her aunt spoke.

“Mr. Downes,” she called, her voice breathless with distress. “Oh, Mr. Downes, might we impose upon you for a few minutes, I wonder? My niece is unwell.”

Helena’s eyes snapped open. There he was, tall and broad and immaculately groomed and frowning at her as if he were quite out of humor. He of all people! There was suddenly another wave of nausea to be fought.

S
HE PUSHED AWAY FROM HER AUNT
’
S SIDE AND
stood upright. “I am quite well, I thank you,” she said. “Good morning, Mr. Downes.”

The effect of her proud posture and brisk words was quite marred by the fact that she swayed on the spot and would perhaps have fallen if Mrs. Cross had not grasped her arm and Edgar had not lunged forward to grab her by the waist.

“I am
quite well
,” she said testily. “You may unhand me, sir.”

“You are not well, Helena,” her aunt insisted mildly. “Mr. Downes,
may
we impose upon you to call us a hackney cab?”

“No!” Lady Stapleton said as Edgar looked back over his shoulder toward the road. “Not a hackney cab. Not a carriage of any sort. I shall walk home. The fresh air will feel good. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Downes, but we need not detain you. My aunt’s arm will be quite sufficient for my needs.”

She was attempting her characteristic mocking smile, but it looked ghastly in combination with parchment white face and lips. The foolish woman was obviously trying to defy an early winter chill.

“I shall summon a hackney cab, ma’am,” he said and turned away from her in order to hail one.

“I shall vomit if I have to set foot inside a carriage,” she said from behind him. “There. Is that what you wanted, Mr. Downes? To hear me admit something so very ungenteel?”

“My dear Helena,” her aunt said, “Mr. Downes is just being—”

“Mr. Downes is just being his usual overbearing self,” Lady Stapleton said. “If you must offer your assistance, sir, give me your arm and escort me home. I can lean more heavily on yours than I could on Letty’s.”

“Helena, my dear.” Mrs. Cross sounded shocked. “Mr. Downes probably has business elsewhere.”

“Then he can be late,” her niece retorted, taking Edgar’s offered arm and leaning much of her weight on it. “Oh, I do wish I had gone to Italy with the Povises. How tiresome to be in England when it is so cold and sunless and cheerless.”

“I have no business that cannot be delayed, ma’am,” Edgar told Mrs. Cross. “I shall escort you home, Lady Stapleton, and then go to fetch a physician if you will tell me which. I suppose you have not consulted him lately.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“How kind of you, sir,” Mrs. Cross said.

“I do not consult a physician every time I am subjected to an overheated library and half faint from the stuffiness,” Lady Stapleton said. “I shall be quite myself in a moment.”

But she was very far from being herself even five minutes later. She continued to lean heavily on his arm and walked rather slowly along the street. She did not speak again, even to contradict Mrs. Cross, who proceeded to tell Edgar that her niece had not been in the best of health for some little while. By the time they came in sight of her house, her eyes were half closed and her footsteps lagged more than ever.

“Perhaps, ma’am,” Edgar suggested to Mrs. Cross,
“you could go ahead to knock on the door and have it open by the time Lady Stapleton arrives there.” And without warning to his flagging companion, he stopped, released her arm, and scooped her up into his arms.

She spoke then while her one arm came about his neck and her head dropped to his shoulder. “Damn you, Edgar,” she said, reminding him of how she had sworn at him on a previous occasion. “Damn you. I suppose you were waiting outside that library for the express purpose of humiliating me. How I hate you.” But she did not struggle to be set down.

“Your effusive expressions of gratitude can wait until you are feeling more the thing,” he said.

The flat-nosed pugilist was in the hall and looked to be bracing himself to take his mistress in his own arms. Edgar swept by him with hardly a glance and carried his burden upstairs. She was certainly no light weight. He was thankful when he saw Mrs. Cross outside Lady Stapleton’s bedchamber, holding open the door. Had she been ascending the stairs behind them, he might have forgotten that he was not supposed to know where the lady’s bedchamber was.

He set her down on the bed and stood back while her aunt removed her bonnet and a maid, who had rushed in behind them, drew off her half boots. She was still terribly pale.

“Who is your physician?” he asked.

“I have none.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Some of her hair had come loose with the bonnet. The richness of its chestnut waves only served to make her face look more colorless. “I have no need of physicians, Mr. Downes. I need a warm drink and a rest. I daresay I shall see you at Lady Carew’s musical evening tonight.”

“Oh, I think not, Helena,” Mrs. Cross said. “I will send a note around. The marchioness will understand.”

“You need a physician,” Edgar said.

“And you may go to the devil, sir,” she said sharply. “Might I expect to be granted the privacy of my own room? It is not seemly for you to be standing there looking at me here, is it?” The old mockery was back in both her face and her voice. It was the very room and the very bed, of course …

“When you are feeling better, Helena,” Mrs. Cross said with gentle gravity, “you will wish to apologize to Mr. Downes. He has been extraordinarily kind to us this morning, and there is no impropriety with both Marie and me here, too. We will leave you to Marie’s care now. Sir, will you come to the drawing room for tea or coffee—or something stronger, perhaps?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, turning toward the door, “but I really do have business elsewhere. I shall call tomorrow morning, if I may, to ask how Lady Stapleton does.”

Lady Stapleton, he saw when he glanced back at the bed before leaving the room, was lying with her eyes closed and a contemptuous smile curling her lip.

“I am worried about her,” Mrs. Cross said after he had closed the door. “She is not herself. She has always had so much restless energy. Now she seems merely restless.”

“Would
you
like me to summon a physician, ma’am?” he asked.

“Against Helena’s wishes?” she said, raising her eyebrows and laughing. “You do not know my niece, Mr. Downes. She was unpardonably rude to you this morning. I do apologize for her. I am sure she will do so for herself when she feels better and remembers a few of the things she said to you.”

Edgar doubted it. “I understand that Lady Stapleton prides herself on her independence, ma’am,” he said.
“She was embarrassed to have to accept my assistance this morning. No apology is necessary.”

They were in the hall already and the manservant, looking his usual surly self, was waiting to open the door onto the street.

“You are gracious, sir,” Mrs. Cross said.

He wished she would see a physician, Edgar thought as he strode along the street in an effort not to be quite impossibly late for a meeting he had arranged with a business associate. She was not the type of woman to be always having the vapors and relying upon men to support her to the nearest sofa. She had hated having to accept his help this morning. She had even damned him—and called him by his first name. Her indisposition was very real, and it had been going on for some time if her aunt was to be believed.

He was worried about her.

And then he frowned and caught the thought.
Worried
about her? About Lady Stapleton, who meant nothing to him? How had they expressed it between them during that evening when they had been waltzing? They were not adversaries or friends or lovers. They were nothing. They could be nothing, because there had been that night.

But there had been that night. He had known her body with thorough intimacy. He had known exhilarating and blazing passion with her.

Yes, he supposed she was
something
. Not anything that could be put into words, but something. Because there had been that night.

And so he was worried about her.

S
HE HAD ALLOWED
Marie to undress her and tuck her into bed. She had allowed her aunt back into her room to draw the curtains across the window and to send for
a hot drink of weak tea—the thought of chocolate or coffee was just too nauseating. She had allowed them both to fuss—though she hated people fussing over her.

And now she had been left alone to sleep. She felt as far from sleep as she had ever felt. She lay staring up at the large silk rosette that formed the peak of the canopy over her bed. She could not believe how foolish she was. She was stunned by her own naivete.

Although her husband had been fifty-four when she married him and sixty-one when he died, he had been a vigorous man. He had had her almost nightly for the first year and with frequency after that, almost to the end. She had never conceived. She had come to believe that the fault was in herself. Although Christian had had only the one son, she had been told that his first wife had had an appalling number of stillbirths and miscarriages.

The possibility of conception had not occurred to her when she had lain with Edgar Downes—either before or during or after. Not even when she had begun to feel persistently unwell.

She was careless about her own cycle. Her monthly flow, that great nuisance to which all women were subjected, almost always took her by surprise. She had no idea if she was strictly regular or not. She was one of the fortunate women who were not troubled by either pain or discomfort or a heavy flow.

And so for a number of weeks she had allowed symptoms so obvious that they were like a hard fist jabbing at her chin to pass her by unnoticed. Even now, when she set her mind to it, she could not remember when her last flow had been. She was almost sure there had been none for a while—none since that night, anyway. She was almost sure enough to say that she was quite certain. Oh, yes, of course she was certain. And that had been well over a month ago.

She had been feeling lethargic and nauseated—especially in the mornings. Her breasts had been feeling tender to the touch.

As she stared upward, strong suspicion turned unwillingly to certainty—and to a mindless, clawing terror. She closed her eyes as the canopy began to swing about her—and then opened them again. Dizziness was only worsened when one closed one’s eyes. She drew deep breaths, held them, and released them slowly through her mouth.

At the age of six-and-thirty she was with child.

She was pregnant.

She was going to swell up to a grotesque enormity just like a young bride. And then there was going to be a baby. A child. A person. For her to nurture.

No.

No, she could not do it. She could not face the embarrassment. Or the shame. Though she did not care the snap of two fingers for the shame. But the embarrassment! She was six-and-thirty. She had been a widow for ten years. If the
ton
suspected that she occasionally took lovers—and her carelessness of strict propriety had made that almost inevitable—then they would guess, too, that she was worldly-wise and knowledgeable enough to take care of herself. It was unpardonably gauche to allow oneself to be impregnated, especially when one did not have a live husband upon whose paternity to foist the love child.

She would be the laughingstock.

She did not care about that. Why should she care what people thought about her? She had not cared for a long time.

Her terror had little to do with either shame or embarrassment. It had everything to do with the fact that there was going to be a
baby
. A child who was half hers and
would come from her body. A child she would be expected to nurse and to love and to teach.

She had involved someone else, drawn someone else into her own darkness. A child. An innocent.

Her mind reached frantically about. If she searched carefully for a good home, if she gave the baby up at birth, if she was careful never to see it again, never to let it know who or what its mother was, would the child have a chance?

But she could not think clearly. She had only just realized the truth, though it had been staring her in the face for some time. He had stopped a short distance from the house and taken her totally by surprise by picking her up and carrying her the rest of the way. She had felt the strength of his arms and the sturdiness of his body—and she had known in a blinding flash the nature of her obsession with him. Her body had been speaking for a few weeks but her mind had not been listening. She had this man’s child growing inside her.

And so she had damned him and would have used worse language on him if she had had the energy.

Where would she go? She closed her eyes and found to her relief that the dizziness had gone. Scotland? Her cousins were respectable people. They would not appreciate the notion of entertaining a pregnant woman whose husband had died ten years ago. Italy? She could find the Povises and their party. If she told the story well enough, they would be amused by it. They were worldly enough to accept that such things happened.