A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (13 page)

She could not tell this story amusingly. There was a
child
involved. An innocent.

Where, then? Somewhere else in Europe? Somewhere here in England?

She could not think straight. She needed to sleep. She was mortally tired. If she could but sleep, she could clear
her head and then think and plan rationally. If she could but sleep …

But she kept seeing Edgar Downes standing beside her bed, looking even more massive and forbidding than usual in his caped greatcoat, his booted feet set apart on her carpet, his face frowning down at her as he suggested fetching a physician.

And more alarmingly, she kept seeing him above her on the bed, his weight pressing her down, his hot seed gushing deep inside her. She kept feeling herself being impregnated.

She hated him. She did not blame him for anything. It had been all her fault. She had seduced him and had taken no precautions to avoid the consequences. But she hated him anyway.

He of all people must never know the truth. She would never be able to live with that humiliation. He would probably proceed to take charge, to send her somewhere where she could bear the child in comfort and secrecy. He would probably find a home for it. He would probably support it until it was adult and he could find it suitable employment. He would see her as just a weak woman who could not possibly manage alone.

He must never find out. He was not going to organize the life of
her
child. He was not going to take her child away from her or lift from her shoulders the responsibility of caring for it. It was her child. It was inside her body. Now. And not it. He. Or she. A real person.

She was biting her upper lip. After a while she tasted blood. She did not sleep.

L
ADY
S
TAPLETON AND
Mrs. Cross were not at the Carews’ musical evening. Mrs. Cross had sent a note making their excuses, the marchioness explained when
someone noted their absence. Lady Stapleton was indisposed.

It was only surprising that most of them remained healthy in such dreary weather, someone remarked.

Fanny Grainger had mentioned seeing Lady Stapleton at the library looking quite ill, Lady Grainger reported.

She had been looking not quite herself for a few weeks, the Countess of Thornhill said. Poor lady. Some winter chills were very hard to shake.

But look at the gowns she wore, Mrs. Turner remarked—or rather did not wear, her tone implied. It was no wonder she took chills.

No one picked up that particular conversational cue.

“I must pay her a call,” Cora Kneller announced in the carriage on the way home. “I wonder if she has seen a physician. At least she is fortunate to have Mrs. Cross to tend to her. Mrs. Cross is a very amiable and sensible lady. I like her excessively.”

“I shall come with you, Cora,” her brother said.

“Oh good.” She looked only pleased and not even mildly suspicious, as Lord Francis did. “I will not need your escort then, Francis. You may take the children to the park.”

“They will probably take me, my love,” he said. “But I shall allow myself to be dragged along.”

And so Edgar made his promised morning call in company with his sister. He hoped that Lady Stapleton would have kept to her bed so that they might make their inquiries of Mrs. Cross and spend just a short while in conversation with her. But when they were shown up to the drawing room, it was to find both ladies there.

Lady Stapleton was looking more herself. There was little color in her cheeks, but she was looking composed and was dressed with her usual elegance. She even favored Edgar with her usual mocking smile as she greeted
him. He and Cora were invited to have a seat and Mrs. Cross rang for tea.

“I was quite disturbed to hear last evening that you were indisposed,” Cora said. “I can see for myself this morning that you are still not quite the thing. I do hope you have consulted a physician.”

Lady Stapleton smiled at Edgar. “I have not,” she said in her velvet voice. “I do not believe in physicians. But thank you for your concern, Lady Francis. And for yours, sir.”

Edgar said nothing. He merely inclined his head.

“Letty tells me that I owe you an apology,” she said. “She tells me I was rude to you yesterday. I cannot remember saying anything I did not mean, but perhaps I was feeling ill enough to say something to offend. I do beg your pardon.”

“Yesterday?” Cora said with bright curiosity. “Did you see Lady Stapleton yesterday, Edgar, and said nothing last evening when we were discussing her absence? How provoking of you!”

“Ah, but doubtless Mr. Downes was too modest to admit to his own gallantry,” Lady Stapleton said, her eyes mocking him. “I leaned heavily on his arm all the way home from the library, and he actually carried me the last few yards and all the way upstairs to my bedchamber. My aunt was with us, I hasten to add. Your brother has amazing strength, Lady Francis. I weigh a ton.”

“Oh, Edgar.” Cora looked at him curiously. “How thoughtful of you. And you did not say a word about it. I am not surprised that you wished to come to pay your respects today. But
you
are quite well, ma’am?” She turned her attention to Mrs. Cross.

The two of them proceeded to discuss Lady Stapleton’s health almost as if the lady herself was not present. Mrs. Cross was worried because her niece had been
under the weather for a week or more—yes, definitely more—but refused to seek a cure. She was ill enough each morning to be quite unable to eat any breakfast and her energy seemed to flag several times each day. She had come near to fainting on more than one occasion. And such behavior was quite unlike her.

Lady Stapleton kept her gaze on Edgar while they spoke, a look of mocking amusement in her eyes.

“I know just what it is like to be unable to eat breakfast,” Cora said. “I sympathize with you, Lady Stapleton. It happened to me during the early months when I was expecting all four of my children. And yet breakfast has always been my favorite meal.”

Lady Stapleton raised both eyebrows, but continued to look at Edgar. “Goodness me,” she said. “We will be embarrassing Mr. Downes. I do believe he is blushing.”

He was not blushing, but he was feeling remarkably uncomfortable. Only Cora would speak so indelicately in mixed company.

“Oh, Edgar will not mind,” Cora said. “Will you, Edgar? But of course in my case, Lady Stapleton, it was a natural effect of my condition and passed off within a month or two. So did the dreadful tiredness. I do hate being tired during the day. But in your case such symptoms are unnatural and should be confided to a physician. It is unmannerly of me to press you on the issue, however, when I am not a relative or even a particularly close acquaintance. I am a concerned acquaintance, though.”

“Thank you,” Lady Stapleton said. “You are kind.”

The conversation moved on to a more general discussion of health and by natural progressions through the weather and Christmas and some of the more attractive shops on Oxford Street.

Edgar did not participate. His discomfort had turned to something more extreme, though he was trying to tell
himself not to be so foolish. She was his age, she had once told him. As far as he knew, she had never had children, though she had been married for a number of years and had admitted to numerous lovers since her widowhood. Was it possible for a woman to have a child at the age of six-and-thirty? Foolish question. Of course it was possible. He knew women who had borne children at an even more advanced age. But a first child? Was it possible? After years of barrenness or else years of careful guarding against such a thing?

It surely was not possible. How she would laugh at him if she knew the suspicions that were rushing their course through his brain. Just because Cora had compared the early months of her pregnancies with Lady Stapleton’s illness. What an absurdity for him to take the extra step of making the direct comparison.

But then Cora did not know—and in her innocence would not even suspect—that the lady had had a lover just over a month ago. Neither would her aunt suspect it.

“And what are your plans for Christmas, Mr. Downes?” Mrs. Cross asked him suddenly.

He stared at her blankly for a moment. “I will be going down to Mobley Abbey, ma’am, to spend the holiday with my father,” he said.

“There will be quite a house party there,” Cora said. “Francis and I and the children will be going, of course, and several of our friends. I am looking forward to it excessively.”

“And Mr. Downes’s future bride will be there, Letty,” Lady Stapleton said, looking at Edgar as he spoke. “Did you not know that he has come to town for the express purpose of choosing a bride from the
ton
? He is to take her to Mobley Abbey to present her to his father for approval. A Christmas bride. Is that not romantic?” She made it sound anything but.

This time Edgar really did flush.

“Now you are the one to have embarrassed Mr. Downes, Helena,” Mrs. Cross said reproachfully. “But there is nothing to be embarrassed about, sir. I wish you joy of your quest. Any young lady would be fortunate indeed to be your choice.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said and noticed with some relief that Cora was getting to her feet to take her leave. He stood up and the other two ladies did likewise. He made his bow to them and then waited while Cora thought of something else she must tell Mrs. Cross before they left. He looked closely at Lady Stapleton, who smiled back at him.

Are you with child?
he wanted to blurt out. But it was a ridiculous notion. Bizarre. She was a thirty-six-year-old widow. With whom he happened to have had sexual relations—twice—just over a month before. And now she was suffering from morning sickness and unusual tiredness and fainting spells when she tried to push on with her usual daily activities. And she was unwilling to see a physician.

He felt dizzy himself for a moment.

He could not imagine a worse disaster. It could not possibly be. But what other explanation could there be? Morning sickness. Tiredness. Even he was aware of those two symptoms as very characteristic of pregnancy in its early stages.

He followed his sister downstairs with some longing for the fresh air beyond the front door—even if it was chilly, damp, windblown air. He had to think. He had to convince himself of his own foolishness. But was it more foolish to think that it might be or to imagine that it could not possibly be?

Was she pregnant?

By him?

H
ELENA HAD DECIDED TO STAY IN TOWN OVER
Christmas. After a few days of suppressed terror and near panic, she calmed down sufficiently to decide that she had to plan carefully, but that there was no immediate hurry. She was a little over one month pregnant. Soon the nausea and the tiredness would pass off. Her condition would not be evident for a few months yet. She need not dash off somewhere in a blind panic. There was time to think and to plan.

Soon most of her acquaintances would disperse to their various country estates for the holiday. Some would remain and others would arrive, but the people she most wanted to be rid of would be gone. Edgar Downes would be gone and so would that bold, curiously appealing sister of his and her family. They were taking a number of other people with them to Mobley Abbey—the Carews, the Bridgwaters, the Thornhills, the Greenwalds. And very probably the Graingers, too.

She felt sorry for Fanny Grainger, though it was not normally in her nature to feel sorry for people. Perhaps she pitied the girl because she was reminded of herself at that age, or a little younger. So unhappy and fatalistic. So very obedient. Like a lamb to the slaughter, to use the old cliché. Fanny would be quite suffocated by Edgar Downes.

She forced herself to attend most of the social functions to which she was invited—and she was invited everywhere—while she was careful to curtail her morning activities and to keep most of her afternoons free so that she might rest. She succeeded in feeling and looking a little better than she had with the result that her aunt, though not quite satisfied, stopped pressing her to consult a physician.

Sooner or later, Helena thought, she was going to have to see a doctor. How embarrassing that was going to be. But she would think of it when the time came—after Christmas. By then she would have decided where to go and exactly what to do with the child. Perhaps she would keep it, she thought sometimes, and live somewhere on the Continent with it, thumbing her nose at public opinion. Probably she would give it up to a carefully chosen family and disappear from its life. She was not worthy of being a mother.

She took care to think of the child as
it
. Terror could return in a hurry when she began to think of its person-hood and to wonder about its gender and appearance. Would it be a boy who would look like
him
? She would shake off the speculations. She could not imagine a real live child, born of her own body, in helpless need of her arms and her breasts and her love.

She was incapable of love. She knew nothing of nurturing.

Oh, yes, she rather thought she would give up the child.
It
.

She saw Edgar Downes frequently. They became very skilled at avoiding each other, at sitting far from each other at dinner and supper tables, at joining different conversational or card-playing groups, at sitting on opposite sides of a room during concerts. They never ignored each other—that might have been as noticeable to a society hungry for something to gossip about as if
they had been constantly in each other’s pocket. When they did come face-to-face, they smiled politely and he asked about her health and she assured him that she was quite well, thank you.

They watched each other. Not with their eyes—a strange notion. They were
aware
of each other. She was sure it worked both ways. She felt that he watched her, though whenever she glanced at him to confirm the feeling, she was almost always wrong. When he asked about her health, she sensed that the question was not a mere courtesy. For days after he had carried her to her bed and then called on her with his sister, she had half expected him to return with a physician. It was just the sort of thing she would expect him to do—take charge, impose his will upon someone who had no wish to be beholden to him in any way, do what he thought was best regardless of her feelings.