A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (3 page)

He needed their help. Despite the courteous tact of his brother-in-law’s words, Edgar felt no doubt about that. He might have managed it himself, but with far more
effort than would be needed if he simply relied upon the fact that Francis was a member of the upper echelons of the
ton
. Edgar was resigned to forcing his way into ranks from which his birth would normally exclude him. He was prepared for some coolness, even some rejection. But he knew enough about the world to believe that his wealth and his prospects would open a number of doors to him, especially those of people who felt themselves in need of sharing in his wealth.

He did not doubt that it was within his power to win himself a bride by Christmas. Someone of birth and breeding. Someone who would not look upon his own origins with contempt or condescension. Someone pretty and personable. Someone of whom he could be fond, it was to be hoped. He came from a family that set much store by that elusive something called love. He loved his father and his sister and was loved by them in return. His parents had enjoyed a love match. So did Cora and Francis, though the marriage had not appeared too promising at the start. Edgar rather thought that he would like to make a love match, too, or at least a match of affection.

He had until Christmas. Three months.

He was going to choose himself a bride. He traveled up to London at the end of the month, a little chilled by the thought, a little exhilarated by it.

After all, he was enough his father’s son to find a challenge stimulating.

L
ORD
F
RANCIS
K
NELLER
’
S
friends were indeed in London. The Earl and Countess of Thornhill and the Marquess and Marchioness of Carew had come down together from Yorkshire with their six children for the purpose of shopping and seeing the sights and socializing at a somewhat less frantic pace than the Season would
have allowed. Even the Duke and Duchess of Bridgwater had come up with their new son, mainly because their other friends were to be there. The duke’s sister and Cora’s special friend, the Countess of Greenwald, was also in residence with her husband and family. And they all decided to be kind to Cora’s brother and to take him under their collective wing.

It was all somewhat daunting. And rather embarrassing. And not a little humbling to a man who was accustomed to commanding other men and to thinking himself very much master of his own life and affairs. His first social invitation, to what was termed an intimate soirée, came from the Countess of Greenwald. The affair was termed “intimate,” Edgar guessed, to excuse its lack of numbers in comparison with what might have been expected during the Season.

But when his sister informed him that quite one hundred people had been invited and that surely all but a very few would make an appearance, Edgar felt absurdly nervous. He had never forgotten how the other boys at school had made him suffer for his birth. He had never complained to his father, or to any of the masters, who had undoubtedly shared the sentiments of the bulk of their pupils anyway. He had learned how to use his fists and his tongue, too, with blistering effect. He had learned endurance and pride and self-respect. He had learned that there was an invisible barrier between those men—and boys—who were gentlemen and those who were not. He had vowed to himself that he would never try to cross that barrier.

As a very young man he had scorned even to want to cross it. He had been proud of who he was and of what he had made of himself and what his father had made of
him
self. But Cora had married Francis. And the bridge had been set in place. And then his father had expressed
his dying wish—surely thirty years before he was likely to die.

Edgar dressed carefully for the soirée. He wore a plain blue evening coat with gray knee breeches and white linen. He directed his valet to tie his neckcloth in a simple knot rather than fashion one of the more elaborate and artistic creations his man favored. His only jewelry was a diamond pin in the folds of the neckcloth. His clothes were expensive and expertly tailored. He would allow the tailoring to speak for itself. He would not try to put on any show of wealth. He certainly would not wear anything that might suggest dandyism. The very thought made him shudder.

Cora and her friends would doubtless introduce him to some young ladies. Indeed, he had been quite aware of them going into a huddle after dinner at the Carews’ the evening before. He had been painfully aware from the enthusiastic tone of their murmurings and the occasional furtive and interested glance thrown his way by one and another of them that he had been the subject of their conversation.

He hoped they would not introduce him to very young ladies. He was thirty-six. It would be most unfair to expect a young girl straight from the schoolroom to take him on. And he did not believe he would find appealing a girl almost young enough to be his daughter. He should have told Cora that he wanted someone significantly past the age of one-and-twenty. Such ladies were deemed to be on the shelf, of course. There had to be something wrong with them if they had not snared a husband by the age of twenty. And perhaps it really was so. How would he know?

“I would lead you in the direction of a congenial game of cards, old chap,” Lord Francis said to him as they arrived at the Greenwalds’ town house. He clapped a hand
on his brother-in-law’s shoulder and grinned. “But Cora would have my head and your purpose in coming to town would not be served. I shall allow her to go to work as soon as she emerges from the ladies’ room. But no, you will not have to wait that long. Here comes our hostess herself, and from the look in her eye, Edgar, I would guess she means business.”

And sure enough, after greeting them both with a gracious smile, Lady Greenwald linked one arm through Edgar’s and bore him off to introduce him to a few people he might find interesting.

“Everyone is starved for the sight of a new face and the sound of new conversation, Mr. Downes,” she said, “especially at this time of year when there are so few people in town.”

It seemed to Edgar that there was a vast number of people in Lady Greenwald’s drawing room, but the fact that almost all of them were strangers might have contributed to the impression.

He was introduced to a number of people and conversed briefly with them about the weather and other such general topics until Lady Greenwald finally led him to where he guessed she had been leading him from the start. Sir Webster Grainger shook him heartily by the hand instead of merely bowing, and laughed just as heartily for no apparent reason. Lady Grainger swept him a curtsy that looked deferential enough to have been made in the queen’s drawing room. And Miss Fanny Grainger, small, slight of figure, fair of hair, rather pretty, blushed rosily and directed her gaze at the floor somewhere in the vicinity of Edgar’s shoes.

It had been planned, he thought. As both an experienced lawyer and a businessman he was canny at interpreting tone and atmosphere and the language of the body. Words were not always necessary for the assessment of a situation. It was very clear to him from the
first moment that Sir Webster Grainger and his lady were in search of a husband for their daughter, that they had heard of his availability, and that they had determined to fix his interest. He did not doubt that Lady Greenwald would have done her job well. The Graingers would be well aware of his social status.

“You are familiar with Bristol, I understand, Mr. Downes,” Sir Webster said as Lady Greenwald excused herself to greet some new arrival at the drawing room door.

“I live there and conduct my business there, sir,” Edgar said very deliberately. Let there be no possible mistake.

“We invariably spend a day in Bristol whenever we go to Bath for Lady Grainger to take the waters,” Sir Webster said. “She has an aunt living there. At Bristol, that is.”

“It is an agreeable place in which to have one’s residence,” Edgar said. Good Lord, the girl could be no more than eighteen. He must have been her present age when she was born. Her mother must be of an age with him.

“Fanny always particularly enjoys the days we spend in Bristol,” Lady Grainger said. “You must tell Mr. Downes what you like best about Bristol, Fanny, to see if he agrees with you.”

There could have been no suggestion better calculated to tie the girl’s tongue in knots, Edgar could see. She lifted her eyes to his chest, tried to raise them higher, failed, and blushed again. Poor child.

“Whenever I have been to London and return home,” he said, “I am invariably asked what I liked best about town. I am never able to answer. I could, I suppose, describe the Tower of London or Hyde Park or a dozen other places, but I can never think of a single one when
confronted. In my experience, one either likes a place or not. Do you like Bristol, Miss Grainger?”

She shot him a brief and grateful glance. She had fine gray eyes in a rather thin face. “I like it very well, sir,” she said. “Because my great-aunt lives there, I believe, and I like her.”

It was not a profound answer, but it was an endearingly honest one.

“It is the best reason of all for liking a place,” he said. “I grew up in Bristol with a father and a sister whom I loved and still love, and so for me Bristol will always be a more pleasant place than London.”

The child had almost relaxed. She even smiled briefly. “Is your mother d— Is she not living, sir?”

“She died giving birth to my sister,” he said. “But I remember her as a loving presence in my life.”

“And your sister is Lady Francis Kneller, Mr. Downes,” Sir Webster announced, just as if Edgar did not know it for himself. He rubbed his hands together. “A fine lady. I remember the time—it was before her marriage, I do believe—when she saved Lady Kellington’s poodles from being trampled in Hyde Park.”

“Ah, yes.” Edgar smiled. “My sister has a habit of rushing to the rescue.”

“She saved some dogs from being
trampled
?” Miss Grainger’s eyes were directed full at him now.

It needed Francis to tell the story in all its mock-heroic glory. But Edgar did his best. It appeared, though, as if he failed to convey the humor of Cora’s heroism in endangering her life to save some dogs who had been in no danger except from her rescue. Miss Grainger looked earnestly at him, her mouth forming a little O of concern. A very kissable little mouth—in rather the way that Cora’s children’s mouths were kissable when they lifted them to him on his visits to the nursery.

He must be getting old, he thought. Too old to be in search of a bride.

And then he glanced across to the doorway, where another new arrival stood. A woman alone, dressed fashionably and elegantly in a high-waisted, low-bosomed dress of pure scarlet silk. A woman whose magnificent bosom more than did justice to the gown. Her whole figure, in fact, was generous. It might even be described as voluptuous more than slender. But then it was a mature woman’s figure. She was not a young woman, but well past her thirtieth year if Edgar’s guess was correct. Her dark hair was piled high and dressed in smooth curls rather than in more youthful ringlets. She looked about her with bold eyes in a handsome face, a half smile on her lips, which might denote confidence or contempt or mere mocking irony. It was difficult to tell which.

Before Edgar could realize that he was staring and proving himself to be indeed less than a gentleman—Sir Webster was saying something complimentary about Cora—the woman’s eyes alit on him, held his own for a moment, and then moved deliberately down his body and back up again. She lifted one mocking eyebrow as her eyes met his once more and pursed her lips into something like the O that had just made Miss Grainger’s lips look kissable. Except that there was nothing this time to remind him of his niece and nephews. He felt heated, as if there had been a hot hand at the end of her eyebeams that had scorched its way down the length of his body and back up again.

If he had not been standing in the Earl of Greenwald’s drawing room, he would have been convinced that he was surely in the presence of one of London’s more experienced and celebrated courtesans.

“Ah, yes, indeed,” he said to Sir Webster, feeling that
it was the correct response to what had just been said, though he was not at all sure.

Sir Webster seemed satisfied with his answer. Lady Grainger smiled and Miss Grainger lowered her gaze to the floor again.

The scarlet lady had moved into the room and was being greeted by the Earl of Greenwald, who was bowing over her hand.

H
ELENA
S
TAPLETON WAS INVITED EVERYWHERE
. She was quite respectable, even though the general feeling seemed to be that she was only just so. She had been a widow for ten years, yet apart from the first four of those years, when she had gone to stay with cousins in Scotland, she had adopted neither of the two courses that were expected of widows. She had not retired to live quietly as a dowager on the estate of her dead husband’s son, and she had not shown any interest in remarrying.

She had gone traveling. Her husband, more than thirty years her senior, had been besotted with her and had left her a very generous legacy. This she had conserved and increased through careful investments. She traveled to every corner of the British Isles and to every country of Europe, the wars being long over. She had even been to Greece and to Egypt, though she would tell anyone who cared to ask that she thought too highly of her creature comforts to repeat either of those two experiences. Sometimes she rested from her travels and took up temporary residence in London, where she proceeded to amuse herself with whatever entertainments were available. This was one of those occasions. She almost always avoided the crush of the spring Season.

She was always careful to travel with companions,
with congenial female acquaintances and with gentlemen to serve as escorts. She always set up house in London with a female companion, usually an aunt, whom she sent into the country to visit a nephew and a brood of great-nephews and great-nieces as soon as respectability had been established. And so she almost always arrived alone at entertainments, making her aunt’s excuses to her hosts. There never had been such a sickly aunt.