A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (50 page)

“Lagging a significant distance behind,” he said. “I have been in the habit of thinking that Max is as confirmed a bachelor as I have always been. It seems I have been wrong. It is intriguing, though, that Mrs. Easton is the lady who was once betrothed to him. Most intriguing.”

“Judith will not have it that he is trying to fix his interest with her,” Amy said. “But it is as plain as the nose on her face, and has been since we were in London. I am glad you have noticed it, too. I was sure I was not imagining things.”

“And what will you do if she remarries?” he asked.

She was silent for a while. “I have my parents’ home to go back to,” she said.

“You do not sound enthusiastic about the prospect,” he said.

“I will think of it when the time comes,” she said.

“A wise thought,” he said, curling his fingers about hers as they rested on his arm.

I
T DID NOT FEEL PARTICULARLY COLD
. T
HERE WAS
no wind and the sky was clear and star-studded. They strolled rather than walked, by tacit consent letting everyone else outstrip them before they were even halfway home.

“Aunt Edith and Mrs. Webber will see to it that your son is put to bed,” he said. “He will probably not even wake up.”

“They very rarely have late nights,” she said, “and the past two days have been unusually active and exciting ones for them.”

They strolled on in silence.

“It is Christmas Day,” she said. “It always feels quite different from any other day, does it not?”

“Yes.” He breathed in deeply. “Even when one cannot smell the goose and the mince pies and the pudding. Happy Christmas, Judith.”

“Happy Christmas, my lord,” she said.

“Still not Max?” he asked.

She said nothing.

He was close to reaching his goal, he thought. He could sense it. She would not call him by his given name, perhaps, but there was none of the stiffness of manner, the anger even, that he had felt in her in London. She had accepted his escort to and from church without
question, and he had not had to use any effort of will to force her to slow her steps on the return walk. The others had disappeared already around a distant bend in the tree-lined driveway.

Perhaps he would not even need the full week. There was triumph in the thought. She had resisted him eight years before, but then of course he had been a great deal more shy and inexperienced with women in those days. She would not resist him now. His revenge, he sensed, could be quite total and very sweet.

Sweet? Would it be? Satisfying, perhaps. But sweet? His triumph was tempered by the fact that he had just come from church on Christmas Eve and been filled with the holiness and joy of the season. He had wished the rector and all his neighbors a happy Christmas. He had just wished Judith a happy Christmas.

He wished suddenly that it were not Christmas. And he wished that his thoughts had not been confused by what he had heard that afternoon. He was so close to putting right a wrong that had haunted him for eight years. So close to getting even.

And another thought kept intruding. If he was so close to reaching his goal, then surely it would be possible to use his triumph in another way. It would be possible to secure a lifetime of happiness for himself.

For he had made a discovery that afternoon—or rather he had admitted something that had been nagging at his consciousness for some time, perhaps ever since he had set eyes on her at Nora’s soirée: He was still in love with her. The love that he had converted to hatred so long ago was still love at its core.

And yet the hatred was still there, too. And the hurt. And the inability to trust again. He had trusted utterly before and been hurt almost beyond bearing. He would be a fool to trust her again—the same woman. He would be a fool.

A
ROUND THE NEXT
bend in the driveway the house would come into sight.

Through all the years of her gradually deteriorating marriage, Judith thought, only one conviction had sustained her. Sometimes it had been almost unbearable to have Andrew at home, frequently drunk, often abusive, though he had never struck her. And yet it had been equally unbearable to be without him for weeks or months at a time, knowing that he was living a life of debauchery, that he would be coming back to her after being with she knew not how many other women.

Only one thought had consoled her. If she had not married Andrew, she had thought, she would have been forced to marry the Viscount Evendon, later the Marquess of Denbigh. And that would have been a thousand times worse.

She walked beside him along the driveway to his house, their boots crunching the snow beneath them, their breath clouds of vapor ahead of them, and held to his arm. And she was aware of him with every ounce of her being. And aware of the fact that they were alone, that they had allowed everyone else to get so far ahead that they were out of sight and earshot already.

If she had not been so naive at the age of eighteen, she thought, and had not misunderstood her physical reaction to him; if there had not been that stupid wager and Andrew had not turned his practiced charm on her; if several things had been different, would she have fallen in love with the viscount then? Or would she at least have accepted the marriage that her parents had arranged, prepared to like her husband and to grow to love him?

They were foolish questions. Things had happened as
they had and there was no point in indulging in what-ifs.

His footsteps lagged even further as they approached the bend in the driveway and hers followed suit. She could feel the blood pulsing through her whole body, even her hands.

She turned to him when he stopped walking and fixed her eyes on the top button of his greatcoat as his gloved hands cupped her face. She lifted her hands and rested her palms against his chest. And she lifted her eyes to his and then closed them as his mouth came down to cover hers.

He was kissing her as he had the day before beneath the mistletoe, his lips slightly parted, the pressure light. And the wonder of it filled her. He was the man she had feared for so many years. She tried to remember the impression she had always had of his face until recent days—narrow, harsh-featured, the eyes steel-gray, the lips thin. It was he who was kissing her, she told herself.

The moan she heard must have come from her, she realized, startled. And then one of his arms came about her shoulders and the other about her waist, and he drew her against him. She sucked in her breath.

He must not overdo it, he told himself. He must not move too fast, must not frighten her. He must be patient, take it gradually. He wanted total victory, not a partial one. His motives might be confused, but he knew that he wanted victory.

And yet she tasted so sweet. And so warm. He set his arms about her and drew her against him and fought to keep his control. She was soft and yielding and shapely even through the thicknesses of his greatcoat and her cloak.

He had waited so long. So very long. An eternity. And here she was at last in his arms. He could not force his
mind past the wonder of it. She was in his arms after an eternity of emptiness.

He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes in the darkness. They looked directly back into his and he read nothing there but acceptance and surrender. He was not going too far. She wanted this, too. And in the faint light of the moon and stars through the branches of the trees she looked more beautiful than ever.

“Judith,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He did not know what his hands were doing until he looked down to see them undoing the buttons on her cloak. He left only the top one closed. And then he was undoing the buttons of his greatcoat, opening it, opening her cloak, and drawing her against him, wrapping his coat about the two of them.

And he brought his mouth down to hers again, open, demanding response, pushing at her lips with his tongue, exploring the warm soft flesh behind them when they trembled apart, demanding more, and sliding his tongue deep inside when she opened her mouth.

He wanted her. God, he wanted her. He loved her. He slid one hand down her back, drew her hard against him, chafed at the barrier of clothing between them, wanted to be inside her.

He wanted her. He had always wanted her. And he had waited so long. Judith.

“Judith.”

She had never felt physical desire before. She realized that now. She had been in love before, had had stars in her eyes, had been eager for the intimacy of marriage, had tolerated it while she had been in love. But she had never felt desire.

Never this bone-weakening need to be possessed. Never this aching desire to give herself. Her hands must have unbuttoned his evening coat and waistcoat, she
thought dimly. They were at his back, beneath both, against the heat of his silk shirt.

She heard her name as his mouth moved from hers to her throat. He was holding her to him so that she could be in no doubt that his desire matched her own.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

And then the side of her face was against the folds of his neckcloth, one of his hands holding it there, his fingers threaded in her hair. Where was her bonnet? she wondered vaguely. His other arm was about her waist and he was rocking her against him. She could hear the thumping of his heart. And she could feel him drawing deep and even breaths, imposing calm on himself. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax.

God, he thought, it was not easy. It was not easy to love the woman one hated. He held her, his eyes closed, and rested one cheek against the top of her head.

Judith. Perhaps he should not blame her. Not after what he had learned that afternoon. She had been very young, just a green girl in the hands of a rake intent on winning a wager. Perhaps he should forget, let go of all the hatred that had been in him so long that it was almost a part of him.

But how would he ever be able to trust her again? Even at the age of eighteen she should have behaved better than she had. She should not have sent her father. She should have told him herself. He did not believe he could ever forgive her for that even if he could excuse her for the rest.

“You should know better than to walk alone with a man on a dark driveway at night,” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice was low. She did not sound worried or sorry.

“You never know what might happen to you,” he said.

“No.”

“Judith.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Call me by name. Just once. Please?”

“Max,” she said softly. She lifted her head and smiled up at him a little uncertainly.

He set his hands at her waist and took a step back from her. He bent down and picked up her bonnet from the driveway, shook the snow from it, and handed it to her. And he buttoned up his greatcoat and drew his gloves from his pockets—he could not remember removing them or putting them there.

“I have been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said.

She finished doing up her cloak and looked up at him. “I have wanted it, too,” she said. A smile touched her lips. “Max.”

He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips once more. “My aunts will be imagining that we have been caught and devoured by wolves if we do not appear soon,” he said, and he held out a hand for hers.

A minute later they had rounded the bend in the driveway and were in sight of the house. They both chuckled at the surprising sight of a few of the older children with Spencer Cornwell, and Amy, too, engaged in a fierce snowball fight close to the front doors.

L
ATE NIGHTS SEEMED
to make no difference to children on Christmas morning. There was always far too much excitement ahead to allow them to sleep until a decent hour.

Judith tried to pretend that she was dreaming and burrowed her head beneath the blankets and pillows. But the chill little body that wormed its way beneath the covers next to her and laid cold feet against her thighs and encircled her neck with little arms was too persistent
a dream. And the larger body that launched itself on top of her refused to be ignored.

“Wake up, Mama!” Rupert demanded.

“Are you awake, Mama!” Kate asked, kissing Judith’s cheek.

She did not want to be awake. Having lain awake through much of the night reliving the evening, marveling at the wonder of it, dreaming about the consequences of it, she had finally fallen asleep very late. And she had been having dreams that she wanted to cling to, dreams of strong arms about her and a warm mouth open over hers.

“I am now,” she said with a sigh, and turned to wrap one arm about each child and pull them into a close hug. “What day is it? I have forgotten.”

She laughed as they both answered her question, one in each ear. Of course it was. How could it be any day other than Christmas Day? There was a special feel about the day, as she had said on the way home from church the night before, something that made it different from any other day of the year.

“Oh, so it is,” she said. “How silly of me to forget. What shall we do now? Go back to sleep for a while? Or shall we wash and dress and go in search of breakfast?”