A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (53 page)

She was back with Lord Denbigh again. “What a wonderful ball this is,” she told him.

“You are not trying to flatter the host are you, Mrs. Easton?” he asked her.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I also mean it.”

He smiled at her before they parted company yet again.

She would have been looking forward to their waltz with some impatience if she had not also wanted to live through and savor every moment of the evening.

“I
HAVE NEVER
seen them so excited or so puffed up with their own worth,” Mr. Cornwell said.

“They had every right to be,” Mrs. Harrison said. “They did quite splendidly even if in the final performance they disregarded or forgot every suggestion we had made to them about their use of the English language. My only consolation is that half the audience
probably had never even heard some of the words before. Perhaps they assumed they were Latin or Greek.”

Amy laughed. “I could have hugged every one of them,” she said.

“I believe you did,” Mr. Cornwell said.

The three of them were standing in the doorway of the ballroom, watching the vigorous country dance that had already been in progress by the time they arrived. Mrs. Harrison was being beckoned by the marquess’s aunts and made her way to the empty chair beside them.

“Well, dear,” Mr. Cornwell said, “Christmas is almost over.”

Amy looked sharply up at him. “Yes,” she said. “But it has been wonderful, and the glow of it will carry us all forward for some time to come.”

“I sometimes worry about my boys,” he said with a sigh. “And about the girls, too. Shall we stroll? It seems that this set is not nearly finished yet.” She set her arm through his and they began to stroll out into the great hall. “I worry about what will happen to them when we finally have to let them out into the world to fend for themselves.”

“But you will not let that happen until they have been well prepared for some employment, will you?” she said. “And I believe that his lordship will help them find positions.”

“Yes,” he said. “But will they forget everything else they have learned? Love and sharing and respect and courtesy toward others and belief in themselves and everything else?”

Amy chuckled. “I do believe, Spencer,” she said, “that you are sounding like any father anywhere. You are busy giving your charges wings but are afraid to let them fly. If they are loved, they will love. And they will carry with them everything else you have taught them and shown them and been to them.”

He patted her hand. “You are a beautiful little person, Amy Easton,” he said. “Where have you been hiding all my life?”

She laughed. “That is the first time I have ever been called beautiful,” she said. “My family hid me at home. They were afraid I would be hurt if I went out into the world. They clipped my wings, you see.”

“Was it smallpox?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Only me,” she said. “It afflicted no one else in the family. For which I can only be thankful, of course.”

“If they had only allowed you from home,” he said, “you would have been called beautiful many times, Amy. Your beauty fairly bursts out from inside you.”

“Oh,” she said.

He worked his arm free of hers and set it about her shoulders. “And the exterior is not unpleasing either,” he said. “Have you allowed a few pockmarks to influence your image of yourself?”

“Oh,” she said, “I stopped even thinking about my appearance years ago. We have to accept ourselves as we are, do we not, or live with eternal misery.”

“I wish …” he said, and stopped. He smiled at her. “I wish I had met you ten years ago, Amy, and had a fortune as large as Max’s.”

She swallowed. “I have never believed that wealth necessarily brings happiness,” she told him. “And age makes no difference to anything.” She looked up at him, liking and affection and hope in her eyes.

He stopped and drew her loosely into his arms. “Ah, Amy,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head, “these are foolish ramblings. Forgive me. It has been a lovely Christmas, has it not?”

“Yes.” There was an aching pain stabbing downward from her throat to her chest. And an inability to say more because she was a woman and because she had no
experience whatsoever with such situations. “It has been the loveliest.”

She drew her head back to smile at him and he lowered his to kiss her warmly on the lips.

“Come,” he said, “I had better take you back to the ballroom while you still have some shreds of your reputation left. Will you dance the next set with me?”

“I have never danced in public,” she said.

He frowned at her. “Clipped your wings?” he said. “Did they cut them off completely, Amy?”

She smiled.

“But in private?” he asked. “You danced in private?”

She nodded.

“Then we will see and hear no one else in the ballroom,” he said. “You will dance for me—in private. Will you?”

“I would like to try,” she said.

He drew her arm through his again and curled his fingers about her hand.

H
IS
A
UNT
F
RIEDA WAS FLUSTERED AND TITTERING
, protesting to Mr. Rockford that she had never seen the waltz performed and indeed had not even danced at an assembly for more years than she cared to remember.

Mr. Rockford was insistent and Aunt Edith nodding and simpering. Judith was close by and enjoying the moment.

“It is a very easy dance to learn, ma’am,” she said. “All you have to do is move to counts of three and allow the gentleman to lead you.”

Aunt Frieda threw up her hands, tittered again, and looked alarmed. The Marquess of Denbigh grinned as he walked up to the group.

“My dance, Judith?” he said, extending a hand to her. “Why do you not watch us for a minute, Aunt Frieda?”

“Oh, yes,” his aunt said gratefully as Judith placed a hand in his. “That would be best, Maxwell.”

“And I am quite sure,” Aunt Edith said, “that Maxwell and Mrs. Easton will waltz quite splendidly, Frieda, since they have both recently been in town and the waltz is all the crack there.”

Judith was smiling up at him as he led her onto the floor and set one hand on her waist. “It was rather rash of Mr. Rockford to ask your aunt,” she said. “She will
probably have a fit of the vapors when she sees what a very improper dance it is.”

“I believe my aunts are made of sterner stuff,” he said. “And improper, Judith? Merely because one faces the same partner for the whole dance and can carry on a decent conversation?”

She continued to smile as the music began.

Both of his aunts were watching them intently. He was very aware of that and kept his steps simple. And he held her at arm’s length, her spine arched back slightly from the waist, her hand light on his shoulder.

Improper? Hardly. There was distance between them. He touched her only at the waist, her other hand clasped in his. And yet there was something intimate about the waltz. There was something created within the circle of bodies and arms, some awareness, some tension. Not always, it was true. But with some partners. With Judith it was an intimate dance.

He kept his distance, kept his steps simple, kept conversing lightly with her. His aunts were still watching them, though Rockford was talking to Aunt Frieda and bowing.

It had been an intimate dance in London at the Mumford ball. Almost unbearably intimate. And tense. He had deliberately fostered the tension on that occasion, keeping his eyes fixed on her face the whole time, neglecting to converse with her. He had hated her at that time. Hatred and the desire for revenge had outweighed the renewed attraction he had felt toward her.

And now? But he did not want to spoil the evening or Christmas by thinking and analyzing.

“You were quite right,” she said. “Your aunt is ready to try.”

They both watched Aunt Frieda take her first dance steps in years.

“I would almost be prepared to say that a romance is
in the making,” the marquess said, grinning, “if Aunt Frieda were not at the very least twenty years older than her partner. I believe Rockford has taken a liking to my aunts because they are always willing to listen to his stories—even if they do frequently fall asleep before he has finished.”

“I think he is enjoying Christmas,” she said. “You have made at least one of your lonely persons happy.”

“Lonely persons?” He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Lady Clancy’s name for your guests,” she said.

“Lonely persons.” He smiled and shook his head. “You, too, Judith?”

Her smile faded slightly. She searched his eyes. “Why did you invite me?”

He twirled her about a corner of the ballroom now that there was no longer the necessity of keeping his steps simple. “You do not know?” he asked her.

“Because we would have spent Christmas alone in town without your invitation?” she said.

“Four of you?” he said. “Alone? It could have been a very cozy Christmas.”

“Yes,” she said. He held her eyes as he whirled her to the music. “I thought you were bringing me here to punish me.”

“To punish?” he said.

She nodded. “You knew I was uncomfortable with you in London,” she said. “You knew that I did not wish to be in your company. I thought you had devised this as the ultimate punishment. A week in your country home at Christmastime.”

He smiled at her. “But you have changed your opinion?”

She continued to search his eyes. And then she nodded slightly again. “It is a Christmas that has been made wonderful by your kindness to many people,” she said.
“I do not believe you could spoil it all by bringing one person here out of hatred. I misjudged you in London. Perhaps I have always misjudged you. I am sorry.”

Her eyes wavered to his mouth and then returned to his. And he gazed back at her. So beautiful. So slender and warm. And so very, very beautiful. And he held his mind blank. He had to do so, for he knew that a fierce war would rage in his mind if he but opened up his thoughts. His desire for her, his love for her at war with his determination to complete what he had begun. And it was so close to completion. It could be completed within a few minutes if he so chose.

“You are making me uncomfortable,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I can think of no other way of looking at you,” he said.

They were close to the doors leading out into the great hall. He waltzed her toward them and through them and continued to dance with her on the tiles. He looked keenly at each of the two footmen standing there, and they both hurried away as if they had remembered pressing business elsewhere.

“My only alternative,” he said, “is not to look at you at all.” He set the hand he held flat over his heart and held it there with his own. He tightened his arm about her waist, drawing her against him until she slid her own hand from his shoulder up about his neck and rested her forehead against his shoulder.

He continued to waltz with her, her body moving in perfect time with his own. He rested one cheek against the smooth hair at her temple.

“I have guests I must return to when this set is at an end,” he murmured into her ear after a few minutes had
passed. “There is no time for what we both wish to do, Judith.”

She raised her head and looked up at him, shocked. And yet there was knowledge in her eyes, too, and the admission that he was right, that what was between them was no idle or innocent flirtation.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Arrange to have the afternoon free. Will you?”

She gazed into his eyes for a long time and he could see the conflict of emotions in hers. “Yes,” she said at last.

He stopped dancing, closed the distance between their mouths, and kissed her. She responded instantly, molding her body to his, opening her mouth even without persuasion, moaning as he licked hungrily at her lips.

“Max,” she said when he moved his mouth to her chin and down to her throat.

But he had not forgotten where they were: in the middle of the great hall, the doors to the ballroom open beyond it.

“Tomorrow,” he said, straightening up, cupping one hand lightly against her cheek. “Tomorrow we will settle everything between us, Judith.” He was not even sure himself what he meant by those words. He held his thoughts blank. He did not want to know.

“Yes,” she said, and she raised a hand to cover his.

He kissed her softly on the lips once more.

F
IRST THE MEREST
suggestion of light on the eastern horizon. Then a gradual lifting of the blackness of the world to gray. A brighter line of light turning from white to pale gold to brighter gold, to pink, to orange-gold. And then all the glory of the dawn sky before the sun came up.

Judith watched it all from the windowseat in her
room, where she sat warmly wrapped in a blanket from the bed, her knees drawn up against her, her arms tight about them.

It looked as if it was going to be a glorious day. Cold but glorious. Even as she watched she saw him—Max—emerging from the stable block on horseback, a large bundle tied behind his saddle. He rode beneath her window, picking his way carefully, not pressing any speed on his horse because of the snow. Why was he up so early after such a late night?

But it was midwinter. She had no idea what time it was, but it was probably not as early as the coming of dawn made it seem. He was up for some morning fresh air and exercise. She wished she were with him.

She looked back into the room. It was a pretty and a cozy room despite the fact that the fire had died down long ago and the air was chill. It looked familiar already, even after just a few days. It looked like home.

Would it be home? she wondered. Would Denbigh Park be her home? After this afternoon she supposed she would know the answer to her question. She knew it now. But it seemed just too wonderful to be true. Could she really be finding such happiness so soon after the ending of a bad marriage, in which she had expected to be trapped for the rest of her life? And with Max of all people?

It was hard to believe in such happiness. And so, even though she was almost certain of it and would be certain before this day was over, she was anxious, too. What if she had misinterpreted all the signs?