Marry Christmas (Zebra Historical Romance) (10 page)

Elizabeth had no notion how her mother and father had ever gotten married. It had not been an “arrangement” as so many marriages had been, and yet it also had not been a love match. Her parents, who were so completely different, rarely agreed on anything—except, perhaps, that she should marry the Duke of Bellingham. In her memory, it truly was the only thing upon which she could remember her parents presenting a united force.

Elizabeth watched the dancers in a polka, spying Maggie dancing with Arthur Wright. She seemed to be having an uncommonly good time, she thought, feeling just a bit sorry for herself. How she wished she could be carefree and happy as Maggie always was. It seemed her friend never had a care in the world, which is what made it so easy for her to unburden herself on her friend, Elizabeth thought with a twinge of guilt. She looked around and found Maggie’s mother frowning heavily at the pair who seemed to be having such a grand time, and Elizabeth let out a giggle.

“What is so amusing?” Alva asked.

“I believe Mrs. Pierce has her heart set on the earl for Maggie and is none too happy with her at the moment,” Elizabeth said lightly.

“She’s daft if she thinks to elevate herself to that degree,” Alva said acerbically. “I will have to speak to her before Maggie makes a complete fool of herself over Lord Hollings.”

Elizabeth felt her entire body heat with anger, but she held it in check as she so often had to with her mother. “I don’t think she’s doing anything of the sort,” she said with a calm she did not feel.

“You are not to
think
at all. Leave the thinking to your mother and father. Maggie would be wise to do the same.”

Cheeks tinged red, Elizabeth stared unseeingly at the dancers. She would never understand her mother and she wondered when she would stop trying.

“I’m going to the powder room,” she said, because she was so used to telling her mother every move she made.

“I see His Grace. I believe he is looking for you,” she heard her mother say as she continued walking away. “Elizabeth! The duke!”

She kept walking, her fists unknowingly clenched, her teeth set, her mind raging. She walked past the powder room, down a long hallway with its gleaming marble floor, past a library, a sitting room, her eyes on a set of French doors at the very end of the dim corridor. She walked until she reached them, then stopped, hanging her head down as if walking that short distance was almost too much for her. Then, lifting her head, she pushed open the doors, letting them fly and bounce against the wall, letting them fall closed with a bang as the cool night air touched her heated cheeks.

“I can’t even relieve myself without permission,” she whispered. She found herself on a small terrace on the side of the house. It was empty of everything but a single chair set in one corner. Perfect. She sat down in it, brought her knees up and hugged them against her, not caring at the moment that she wrinkled her gown terribly. She sat there for a few minutes before setting her feet flat on the stone surface, letting out a long sigh as she smoothed her skirts. Before long, the duke would be gone on his sightseeing trip and she would shop for her trousseau and then Christmas would come and her wedding. Her wedding. A baby. A boy. Please let the first child be a boy so she could be free. Elizabeth wasn’t even certain what she would do with such freedom. She knew only that should she have a girl she would never force her to marry or even sit up straight or wash or eat with utensils. She would raise her to be wholly wild. Despite herself, Elizabeth laughed at her own thoughts.

The muted sound of a waltz came to her through the night air, as well as the closer sounds of a mosquito. She waved her hand in front of her face, grimacing. The bugs would force her inside where she would find the disapproving look of her mother and perhaps the disappointed look of the duke. She stood and gave a deep curtsy. “Her Grace, the Duchess of Bellingham,” she said, trying to match the lofty tones of a footman. It simply felt silly and wrong. She cleared her throat. “Mrs. Henry Ellsworth.”

A small furrow formed between her brows, because that didn’t sound quite right either.

“Miss Elizabeth Cummings.” She gave a wistful smile, because finally she found a title she felt comfortable with.

His fiancée was avoiding him. She obviously did not care if she knew him when they married. They had spent only a small amount of time together before he’d proposed, and that had only been because her parents were sick with worry that she’d elope with a fortune hunter. He wondered if Miss Cummings were foolish enough to try to elope anyway. God help her if she did.

Rand found this entire thing humiliating enough, he refused to chase after a woman who clearly did not want to be found. For the past week, he’d attended balls, picnics, concerts, and lavish dinners and exchanged no more than a few polite sentences with the girl. It was damned irritating. What was more irritating was that he could not get her out of his mind. It was almost as if he were infatuated with her, something that had not happened in years. When he was in the Guards, women were so easily obtained it had been more sport than romance. Married women, he supposed, knew better than to fall in love with a young officer and a second son at that. He kept remembering that kiss, brief though it had been. He’d kissed a hundred women, why couldn’t he get that one less-than-satisfying one from his mind? Perhaps that was it. He’d never in his life kissed a woman who hadn’t wanted him to. It bothered him, wondering whether or not she found him lacking.

Rand dragged a hand through his thick hair in frustration. He did not want to marry a stranger, but it appeared he was going to. He had but one week left before he and Edward left on their small tour of America and would return to New York just days before the planned wedding. And she knew it, damn her.

Rand decided that in order for his future bride to stop avoiding him, he would have to confine her to a very small space. They were going for a ride and it was not going to be down Bellevue Avenue where everyone would be spying on them. He would drive her to Portsmouth, to the pretty New England farms that stretched out along the Atlantic. He and Edward had ridden out there not two days ago, finding it pastoral with gently rolling hills and sturdy stone walls, and reminding him very much of the Yorkshire countryside. Riding out among green fields he understood for the first time why the first settlers had dubbed the area
New
England.

He drove up to Sea Cliff with a rented horse and phaeton to find Elizabeth waiting for him near one of the grand classical pillars that adorned the front of the grand house. With her was a maid, for her mother was a stickler for propriety.

“A beautiful day for a ride,” Rand said, looking up to a sky filled only with puffy white clouds, the kind one could see shapes in.

“Indeed,” Elizabeth said, stepping forward and taking his hand to be put up into the phaeton. She smiled, but it was only polite, not welcoming and certainly not joyful. The poor maid struggled with a basket, so Rand took it from her, raising his eyebrows at its weight. He placed it on the boot, then helped the maid onto the narrow cushion seat there.

“Are we expecting company?” he asked Elizabeth lightly and stared in disbelief when he saw her cheeks blush.

“I thought that instead of riding to Portsmouth, we could go to Bailey Beach. It’s so much cooler there and I do belief Miss Pierce and Lord Hollings were planning an outing—”

“No.”

She put her jaw out mulishly, then smiled. “Wouldn’t it be more fun with people about?”

“I am ecstatic to be only in your company.”

“But Bailey is something you really should not miss.

It’s quite nice there when the seaweed is thin,” she said, wrinkling her nose at some remembered stench.

“We can go tomorrow. Today we are riding out to Portsmouth.”

He could almost hear her teeth grinding together and had to stop himself from losing his temper with her.

Was an afternoon alone with him so distasteful that she would go to such lengths to avoid it? He swallowed down a sharp retort, told himself to be patient with her, and swung himself up onto the phaeton.

“Would you care to drive?” he asked. She looked at him with shock, then finally showed the delighted smile he’d been hoping to see.

“Are you certain?” she asked, taking hold of the reins and looking around her as if she were doing something naughty. “I haven’t done this in years so you must be ready to take over at the slightest notice.” She turned back to her maid with a laugh. “You’d better hang on well, Millie, there’s no telling what can happen now.”

And with a nice little flick of the reins, she got the pretty bay moving forward. Grinning happily, she looked over to Rand, her face glowing with excitement.

He realized that it would probably take very little to make her happy, just a bit of freedom, allowing her to do things her mother had probably forbidden her to do.

“All right then, you’re doing fine,” he said as they approached the entrance to Bellevue Avenue. “Pull gently, now.”

“I have done this,” she said, sounding slightly indignant. Then she gave him another grin. “It was a pony cart, but it’s the same basic principle, is it not?”

“Oh, Lord,” he heard Millie mutter from behind them.

Elizabeth seemed nervous, but also exhilarated as she held the horse waiting for a small amount of traffic to clear. “If you see a motorcar coming toward us, take over,” she said, then flicked the reins and pulled onto Bellevue going, Rand noted happily, in the direction of Portsmouth.

“Do you have many in Newport?” Rand asked, surprised.

“No,” she said a bit sheepishly. “But I wanted you to be prepared for anything. I did see one in France last year.”

Rand began to relax now that he could see she was doing fine with the phaeton. “Did you? I have not had the opportunity as yet. Edward has. Lord Hollings, that is. He said it was magnificent.”

Elizabeth let out another delighted laugh, her blue eyes glued to the road ahead. A tricky intersection was coming up and she deftly slowed the phaeton down. “I would not call that contraption magnificent. It seemed rather loud and smelly to me.”

“More smelly than a horse?”

“Perhaps not,” she agreed. “Whoa.”

She pulled on the reins a bit too harshly, the overreaction of a novice driver. Rand immediately put his hands over her gloved ones and adjusted the tension. “There. Don’t overreact or your horse will, too.”

“I know,” she said, angry with herself.

“It takes practice,” he said, letting go of her hands that had held the reins so tightly, he clearly felt her rigid knuckles through her silk gloves.

Before long they were out in the countryside, Elizabeth still at the reins, seemingly enjoying herself more than he’d ever witnessed before. Newport, and the traffic, was left far behind and they drove along the smooth, hard-packed sandy roads lined by farms and small forests, glimpsing Narragansett Bay in the distance. Rand directed Elizabeth down a narrow road that led in the direction of the bay, leading her to a private little spot overlooking the blue waters and the mainland beyond.

“It’s lovely,” Elizabeth said, handing the reins over to Rand and dusting off her gloves. “Thank you for letting me drive. It’s the most fun I’ve had in months.”

Rand hopped down, then went around to help her down, and would have helped Millie, but she was already on the ground trying to heave the basket out of the phaeton. “Here,” he said, rushing around and grasping the basket. He let out an exaggerated groan at its weight.

“What do you say we take what we need and leave the rest for Millie to sort out,” he said, opening the basket. He laid out a blanket and started tossing food into it while Millie fluttered nearby making small sounds of protest. He gathered the blanket up and hefted it over one shoulder. “There we go. That should be enough to feed us twice over. Millie, you may sit beneath that tree and eat to your heart’s content. Take a nap, if you like. Miss Cummings and I will be right down that small path, just a few yards away. I assure you, you will hear Miss Cummings scream if I decide to push her off the cliff and into the bay.” Millie giggled. “Enjoy your free time,” he said, and began walking down the narrow path fully expecting Elizabeth to follow behind.

He heard her whisper something fiercely to Millie before she lifted the skirts of her white and green-striped dress and hurried after him. “I don’t believe Mother intended for us to abandon Millie,” she said when she reached him.

“I don’t care what your mother intended,” he said, then turned toward her. “Do you?” It was a challenge and he could see she knew it.

A smile formed on her lips so slowly that at first Rand didn’t recognize it as such. Then it bloomed, lighting her face, and he grinned back at her. “You know,” he said, turning back to the path. “You really are quite pretty when you smile. I wasn’t certain I could stand looking at you for a lifetime until I saw it.”

He heard a snort that could have been a stifled laugh or a sound of outrage. He didn’t know and didn’t care. It was a beautiful day and he was on a picnic—alone—with a beautiful girl who would in just a few short months be his wife. For the first time in a long time, the future seemed a little bit brighter.

“Here we are,” Rand said, after they’d walked a short way through some tall reeds. It wasn’t much of a cliff, more of a gentle drop-off that probably wouldn’t kill a kitten should it stumble from the edge. But it was a pretty spot and secluded with nary another soul in sight but for some fishermen down the bay on a small skiff. Rand dropped the blanket and spread it out to examine what he’d so hastily dropped into it.

Elizabeth eyed him with some uncertainty, then fell to her knees to see what he’d managed to pilfer from the basket. “Oh,” she said, a note of dismay. Her gloves, which were not made for anything more strenuous than holding a parasol, were quite ruined. With a small frown, she peeled them off and tugged loose the broad green ribbon that kept her straw hat from flying off, placing it by her gloves.

“Do continue,” the duke said, a devilish gleam in his eyes.

Elizabeth pursed her lips and considered putting her gloves and hat back on just to spite him. But it was warm here, despite the shaded area and the bay below them.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, trying to sound haughty and failing miserably. She didn’t feel haughty at the moment and didn’t want to expend the energy to be so. The duke was being very charming and she found herself having far more fun than she would have expected.

“I believe I owe you an apology,” she said, placing a large piece of fried chicken onto a napkin and handing it to him.

“Oh?”

There was nothing to do but plunge ahead, so she did. “I have been avoiding you for the past week and for that I am sorry.”

“I know you have.”

She grimaced. “I expected you would,” she said, keeping her eyes on the business of dividing up the food. He clearly had put no thought to what he’d thrown on the blanket, for it appeared he’d put three different desserts and very little actual food. She sat back on her heels and finally looked at him, fearing he’d be angry. Instead, he was looking at her steadily as if trying to see what her thoughts were. His dark gray eyes were disconcerting in their intensity and she quickly pretended to be interested in her piece of chicken.

“What other things do you enjoy, other than tearing down the streets on a phaeton?”

“I’d hardly call what I was doing as ‘tearing,’” she said. “I like riding bicycles.”

“So you’ve said.”

Elizabeth was momentarily confused, until she remembered that during one of their very few conversations she had mentioned riding bicycles. She shrugged. “I think it would be better to tell you what I dislike. I dislike hunting, swimming, and boats. My father, as you well know, has a yacht, which he insists we must use for long trips. My seasickness is truly a curse. I cannot even sit on a rowboat in a placid lake without feeling ill. I adore Paris, but the thought of getting on a boat and sailing there is enough to stop me from going. I truly thought I would die when we went to England last year. And then my mother, who has a stomach made of iron, insisted we go to Paris. I have to tell you, I have never been so frightened in my life. On a map, the channel doesn’t seem particularly large or daunting. It was purely dreadful.”

The duke laughed aloud.

“So glad that you find my misery amusing,” she said dryly, producing another chuckle.

“You will be happy to know that once we reach England we will be there for a fair number of years. I’ve too much work to do to leave anytime soon.”

“Oh?”

He looked down, as if regretting saying anything about his plans. Tossing the well-picked bone onto a napkin, he said, “My ancestral home is in need of work, as well as the tenants’ homes. I fear it will take years before I can return it to its former glory.”

Years and my father’s money.
Neither said such a crass thing, but Elizabeth knew what he was thinking. She wouldn’t have thought it should bother him. After all, it was well-known between the two of them why he was here. “What will be my duchessily duties?” she asked, having fun with him.

“Duchessily?” He raised an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth tilted up. “I imagine you’ll have plenty to do,” he said, dismissively.

“You don’t know, do you?” she asked, stunned.

“I hardly do. I was not home very much growing up and even when I was I didn’t pay attention to what my mother did. She liked to garden.”