Marry Christmas (Zebra Historical Romance) (13 page)

“Yes,” Elizabeth muttered. “Good-bye.”

And then he was gone, melting away into the crowd, leaving Elizabeth standing in Tiffany’s among a throng of men and women, swaying on her feet. Maggie grasped her arm.

“Elizabeth, what did he say to you?”

She hadn’t seen. Maggie hadn’t seen Henry give her the package. She didn’t know. For some reason, Elizabeth secreted the envelope in her reticule, and forcefully brought herself out of the shock Henry left her in.

“He wanted to wish me well,” she said, staring blindly at the crush of people around them. If even one of them recognized her or Henry, her mother was certain to hear of it.

“He should have left you alone,” Maggie said fiercely. “The very last thing you need right before your wedding is Henry coming to talk to you.”

No, Elizabeth thought, the very last thing she needed was to marry a stranger, a man she didn’t love. “You’re right,” she said instead. “He shouldn’t have. But I’m fine. Really I am,” Elizabeth insisted when Maggie gave her a frown.

“Miss Cummings, your purchase,” the clerk said, handing her a beautiful rosewood box with intricate inlay that contained her future husband’s wedding gift. Oh, God, she felt as if she were going to explode from all the feelings coursing through her. “Would you care to examine it before we wrap it for you?”

“That’s not necessary,” Elizabeth said absently. “Please just wrap it.”

She should take the letter and throw it in the trash without reading it. She should ignore it, push it from her mind, pretend she’d never seen Henry, never seen the anguish in his eyes, never heard the despair in his voice.
Damn him,
she thought.
I was over him. I’d accepted what I was to do. I like the duke. I’m fairly certain I do.

“Come on,” Elizabeth said cheerfully after she’d tucked the duke’s gift into her reticule beside Henry’s package. “We’ve all kinds of time. Where do we go next?”

Maggie gave her a long look, but she smiled at Elizabeth. They walked from Tiffany’s arm in arm, both pretending to be far happier than they were, and both thinking they were fooling each other. And themselves.

It was not only a letter, though that would have been more than enough to crush her. Inside the sturdy little envelope, well-worn and a bit tattered from staying inside Henry’s overcoat all those weeks, was a small diamond heart centered by a tiny pearl dangling from a long, delicate chain. Elizabeth had waited in near agony for the privacy to open the letter. She’d arrived home and gone directly up to her room only to find her maid busily preparing the gown she was supposed to wear that very evening when the duke arrived for dinner. It seemed a lifetime before she bobbed a curtsy and left. Elizabeth carefully opened the envelope, as if even that were a precious thing, knowing even as she did so how foolish she was being.

Elizabeth felt as if she were being torn in two. She was angry with Henry to write such words, to suggest such a sordid thing as adultery. And yet…when she had seen him, she’d been so happy for that small instant before she remembered her life had been inalterably changed. She stared at her reflection in her vanity mirror, asking the frightened, confused girl staring back at her what she should do. She
knew
what she should do with the letter, with the necklace. She knew, she knew. Even as she placed the delicate chain around her neck, she knew. Even as she put the letter between the pages of her address book. She knew.

But she didn’t.

Because this was one thing she could do that was her own. All her life she’d been told what to eat, wear, say. She’d been told who her friends ought to be, who she could like, love. Marry. She told herself she didn’t put that chain around her neck for any other reason than that she could, that no one would know about this small rebellion, that no one but her could know its significance, could know that somewhere inside her, another Elizabeth lived, a far braver girl who could thwart her mother and marry the man she loved. The girl in the mirror could do all that. But the real one, the one sitting in her darkened room was getting married tomorrow to a man she hardly knew and certainly did not love.

If Elizabeth had been nervous before her outing with Maggie, now she was completely unhinged. She couldn’t bear to see the duke, she couldn’t bear to do anything but sleep. And that is where her mother found her not twenty minutes before the guests began arriving.

“Elizabeth, are you ill? Please tell me you are not. It doesn’t matter, we’ll carry on, even if I have to wheel you into the church. Get up,” she shouted when her tirade produced nothing but a groan from the sleeping lump on her daughter’s bed. Nothing could get her out of this bed and dressed and ready to see fifty guests. Nothing could make her smile and pretend she was the giddy, happy bride-to-be.

She felt her bed dip as her mother sat down beside her. “Are you ill?” she asked again, this time with real concern in her voice.

“I think I am,” Elizabeth muttered.

“Have you a fever? I’m certain it is just nerves. You should have seen me the night of my wedding. I couldn’t sleep a wink. I was scared to death at what I had started. But, see, it’s all worked out.”

“I can’t go down, Mother. Please understand.”

“Elizabeth. There will be many, many times in your life when you do not feel like carrying on. But you must carry on. You must. This is one of those times. You cannot leave our guests waiting for you. They won’t believe it if I tell them you are ill. And what of His Grace? He hasn’t seen you in months. What is he to think?”

“I don’t care.”

“Elizabeth,” her mother said sternly. “Sit up.”

Groaning, she did. And then her mother slapped her face. “You silly, stupid girl. Get dressed immediately. And smile. And see that Millie fixes your face.”

Her mother marched from the room fully expecting her daughter to comply. With one hand on her burning cheek, the other drifted to the chain around her neck and her small bit of rebellion. If this was all she had, it would have to be enough. At that moment wearing it had less to do with Henry than it did as a sign of her independence, as pathetic as that was.

Within moments, Millie appeared in her room and began pulling her things from her wardrobe she needed for the evening. “We haven’t much time,” she said. “I’ll do your hair in a simple topknot this evening. That will make tomorrow seem so much better, don’t you think, Miss?”

“That’s fine, Millie,” Elizabeth said, heaving herself out of bed. Despite her mother’s slap, she still felt groggy and not quite herself. She looked in the mirror dreading seeing a handprint on her cheek, but was relieved to see it was simply a livid pink. If Millie made the other side as red, she’d end up looking like a clown. After donning her gown, Millie got a pot of rouge out but Elizabeth stopped her. “It’s not so noticeable now,” she said.

“But your mother—” Millie stopped abruptly, apparently seeing something in Elizabeth’s gaze that halted her argument. “Perhaps if you just give the right cheek a bit of a pinch,” she suggested as she picked up a brush. Millie made short work of her hair and Elizabeth found herself ready to greet guests a full five minutes before she was needed. She looked at her reflection quickly, checking only to see if the thin chain could be seen beneath the thick rope of pearls she wore.

Rand had been dreading this night for weeks. Soon after he’d left with Edward on his extended tour of the states, he realized it had been a mistake. At the time they’d planned it, the trip seemed like the perfect thing to do: see the girl, determine if she suited, propose, leave, marry, and go home. Now, he found himself a besotted idiot looking forward to seeing a girl he knew was probably not looking forward to seeing him. At least not to this degree. About one month into their tour, he suggested to Edward they could go to New York early, get to know the great city before they returned home. It was unlikely he would ever return to America, he explained. Edward’s reaction was predictable. He accused Rand of being a lovesick calf, which Rand immediately denied, even though, damn it all, that was exactly what he’d become.

He’d been gone too long. The fledgling bond he had shared with Elizabeth was sure to be diminished, if not erased all together, and they would face each other at the altar as the complete strangers he’d thought he wanted them to be. He tried to tell himself not to stare when he first saw her, but when he saw her come into the Grand Salon on her father’s arm it was as if some one took a hammer to his stomach.

How had she become so beautiful? Her color was un usually high, her hair swept up in a simple style, piles and piles of it that he found he couldn’t wait to take down and drown in.

Beside him, Edward nudged him and gave a soft “moo.” It took him perhaps three seconds to realize his friend was calling him a lovesick calf. He gave him a sardonic grin, before turning back to Elizabeth, his heart full with the knowledge that in a mere twenty-four hours they would be alone, and very probably not nearly as fully clothed as they were at the moment.

“Your Grace,” she said, dipping a curtsy. She didn’t meet his eyes and instead rested her gaze on his tie.

“Miss Cummings.”

Another curtsy. “Lord Hollings.”

“Miss Cummings.”

And then she moved on, greeting the other guests with the same warmth—or lack thereof—she’d shown him. He’d been standing there in near rapture at the sight of her and she’d greeted him as if he were one of her father’s friends—and one she didn’t know very well.

He looked over to Edward and shrugged when his friend raised a telling eyebrow.

“Is that your heart she just stepped on?” Edward asked lightly.

“No. My dignity.”

Edward laughed. “What did you expect, her to rush into your arms in greeting? Never in my life have I seen a more proper girl. I daresay she wouldn’t sneeze unless given permission.”

“She has far more gumption than that,” Rand said, looking at Elizabeth and missing the telling look Edward gave him.

“I wonder if her friend will be here tonight,” Edward said.

“The talkative one? I haven’t seen her.”

“I shall be bored, then,” he said, already sounding exceedingly bored. “I wonder what you shall do without me when you go on your honeymoon. Must you drag me about with you every time you go somewhere? These dinners are interminable.”

Rand smiled at his friend’s common complaint. “It is nearly over. You may take the first steamer to England after the wedding. Besides, what would you have done these past months? This was a grand adventure and you know it. Far better than being at home with your stepaunt and her overly large brood. You very well may benefit from all we learned.”

“If I have to sit through one more lecture about agricultural advances, I shall become a drunkard. Our situations are far different, thank God.” Rand would forever be grateful to his friend for tolerating his newfound passion for learning everything about farming. If he was going to make a success out of Bellewood, he would have to compete with the Americans and grow produce as cheaply and efficiently as they did.

“No more lectures and only one more dinner. You should feel sorry for me. I have to stay here until at least March when the seas calm down enough for Miss Cummings to travel. I wish I were home now.”

Edward looked over to his friend. “This all weighs heavily, doesn’t it?”

“You’ve no idea. I wouldn’t be here, would I, if it didn’t.” He looked for his fiancée and found her chatting with a small group of people, smiling as if delighted in the conversation. They were all elderly, all women, and yet he felt a twinge of jealousy that they could hold her attention. He wondered what would happen if he wandered over to her and put his hand on her back, just high enough to touch the skin that was exposed so enticingly. If he leaned toward her and pressed his mouth against her exquisite neck, if he tasted her.

“I wish to hell this was all over,” he said shortly.

A footman walked by at that moment carrying a tray of champagne. Edward grabbed two, handing one to Rand. “To getting the hell out of here,” he said, lifting his glass.

Rand smiled and took a sip and wondered what the hell he was going to do in bed with a bride who wouldn’t even look at him.

Dinner
was
interminable, despite Alva’s efforts to keep the conversation lively and interesting. Elizabeth simply would not look at him, as if doing so would so unhinge her and she’d have to run from the room. Perhaps worse was that he was beginning to suspect that others at the dinner party had noted the bride’s rather chilly reception for the groom. What had happened since he’d been gone? Certainly he had not expected her to hang on his arm and gaze at him with adoration, but when he spoke at the dinner party she did not even lift her head to acknowledge him. Rand had thought the gifts, the letters would have been enough to keep him in her thoughts. While he had no illusions she loved him, he at least hoped she liked him and missed him a bit while he was gone. Because he damn well missed her.

It struck him then, like a blow to the gut, that she had seen Henry Ellsworth. And perhaps not only just seen him, but had an assignation. She didn’t only look exceedingly unhappy, she looked guilty. And why wouldn’t she look at him? Rand was well aware his thoughts were drifting the way a jealous husband’s would, but at the moment he did not care. The thought of her gazing into that man’s eyes, all doe-eyed and love-soaked, filled with the tragedy that the big mean duke was keeping them apart—it was far too much to bear.

After dinner, the party moved to the music room where a string quartet was set to entertain. Rand, with the determination of a soldier on a vital mission, headed directly to his fiancée.

“You have been avoiding me,” he said softly when he reached her side.

She looked at him with surprise that was so contrived, he nearly laughed.

“You are a poor actress,” he said.

“I must admit it is a bit awkward, seeing you again after so long. And on the eve of our wedding,” she said.

“Something that could easily be remedied by some conversation.”

She took a bracing breath as if about to face a task that was not entirely pleasant. “Your letters were quite interesting,” she said, dutifully. “It was almost as if I have been to all those places myself. Your descriptions were quite…thorough.”

“I’m afraid writing is not my forte. I would have waxed poetic for you had I been capable of putting such sentiments on paper. Lord Hollings did offer to write the notes for me, but I thought that rather disingenuous. I suppose you are quite used to flowery letters of adoration from your great many admirers.”

Her cheeks heated profusely, serving to fuel his suspicions that she had been in some sort of contact with Ellsworth. “I’m certain my letters weren’t the stuff of poets, either,” she said dryly, ignoring his comment.

No, Rand had to admit, they were not. They were, however, a catalogue of wedding events, stuff he could have gleaned from the
New York Times,
which seemed to be covering every detail of the wedding in amazing detail. Her letters were brief and held nothing personal in them. They could have been from a business associate for all the warmth they contained.

“And I noticed you did not include the fascinating information about your garters. Diamond clasps and all that.”

Elizabeth grimaced. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with that article. My mother has been delighting in handing out tidbits about the wedding. I gave her a firm talking to about the matter.”

“I would think that diamond clasps on garters was more of a tidbit about the wedding
night
rather than the actual wedding,” he said in an effort to get some sort of reaction from her. She gave him a reaction, but it was not the one he expected: alarm, turning to fear. Or was it revulsion? He thought she would blush or perhaps gently chastise him for bringing up such an indelicate topic, but she had done neither of those things.

“Is thinking about our wedding night so objectionable to you, then?”

Alva saved her daughter by announcing that everyone should take their seats, forcing their brief talk to a close. He held up his arm and she placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, a light touch, the touch of a woman who doesn’t feel comfortable, who doesn’t wish to touch at all.