Christine Merrill - The Mistletoe Wager

And then she stopped talking and came into his arms, all trembling beauty. That was the way it had always been with Elise. Almost too beautiful to resist, even though she had never been right for him. Her body pressed tight to his, soft and yielding, and her face tipped up to give him easy access for his kiss. Perhaps she was correct, and giving in to lust was all it would take to clear his head of romantic nonsense. So he tried to kiss her in the way she wished to be kissed, as though it mattered, and made every effort to drum up the old passion he had felt for her so long ago.

Her response to him was just as devoid of true desire as his was to her. After a time she pulled away from him and looked up, disappointment and awareness written plainly on her face. When she spoke, her voice was annoyingly clear of emotion. ‘This is not working at all as I expected.’

‘No,’ he answered in relief. ‘It is not.’

‘I suppose it is too much to hope that you are feeling more than I am on this matter?’

‘I am sorry, but I am not. If there were anything, Elise, I would tell you. But do not think that I am disguising my true feelings for you to save your marriage. I will be your friend for ever, but I do not love you in the way you desire.’

She pulled away from him, stood up. And as she walked towards the door she looked sad, but strangely relieved. ‘All this time I have been so afraid that I was supposed to be with you. And now? Things are not as I expected at all.’

He nodded, following her. ‘I will admit to being somewhat surprised on that point as well. When you came back, I thought perhaps…But, no. I have suspected for some time now that it was not meant to be.’

She sighed in annoyance. ‘And when did you mean to share this knowledge with me? For if you meant to take advantage of the situation, Nicholas Tremaine, I swear…’

He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I do not know why everyone expects the worst from me, for I am utterly blameless in this. It is not as if I sought you out.’

‘You have flirted with me all these years, Nicholas.’

‘You and everyone else, darling. I am incorrigible. You have told me so on many occasions. And you never for a moment took me seriously. It is only since the trouble between you and Harry that you have given me real consideration. Frankly, I found it to be rather alarming, and most out of character for you. But I thought, as your oldest and dearest friend, that if you meant to do something foolish you might as well do it with me.’

‘You thought you would spare me pain by entering into a dalliance with me?’

He smiled. ‘Better me than another. I never claimed to be a noble man, Elise. I am a rake, pure and simple. But I sought to be the lesser of two evils, and I think, after a fashion, that I have succeeded. Never mind what the world thinks has occurred. We have done nothing that your husband will not forgive.’

Her face darkened. ‘And what makes you think that my husband cares to forgive me?’

Damn his tongue for speaking of Harry too soon. He did not wish, at this delicate juncture, to spoil progress towards reconciliation. ‘I am merely saying that should you ever wish to return to him, my conscience is still clear. I have not broken your heart. I have not even truly engaged your affections.’

‘Neither has he.’

Tremaine resisted the urge to inform her that a woman whose affections were not fully engaged would not be going to such trouble to exact revenge. ‘Even so, if you do not wish to settle for less than a full commitment from your husband, you need hardly settle for less than you deserve from me.’

She considered the situation. ‘You think that I should choose another lover, then?’

Once again he felt himself losing control of the situation. ‘That is not what I said at a-’

‘Tremaine!’ Harry’s hand fell on his shoulder, heavy as death, and yanked him away from Elise. Then Harry pushed him back to the wall, and stared into his eyes, too close. ‘I have had quite enough of your interference in the matter of our marriage. It has been difficult enough to have you sniffing about the edges, waiting for my wife to stray. I have tolerated it for Elise’s sake. But if you mean to cast her off and pass her on to some other man? You are a heartless cad, sir. You are filling my wife’s head with nonsense, and you are to stop it this instant.’ His face had the same amiable smile it always had, but this time the tone of his voice was menacing. ‘Or I will be forced to take action.’

‘Ha!’ Elise’s response was a shrill laugh. ‘You will take action, now, will you? After all this time?’

Nick could feel the fists of the man holding him begin to tense on the lapels of his jacket. ‘Elise,’ he said in warning. ‘Do not goad the man.’

Elise ignored him, as it had always been her nature to do. ‘I have been gone for months, Harry. And I have been with Nicholas all that time.’

‘But not any more,’ Nick announced, hoping that it would end the matter.

She smiled with pure malice at her husband. ‘I suppose you can imagine what has occurred?’

Judging by the look on Harry’s face as he stared at Nick, he was doing just that.

Nick gave him an ineffectual pat on the arm. ‘It does no good to let one’s imagination run free and create scenarios where none has existed. She’s all yours, old man, and always has been.’

‘I am not,’ Elise insisted. ‘I am not some possession of yours, Harry. And if I wish to take one lover, or a dozen, there is no way you can stop me.’

‘Oh, really?’ Harry was angry enough to strike someone, and since he would never raise his hand to a lady, no matter how vexing she might be, Nick closed his eyes and waited for the punch. Then, just as suddenly as Harry had grabbed him, he pulled him off balance and pushed him out into the hall, slamming the door after him.

Nick hit the wall opposite the door and bounced off it, landing on the floor with a thump. He leaned his back against the wall in relief, and waited for his head to clear. The situation was solved at last. Judging by the look on Harry’s face as the door had closed, Elise would be given no more opportunities to roam. And even if she did, Nick would be risking life and limb should he involve himself in the situation. In any case, she had admitted that he was not the true object of her affections. If she could not manage to solve the problems in her marriage she would not come back to him again, hoping to regain the past.

Which meant he was free.

What a strange thought. For he had been free all these years, hadn’t he? There was no wife to tie him down. Since his break from Elise he had sampled all the pleasures available to an unattached man in the city. He had indulged whims to the point of boredom, and was more than ready to give them up and settle down. But there had been something holding him back from seeking an end to his solitude.

In the background there had always been Elise-unattainable and yet his constant companion. For even when she had married he had grown used to the idea that he was in some way still responsible for her happiness. He had feared that while she might tolerate his mistresses and small infatuations, and laugh at his penchant for opera dancers and actresses, any serious attachment of his to another would break her heart.

But if she was returning to her husband, this time it would be in soul as well as body. He stared at the closed door in front of him, then rose to his feet, surprised at the lightness of his heart. He would always be her friend. But it was as if some bond had snapped, a tie that had held him so long it had felt more like security than restriction. As though he had been staring at a brick wall so intently he no longer knew if he was outside or inside of it.

And now there was nothing to prevent him from doing what he suspected he had wished to do from the very first.

Rosalind stopped to retie a bow on the Christmas tree, only to be rewarded by a shower of needles on the rug beneath. After Harry’s embarrassing outburst, and the disappearance, one by one, of the key players in the domestic drama, the audience had escaped to the dining room for luncheon and gossip.

She was in no mood to hear the scene reworked by curious strangers, so had remained behind with the pretence of refreshing the decorations. She kicked the needles into a small pile at the base of the tree, only to see more fall onto the cleared spot of carpeting. The silly pine had no right to die on her so quickly. How was she to keep the candles lit even for one more night with the tree in this condition? Well, they could carve ‘Happy New Year’ on her tombstone if they were burned in their beds because of the decorations.

Not that she was likely to remain here much longer. If things had progressed as she thought, Harry had finally come to his senses and she would be back in her own bed in Shropshire long before Candlemas. And Tremaine was still full of excuses, and no closer to offering for her than he had been all those long years ago.

She walked to the drawing room door and stretched and strained until she had pulled down the mistletoe ball. Without thinking, she began to shred the leaves in her hands. What had possessed her to hang the things all through the house, so she could not get a moment’s reprieve from them? Damn all mistletoe, anyway. She was likely to see everyone else in the house put it to good use, but gain nothing by it herself.

She could hear steps in the hall, clicking on the marble at the far end. Tremaine, she thought, for there was the distinctive tap of his fine leather boots. But he was coming indecorously fast. What had started out at a measured pace on the marble was growing faster with each step. She ducked her head out into the hallway to see if she had guessed correctly.

At the sight of her, he sped up. And when he reached the rug that began at the entry hall, it was at a dead run.

She looked both ways, searching for the cause of the disturbance. ‘What is it? Is something amiss? Do I need-?’

In a moment he was upon her, pushing her back into the room, closing the door and yanking the destroyed plant from her hand. Then he pinned her against the doorframe, his hand twisted in her hair, the mistletoe crushing beneath it, and his lips came down to hers with surprising force.

It was just as wonderful as she remembered it from the first time they’d kissed: the smell of him, the feel of his hands, the warmth of his body near to hers. She opened her mouth, as he had taught her then, to find the taste of his tongue against hers was deliciously the same.

If she was not careful, the end result would be the same as well. He would kiss her, and then he would leave. So, no matter how much she was enjoying it, she gathered her will and pulled away from him, trying to appear shocked. ‘Tremaine, what the devil are you doing?’ she managed, before he overpowered her weak resistance and stopped her speech with another kiss.

Actually, there was no question of what he was doing. He was driving her mad, just as he had when she was young and foolish. She could feel her pulse racing to keep up with her heart, and felt the kiss from her mouth to the tips of her toes, and every place in between. It did not matter any more than it had the first time that this was wrong. She wanted it anyway.

He pulled away far enough to speak. ‘What I am doing, darling, is settling once and for all the location of the mistletoe. You have been standing under it for days, a continual source of temptation. I feel I have done an admirable job of ignoring the fact. But no longer.’

She struggled in his grasp, shocked to find that his other hand had settled tight around her waist, holding her to him in a way that was much more intimate than the brief meeting in their past. The situation was getting quickly out of hand. ‘I did not think it mattered to you.’

‘And I find I can think of nothing else.’ When he realised that he was frightening her, he relaxed for a moment, smoothed her hair with his hand and looked into her eyes. There was a softness in his expression, a tenderness that she had not seen since the day they had first met. Then he smiled, and was just as wicked as he ever was. He kissed her again, into her open mouth, before she could remember to stop him, thrusting with his tongue, harder and harder, until she gave up all pretence of resistance and ran her hands through his hair and over his body, shocking herself with the need to touch and be touched.

‘I suppose,’ she said breathlessly when he paused again, ‘that when someone catches us here you will insist that this is all my doing, just as you did before.’ She regained some small measure of composure and pushed at his hands, trying to free herself from his grip. But as she struggled against him she suspected that, despite the trouble it would cause, total surrender was utterly superior to freedom.