Mary Balogh - Under the Mistletoe

Perhaps we will build a snowman. Or make snow angels. That would be appropriate for the occasion, would it not?”

“The doors are all bolted,” she said foolishly. “It is almost midnight.”

He said nothing. He merely continued to look down at her and grin at her.

He was mad. Wondrously, gloriously mad.

Elizabeth laughed.

“You are mad,” she said.

“You see?” He pointed a finger at her. “That is something you have not known about me all year. There is a great deal more. And I have not known that you could possibly laugh at the prospect of being dragged outside on a cold, snowy night in order to make snow angels. I daresay there is a great deal I do not know of you. I am going out. Are you coming with me or are you not?”

“I am coming,” she said, and laughed again.

“I’ll be back here in five minutes,” he told her, and he strode to the door and left the room without a backward glance.

Elizabeth gazed after him and laughed again.

And jumped out of bed.

Five minutes! Never let it be said that she had kept him waiting.

“You lie down on your back,” he explained, “and spread out your arms and legs and swish them carefully back and forth. Like this.” He demonstrated while she watched and then got to his feet again and looked down at the snow angel he had made. “Rather a large one.”

“The angel Gabriel,” she said softly.

She was wearing a pale, fur-lined cloak with the hood drawn over her head. She looked ethereally lovely in the reflected light from the snow.

She also looked very much on her dignity. But she lay down carefully on the snow beside his own angel and made one of her own with slow precision and downcast eyes.

He was so much in love with her that he wanted to howl at the moon. He was also afraid, uncertain. Was this his dutiful wife he had with him?

Or was she the repressed daughter of a humorless tyrant, ready to break free, like a butterfly from the cocoon? But would she simply fly past him when she discovered her wings?

“Ah,” he said after she had got back to her feet again, “a dainty angel.

A guardian angel, I believe. Jeremy’s, perhaps. Mine, perhaps.”

She looked at him and smiled-and then her eyes went beyond him to the sky.

“Oh, look,” she said, “the clouds are moving off. Look at the miracle.”

The moon was almost at the full, and suddenly, it seemed, the sky was studded with stars. They looked unusually bright tonight, perhaps because he was in the country rather than in London, as he usually was.

One in particular drew his eyes. He stepped a little closer to her and pointed, so that she could look along the length of his arm to that particular star.

“I believe the Wise Men are on their way after all,” he said.

“Edwin,” she said softly, “have you ever known a more perfect Christmas?”

The sound of his name on her lips warmed him. No, he never had-he had never known a more perfect Christmas or a more perfect moment. If he held his breath, could he hold on to it forever?

“I have not,” he told her.

He was about to set one arm about her waist, to draw her to him, to begin, perhaps-one year late but surely not too late-to speak the words of the heart, so difficult for a man who spent his days speaking the practical words of business and commerce. But she spun around to face him before he could lift his arm, and in the semidarkness he could see that her body was tense and her expression agitated.

“Take us back with you,” she said. “When you go home to London, take us with you.”

The words were so stunningly unexpected, so exactly what he wanted to hear that he stared stupidly at her for several moments without speaking.

“Why?”

She stared back at him, still tense, before closing her eyes and turning away from him.

“Jeremy needs you,” she said.

Again there was a long pause, during which he dared not ask the question whose answer might shatter his newfound, fragile dream. How foolishly hesitant he was with his wife-so different from the way he was in all other aspects of his life. But she answered the question before he could ask it.

“I need you.”

“Do you?” His heart felt as if it might burst.

“Edwin,” she said in a rush, her voice breathless, her face still turned away, “I should have said no. Even though Mama and Papa were in desperate financial straits, I should not have agreed to buy their reprieve at the cost of your freedom and happiness. But I had met your father and liked him enormously, and I knew that he really wanted me for you. And so I persuaded myself that perhaps you wanted me too. But it was purely selfish of me. I thought I could leave behind the cold, loveless world in which I had grown up and become part of your father’s warm, joy-filled world. Instead I killed any joy you might have had. I am so sorry. But let us go home with you, and I will try…”

His hand closed tightly about one of her arms, and she stopped talking as he turned her to him and gazed down into her face, bathed in the light of the moon and the Christmas star.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I am the one who destroyed your happiness, taking you away from your own world only because I knew my father was dying and I could not say no to him. I despised myself for agreeing to that bargain when you must have dreamed of making a dazzling match with a titled gentleman of the ton, someone who was your social equal. All I could think to do after my father died was to bring you here, to a home that at least would be familiar to you in size and grandeur, and to give you a measure of freedom from me and my world. Yet now you want to come back to me?”

She bit her lip. “You did not despise me?”

“Despise you?” He took both her arms in his hands and drew her closer.

“Elizabeth, I fell head over ears in love with you the moment I set eyes on you. I tried to… treat you with restraint and respect. I thought that perhaps after you had grown accustomed… But you seemed to turn to stone. And then my father died.”

When she lifted one gloved hand to cup his cheek, he could see that it was trembling. He could also see stars reflected in her eyes.

“Edwin,” she whispered, “I thought you despised me. I wanted that marriage so very, very much-with you, with your father’s son. You were to be my escape from a life I had ever enjoyed, and I was so very enchanted when I first saw you. But when you said nothing after our marriage about love or even affection, but were so… respectful, I thought you despised me.”

“We have been such idiots,” he said, raising her hand to his cheek and holding it there. He grinned at her. “I thought it was just me, but it was you too. I know so little about pleasing a woman, Elizabeth, especially the woman I love.”

Her eyes looked even brighter suddenly, and he knew they were filled with tears.

“You do know,” she said. “Today has been the happiest of my life-to see you smile and laugh, to see you hold Jeremy, to have you kiss me beneath the kissing bough, to-” She stopped abruptly and bit her lip again.

He turned his head and kissed her gloved palm.

“I will teach you to enjoy what happens in our marriage bed, Elizabeth,” he said. “I promise. Just give me time. I have to learn how to please you.”

“You pleased me.” She snatched her hand away from his cheek to set it, with her other hand, on his shoulders. She gazed earnestly into his face. “You pleased me, Edwin. I thought I would die of pleasure. But I did not show it, did I? Perhaps I ought to have done so. Mama told me-before our nuptials-that I must always lie still and pray for it to be soon over. But tonight I did not want it to be over. I prayed for it never to end. You pleased me, Edwin. Oh, you did!”

He chuckled and then wrapped his arms about her and held her tight. He laughed aloud, and she joined him.

“I must tell you,” she said, “that I have told Mama that she and Papa must leave Wyldwood after Christmas. Even if I must stay here alone with Jeremy, I will be happier without Mama’s influence. I want to be your wife, even if I am to see you only once or twice a year.”

He caught her to him even more tightly.

“My dearest,” he said. “Oh, my love. I will not let you out of my sight again for longer than a day at a time-and even that will be too long.”

She drew back her head and smiled at him. He smiled back before lowering his head and kissing her. This time there was no audience, as there had been in the drawing room before tea, and this time there was no anxiety or uncertainty, as there had been in their bedchamber earlier. This time there was all of love to be shared openly and joyfully. And the knowledge that a future together stretched ahead of them even after Christmas had passed into a new year and a new spring and a new hope.

When he lifted his head, they smiled at each other again. The house-their house, the house his father had purchased for him, really a rather lovely house-was behind her at the top of the snow-clad lawn. In fancy he could almost see the rudely carved Nativity scene behind the dark drawing room windows. He knew exactly which window Jeremy slept behind, warm and safe in his crib. Their son.

Above them, the sky was moonlit and starlit, the Christmas star beaming softly down on their heads-or so it seemed.

“It must be after midnight,” he said, his arms still about her waist, hers about his neck. “Happy Christmas, my dearest.”

“Happy Christmas, Edwin,” she said.

“I do not know about you,” he said, grinning down at her, “but I am frozen out here. Whose idea was this, anyway?”

She smiled back at him, a radiant smile that lit her with beauty.

“It was the most wonderful idea in the world,” she said. “I have seen Christmas angels and the Christmas star, and I have taken all the love and joy of Christmas into my heart and my life. But I am chilly,” she admitted.

“We had better go back to bed, then,” he said, “and see if we can warm each other up.”

Even in the moonlight he knew that she blushed. But she did not stop smiling or gazing into his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Edwin. Let’s do that.”

The Christmas star shed its radiant light onto Wyldwood long after they had gone inside and warmed each other and loved each other and fallen asleep, twined together beneath the rumpled bedcovers.

“I’ve lost the Star of Bethlehem,” she told him bluntly when he came to her room at her maid’s bidding. There was some sullenness in her tone, some stubbornness, and something else in addition to both, perhaps.

He stood just inside the door of her bedchamber, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her, showing little emotion.

“You have lost the Star of Bethlehem,” he repeated. “Where, Estelle? You were wearing it last night.”

“I still have the ring,” she said with a nonchalance that was at variance with her fidgeting hands. She noticed the latter, and deliberately and casually brushed at the folds of her morning wrap in order to give her hands something to do. “But the diamond is gone.”

“Was it missing last night when we came home?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her. Having assured herself that her wrap fell in becoming folds, she was now retying the satin bow at her throat. She looked as if she cared not one whit about her loss.

“I would have mentioned it if I had noticed, would I not?” she said disdainfully. “I really don’t know, Allan. All I do know is that it is missing now.” She shrugged.

“It probably came loose when you hurled the ring at my head last night,” he said coolly. “Did you look at it when you picked it up again?”

She regarded him with raised chin and eyes that matched his tone. Only the heightened color of her cheeks suggested the existence of some emotion. “Yes, I did,” she said. “This morning. The star was gone. And there is no point in looking about you as if you expect it to pop up at you. Annie and I have been on our knees for half an hour looking for it.

It simply is not here. It must have fallen out before we came home.”

“I was standing at the foot of the bed when you threw it,” he said. “You missed me, of course. The ring passed to the left of me, I believe.”

“To the right,” she said. “I found it at the far side of the bed.”

“To the right, then,” he said irritably. “If I were to say that you threw it up into the air, you would probably say that you threw it under the floorboards.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said coldly.

“The diamond probably landed on the bed,” he said.

“What a brilliant suggestion!” She looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Both Annie and I had similar inspiration. We have had all the bedclothes off the bed. It is not there. It is not in this room, Allan.”