Mary Balogh - Under the Mistletoe

But she would not think.

She sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes before leaping to her feet suddenly and flying to the door to answer a loud hammering there. She pulled it open, letting in cold and snow. And she closed it again, setting her back to it, and watching in a kind of stupor as Bedford stamped the snow from his boots and tore off his coat and hat and threw them carelessly aside.

“Listen to me, Lilias,” the marquess said fiercely, turning to her. But he stopped talking and looked at her in exasperation. He reached out and took one of her hands in a firm clasp. “No, don’t listen to me. Come with me.”

He did not take her far, only to the middle of the parlor. She looked up at him in mute inquiry.

“You will not even be able to slap my face,” he said, drawing her against him with his free arm. He glanced upward at the mistletoe. “It is a Christmas tradition, you see.” He bent his head and kissed her.

She stood still, rigid with shock. It was a hard and fierce kiss.

“Don’t,” he said against her lips. His very blue eyes were gazing into hers. “Don’t, Lilias. Don’t shut me out.”

And then she could only cling to him and sag against him and eventually reach up to hold him more firmly by the shoulders and about the neck. He was no longer a slender boy, kissing her with the eager kisses of a very young man. He had a man’s body, hard and firmly muscled. And his kisses were a man’s kisses, deep and experienced and full of a knee-weakening promise.

But he was the same, nonetheless. He was Stephen as she remembered him, as she had dreamed of him and cried for him, and as she had consigned to the most treasured memories of her young life. He was Stephen as she had longed for him and yearned for him through six years when she might have married any of several other worthy men. Stephen, whom she had loved at the age of fifteen, and whom she would love at the age of ninety, if she lived that long.

She did as he asked. She did not shut him out. At long last, she lowered her guard and did not shut him out.

“Lilias.” He held her head against his shoulder and looked down into her face. “I said it all wrong. I did it all wrong. Right from the start.

Six years ago. How could I ever have left you? After Claude died, my father impressed upon me that I was now his heir, that I must put behind me all that was humble and beneath the dignity of a future marquess. And when he died soon after, I was dazzled by my own importance and popularity. I forgot you. I married Lorraine.”

“I understood,” she said, reaching up a hand and touching his cheek with her fingertips. “I did not expect any different. Even before you left, I never expected more from you. Only friendship and an innocent romance. I was very young. Too young to have any expectations of anything beyond the moment.”

“I never allowed myself to think of you,” he said. “You just became part of the dream of a perfect childhood and boyhood.”

“I know,” she said. “You became my dream, too.”

“I did only one good and worthy thing in all those years,” he said, “and had only one claim to happiness: I begot Dora.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“I have had her only since last spring,” he said. “And as Christmas approached, I knew I had to bring her here. I remembered that Christmases here were always perfect. I thought it was the snow and the sledding and skating. Memory can sometimes be so defective. I was wrong about that. But not wrong in the main. Christmas was always perfect here, and it has been perfect this year, even though the snow has only just come. It was because of you, Lilias. Because you were always there.

And because you were here this year.”

She turned her face to his shoulder. “I wanted Christmas for the children,” she said. “I did not know how I was to do it. But when I heard that you had come, I knew that you would be able to provide it.

Not just with money, though that is what I ended up asking for and remembering that ridiculous incident of the Latin lessons. I just felt that I had to go to you and that you would make everything all right.

But you had changed. I was frightened when I saw you.”

“Lilias,” he said, and held her head more firmly against his shoulder.

“How can I say it this time without saying quite the wrong words again?

If not for your own sake and your brother’s and sister’s, will you do it for mine? Marry me, I mean. Though I don’t deserve it. I left you without a word. For Dora’s, then? She needs a mother. You would not believe what a sullen and bad-tempered child she was when I first took her, and how petulant she can still be when she does not have her way.

And I cannot say no to her, though I know I must learn how. She needs you, Lilias. And she loves you already. Have you seen that? I want you to be her mother. Will you? Will you marry me?”

She pulled her head free of his hand and looked up into a face that was anxious and vulnerable.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not for Dora’s sake, Stephen. It would not be enough. And not for Andrew’s and Megan’s. That would not be enough either. And not for my need. Somehow I will survive as a governess.”

He opened his mouth to protest. She set one finger lightly over his lips.

“For one reason only,” she said. “For the only reason that would make it work.Only if we love each other.Both of us.”

Wide blue eyes looked down into hers. “You have been there for six long and unhappy years,” he said. “The dream of you. I brought my child to you this Christmas, though I did not realize when we left London quite why I was bringing her here. The dream has come alive again. Like a greedy child, I have Christmas and want to keep it forever here in my arms. I don’t want it to disappear tomorrow or the next day. I don’t want that dreary world back, Lilias. I don’t want to live without you.

Yes, I love you. I always have, but like a fool, I have repressed the knowledge for six years. Will you have me?”

“So many times,” she said, “I have told myself how foolish I was not to let go the memory of you. I had the well-being of two children to see to, and my own, and I have had two offers since Papa died. We could have been comfortable, the three of us. But I could not let you go, even though I was so very young when you left. Now I know I was not foolish, after all. For whether you marry me or leave me forever tomorrow, Stephen, you will always be a part of me. I will never love any other man. There is only you.”

He was quite the old Stephen suddenly, his eyes dancing, his mouth curved into a grin. “Now, let me get this straight,” he said. “Was that yes or no?”

She laughed back into his eyes. “It was yes,” she said.

“Was it?” He stooped down suddenly and she found herself swung up into his arms. He carried her over to the fire and sat down on a chair with her. “God, Lilias, you weigh no more than a feather. The first thing I am going to do with you, my girl, is fatten you up.”

She clung to his neck and laughed.

“And the next thing I am going to do,” he said, “is take you to London and buy you so many clothes it will take you a year to wear them all.

And so many jewels that it will take two footmen to lift you from the ground.”

Her laughter turned to giggles.

“But there,” he said, shrugging his shoulder so that her face was turned to his again, “I was always a fool, wasn’t I, love? The costliest gown in London could not look lovelier on you than this blue silk. And anyway, those things are going to have to come second and third. A very distant second and third. There is something else I must do first.”

“What?” she asked, reaching up to touch the silver hairs at his temples.

“I’ll show you in just a moment,” he said. “But first you had better tell me what time you are planning to kick me out of here.”

“Mm,” she said. “Give me time to think about it. What were you going to show me, Stephen?”

He rubbed his nose against hers. “How to play house properly,” he said, grinning at her once more before seeking her mouth with his own again.

The White Hart Inn, somewhere in Wiltshire-it had never been important enough for anyone to map its exact location on any fashionable map or in any guidebook, fashionable or otherwise-was neither large nor picturesque nor thriving. It was not a posting inn and had no compensating claim to fame-not its location, nor the quality of its ale or cuisine, nor the geniality of its host, nor anything, in short. It was certainly not the type of place in which one would wish to be stranded unexpectedly for any length of time.

Especially at Christmastime.

And more especially when the cause was not a heavy snowfall, which might have added beauty to the surroundings and romance to the adventure, but rain.Torrential, incessant rain, which poured down from a leaden sky and made a quagmire of even the best-kept roads. The road past the White Hart was not one of the best-kept.

The inn presented a picture of squatness and ugliness and gloom to those who were forced to put up there rather than slither on along the road and risk bogging down completely and having to spend Christmas inside a damp and chill carriage-or risk overturning and celebrating the festive season amidst mud and injuries and even possibly death.

None of the travelers who arrived at the inn during the course of the late afternoon of the day preceding Christmas Eve did so by design. None of them did so with any pleasure. Most of them were in low spirits, and that was an optimistic description of the mood of a few of them. Even the landlord and his good lady were not as ecstatic as one might have expected them to be under the circumstances that they had rarely had more than one of their rooms filled during any one night for the past two years and more. Before nightfall all six of their rooms were occupied, and it was altogether possible that someone else might arrive after dark.

“What are we going to give ’em to eat?” Letty Palmer asked her husband, frowning at the thought of the modest-size goose and the even more modest ham on which the two of them had planned to feast on Christmas Day. “And what are we going to give ’em to drink, Joe? There is only ale, and all of ’em are quality. Not to mention the coachmen what brought ’em ’ere.”

“It’ll ’ave to be ale or the rainwater outside,” Joseph Palmer said, a note of belligerence in his voice, as if his guests had already begun to complain about the plain fare at the White Hart. “And as far as vittles is concerned, they’ll ’ave to eat what we ’as and be thankful for it, too.”

But the guests had not yet begun to complain about the food and drink, perhaps because they had not yet had an opportunity to sample the fare on which it seemed likely they would have to celebrate Christmas.

Edward Riddings, Marquess of Lytton, cursed his luck. He had been fully intending to spend the holiday season in London as he usually did, entertaining himself by moving from party to party. The ladies were always at their most amorous at Christmastime, he had found from experience. Yes, even the ladies. There was always pleasure to be derived from a sampling of their charms.

But this year he had been persuaded to accept one of the invitations that he always received in abundance to a private party in the country.

Lady Frazer, the delectable widow, was to be at the Whittakers’ and had given him an unmistakable signal that at last she would be his there. He had been laying determined siege to her heart, or rather to her body, since she had emerged from her year of mourning during the previous spring. She had the sort of body for which a man would be willing to traverse England.

Yet now it was evident that he was neither to reach that body in time for Christmas nor to return to London in time to console himself with the more numerous but perhaps less enticing pleasures of town. Even if the rain were to stop at this very instant, he thought, looking out of the low window of the small and shabby room to which he had been assigned at the White Hart, it was doubtful that the road would be passable before Christmas Day at the earliest. And there were still twenty miles to go.

The rain showed no sign of abating. If anything it was pounding down with greater enthusiasm than ever.

If he were fortunate-but events were not shaping up to bring any good fortune with them-there would be a beautiful and unattached lady of not quite impeccable virtue also stranded at this infernal inn. But he would not allow himself to hope. There could not be more than five or six guest rooms, and he had already seen five or six of his fellow strandees, none of whom appeared even remotely bedworthy.