A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (7 page)

He had done Lady Stapleton a great wrong. It would not be repeated. He wondered if he owed her an apology. Perhaps not, but he owed her something. A visit tomorrow. Some sort of an explanation. He must make her aware that he did not hold her in contempt for what she had allowed tonight.

He did not look forward to the visit.

L
ORD
F
RANCIS CAME
out of his library as Edgar let himself into the house. He lifted the cup he held in one hand. “The chocolate is still warm in the pot,” he said. “Come and have some.”

Edgar had hoped everyone would be safely in bed. “Waiting up for me, Francis?” he asked, entering the library reluctantly and pouring himself a cup of chocolate.

“Not exactly,” Francis said. “Waiting for Cora, actually. Annabelle woke up when we tiptoed into the nursery to kiss the children, and Cora lay down with her. I daresay she has fallen asleep. It would not be the first time. Once Andrew came to
me
for comfort and climbed into bed beside me because his mama was in his own bed fast asleep and there was no room left for him.”

“That sounds like Cora,” her brother said. He felt some explanation was necessary. “I escorted Lady Stapleton home because she had no other escort. And then I decided to walk about Mayfair and get some fresh air rather than return to Greenwald’s. A few hours at such entertainments are enough for me.”

“Quite so,” Francis said. “Firm up the story for Cora by breakfast time, old chap. She will wish to know about every post and blade of grass you passed in your nocturnal rambles. You do not owe me any explanation. She is a woman extraordinarily, ah, well-endowed with charms.”

“Lady Stapleton?” Edgar said carelessly, as if the idea were new to him. “Yes, I suppose she is.”

Lord Francis chuckled. “Well,” he said, “I am for my lonely bed. You look as if you are ready for yours, too, Edgar. Good night.”

“Good night,” Edgar said.

Damnation! Francis knew all right. But then he would have to be incredibly dim-witted to believe that story about the walk and fresh air.

H
ELENA WAS USUALLY FROM HOME IN THE MORNINGS
. She liked mornings. She loved to walk in the park early, when she was unlikely to meet anyone except a few tradesmen hurrying toward their daily jobs or a few maids running early errands or walking their owners’ dogs. Her own long-suffering maid trotting along behind her or, more often, the menacing figure of Hobbes, the one servant who traveled everywhere with her, made all proper. She liked to go shopping on Oxford Street or Bond Street or to the library to look at the papers or borrow a book. She also liked to visit the galleries.

Mornings were the best times. The world was fresh and new each morning, and she was newly released from the restlessness and bad dreams that oppressed her nights. Sometimes in the mornings she could fill her lungs with air and her body with energy and pretend that life was worth living.

But on the morning after Lady Greenwald’s soirée, she was at home. She had not found the energy nor the will to go out. The clouds were low and heavy, she noticed. It might rain at any moment. And it looked chilly and raw. In reality, of course, she rarely allowed weather of any type to divert her when she wished to go abroad.
This morning she was tired and listless and looking for excuses.

She would send for her aunt, she decided. Aunt Letty liked town better than the country anyway, and would be quite happy to be summoned. She was, in fact, more like a friend than an aging relative—and therein, perhaps, lay the problem. Helena had numerous friendly acquaintances and could turn several of them into close friends if she wished. She did not wish. Friends, by their very nature, knew one intimately. Friends were to be confided in. She preferred to keep her acquaintances at some distance. She certainly did not need a friend in residence. But, paradoxically, her friendless state sometimes became unbearable.

She procrastinated, however, even about writing the letter that would bring her aunt home. She stood listlessly at the drawing room window, gazing down on the gray, windblown street. She was standing there when she saw him coming, walking with confident strides toward the house just as he had walked away from it last night. He wore a greatcoat and beaver hat and Hessian boots. He looked well-groomed enough, arrogant enough, to be a duke. But that firm stride belonged to a man who had all the pride of knowing that he had made his own way in his own world and was successful enough, rich enough, confident enough to encroach upon hers.

She hated him. Because seeing him again, she felt a deep stabbing of longing in her womb. What she had allowed last night—what she had initiated—was not so easily shrugged off this morning. Her hands curled into fists at her sides as she saw him turn to approach her front door. She stepped back only just in time to avoid being seen as he glanced upward.

So he thought he had acquired himself a mistress from the beau monde, did he? As a final feather in his cap? She supposed that a mistress from her class might be
more satisfactory even than a wife, though perhaps he thought to acquire both. The Graingers would not have shown such interest in him last evening if they had not heard somewhere that he was both eligible and available.

He thought that because he had given her undeniable pleasure last night she would become his willing slave so that she could have more. She swallowed when she remembered the pleasure. How humiliating!

The door of the drawing room opened to admit her butler. There was a card on the silver tray he carried. She picked it up and looked at it, though it seemed an unnecessary gesture.

Mr. Edgar Downes.
Edgar
. She had not wanted to know. She thought of Viking warriors and medieval knights.
Edgar
.

“He is waiting below?” she asked. It was too much to hope, perhaps, that he had left his card as a courtesy and taken himself off.

“He is, my lady,” her butler told her. “But I did inform him that I was not sure you were at home. Shall I say you are not?”

It was tempting. It was what she wished him to say, what she intended to instruct him to say until she opened her mouth and spoke. But it was not to be as simple as that, it seemed. She was on new ground. She had done more than flirt with this man.

“Show him up,” she said.

She looked down at the card in her hand as she waited. Edgar. Mr. Edgar Downes.

She felt very frightened suddenly—again. What was she doing? She had resolved both last night and this morning never to see him again. He posed far too great a threat to the precarious equilibrium of her life. She had spent six years building independence and self-assurance, convincing herself that they were enough.
Last night the glass house she had constructed had come smashing and tinkling down about her head. It would take a great deal of rebuilding.

Mr. Edgar Downes could not help. Not in any way at all.

She could no longer possibly deny that she wanted him. Her body was humming with the ache of emptiness. She wanted his weight, his mastery, the smell of him, his penetration. She wanted him to make her forget.

But she knew—she had discovered last night if she had been in any doubt before that—that there was no forgetting. That the more she tried to drown everything out with self-gratification, the worse she made things for herself. She should not have told Hobbes to send him up. What could she have been thinking of? She must leave the room before they came upstairs.

But the door opened again before she could take a single step toward it. She stood where she was and smiled.

A
T EACH OF
his professions in turn Edgar had learned that there were certain unpleasant tasks that must be performed and that there was little to be gained by trying to avoid them or put them off until a later date. He had trained himself to do promptly and firmly what must be done.

It was a little harder to do in his personal life. On this particular morning he would have preferred to go anywhere and do anything rather than return to Lady Stapleton’s house. But his training stood him in good stead. It must be done, and therefore it might as well be done without delay. Though he did find himself hoping as he approached the house that she would be from home. A foolish hope—if she was out this morning, he would
have to return some other time, and doubtless it would seem even harder then.

He knew that she was at home when he turned to climb the steps to her door and looked up and caught a glimpse of her at a window, ducking hastily from sight. She would not, of course, wish to appear overeager to see him again. His irrational hopes rose once more when that pugilist of a manservant who answered the door informed him that he thought Lady Stapleton might be from home. Perhaps she would refuse to see him—that was something he had not considered on his way here.

But she was at home and she did not refuse to see him. He drew deep breaths as he climbed the stairs behind the servant and tried to remember his rehearsed speech. He should know as a lawyer that rehearsed speeches scarcely ever served him when it came time actually to speak.

She looked even more beautiful this morning, dressed in a pale green morning gown. The color brought out the reddish hue of her hair. It made her look younger. She was standing a little distance from the door, smiling at him—that rather mocking half smile he remembered from the evening before. The events of the night seemed unreal.

“Good morning, Mr. Downes.” She was holding his card in one hand. She looked beyond his shoulder. “Thank you, Hobbes. That will be all.”

The door closed quietly. There was no sign of the aunt or of any other chaperone—an absurd thing to notice after last night. He was glad there was no one else present, necessitating a conversation about the weather or the social pages of the morning papers.

“Good morning, ma’am.” He bowed to her. He would get straight to the point. She was probably as embarrassed as he. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

“Indeed?” Her eyebrows shot up. “An apology, sir?”

“I treated you with—discourtesy last evening,” he said. Even in his rehearsed speech he had been unable to think of a more appropriate, less lame word to describe how he had treated her.

“With discourtesy?” She looked amused. “
Discourtesy
, Mr. Downes? Are there rules of etiquette, then, in your world for—ah, for what happens between a man and a woman in bed? Ought you to have said please and did not? You are forgiven, sir.”

She was laughing at him. It had been a foolish thing to say. He felt mortified.

“I took advantage of you,” he said. “It was unpardonable.”

She actually did laugh then, that low, throaty laugh he had heard before. “Mr. Downes,” she said, “are you as naive as your words would have you appear? Do you not know when you have been seduced?”

He jerked his head back, rather as if she had hit him on the chin. Was she not going to allow him even to pretend to be a gentleman?

“I was very ready to take advantage of the situation,” he said. “I regret it now. It will not be repeated.”

“Do you?” Neither of them had moved since he had stepped inside the room. She moved now—she took one step toward him. Her eyes had grown languid, her smile a little more enticing. “And will it not? I could have you repeat it within the next five minutes, Mr. Downes—if I so choose.”

He was angry then. Angry with her because despite her birth and position and title she was no lady. Angry with her because she was treating him with contempt. Angry with himself because what she said was near to truth. He wanted her. Yet he scorned to want what he could not respect.

“I think not, ma’am,” he said curtly. “I thank you again for your generosity last night. I apologize again
for any distress or even bodily pain I may have caused you. I must beg you to believe that whenever we meet again, as we are like to do over the next few weeks if you plan to remain in town, I shall treat you with all the formal courtesy I owe a lady of your rank.” There. He had used part of his speech after all.

She took him by surprise. She closed the gap between them, took his arm with both of hers, and drew him toward the fireplace, in which a fire crackled invitingly. “You are being tiresome, sir,” she said. “Do come and sit down and allow me to ring for coffee. I am ready for a cup myself. What a dreary morning it is. Talk to me, Mr. Downes. I have been in the mopes because there is no one here to whom to talk. My aunt is on an extended visit in the country and will not be back for a couple of days at the earliest. Tell me why a Bristol merchant is in London for a few weeks. Is it for business, or is it for pleasure?”

He found himself seated in a comfortable chair to one side of the fire, watching her tug on the bell pull. He had intended to stay for only a couple of minutes. He was feeling a bit out of his depth. It was not a feeling he relished.

“It is a little of both, ma’am,” he said.

“Tell me about the business reasons first,” she said. “I hear so little that is of interest to me, Mr. Downes. Interest me. What
is
your business? Why does it bring you to London?”