A Countess by Christmas (20 page)

They’d been as essential to each other as the air they’d breathed.

And was she, their daughter, seriously contemplating marrying a man who, though he had shut himself away
in mourning for years after the death of his first wife, would regard her as
comfortable
?

Comfortable for him, perhaps. But what would such a match be like for her? She had already imagined herself pouring her love into his wounded soul. But if his heart remained closed, as was clearly his intent, then how long would it be before loving him without hope proved too much for her? She was not a saint! Far from it. She had only a very limited supply of patience. And a great deal of pride. And a temper that she often had a struggle to contain.

It would not be very long before she became disgruntled. She would shout at him. He would coldly withdraw.

Eventually, from being merely cool towards her, he would grow increasingly irritated by her outbursts. Which would hurt her terribly.

Before much longer they would become one of those couples who lived in a state of cordial dislike. Given his propensity to remove himself from unwelcome society, he would probably disappear to the estate furthest flung from wherever she was, and she did not want to be reduced to the kind of woman who followed around after a man, begging for scraps of attention like some…spaniel! She would not do it. She had too much pride to beg anyone for anything!

No, she would stay exactly where she was, proudly refusing to show how much he hurt her.

It would be hell on earth!

She hugged Junia swiftly, got to her feet and, after waving goodbye to the children and wishing them a
happy Christmas, left the nursery to go and find Lord Bridgemere.

She was going to tell him she could not marry him. The prospect of living like that was too dreadful.

F
or a man who wanted an answer to his proposal before nighttime he was being extremely elusive. But at length, just before dinner, she ran him to ground in his study.

‘Please take a seat,’ he said, when she hesitated just inside the doorway, her heart in her mouth. He was dressed for dinner, as was she by now. His face was shuttered. He had never looked more unapproachable.

She took a seat. She bowed her head. She was on the verge of tears. Was she doing the right thing? Was she walking away from what could be her heart’s desire?

No. She swallowed down an incipient sob. The vision she’d had of marriage to Lord Bridgemere had convinced her he would utterly destroy her. This brief interview would be painful, but at least all her memories of him would be good ones. She would not grow bitter with resentment. Turn into a shrew that no man could like, never mind love.

She took a deep breath, raised her head and looked at him.

‘I am conscious you have paid me a great compliment by asking me to marry you,’ she began, using the phrases she had rehearsed so many times in her head. ‘I am flattered by your proposal. But on reflection I am afraid that I m…must…’
Oh, no! She could not burst into tears. How undignified that would be.
She took another deep breath, clenching her hands into fists on her lap. ‘I am sorry, but I c…cannot m…marry you.’

There! She had done it.

Oh, God. It felt as though her heart was going to break. It hurt to breathe.

‘I see.’ For a moment he looked completely blank. Then he frowned slightly at her, as though she were something of a puzzle, got to his feet and walked past her to the door. ‘There is no more to be said,’ he said tonelessly, opening the door. ‘I trust you enjoy the rest of your stay. I will make the necessary arrangements for your departure on the twenty-seventh.’

He made a gesture with his arm to indicate she should leave.

And she no longer felt as though she might burst into tears.

She had suspected that he would simply shrug and get on with his life if she refused him. And just look at him! That was exactly what he was doing. Calmly ordering her from his study—from his life.

Oh, how right she had been to refuse him.

She leapt from the chair and stalked past him, her head held high. Since he was holding the door open for her he did not even afford her the satisfaction of slamming it in his face.

She was halfway along the corridor before the breath
got stuck behind the hard lump of misery in her chest and she had to sit down swiftly on one of the chairs that were ranged along the walls. Oh, what a fool she was! She knew she had made the right choice, to avoid exposing herself to a lifetime of pain, and yet it still hurt.

She suspected it would hurt for quite some time.

But in the distance she heard the dinner gong sound, and knew she must somehow put on a brave face and go and find her Aunt Bella. If she did not turn up for dinner, her aunt would worry about her and demand to know what was wrong with her. And she did not feel up to speaking about it. Not even with her.

This cut too deep. And somehow she did not think Aunt Bella would understand. She had never had any time for men. She might applaud Helen’s decision to reject a proposal of marriage, but it was highly unlikely she would understand the pain it had caused her to do it.

She paused just inside the doorway of the blue saloon, wondering how on earth she would survive another evening closed in with Lord Bridgemere’s extended family.

One or two glanced her way, before turning away abruptly in dismissal. Aunt Bella smiled vaguely in her direction, but she was deeply engrossed in conversation with her friend Lady Norton.

Helen had never felt so alone. So utterly, hopelessly lost.

And then Reverend Mullen approached her. ‘Good evening,’ he said with a friendly smile. ‘I have the honour to escort you in to dine tonight,’ he said, taking her by the arm and drawing her into the room. ‘And may I say
what a pleasure it will be to have a like-minded person with whom to converse…’

In a daze, she watched his mouth moving as he no doubt said a lot of very kind things to her. But Lord Bridgemere had just at that moment entered by the far door, and he was walking across the room. Nobody else existed.

He looked, she thought on a fresh wave of misery, just as he always did. Calm, controlled. Perhaps just slightly irritated. Just very slightly.

As he might have been by any minor setback that had occurred during the course of his busy day.

Nobody, but nobody, would be able to tell from his demeanour that he was a spurned suitor.

But then he was not. He had not courted her as a suitor would a woman he cared for deeply. He must have proposed to her on some kind of a whim!

‘I say, Miss Forrest, are you quite well?’ The Reverend Mullen’s voice swam to the forefront of her consciousness briefly. She saw his concerned face, peering intently at her.

‘No…no. Actually, I do feel a little unwell,’ she said. ‘I think that perhaps I shall go to my room…’

There was certainly no way she could sit through dinner, watching him carry on as though nothing had happened between them, when she felt as though… Oh, the only way to describe it was as though she was dying inside.

It was not long before her aunt came to join her. Helen had undressed and got into bed, though she was not sleepy. She saw no point in sitting up, brooding. She
wanted to pull the blankets over her head and will the day to end. It was sure to hurt less in the morning.

Wasn’t it?

‘What is the matter, dear?’ her aunt enquired, laying her hand upon her forehead. ‘You do not seem to have a fever.’

‘No, it is not a fever,’ she sighed.

‘Then what is it? What can I do to make you feel better?’

There was nothing anyone could do to make her feel better. She suspected she was not going to feel any better for some considerable time. She had thought earlier on that she could not possibly open her heart to Aunt Bella, but there
was
nobody else. And her aunt deserved some sort of explanation for why she was missing her dinner.

‘Aunt Bella, have you ever been in love?’

Her aunt looked at her sharply. ‘Ah, so that is it after all. Sally said you had fallen for Lord Bridgemere. The fellow has played fast and loose with your feelings, has he?’

‘No,’ sighed Helen. ‘He asked me to marry him. And I refused.’

Aunt Bella looked completely confused. As well she might.

‘Have I done the right thing?’

Aunt Bella pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed. ‘I do not know, Helen. I am not the best person to talk about romantic love between a man and woman, if that is what ails you. I have no experience of it myself. And from what I have observed in others it brings nothing but pain and disillusion.’

‘So you would say it is better not to marry if you are not sure…?’

‘Oh, unquestionably. A woman is better alone.’

Alone.
The word tolled like a death knell in Helen’s heart. She would always be alone. She would never meet another man who would match up to Lord Bridgemere.

‘That is what I thought. Only it does hurt so…’

And finally Helen burst into tears. Tears she had been holding back since the moment she had reached her decision.

‘H…he does not l…love me, you s…see,’ she sobbed. ‘So of course I c…could not marry him, c…could I?’

‘Not if you have any sense of self-worth, no,’ said Aunt Bella prosaically.

For a while Helen just wept, while her aunt patted her on the back.

‘In time I expect the pain will ease,’ said Aunt Bella, offering her a handkerchief when Helen began to weep a little less bitterly. ‘People do not really die of broken hearts. Not sensible people, at any rate. I could tell, really, I suppose,’ she admitted, ‘that you fell hard for him the moment you clapped eyes on him. You have never been able to hide what you are feeling,’ she said, gently brushing a strand of hair from Helen’s tearstained cheek. ‘Did he try to take advantage of you? Is that what upsets you so?’

Helen shook her head furiously. ‘No! It is because he said I should be a comfortable wife!’

Aunt Bella’s brows shot up. ‘You? Comfortable? Are you sure?’

When Helen nodded, Bella clicked her tongue. ‘The
man’s an idiot. Only a grand passion would induce
you
to marry. And there is nothing comfortable about that sort of relationship, I should not think.’ She frowned. ‘You would not have wanted to upset me by marrying for anything less. I have always been so scathing about the institution, have I not? Have I been utterly selfish? I have worried recently that I did you a great wrong by not taking you to London and introducing you to some eligible men. Just because I never wished to marry, there was no reason to assume that you would not.’

‘Oh, Aunt Bella, no! Please do not think that. I never wanted a Season. Besides, I am certain that had I said I wanted one you would have gone along with my wishes. You always let me have whatever I wanted.’

Aunt Bella looked a little mollified.

‘And,’ Helen continued, ‘this week, mixing with the kind of people we would have run into in London, has shown me that I should not have enjoyed it all that much. I do not regret anything about the way you brought me up, Aunt Bella. Please do not think so!’

Aunt Bella produced another handkerchief and blew her own nose on it. ‘And yet if you had married someone you would not now be obliged to go and work as a governess. Be reliant upon strangers. We know nothing of these Harcourts. I worry that—’ She broke off and dabbed at her eyes. ‘You have been so brave about it, but this week I confess I have often felt so uncomfortable about the way things have turned out that I have actually been avoiding you. Sticking my head in the sand, I suppose you would say. Because every time I am with you I—’ She broke off again, on a little sob.

Helen knelt up in bed and put her arms about her
aunt. ‘Please do not worry about me. You have taught me to be strong and resourceful. I have appreciated the way you have brought me up even more this week, after renewing my acquaintance with General Forrest and his wife. I shudder to think what I would have ended up like had I stayed with them!’

‘And yet you refused Lord Bridgemere. When most women would think marrying him would be far preferable to going out to work for a living. Helen, what have I done to you?’

‘Taught me to have pride,’ she said. ‘The man is still in love with his first wife, Lucinda. If I married him he would expect me to simply accept what is left over—like a beggar taking crumbs from his table!’

Aunt Bella frowned. ‘Lucinda? In love with her, was he? I should not have thought it myself.’

‘Wh…what do you mean? Lady Thrapston said—’

‘That woman! Twists the facts to suit herself, she does. Lord Bridgemere could not have been much more than seventeen when he married Lucinda Ellingham. She was of much the same age. The match was arranged by their families.’

‘Oh?’ Helen had a peculiar cold sensation in her insides. Had she just made the most colossal error? ‘B…but why did he shut himself away from everyone after she died? Lady Thrapston said his heart was buried with her in her grave.’

Aunt Bella flung up her hands in annoyance. ‘What a piece of melodramatic nonsense! Honestly! Does he strike you as the sort of man who would care that much about any woman?’

That remark did not help Helen as much as her aunt
had probably intended. Though it might be some consolation to hear he had not been so enamoured of his first wife as she had been led to believe, it still did not bode well for any relationship they might have had.

‘S…Swaledale said—’

‘Helen, if you have been listening to the tales those two have been telling, then I despair of you. Surely they contradicted each other on every conceivable point?’

Now she came to think of it, they had. Lady Thrapston had said Lord Bridgemere was a man with a broken heart. Whilst Swaledale had implied he had a guilty conscience.

‘So…are you saying he did not love her?’

Aunt Bella shrugged. ‘That I cannot tell you. It was a long time ago, and I have never been that close to him. Does it make so much difference?’

Helen’s shoulders slumped. ‘Probably not. He does not love
me
, and that is the main reason I could not accept. I sat down and really thought about marriage for the first time today. And I saw that the kind of match I want would be the kind my parents had. The grand passion, as you so rightly said. They were so very much in love, my mother and father.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Bridgemere I think admires me a little. But he does not love me the way I need to be loved. He would have made me miserable.’

‘I expect so,’ said Aunt Bella tartly. ‘That is what men are best at. Making women miserable.’

Helen could not help smiling weakly at that remark.

‘That is what Swaledale said. That Lord Bridgemere would make me miserable. According to him, Lord
Bridgemere has a dreadful temper. And, what is more, he implied his first wife’s death might not have been an accident. He said that nobody ever dared question Lord Bridgemere too closely about the incident, as though there was something sinister about her death that he wished to keep quiet.’

Aunt Bella snorted contemptuously. ‘Well, from what I recall of that time it would have been no surprise if Bridgemere
had
lost his temper with Lucinda. She acted like a spoiled child instead of a wife with a position in society to live up to. But as for implying he had anything to do with her death—why, that is absolute nonsense! He may have blamed himself for not being here to curb her excesses perhaps…’

‘It happened here?’

‘Yes. She fell down the grand staircase and broke her neck. During one of the riotous parties she liked to throw. The rumours that came my way were to the effect that she was intoxicated.
Not
that Bridgemere had anything to do with it. And if Swaledale implied otherwise I should say that it stems from spite, because he feared what he could see was going on between you and His Lordship. That young man must be terrified of being cut from the succession.’