Christmas Carol (10 page)

“If you wish, we will drive past it,” he
said. “You know I cannot take you inside without a chaperone.”

“I understand.”

The house was in Mayfair, an ornate white
wedding cake of a place. Nothing about it struck a chord in Carol’s
memory, though she had walked along that particular street many
times during her ramblings around London.

“It’s huge,” she whispered.

“I feel certain you will know how to manage
it,” he told her. “Your mother raised you to be the competent
mistress of such an establishment.”

By the time Nicholas returned her to Marlowe
House, Carol felt as if her brain would burst from all the
information she was trying to sort out. As she watched him drive
away, she was certain of only one thing. She could scarcely wait to
see him again that evening at Lady Lynnville’s ball.

Carol, Penelope and Lady Augusta went to the
theater first and then on to Lady Lynnville’s ball. The ballroom
was large and it was badly crowded with elegantly dressed
people.

“What a crush,” gasped Penelope. “Lady
Lynnville must be delighted to know her affair will be considered a
huge success.”

“Must social success be dependent upon how
uncomfortable the guests are?” Carol demanded, trying to push her
way through the throng. “If that’s the case, then we didn’t make
the grade last night, did we? There was plenty of room at Marlowe
House.”

“Do you mean you didn’t notice?” As usual,
Penelope was laughing, and her pretty blue eyes were twinkling
merrily. “I vow, you had eyes only for Nicholas and saw no one
else. And then, you spent so much time in the library with
him.”

“There is a charming library in this house,”
a voice at Carol’s shoulder said, interrupting Penelope. “I will be
happy to show it to you, my dear.”

“Nicholas,” Penelope exclaimed, “you ought
not to make such suggestions.” Looking at the man with him, she
added with a slight blush, “Good evening, Lord Simmons.”

Within a few moments Penelope and Lord
Simmons were dancing and Carol was swept into Nicholas’s arms. This
second evening in early nineteenth-century London passed in a blur
of overcrowded, overheated rooms, of constant frivolous chatter and
dances claimed with her by men whom Carol did not know. Through it
all Nicholas frequently returned to her side, and Carol began to
regard him as the one stable element in an unfamiliar, shifting,
and confusing scene. Penelope was spending most of her time with
Lord Simmons, except for a few dances with other men in order to
assuage the demands of propriety. Lady Augusta seemed to have
disappeared, possibly into the card room with Lord Falloner.
Nicholas was the only constant.

“Are you feeling unwell?” he asked sometime
after midnight, when he discovered her standing on the terrace just
outside an open French door.

“It’s too hot in the ballroom,” she answered,
taking a deep breath of the bitterly cold fresh air, “and everyone
is wearing so much perfume. I wanted to clear my lungs.”

“You will end with lung fever,” he cautioned.
There followed a moment of silence until he asked, “Shall I take
you home, Caroline?”

“Now?” She turned toward his tall, dark
figure. He was wearing black again this evening. In the shadows
where they were standing, only the pristine white of his linen and
the pale shape of his face were visible. “Are you telling me we can
leave this—this fearful crush, as Penelope calls it, without
causing an uproar among the chaperones, or hurting our hostess’s
feelings?”

“It can be arranged,” he said. “If an early
departure is what you wish.”

Something in his voice told Carol that more
than transportation back to Marlowe House was included in his
offer. Suddenly the prospect of several additional hours spent
dancing with men whom she would have to pretend to recognize, or
conversation with young ladies who were chiefly interested in
snagging rich and titled husbands, was unbearable.

“I find that I am most dreadfully tired,” she
said in her best imitation of one of those ladies. Spreading her
fan, she fluttered it gracefully. “I do believe I feel the
beginnings of a headache. Not to mention a cough that may presage
development of a serious inflammation of the chest.”

“All excellent reasons for you to return home
as soon as possible.” He spoke with complete seriousness, but she
could tell he was amused.

“Would you be good enough to arrange a
speedy, yet quiet departure?” she asked.

“It will be my pleasure. Allow me to offer
you the support of my arm.”

He handled their leave-taking beautifully. He
found their hostess, explained Lady Caroline’s indisposition, and
begged Lady Lynnville to excuse them. Meanwhile, Carol drew
Penelope aside and whispered her own explanation so her sister
would not worry. Lady Augusta was nowhere to be seen, but Penelope
promised to transmit the message to her.

“I cannot think where she could be,” Penelope
said. “I looked into the card room a few minutes ago and she wasn’t
there. Lord Falloner is trying to find her, too.”

Carol could not help wondering if Lady
Augusta had herself departed the ball in order to make a brief
visit
elsewhere
, there to receive further instructions on
how best to torment her victim.

She did not dwell on that thought. Never had
she felt less like a victim. After wrapping her in Lady Caroline’s
warm, fur-lined cloak, Nicholas hurried her out of Lady Lynnville’s
mansion and down the steps to his waiting carriage. This was not
the small, open conveyance he had driven earlier in the day, but a
closed coach with someone else to drive it and two footmen to help
them in and out of it. Inside, the coach was luxuriously appointed
with well-padded gray leather upholstery and with a fur rug to
cover her knees. Nicholas tucked the rug in around her, then sat
back on the seat beside her.

“This is lovely,” she said. “Thank you for
taking me out of there. It was all a bit too much.”

“I do recall you saying once that you do not
care for large gatherings,” he replied.

“I never have.” It was perfectly true.

“I am glad to hear that in that much at least
you have not changed, since as you know I, too, prefer a quiet life
in the country over the constant round of tedious social
events.”

“You keep telling me how much I have
changed.” Carol paused, hoping he would let slip a few more facts
about the real Lady Caroline. She got more than she expected. He
seized her hands and held them tight, and when he spoke again it
was with a barely suppressed passion.

“I do not know why you are so different now
from your usual cold and unemotional self, but I beg you, Caroline,
never change back to what you were before last evening. I could not
bear it if you did.”

“It seemed to me at first that you
disapproved of my new warmth,” she said, trying to chose her words
carefully so as to avoid making any further mistakes that might
prove detrimental to Lady Caroline.

“I was surprised by it,” he said. “The change
was so sudden. Caroline, we barely touched on the subject when we
agreed to marry, and you evaded an answer this afternoon. Now I
must speak of it again. I know my proposal pleased you for
practical reasons, because you told me so. And I knew from your own
lips that you liked and respected me. But I received the distinct
impression that you regarded certain of your future marital duties
with some trepidation—not to say distaste.”

“Is that what you thought?” Carol tried to
play for time until he could reveal more about the exact direction
in which the relationship between the Earl of Montfort and Lady
Caroline had been going prior to her own arrival on the scene.

“Dare I hope that you have had time to warm
to the prospect of—shall I say it aloud, Caroline?—of sharing a bed
with me? Your recent behavior makes me hopeful that this is the
case. Otherwise I would not have spoken so boldly this
afternoon.”

“My lord, you will make me blush,” Carol
murmured, still stalling in hope of learning more. What in heaven’s
name was wrong with Lady Caroline that she did not respond to this
man? Was she frigid? What kind of upbringing did girls have in this
period of history? From what she had been able to observe so far,
Carol knew young women were taught to repress any youthful
exuberance in public, and she had no doubt, considering the tight
supervision they were under from numerous chaperones and from all
the rules of propriety, that most well-bred girls were virgins when
they married, but how were they instructed to behave when alone
with their fiancés—or their husbands? She had no idea.

“You were not blushing last night after I
kissed you,” Nicholas said, the sudden note of steel in his voice
reminding her that, however sensitive he might appear to be in
regard to his fiancee, at heart he remained a tough and rather
arrogant nobleman. It was dark in the coach, but she could see by
the light coming in through the windows that he was sending a
meaningful sidelong glance toward her. His tone did not change when
he spoke again. “Answer me honestly, Caroline.”

“You are right,” she said slowly. “I have
changed. Knowing our future together is settled, knowing I don’t
have to wonder anymore—”

“Yes,’ he interrupted. “You did tell me when
you accepted my proposal that for some time you had been worried
about your future, and about Penelope’s.”

“Do you actually remember every word I
spoke?” she asked, prompting him to reveal that conversation.

“You said you were willing to become Lady
Augusta’s companion, or to endure the humiliation of taking a
position as governess, if that were the only respectable path open
to you, but you did not want such a life for your sister. As I
recall, at the time you were planning to turn your own small dowry
over to Penelope, to add to the one left to her by your parents, in
order to enable your sister to make a good marriage. Fortunately, I
was able to convince you that Penelope would surely refuse such a
scheme as unfair to you, and so you agreed to my proposal of
marriage instead. I believe my offer of a substantial dowry for
Penelope was the deciding factor in your decision.”

“Anyone would wish the best in life for
Penelope,” Carol said.

“It was your affection for your sister that
first endeared you to me, Caroline. Having no brothers or sisters
myself, I view the love between you and Penelope as beautiful and
sacred.”

“
Am
I dear to you?” she whispered.

“You are becoming more so every day.”

“Oh.” Carol smothered the quick little spurt
of jealousy that was the result of knowing she would not be present
to be the recipient of Nicholas’s love. She had no right to be
jealous of Lady Caroline. It was not Lady Caroline’s fault that
Carol Simmons was presently living in a nineteenth-century
body.

In fact, Carol was beginning to like Lady
Caroline Hyde. In a time of limited possibilities for females, a
woman who was willing to marry in order to secure a comfortable and
happy future for her beloved sister was a woman worthy of
admiration. Carol just wished she knew what Lady Caroline’s true
feelings toward Nicholas were. From her own point of view, marrying
Nicholas, going to bed with him every night, and bearing his
children was definitely not a fate worse than death. Life with him
might well be an interesting variation on life in heaven.

“You cannot claim to be frightened of me,”
Nicholas whispered, his breath warm at her ear. “Not after last
night.”

“I’m not afraid. Not in the way you mean.
It’s just that there are things you don’t know about me—I mean,
about the real me. I’m not what I appear to be.”

“Whatever you are, I want you. I want to hold
you in my arms, and I pray that when we marry, you will come to me
with hope and bright anticipation. I cannot tell you how glad it
would make me if you were to admit that you feel a warm affection
for me. After the way you responded to me when I kissed you, I
think you are not unmoved by my advances. You need not be ashamed
of your reaction, my dear. I assure you, it was perfectly
normal.”

“You are speaking of physical love.” She
could scarcely whisper the words. Her heart was beating hard—she
could hear it in her ears—and she was trembling. This was more than
the reaction of Carol Simmons. This had something to do with the
body of Lady Caroline. Carol could not understand what was
happening to her, and she could not stop shaking. “I ought to tell
you—to explain—”

“Dare I hope that you might look forward to
that part of our marriage, now that we are beginning to know each
other better and to explore the possibilities that lie between
us?”

“Well, you see—” She wanted to tell him
everything, all about Lady Augusta and the way she had moved Carol
through time. She wanted to confess her stupid and emotionally
destructive teenage indiscretion with Robert Drummond. And when
Nicholas knew the truth, she wanted him to tell her it didn’t
matter. She wanted him to know all of it and still make love to her
because he wanted
her
, Carol Simmons.

She tried to tell him, only to discover that
she could not. Lady Augusta’s warning, combined with her own fear
of the historical repercussions if she violated that warning, kept
her from speaking the words forming in her mind and on her
tongue.

“It’s all so complicated,” she whispered.

“Then let us discover together how best to
simplify matters.” Nicholas gathered her into his arms and kissed
her hard.

Carol did not protest. Because it was what
she wanted, too, she ignored the continued shaking of her body and
the peculiar, panic-stricken little voice deep inside her mind that
told her she ought to find the touch of any man repulsive. Another,
stronger, voice overcame the first to insist that nothing about
Nicholas could ever be repulsive. Carol welcomed his kiss, opening
her mouth for him, accepting him in a surge of spiraling
desire.