His Christmas Pleasure (23 page)

She even carried herself differently, as if her less rigid attitude had relaxed her entire body and given her grace.

For that evening, she decided to wear her hair down with a velvet cap on her head. Her gown had some of that same blue velvet.

Andres liked the look and showed his appreciation with kisses that Abby couldn’t refuse. They were newly married, after all, and enjoying every moment of it. Consequently, they were late arriving at Lord and Lady Landsdowne’s house. The butler greeted them with the information that all the other guests were assembled and dinner would soon be served. Abby gave Andres a covert pinch, a reminder that their being late was his fault.

He appeared unrepentant.

The Landsdownes’ ancestral home was the Georgian manse Andres had once described Stonemoor as being. It had enough rooms to store an army, but Abby discovered she liked her Tudor hovel. It was a fraction of the size of the Landsdowne property, but she felt it had personality and charm.

The sitting room was crowded with guests when Andres and Abby came down from the bedroom they’d been given. Most of the guests were from London.

Abby was surprised. Celeste had told her there would be family, but Abby had not expected such a large, extensive family.

Jonathan claimed Andres’s attention while Celeste took Abby’s arm and started leading her around the room, introducing her as an honored guest.

There were so many people. Abby knew she couldn’t remember all their names. She’d just met Celeste’s three maiden aunts and was being brought over to a new group more of their age—when she stopped, stunned.

Freddie Sherwin stood by the fireplace.

Abby hadn’t even realized he was here until she’d almost come upon him.

And when she did recognize him, she felt him a stranger.

He didn’t share that reaction. He’d obviously been anticipating the meeting.

Abby knew Freddie’s ways. His pleasure at surprising her was in his eyes and the smug set of his mouth.

Celeste introduced him. “This is my second cousin, Lord Frederick Sherwin, here for the holiday. We so rarely have him with us,” she confided. “He’s heir to the earl of Bossley.”

Freddie interceded. “Lady Vasconia and I are old friends.”

He bowed, but as his gaze came up, it scanned her body, undressing her with his eyes. He’d never done that before—at least, not that she’d been able to tell. Of course, now that Andres had introduced her to the sensual side of life, she understood a great deal more about men.

Both confused by his presence and offended by his presumption, Abby took a step back—and bumped into the commanding figure of her husband.

Andres was outraged Sherwin was here.

He’d barely noticed the man in London. At the time, he’d had a host of his own concerns to worry about.

However, the moment he heard his name and saw Abby’s reaction to him, his memory of Sherwin took on the intensity of an arrow in flight.

This was Abby’s “Freddie,” the man she’d loved enough to beg him to run away with her. The man who, not that long ago in Banfield’s library, had suggested she marry someone else and then they could be lovers.

Jealousy was an alien emotion for Andres. He’d yearned for things, wanted them … but he’d never experienced jealousy’s power to burn a hole in the heart.

He did so now.

Common sense reminded him that he had been the one to suggest marriage to Abby. This had not been a ruse on her part. However, it took all of his self-control to not grab her and carry her out of the house now. This minute.

He placed his hands on her shoulders, a husbandly gesture. “Sherwin?” he heard himself say, his voice almost pleasant. “Have we ever met? Ah, yes, in London—” Andres shook his head, as if memory returned. “You commented on the knot in my neck cloth. Begged to know my secret. Did you ever master the knot?”

The knot jibe was a deliberate poke. Everyone around them could see that Sherwin had indeed attempted a poor execution of Andres’s famed knot. For a dandy like Sherwin, such attention could be intimidating.

The man’s face flushed. Andres smiled, enjoying his rival’s discomfort.

The butler’s “Dinner is served” interrupted them before Sherwin had to respond.

Andres wasted no time in offering his wife his arm. He and Abby started to follow the others to the dining room, but Celeste chastised them all, “Please, please, I find parties where everyone stays with their own little twosomes so tedious. I have names at place settings around the table, but let us start now.

I want every gentleman to escort a woman he doesn’t know into dinner.

That includes you, my love,” she said to Jonathan.

There was a shuffling around. Andres did not want to give Abby up. Sherwin went right for her, but Andres blocked him with the reminder, “Our hostess says someone we don’t know.”

“I know everyone here,” Sherwin countered, but Abby had taken matters in her own hands. While the two men had been squaring off, she’d placed her hand on the arm of a much older gent who needed a cane to walk.

Pleased at his wife’s choice, Andres felt a tug on his own arm as a woman slid her hand around it. He turned and found himself chosen by the local squire’s oldest daughter, a very bosomy woman of some eighteen to twenty years of age. Her dress was extremely low cut so that what she had was right there for him to see.

Andres had to look away, wishing the toothsome girl had had the good sense to cover up—and his gaze met his wife’s.

She’d caught him eyeing the girl’s overabundant cleavage, and she let him know with a lift of her eyebrow that she expected his vision not to stray again—but there was a smile on her face, too.

He winked at her. There was only one woman to his tastes—and that was his palomita.

Abby’s shy, pleased, answering smile as she leaned over to listen better to what her escort had to say told him she’d understood.

And Andres was humbled by love. His life had been empty before her. What a gift it was to be so close to someone that you could communicate with using no more than a look or a nod.

If “Freddie” thought he was going to come between that, he was wrong.

Andres would rip him in two.

However, doubt raised its ugly head during dinner.

Celeste had been true to her word. Couples did not sit together but were interspersed all around the table. Andres found himself surrounded by some of Jonathan’s matronly aunts and the squire’s flirtatious daughter.

Abby sat close to Sherwin.

It seemed to Andres the conversation from that end of the table was livelier than where he was. Sherwin’s voice could be heard over the laughter. He was witty, clever, and English.

Whereas Andres was definitely the outsider.

Over the soup course, Jonathan’s oldest aunt, an outspoken, wizened woman called Dame Edith, demanded to know why he talked strangely.

“I have an accent, my lady,” he said politely, in deference to her aged years.

“What sort?” she barked.

“Spanish. I am from Spain.”

Dame Edith contorted her face as if trying to remember where Spain was.

The gentleman on her right, Robert Ramey, a local barrister, thought he’d be helpful by telling her, “That country is one of our enemies. The Spanish allied themselves with Bonaparte.”

“My family did not,” Andres quickly assured her and everyone else listening.

“If we had, I’d be in Spain at this moment.” The moment his words hit the air, he realized they were not particularly reassuring. “I mean to say, my family did not support Napoleon and lost all for it.”

Too late he realized how unsettling he sounded.

His attempt to remove doubts failed. He smiled at Dame Edith, but she didn’t smile back and continued to watch him with suspicion throughout the rest of the dinner. She was so concerned, she barely touched her food, spending her time tearing her bread into pieces and downing repeated glasses of wine.

The others around him thought it great fun, especially Ramey, who did apologize after the women had withdrawn. “I didn’t know the biddy was going to think you some French spy,” he said to Andres, chuckling over the joke.

“What is this about?” Sherwin piped up with interest, and of course Ramey told him. Andres didn’t think he’d escape the story for the rest of the time he was there—and he was right.

When the men joined the ladies, Sherwin made sure that everyone knew the story. Dame Edith had fallen asleep in a chair by the fire, presumably from overindulgence, which added even more to the telling.

Those who thought they were sophisticated twittered away. Another group laughed but eyed Andres with Dame Edith’s same suspicion.

The squire’s daughter shyly touched his hand and whispered to him, “I don’t think you are a traitor.”

Andres murmured some bit of nonsense about gratitude, but he caught sight of the squire, who scowled at Andres in a manner that would have made Banker Montross proud. Andres moved across the room and found that most of the men had broken into small groups that didn’t seem open to him.

This wasn’t the first time he’d sensed that his foreignness kept him on the fringes. Sometimes it added to his celebrity, and other times it made him an outsider. Usually the latter.

Only this time was different. He planned on establishing a life for himself here. In the past, when he’d found things not to his liking, he’d moved on.

He’d left, to try his luck somewhere else.

But the time had come for him to set down roots. He wanted to breed his horses and watch them grow. He wanted to train and gain a reputation for something other than his looks. He wanted to be a man like his sire, one who was well respected in his community.

Abby seemed not to notice there was an issue. She and Celeste had their heads together in a corner, and Abby appeared to be enjoying herself. She’d been readily embraced by those around them.

She caught Andres’s eye and gave him a brilliant smile, but then Sherwin walked right over to her and whispered something in her ear. She pulled back and started to shake her head no, laughing.

Sherwin turned to the others. “Lady Vasconia is too shy, but I know she has a lovely voice. She sings like a bird. And we want her to entertain us. Please.”

“Oh, yes,” Celeste said. “You must sing. You’ll play, won’t you, Freddie?”

Andres frowned. What did she want Freddie to play? His wife?

His earlier good humor with his new friends went flat with distrust. Did Celeste know of Sherwin’s interest in Abby? How close were Celeste and Freddie?

And it didn’t help that Abby could sing—something Andres had not known.

She’d finally given in to the calls for entertainment and graciously taken her place by the pianoforte. Sherwin sat at the instrument. Without consulting Abby, he launched into music she knew and obviously enjoyed.

Her voice was radiant. It wasn’t one of those warbling sopranos that always left Andres scratching his head as to why anyone feted them.

No, she had a lush, warm voice, much like her personality. Andres didn’t know the tune or the melody, but like most songs, it dealt with love lost, not his favorite topic at the moment.

When she was done, the room sat silent, then burst into applause.

Celeste approached Andres. “Did you know your wife had such a marvelous voice? Or do you sing as well?”

Andres ignored her first question and confessed, “I sing, but my voice is more that of an owl than a dove.”

He smiled at Abby as he said it, to let her know how proud he was of her.

He’d meant for the comment to be taken lightly by the other guests and was impressed with himself for doing so. His modest humor was met with more laughter, then calls for Sherwin to sing.

Apparently he had a fine voice as well.

And he was not modest about it.

“Abby—I mean Lady Vasconia—” Sherwin said, correcting himself with a rueful glance at Andres, “and I sang a duet years ago that was popular in every London drawing room. Do you remember, Abby?”

Sherwin didn’t correct the familiar use of her given name the second time.

Abby scrunched her nose, her red curls bouncing as she shook her head.

“Which one do you mean?”

Which one? Was she saying there were several of them?

Andres shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His jaw was starting to hurt from gritting his teeth while he smiled.

“ ‘The Knight and His Lady,’ “ Sherwin prompted, and she nodded with sudden memory.

“That was fun,” she said.

“Let’s sing it now,” Sherwin suggested, and the other guests clapped and called out for the song.

Sherwin put his arm around Abby to whisper in her ear. She nodded at whatever he said.

Andres crossed his arms. He felt exposed where he was standing. He was jealous and didn’t like Sherwin being in the same house with Abby, let alone preening and prancing around in front of the company.

And he couldn’t stave off the knowledge that Abby had loved this man. He was Andres’s only rival.

Their duet was spectacular. Abby was a different woman when she sang. She had a bit of the theater in her. Her eyes were lively and her manner saucy as she sang the part of the “lady.” When they finished, the other guests called for more, a request Sherwin was happy to accommodate.

In fairness, Abby did try to beg off. The squire’s daughter offered to sing, and Abby generously encouraged her to do so. Abby looked over to Andres and gave him a smile.

He smiled back, hoping the Spanish words going through his mind didn’t show on his face.

But they must have, because Abby’s smile died. She became more serious, though she didn’t return to his side. He got the impression that for some reason, he’d done something wrong.

After the squire’s daughter finished her song, Sherwin led the demand for Celeste and Abby to sing—and so it went for the longest, worst evening of Andres’s life.

It didn’t help when Dame Edith woke with a start during one of the lulls between musical pieces and asked in the loud voice only the aged possessed,

“Is that foreign man still here?”

She was shushed but not until once again everyone looked at Andres with those damnable raised eyebrows.