Laura Kinsale (19 page)

He frowned a little. “Not so innocent. Grown up and married,” he said. He looked up, fixing a distant gaze on the window. “It is all so damnably odd. I’ve been making inquiries—Mari, do you know who this Winter fellow was? The heir to Belmaine, for heaven’s sake!”

“Belmaine! Oh, surely you must be mistaken.”

“I’m not. There was word at the foreign office. Arden Mansfield, Viscount Winter. Only son of the Earl Belmaine. Killed in some uprising in Arabia—the report came in from Cairo, with the same mail as the Smith woman’s letter to me.”

His wife sat silently, picking at the counterpane. “But she’s said nothing?”

“Not a word. I know nothing but what Mrs. Smith wrote. But Mari—he was there. Belmaine. On the dock. He didn’t come forward. He let me take her.”

“They don’t approve, then.”

He shook his head. “Good God, how could they approve? She’s—”

“The offspring of two prime ministers and several aristocratic houses,” Marianne said tartly. “They can hardly complain of her bloodlines, legitimate or not.”

“But why has she come to me, then? Surely he told her to go to his parents if she was left alone.”

“Perhaps she wished to come to you instead, Michael.”

“But Belmaine! She didn’t even speak to him. I don’t think she knew who he was.”

“Why should she? She can’t have seen him before, any more than she’s seen you. The poor child is distraught. I shall have to invite Mrs. Smith and her brother to dinner. We must be grateful to her.”

“Yes,” he agreed abstractedly. “And who married them, Mari? Where? It would be no easy thing, to make a Christian marriage in a Mohammedan country—a marriage that would be legal here.”

“I read in the paper that there was an American missionary at her mother’s funeral,” Marianne said quietly.

He glanced at her. The death of the lady in the desert had gone unmentioned in the house in Bentinck Street, though the papers had been full of letters and obituaries for Lady Hester Stanhope. “Yes,” he said, holding her hand. “I read it too.” He pressed his lips together. “I suppose one never outlives one’s past.”

“Not when it is moving in upstairs,” she said wryly.

“My love,” he said, “it is worse than you think.” He sighed, and then set his jaw. “I haven’t told you everything that was in the letter. She is—expecting.”

“That is a natural consequence of marriage.”

“My dear, don’t you understand?” He stood up with a sudden move. “I don’t think she
is
married. And I don’t think Belmaine thinks it either.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Oh, I say!” young Michael exclaimed, as the blazing Christmas pudding, adorned with holly, was borne in by Marianne herself, the platter only lightly supported on the other hand by the maid. “Now you will taste something you’ll like, Zenia!”

There was holly and greenery all about the house. The rooms smelled of steam and baking and evergreen, and Marianne and Zenia had copied from a magazine that showed how the Queen celebrated Christmas at Windsor, tying up bonbons in crackling silver paper and bows to hang from the branches of a little tree. They would have a very quiet holiday this year, Marianne had said, just Papa’s colleague Mr. Jocelyn, an advocate in Doctors’ Commons who always came to Christmas dinner—but to Zenia it seemed splendid.

“A plum pudding,” she said reverently, looking at the perfect half-round mold, flickering with the last blue flames, set before her father.

“Steeping since October!” Marianne said. She turned the platter, adjusting it in a precise way, and handed her husband the knife. “Zenia’s piece first,” she said, with her hand over his to place his initial cut.

He gave her a pursed, laughing look aside. “I believe I understand you, my dear.” He cut into the pudding, then moved the knife. “Here?”

“The other way,” Marianne said imperturbably, and he obeyed her. As he scooped out the piece, a silver coin fell from among the crumbs.

“Good luck!” young Michael cried, sitting forward in his seat. “She got the shilling! Good luck for Zenia!”

“Good luck indeed,” Mr. Jocelyn said pleasantly. He was younger than her father, with intelligent brown eyes that smiled easily. His clothes were exceptionally neat and his manners gentle. Zenia had felt at ease with him immediately.

Her father winked at him as he passed the plate. “Merry Christmas, and a fortunate and Happy New Year! Be so kind as to do the honors with the sauce, Michael.”

Zenia chewed her lower lip, gazing excitedly at the pudding as Michael dropped a huge dollop of fluffy sauce upon it. She knew that they had arranged for her to get the coin, but that did not matter. It made everything better.

Young Michael set the plate in front of her. Everyone watched, quieting. Zenia glanced up with a tremulous smile, and took up a forkful of pudding and sauce.

She nearly choked. “Phew!” She put her hand to her mouth, laughing and grimacing. “Oh, no! Oh, no! It’s awful!”

Everyone groaned. “Awful!” Marianne cried, and popped a cracker at her, spewing bright paper bits and sweets over the table.

“I’ll eat it!” Michael cried, pulling her plate toward him and taking a huge bite. He rolled his eyes in extravagant satisfaction. “Perfect! Delicious! Utterly salubrious!”

Zenia picked up the little cardboard cracker by her plate and popped it at him, and laughed immoderately when the bang made him flinch.

“I’ll take my coin back,” Zenia said, picking up the keepsake and dusting crumbs from it.

“Keep your silly old coin, then,” Michael said merrily. “If you have no better sense than to think our Christmas pudding
awful!
What an addle-brain!”

Zenia glanced anxiously at Marianne, hoping that her stepmother was not hurt, but Marianne was smiling, her color high. She had suffered a rheumatic attack not long after Zenia arrived, and Zenia had been glad to fetch and carry and do everything she could. The weeks of illness had made Zenia feel more at home. Useful. She was accustomed to serve, and more than happy to nurse such an undemanding patient. She would rather think of Marianne than of what was happening to herself.

The horrible black dress from Suez had been replaced, but Zenia still wore black, and the seamstress who had come to the house had matter-of-factly advised a style that could be let out easily in the waistline. No other mention had been made of her condition. Sometimes she looked up from sewing or writing a letter for Marianne to find her father gazing at her, a somber expression on his face, but he always smiled immediately, and with such warmth that she felt her fears recede.

She chose not to think about it. She chose to live in the moment, with holly and Christmas presents, to listen raptly to the carolers who came to the door, and bask in the pleasure of pouring out hot punch for them. She sang a duet that Mr. Jocelyn taught her as he played upon the pianoforte and harmonized in a rich baritone. She lost at forfeits, and won at Yes and No, and How and When and Where, and pantomime. For the last round, just as the church bells rang quarter to midnight, young Michael pantomimed a camel. Zenia did not win; she made herself laugh very hard, and then said that she must go upstairs for her shawl.

In her room, she put the shawl about her shoulders and sat down, fiddling with the ends, tying them in a knot and untying them again.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered to herself, staring into the coals behind the grate. “Don’t cry!”

She did not know how much time had passed, until she heard the sound of young Michael’s steps go up the stairs past her door. A little while later, her father quietly knocked. Zenia looked up and gathered the shawl about herself as he entered.

“Don’t get up,” he said softly. “It is high time for bed.”

He closed the door behind him. She sat still, tying and untying the shawl. Her father came to the grate and stood with his back to it. He seemed awkward, as if he had forgotten why he was there.

“It was a wonderful Christmas,” Zenia said. “The most wonderful—”

“Please,” he said. “I know you mean to thank me, but it only makes me feel worse. It is the first you’ve had, isn’t it?”

She did not answer, but looked past him into the fire.

“Zenia— I just want you to know that you are welcome here. When the child comes—”

She looked up sharply.

“Yes, I know of it,” he said. “Mrs. Smith informed me. I haven’t wanted to pry, or make you feel uneasy. I just want you to know that you have a home. We don’t go into society much anymore; I’ve not cared for it for a long time, and Marianne—well, you know her situation. This is a liberal neighborhood, artists and writers and so on. No one much questions other people’s business. I don’t know what you have thought about for your future, but—”

“I would stay with you forever!” she said quickly. “If I might.”

He smiled a little. “Well, forever may be longer than you think, but you may stay until you choose of your own accord to go.” He tilted his head. “You are young yet, and may marry again.”

She turned her face down. “Thank you,” she whispered.
 

“Do you think,” he said gently, “that your husband’s family should be informed of your condition?”
 

She shook her head.
 

“For the child’s sake, Zenia?”

That did not seem very real to her. Mrs. Smith had said so, and the seamstress, and now her father—she could feel the changes in her body, hard and soft, but everything was so changed; they were just a part of all of it.

“For Lord Winter’s sake?” he asked, when she did not answer. “Is it fair to his memory, to keep his child hidden from his own family?”

She bit her lip.

He knelt down beside her. “Zenia—is it Lord Winter’s child?”

“Yes,” she said. It came out more clearly and firmly than she had thought she could speak. There was a frown between her father’s brows. He looked at her for a long time, and then he said, “Did he take advantage of you? Force you?”

“No.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, no. He wanted me to sleep. I was afraid, and he wanted me to sleep.”

She thought he was going to ask more. But he knelt beside her unspeaking.

“He promised he would bring me to England,” she said. She looked up at her father’s worried face. “He gave me his word he would bring me. And he has done it.”

He put both hands over hers. “Zenia—I must ask. I must. Did he marry you?”

She clutched the ends of the shawl. “It will be very terrible if he didn’t, will it not? Will I be beaten? Will they take me away from you?”

“No!” He gripped her hands. “No, of course not!”

“I used his letter, to get a passage home. And everyone began to call me Lady Winter, and to help me, and be kind to me. And I—what was I to do? I had nowhere—I wanted to go home! I wanted to find you! That was all that I ever wanted, to find you!”

“It’s all right.” He held her against his shoulder, rocking her. “It’s all right. My sweet girl.”

“I can’t cry!” She exclaimed, pulling away and standing up. She was breathing hard and nervously. “He wouldn’t like it if I cried.”

Her father rose. His figure was blurred against the fire and the white marble mantelpiece. She gritted her teeth together and dashed her hand at her eyes.

“If I can stay here,” she said. “If I can stay here and help Marianne and have next Christmas and tell Michael I’m happy when he gets his commission in the Grenadier Guards, which I’m sure that he will, he wants it so. If I can only stay here!”

“You can stay,” her father said. “And I’ll get down on my knees and pray to God every night in thanks for Lord Winter, because he brought you to me.”