Mistletoe Magic (13 page)

Such an empty troth! She wondered why an omnipotent God did not smite the church with an earthquake or a shower of hail or at the very least inveigle his man to question the intent. But the clergyman droned on as if it had oft been his misfortune to marry a less-than-jubilant bride.

Nothing about this wedding was anything like she had imagined it would be; when Lucas Morgan Clairmont
reached out for her hand and slid the ring on her finger, it seemed like just another extension of an awful day.

The wedding band was a lurid yellow gold and embossed with a heavily set ruby, a ring that worked on the premise that bigger was better and that comfort was barely to be considered. No cheap piece either, but one fashioned only with the wish to impress.

Had he stolen it? Had he won it in a game of cards? She tucked her hand away into the folds of her skirt and wished he had not given her such an obvious piece. In contrast, the band she had given him was of classic plain gold and engraved with their initials and a date.

When the priest intimated that the bride and groom might now kiss, Lucas merely shook the suggestion away and turned for the door, leaving her to follow in his wake as she tried not to catch the eyes of all those present on her side of the church. The wedding dress bumped against her legs as she hurried to keep up.

Lord, when the hell would this be over? Luc thought, as he tried to maintain a peace of mind that he had not felt in all the days since being back in England.

He had hit the water with a shock of fear, ten miles off a coast he had no knowledge of and the black ink of ocean stretching for ever. It was only for Lillian that he had kept going, stroke after stroke through the currents and the endless waves, the sea in his eyes and nose and throat. Yet now? His wife looked as though she hated him and her aunt Jean Taylor-Reid behind
gave the impression of a woman seeing a ghost back from the dead.

Luc breathed out, wishing he might confront Lillian’s aunt with his accusations and knowing at this minute that he just could not.

Lord, what was it he was doing? He had made the mistake of marrying badly once before and the first thrall of exaltation he had felt when Lilly had agreed to marry him was now fading into apprehension.

He hated weddings, hated the empty promise of them and the forced joviality that was almost always accompanied by a large dollop of uncertainty.

At least at his last wedding the bride had worn a dress that let him get near her and the words she had given were edged in hope rather than anger. Yet look where that had got him!

Lillian had barely glanced at him and had snatched her hand from his as soon as the ring was placed on her finger, the special licence he had purchased suddenly looking like a reckless thing.

Better perhaps to have taken her professed dislike of his character at face value and departed for America, where his lands and houses waited and the living was easy.

Easy? He could not have said that even three months ago with the guilt of Elizabeth crippling him and a drinking problem he could do little about.

Lilly with her pale goodness seemed to have cured him, made what before was impossible, possible. A
woman he respected and liked. No, he could not just walk away.

‘You look pensive, Luc?’

Hawk offered him a glass of lemonade and he took it.

‘I was thinking that my bride doesn’t look particularly happy…’

‘Nat said that Cassie was as miserable at their wedding.’

‘She ran away from him the next day, remember?’

Stephen smiled. ‘I had forgotten about that.’

A flash of cream to one side of the room had them both turning.

‘It seems that Alfred has made himself known to your new spouse. How long do you think it will be before she realises my uncle is somewhat soft in the head?’

‘About now, I’d say,’ Luc interjected. ‘He seems to be trying to extract my wedding ring from her finger. Perhaps you could persuade him not to, Hawk.’

But before either man had moved Lillian had solved the problem completely. With little fuss she removed the band and handed it to him, watching as he held it up to the window for a better look at the jewel in the light.

‘Well,’ said Hawk, ‘that’s a first. Usually they run screaming from him.’

‘She didn’t wait to collect the ring back either,’ Luc added as he watched her move on. ‘Do you think she has any notion as to how much it is worth?’

‘She is a lady of taste, Lucas. Of course she knows it and right down to the last copper farthing, if I had my guess.’

‘Then why would she just leave it with him?’

‘Your grandmother was never one known for her artistic eye.’

‘She was given the piece by the Duke of Gloucester’s mistress.’

‘And it shows!’

Seen like that, Lucas felt the first twinge of uncertainty. ‘I’ll buy her another one, then.’

‘I think the ring’s the least of your worries, Luc. Your bride looks miserable.’

‘She thinks I deserted her intentionally.’

‘You didn’t tell her about the kidnapping? Why the hell wouldn’t you tell her that?’

When he remained quiet, Stephen swore.

‘God. You think she had something to do with it…’

‘No.’ The word was said loudly and had people turning. He remembered back to the lies Elizabeth had told. Little lies at first and then bigger ones as he had struggled to understand her anger and her moods. From Lillian he could not weather lies.

When Nathaniel broke into the conversation by slapping him on the back and indicating that the speeches were just about to start, he was relieved. Tempering worry, he walked to the head of the room to stand next to Lily.

Her newly acquired husband had been conversing happily with his friends whilst she was struggling to keep a thinly held composure. The absurdity of their
marriage just kept on escalating. He was enjoying himself whilst she was so plainly not, her ugly dress hampering all sense of confidence and the horrible wedding ring lost into the hands of an ancient simpleton.

Stephen Hawkhurst’s uncle it was said when she had asked his identity, a man who had been a little simple for years. Her hand crept to a growing headache about her temple as the speeches she had been dreading were called for. What would Lucas Clairmont say? Or her father?

Was this the part when the whole affair erupted into the fiasco it truly was? Surreptitiously she looked around to see where her cousin Daniel stood and was glad to find him missing. At least that was one less thing to worry about! Patrick, however, seemed bent on shadowing her every move, whether from a stance of protection or a desire to flex his muscles again, she could not be sure. Outside the rain beat against the roof.

Happy be the bride the sun shines on…

Today all she could think of were rhymes that scoffed at any inherent hope she might try to muster.

Her father began the toasts, raising up his glass and waiting for silence. ‘To the bride and groom,’ he said eventually when the room was quiet, his eyes settling on her. ‘May they enjoy a long and joyous life together!’

‘And fruitful,’ someone called out, a rumble of amusement rippling around the room.

Not from her, though! The crass reminder of what this night could bring was suddenly and terribly in Lillian’s mind. Would Lucas Clairmont expect fruitful,
knowing what he did? Could he in all conscience demand what it was she had offered less than an hour ago before a man of God, knowing her feelings about this charade?

To love and to cherish…

Such tiny words for all that they implied.

Goodness, she thought, fixedly staring at the floor as the lump of terror in her throat congealed…if he thought that I might…She chanced a quick glance at her husband and the brittle smile that he gave back did nothing to reassure her. No, the opposite, in fact, because in the amber light she caught a glimpse of the lust that
fruitful
engendered, a very masculine understanding of all that a wedding night meant.

She shivered again and unexpectedly Lucas Clairmont moved closer, the light wool in his blue frockcoat resting against the thin layers of silk and organza across her arm. As a measure of comfort? She hoped that he had meant it such, but was doubtful. Anne Weatherby and Cassandra St Auburn standing together across the room both smiled at her, a tinge of anxiety in their looks, and Lillian wished Eleanor Wilcox-Rice might have come, too, but of course in the circumstances she could not, the stiff letter she had had in answer to her own note implying the desire for no further correspondence. She smoothed down the growing crinkles in her dress as attention swung back to her husband, alarm setting her heart to racing at a pace she felt worried about as she saw that it was now his turn to reply.

‘Please, Lord, let him speak with authority and honour.’ The whisper of prayer hung in the empty corners of her pride.

Lucas paused for a moment as though thinking of what it was he wished to impart; when he did begin speaking, he sounded neither breathless nor nervous.

‘Ernest Davenport has given me the pleasure of taking his only daughter’s hand in marriage and I would like to thank him for his generosity.’ Lillian wondered why her father looked away, a rising blush evident upon his cheeks. Had she missed something important? ‘I have known Lillian…’ He halted, as though he would have perhaps preferred to use Lilly, but had decided against it. ‘I have known Lillian for only a short while, but in that time have come to realise that she has all the attributes of an admirable wife. So it is with great pride that I stand before you all as her groom today and thank you for your presence here.’

Nothing of love or respect or even friendship! Lillian worried her bottom lip as he continued. ‘Please raise your glasses and drink to my wife.’

When her name echoed around the room she inclined her head in thanks, her eyes widening as Stephen Hawkhurst’s uncle stood from the chair in which he sat.

‘Your ring’s been blessed, did you know?’ he began. ‘The fairies came before and sanctified your union. It is not often that this happens, in fact, I have not seen the little folk in years, not since my brother’s wedding in the March of 1816 when they came…’

Lord Hawkhurst had reached his uncle by now and taken him by the arm, meaning to lead him away. Lillian noticed that he did so gently but the old man wasn’t finished.

‘Yours will be a happy and long marriage, I am certain of it…’ But now his voice was distant, the mere echo of it lying in the silence of the room. Lucas, however, did not seem content to leave it at that as the first awkward titters of embarrassment and fluster began to flow.

‘Lord Alfred Hawkhurst was a soldier who took a bullet in the head for his country in the second Peninsular campaign under Wellington. In doing so he saved twenty of his regiment from certain death and as a hero deserves at least compassion.’

The snickering stopped.

An old hero in the guise of a fool! Her wedding in the guise of a celebration! Her husband in the guise of a man who held honour above the easier pathway of saying nothing!

For the first time in weeks she liked Lucas Morgan Clairmont again and was heartened by it.

I
t was almost four o’clock and Lucas knew that the time had come to take his bride and go home to Woodruff Abbey, an hour and a half away on the Northern Road.

He had toyed with the idea of paying for a room at the Elk and Boar Inn, a point that broke the journey halfway, but with the indifference marking Lillian’s face had decided that being cramped together in a small space might not be the wisest thing to do.

Indeed, he even wondered about the carriage ride and wished that Hawk and his uncle had made plans to stay at Woodruff until the morrow. Such a desperate thought made him smile and as he did so he caught his wife looking at him.

‘If you are ready to leave, I thought we might go?’

‘Go where?’ Her astonishment gave him the impression that she had expected to stay at Fairley Manor.

‘My home is in Bedfordshire. A place called Woodruff Abbey.’

‘And it is yours?’

He could not help but hear the catch of surprise in her voice. ‘I only recently came into the inheritance.’

The interest that crossed into her eyes was tempered by disbelief, the whole charade of whom and of what he was here in England mirrored in pale blue uncertainty.

He hoped that Lillian would not hate the Abbey, would not demand the perfection of Fairley, would not turn up her nose at the shabby beauty of a house that was coming to mean a lot to him.

Lord, let her like it!

The emptiness of his last few years made him swallow and he knew that he could not survive should this marriage prove as disastrous as his first.

Ernest Davenport, seeing their intent to leave, came up to speak, his eyes watering a little as he held the hand of his daughter.

‘I shall journey to see you for Christmas, Lillian.’

Lucas noticed how his wife’s fingers curled about that of her parent as if she was desperate not to let him go. ‘If you would wish to come sooner…’ she began, but Davenport stopped her.

‘Nay, the first weeks in a new marriage are for you and your groom alone. But I would just speak to your husband privately, for a moment?’

Lillian made a show of bidding her remaining family goodbye as Luc walked to the window with her father.

‘This unconventionality of telling my daughter little about the state of your finances will be obeyed by me only until I see you again in a fortnight. Do you understand?’

Lucas nodded. Davenport had kept his word thus far and he was thankful for it, but with Christmas less than two weeks away he knew that he was running out of time.

‘And if I hear that there has been anything untoward happening…’

‘I would never hurt your daughter.’

‘Your lawyer gave you my message, then?’

‘He did, sir.’ Lucas remembered David Kennedy’s less-than-flattering summation of Ernest Davenport’s parting words.

‘I notice that she is not wearing her wedding ring?’

‘No, it is here in my pocket.’ He had retrieved the band from Hawk’s uncle once the old man had lost interest in it.

‘It does not look like a piece that my daughter would be fond of. If I might offer you some advice, having it reset completely may be the wiser option.’

Lilly’s father and Hawk felt the same way?

Luc felt a strange sense of kinship with the man opposite. He was, after all, a father just trying to do his best by his daughter.

‘I shall certainly think about it, sir.’

Lillian shifted in her seat when the carriage began to slow almost two hours later, pulling off the road and slipping through intricate wrought-iron gates. It had
been a silent trip to Woodruff Abbey as two of her maids had shared the space with them, the lack of privacy allowing nothing personal at all to be said and slanting rain the only constant noise of the journey. When they rounded the last corner, she saw that the house before them was like something from another century.

‘It needs a lot of work,’ Luc declared as he leaned across to look at it and Lillian thought she detected a hint of apology in his voice.

In the growing darkness she could only just make out the newly weeded verges around the circular drive and the piles of pruned branches heaped to one end of a low-lying addition. Could this have been where her husband had been in the last weeks? Trying to make something of his windfall?

‘The lines of the building are beautiful.’ In all her hurt she found herself reassuring him and was rewarded with a smile as a footman drew down the steps, Lucas’s hand coming to assist her after he had alighted.

Lillian was surprised by the bareness of the place as they walked in, though there was a certain beauty in the ancient rugs and the few pieces of furniture that were on display. An old dog roused itself from beneath a table and stretched, before coming to see just who the new arrivals were and three long-haired cats watched them from a small sofa placed by the stairway.

‘This is Royce, the mongrel,’ her husband said as he bent to pat the dog, its tongue licking the inside of his palm with a considerable force. For Lillian, who had
never had much contact at all with animals inside a house, the plethora of pets was alarming. ‘He is at least fifteen years old, although Hope believes him to be older still.’

‘Hope?’

Lord, she thought, the tale she had heard of his children ensconced in some house suddenly taking on a frightening reality.

‘You will meet her and her sister tomorrow.’

Before she could answer an old man appeared, a similar-aged woman behind him pulling away the strings of a well-used apron as she too shuffled forwards.

‘Mr Lucas,’ she said, taking his arm with delight. ‘You are back already?’ Her glance took in them both. ‘And with your lady wife, too?’

‘Lillian Clairmont, meet Mr and Mrs Poole, my housekeeper and head butler.’ The appellations seemed to please the older couple and she was astonished by the fact that her husband kept up such friendly terms with the serving staff that he would introduce them like equals. The Americans were odd in such ways, she surmised, giving the woman a polite but reserved smile.

‘Well, I have your room ready, sir, and the eiderdown I embroidered myself over the winter months is just this week finished, so no doubt you will be warm and toasty.’

Your room? Warm and toasty?
These words implied exactly what Lillian did not wish to hear at all, though the small squeeze her new husband gave her kept her mute.

‘I am certain everything will be well prepared, but as we are tired would it be possible to send up a tray with some food?’

Goodness, in England these words were never used to serving staff—they implied a great deal of choice on behalf of the paid attendants. As a new landlord and employer, Lucas Clairmont had a lot to learn. The sneaking feeling that he could well be getting duped with his household expenses also came to mind, though the couple before her did not, in all truth, look like a dishonest sort, but merely rather strange and doddery.

The same headache that she had been cursed with all day suddenly began to pound and despite everything she was pleased to be led upstairs by her husband and into a bedroom on the second floor.

It was a chamber like no other she had ever been in, bright orange curtains at the windows and a red and purple eiderdown proudly slung across a bed that was little bigger than a single one.

On a table were bunches of wildflowers in the sort of glass jar that jam was usually found in and beside that lay a pile of drawings. Children’s drawings depicting a family in front of a house, two small girls in pink dresses before a couple holding hands.

‘Charity likes to draw,’ her husband explained, picking up the sheath of papers and rifling through them. ‘I think she has a lot of talent.’

He held up another picture of the same black-and-white dog downstairs, though this time Royce sat in a
field of wildflowers, the sun above him vividly yellow. With no idea at all of the stages of refinement in a child’s artistic ability, Lillian had to admit to herself that it seemed quite well done. Indeed, the artist had exactly copied the slobbery mouth and the matted coat, though the angel complete with halo perched before it was an unusual addition.

‘Charity always draws her mother in these things,’ Lucas explained when he saw her looking. Finding the first drawing, he alerted her to the same angel balanced on the only cloud in the sky.

‘Her mother was your first wife?’

He shook his head and the whole picture became decidedly murkier. ‘No, their mother was my wife’s sister.’

Lillian sat down. Heavily. ‘You dallied with your wife’s sister?’

‘Dallied?’ His amber eyes ran across her face, perplexity lining gold with a darker bronze. ‘I did not know her at all.’

‘I thought—they say you are their father. How could you not have known her?’ Lillian no longer cared how her voice sounded, perplexity apparent in every word.

A deep laugh was his only answer. The first time she had heard him laugh since…when? Since he had held her in the drawing room in London and shaken away her feebly offered kiss. The chamber swirled a little, dizzy anger vying with horror as she realised well and truly that she was now married to a man who appeared to have absolutely no moral fibre. And that she still wanted him!

‘The children are my wards. I am not their father, but their guardian.’

‘Oh.’ It was all that she could say, the rising blush of her foolish deduction now upon her face as he crossed the room to fill a glass of water from a pitcher and drank it.

‘Do you want one?’ he asked as he finished and when she nodded he refilled the same glass and handed it to her.

Married people shared beds and houses and glasses of water, she ruminated, and the thought made her suddenly laugh. A strange strangled sound of neither mirth nor sadness. She imagined that if she could have seen the expression on her face she might look a little like the baffled angel in Charity’s drawings—a woman who found herself in a position that she could not quite fathom.

Unexpectedly a tear dropped down her cheek and Lucas moved forwards, his thumb tracing the path of wetness with warmth.

‘I know that this is all different for you and that the house is not as you may have hoped it to be, but—’

She shook her head. ‘It is not the house.’

‘Me, then?’

She nodded. ‘I do not really know you.’ She refused to look at him as she said it, and refused to just stop there. ‘And now this room with one bed between the two of us…’

‘Nay, it is yours. Tonight I shall sleep elsewhere.’

The relief of that sentence was all encompassing, and she swallowed back more tears. She never cried, she never blushed, she had never felt this groundless shifting
ambivalence that left her at such a loss, but here, tonight, she did not even recognise herself, a quivering mannerless woman who had made little effort with anyone or anything for the whole of her wedding day and was now in a room that looked like something out of a child’s colourful fairytale.

And yet beneath everything she did not want her pale and ordered old life back, and it was that thought more than anything that kept her mute.

She looked as if she might crumple if he so much as touched her, looked like a woman at the very end of her tether and the fact that the water in the glass had stained the front of her cream bodice and gone unnoticed added further credence to his summations.

His new wife was beautiful, her cheeks flushed as he had never seen them before and her skirt pushed up at such an angle that he could glimpse her shins, the stockings that covered shapely ankles implying that the rest of her legs would be just as inviting.

The direction of his thoughts worried him and to take his mind off such considerations he took the wedding ring from his pocket and laid it in his hand.

‘I retrieved this from Lord Alfred.’

She remained silent.

‘Though I have had advice that the setting may not be quite to your taste?’

A look of sheer embarrassment covered her face. ‘No, it is perfectly all right.’

Manners again, he thought, and it was on the tip of his tongue to insist otherwise when she stood and put out her hand.

‘I am sorry for the careless way I treated your ring.’

She did not say that she liked it, he noticed, as he took her left hand into his own, the fingers cold and her nails surprisingly bitten down almost to the quick.

At the very end of her forefinger was a deep crescent-shaped scar, the sort of mark a knife would make, but he said nothing for fear of spoiling the moment as he slipped the band back upon her finger.

A sign that things could be good or a shackle that held her to him despite every other difference?

‘How old was your wife when she died?’ The question unsettled him, but he made himself answer.

‘Twenty-four. Her name was Elizabeth.’

‘And you met her in Virginia?’

‘She was the daughter of an army general who was stationed near Boston.’

‘Nathaniel said that she was killed in an accident?’

The anger in him was quick, spilling out even as he tried to take back the words. ‘No. I killed her by my own carelessness. It was a rain-filled night and the path too difficult for a carriage.’

‘Did you mean for her to die?’ Lilly’s voice was measured, the matter-of-factness within it beguiling.

‘No, of course I didn’t.’

‘Then in my opinion it was an accident.’

Light blue eyes watched him without pity. Just an
accident. In her view. Perhaps she was correct? The hope of it snatched away his more usual all-encompassing guilt and he breathed out, loudly.

‘Are you always so certain of things?’ This was a side of her he had not seen before.

The answering puzzled light in her eyes reminded him so forcibly of the time that he had kissed her in London he had to jam his hands in his pockets just to stop himself from reaching out again.

Not now. Not yet. Not when she so plainly was frightened of him.

‘Certain? I used to think I was such, but lately…’ The shadows of the past week bruised her humour, and because of that he tried to explain even just a little of what lay unsaid between them.