Teresa Medeiros (25 page)

They faced each other, awkward again, strangers on a busy street. The passing shoppers stared curiously. Emily caught a glimpse of her reflection in a darkened shop window—a
small figure in a shabby black dress, torn stockings, and ragged shawl. Her bare fingers poked out the ends of her gloves. How dare she accost a fine lady on the street?

Her worst fears were founded as Tansy thrust a hand in her purse and pulled out a shilling. “I ’aven’t any pound notes with me. Won’t ya let me buy ya a nice meat pie?”

Emily stared at the gleaming coin. The warm, yeasty aroma of a nearby bakery wafted to her nostrils. She couldn’t live on charity again. Not even Tansy’s.

She put her hands behind her back to ease the temptation. “Oh, no. I’m quite full, thank you. I just ate at a friend’s house, you see, and had a splendid helping of roast pheasant. And gravy. A whole tureen of gravy.” She started to walk backward. “Tarts, too. Those charming ones you douse in brandy and set aflame. I ate half a tray of those, then polished them off with a pitcher of cream. You know how I love cream.” She clasped her hands over her stomach. “Why, my little belly is so stuffed, I feel like a Christmas turkey!”

The jostling crowd was beginning to come between them. She caught a glimpse of Tansy perched like a bewildered canary among her scattered packages.

“Em, wait! Don’t go!” she cried.

Emily lifted her hand in a cheery wave. “I’m glad you’re happy in your new situation. Perhaps we can meet for tea soon.”

A cloaked man tipped his hat to Tansy, offering his assistance in retrieving her packages. Emily took advantage of her divided attention to slip into a merry throng of carolers and be swept away on a tide of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

As she dodged around a corner, the carolers went on, their laughter ringing on the crisp air. An emptiness worse than hunger seized her heart. She had learned all she needed to know of Christmas as Justin read to a circle of rapt Maori in his resonant voice.

Grymwilde Mansion in Portland Square
.

The lamplighters had come out to coax the gas lamps to flickering life above her head. Her feet moved of their own accord, although even exertion wasn’t enough to stave off the deepening chill. The bells of St. Paul’s began to chime. She wondered if Penfeld was curled up somewhere before a cozy fire, savoring their sweet refrain and sipping a cup of hot tea.

Grymwilde Mansion in Portland Square
.

The cacophony of the city streets faded to a muted hush. She stood in the falling darkness at the neck of a broad street lined by wrought-iron fences and towering oaks. Their naked branches brushed stark fingers against the sky. Even the snow was clean here, laid in a milky blanket over rolling lawns and terra-cotta fountains. Emily felt like an intruder from another land.

Grymwilde Mansion in Portland Square
.

Did she really think she could abide in the same city, walk the same streets without even trying to steal a glimpse of him? Did he sit sad and alone in a deserted house with only his regrets for company? Did he wander a cold, snowy garden, dreaming of her?

There was only one way to find out.

The sky began to spit snow. Sighing, Emily pulled her shawl up over her hair and hastened through the deepening dusk.

Chapter 17
 

J
ustin stood at the window and watched the fat snowflakes drift down to fur the lawn. Despite his longing for sunlight and sea, the snow still captivated him with its purity, its eternal promise of fresh hope.

“Justin, oh, Justin, my darling, where are you?”

He blew out a breath of frustration, fogging the cold windowpane. Even the heavy damask of the drapes wasn’t enough to deter his mother. She swept them aside, smothering him in the cloying fog of her perfume.

“There
you are! I was beginning to think you were hiding under the bed as you used to do when you were little.”

“Fat lot of good that would have done me. You would have just sent the butler to drag me out by my heels.”

She slapped his arm with her fan. “Don’t be a bad boy. You promised to be civil to my guests, not spend the evening lurking behind the drapes. It was heartless of you to deny me my annual Christmas ball. The least you can do is grace my modest fête with your presence.”

Justin sighed. The duchess’s idea of a modest fete was cramming a hundred guests into the octagonal drawing room. “I warned you I wouldn’t be good company, Mother. I have more pressing matters on my mind than playing Simile with a bevy of sotted swells.”

“I suppose you mean that infernal child. You must stop this ridiculous fretting. You’ve got the finest men in the business on it. They’ll find the little lad soon enough.”

“It’s a girl,” he explained for the hundredth time. “A girl.”

“Speaking of girls,” his mother said, rescuing a perfumed handkerchief from the bodice of her dress, “there’s that charming du Pardieu woman I told you about. You simply must meet her daughter. Quite a bewitching little creature. Fresh out of seminary.” She fluttered the hanky in the air like a flag of surrender, calling out, “Over here, dear.”

Justin jerked her arm down, cringing at her shrill titter. Now that she’d regained one rightful Winthrop heir, her primary mission in life seemed to be to ensure he produced another one. “I don’t want to meet the charming du Pardieu woman and I don’t want to meet her daughter. If Queen Victoria is here, I don’t want to meet her either. I wish to be left alone.”

The duchess’s iron-gray ringlets quivered in indignation. “Very well, then. Perhaps I’ll let them think you a savage.”

She sailed away, her formidable bosom jutting out like the prow of some mighty ship. The staring guests milled in her wake. Justin shook his head, understanding for the first time why his father, in his own besotted youth, had ordered a figurehead carved in her honor.

He turned away from the window, tugging irritably at his starched collar. Perhaps he should make more of an effort to be pleasant. He might want to bring Emily back here someday after they were wed, and he didn’t want her reputation besmirched by his.

He wandered through the crowd, managing a smile here, a friendly nod there. The diplomacy of his years with the Maori seemed to have deserted him. He felt stiff and awkward, beset by the painful shyness that had troubled him as a child.

His sister Edith was pounding out “Joy to the World” on the grand piano. He winced, his heart aching for the poor beleaguered instrument. Her husband Harold had thrown back his head and was baying along with her. Or was it Herbert? Justin frowned. He still could not keep his sisters’ husbands straight.

He angled toward a punch bowl ringed with glossy leaves of holly, hoping to find a safe haven in its rum-soaked depths.

A gloved hand caught his arm in a velvety vise. “Hello, Justin. Haven’t you a moment to spare for an old friend?” The familiar voice had the huskiness of mellow brandy ignited by flame.

“Suzanne,” he said, turning to greet his former fiancée and lover.

The years had been kind to her, softening her nubile beauty to glowing maturity, betraying her only in the faint puffiness beneath her eyes. Sweeping wings of auburn framed her face. Justin knew he should feel something for her, some hint of affection, or even nostalgia, but he felt nothing. She might have been a stranger. She must have sensed his detachment, for her grip tightened.

“I thought perhaps you’d care to dance. I fear my husband is more interested in discussing the Bank Holidays Act with his friends than he is in dancing with me.”

Justin glanced at the man she indicated—a dapper, gray-haired chap much older than she. And doubtlessly very wealthy.

His first instinct was to decline, but her possessive grip dissuaded him. “If you’ll honor me …?” he said, spreading his arms.

She stepped into them, smiling. Edith had switched to
a tinkling little waltz, and several of the guests had begun to dance.

“Do you still play?” Suzanne said, breaking the awkward silence.

“Only when everyone else is asleep.”

She laughed briefly, but stopped when she realized he was serious. “Did you ever make it to Vienna to study?”

He swept her past the gleaming windows. “No. I took a … detour along the way.”

“Dreams are like that sometimes. We give up what we really want to reach for something else. If we could only go back …” Her wistful voice trailed off.

She rested her head against his shoulder, and for a moment Justin was content to hold someone else who understood the terrible cost of hesitation. But as they spun in the arms of the music, his heart balked, remembering another night when he had waltzed beneath the merry twinkle of the stars. He had danced to the wrong music, held the wrong woman, but nothing in his life had ever felt so right.

He closed his eyes, breathing in not the delicate lavender of Suzanne’s perfume, but the haunting aroma of vanilla warmed by sun-honeyed skin. His body responded to the dangerous provocation with a will of its own.

“Perhaps we could meet again. My husband travels frequently in his work. He’s leaving for Belgium next week.”

The breathless voice scattered his memories. He opened his eyes. Suzanne was gazing up at him, her lips parted in glistening invitation.

“Oh, God.” He pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“For what?”

His words echoed his despair. “We can’t go back, Suzanne. We can’t ever go back.”

He drew away from her, frantic to escape her crushed bewilderment. He pressed his way through the crowd,
snatching a full bottle of rum from the tray of a liveried footman.

“But, Your Grace, that’s for the punch!”

“Not anymore, it isn’t,” he replied, escaping into the deserted peace of a darkened sitting room.

Tall windows framed the front lawn in a swirling vista of moonlight and snow. Justin leaned against the window frame and tilted the bottle to his lips. The familiar heat failed to warm him or soothe his temper. His fingers bit into the smooth glass.

In the drawing room Herbert or Harold was crooning some maudlin ballad about a man who searched the world over for his love, only to find her in the arms of another man. Groaning, Justin closed his eyes and rapped his forehead against the icy pane.

When he opened them, someone was standing just outside the gate.

Snowflakes danced in his vision. He blinked, thinking he might have imagined it. But the small figure clad in black was still there, clinging in eerie stillness to the wrought-iron gate.

It must be a beggar child, he thought.

He had spent much time in the past few weeks reacquainting himself with the orphans and urchins of the London streets. There were no hungry children among the Maori. What was planted by one was harvested by all. It had appalled him to see the children of London starving in the slums. Perhaps one of those he had helped had sent this bedraggled creature to his doorstep to beg for food.

A blast of wind rattled the windowpane. How very cold she must be! He would have Penfeld invite her into the kitchen for a hot meal.

As he turned from the window, a thought brushed him with icy fingers, an idea both so horrible and so magnificent, it chilled him to the bone.

He narrowed his eyes. The figure was still there. Motionless. Waiting.

He tore across the room, swearing under his breath as his knee slammed into a brass pedestal crowned by a glowering bust of Prince Albert. He burst into the drawing room and shoved his way through the crowd, ignoring the crash of a footman’s tray and the startled cries of alarm.

“Good Lord, where’s the lad off to now?”

“Careful there, Millicent, he trod all over my train.”

“Where’s the fire, son? Shall we call out the brigade?”

Justin flew across the entranceway and flung open the front door. Frigid air burned his lungs. Tears of cold stung his eyes. He blinked rapidly to dispel them.

Snowflakes tumbled and spun in a wind-driven waltz, frosting the world in white. Leaving the front door gaping, he ran, sliding across the icy lawn to the street.

He searched both ways. The street was empty. The iron gate swung in the wind, creaking an eerie refrain.

Justin sank down on the curb and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared blindly into the night, wondering if he was going mad and listening to the falling snowflakes whisper promises they could never keep.

Emily’s long strides ate up the pavement. Her shoulder slammed into a passing chimney sweep, knocking his tools into the snow.

“Watch where you’re goin’, you little fool!” he growled.

She jerked up his metal broom and swung around to press the sharp bristles to his throat. “Why don’t you watch who you’re calling a fool, pudding head.”

He recoiled and lifted his palms in surrender. She tossed him the broom.

“And a merry Christmas to you, too,” he called after her as she marched on.

Emily was madder than hell.

She rushed on to nowhere, nursing the cold ashes of her bitterness to raging flame. She toyed with her anger, ripping the familiar comfort of the old scar wide open. She
knew her anger well. It had been her friend, enabling her to hold her head high despite the giggles and slights. It had been her enemy, driving her to stomp toes and tie Cecille’s braids in knots. And it had been her lover, sustaining her through cold, dark nights shivering in her attic bed by building a stone wall of fury against the despair.