The Christmas Carrolls (12 page)

Really, Holly thought, Evan should have made sure she was escorted. His father seemed to agree, for Mr. Rendell bowed before her and silently offered his arm. “Unmannered pup,” he muttered. She didn’t think he meant Merry’s dog.

Evan was seated next to her, but he might have been at the opposite end of the table for all the conversation they had. With so few ladies present, talk was general, loud, and devoted almost entirely to equestrian pursuits. Mr. Rendell, Holly noted, seated next to Mama, added little to the cheerful hum. Evan obviously inherited his love of horses from his mother’s side of the family, as well as his outgoing nature. Perhaps Mr. Rendell had done him a favor after all, she considered, leaving Evan to be raised by the Blakelys. A father cold enough to walk away from his own motherless son wouldn’t be much of a parent.

During the last course, Evan told Holly that they had to talk later, he had great news to tell her. She wasn’t surprised when he came to sit beside her at the pianoforte after dinner, but she was startled when her mother suggested Holly take Evan to see the new family portrait hanging in the library. Evan didn’t care about art; the countess did care about the conventions. Therefore, Holly concluded, Mama must also favor the match.

Lady Carroll watched her middle daughter go off with her old playmate, certain that a few minutes spent alone with the likable, light-minded Evan would convince Hollice they wouldn’t suit.

Evan didn’t bother looking at the portrait over the mantel. He grabbed one of Holly’s hands and tugged her to the sofa, where he sat sideways, facing her. “Capital news, Hol. M’father says he’ll purchase my colors as soon as I’ve got an heir. So what do you say we get buckled, old girl?”

Holly could see herself, frail and bent, with a sweet little girl at her knees asking, “How did Grandfather propose, Grandma?” And she’d have to repeat: “ ‘So what do you say we get buckled, old girl?’ “

She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, so she stalled. “Why can’t your father get his own successor after you? He’s certainly young enough, much younger than I expected. I daresay he’s no older than my mother.”

“He’s six and thirty, and he doesn’t care about that flummery of an heir and a spare. It’s Grandfather Blakely who won’t have any closer kin to take over if I cash in my chips, which I don’t intend to do anytime soon. The old boy is set on having his way, though, so this is the best I can manage. What do you think?”

“About your signing up? I hate it, Evan. Bullets and cannon-balls don’t care about your intentions to live forever.”

“No, goose, about us getting legshackled. M’father says we can have Rendell Hall. I know how you like managing things, so that should please you. Or else you could live with m’grandparents. They could use some help now that they’re getting on.”

They’d been getting on since Holly was a child. Now they were getting curmudgeonly. “Evan, are you telling me that I have my choice of residing at Rendell Hall or Blakely Manor after we’re wed, while you are off with the army?”

“I didn’t suppose you’d want to stay on here with your parents, but if that’s what’ll make you happy, Holly, I’m sure your father won’t mind, the way he dotes on you girls.”

“You don’t think I ought to be with my husband?”

“What, at the front? That’s no place for a lady, Holly. I’d be a hundred kinds of cad to drag you off to live in a tent and cook your own supper and wash your clothes in a stream.” He waved his hand around at the luxury of Winterpark. “After this? Don’t be a hen-wit, Holly. Think of the child.”

And don’t think of having an adventure of your own,
she extrapolated from his words,
just stay all cozy and safe, breeding Berkshire Blakelys, raising rural Rendells.
While her husband was off getting killed.

Evan could sense her lack of enthusiasm for the plan, perhaps by the way she was tapping her foot and shaking her head. “It won’t be for long, Holly. I’ll be back soon and we can go to London, do the sights and all. Or Bath. But if I don’t get to go now, Boney’ll be defeated and I’ll never see action. M’father’s sure the end is in sight, and he has more sources for information than the War Office does. He’s going off to Austria soon, but he says he’ll make the arrangements for me to join a crack cavalry unit as soon as you give the nod.”

“Evan, I don’t think...”

He jumped up and started pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. “Dash it, Holly, don’t be getting all missish on me. I counted on your understanding because you know better than anyone how I’ve always wanted to sign up. Now I can, if you’ll agree to get hitched. I even brought a special license with me so we can get started on that nursery sooner.” He took an official-looking document out of his pocket and spread it on the striped cushion next to her. “This didn’t come cheap, old girl. I had to ask m’father to advance this quarter’s allowance for it. He was decent about that, too.”

“I thought you hated the man you used to call sir. Now it’s m’father this and m’father that. What happened to the resentment you harbored against him all your life for deserting you? Is he less cold and unfeeling now that he’s offered to purchase your colors?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. If Mr. Rendell hadn’t suddenly imposed himself on their lives, at this late date, they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Evan smoothed out the license so she wouldn’t see his blush. “He kept me on tight purse strings, was all. I shouldn’t have complained to you, I guess. With all his blunt, I figured m’father could afford better horses for me and a place of my own in Town. I was aggravated when he wouldn’t spring for a high-perch phaeton last year either.”

“The man has some sense, then. I’ve seen how you drive.”

“I could still teach you a thing or two, missy. Who was it tipped your father’s curricle in the ditch that time?”

“You distracted me.”

As she was distracting him now. Holly was happier that their relationship was back to its usual footing, but Evan wasn’t letting their familiar bickering stop him from showing his sire in a better light. When Holly took a dislike to someone, she never let up, which would be deuced awkward in a daughter-in-law.

Running anxious fingers through his sandy hair, Evan said, “Dash it, Hol, that ain’t the point. M’father’s top of the trees, b’gad, and I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression of him. Of course, I used to resent not going along on his jaunts, but a chap don’t take an infant to China, does he? He did write regularly from wherever he happened to be, and sent gifts from every port. Whenever he was in the country he visited me at school, on account of not being comfortable at Squire’s. Which ain’t to say he didn’t come down heavy to keep the place in repair. The manor would have crumbled into compost if m’father hadn’t spent his brass on it. And he had no reason to be so generous, not after what the Blakelys did to him.”

“What exactly did they do?” Holly wanted to know, and not just to delay giving her old friend an answer. She’d been curious about the Rendells forever, it seemed. “No one would ever say.”

Evan was pacing again. “I never had the straight of it myself. Couldn’t very well ask m’grandfather, could I? Or ask m’father in a letter. Bad form, that. Shouldn’t even be discussing it out of the family, but if you’re going to be part of it, you have a right to know. And I trust you, naturally. Fact is, the servants knew as much as anyone, so I got to hear how there was a ball at the Manor, and how m’father was invited over from Rendell Hall. He and m’mother were discovered in the summerhouse. They were sleeping all innocent-like, but the damage was done. M’father swore his wine had been drugged, but he still had to do the honorable thing.”

“Your mother entrapped him?”

Evan shrugged. “She might have been drugged, too, no one knows. Thing is, the manor house was falling down around Squire’s ears and he had four daughters with no dowries. The Rendells were wealthy. Not as deep-pocketed as now, but more than enough for Squire’s needs. M’father should have been downier, but he wasn’t more than eighteen. I suppose
his
parents shouldn’t have sent him to England on his own, but they wanted him to be a proper English gentleman.”

“So he ended up with a not-quite-proper English wife.”

He nodded. “Then I came along. Thing is, he’d grown suspicious fast, and wondered if I was part of the reason for the trap, to give Blakely’s daughter a name for her, ah, indiscretion. When she died he washed his hands of the whole family and went off to make his own fortune.”

“But what about you? Didn’t he care that you were alone with those awful, deceitful people?” She’d never liked Squire Blakely. Now she knew why.

“Don’t be a gudgeon, Holly. He didn’t think I was his.”

“That’s nonsense. Anyone can see the resemblance about your eyes, and the shape of your head is the same.”

“Yes, but no one could see it in a hairless, mewling infant, so he left. He didn’t renege on his responsibilities the way another man might have, thinking he’d been compromised and cuckolded. I understand all that now, Holly. And truly, it didn’t hurt me any.”

But Holly knew it had, knew how the lonely little boy had envied her for her own father. And now he wanted to do the same to his son, to Holly’s son. He wanted to conceive a child only to leave him to go fight a war.

“So what do you say, old girl? You know your father and mother approve. They’d have sent old Barty in here ages ago otherwise. Should we shake on it?”

Shake on it? This was the only marriage proposal Holly might ever get—especially if she accepted it—and he wanted to shake hands. Shouldn’t marriage involve something more? she wondered. “I don’t know, Evan. We’ve been friends for so long, but marriage is different. I need to think about it.”

“Dash it, Holly, what have you been thinking about for the last nineteen years?” That was a good question, too.

Chapter Fourteen

Holly wanted romance.

Joia was the fairy princess and Merry was the madcap. Holly was supposed to be the daughter with her feet on the ground, the reliable one. But she read, she listened, she observed—and she knew there was a world apart from her own universe. She imagined, too, all the different sights and smells, the new languages to be learned, the strange customs to be observed besides the proper depth of a curtsy at Almack’s. Holly wanted to live, before she lived the rest of her placid, reliable life.

She stayed on in the library, smoothing the edges of the special license Evan had left behind. That was also typical of Evan, she thought, carelessly misplacing such an important prize. He knew she’d look after it for him as always, even if the scrap of paper was her death sentence, just as he expected her to look after his home and his son. Evan would have his Grand Adventure. Holly would have his grandparents.

Everyone seemed to want Holly to say yes, to get the deed done so they could move on with their own lives. Merry thought the uniforms were dashing; an officer for a brother-in-law would suit her to the ground. Mama would like to see her settled nearby. And Papa, well, Papa seemed to have sensed his own mortality all of a sudden. That folderol with Oliver had sorely affected him. Holly wondered if the earl had some scheme afoot to replace Oliver in the succession with his first grandson, the way he was so eager to get her and Joia fired off. Lud, what a coil that would be! He’d have to petition the courts and the College of Records, possibly Parliament. And he’d have to have Oliver declared incompetent to take over the earldom, which he was, of course, but no more so than half the members of Parliament who would be voting. Mama would hate the scandalbroth being stirred that way.

And Evan wanted Holly to agree to the marriage. He was such a good friend that she wanted to see him happy, and knew she could do it, first by standing up with him, then by standing aside while he pursued his dream. Later he’d be content with his fields and his horses, with the occasional jaunt to London, where he wouldn’t want to attend lectures, musicales, or museums. Would that make her content? Holly wondered.

As she made her way back to the drawing room, she passed Bartholemew in the hall, directing the footmen who were wheeling in the tea cart. The butler gave her a sharp look, then nodded to himself as if his question had been answered.

“What are the odds, Barty?” she asked softly, outside the door.

Bartholemew didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “They were dead even, Lady Holly, but now it’s more of a pool. Not a matter of whether, but when.”

“I see,” she said, feeling another door close as she stepped into the drawing room ahead of the servants.

She didn’t hear Bartholemew mutter to himself: “When hell freezes over ought to be the safest bet.”

Lord and Lady Carroll were sitting to one end of the double-square parlor with the Blakelys, who’d driven over after dinner to see Evan. Joia and the viscount were in the corner, in their own private world. At the other end of the room, Merry had organized Evan and his friends into two teams for a game of charades that was getting more uproarious with every missed clue. Mr. Rendell sat by himself near the windows, a book in his hands, a still, dark presence, neither seeking company nor inviting it.

Half the heads in the room swiveled in her direction, looking for the answer to the question they all knew had been asked. Holly made her mouth curve into a noncommittal smile as she stepped farther into the room, her slippers making no sound on the thick carpet. The conversations and contest resumed.

Holly should have joined the youngest members of the gathering at their game. Merry shouldn’t have been alone in the center of a handful of carefree youths who, unless Holly missed her guess, had sampled too liberally of her father’s port after dinner. Instead she retreated to her own sanctuary, the pianoforte along the far wall.

Holly lost herself in the music, where she didn’t have to think, until a soft voice beside her said, “You play very well. I thought the whelp was boasting of some schoolgirlish talent when he said you could play. I see that he spoke the truth.”

Mr. Rendell was there, with a cup of tea for her. Holly nodded her thanks, and when he seemed to be expecting more, she added, “I am surprised Evan mentioned a thing like that. He isn’t very musical himself, you know.”