by Mary Balogh
And finally the music trailed away. The lump in her throat that made her want to cry had also made the music wobble.
"Out of breath already?" he asked, tightening his hands at her waist and bringing them to a stop. "But you did very well, Jess. If you just had the confidence, you could skate on your own, you know. But not today. Your lip looks sore. My mother will have some salve for it, doubtless. Come, I will help you off with your skates."
He lifted her effortlessly and set her feet on the bank.
"You played a cruel trick on me, Jess Moore," he said as he knelt before her, despite her protests, to remove her skates.
"Did I?" she asked.
"Did I?" he mimicked. "Why did you not tell me? I should have known right from the start, you know."
"Would it have made a difference?" she asked.
He looked at her intently as he straightened up and tossed her skates into one of the boxes. "Of course it would have made a difference," he said.
"I was afraid you would say that," she said.
"It is Christmas, Jess," he said, smiling and passing one hand briefly beneath her upturned chin. "For today and tomorrow let us not quarrel. I should not have referred to the matter at all. I am sorry. We will do battle again the next day if we must. Agreed?"
"I have nothing to battle with you about, my lord," she said.
"Agreed, Jess?" he insisted.
"Agreed," she said grudgingly.
It was not until the following day, the afternoon of Christmas Day, that Jessica finally succeeded in being alone with her grandfather. The morning had been taken up with all the excitement of watching the children open their gifts in the morning room, as was traditional, exchanging gifts with one's immediate family, and entertaining the servants to cider and cakes while they too were presented with gifts by the duke and duchess.
Her grandfather was tired, Jessica could see when luncheon was over. He readily agreed to her suggestion that she accompany him to his sitting room so that they might talk quietly. She resisted Lady Hope's invitation to join a smaller group than the day before for skating.
"You really should give Sir Godfrey a chance to redeem himself, you know, my dear Miss Moore," she had said. "I believe he is dreadfully upset for allowing you to fall yesterday. And I must say, my dear, that I was most vexed that Charles rushed to your assistance the way he did. I am sure Sir Godfrey would have been only too glad to help you to your feet and spend more time in your company. Sometimes I suspect that Charles lacks all sensibility."
"Well, Jessica," the marquess said, lowering himself heavily into a chair beside the fire in his sitting room, "are you happy, my love?"
"Yes, I am," she said, perching on the arm of his chair and smoothing back some wisps of his white hair, "now that you are here, Grandpapa. You cannot know how lonely Christmas can be without any members of one's family present."
"Can I not?" he said gruffly. "Each year you have been without me, I have also been without you, you know."
"Yes, that is true," she said, bending to kiss the top of his head briefly. "How foolish we have been, have we not?"
"We?" he said ominously.
Jessica laughed. "Come now, Grandpapa," she said, "admit the truth. You can be every bit as stubborn as I can at times. I believe both of us place pride before love far more than we should."
"Well," he said, patting one of her knees with a gnarled hand, "since it is Christmas, I shall agree with you, girl. We cannot quarrel at this season, can we?"
"Absolutely not," she agreed. "And perhaps we can make every day Christmas from now on. I do love you, Grandpapa. I do not know if I have ever told you that."
"I am glad you have come to your senses finally, anyway, Jessica," the marquess said. "The dowager duchess was a particular friend of your grandmother's, you know. The connection with her grandson will be even more eligible than I could have hoped for you."
Jessica's hand, which had been playing with his hair, became very still. "My connection with the Earl of Rutherford?" she said.
"You are fortunate, my love," he said. "Rank and wealth on the one hand seldom go together with looks and character. I shall be delighted to see you well settled before I meet my end."
"There is to be no connection between the Earl of Rutherford and me, Grandpapa," Jessica said. She found that her voice was shaking.
"Of course there is," he said. "I gather you have refused him already, Jessica. It is never a bad idea to do that once, you know. Your grandmother did it to me. It merely piques a man's interest. But you must have Rutherford, of course. There is no question about that."
"I beg your pardon, sir," Jessica said, sitting upright on the arm of the chair, "but I believe there is every question about the matter."
"Sometimes you can be very exasperating, Jessica," the marquess said. "What possible objection could there be to Rutherford? He is an earl and heir to a dukedom. He has property, wealth, character."
"He is a rake!" Jessica said.
"Jessica," her grandfather said, making an effort to sound patient, "if you are looking to find yourself a husband who has never kept a mistress or a high flyer, my girl, you are likely to be looking until your dying day. Besides, it don't mean he will continue the same habits. You are pretty and lively enough to keep his interest if you set your mind to it. I was never unfaithful to your grandmother, you know, after our marriage."
"When I refused the Earl of Rutherford," Jessica said, "I meant my refusal for all time. I was not hoping to entice him to renew his attentions with increased ardor. I do not want him as a husband, and I will not have him." She was on her feet by this time, her hands clenched at her sides.
"You have no choice, foolish girl." The marquess had abandoned his attempts to deal patiently and rationally with the situation. "You have been compromised. That employer of yours-Beattie? Bering?-saw the two of you in his library. You spent the night at the same inn together. To his credit, of course, Rutherford did not know who you were on either occasion, but it will not do for the granddaughter of the Marquess of Heddingly. Not at all. Marry the man you must, Jessica, and quickly too, whether you like him or not."
"What?" Jessica said, hands on hips. "I am to marry a man I despise, spend the rest of my life with him, become his possession, all because he mistook me for a servant and treated me accordingly? Besides, Grandpapa, who is to know of those incidents if neither you nor the Earl of Rutherford tells anyone? Of course I will not marry him. And I think it highly unlikely anyway that he will renew his offer."
"Of course he will renew his offer," the marquess barked. "He already has my permission to do so, Jessica. We have already agreed on a marriage settlement."
"Oh!" Jessica moved toward him, her hands still on her hips, her eyes blazing. "So I have become an object of barter between you and Lord Rutherford, have I? Not at all a person with feelings and opinions to be consulted. Merchandise merely. If you have offered a large dowry, Grandpapa, you are remarkably foolish. The Earl of Rutherford would have paid you to get me into his bed. He offered twice, you know. Did he tell you that?"
"He thought you a servant," the marquess said. "Of course he told me. All the more reason why you must accept him. And enough of this nonsense, Jessica. I will hear no more on the matter. This time, my girl, we will have your future all tied up right and tight. You have had your flight of rebellion. Time now to settle down."
"Do you know?" Jessica said. She had turned away from him and crossed the room to the window, where she stood drumming her fingers on the windowsill. "I thought things were different this time. I really thought you had grown to love me. I thought I mattered to you as a person."
"Tush, girl!" her grandfather said impatiently. "Since when does a grandfather's concern to marry his girl well and secure her future and her reputation show lack of love? Of course I love you, girl. Would I be here otherwise?"
"Then don't," she said, turning back to him to reveal eyes brimming with tears. "Don't do this to me, Grandpapa. Please.
I have been of age for several years and have the right to make my own choice of a future. I hoped to spend some of that future with you. I have even planned to allow you to order my life and find a husband for me if you wish. But not the Earl of Rutherford. Please, anyone but him. I cannot agree to it. Yet I don't want to quarrel with you. I need your love so much, Grandpapa. Please!"
"There," he blustered, patting the arm of the chair beside him. "Come back here, girl, and stop your silliness. Of course I love you. Always have. There have been three women very precious to my life, Jessica, and you are the only one left. Now don't go trying my patience when I am tired and irritable after a busy morning. Have you ever heard such a whooping and screeching of children in all your life?"
Jessica laughed. "You loved every moment of it, Grandpapa," she said, "especially when that tiny tot climbed into your lap and demanded that you read a story from her new book."
"The one with the hair bow as large as her head?" He chuckled. "She reminded me of you, Jessica. When your Mama brought you to visit when you could scarcely walk and had scarcely any hair, you had two scarlet bows, one on each side of your bald head. I never did find out what held them there."
They both laughed, and Jessica laid her cheek against the top of his head.
"Let me help you to your bedchamber, Grandpapa," she said. "You really should have a sleep. Oh, I know you are not old enough yet to give in to afternoon naps. But Christmas is a busy time, you see, and I am going to tiptoe along to my room and have a sleep too. I shall just have to hope that no one shames me by finding out. You will not tell, will you? If you do, you know, I shall tell on you."
"You're a good girl, Jessica," he said, pulling himself to his feet and leaning on her arm. "Stubborn and chuckleheaded as they come, but a good girl. All you need is a gentleman of strong character to settle you down."
"Well," she said, squeezing his hand, "let us agree not to pursue that topic any further for the time being, shall we, Grandpapa?"
13
The Earl of Rutherford was not eager to see the end of Christmas Day, but inevitably it came. It had been a day teeming with activity: opening gifts and holding a party for the servants in the morning; skating with most of the children and some of the more energetic adults in the afternoon; playing billiards and cards with the men while the ladies rested before dinner; romping at children's games in the evening until their bedtime; playing a high-spirited game of charades for the rest of the evening. It had been the usual Christmas Day. The only part that ever varied was the skating. The weather was not always kind enough to permit it.
He always enjoyed the day. One grumbled, of course, assuring one's parents each autumn that really one had far better activities with which to fill the festive season. But inevitably one came, not because one was necessarily weak-willed or because one did not have anything else to do, but because Christmas simply would not be Christmas if one were anywhere else or engaged in any other activities. On what other day of the year would one join in a spirited game of blindman's buff with hosts of giggling children and very young adults, completely oblivious of one's dignity, and actually enjoy oneself?
Yet it was not just the sheer exuberant enjoyment of the day that made him sorry to see it at an end, Lord Rutherford thought, unconsciously moving closer to the fire in his dressing room as he pulled off his shirt. It was that tomorrow he must act. He must do something about Jess.
He wanted to, of course. He was very eager to offer for her again, arrange for an early marriage, and begin to live out the blissful remainder of his life with her. In some ways the delay of the past two days had been torture. Yet in another way he had welcomed the excuse of Christmas to hold back and postpone the inevitable moment. She was not going to take kindly to his proposal. He just had a very strong intuition that she would not.
He had not spent a great deal of time in her company. Quite deliberately he had kept apart from her most of the time. He did not wish to invite any quarrel between them, and he did not wish her to feel that she was being pursued so closely by him that she could not relax and enjoy the season and the recent arrival of her grandfather.
So apart from that one spell on the ice, when he had not been able to resist rushing to her assistance after she fell, he had contented himself with watching from afar. He had denied himself the pleasure of taking her in to meals, and this evening he had resisted the temptation to let her catch him at blindman's buff.
But he had enjoyed watching her. She seemed to enjoy the company of all his family, especially Hope, who was making something of a fool of herself trying to throw Godfrey and Jess together. Fortunately, he could see quite clearly that those two felt no dangerous attraction for each other. He might have been ready to do murder otherwise. But Hope clearly could not see it. Anyone would have thought that by her age she would have realized that she had no talent whatsoever at matchmaking. She had even scolded him for taking Jess away from Godfrey out on the ice. It was far more likely that Godfrey was interested in her than in Jess. They certainly spent a great deal of time in company together.
Interestingly enough, too, he had heard from a cousin since arriving at Hendon Park that Godfrey had put an end to that long-standing affair of his. Had he shed the mistress in preparation for taking a wife? Godfrey himself had said nothing about the matter in the past few days. That in itself might be significant.
Well, tomorrow, Rutherford thought, he would pay his addresses to Miss Jessica Moore. She would not refuse him, surely. It was merely his extreme eagerness to marry her that made him nervous. She had no reason to refuse him. Indeed, the Marquess of Heddingly must have already pointed out to her the utter necessity of accepting him. She really had no choice at all. Even if she detested him, she must marry him. And she did not detest him. He even had good reason to believe that he could teach her to love him.
There had been that short spell on the ice, for example. The pull of attraction between them had been almost suffocatingly strong. He could not have felt it so powerfully while she felt nothing. He knew she had not felt nothing. When she had skated with him, she had been as incapable of looking away from him as he from her. Her eyes had been dreamy. She had been in a world of her own. No, that was wrong. They had been in a world of their own. Together. She could not have looked at him like that and felt nothing.
If he could only approach this meeting with her, then, with care, there was no reason at all why this time tomorrow night he should not be the happiest of men. He settled into bed and clasped his hands behind his head. He would announce their betrothal at dinner tomorrow night before any members of the family started to disperse to their own homes. Rather, he would have his father make the announcement. They would marry in the spring, during the Season, when London was crowded with fashionable people. He wanted to show Jess off to all the world. The thought surprised him rather. He would have expected that once he did decide to marry, he would dread a large and very public wedding.
How should he approach tomorrow's meeting, though? With confidence? Yes, he decided, but he must be certain that he did not give the impression of arrogance. With common sense, certainly. He must point out to her all the advantages of a marriage between them and all the necessity of it. She must be made to realize that really she did not have a choice.
Yet he must almost make it seem as if she did have a choice. He must show some vulnerability. The thought was not a pleasant one. It was not in his nature to admit any personal weakness to himself or anyone else. He had been brought up to think that manliness and unyielding strength were one and the same thing. But he must show Jess that he cared, that she mattered to him. She must be made to see that he wanted her as a bride, that his life would somehow be incomplete, meaningless even, without her.
Yes, he must, more than anything else, be sure to tell her that he loved her. It would not be so difficult an ordeal after all, perhaps. For weeks he had been wanting to tell Jess just that. Tomorrow he would have the opportunity. And how could he not tell
her with his every look as well as with his words? Once he was alone with her, it would be impossible to hide the truth even if he wished to do so.
And he certainly did not wish any such thing.
"What a poor-spirited family we have become," Lady Hope was complaining the following morning at the breakfast table. "Charles, I thought at least you of all people would not have refused to accompany the children sledding."
"They have nurses and governesses and such to take them, Hope," he pointed out, folding his napkin and laying it beside his plate.
"But there is the exercise," his sister insisted. "And you know we have always had enormous fun out on the hills, Charles."
"I prefer to leave it to the children now that I am entering my dotage," he said firmly. "There is a two-mile tramp before one even reaches the hills, Hope."
"Well," she said, "it seems that I am the only one with any youthful spirit remaining. Very well. I shall go alone."
"If a nonmember of the family is permitted to make one of the party," Sir Godfrey said, "I should be delighted to make the trek, Lady Hope."
"Well, how very gracious of you, sir," she said. "The children will be very grateful. It adds enormously to their fun, you know, to have some of us there with them. Especially if we should fall off a sled into the snow. That would complete their joy for the day."
"I could probably arrange to supply that fun too, ma'am," he said, "without even trying."
Those who still remained at the breakfast table laughed.
"And I am quite sure that dear Miss Moore would enjoy the outing too," Lady Hope said. "I believe she felt somewhat embarrassed while skating, though there was absolutely no need to do so. But anyone can sit on a sled and slide down a hill. I shall go immediately to ask her. She is breakfasting in Lord Heddingly's sitting room. He is somewhat tired from the excitement of yesterday, I daresay."