“I doubt you will be able to take the carriage anywhere tomorrow, Beatrice,” that lady said, a note of triumph in her voice. “Neither will anyone be able to set foot beyond the door to gather greenery. It is almost certain to snow before morning, and we will all be housebound.”
“But I am counting upon its snowing, ma’am,” Mr. Chambers assured her.
“All work and no play would make for a thoroughly dull Christmas Eve. A snowball fight would be just the thing to lift our spirits, get the blood moving in our veins, and yet not slow us down fatally. We will definitely need to make an early start, though.”
There was a smell of unabashed excitement from the younger people at the mention of snow.
Lady Templar got to her feet and surveyed the gathering with haughty disdain. “I, for one, will not stand for such vulgar nonsense,” she declared. “And if Lizzie will not assert herself as mistress of this house, then I-”
“Mama!” Elizabeth cut her off sharply. “If Mr. Chambers says that our home is to be decorated for Christmas, then it will be decorated. Even with a kissing bough.”
“Lizzie!” Her mother’s bosom swelled with outrage.
“Stow it, Gertrude,” Elizabeth’s papa advised from the other card table, exerting his authority briefly for the second time in one evening, without raising his eyes from his cards.
Elizabeth met her husband’s gaze but then looked sharply away. Her heart was beating a wild tattoo in her bosom. She had just openly defied her mother! But how could she not have done so?
“Excuse me,” she said abruptly. “I must go up to Jeremy.” He would be ready for his night feeding. She just hoped her milk had not been soured.
She had never seen Mr. Chambers smile before today, she thought as she hurried up the stairs. But he had smiled at the children this afternoon, and he had done more than that to all her young cousins in the drawing room-he had actually grinned at their enthusiasm over his plans for tomorrow. And he had suggested something that sounded so much like fun that her heart ached with longing.
Fighting in the snow.
Gathering greenery in the woods.
Decorating the house.
Making a kissing bough.
She had never been kissed-a ridiculous truth in light of the fact that she was a wife and mother. But he had never kissed her. And she had never had a beau before him.
They were going to decorate the house for Christmas-they, not the servants. They were going to have a kissing bough. She hurried lightly along the corridor to the nursery.
They were going to have fun.
At least, she thought, amending the idea as her footsteps slowed, the children and young people were going to have fun. But she was not in her dotage, she reminded herself. She was not even twenty yet. It just seemed that somehow, somewhere, she had misplaced her youth.
She was a matron with a child. She would be expected to remain at the house.
Lady Templar’s prediction had proved quite correct. Yesterday’s gray, raw day had been transformed into today’s magical white world. A few inches of snow blanketed the outdoors, and more was falling. They were to enjoy that rare phenomenon, Edwin realized early-a white Christmas.
All the parents of young children not only had given permission for them to join the expedition to gather greenery but also had decided to go outside themselves. Only two babies, Edwin’s own included, stayed in the nursery. The remaining children, their parents, and most of the younger cousins gathered in the hall soon after breakfast, bundled up warmly, chattering and laughing and in exuberant high spirits.
Most of the parents and young people were there, Edwin saw. One was conspicuously absent. Had he expected her to come? She had surprised him the evening before by defending him against her mother, but she had done so with a cool dignity that had proclaimed only wifely obedience. There had been no indication that she was enthusiastic about his plans or that she intended to participate in them in any way. It would be as well to take no notice of her absence. She was still the ice maiden he had married, even though she was a maiden no longer. Her cool demeanor had kept him from going to her bed last night, though he had wondered before he arrived at Wyldwood if he would. They were not officially estranged, after all.
But despite himself he hesitated, even as the crowd in the hall looked to him for direction.
“I have forgotten something,” he said. “Give me five minutes.”
He hurried through the arch and ascended the stairs two at a time, imagining with a certain feeling of amusement what Lady Templar’s reaction would be if she should happen to see him. She had ignored him with haughty dignity at breakfast.
Elizabeth was not in her room. She might be anywhere, but he took a chance on finding her in the nursery. He was not mistaken. She was standing at the window of Jeremy’s room looking downward, as if she expected the outdoor party to emerge from the door below at any moment.
The baby was asleep in his crib.
“We are about to leave,” he said.
“Are you?” She turned toward him, straight-backed and regal and unsmiling.
He had wasted his time coming up here to talk to her, he thought. He had probably ruined her Christmas, in fact.
“Does the baby need you?”
“He has just been fed,” she told him. “Your eagerness to see him has certainly diminished since yesterday.” She spoke softly, but the rebuke was unmistakable.
“I came up here early,” he said, feeling a stirring of anger against her. Why had she married him if she despised him so? But the answer to that question was obvious, at least. It had certainly not been from personal choice. “His nurse was changing his nappy, and he was as cross as blazes, though she assured me that he could not possibly be hungry. I held him for half an hour.” He had held his tiny son against his shoulder with an intense ache of tenderness. “He almost deafened my right ear for a few minutes, but he finally found amusement in chewing on the brocade collar of his papa’s dressing robe.”
Not for the first time he wondered how his son would grow up. Would he, too, despise his father and be embarrassed by his origins?
“I did not know that,” his wife said. “Nurse did not tell me.”
“I suppose,” he said, “you do not want to come outside with us?”
“Gathering greenery?” she said. “And engaging in a snowball fight?” She sounded shocked.
“No.” He nodded briskly and turned back to the door. “I did not think so. We will probably be back late for luncheon. You may wish to have the meal set back an hour.” If her mother would permit such a disruption of the household routine, that was.
He was at the door of the outer nursery-deserted this morning-when her voice stopped him. She had stepped out of Jeremy’s bedchamber and was closing the door behind her.
“Mr. Chambers,” she called, her formal words of address increasing his irritation, though he turned politely toward her, “do you want me to come?”
She looked different somehow, less serene, less sure of herself. There was an expression almost of longing in her eyes. She looked suddenly youthful, and he remembered that indeed she was little more than a girl.
She had been eighteen when they married, five years younger than he.
He swallowed his first impulse, which was to tell her that she might please herself.
“Yes,” he said abruptly. And it was true. He was as irrationally head-over-ears in love with her as he had been when he first set eyes on her. If she still despised him for his origins and his willingness to have his father purchase her for her birth and rank, well, so be it. But he had come here to see if something could be made of his marriage before their separation had continued for so long that it would be virtually irreversible.
“Very well,” she said, her cool, reserved self again. “I will go and change. You need not wait for me.”
Had he imagined that look of longing? Was she coming merely because he had asked? Merely because she owed him obedience? Would she be miserable outside in the snow and the cold? Would she spoil the outing for everyone else?
“We will wait outside for you,” he said.
It was still snowing. Thick white flakes fluttered down from a heavy gray sky. The steps outside the front doors had been swept recently, but there was a thin film of snow on them again. Elizabeth stepped out onto the top step
