She was quite pale. She stared up at him, all large eyes in her thin face. “No,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “No, I will not accept charity. No.”
But she must be made to accept. Did she not realize that? He felt his jaw harden. He retreated behind the mask that had become almost habitual with him in the past few years.
“I don’t think you have any choice,” he said. “Do you seriously think that, as a governess, you will ever again have a chance to see your brother and sister? Do you imagine that you will be able to save even enough money to travel to where they are to visit? It will not happen.
When you leave here, you will see them for perhaps the last time.”
She was sitting on the very edge of her chair, her back straight, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
“Do you think I do not know that?” she said.
“Andrew will not even be allowed to see you again,” he said. “He will be taken back into the fold, and he will be taught to despise you. Do you realize that?”
“Yes.”
He saw the word forming itself on her lips. He did not hear it. “Megan will be an old woman’s slave,” he said. “She will have a dreary girlhood. She will probably end up like you, a governess or a paid companion. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you must marry me,” he said. “For their sakes, if not for your own. You will be able to stay together.” His eyes strayed down her body.
“And you will be able to have some new clothes at last.”
He ached to buy her those new garments, to see the pleasure in her eyes as he clothed her in silks and lace and warm wool. He wanted to hang jewels about her neck and at her ears. He wanted to put rings on her fingers.
“You must marry me,” he said.
She rose to her feet. He knew as soon as she did so that she was very angry. “Must I?” she said softly. “Must I, my lord? Is this what your title and wealth have done for you? Do you talk to your servants so? Do you talk to everyone so? And does everyone kiss the ground at your feet and do what they must do? Is this how you persuaded your first wife to marry you? And did she instantly obey? Well, not me, my lord. I do not have to marry you, or anyone else. And if it is true that my brother and sister will live less than perfect lives according to the arrangements I have made for them, then at least we will all be able to retain our pride and hold our heads high. I will not sell myself even for their sakes.”
The Marquess of Bedford had trained himself not to flinch outwardly under such scathing attacks. He merely stared at her from half-closed eyelids, his teeth and lips firmly pressed together.
“Pride can be a lonely companion,” he said.
“Perhaps so,” she said. “But charity would be an unbearable companion, my lord.”
He nodded. “I will wish you good-night, then,” he said. “Thank you for giving Dora a bed. And thank you for giving her the loveliest day of her life. I know I do not exaggerate. I hope we have not spoiled your day.”
“No,” she said. The fire of battle had died in her eyes. She looked smaller and thinner even than usual. “You have not spoiled our day. The children have been very happy.”
The children. Not she. The marquess half-smiled, though he feared that his expression must look more like a sneer. He picked up his greatcoat and pulled it on.
“Good night,” he said again, pulling his collar up about his ears.
“Don’t stand at the door. You will get cold.”
He did not look at her again. He concentrated his mind on wading through the soft snow without either falling or losing his way.
She sat back down on the edge of her chair and stared into the fire. She would not think. She would not remember… or look ahead. She would not think. She would not. She would sit until some warmth seeped into her bones, and then she would go to bed and sleep. She felt bone-weary.
But she would not think at all. Tomorrow she would work things out.
She would sit there until she was warm and until she could be sure that her legs would support her when she stood up. And until she could see to climb the stairs. She blinked her eyes determinedly and swallowed several times.
But she would not think.
She sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes before leaping to her feet suddenly and flying to the door to answer a loud hammering there. She pulled it open, letting in cold and snow. And she closed it again, setting her back to it, and watching in a kind of stupor as Bedford stamped the snow from his boots and tore off his coat and hat and threw them carelessly aside.
“Listen to me, Lilias,” the marquess said fiercely, turning to her. But he stopped talking and looked at her in exasperation. He reached out and took one of her hands in a firm clasp. “No, don’t listen to me. Come with me.”
He did not take her far, only to the middle of the parlor. She looked up at him in mute inquiry.
“You will not even be able to slap my face,” he said, drawing her against him with his free arm. He glanced upward at the mistletoe. “It is a Christmas tradition, you see.” He bent his head and kissed her.
She stood still, rigid with shock. It was a hard and fierce kiss.
“Don’t,” he said against her lips. His very blue eyes were gazing into hers. “Don’t, Lilias. Don’t shut me out.”
And then she could only cling to him and sag against him and eventually reach up to hold him more firmly by the shoulders and about the neck. He was no longer a slender boy, kissing her with the eager kisses of a very young man. He had a man’s body, hard and firmly muscled. And his kisses were a man’s kisses, deep and experienced and full of a knee-weakening promise.
But he was the same, nonetheless. He was Stephen as she remembered him, as she had dreamed of him and cried for him, and as she had consigned to the most treasured memories of her young life. He was Stephen as she had longed for him and yearned for him through six years when she might have married any of several other worthy men. Stephen, whom she had loved at the age of fifteen, and whom she would love at the age of ninety, if she lived that long.
She did as he asked. She did not shut him out. At long last, she lowered her guard and did not shut him out.
“Lilias.” He held her head against his shoulder and looked down into her face. “I said it all wrong. I did it all wrong. Right from the start.
Six years ago. How could I ever have left you? After Claude died, my father impressed upon me that I was now his heir, that I must put behind me all that was humble and beneath the dignity of a future marquess. And when he died soon after, I was dazzled by my own importance and popularity. I forgot you. I married Lorraine.”
“I understood,” she said, reaching up a hand and touching his cheek with her fingertips. “I did not expect any different. Even before you left, I never expected more from you. Only friendship and an innocent romance. I was very young. Too young to have any expectations of anything beyond the moment.”
“I never allowed myself to think of you,” he said. “You just became part of the dream of a perfect childhood and boyhood.”
“I know,” she said. “You became my dream, too.”
“I did only one good and worthy thing in all those years,” he said, “and had only one claim to happiness: I begot Dora.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“I have had her only since last spring,” he said. “And as Christmas approached, I knew I had to bring her here. I remembered that Christmases here were always perfect. I thought it was the snow and the sledding and skating. Memory can sometimes be so defective. I was wrong about that. But not wrong in the main. Christmas was always perfect here, and it has been perfect this year, even though the snow has only just come. It was because of you, Lilias. Because you were always there.
And because you were here this year.”
She turned her face to his shoulder. “I wanted Christmas for the children,” she said. “I did not know how I was to do it. But when I heard that you had come, I knew that you would be able to provide it.
