Mary Balogh: Under the Mistletoe

“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 and felt as if she were walking into an alien, enchanted world.

Snow had always meant being housebound. Snow was something one could slip and break a leg on. Worse, snow was something that had to be waded through with an accompanying loss of dignity, especially if one skidded inelegantly. Walking out into the snow, making slides of it, sledding over it, building snowmen with it, clearing it from a frozen pond or lake in order to make a skating surface, were all activities designed for the lower classes, who had no dignity to lose. Fighting with snowballs was simply beyond imagination, even for children.

There were times when she was a child that Elizabeth had guiltily wished she had been born into the lower classes.

They were out there on the great white expanse that was the south lawn-all the children, most of the cousins who were in Elizabeth’s own age group, her brother Bertie, Annabelle, and Mr. Chambers. The children were dashing about and screeching as they chased one another. The ladies were laughing; the men were whooping as they tried sliding on snow that was too deep, and kept coming to grief. They were all very obviously enjoying themselves.

Even Aunt Amelia and Uncle Horace were outside, standing in the snow on the terrace, watching the activities and laughing.

It was a scene so alien to Elizabeth’s experience, so full of wild, uninhibited joy that she felt overwhelmed by it. Could she ever give herself up to such sheer fun? She had been brought up to think that having fun and lacking ladylike dignity were synonymous terms. She almost turned and hurried back inside before anyone saw her. But Mr.

Chambers must have been watching for her. He came wading toward her, his eyes bright with animation, his face already flushed from the cold and exertion. He looked incredibly virile and handsome.

“Take my hand,” he said when he reached the bottom step.

She set her hand in his outstretched one and remembered with almost painful intensity her first enchanted sight of him when he had come to offer her marriage. He would be her escape, she had thought naively then, from her dull, restricted life into a world where warmth and love and laughter would transform her. She had already met his father and had liked him immensely, despite-or perhaps because of-those qualities her mother had despised as vulgar. Absurdly, she had wanted him as her father. The son was so very handsome, and younger than she had expected.

It had not taken her long, though, to realize that his very correct, unsmiling demeanor hid scorn for her for allowing herself to be bought.

But this morning she would not think of that. He had chosen to come to Wyldwood for Christmas, and he had come to the nursery this morning with the express purpose of inviting her out here.

He released her hand as soon as she was safely down the steps, set two fingers to his lips, and let out a piercing whistle. Elizabeth looked at him in astonishment, as did everyone else.

It was easy to believe over the next couple of minutes that he was a successful businessman, accustomed to organizing and commanding. He announced that the snowball fight was about to begin and soon had everyone divided into two teams of roughly equal numbers and firepower.

Elizabeth would gladly have stood watching with her aunt and uncle, but she was given no choice. She was named to a team and waded gingerly out onto the lawn to join her teammates. Annabelle caught her by the hand and squeezed it.

“Lizzie,” she said, “I am so glad you have come to enjoy the snow. But however did you escape from Mama-in-law?” She laughed and slapped one mittened hand over her mouth. “Forget I said that. Oh, goodness, I have to face both Bertie and Charles on the other team.”

The snow was soft beneath Elizabeth’s feet and not as slippery as she had expected it to be. It reached almost to the top of her boots.

“It sparkles,” she said, “even though the sun is not shining, as if someone has sprinkled the surface with thousands of miniature sequins.

How beautiful it is.”

But she was not given long to admire her first real experience of snow.

The two teams were facing each other across a neutral expanse of it, and Mr. Chambers whistled again, the signal for the snowball fight to begin.

Most of the players, it soon became obvious to Elizabeth, had armed themselves in advance. Snowballs zoomed through the air, and squeals and shouts and laughter revealed that many of them had found their mark.

Elizabeth shied away from all the vigorous action, uncertain what to do herself. She felt the beginnings of misery in the midst of such bubbling animation. She had never been allowed to play and enjoy herself-she did not know how. She was a lady.