Mary Balogh: Christmas Beau

Or to him she had been different.

She would be twenty-six years old now. A woman. A widow. The mother of two young children. And her marriage could not have been a happy one-unless she had not known, of course. But how could a wife not know, even if she spent all of her married life in the country, that her husband lived a life of dissipation and debauchery?

She would be different now. She was bound to be.

He wanted to see the difference. He had waited for it a long time, especially since the death of her husband in a barroom brawl-that was what it had been despite the official story that he had died in a skirmish with thieves.

He had waited. And come to London as soon as he knew that she was there. And waited again for her to begin to appear in public. And finally, it seemed, she was to appear at Nora's soiree.

He would be there too. He had a score to settle with Judith Easton. Revenge to take. He had a great deal of leftover hatred to work out of his heart and his soul.

He had waited a long time for this.

His eyes found her immediately when he entered Lord Clancy's drawing room three evenings later. Indeed, he hardly needed the evidence of his eyes that she was there. There had always been something about her that appealed very strongly to a sixth sense in him.

"Come," Lady Clancy said, linking her arm through his and noting the direction of his gaze. "You do not need to be embarrassed by her presence, Max. I shall take you over to Lord Davenport's group. Caroline Reave is there, too. Conversation is never dull when she is part of it.''

"Thank you, Nora," he said, resisting the pressure of her arm, "but I can find my own way about. I have not forgotten how to do it in two years away from town."

She shrugged and smiled. "I might have known that you would confront the situation head to head," she said. "Perhaps I should have warned Mrs. Easton as I warned you."

Ah, so she had not been warned, he thought as he strolled across the room toward the group of which she was a part.

Yes, she was different. She was slender still, but with a woman's figure, not a girl's. Her hair was more elegantly dressed, with ringlets only at the back, not clustered all over her head as they had used to be. She carried herself proudly. He had not yet seen her face.

And then Dorothy Hopkins saw him and stood aside to admit him to the group, and he was able to stand right beside her and turn and make his bow to her, since Dorothy seemed to have forgotten the old connection and mentioned her particularly by name.

"Mrs. Easton," he said.

It was impossible to know her reaction. She spoke to him and curtsied to him, but her expression was calm and unfathomable-as it had always been. He had not known at that time that she hid herself behind that calmness. Her flight with Easton had taken him totally by surprise, had shattered him utterly.

Yes, her face had changed too. She had been pretty as a girl, with all the freshness of youth and eagerness for an approaching womanhood. She was beautiful now, with some of the knowledge of life etching character into her face.

"A long time ago," he said in reply to a remark made by someone in the group.

He did not take his eyes off Judith Easton or particularly note the embarrassment of the other members of the group, who had just been reminded of their former connection. He hardly noticed that their embarrassment drew them a little away from the two of them, so that soon they were almost isolated.

She was not looking quite into his eyes, he saw, but at his chin, perhaps, or his neckcloth or his nose. But her chin was up, and there was that calmness about her. He had dreamed once of transforming that calmness into passion once

they were married. He had not known that behind it she was totally indifferent to him, perhaps even hostile.

It had been an arranged match, of course, favored by his father and her parents. He had been a viscount at the time. He had not succeeded to his father's title until three years before. But she had shown no open reluctance to his proposal. He had attributed her quietness to shyness. He had dreamed of awakening her to womanhood. He had dreamed of putting an end to his own loneliness, his own inability to relate to women, except those of the wrong class. He had loved her quite totally and quite unreasonably from the first moment he set eyes on her.

They had been betrothed for two months before she abandoned him, without any warning whatsoever and no explanation. They were to have been married one month later.

"Eight years, I believe," he said to her.

It was seven years and seven months, to be exact. She had been to the opera with him and two other couples. He had escorted her home, kissed her hand in the hallway of her father's house-he had never kissed more than her hand- and bidden her good night. That was the last he had seen of her until now.

"Yes," she said. "Almost."

"I must offer my belated condolences on your bereavement," he said.

"Thank you." She was twisting her glass around and around in her hands, the only sign that her calmness was something of a facade.

He made no attempt to continue the conversation. He wanted to see if there would be any other crack in her armor.

She continued to twist her glass, setting one palm against the base while she did so. She raised her eyes to his mouth, drew breath as if she would speak, but said nothing. She lifted her glass to her mouth to drink, though he did not believe her lips touched the liquid.

"Excuse me," she said finally. "Please excuse me."

It was only as his eyes followed her across the room that he realized that a great deal of attention was on them. She had probably realized it the whole time. That was good. He was not the least bit sorry. If she was embarrassed, good. It was a beginning.

He did not know quite when love had turned to hatred. Not for several months after her desertion, anyway. Disbelief had quickly turned to panic and a wild flight, first to the Lake District, and then to Scotland. Panic had turned to numbness, and numbness had finally given way to a deeply painful, almost debilitating heartbreak. For months he had dragged himself about on his walking tour, not wanting to get up in the mornings, not wanting to eat, not able to sleep, not wanting to live.

He had continued to get up in the mornings, he had continued to eat, he had slept when exhaustion claimed him. And eventually he had persuaded himself to go on living. He had done it by bringing himself deliberately to hate her, to hate her heartlessness and her contempt for honor and decency.

And yet hatred could be as destructive as heartbreak. He had found himself after his return to London hungry for news of her, going out of his way to acquire it-not easily done when she never came to town. He had found himself viciously satisfied when it became evident that Easton was returning to his old ways. She had preferred Easton to him. Let her live with the consequences.

Finally he had had to take himself off to his estate in the country to begin a wholly new life for himself, to try to stop the bitterness and the hatred from consuming him and destroying his soul.

He had succeeded to a large extent. He had focused the love she had spurned on other persons. And yet always there was the hunger for news of her. The birth of her children. The death of her husband. Her return to London.

And overpowering all his resolves, all his common sense, the need to see her again, to avenge himself on her, to even the score. He had been horrified at himself when he had heard of her arrival in London and had realized the violence of his suppressed feelings. Despite the meaningfulness, the contentment of his new life, they had been there the whole time, the old feelings, and they had proved quite irresistible. They had driven him back to London to see her again. The Marquess of Denbigh turned abruptly and left both the room and Lord Clancy's house.