Mary Balogh: Christmas Beau

"And he with you, if my eyes have not deceived me," Judith said. "He seems very fond of you, Amy. Did something happen this afternoon?"

"Only good-bye," Amy said. "And the assurance that 'it' would never work-whatever 'it' is. I am a lady, you see, and have been brought up to the life of a lady."

"Have you ever told him," Judith asked, "how lonely that life was, Amy, and how sheltered from the world you have always been? And have you ever told him how you surrounded yourself with the children and happiness whenever all your family came to visit?"

Amy did not answer. She sniffed and Judith knew that she was crying again.

"Oh, Amy." Judith crossed the room and set firm hands on her sister-in-law's thin shoulders. "We live in a cruel world. We women have to wait for the men to make all the moves, don't we? And if they decide not to do something, there is almost nothing we can do about it."

"Perhaps he does not even want me," Amy said. "Why should he? Look at me, Judith. And I am too old to be starting to bear children-or almost too old anyway. He must have guessed my feelings. It must have been embarrassing to him. I am fortunate that he is a kind man."

Judith clucked her tongue impatiently. "These things can be sensed, Amy," she said. "If you have felt that he cares for you, then you are probably right.''

Amy straightened her shoulders and blew her nose once more. "I cannot bear to stay here even one more day," she said. "Will you mind if I leave, Judith? Will Lord Denbigh be offended, do you think?"

"My things are already packed in the dressing room,"

Judith said. "I have already sent word that the carriage is to be got ready for the morning."

Amy turned and looked up at her with reddened eyes. Judith's smile was a little twisted.

"It seems that it was something of a mistake for both of us," shesaid. "I just wish it were possible to leave tonight, Amy. No!" She held up her hands sharply as her sister-in-law took a step toward her. "Please don't say anything, or ask any questions. Not yet. My control can be very easily broken and there is this wretched concert to be lived through. Perhaps on the journey home I will tell you all about it."

"But has he not made you an offer?" Amy asked. "I thought… It seemed so obvious that…"

"No," Judith said. "It was just a Christmas flirtation, Amy, nothing more."

"Oh, no." Amy frowned. "It was definitely more than that, Judith. He…"

"I think we should go down to join the ladies," Judith said. "Shall we?"

Amy sighed. "It was all so perfect until this afternoon, was it not?" she said. "In time, Judith, we will remember that and judge it after all to have been one of the best Christmases ever, perhaps the best."

"Yes," Judith said. "Perhaps in time."

There was much sleeplessness in Denbigh Park that night. Amy stood at her window long after everyone had gone to bed, staring sightlessly out, thinking of Judith's words. It was something that could be sensed, Judith had said from an experience of life that was more extensive than Amy's. If Amy thought he had cared, then he probably had.

He had cared. She was sure of it. He had wished things could be different. He had wished he were ten years younger and wealthy. He had wished she could find someone who would make her comfortable for the rest of her life.

He cared.

Life was cruel, Judith had said. Women had to wait around for men to speak, and if the man never spoke, then the woman remained disappointed. Unfulfilled. Unhappy. Life a dreary waste.

Tomorrow she would go away with Judith. And she would never see him again, or all those children. In time, Judith would marry again. It was inevitable even if for some strange reason she did not marry Lord Denbigh. And then she, Amy, would go home again. And that would be the end of life until the time, some unknown number of years in the future, when she breathed her last.

Because she was a woman. Because he was a gentleman and did not believe his way of life suitable for a lady. And because she was a woman and unable to speak up against him.

She was thirty-six years old. Perhaps she would live for thirty or forty more years. Years of dreariness and uselessness and humiliation-because she was a woman and unable to speak her piece.

It was a stupid reason. Because she was a woman!

Well, she thought finally, and the thought sent her to bed at last, if she allowed such a stupid reason to spoil the rest of her life, perhaps she deserved the future that was yawning ahead of her.

She was going to persuade Judith to put off calling the carriage until noon. If she did not lose her courage with the light of day, she was going to use the morning to speak her piece. If she did not lose her courage…

She scrambled into bed…

Judith lay in bed staring up into the darkness. She could still feel the physical effects of that afternoon's happenings. Her breasts were still tender. There was still an ache where they had coupled. And if she closed her eyes, she could still feel him. And smell him.

She did not close her eyes.

The anger, the hatred that had sustained her during the walk home that afternoon, during that brief and unexpected meeting with him in the nursery, and during the interminable evening of cheerful Christmas entertainment, had faded. She was no longer either angry or filled with hatred. She was empty, blessedly free of any violent feelings.

And she began to live again through the events of eight years before. The very correct, very harsh-looking man who had been her betrothed, who had escorted her to the various ton events of the Season, conversing with her stiffly, never touching more than her hand. Her own frightening awareness of him, which she had naively interpreted as revulsion. And Andrew, handsome, charming, smiling, easy and familiar in his manners.

And her own dreadful behavior. Unthinkable. Unforgivable.

And his revenge. He had planned it all, moment by moment. She could clearly see that now. Everything, from that first encounter in Lady Clancy's drawing room, had been directed toward achieving his revenge.

But why? That was the question that had revolved and revolved in her brain since the afternoon. Wounded pride and consequence? Would that account for all he had done? Would not some public humiliation have been more appropriate to a revenge from that motive? This revenge would surely not be public enough for such a man, even though there were undoubtedly several people who were expecting them to marry. She did not believe that he would make public the fact that she had given herself to him and declared her love for him.

But if not that motive, then what?

If he had not changed radically in the past eight years, if he had been then in character what he was now, then what must he have been like beneath the harsh exterior? She had never tried to find out at the time. How must he have felt about his betrothal? About her? He was a man now who loved to give happiness, a man who loved children. He loved her own children even though they were hers-and Andrew's.

She had not thought him quite human eight years before. And yet even if he had changed in that time, he had still been human then. He had been a man engaged to be married and within one month of his wedding. A man who had since proved himself to be fond of children…

Judith dashed a tear from her cheek impatiently and continued to stare upward into the darkness.

The Marquess of Denbigh sat in his library for a long time after his guests had gone to bed. He was not really thinking. He was just allowing sensation to wash over him and felt too lethargic to drag himself off to bed.

“I love you,'' she had told him when they had first arrived at the cottage. And during the following couple of hours she had loved him indeed with all of herself, with her body and with the part of herself that had looked at him through her eyes.