The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne Page 23

  Chapter 18

  “Ellie, my dear, I didn’t want to keep it from you, but I did not know what you’d say.” Her aunt looked down at her toes. “You must think that at my time of life it is quite absurd to marry again. But I’ve been a widow now for more than twenty years, and it does become very lonely.”

  “Aunt Lizzie, I am delighted that you found love again. There is nothing I could want more for you.” She gently kissed her aunt’s soft, warm cheek. “I wish you’d told me when I arrived. I thought you had some awful secret. My imagination has been hard at work on all manner of gruesome thoughts.” Ellie paused as another realization slowly dawned. “That is why you let Mary Wills go!”

  “It was one of the reasons, Ellie my dear. It is true that I could not really afford her any longer, but Mary was a terrible gossip, and she did like to pry.”

  “And then I came along!”

  “You are always welcome.” Her aunt patted her hand. “But whatever you do, say nothing to Mrs. Flick. I have not got up the courage yet to tell her.”

  They laughed together.

  Quite suddenly, Ellie decided to be brave. “Now I have news for you too. Prepare yourself, dear aunt, for a monstrous shock. I have an understanding with James Hartley.”

  Her aunt took off her spectacles, wiped them on her lace kerchief, and put them back on. “I should hope so too. It’s about time.”

  “Aunt Lizzie! You’re not surprised?”

  “Why would I be, dear girl? You’ve been in love with him since you were ten.”

  Ellie swallowed hard. A gale of embarrassing tears threatened to pour out of her, when she was never usually prone to fits of hysteria.

  “Did you think me blind, Ellie? I’ve seen many love-struck glances back and forth across my parlor over the years. I’ve witnessed acknowledged love and thwarted love, anguish, passion, and denial. Oh yes. It all happens here in Sydney Dovedale.” Her aunt reached up to extract a piece of straw from Ellie’s hair. “Don’t be fooled by the sleepy image.”

  Anxious to be busy, Ellie ladled herself a cup of eggnog. Aunt Lizzie was quite a romantic, she mused. In love with James all these years? Ha! Ridiculous. Their arrangement was one of mutual convenience, brought about by the shared enjoyment of a good argument. That was all.

  However, if it pleased her aunt to think of it as love…well, she would not argue. Why spoil it for dear, sweet Aunt Lizzie?

  She glanced slyly around the room and was relieved to find no eyes upon her at that moment, because she felt the Christmas spirit going to her head already. Confessing about James to her aunt had taken a load from her shoulders. An understanding. Yes, she could call it that without suffering the pangs of fear produced by any mention of an engagement. An engagement sounded too planned, too formal. An “understanding” suggested a meeting of minds and ideas.

  But he had looked at her tonight with such warmth in his gaze that she could almost believe…

  Oh, she was being a fool.

  She used to think James was an uncomplicated fellow, that she had his character neatly pegged. But over the past few days, there seemed to be more Smallwick in him than there was Hartley. Ellie didn’t like to think she’d been wrong all those years when she’d determinedly set about convincing herself and everyone else that she thoroughly despised him.

  Her aunt was still talking. “My brother, for instance. He was so in love with Catherine—your mother. She swept him off his feet as no other woman ever did. And he knew many women. The first moment he laid eyes on her, it happened. I was there. I saw it then.”

  “Really? It is odd how the admiral never speaks of my mama very fondly. He says she was a scolding nag, and he should never have married her.”

  Her aunt turned, smiling, head tilted. “I don’t mean your stepfather, my dear. I speak of my younger brother, Graedon. He was desperately in love with Catherine. Completely smitten. I believe she was the same for him. But there was nothing they could do about it, because she’d already married our elder brother.”

  The eggnog slipped too quickly down Ellie’s throat. She coughed.

  “When Grae went off with James Hartley’s mother, I knew he was trying to forget Catherine. The Hartley woman was unhappy in her marriage, and she used Grae to escape it. That I saw too. Theirs was an affair of temporary convenience and passing lust, not of love. Unfortunately, it wounded so many innocent folk.”

  All this news sank in slowly. Ellie gazed across the room and saw James talking to Sophie. He looked very stiff, angry. Sophie looked…guilty. What were they talking about? Was she being a fool to think he could ever care for her as he once did for her friend? Her aunt was so right—all these secrets, all this jealousy.

  She thought of her uncle Grae. Her childhood memories of him were mostly of a tall, lean, handsome fellow with a big, booming laugh, bouncing her on his lap as he taught her card tricks. He had often come to Lark Hollow, and she assumed, naturally, that he came to visit his brother, the admiral. She closed her eyes and pictured him, a commanding presence striding into their drawing room, filling it with his jokes and laughter. He always went immediately to the chair in which her mother sat, so he could kiss her hand before he greeted anyone else.

  Ellie remembered his gallant manners, the way his eyelashes flickered upward even before the kiss on her mother’s hand was complete. A look passing between the adults. A look she was too young then to understand.

  “When Grae left England, I gave him a portrait I’d painted of Catherine. She wanted him to have it, and it was my way of telling him I knew, I understood. I forgave him for the Hartley scandal, but my elder brother never could. Then only two years after Grae left England, Catherine was dead, of course. Poor Grae. It must have broken his heart all over again that he could not even attend the funeral.”

  Would James marry her but always, secretly—or not so secretly—continue to be in love with Sophie? Once again she tried to pretend it didn’t matter. But it did. It always would.

  Was she in love with him? She’d tried not to be. Ever since she heard him spitefully mocking her when she was just sixteen and a trifle plump, dreadfully clumsy, and extremely self-conscious. She’d tried to hate him with every part of her being. But even a rock can be dented over time by a steady, insistent trickle of water. What hope did her heart have?

  ***

  Sophia had clearly prepared herself for this. As she led him into the scullery where they could talk alone, she kept her head up, hands clasped before her. Although her pose was calm, he saw the whirlpool of emotion in her green-and-gold-grained eyes.

  “I shouldn’t have kept him from you, James,” she confessed, “but I tried assuring myself it was the best for everyone if you didn’t know. You had your busy life in London. How could you raise a child? I feared you might send him to live with your grandmother.” She shuddered. “I could raise him here, in his uncle’s home, where he’d be loved and cared for. I thought it was best for my husband too, if he did not know. So I…” She swallowed. “I never told him that you are Rafe’s father. He never knew the name of the gentleman who abandoned his pregnant sister.”

  James felt his temper mounting. “I did not abandon Rebecca. It was a brief affair. She left the house, and I never knew why. By the time I received her letter asking for help, it was too late. I rode back to London as soon as I could, but she was gone.”

  She studied his face, cautious, fearful.

  “For these last two years, Sophia, I believed the child was dead.”

  “I did not say that he died,” she demurred.

  “However, you let me assume it was so.”

  Sophia’s hands came up to her face, and he saw that she clutched a kerchief. “He loves it here. He thrives here. Don’t take him from us.”

  His throat burned with anger. “You mean don’t take him away from you as you took him from me, his father?”

  The first gleam of tears bubbled over her lashes. James took a deep breath and rubbed his brow with one hand, trying
to smooth his scowl away.

  “You are fond of him, I see,” he managed tightly.

  She nodded, lips clenched.

  “I won’t spoil Christmas for everyone,” he snapped. “There is no need to pursue this subject tonight, but he is my son, and he should know who he is.”

  She blew her nose into the kerchief and murmured a soft assent.

  “And it should be his choice where he lives,” added James firmly. “I may not have seen eye to eye with your husband in the past, but I believe even he would agree with me on that score. We’ll discuss what is to happen in the New Year.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “He should be in school.”

  “He is.” She took the kerchief away from her damp face long enough to exclaim, “He comes to my school every day, except during harvest, and he improves greatly.”

  James knew Sophia ran a small village school, but in his opinion, a boy of twelve needed a more thorough education. He didn’t say that though, for it would hurt her feelings.

  Oh, he realized, chagrinned, how much he’d changed in these last few years.

  “You won’t send him away to boarding school?” she demanded, her face pale.

  “We will discuss this matter in the New Year. All of us, including Rafe.”

  She wiped her eyes again. James was disconcerted by the strength of her tears for a boy who was not her own child. It was a good thing they’d never married, for he wouldn’t know how to handle this many tears.

  “You should be proud of him, James,” she sputtered just before her face crumpled and she descended into more sobs. “He’s a good boy,” she wailed. “He’s ever so patient with the animals on the farm and takes all his duties seriously. He’s a little mouthy sometimes, but he works so hard! You should have seen him in the harvest this year—”

  James cringed as she covered her face with the kerchief and mewled into it, making a sound not unlike cats fighting in a coal scuttle. He winced, reached out one arm, and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “There, there. Don’t distress yourself. I’m sure it will all work out in the end.” Once again, a woman melted to sobs in his presence. This time she was crying for him, it seemed, not for herself. He truly was getting old if even Sophia felt sad for him.

  She moved two steps closer and laid her head on his shoulder, still sobbing. “I’m sorry, James. I should not have kept your son from you. Now that I see how my husband loves our son, I know I was wrong. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Of course, Sophia.” What else could he do? Hold a grudge? There had been enough of that. He knew it was too late to worry now about what should have been done. The good thing was that Rafe, his son, was alive and healthy. They must look to the future and put things right. It was something Sophia had once been fond of saying. Finally he understood her meaning.

  ***

  The dancing was set aside to give the musicians a rest, and the party guests were just about to play “bullet pudding.” Ellie had looked all over the house for James and then saw the scullery door ajar, a thin light within. She approached quietly and peered inside. James held Sophie in his arms and comforted her.

  The shocking sight caused Ellie to turn away so rapidly she almost knocked a plate of gingerbread from Farmer Osborne’s hand.

  “Are you all right, m’dear? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Yes, the ghost of an old romance. “I was just looking for…something…”

  The kindly gentleman raised his eyebrows and offered her gingerbread. She declined, feeling wretched. She thought of running all the way back to her aunt’s house. Then she thought of bursting in and confronting them both, but she controlled both urges. Slowly her pulse settled, her mind likewise.

  There must be some perfectly reasonable explanation for the embrace. Sophie was an honest and true friend, content in her marriage, and could never deceive anyone. It was patently ridiculous to suspect Sophie of being complicit in anything of that nature.

  But what secret did they share that caused such tenderness after all this time?

  Suddenly she felt a chill. It traveled right through her clothing as if she wore her thinnest summer muslin with no heed to the season. She finished her eggnog in one unladylike gulp. Ah, better. That got a little warmth back.

  What, in heaven’s name, did it matter? She knew what she was getting into when she agreed to this arrangement. Ellie concluded that her aunt’s tale of a tragic love triangle had wound its way inside her head like the serpent that tempted Eve with the apple. She had briefly allowed herself to ponder hopes that should never be let in.

  An affair of temporary convenience and passing lust, not of love. Her aunt might as well have been describing this “understanding” she had with James. There was no reason to suddenly expect more from him. Unfortunately, while he was the obliging, fun-loving “Smallwick,” it was too easy to forget the reality.

  She glanced at her empty cup and shook her head. No more eggnog for her, or she might end up saying something embarrassing to James—something she would hate herself for admitting once sanity returned.

  She pasted a cheery smile on her face and returned to the party. When the missing couple reappeared a short while later, James came immediately to her side, but she was still too unsettled to look at him. She was not angry. She kept telling herself that.

  But it’s a minuet. People will think we’re in love.

  Nonsense. They know us better than that, madam.

  “What’s this?” he asked as he watched Sophie’s husband carry a tall mound of white flour to the table, set it down with care, and then balance a bullet on the very top.

  Ellie forced herself to answer. The easiest way to mask any unusual quavering was with a cross tone. “It’s a bullet pudding. Don’t Hartleys play games at Christmas?”

  “No, we—”

  “I suppose you just sit around being very grand and despising other people.”

  “What ails, Miss Vyne?”

  “Don’t you Miss Vyne me,” she snapped.

  Since he could not possibly know what to say to that, she was not surprised when he remained silent.

  “The object of the game,” she explained, churlish, “is for each person to take a slice. If the bullet falls from the top, the person making the slice must, with their hands behind their back, retrieve the bullet from the flour.”

  “Without their hands?”

  “Just with their mouths, of course.”

  “Won’t the flour get everywhere?”

  “That, Hartley, is the point. You’re supposed to get all floury and look ridiculous. It’s fun.” She folded her arms. “Not that you, precious, pampered Prince James, can understand the concept.”

  The wine and eggnog had flowed liberally that evening, so there was great jollity even before the game began, but Ellie felt only confusion and sadness. She should have joined the frenzy, for that game was once one of her favorites, and she was usually the first to cover her face in flour. Tonight, however, her heart wasn’t in it.

  She gave herself a stern lecture. James had never professed to love her. He’d been quite frank about two things—his need for a wife just to stop his dictatorial grandmother forcing candidates upon him, and Ellie’s suitability because she would not fall in love with him or have grandly romantic expectations about their marriage. It was wrong to want more, to suddenly change the rules after they’d both agreed upon the terms.

  If she was in danger of feeling too much, being hurt, she had better withdraw a few steps and save herself. She had let him too close, evidently.

  As she turned her face to the window, she saw it had begun to snow. Fat white flakes drifted slowly down, and in her sight they glistened like diamonds because of the tears trapped in her lashes.

  When James soon had his mouth and nose covered in white flour, she pushed herself to laugh, and he seemed to believe it. After that, he spent much of the evening with Rafe Adamson, discussing the spaniel the boy had trained to hun
t rabbits. She’d never seen him so talkative and friendly, unless it was to some woman he tried to charm. Tonight he put his efforts into winning over the boy instead.

  By the time they rode home on Farmer Osborne’s cart, two inches of snow had settled, framing the tree limbs with white and muffling the steady clop of the old shire horses’ hooves. They huddled together under woolen blankets and fleece in the back of the cart. Lady Mercy was the only one with enough breath left to chatter—something she did almost without pause for most of the journey. It was fortunate for Molly Robbins that her new friend lent her the pair of fur earmuffs, or she would have taken the brunt of that boundless, ebullient, one-way conversation.

  Her aunt tried to organize the singing of Christmas carols, but she was perhaps the only one who’d imbibed enough to think that was a good idea. Lady Mercy was willing but did not know the proper lyrics to any, so that plan soon fell by the wayside. Instead, they began a game of “I pack my bag and in it I put…” All the things put in the bag were very silly and impractical, such as aardvarks, brass buttons, and cucumber, of course.

  Grieves and Dr. Salt rode behind in James’s mended carriage. Ellie had expected Lady Mercy to prefer riding home in the more comfortable vessel, but she chose the open cart instead. When Aunt Lizzie asked her why, the child replied that she wanted everyone to be able to see her hat. But Ellie wondered if the girl was simply enjoying herself for once, going with the mood of the moment, experiencing life like everyone else.

  James gave her waist a gentle squeeze. A plume of misty breath evaporated around his lips. “I’ll miss you tonight, madam,” he whispered.

  But once back with his familiar luxuries, in that big, warm, soft bed at Hartley House, he wouldn’t suffer overly much. She’d never seen his bed, of course, but she had a picture of it in her mind—a monstrosity passed down through generations, with four ugly posts and grim drapes that smelled musty and had probably witnessed the deflowering of many genteel, well-connected, perfectly behaved Hartley brides on their wedding night.