Hatred, Jeannette had said, was very akin to love. At the moment he felt neither for Christina. He felt only an unwilling pull toward her, a need to know the woman who had haunted him for longer than ten years, to know what those missing years had held for her, to understand why she had made it impossible for him ever to marry anyone else, to understand why he both dreaded and hoped that his seed, inside her now, had impregnated her and bound them together for life.
No, he decided, striding off in the direction of the staircase, he surely could not have believed for one single moment that it really was all finished between them.
Christmas Eve. It was surely the dream of all Christmas Eves, Christina thought the following morning, setting one knee on the low sill of the window in her bedchamber after pushing aside the curtains, and gazing out on a white world, just beginning to sparkle in the early light of day.
She shivered. The fire had been built up and lit, but it had not had time to warm the room. Yet the shiver was not entirely from the cold. Partly it was excitement. Christmas would surely come this year in full glory, not merely slip on by as it had done through most of her life, it seemed. Partly it was memory, which she might have dismissed as a strange dream if she had not been able to feel the unmistakable physical effects of tender breasts and a slight soreness inside, where he had joined his body with hers. Partly it was indecision—she still had every penny of the money Mr. Monck had given her on Gerard’s instructions tucked into a cubbyhole of the escritoire in her private sitting room. She still had not even written a reply to her father’s letter.
It was a heady mixture of emotions for the morning of Christmas Eve. And over and above them all, the constant awareness, humming through her consciousness, as it had all night, even weaving itself through her dreams, that now, at this very moment, she might have the beginnings of his child in her womb. A part of her for nine months. And binding her to him for the rest of her life.
Perhaps something had begun, not ended last night, he had said. She rested her forehead against the window glass.
But her thoughts and her wonder at the sight of the snow were interrupted by the sound of someone opening the door of her bedchamber without first knocking. Rachel hurried inside, barefoot and clad only in her long flannel nightgown, her long, dark hair hanging loose down her back. And on her face, such a bright look of excitement that Christina felt her heart turn over. She had not seen Rachel look thus since ... Oh, for a very long time.
“Mama, look!” she said, hurrying toward the window. “Have youseen?”
“The snow?” Christina smiled and crossed to the bed to drag free a blanket to wrap about her daughter. She lifted her to stand on the sill, just as if she had been a tiny child again, and kept her arms about her as well as the blanket. “Have you ever seen anything more wonderful in your life?”
“No,” Rachel said, and her voice sounded almost like an agony.
The sun was just rising in the clear east. There were still clouds overhead, but they were moving off. The snow had stopped falling.
“See how the sun sparkles off the snow?” Christina said.
“Like hundreds and thousands of jewels,” Rachel said with a sigh.
She snuggled against Christina, who reveled in the feeling. For a long time Rachel had not been a child for physical closeness.
“Mama,” she said, “Paul and Matthew said last night that their mama and papa are going to take them out to play in the snow today. May I go too? Would it be wrong?”
Wrong! Christina closed her eyes and hugged her daughter more tightly. Wrong to play? To have fun and exercise?
“I will not make a loud noise or run around too fast,” Rachel promised. “I will not get under anyone’s feet. Please, Mama?”
Christina swallowed against a gurgling in her throat. “I am coming out to play too,” she said. “So is Tess. So are all the other children and most of the grown-ups too if my guess is correct. And I am going to make all the noise in the world. I am going to laugh and shriek and dash about just as if I were—what?”
“A puppy?” Rachel suggested.
“A whole litter of the most unruly puppies in the world,” Christina said. “You will need to press your mittens against your ears once I get started. And I am going to get undereveryone’sfeet.”
“Mama?” Rachel dipped her head sideways to rest on her mother’s shoulder. “I am glad Lord Wanstead came here and brought everyone else with him. I like him.”
“Do you?” Christina kissed the sleek dark hair with its crooked part.
“He does not frown and say no all the time,” Rachel said. “He dances and slides and smiles. He is not an evil man, is he?”
“No, he is not evil, sweetheart,” Christina said.
“I am glad.” Rachel sighed. “Because I like him. I hope he stays here forever and ever.”
No. Rachel had always needed a hero. But heroes could bring pain, especially to children, who could not distinguish between worthy and unworthy heroes.
“I believe he must go away again,” Christina said gently. “He does not really belong to us, you see, and he has a home elsewhere. But he likes you. He told me so himself. And he will be here for Christmas. He is going to make Christmas happy for all of us. It will be something to remember and talk about after he has gone.”
“May I build a snowman?” Rachel asked.
“Ten, if you wish.” Christina hugged her and kissed her before lifting her down and releasing her. “But if we stand here talking all morning, not even one will get made. Shall we go and wake Tess?”
Yes, they would have him for Christmas, she thought as she went up to the nursery with Rachel after pulling on a dressing gown over her nightgown. And it was going to be a happy Christmas—for all three of them. She was determined on that.
