“I see,” he said. “He was an amiable gentleman, Christina. I liked him. Everyone did.”
Yes, everyone had liked Sir Charlton Spense.
“That letter was from him,” she said abruptly. “The one you handed me a few days ago.” She remembered too late how he had witnessed her reaction to that letter, how she had asked for an advance on her allowance soon after reading it.
His silence told her that he remembered too.
“He is living at home,” she said. “He is in good health.”
She could tell that his eyes were watching her closely. “When did you last see him?” he asked.
She considered not answering at all. Or lying. She laughed instead. “Ten and a half years ago,” she said, “on my wedding day. After that I was forbidden to communicate with him or even to speak his name—just as I was forbidden to speak yours.”
“Ah,” he said softly as the carriage was drawing to a careful halt before the horseshoe steps outside the house. “There was more to it than I ever knew, then, was there?”
It was not phrased as a question that required an answer. He did not wait for one. He opened the door even before the coachman could descend from the box, and vaulted out onto the snowy terrace. He set down the steps and reached up a hand to help her down.
“We will speak of it before I return to London,” he said. “It is time the truth was spoken, Christina. But not today. Or tomorrow. It is Christmas.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Let us enjoy it,” he said, his eyes looking directly into hers. “We are both in need of some good memories, I believe.”
“Yes.”
She half ran up the steps ahead of him and proceeded directly through the great hall to the staircase arch without looking back. She might have disgraced herself and burst into tears if she had done so. It was not a day for tears. It was a day for joy.
And part of her, strangely enough, was bursting with it.
It was Christmas. And she was spending it with her children, her aunt, her sister-in-law, congenial house guests, and—and him.
It was a time for gathering good memories.
Not everyone went skating during the afternoon. Some protested their need for quiet rest in preparation for the evening’s concert. Others chose to stay to rehearse. But a sizable group of young people and children trekked off to the lake in the wake of three grooms, each of whom carried a large box of skates.
The Earl of Wanstead walked with Margaret. He had watched with interest and approval her transformation from the restless, almost petulant girl who had greeted him on his arrival at Thornwood to the smiling, exuberant young lady of the past few days.
“You are enjoying Christmas, Margaret?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes,” she assured him, her eyes aglow. “I have always hated it until this year. You must remember what it was like when Papa was living.”
There had never been gifts. Never anything to make the day much different from any other except that there would be goose for dinner and rowdy, drunken adults to be avoided at all costs.
“It did not change when Gilbert was master here?” he asked. He partly knew the answer, but he was curious to know more. If he had thought of Christina at all during the lost years—and despite himself hehadthought of her, of course—it had been to imagine her living in the proverbial lap of luxury, all her whims indulged. Though Gilbert had never been the most amiable of boys, it was true.
“Oh yes, it changed,” Margaret said with a grimace. “Totally. Gilbert discovered God soon after he married Christina—that was how he described it to us, anyway. I did not say so while he was alive, but I really had no wish to discover or worship his God. All was sin and penance and sobriety and morality and—oh, I could go on and on. Rodney was fortunate. He was old enough to leave home. He went traveling. Though that did not turn out to be fortunate for him in the end, of course—he drowned in Italy. But I was a girl and still a child and stuck here. It was dreadful, Cousin Gerard. I even used to long to have Papa back—and you. You were always kinder to me than anyone else after Mama died.”
He hated himself for asking the question. It seemed somehow underhanded. “Christina did not try to make Thornwood a happier place?” he asked.
She looked at him and then straight ahead through the trees. “No,” she said at last. “Except occasionally when Gilbert went to London. He never took her with him. He would not take me either when I was old enough to make my come-out. He called it the most sinful and the most extravagant city in the world, unfit for either his wife or his sister. Sometimes we used to have picnics when he was gone. Sometimes we used to laugh.”
“You have laughed a great deal in the past week,” he said. “As you used to do when you were a child.”
“It is good to have you home again, Gerard, and to find that you have not changed.” She smiled at him. “Is skating as difficult as waltzing?”
“The essential difference,” he said, “is that there is no shame in having to lean on your partner when you are skating. Do you want me to teach you? Or is there someone on whom you would prefer to lean?”
Her eyes danced with merriment. “I believe,” she said, “Lizzie Gaynor would be severely disappointed if I monopolized your attention, Cousin Gerard. Before we left the house I overheard her telling at least half a dozen people in a group together that she wasterrifiedof ice, that she would never in a million years be able to skate, but that you had promised to teach her and to keep her safe. She trusts you to do just that—you aresostrong, you know.” She batted her eyelids at him in a fair imitation of Lizzie.
