“Gilbert died last summer, when Meg was but nineteen,” she explained. “We were still in mourning this spring. A Season was out of the question.” She resented the feeling she had of being on the defensive. She was not giving a true explanation anyway. Why did she not simply tell him the truth?
“Yes,” he said curtly. “I see.”
“Do tell us about some of the balls and routs and drums you attended, Cousin Gerard,” Margaret begged. “Were they very,verysplendid affairs?”
“I would prefer to hear about your life in Canada, Gerard,” Lady Hannah said. “We hear so little about the colonies.”
“Oh, yes,” Margaret agreed. “Did you live among savages? Did they wear war paint and feathers? Did they shoot at you with arrows?” She laughed at the foolishness of her own questions, a delightful, lighthearted sound so rarely heard at Thornwood.
He told them about Montreal and made it sound like a flourishing, dynamic, but perfectly respectable city. There were families there of taste and education with whom to mingle socially. He told them briefly of his long journeys by canoe inland from Canada to the interior of the continent, where the furs were trapped and traded. He told them about the long, frigid winters spent there.
“I should simply die,” Margaret commented, but her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were wide, and she was clearly hanging on his every word.
“Yes.” He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. “I do believe you might, Margaret. No white women ever go inland.”
“But white men go there for months, even years at a time?” Lady Hannah said. “Dear me, how lonely they must be.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, but his eyes met Christina’s again as he said it, and there was a knowing, half amused look in them. She found her cheeks flushing. Nowhitewomen, he had said. It was not quite the same thing asno women. Yes, of course there would have been women.
But the conversation inevitably came back to England and London and balls and parties. Margaret had an insatiable hunger to hear about such things.
“I suppose,” the Earl of Wanstead said finally, “you have plans for a Season next spring, Margaret? If her ladyship can be persuaded to exert herself to take you to town and sponsor you, of course.”
Christina looked sharply at him. What exactly did he mean by that? Was he accusing her of laziness, of unwillingness to exert herself on her sister-in-law’s behalf? She was not imagining the antagonism in his manner, she realized. It had not been apparent in anything he had said to the other two even though he must have found their insatiable questions tiresome.
“A Season is expensive, my lord,” she said tartly.
“And so it is." He raised his eyebrows. “But not beyond the means of the daughter and sister of an earl, surely?”
She could feel her breath quickening. “That is a question for you to answer, my lord,” she said, “not us.”
He looked arrested for a moment until he was distracted by the appearance of the servants to remove the covers ready for dessert. He leaned back in his chair.
“You are quite right, my lady,” he said. He turned to smile at his cousin. “But I believe I can offer something for your amusement sooner than next spring, Margaret. I will be staying here for Christmas. There—”
“Oh,willyou?" Margaret leaned forward in her chair, her hands clasped to her bosom. “I amsoglad. We feared that you were coming merely for a few days, just to look around. But you will stay for Christmas? Perhaps we can invite some of the neighbors for a party one evening. May we? It is an age since there was a truly grand occasion at Thornwood.”
“Meg—” Christina said.
“Perhaps we should allow Gerard a day or two in which to catch his breath, Meg,” Lady Hannah said with a laugh. “But we are all delighted, Gerard, that you will be staying for Christmas. Are we not, Christina?”
“Of course,” she said coolly as his eyes met hers again. That look was back in them—the look that might have been mockery and was definitely dislike.
“You did not allow me to finish,” he said, turning his attention back to Margaret. “I have invited a number of friends to spend Christmas here with me. There will be a houseful.”
Lady Hannah exclaimed with delight; Margaret was ecstatic; Christina merely stared. House guests? A house party? Noise and jollity at Thornwood? It seemed like a contradiction in terms. He had invited a houseful of guests for Christmas—only a week and a half away—without even consulting her? But whyshouldhe consult her? She was no longer mistress of Thornwood. Sometimes it was hard to digest that fact.
“I hope this will not upset any of your own plans, my lady?” he asked her.
“I have none, my lord,” she said, “beyond the intention of spending a quiet Christmas with Aunt Hannah and Meg, Rachel, and Tess.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“My daughters,” she explained.
“Ah, yes. Your daughters.” There was that disturbing suggestion of a smile again. “There will be other children among my guests. Perhaps yours will enjoy their company for the holiday.”
Christina inclined her head but said nothing.
