“Ah,” he said, slapping a hand to the left side of his chest. “My heart would be broken.”
“I would have no pity on you,” she said, “even if you came to me with the pieces in your hand.”
“Cruel.” He sighed. “Then I had better be prepared to go out tomorrow and make a few snow angels and hurl a few snowballs, preferably at you. I warn you, though, that I was the star bowler on my cricket team at school.”
“What modesty,” she said. “Not to mention gallantry. But I see that two of the footmen are lighting the carolers’ lanterns. They are about to leave. Shall we go and see them on their way?”
She took the arm he offered and they joined the throng about the great doors. The noise level escalated as everyone thanked the carolers again and the carolers thanked everyone in return and everyone wished everyone else a happy Christmas.
Hewashappy, Colin decided. He was a part of all this. He was an accepted member of the Westcott family, even if merely an extended member. Lady Overfield—Elizabeth—had remarked that they were virtually brother and sister. She had joked and laughed with him. Her hand was still tucked through his arm. There was surely no greater happiness.
There were a snowball fight and sledding to look forward to tomorrow.
And gifts to exchange.
And goose and stuffing and Christmas pudding.
Yes, it felt very good to belong.
To a family that was not really his own.
Two
Elizabeth Overfield had been fighting melancholy for the past few days and was taking herself severely to task over it. This was surely going to be the happiest of Christmases. She was spending it with her mother and brother and sister-in-law and the whole of the Westcott clan. The Radleys, her mother’s side of the family, would have been here too if they had not had a prior commitment, but they had already agreed to come next year.
It was nothing short of a miracle that all the Westcotts were assembled here at Brambledean. The great upset of two and a half years ago could so easily have driven them apart into angry, bitter factions. But that had not happened. Rather, the family had pulled together and held together. Viola, the dispossessed Countess of Riverdale, had married here this morning. Her three children, officially illegitimate, were all here too. So was Anna, Duchess of Netherby, the late earl’s only legitimate child. None of them seemed to resent in the least Elizabeth’s brother, Alex, who had inherited the Riverdale title.
It was illogical, then, to be wrestling with depression.
After the carolers had finished singing, Elizabeth looked about the hall and tried to feel the mood of unalloyed happiness everyone else seemed to be feeling. Then her eyes had alit upon Lord Hodges, standing temporarily alone in the midst of the throng, a wistful, almost bleak expression on his face. And her heart had reached out to him as it had yesterday, when she had sensed his discomfort at being here among a family of virtual strangers. She had taken him under her wing then and found herself unexpectedly enchanted by his quiet charm and smiling blue eyes and by his tall, slim, youthful figure and blond good looks. Spending a couple of hours of the evening talking with him had been a great pleasure, but had done nothing to lift her general mood of depression. For she had found herself wanting to be young again as he was young now and filled with the youthful vitality that had once been hers until the passing of time and a disastrous marriage had sapped it out of her.
It would perhaps have been wise to stay away from him this evening. She did not want to go developing any sort of tendresse for him, did she? That would be mildly pathetic. She had approached him anyway and been rewarded by his smile and his warm sense of humor. But she had sensed a certain loneliness in him, as she had last evening. This was nothisfamily, after all. Only Wren belonged to him.
Loneliness could feel a bit more acute in circumstances like these, when one was surrounded by friends—and family in her case—but none of them was that particularsomeone, that love of one’s life she had spoken of a few minutes ago. She had thought once upon a time she had found him. She had even married him. But it had turned out that despite his protestations to the contrary, Desmond Overfield had preferred alcohol to her, and her love for him had died an aching death even before he literally passed from this life. Or perhaps it never had quite died. Could love die if it was real?
Her lone state had felt even more acute today with the marriage this morning of Viola and the Marquess of Dorchester, a match she believed was going to be a happy one, though nothing in this life was ever certain.
Lord Hodges’s situation—Colin’s—was quite different from her own, of course. He was still very young, only in his middle twenties, she would guess. She watched him as he shook hands with some of the carolers and commended them on their singing and wished them a safe return home through the snow. Some young lady was going to be fortunate indeed when he really did set his mind upon marriage. She felt suddenly very middle-aged, if not elderly. Had she ever been young like the three girls he had been joking about marrying a few minutes ago, eyeing the young gentlemen with self-conscious awareness, all of life and hope and happiness ahead of her? But of course she had.
“What a wonderful day this has been,” Anna said from beside her. “Do you think tomorrow will be an anticlimax, Elizabeth?”
“When there are the gifts to give and receive and the goose to be consumed and the Christmas service at church to look forward to?” Elizabeth said. “And the snow beckoning us to come outside? I think not.”
Avery, Duke of Netherby, Anna’s husband, sighed and shuddered. “You are not by any chance going to try forcing us to go out there to frolic, are you, Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Ah, but she is,” Colin assured him. “She has threatened to have me permanently banished from Brambledean if I try insisting upon napping by the fire as any civilized gentleman ought on Christmas Day. And she has power, Netherby. She is Riverdale’s sister.”
Elizabeth smiled at the teasing.
Avery raised his quizzing glass to his eye and surveyed her through it, his expression pained. She twinkled merrily back at him, and they all turned their attention back to the departure of the carolers, who were stepping out onto newly swept steps but descending into deep white snow, their mufflers up about their ears, their hats and bonnets pulled low, their lanterns held high. A blast of cold air and even some swirling snow invaded the great hall while farewells and thanks and Christmas wishes were called back and forth yet again.
“Since there is plenty of wassail left in the bowl,” Alex said, raising his voice above the slightly diminished hubbub after the doors had closed behind the departing villagers, “and since it must be six or seven hours since we last toasted the health and happiness of the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester, I suggest we do so again before we all retire for the night. Wren, where are you? You may pass around the glasses as I fill them, if you will.”
Viola, once the Countess of Riverdale, now Viola Lamarr, Marchioness of Dorchester, was looking remarkably happy. Indeed, she glowed like the new bride she was. And the marquess was looking down at her with a gleam in his dark eyes that left Elizabeth feeling slightly breathless and…jealous?
But no, not that. She would never begrudge Viola her happiness. Envy, then. She was envious. And lonely again.
There had been a number of marriages in the family during the past couple of years or so, beginning with Anna’s to Avery. Anna had lived with Elizabeth for a short while after she came to London from the orphanage where she had grown up, unaware that she was the daughter of the Earl of Riverdale—the legitimate daughter. Elizabeth had lived with her to help her adjust to her new life and feel less bewildered and alone. She and Avery’s secretary had been the lone witnesses at their wedding. Then Camille, Viola’s elder daughter, had married Joel Cunningham in Bath, and Alex had married Wren in London. Now Viola, who was in her forties, had married the marquess here at Brambledean. And the four family marriages appeared to have one thing in common, as far as Elizabeth could judge from the outside. All four were love matches. All four stood a good chance of remaining happy on into the future.
