Christine Merrill - The Mistletoe Wager

Before she could answer, Harry cut in. ‘I am so sorry, darling. Had I but known you were coming I’d have set them aside for you. But since I thought Tremaine was arriving alone, if at all, I had Rosalind put him in the room at the end of that hall.’

‘The smallest one?’ Elise said bluntly.

‘Of course. He does not need much space-do you, old man?’ Harry stared at him, daring him to respond in the negative.

‘Of-of course not,’ Tremaine stuttered.

Harry turned back to Elise. ‘And I am afraid you will have to take the room you have always occupied. The place beside me. Although we are full to the rafters, I told Rosalind to leave it empty. I will never fill the space that is rightly yours.’

The last words had a flicker of meaning that Elise chose to ignore. ‘That is utterly impossible, Harry. I have no wish to return to it.’

His voice was soft, but firm. ‘I am afraid, darling, that you must make do with what is available. And if that is the best room in the house then so be it.’ He turned and walked away from her, up the stairs.

Elise hurried after him, and Rosalind could hear the faint hiss of whispered conversation. Nicholas Tremaine followed after, his retreating back stiff.

By the time they reached the door to her bedroom, Nicholas had made a discreet exit. And for the first time in two months, Elise was alone with her infuriatingly reasonable husband.

‘But, my dear, I cannot give you another room, even if I might wish to. On my honour, they are all full.’

Harry was smiling at her again, and she searched his face for any sign that he had missed her, and had orchestrated the situation just to have her near. But in his eyes she saw not love, nor frustrated passion, nor even smug satisfaction at having duped her to return. He was showing her the same warmth he might show to a stranger. He held a hand out to her again, but made no attempt to touch her.

‘I am offering you the best I have, just as I have always done. And you will be more comfortable, you know, sleeping in your own bed and not in a guest room.’

He was being sensible again, damn him. And it was likely to drive her mad. ‘It is not my own bed any longer, Harry. For, in case you have forgotten, I have left you.’ She said it with emphasis, and smiled in a self-satisfied way that would push any man to anger if he cared at all for his wife or his pride.

Harry responded with another understanding smile. ‘I realise that. Although it is good to see you home again, even if it is only for a visit.’

‘If you were so eager to see me you could have come to London,’ she said in exasperation. ‘You were there only last week.’

Harry looked confused. ‘I was supposed to visit you? If you desired my company, then you would not have left.’ He said it as though it were the most logical thing in the world, instead of an attempt to provoke her to anger.

‘You tricked Nicholas into coming here for Christmas with that silly letter.’

‘And he brought you as well.’ Harry beamed at her. ‘I would hardly call my invitation to Tremaine a trick. I promise, I meant no harm by it. Nor by the arrangement of the rooms. Can you not take it in the way it is offered? I wish Tremaine to have a merry Christmas. And I wish you to feel at home. I would want no less for any of my guests.’ If he had a motive beyond that she could find no trace of it-in his expression or his tone.

‘But you do not expect the other female guests to share a connecting door with your bedroom, do you?’ She had hoped to sound annoyed by the inconvenience. But her response sounded more like jealous curiosity than irritation.

He laughed as though he had just remembered the threshold he had been crossing regularly for five years. ‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes. That, Harry.’

‘But it will not matter in the least, for I have no intention of using it. I know where I am not welcome.’ As he spoke, his cordial expression never wavered. It was as though being shut from his wife’s bedroom made not the slightest difference in his mood or his future.

And with that knowledge frustration got the better of her, and she turned from him and slammed the door in his face.

Nick made it as far as the top of the stairs before his anger got the better of him. In front of him Harry and Elise were still carrying on a sotto voce argument about the sleeping arrangements. In truth, Elise was arguing while her husband remained even-tempered but implacable. In any case, Nick wanted no part of it. And he suspected it would be the first of many such discussions he would be a party to if he did not find a way back to London in short order.

But not until he gave the girl at the foot of the stairs a piece of his mind. Rosalind Morley was standing alone in the entryway, fussing with the swag of pine bows that decorated the banister of the main stairs. She was much as he remembered her-diminutive in stature, barely five feet tall. Her short dark curls bobbed against her face as she rearranged the branches. Her small, sweet mouth puckered in a look of profound irritation.

It irritated him as well that even after five years he fancied he could remember the taste of those lips when they had met his. It was most unfair. A mistake of that magnitude should have the decency to fade out of memory, not come running back to the fore when one had troubles enough on one’s hands. But he doubted she was there by accident any more than he was. And she deserved to know the extent of his displeasure at being tricked by her again, before he departed and left Elise to her husband. He started down the stairs.

She was picking at the boughs now, frowning in disapproval and rearranging the nuts and berries into a semblance of harmony. But her efforts seemed to make things worse and not better. As he started down towards her, the wire that held the thing in place came free and he could see a cascade of needles falling onto the slate floor at her feet, along with a shower of fruit.

‘Damn,’ she whispered to herself, sneaking a curse where she thought no one could hear her.

‘You!’ His voice startled her, and she glanced up at him, dropped the apple she had been holding, and stared fixedly at it as it rolled across the floor to land against the bottom step.

‘Yes?’ She was trying to sound distant and slightly curious, as though she were talking to a stranger. But it was too late to pretend that she had no idea what he meant by the exclamation, for he had seen the panic in her eyes before she looked away.

‘Do not try to fool me. I know who you are.’

‘I did not intend to hide the fact from you. And I had no idea that you would be among Harry’s guests.’

‘And I did not know, until this moment, that you were Harry’s sister, or I’d never have agreed to this farce.’

‘Half-sister,’ she corrected.

He waved a hand. ‘It hardly matters. You were more than half-loyal to him the day you ruined me.’

‘I ruined you?’ She laughed, but he could hear the guilt in it.

‘As I recollect it, yes. You stood there under the mistletoe, in the refreshment room at the Granvilles’ ball. And when you saw me you held your arms out in welcome, even though we’d met just moments before. What was I to think of the offer?’

‘That I was a foolish girl who had drunk too much punch?’

He held up a finger. ‘Perhaps that is exactly what I thought, and I meant to caution you about your behaviour. But when I stepped close to you, you threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, most ardently.’

Rosalind flinched. ‘You did not have to come near to reprimand me, or to reciprocate so enthusiastically when I kissed you.’ She stared down at the floor and scuffed at the fallen pine needles with her slipper, looking for all the world like a guilty child.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. ‘Believe me, I regret my reaction, no matter how natural it was. That little incident has taught me well the dangers of too much wine and too much celebration.’

‘So you blame me, personally, for ruining Christmas for you?’

‘And my chances with my intended, Elise. For when she got wind of what had occurred she left me and married another.’

Nicholas was surprised to see the girl start, as though she was just now realising the extent of her guilt and the chaos her foolish actions had caused. ‘You were engaged to Elise? The woman who was in the entry with us just now? My sister-in-law?’ Rosalind shook her head, as though she were misunderstanding him in some way.

‘The woman who married your brother after you so conveniently dishonoured yourself and me.’

She gave a helpless little shrug. ‘But I had no idea, at the time, what I was doing.’

‘Because you were inebriated.’ He held up a second finger, ticking off another point in his argument. ‘And on spirits that I did not give you. So do not try to tell me I lured you to disaster. Although you appeared fine to the casual observer, you must have been drunk as a lord.’ He puzzled over it for a moment. ‘If that is even a possible state for a girl. I do not think there is a corresponding female term for the condition you were in.’

She winced again. ‘I was sorry. I still am. And I paid dearly for it, as you remember.’

‘You were sick in the entry hall before your father could get you home.’

If possible, the girl looked even more mortified, as though she had forgotten this portion of the evening in question. ‘I meant when I was sent off to rusticate. I never had the come-out that my father had promised, because he said he could not trust me. I am unmarried to this day.’

‘You are unmarried,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘because your father could not persuade me that it was in my best interests to attach myself for life to a spoiled child.’