Mary Balogh - Under the Mistletoe

When she lifted one gloved hand to cup his cheek, he could see that it was trembling. He could also see stars reflected in her eyes.

“Edwin,” she whispered, “I thought you despised me. I wanted that marriage so very, very much-with you, with your father’s son. You were to be my escape from a life I had ever enjoyed, and I was so very enchanted when I first saw you. But when you said nothing after our marriage about love or even affection, but were so… respectful, I thought you despised me.”

“We have been such idiots,” he said, raising her hand to his cheek and holding it there. He grinned at her. “I thought it was just me, but it was you too. I know so little about pleasing a woman, Elizabeth, especially the woman I love.”

Her eyes looked even brighter suddenly, and he knew they were filled with tears.

“You do know,” she said. “Today has been the happiest of my life-to see you smile and laugh, to see you hold Jeremy, to have you kiss me beneath the kissing bough, to-” She stopped abruptly and bit her lip again.

He turned his head and kissed her gloved palm.

“I will teach you to enjoy what happens in our marriage bed, Elizabeth,” he said. “I promise. Just give me time. I have to learn how to please you.”

“You pleased me.” She snatched her hand away from his cheek to set it, with her other hand, on his shoulders. She gazed earnestly into his face. “You pleased me, Edwin. I thought I would die of pleasure. But I did not show it, did I? Perhaps I ought to have done so. Mama told me-before our nuptials-that I must always lie still and pray for it to be soon over. But tonight I did not want it to be over. I prayed for it never to end. You pleased me, Edwin. Oh, you did!”

He chuckled and then wrapped his arms about her and held her tight. He laughed aloud, and she joined him.

“I must tell you,” she said, “that I have told Mama that she and Papa must leave Wyldwood after Christmas. Even if I must stay here alone with Jeremy, I will be happier without Mama’s influence. I want to be your wife, even if I am to see you only once or twice a year.”

He caught her to him even more tightly.

“My dearest,” he said. “Oh, my love. I will not let you out of my sight again for longer than a day at a time-and even that will be too long.”

She drew back her head and smiled at him. He smiled back before lowering his head and kissing her. This time there was no audience, as there had been in the drawing room before tea, and this time there was no anxiety or uncertainty, as there had been in their bedchamber earlier. This time there was all of love to be shared openly and joyfully. And the knowledge that a future together stretched ahead of them even after Christmas had passed into a new year and a new spring and a new hope.

When he lifted his head, they smiled at each other again. The house-their house, the house his father had purchased for him, really a rather lovely house-was behind her at the top of the snow-clad lawn. In fancy he could almost see the rudely carved Nativity scene behind the dark drawing room windows. He knew exactly which window Jeremy slept behind, warm and safe in his crib. Their son.

Above them, the sky was moonlit and starlit, the Christmas star beaming softly down on their heads-or so it seemed.

“It must be after midnight,” he said, his arms still about her waist, hers about his neck. “Happy Christmas, my dearest.”

“Happy Christmas, Edwin,” she said.

“I do not know about you,” he said, grinning down at her, “but I am frozen out here. Whose idea was this, anyway?”

She smiled back at him, a radiant smile that lit her with beauty.

“It was the most wonderful idea in the world,” she said. “I have seen Christmas angels and the Christmas star, and I have taken all the love and joy of Christmas into my heart and my life. But I am chilly,” she admitted.

“We had better go back to bed, then,” he said, “and see if we can warm each other up.”

Even in the moonlight he knew that she blushed. But she did not stop smiling or gazing into his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Edwin. Let’s do that.”

The Christmas star shed its radiant light onto Wyldwood long after they had gone inside and warmed each other and loved each other and fallen asleep, twined together beneath the rumpled bedcovers.

“I’ve lost the Star of Bethlehem,” she told him bluntly when he came to her room at her maid’s bidding. There was some sullenness in her tone, some stubbornness, and something else in addition to both, perhaps.

He stood just inside the door of her bedchamber, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her, showing little emotion.

“You have lost the Star of Bethlehem,” he repeated. “Where, Estelle? You were wearing it last night.”

“I still have the ring,” she said with a nonchalance that was at variance with her fidgeting hands. She noticed the latter, and deliberately and casually brushed at the folds of her morning wrap in order to give her hands something to do. “But the diamond is gone.”

“Was it missing last night when we came home?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her. Having assured herself that her wrap fell in becoming folds, she was now retying the satin bow at her throat. She looked as if she cared not one whit about her loss.

“I would have mentioned it if I had noticed, would I not?” she said disdainfully. “I really don’t know, Allan. All I do know is that it is missing now.” She shrugged.

“It probably came loose when you hurled the ring at my head last night,” he said coolly. “Did you look at it when you picked it up again?”

She regarded him with raised chin and eyes that matched his tone. Only the heightened color of her cheeks suggested the existence of some emotion. “Yes, I did,” she said. “This morning. The star was gone. And there is no point in looking about you as if you expect it to pop up at you. Annie and I have been on our knees for half an hour looking for it.

It simply is not here. It must have fallen out before we came home.”

“I was standing at the foot of the bed when you threw it,” he said. “You missed me, of course. The ring passed to the left of me, I believe.”

“To the right,” she said. “I found it at the far side of the bed.”

“To the right, then,” he said irritably. “If I were to say that you threw it up into the air, you would probably say that you threw it under the floorboards.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said coldly.

“The diamond probably landed on the bed,” he said.

“What a brilliant suggestion!” She looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Both Annie and I had similar inspiration. We have had all the bedclothes off the bed. It is not there. It is not in this room, Allan.”

She reached into the pocket of her wrap and withdrew a ring, which she handed to him rather unnecessarily. There was certainly no doubt of the fact that the diamond was missing.

The Earl of Lisle took it on the palm of his hand and looked down at it-a wide gold band with a circlet of dark sapphires and an empty hole in the middle where the diamond had nestled. The Star of Bethlehem, she had called it-her eyes glowing like sister stars, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted-when he had given her the ring two years before, on the occasion of their betrothal.

“Look, my lord,” she had said-she had not called him by his given name until he had asked her to on their wedding night a few minutes after he had finished consummating their marriage. “Look, my lord, it is a bright star in a dark sky. And this is Christmas. The birthday of Christ.The beginning of all that is wonderful.The beginning for us.How auspicious that you have given me the Star of Bethlehem for our betrothal.”

He had smiled at her-beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacious Estelle, the bride his parents had picked out for him, though his father had died a year before and unwittingly caused a delay in the betrothal.

And holding her hand, the ring on her finger, he had allowed himself to fall all the way in love with her, though he had thought that at the age of thirty there was no room in his life for such deep sentiment. He had agreed to marry her because marriage was the thing to do at his age and in his position, and because marrying Estelle made him the envy of numerous gentlemen-married and single alike-in London. She would be a dazzling ornament for his home and his life.

It would have been better if he had kept it so, if he had not done anything as foolish as falling in love with her. Perhaps they would have had a workable relationship if he had not done that. Perhaps after almost two years of marriage they would have grown comfortable together.

“Well,” he said, looking down at the ring in his hand and carefully keeping both his face and voice expressionless, “it is no great loss, is it, Estelle? It was merely a diamond. Merely money, of which I have an abundance.” He tossed the ring up, caught it, and closed his hand around it. “A mere bauble. Put it away.” He held it out to her again.

Her chin lifted an inch as she took it from him. “I am sorry to have taken your time,” she said, “but I thought you should know. I would not have had you find out at some future time and think that I had been afraid to tell you.”

His lips formed into something of a sneer. “We both know that you could not possibly fear my ill opinion, don’t we?” he said. “I am merely the man who pays the bills and makes all respectable in your life. Perhaps the diamond fell into the pocket or the neckcloth of Martindale last evening. You spent enough time in his company. You must ask him next time you see him. Later today, perhaps?”

She ignored his last words. “Or about the person of Lord Peterson or Mr.