A Matchmaker's Christmas Page 8

  The Bath chair was drawn up to the tall, deeply carved desk in the corner, and the comtesse was writing a letter. In the ten years Beatrice had worked for her, the lady had slowly moved from upright mobility, to a cane, and finally to a Bath chair after a fall the previous winter. It had been a severe blow to the independence that was a hallmark of the widowed aristocrat, and she bore it ill, but was becoming reconciled to it gradually. Her one unfailing vanity was to allow no one to see that a footman—a young, handsome and strong one—was invariably needed to move her ladyship from the first floor down to the ground level, where the crimson saloon, her favorite gathering place, was situated. A big woman in her youth, she had shrunk over the last few years so she was not such a burden to Charles, the powerful young footman usually chosen for the task.

  And so afternoons were spent here, in the sitting room, a cheerful salon of butter yellow walls and rose tapestry furnishings. Sunlight seemed to expand in the room because of the yellow walls, and it added color to her ladyship’s pale complexion.

  Beatrice watched the old woman for a minute, acknowledging in her heart the love she had come to feel for her benefactress and employer. She would never say such a sentimental thing to the comtesse, who eschewed mawkish sentimentality in favor of a brusque kindness that seemed to belie any softer feelings.

  “I am aware that you are standing there staring at me, Beatrice. I have not lost my hearing, though I may choose to use it selectively at times,” the comtesse said, looking up from the letter she was writing.

  “I just came to inquire whether you will be joining us for dinner tonight,” Beatrice said, moving swiftly and silently to stand beside the desk.

  “I think I shall,” Lady Bournaud said, sliding a piece of blotting paper over the scrawl of the letter. “I would like to go to the window, Beatrice.”

  Beatrice obediently moved to the back of the chair and pushed her to gaze down over the glazed landscape. In the distant valley the spire of the church was still visible, and the dark ribbon of the river wound through, glistening icily among trees and drab stone buildings. Distance was deceptive though, and the village was many miles away over treacherous roads in this weather. Lord Vaughan could have died in the short time it would take to traverse that distance.

  “Ah, I see my pet projects are taking wing,” she said, craning forward in her chair and looking down at the grounds below.

  Beatrice looked down to see to what she was referring. The four young people had re-paired now, with Lord Vaughan and Lady Silvia in the fore, and Mr. Rowland and Miss Allen moving at a sedate pace behind them. “I wish you would not concern yourself so closely with the inner workings of that small quadrilateral,” Beatrice said.

  “Quadrilateral? I did not know you were a mathematician, my girl,” the comtesse said with an acerbic tone. “But I will be concerned with whatever and whomever I please. As always.”

  “As always,” Beatrice echoed, her tone hollow.

  The older lady turned her face up and studied her companion’s expression. “Can you not be happy that I have found an occupation to my liking?” she asked.

  “But it is meddling in people’s lives, my lady.” Beatrice sat down on the ledge, padded with mounds of soft yellow cushions. She stared into the glacial gray of Lady Bournaud’s eyes. “Meddling in something you have only a dim conception of . . . perforce,” she added hastily, seeing the anger drawing down the comtesse’s thin lips. “Each one of us can only have the vaguest notion of the internal workings of each person, what they think, feel, need. It is not given to us to have a closer knowledge, and that is how it was intended from the dawn of time. To interfere between men and women is to upset the fine balance that . . .” She stopped and threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, I don’t know how to explain what I mean.”

  “Perhaps that is because everything you are saying is errant nonsense, my girl. Some people don’t know what is good for them until it is forced on them.”

  “But what if . . .” Beatrice shook her head and looked down at the two couples. “What if it happened that Mr. Rowland and Lady Silvia were the couple that were meant to be, and not he and Miss Allen? I can assure you, after watching them all, I must say the former is a much more likely match.”

  “Impossible!” The word exploded from the comtesse.

  “But—”

  “No. Utterly impossible. You do not know what you are saying.” Lady Beatrice signaled that she would like to go back to the desk and Beatrice leaped to her feet. “Mark is a decent lad, but his chosen profession is the church. And even if it were not so, even if he had gone to sea or taken a commission in the army, where there is hope of advancement and prize money, it would not matter, for the war is over and wealth unlikely at this juncture. He is virtually penniless. Lady Silvia’s father is the most stiff-rumped gentleman there ever was. He was François’s friend, or I would not have stood him. He would never countenance a match between Rowland and his daughter.”

  “But—”

  “No. If Rowland has set his sights on rising socially by marrying Lady Silvia he will be doomed to disappointment, and it will be kinder for all involved if that idea is destroyed soon and for good. The girl’s best hope of a decent marriage is to bring Vaughan to heel. He and I have had a serious talk and he is a pleasing pup. Good-natured, not a vicious bone in his body. Besides, the girl is too young to know what she wants. Vaughan is older, will take good care of her.”

  Remaining silent, Beatrice tidied the desk for the comtesse, pushing the bell she used to call her maid closer to her hand. She felt that her employer was dismissing the girl too readily. There were unrevealed depths to Lady Silvia, of that she was sure. She just hoped that the poor girl did not acquiesce and marry to please her parents. She wandered back over to the window and gazed down again at the odd foreshortened view of the drama being played out in the wintry landscape.

  She was just in time to see the figure of Lady Silvia, clearly visible in her pink attire, adroitly handing off Lord Vaughan to Miss Allen while she found room on the path for only Mr. Rowland. Beatrice smiled. Maybe there was hope after all that love would find a true path.

  Chapter Nine

  “Did you have a favorite place here during your summer?”

  Rowland gazed down at Lady Silvia’s upturned face. He was confused by her, and yet it was not an unpleasant state. He had given in as Vaughan cut him out, completely expecting that Lady Silvia would naturally turn to the more sophisticated, more worldly Lord Vaughan as her companion, but she had very neatly handed him off to Miss Allen—Rowland still wasn’t sure how that exchange had taken place—and now those two were off romping in the snow like a couple of puppies, while he and Lady Silvia were walking sedately down the path. She was so young, and yet in some ways she made him feel the junior, for her social skills were impeccable. Frighteningly so, really.

  “Yes, I did have a favorite retreat. But it is not the sort of place you would enjoy.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “Show me?”

  Her appeal was undeniable, the brown eyes gazing up at him so seriously, full of warmth and interest. He took a deep breath, and then glanced around. “This way,” he said, guiding her over a drift and through the deep snow that managed to find ways to drift into boot tops. When they rounded the back of the estate and his objective came in sight, he smiled. “There is it.”

  Lady Silvia smiled and glanced up at him. “I should have guessed.”

  They slogged through the snow, climbing drifts, Rowland jumping to the other side and holding out his hand, helping her over the particularly deep ones.

  Finally, they stood before it, and both were silent. It was an ancient Norman chapel with a square tower and long low nave that hugged the hillside toward the village. Simply constructed of mellow old gray stone and darkened with time, ivy clung to it, the last few wizened leaves stubbornly mired in the twisted gray reaches. It was utterly simple, devoid of ornamentation and certainly many cent
uries older than the house to which it nominally belonged. Rowland gazed up at it and sighed, remembering that summer years before and the first time he had entered the cool inner sanctum; peace had overwhelmed him with an intensity usually reserved for more passionate emotions.

  “This is where I found my calling.”

  Her eyes shining, Lady Silvia said, clinging to his arm, “May we go in?”

  “If you like.” They approached and Rowland put his shoulder to the enormous oak door, which opened with a rusty creak. A puff of air from inside touched their faces, the odor damp and dank. He hesitated. “It is musty. Do you mind?”

  She shook her head and they entered the dark interior. They passed from the tower into the nave, their boot heels echoing on the stone floor into the upper reaches of the darkened heights. Somewhere a bird fluttered, and a piece of straw fell to their feet, dimly seen in the pale light that filtered through the high gothic-arched windows.

  Lady Silvia shivered. “It is so . . . peaceful.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Rowland asked, chuckling softly when he realized he was whispering, too.

  “It just seems right to not be loud or . . . or boisterous,” she said softly, moving closer to him.

  “Are you cold, my lady?” He felt rather than saw her nod, and without conscious thought or planning he put his arms around her. She turned her face up. Her cheeks glowed like pearl and he felt a treacherous urge to kiss her face, to touch her rose lips with his own.

  But it was wrong. There could never be anything between them, and he defiled the sacred interior of the chapel with the animal instincts that surged through his veins. Too, it would be taking advantage of her trust, when the bestowal of that trust was like a gift she gave him. And so he let go of the urge, sent it up to the high vaulted ceiling like a prayer. Contentment filled him as they stood, his arms around her and her soft sigh echoing up into the tower.

  He became aware gradually, as they stood in companionable silence, that her body was vibrating with shivers. “You are so cold,” he said, his words coming out in frosty puffs. He pulled one glove off her hand and chafed it.

  She flattened her hand to his, his long blunt fingers stretching an inch beyond her slender ones. “Did not someone once say, ‘Palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss’? Or . . . or something like that?”

  Steadily he gazed down at her, and then at their hands, palm to palm, the heat of his transferring finally to her. “He also wrote, ‘have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?’”

  Her brown eyes widened. “Are you asking, with Mr. Shakespeare’s help, to kiss me?”

  He glanced around the dim interior, down the long nave and at the high windows, grimed with a century’s dust. “No, my lady,” he said, giving her her glove back. “We should rejoin the others.”

  It was a misstep, Silvia thought, to speak flirtatiously here to a gentleman who took the sanctity of the church so very seriously. And yet, were not kisses exchanged in church? Certainly at the end of the marriage rite there was kissing. Mr. Rowland guided her outside and pushed the protesting door closed. The sun was sinking into the west, and the sky was blazing golden with dark streaks of coal and indigo where clouds gathered on the horizon.

  “We have been outside far too long, my lady. I think you should be by the fireside to warm up or you will be chilled to the bone.”

  She was already so cold she could not feel her toes in her boots, nor the tips of her fingers, nor the end of her nose, but she was not willing to just meekly let it go. As awkward as it felt, she was determined to make him admit what was between them, even if he would never do so with words. He had taken her arm to guide her back over the snowdrifts but she stopped and would not be hurried.

  He paused. “Is there anything wrong, my lady?”

  He kept doing that, she thought, irritated, calling her “my lady,” as if he was reminding himself over and over of the gap between their stations in life. She gazed up at him, noting the shadow along his square jaw and the silky curls of his hair, dark as walnut stain. She didn’t know where she found the courage, nor the impertinence, but she said, “Will you kiss me now, Mr. Rowland, now that we are out of the chapel?”

  His heavy brown eyebrows descended over his eyes. “I cannot. It would be sinful, for we are not betrothed—”

  “Are you so priggish, then, as to think a gentleman and a lady cannot indulge in a chaste kiss without being condemned?” Ah, yes, that had worked; he did not like being thought priggish. He lowered his head, his warm breath touching her mouth.

  She closed her eyes, and when his lips touched hers she felt a rush of warmth, a swirl of giddy happiness that welled into her heart. It was true. He was the one. This was it, and this warmth, this wellspring of emotion was just the start, the beginning of their future.

  Rowland pulled back and gazed down at her closed eyes, the fan of dark lashes that touched her cheek. This was madness, idiocy! This heady rush of emotion and mingled desire, this tangle of feeling and need and yearning, it would not end well. His hands gripped her shoulders too tightly. He loosened his hold, taking a deep breath and stepping back.

  He stared wretchedly at her, watching as her eyes fluttered open, the warm brown like the soft center of a chocolate bonbon. Madness. He had steered clear of ladies over the years, knowing that for him, it would be years before he could wed, and that when he did, it must be to a woman who understood her lot as the wife of a vicar. It would be a life of labor with only spiritual rewards, never monetary. No jewels, no furs, no carriages, no London Season. She was a child of plenty, and he could offer nothing.

  Not a thing.

  And yet with such inviting lips . . . he stepped back toward her, dipped his head again and was lost.

  • • •

  Sir David Chappell, delegated to find the young folks to round them up for dinner, sent Lord Vaughan and his playmate, Miss Allen, back up to the house and then set out to find the other two. He rounded the corner of the house and, shading his eyes against the setting sun, peered toward the chapel that he knew well from his childhood. Ah, yes, there were two figures near the dark gray of the building.

  He cupped his hand around his mouth and was about to shout, when he saw the taller dip his head to the smaller in what could only be a kiss. Lady Silvia and Mr. Rowland, kissing! He stayed silent, but then, as the kiss lingered, he turned with a heavy heart and started back to the house.

  Years in society had changed his old romanticism into realism. There would be no successful resolution to a love between a penniless vicar and a society belle, the daughter of an earl. And from his own experience he knew that marriage was difficult enough. If the two young people were foolish enough to persist, their love would never survive the hardships and difficulties that would be placed in their path by society.

  He kicked viciously at the snow as he trudged up the slope toward the house. No, marriage was not easy even when all was made smooth for the two. He knew that by bitter experience. He had not thought of Melanie for years, or at least not in any conscious manner, but now all the sadness of that long-ago Christmas season flooded back to him.

  His wife . . . how he had adored her! She was like Lady Silvia, petite and pretty, only blond and fair, vivacious, funny, adorable. Chappell entered the house through the door that opened out to the garden and kicked his snowy boots against the doorstep. As he divested himself of his greatcoat and made his way to the red saloon, he was lost in the past.

  Life had seemed, for a time, complete. He had work that he thrived on, important work with the government, and he was good at it. Men whom he respected said that he had a future, and he had been honestly proud of their esteem, knowing it was hard won.

  And at home he and his beautiful wife had just been safely delivered of a boy, Alexander, and they both adored him. Melanie, though, had seemed sad after the birth, almost inconsolable, and he had been at a loss to understand her emotions. They had everything: each other, a child, a home, enough money to live on.
It had seemed to him that life could not get any better, and yet he had come to her room many times and found her weeping. It had been confusing; he knew now with the wisdom of years that he had been cold and unsympathetic, merely pointing out, when she could not explain her tears, that she was being ungrateful. He had turned away from her in his impatience, angry that she was destroying what should have been a golden time for them with her moodiness. How differently he would do things now, if he had the opportunity!

  But then the tears had stopped. He only remembered being thankful that she was back to her normal behavior. Yet, it had not been normal. She had been brittle, like ice, fragile and yet cold and untouchable. But at least she had smiled and laughed again, and he had thought that the coldness would pass as the crying had.

  Had he known even then? Chappell sat down on a bench in the great hall and buried his face in his hands, overwhelmed by that long-ago misery, feelings he thought he had tucked away, never to be experienced again. It was this time of year, though, with the cold, the snow, the Christmas season creeping up on them. It was almost exactly twenty years ago that he had first suspected that his wife had taken a lover.

  Chapter Ten

  Dinner had come and gone. Chappell had watched with interest the interplay, the loaded phrases and significant glances, the hurt expressions and raised eyebrows. Vaughan was a masterful rake, Chappell knew, for the young man’s exploits were well-documented in London society, but he was clearly puzzled by Lady Silvia’s continual snubbing of his advances. And Miss Allen, a likable if overly exuberant young woman, was, at times, hurt by Vaughan’s brotherly treatment of her. And yet what could she expect when she insisted on buffeting his shoulder just as he was drinking wine, or making surreptitious slurping noises as he sipped his soup?

  But now the young people had retired to the gold saloon to play a game of forfeits, and Lady Bournaud, exhausted from the ordeal of being pleasant through dinner, had returned to her own chamber. Lady Bournaud had urged her companion to join Sir David in the red saloon for wine by the fire, and the woman, unable to politely decline, was now sewing by the pale wintry light thrown by the drifted snow outside and the warmer glow of the fire and candlelight reflected off the crimson-papered walls.