Regency Mistletoe & Marriages: A Countess by Christmas / The Earl's Mistletoe Bride

It was not what he had been about to say she was saving herself from, he reflected grimly as she strode away to the door. But what he had been so sorely tempted to do.

‘I think for once—’ He flinched as she slammed the door shut behind her, sank into his chair, and finished softly, ‘I completely agree with you.’

He felt stunned. Yet strangely energised. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be struck by lightning. There had definitely been something elemental about that encounter.

Miss Forrest, he acknowledged with a hollow laugh, could truly be described as a force of nature.

After breakfast Mrs Dent herself came to the drum room, gushing apologies, and a veritable army of staff moved all their possessions to a new suite of rooms, down on the main floor where the other guests were staying.

‘Since we have discovered you are a guest, and not a servant, your things will be moved down here, too,’ the housekeeper said to Helen.

Adjoining her aunt’s bedchamber was a small but beautifully decorated room, which would afford Helen privacy whilst keeping her close enough to her aunt for peace of mind.

It took most of the rest of the day to organise things to their satisfaction, but as dusk began to fall her aunt remarked, ‘I think we had better go down for dinner a little earlier this evening. I do not want anyone to think I am hiding away, as though you or I have anything to be ashamed of.’

An image of the Earl circulating amongst his guests flashed into her mind. The prospect of perhaps speaking to him filled her with mixed feelings. So far their exchanges had been pithy, and strangely stimulating. But tonight, with other people present, they would both be obliged to limit themselves to polite commonplaces. Which would be most unsatisfactory.

Though in all honesty it was unlikely he would deign to speak to her in public. Why should he? He was the head of a large and wealthy family, with immense responsibilities. Whereas she, in another week or so, was to become a governess. What was more, their encounter this morning had hardly ended on…friendly terms.

‘Do not look so downcast,’ her aunt remarked. ‘You will be more than a match for any of them. You are far more clever, as well as having more spirit than any other woman present.’

Helen was loth to admit that it was the prospect of having to interact with one person in particular that had resulted in her looking a little wistful, so she answered, ‘Thank you for saying that. But I think I shall have to make an attempt to quench that spirit tonight. I would not wish to say something I ought not, and perhaps give His Lordship cause to think you have not brought me up to know how to behave.’

He had already indicated that his decision regarding Aunt Bella’s future hung in the balance. He was half inclined to believe she was Aunt Bella’s illegitimate daughter, and that they had both come here to wheedle something from him to which they were not entitled. Unless she could convince him that the General had lied…She shook her head. It was out of her hands now. She had told him the truth, and thank goodness she had, but it was up to him to make up his own mind.

As had become their custom since letting their maid go, they helped each other to get changed. On their way downstairs Helen decided that she would have to make some alterations to her gowns so that she would be able to dress and undress herself unaided in future. Fortunately she was clever with a needle.

The liveried footman was once again on duty at the foot of the stairs, to remind them of the way to the blue saloon. There were already several of the other house guests present, ranged in groups of twos and threes.

Her aunt took a seat on one of the sofas dotted about the room, and Helen sat beside her.

‘You have already met Lord Cleobury,’ she said in a low voice, cocking her head towards the gentleman who had sat next to Helen at dinner the night before. ‘And if I am not mistaken that clerical gentleman, the one who gave thanks for our meal last night, is none other than Barnaby Mullen. Another very distant connection of His Lordship’s. I should not be a bit surprised…’ she lowered her voice still further ‘…if he is not angling for a living. His Lordship has several in his gift.’

Helen took ruthless advantage of the fact that Lord Bridgemere happened to be engaged in an earnest-looking conversation with the young cleric to turn her head and look at him. It almost surprised her to see that he looked the way he always did. What had she expected? That their confrontation this morning, which had left her so shaken, would have made some kind of physical impression on him? He did not even turn his head and look back at her. It was as though he was completely unaware she had entered the room.

He probably was.

At that moment Lady Thrapston walked across her field of vision, severing her tenuous connection to Lord Bridgemere.

There was no need for her aunt to inform her who this woman was. She and her aunt watched in silence as Lord Bridgemere’s oldest sister sashayed across the room. Tonight she was wearing emeralds to complement the sumptuous outfit of green satin she was wearing.

Helen frowned. Lord Bridgemere had said they all came to Alvanley Hall at Christmas because they wanted something from him. What could a woman as obviously wealthy as this possibly need?

Then Aunt Bella gripped her hand, and said in a voice quivering with suppressed excitement, ‘And this boy just coming in now is the one I was telling you about. Bridgemere’s heir. The Honourable Nicholas Swaledale.’

Unlike His Lordship, the heir—who was not really a boy at all, although he was certainly not very much past twenty—was dressed in an extravagantly fashionable style. There were fobs and seals hanging from his cherry-striped satin waistcoat, jewels peeping from his cravat, and he wore his hair teased into a fantastic style with liberal use of pomade. Helen tried very hard not to dislike him just because of the way he looked. For he, she recollected, was the youth who had steered the dinner conversation away from her the night before, after General Forrest had been so rude.

‘And, oh,’ Aunt Bella continued wickedly, ‘how annoyed Lady Thrapston is that her younger sister produced him, when all she managed to have were girls!’

‘He does not look to me,’ Helen observed, ‘like a very happy young man.’

‘Money troubles,’ Aunt Bella explained darkly. ‘His father is not a wealthy man. But because of the title he expects to inherit once Bridgemere dies, he tends to live well beyond his means.’

An idiot, then, as well as a fop, thought Helen as she watched the youth saunter across the room and take a seat in between two damsels who blushed and simpered at him. One of them Helen recognised as the young lady who had been flirting with Aunt Bella’s dinner partner the night before.

‘I wonder if he is sitting with them on purpose, to annoy his aunt?’ mused Aunt Bella aloud. ‘Oh—I should perhaps explain that those are the two of Lady Thrapston’s daughters not still in the nursery. Octavia and Augustine.’

Even as he acknowledged the adulation of his female cousins, she could still detect a faint sneer hovering about the heir’s mouth, which unhappily put her very much in mind of his Aunt Thrapston.

‘Which are his parents?’ Helen whispered. ‘Are they here?’

Aunt Bella made a motion with her fan, to indicate a very ordinary-looking middle-aged couple perched on the edge of a pair of spindly-legged chairs. The lady had been sitting beside Lord Bridgemere at dinner the night before. Talking non-stop and irritating him, she saw on a flash of insight. As much as his other sister had managed to irritate him from the foot of the table, with her condescending remarks about the quality of the food.

What a family!

‘You know my brother the General, of course, and his charming wife,’ her aunt said sarcastically as the couple strolled into the room arm in arm.

When the General saw them, his brows lowered into a scowl.

‘I wonder why they have come this year?’ her aunt mused. ‘He usually goes to spend Christmas with Ambrose.’

It was a great pity he had not gone to spend this Christmas with Ambrose, Aunt Bella’s oldest brother, sighed Helen. His estate was just outside Chester. Which would have put him at the very other end of the country.

‘I can only assume his pockets are to let.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Oh, come! You know full well that none of us comes here without a very compelling reason. Had I no need, even I would have given my cousin’s nephew a wide berth. Indeed, I do not think I have seen him for over fifteen years.’

Helen shifted in her seat. ‘It sounds a very odd way of conducting family relations…’

But it helped to explain Lord Bridgemere’s conviction that she had come cap in hand, like everyone else. And when she had been so insistent upon speaking to him in private, to put her case, it could only have reinforced that impression.

She wished she had not been so quick to take offence. For suddenly she could see exactly why it had been so hard to convince him that she, personally, wanted nothing from him for herself.

‘Perhaps I am being a little harsh in regards to his sisters,’ Aunt Bella murmured. ‘Not that it is fondness for their brother that brings them here, either. It is just that neither of them can bear the thought that the other might somehow steal a march if they are not here to keep an eye on their dealings with Bridgemere.’

How awful! Did nobody ever come to see him merely because they liked him?

Although her aunt had said he actively discouraged visitors by being purposefully elusive. She could not help allowing her eyes to stray in his direction, her heart going out to a man she now saw as an island in the midst of a sea of greedy, grasping relatives. She wondered which had come first. His reclusive habits, or his family’s attitude towards him as nothing more than an ever-open purse?

She was startled out of her reverie by the General who, after standing stock still, glaring at them for a few seconds, marched right up to them and demanded, ‘I want to know why you have come here, Bella.’

‘I do not think that is any of your business,’ Aunt Bella retorted.

‘Still as argumentative as ever,’ he growled. ‘And just as prone to stirring up a hornets’ nest with your effrontery!’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she replied coldly.