Holiday House Parties (12 page)

He glanced over the floor to see what eggs were left. “So … your mother is expecting a crowd for Christmas?” he asked absently. “Who's coming? In addition to the six Fordyces, of course.”

Elinor shut her eyes, enjoying this moment of relaxation. “Mama and I make eight, and you, of course, make nine,” she murmured. “And Mama sent an invitation to Julian's parents. They'll be here by tomorrow evening, so we shall be eleven at table.”

“Julian's parents?” Miles looked up at the girl curiously. “Does that mean that Julian himself will be back for the holiday?”

“No, not for Christmas”—Elinor sighed—“but in his last letter he said he hoped to be back within a month of the new year.”

Felicia, leaning over the back of the sofa, squealed excitedly. “
Really
, Elinor? Are you saying he'll be here in just a few
weeks
?”

Elinor opened her eyes and smiled up at her younger cousin. “Yes. Just a few weeks more.”

“Well, that must cheer you,” Miles said, reaching for the last two eggs and placing them gingerly into his basket. “And all the more reason for you not to exert yourself in the next few weeks. With so much excitement ahead, you can't afford to be under the weather.”

“You are being much too motherly, Miles.” Elinor threw him a smile that washed away some of the weariness in her face. “Hanging a few Christmas decorations cannot be called exertion.”

But Miles could not agree. “Blast the decorations!” he barked in annoyance. Getting to his feet, he frowned down at the fallen festoon. “Can't we have Christmas without them?”

“No, we can't,” Elinor said firmly, pulling herself up to a sitting position and swinging her legs to the floor with determined energy, “any more than we can do without the plum pudding or the wreaths or the mistletoe.”

He glared at her. “Balderdash! I can do without any of them. But very well, if you insist on the importance of such folderol, I'll put up the deuced festoon for you myself … just as soon as I deliver what's left of these eggs to the kitchen. Your mother sent a message telling me that her need for eggs was urgent.”

“Yes, Cook has run out of them, I hear. Our hens, it seems, have not been productive this month, just when Mama needs them most.”

Miles picked up his basket and started toward the door. “I'll ask one of the housemaids to clean up the broken ones,” he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder. “Meanwhile, promise me you'll not climb the ladder until I return.”

Elinor nodded. “I promise.”

But before Miles could leave, Perkins, the butler, appeared in the doorway. “Miss Elinor,” he announced in tones of hushed surprise, “you've a caller. It's Lord Lovebourne!”

The squire stopped in his tracks, his face stiffening in shock.

Elinor stared at the butler in confusion.

Felicia gave a delighted gurgle in her throat. “Do you mean
Julian
?' she cried.

“No, of course he doesn't.” Elinor rose slowly to her feet, her eyes wide. “It must be Julian's father. You
do
mean the Earl, don't you, Perkins?”

“No, miss,” the butler said with barely concealed excitement. “It's the junior Lord Lovebourne. Says he docked yesterday and came straight here from Liverpool.”

Cousin Felicia clapped her hands delightedly. “But I thought he was not expected until January!”

A pulse began to pound in Elinor's ears. “So did I!”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when Julian Henshaw himself loomed up in the doorway. The man was so tall that his head almost touched the top of the doorframe. Felicia, who'd not met him before, blinked at the sight of him. She'd never seen anyone so handsome. From the top of his sun-streaked brown curls (now incongruously sparkling with snowflakes) to the tip of his dashing Hussar boots, the man was impressive. His skin was tanned from the sun, and his light eyes twinkled. His shoulders, wide to begin with, were emphasized by the capes of a magnificent greatcoat that hung open and revealed a figure of wiry strength. To Felicia, he seemed to have walked right out of a romance. She could not help but gasp.

Elinor, however, could not gasp. Surprise had frozen her breath in her chest. But her heart pounded wildly, and her head swam in bewildered delight. For five long years she'd waited for this moment, and now all she could do was gape at him, dazed.

Endicott, too, gaped at the traveler, having forgotten what a handsome specimen the fellow was. It was no wonder Elinor had fallen in love with him. The squire supposed that there wasn't a girl alive who could resist a man so consumately dashing.

Thus the only one who uttered a sound was the spirited Felicia. “Oh, my!” she breathed, awestruck.

Julian Henshaw, Lord Lovebourne, who'd been surveying the room from the threshold (taking only slight note of a country fellow holding a basket of cracked eggs and a disheveled woman with lank hair and a red nose), was somewhat bemused at seeing a fallen ladder and several broken eggs on the floor. But Felicia's gasp caught his attention, and he turned his eyes in the direction of the sound. His face brightened perceptibly at the sight of Elinor's lovely young cousin. “Good God!” he exclaimed. Skillfully avoiding stepping on eggs, he strode across the room to her. “I'd forgotten how very lovely you are, Elinor!”

“But
I'm
not—” Felicia began.

Julian didn't heed. Sweeping the astonished Felicia into his arms, he fixed his lips firmly on hers. “Elinor, my love,” he murmured against her mouth, “I've missed you so!”

2

The turmoil and confusion that followed this startling mishap did not last long. Julian, as soon as the identities of the ladies in the room were made clear to him, was able to restore everyone's equilibrium by blaming his eyesight: the whiteness of the snow-covered landscape, he said with a self-deprecating laugh, had temporarily blinded him. His manner was so charmingly sincere, and his abject embarrassment so endearingly boyish, that he was able to convince all the observers of the incident that his error was merely amusing.

Elinor was too busy during the remainder of the afternoon to dwell on the incident. After Julian had been duly welcomed by her mother, Martha Selby (with the egg basket tucked under her arm) returned to the kitchen to continue overseeing the Christmas food preparations. Therefore it was left to Elinor to introduce her betrothed to all the Fordyces on the premises; to reassure Felicia that she was not in any way to blame for Lord Lovebourne's inappropriate greeting; to see that a bedroom for the unexpected guest was prepared; to make sure the disorder in the drawing room was set to rights; to settle a squabble that arose between the wild eight-year-old Fordyce boy and his twelve-year-old and very spoiled sister; to serve afternoon tea; and to make sure the dinner-table settings were rearranged. By the time all this was done, it was almost time to dress for dinner.

When Elinor at last found herself alone in her bedroom, the ambivalent feelings she'd pushed aside all afternoon came flooding over her. What's wrong with me? she asked herself. Where's the joy I should be feeling?

She'd waited five years for this day. She had planned it, dreamed of it, even acted it out in her mind. When one waits long years for a reunion with a beloved, it is not uncommon to create fantasies in one's mind of what that reunion might be like. Elinor had played out the scene every night, as soon as she'd blown out her candle. There in the dark she would shut her eyes and try to visualize the longed-for reunion in all sorts of settings. It might, for example, take place in the summer garden, where she (softly gowned in flowing, flowered dimity with a wide-brimmed, beribboned straw hat set beguilingly on her casually curled hair) would be cutting roses. Surrounded by the glory and aroma of the blooms, she'd look up from the rosebushes and behold him, his eyes moist with love of her. Slowly, very slowly, they'd move toward each other. “Elinor!” he'd gasp, his voice husky with emotion.…

Sometimes her fantasy reunion would have a winter setting. The wind would be howling in the chimney while she knelt at the fireplace, tending the fire. There would be a sound at the door … a commotion. She would look up, startled, and there he'd be! He would stride over the threshold but stop short at the sight of her, for she would be lovely (and so very perfectly posed) draped in a gown of dark red velvet with a neckline dashingly décolleté. The firelight behind her would cast a honeyed glow on the skin of her throat and halo her hair. And looking up into his eyes, she'd see how his undisguised adoration combined with her own reflection.…

But never in her wildest imaginings had she pictured a reunion in which her hero failed even to recognize her!

Yes, reality had not come close to those dreams; instead, it had brought her down with a bump. Reality! If she'd wanted reality, she could have found it right there in front of her, standing full length in her pier mirror. Her own reflection was all the reality she needed. She stared back at her reflection and laughed, a short, bitter laugh. How foolish she'd been! She should have expected real life to turn out like this. Life was not like dreams. Life was not a rose garden or a gown of red velvet. Life was a case of the sniffles, life was a basket of broken eggs, life was a room full of visitors who, of course, had to be present at precisely the wrong moment.

A closer look at herself in the glass made her laugh again, for her appearance was positively ludicrous. Her hair hung round her face in a neglected straggle, her nose was red, her eyes rheumy, her cheek streaked with soot (and how
that
had happened she had no idea!), and—oh, God!—there was an ugly smear of dried egg across the bottom of her skirt! What a vision of romance she was, indeed! No
wonder
Julian had embraced someone else!

But the laugh died in her throat, replaced by a choked sob. Her own true love hadn't even recognized her! She knew she was not at her best, but did she truly look as terrible as
that
? As dearly as she wished to believe his laughingly offhand explanation, she could not prevent this attack of very painful doubts. Was she truly so much changed in the five years since Julian had last seen her?

The question smote her spirits with devastating force. She sank wearily down on the chair before her dressing table and stared at her face in the smaller mirror. The face that stared back at her was—she had to admit it—no longer youthful. Her cheeks, her hair, her lips—they were all faded and lusterless. She looked so wan and weary—so different from the youthful girl who'd waved goodbye to him—that Julian
must
have been confused. She could scarcely blame him. Poor Julian! she thought, tears filling her eyes. Poor disappointed—

A tap at the door interrupted her. “It's Miles, Elinor,” came a voice from the corridor.

With a quick sniff and a hasty rub at her cheeks with the back of her hand, Elinor got up and went to the door. Miles stood on the threshold, trying to mask the concern in his eyes with a polite smile. “I just stopped by to make certain, before I took my leave, that you were finally going to rest.”

“Yes, thank you, Miles,” she replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “I have an hour before I must dress for dinner. You
are
coming tonight, aren't you? I've set a place for y—”

“Good God, girl,” he interrupted, his smile fading as he peered at her closely, “you've been crying!”

“No, I haven't,” she denied. “It's just this blasted cold. It makes my eyes runny.”

“It's not the cold. I know how you look when you cry.” He lifted her chin and made her look up at him. “Has that blasted Lovebourne made
another
blunder?” he asked, outraged.

The suggestion brought a hiccupy laugh up from her chest. “Isn't the f-first blunder enough?”

“I suppose so, but …” He released her chin and made a helpless gesture with his hands. “But I thought you accepted his explanation. You seemed so perfectly sanguine all afternoon.”

“I was. It's just that …” She hesitated, embarrassed to reveal to Miles the depth of her shameful self-pity.

“Yes? Go on,” he prodded.

She turned from the door and sank down on the bed. “I took a look at myself in the mirror just now, and I suddenly saw what Julian saw.”

“Oh? And what was that?” he demanded.

“A hag.”

He stalked to the bed and glared down at her. “What utter nonsense is this?”

“It isn't nonsense. You yourself said I look hagged.”

“
I
? I
never
—”

“Yes, you did. It was when you first saw me this morning.”

“I said, ma'am, that you were not in your best looks, which you may take my word is a very far cry from—”

At that moment Martha Selby appeared in the doorway. Having heard whisperings of the day's doings all the way down in the kitchen, she'd come up, still wrapped in her apron, to learn for herself what had occurred. Hearing Miles's raised voice, she paused on the threshold and raised her brows. “Am I interrupting a quarrel?” she asked bluntly.

“You might say that,” Miles snapped. “Your daughter is behaving like a foolish child.”

“Is she? What about?”

“About—of all the idiotic notions—her looks! If there is anything in the world less worthy of concern, I don't know what it could be. What she
should
be concerned about is her
health
!” He threw the girl one last, fulminating glare and strode to the door. “But I leave
you
, Martha, to deal with her. I've run out of patience.”

After he slammed out, Martha approached the bed. “Aren't you feeling well, my love?”

“I'm fine, Mama,” Elinor answered, not meeting her mother's eyes. “Just a bit tired.”

Martha, lips pursed, studied her daughter closely. “What's this I hear about Julian kissing Felicia?”