The Mistletoe Wager

‘That has been the problem all along,’ she said. ‘When I came of age I looked too young to consider.’

‘Many women long for your problem, dear. When you are too old, I expect they will hate you for your youth. It is something to look forward to.’

‘Small comfort.’

‘And you needn’t worry. You will not be the only female, and I have not filled the house to the roof with prospective suitors. I believe you will find the company quite well balanced.’ He smiled as though he knew a secret. ‘But should you find someone present who is to your liking, and if he should like you as well, then I will be the happiest man in England. And to that end, I wish you to play hostess to my friends and to try to take some joy in it for yourself, even though it means a great deal of work.’ He was looking at her with such obvious pride and hope for her own welfare that she felt churlish for denying him his party.

‘Very well, Harry. Consider my good behaviour to be a Christmas gift to you. Let us hope, by the end of the festivities, that the only cooked geese are in the kitchen.’

For the next two days, Rosalind found herself buffeted along with the increasing speed of events. Harry’s carriage was unpacked, and servants were set to preparations. But they seemed to have no idea how to proceed without continual supervision, or would insist that they knew exactly what was to be done and then do the tasks in a manner that was obviously wrong. It was just as it had been since the moment she had stepped over the threshold and into Elise’s shoes. At least she’d managed to gain partial co-operation, by begging them to do things as Elise would have wanted them done, as proof of their loyalty to her and in honour of her memory.

It sounded to all the world as if the woman had died, and she’d been left to write her eulogy instead of run her house. But the servants had responded better to her moving speech then they had to anything she could offer in the way of instruction. At some point, she would have to make her brother stir himself sufficiently to retrieve his wife from London. For Rosalind was not welcome in the role of mistress here, nor did she desire it. But it must wait until after the holidays, for she had made Harry a promise to help him for Christmas and she meant to stick to it, until the bitter end.

At last the house was in some semblance of readiness, and the guests began to come—first in a trickle and then a flood. Arrivals were so frequent that the front door was propped open, despite the brisk wind that had arisen. A steady fall of snow had begun in the late afternoon and followed people across the stone floor in eddies and swirls. She busied herself with providing direction to servants, and praying that everyone would manage to find their way to the same room as their baggage.

Couples and families were talking loudly, shaking the snow from their coats and wraps and remarking in laughing tones about the deteriorating condition of the roads and the need for mulled wine, hot tea, and a warm fire. It seemed that Rosalind was continually shouting words of welcome into an ever-changing crowd, promising comfort and seasonal joy once they were properly inside, making themselves at home. Just to the left, the library had been prepared to receive the guests, for the sitting room would be packed solid with bodies should she try to fit all the people together in that room. The great oak reading tables had been pushed to the edges of the room and heaped with plates of sandwiches and sweets, along with steaming pots of tea, carafes of wine and a big bowl of punch.

There were sounds of gratitude and happiness in response, and for a moment she quite forgot the trouble of the last week’s preparation. And although at times she silently cursed her brother for causing the mess, she noticed that he was behaving strangely as he moved through the hubbub, making many restless journeys up and down the stairs. It was as if he was anticipating something or someone in particular, and his pleasure at each new face seemed to diminish, rather than increase, when he did not see the person he expected.

And then the last couple stepped through the open doorway.

‘Rosalind!’ Elise threw her arms wide and encompassed her in an embrace that was tight to the point of discomfort. ‘So you are the one Harry’s found to take the reins.’

‘Elise?’ The name came out of her as a phlegm-choked moan. ‘I had no idea that Harry had invited you.’

‘Neither does Harry,’ Elise whispered with a conspiratorial grin. ‘But how can he mind? This was my house for so long that I think I should still be welcome in it, for a few days at least. And since he made such a kind point of inviting my special friend, he must have meant to include me. Otherwise he would have left me quite alone in London for the holidays. That cannot have been his intention.’

‘Special friend?’ Elise could not mean what she was implying. And even if she did, Rosalind prayed she would not have been so bold as to bring him here. If Elise had taken a lover, Rosalind suspected that it was very much Harry’s intention to split the two up.

‘Have you met? I doubt it. Here, Nicholas—meet little Rosalind, my husband’s half-sister. She is to be our hostess.’

When she saw him, Rosalind felt her smile freeze as solid as the ice on the windowpanes. Nicholas Tremaine was as fine as she remembered him, his hair dark, his face a patrician mask, with a detached smile. It held none of the innocent mirth of their first meeting but all of the world-weariness she had seen in him even then. And, as it had five years before, her heart stopped and then gave an unaccustomed leap as she waited for him to notice her. ‘How do you do, Mr…?’

But it was too much to hope that he had forgotten her. ‘I believe we’ve met,’ he said, and then his jaw clenched so hard that his lips went white. He had paused on the doorstep, one boot on the threshold, snow falling on his broad shoulders, the flakes bouncing off them to melt at his feet. His clothing was still immaculate and in the first stare of fashion. But now it was of a better cut, and from more expensive cloth than it had been. It hardly mattered. For when she had first seen him, Nicholas Tremaine had been the sort of man to make poverty appear elegant.

If his change in tailor was an indication, his fortunes had improved, and wealth suited him even better. In any other man, she would have thought that pause in the doorway a vain attempt to add drama to his entrance, while allowing the audience to admire his coat. But she suspected that now Tremaine had seen her he was trying to decide whether it would be better to enter the house or run back towards London—on foot, if necessary.

The pause continued as he struggled to find the correct mood. Apparently he’d decided on benign courtesy, for he smiled, although a trifle coldly, and said, ‘We met in London. It was several years ago, although I cannot remember the exact circumstances.’

Liar. She was sure that he remembered the whole incident in excruciating detail. As did she. She hoped her face did not grow crimson at the recollection.

‘But I had no idea,’ he continued, ‘that you were Harry’s mysterious sister.’

Was she the only one who heard the silent words, Or I would never have agreed to come? But he was willing to pretend ignorance, possibly because the truth reflected no better on him than it had on her, so she must play the game as well.

‘I am his half-sister. Mother married my father when Harry was just a boy. He is a vicar.’ She paused. ‘My father, that is. Because of course Harry is not…’ She was so nervous that she was rambling, and she stopped herself suddenly, which made for an embarrassing gap in the conversation.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘I had no idea that you would be a guest here.’ Please, she willed, believe I had no part in this.

If the others in the room noticed the awkwardness between them, they gave no indication. Elise’s welcome was as warm as if there had been nothing wrong. ‘How strange that I’ve never introduced you. Rosalind was in London for a time the year we…the year I married Harry.’ She stumbled over her own words for a moment, as though discovering a problem, and Rosalind held her breath, fearing that Elise had noticed the coincidence. But then the moment passed, and Elise took Tremaine’s arm possessively. ‘I am sure we will all be close friends now. I have not had much chance to know you, Rosalind, since you never leave home. I hope that we can change that. Perhaps now that you are old enough, your father will allow you to come to London and visit?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, fighting the temptation to remind Elise that Rosalind was her senior by almost two months. Her age did not signify, for her father would never let her travel, and certainly not to visit her brother’s wife. If Elise meant to carry on a public affair, no decent lady could associate with her. And the identity of the gentleman involved made an embarrassing situation into a mortifying one.

Elise continued to act as if nothing was wrong. ‘I am glad that you have come to stay with Harry. He needs a keeper if he has taken to engaging in daft wagers for Christmas. And this party will be an excellent opportunity for you to widen your social circle.’

‘Wagers?’ She looked at her sister-in-law with helpless confusion. And then she asked, ‘What has Harry done now?’

Elise laughed. ‘Has he forgotten to tell you, little one, of the reason for this party? How typical of him. He’s bet the men at the club that he can make Mr Tremaine wish him a Merry Christmas. But Nick is most adamant in his plan to avoid merriment. I have had no impact on him, and you know my feelings on the subject of Christmas fun. It will be interesting to see if you can move him, now that you are in charge of the entertainments here.’

‘Oh.’ This was news, thought Rosalind. For at one time Nicholas Tremaine had been of quite a different opinion about the holiday, much to their mutual regret.

But there was no reason to mention it, for Tremaine seemed overly focused on his Garrick and his hat, as though wishing to look anywhere than at his hostess.

Now Elise was unbuttoning her cloak, and calling for a servant, treating this very much as if it was still her home. It was even more annoying to see the servants responding with such speed, when they would drag their feet for her. It was clear that Elise was mistress here, not her. Rosalind’s stomach gave a sick lurch. Let her find her own way to her room, and take her lover as well. She signalled to the servants to help Tremaine, and turned to make an escape.

And then she saw Harry, at the head of the stairs. The couple in the doorway had not noticed him as yet, but Rosalind could see his expression as he observed them. He saw Tremaine first, and there was a narrowing of the eyes, a slight smile, and a set to the chin that hinted of a battle to come. But then he looked past his adversary to the woman behind him.

Resolution dissolved into misery. The look of pain on his face was plain to see, should any observe him. Then he closed his eyes and took a gathering breath. When he opened them again he was his usual carefree self. He started down the stairs, showing to all the world that there was not a thing out of the ordinary in entertaining one’s wife and her lover as Christmas guests.

‘Tremaine, you have decided to take up my offer after all.’ He reached out to clasp the gentleman’s hand, and gave him a hearty pat on the back that belied his look of a moment earlier. ‘We shall get you out of the blue funk you inhabit in this jolly time.’

Tremaine looked, by turns, alarmed and suspicious. ‘I seriously doubt it.’

‘But I consider it my duty,’ Harry argued. ‘For how could I entrust my wife to the keeping of a man who cannot keep this holiday in his heart? She adores it, sir. Simply adores it.’ There was the faintest emphasis on the word ‘wife’, as though he meant to remind Tremaine of the facts in their relationship.

‘Really, Harry. You have not “entrusted” me to anyone. You speak as though I were part of the entail.’ Pique only served to make Elise more beautiful, and Rosalind wondered if it was a trick that could be learned, or if it must be bred in.

‘And Elise.’ Harry turned to her, putting a hand on each shoulder and leaning forward to kiss her.

She turned a cold cheek to him, and he stopped his lips just short of it, kissing the air by her face before releasing her to take her wrap. ‘This is most unexpected. I assumed, when you said that you never wished to set foot over my threshold again…’he leaned back to stare into her eyes ‘…that you would leave me alone.’

Elise’s smile was as brilliant as the frost glittering from the trees, and as brittle. ‘When I heard that you wished to extend your hospitality to Nicholas, I assumed that you were inviting me as well. We are together now, you know.’ There was a barb in the last sentence, but Harry gave no indication that he had been wounded by it.

‘Of course. And if it will truly make you happy, then I wish you well in it. Come in, come in. You will take your death, standing in the cold hall like this.’ He looked out into the yard. ‘The weather is beastly, I must say. All the better to be inside, before a warm fire.’

Tremaine cast a longing glance over his shoulder, at the road away from the house, before Harry shut the door behind him. ‘Come, the servants will show you to your rooms.’

‘Where have you put us?’ Elise asked. ‘I was thinking the blue rooms in the east wing would be perfect.’

Rosalind swallowed, unsure of how she was expected to answer such a bold request. Although Harry might say aloud that he wished for his wife to have whatever made her happy, she doubted that it would extend to offering her the best guest rooms in the house, so that she could go to her lover through the connecting door between them.

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.

Chapter Four

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.’

‘I never expected that you would marry me,’ she assured him. ‘And I had no wish to marry you. We had known each other for moments when the incident occurred. It would have done no good to pile folly upon folly trying to save my reputation.’

He smiled in triumph. ‘Miss Morley, I think I know very well what you expected. For now that I have come to this house the picture is suddenly clear to me. You expected Elise would get word of it and that she would choose your brother over me. And that is just what occurred.’