Regency Christmas Wishes(85)

“Get up so I can knock you down again,” Jonathan said through clenched teeth.

Lord Ipcress either didn’t hear him or decided to let things literally lay where they were for the moment.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan told Pamela as he drew her close. “I didn’t know and didn’t believe what I thought I began to see. We’ll leave at first light. Pamela, I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be,” she said breathlessly.

“Of course I need be,” he said impatiently. “I wish I’d listened to your fears and given them more credence, instead of assuming I knew best. By God!” he said with an angry look at the man who lay at their feet. “I’d no idea of what passed for amusement in this set; my experience of these people was out of date. When I saw the way the guests were being paired off, and how they reacted, I remembered your suspicions, and followed. Where’s that wretched Fanshawe?”

“I knocked him down,” she said.

“Too bad. I’d have liked to do it.”

“Where’s . . . Marianna?” she asked.

“God knows,” he said bitterly, “and only He cares.”



“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said again. He stared out the coach window as they drove down the frosty country lane toward the main highway again. “What a ghastly way to start a Christmas holiday. Forgive me.”

“They all weren’t awful,” Pamela said generously. “I quite liked some of them. The Whitleys and the Gordons, and Mr. Ames and Lord Montrose also left this morning, you know.”

“Yes, and Sam Gregory as well,” he said. “But that only means we weren’t the only ones foolish enough not to look before we leaped.” He avoided her eyes and cleared his throat, very glad that he’d sent her maid with his valet ahead in another coach.

“I spoke to Lady Fanshawe this morning,” he said. “We’ll never see them again. I can only think that losing her looks made her also lose her good sense. Although, now in retrospect, I have to admit that a grown woman who found it amusing to seduce a green lad never really had good sense. What could I have been thinking? There was gossip, but I discounted it in my eagerness to see you established in the social whirl. I’ve been away at the wars too long, Pamela. I’d forgot not only who was important in the social world, but also my own good sense. Forgive me. We’ll make new friends, decent friends, together. I’ll not impose my preferences on you either.”

She nodded, and smiled widely. He was anxious to win her over, but he was only human. She was drinking in every penitent word, and he supposed she had the right. But he was tired of apologizing.

“Do you think our arriving days early will upset your family’s plans?” he suddenly asked.

“I think they will be ecstatic,” she said.

She thought she heard him sigh. So she moved close to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “We’ll have a happy Christmas,” she said. “You’ll see.”

He took her hand. “I hope we shall. I only wish my part of it had turned out differently.”

She didn’t like her new husband when he was arrogant. But she discovered she didn’t like him when he was this repentant, either. So she kissed him, and they forgot sadness and apologies, and Christmas itself, for a while.



Jonathan smiled. His wife had her nose pressed to the carriage window, like a child at a sweet shop.

“It looks just the same!” she caroled as she stared out at the old farmhouse they were approaching. “Oh! But I’ve so missed this place.”

Her husband’s smile slipped.

“London is wonderful,” she went on, “but this is home!”

“Indeed,” he said. He had a home in the Cotswolds as well as the one in London, an ancient manor house that his wife had said was lovely, the one and only time they’d visited it. His estate was older, more beautiful and historic than the house they approached. But she’d never greeted it with half so much pleasure as she now showed as they neared her parents’ rambling country home.

“Oh—there’s Papa!” she cried as the coach slowed in the front drive. “And Mama! And Bobby and Elizabeth—and Cousin George! That means that Mary must have had the baby. And that little love with the basket of holly must be Harriet’s youngest, only look at her curls. Oh, my, how lovely, all the children standing waiting for us, isn’t that sweet? They’ve grown so much I vow I can’t tell whose child is which. Look! There’s Kit and Harry with different hairstyles! Oh, good, they must have finally grown up and decided being the terrible Arthur twins is passé. And could that be Cecil? No! But it is! He’s home from the sea at last. Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, turning to give him a quick hug, “we’re here! I’m home!”