“Happy Christmas, Edwin,” she said.
“I do not know about you,” he said, grinning down at her, “but I am frozen out here. Whose idea was this, anyway?”
She smiled back at him, a radiant smile that lit her with beauty.
“It was the most wonderful idea in the world,” she said. “I have seen Christmas angels and the Christmas star, and I have taken all the love and joy of Christmas into my heart and my life. But I am chilly,” she admitted.
“We had better go back to bed, then,” he said, “and see if we can warm each other up.”
Even in the moonlight he knew that she blushed. But she did not stop smiling or gazing into his eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Edwin. Let’s do that.”
The Christmas star shed its radiant light onto Wyldwood long after they had gone inside and warmed each other and loved each other and fallen asleep, twined together beneath the rumpled bedcovers.
The Star of Bethlehem
“I’ve lost the Star of Bethlehem,” she told him bluntly when he came to her room at her maid’s bidding. There was some sullenness in her tone, some stubbornness, and something else in addition to both, perhaps.
He stood just inside the door of her bedchamber, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her, showing little emotion.
“You have lost the Star of Bethlehem,” he repeated. “Where, Estelle? You were wearing it last night.”
“I still have the ring,” she said with a nonchalance that was at variance with her fidgeting hands. She noticed the latter, and deliberately and casually brushed at the folds of her morning wrap in order to give her hands something to do. “But the diamond is gone.”
“Was it missing last night when we came home?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her. Having assured herself that her wrap fell in becoming folds, she was now retying the satin bow at her throat. She looked as if she cared not one whit about her loss.
“I would have mentioned it if I had noticed, would I not?” she said disdainfully. “I really don’t know, Allan. All I do know is that it is missing now.” She shrugged.
“It probably came loose when you hurled the ring at my head last night,” he said coolly. “Did you look at it when you picked it up again?”
She regarded him with raised chin and eyes that matched his tone. Only the heightened color of her cheeks suggested the existence of some emotion. “Yes, I did,” she said. “This morning. The star was gone. And there is no point in looking about you as if you expect it to pop up at you. Annie and I have been on our knees for half an hour looking for it.
It simply is not here. It must have fallen out before we came home.”
“I was standing at the foot of the bed when you threw it,” he said. “You missed me, of course. The ring passed to the left of me, I believe.”
“To the right,” she said. “I found it at the far side of the bed.”
“To the right, then,” he said irritably. “If I were to say that you threw it up into the air, you would probably say that you threw it under the floorboards.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said coldly.
“The diamond probably landed on the bed,” he said.
“What a brilliant suggestion!” She looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Both Annie and I had similar inspiration. We have had all the bedclothes off the bed. It is not there. It is not in this room, Allan.”
She reached into the pocket of her wrap and withdrew a ring, which she handed to him rather unnecessarily. There was certainly no doubt of the fact that the diamond was missing.
The Earl of Lisle took it on the palm of his hand and looked down at it-a wide gold band with a circlet of dark sapphires and an empty hole in the middle where the diamond had nestled. The Star of Bethlehem, she had called it-her eyes glowing like sister stars, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted-when he had given her the ring two years before, on the occasion of their betrothal.
“Look, my lord,” she had said-she had not called him by his given name until he had asked her to on their wedding night a few minutes after he had finished consummating their marriage. “Look, my lord, it is a bright star in a dark sky. And this is Christmas. The birthday of Christ.The beginning of all that is wonderful.The beginning for us.How auspicious that you have given me the Star of Bethlehem for our betrothal.”
He had smiled at her-beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacious Estelle, the bride his parents had picked out for him, though his father had died a year before and unwittingly caused a delay in the betrothal.
And holding her hand, the ring on her finger, he had allowed himself to fall all the way in love with her, though he had thought that at the age of thirty there was no room in his life for such deep sentiment. He had agreed to marry her because marriage was the thing to do at his age and in his position, and because marrying Estelle made him the envy of numerous gentlemen-married and single alike-in London. She would be a dazzling ornament for his home and his life.
It would have been better if he had kept it so, if he had not done anything as foolish as falling in love with her. Perhaps they would have had a workable relationship if he had not done that. Perhaps after almost two years of marriage they would have grown comfortable together.
“Well,” he said, looking down at the ring in his hand and carefully keeping both his face and voice expressionless, “it is no great loss, is it, Estelle? It was merely a diamond. Merely money, of which I have an abundance.” He tossed the ring up, caught it, and closed his hand around it. “A mere bauble. Put it away.” He held it out to her again.
Her chin lifted an inch as she took it from him. “I am sorry to have taken your time,” she said, “but I thought you should know. I would not have had you find out at some future time and think that I had been afraid to tell you.”
His lips formed into something of a sneer. “We both know that you could not possibly fear my ill opinion, don’t we?” he said. “I am merely the man who pays the bills and makes all respectable in your life. Perhaps the diamond fell into the pocket or the neckcloth of Martindale last evening. You spent enough time in his company. You must ask him next time you see him. Later today, perhaps?”
She ignored his last words. “Or about the person of Lord Peterson or Mr.
Hayward or Sir Caspar Rhodes,” she said. “I danced with them all last evening, and enticed them all into anterooms for secret dalliances.” Her chin was high, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
“I believe we said-or rather yelled-all that needs to be expressed about your behavior at the Eastman ball-or your lack of behavior-last night,” he said. “I choose not to reopen the quarrel, Estelle. But I have thought further about what I said heatedly then. And I repeat it now when my temper is down. When Christmas is over and your parents return to the country, I believe it will be as well for you to return with them for a visit.”
“Banishment?” she said. “Is that not a little gothic, Allan?”
“We need some time apart,” he said. “Although for the past few months we have seen each other only when necessary, we have still contrived to quarrel with tedious frequency. We need a month or two in which to rethink our relationship.”
“How about a lifetime or two?” she said.
“If necessary.” He looked at her steadily from cold blue eyes.
Beautiful, headstrong Estelle.Incurably flirtatious. Not caring the snap of a finger for him beyond the fact that he had had it in his power to make her the Countess of Lisle and to finance her whims for the rest of a pampered life, despite the occasional flaring of hot passion that always had him wondering when it was all over and she lay sleeping in his arms if she had ever gifted other men with such favors. And always hating himself for such unfounded suspicions.