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?”

Elinor threw her mother a worried look. If there was anything she didn’t wish to endure, it was going over the Julian matter with her mother. The two women were so close that each could feel the other’s pain, and pain was not something Elinor wished to inflict on her mother.

But Martha Selby could not easily be put off. A plump, energetic woman with a round, open face topped by a head of wiry white hair, she was as unpretentious as the household she ran. She cared nothing for elegance or show and was happier spending hours in the kitchen kneading dough than sitting like a lady at her embroidery frame working small stitches in fine silk. She had a warm heart that embraced all the people in her world down to the lowliest scullery maid. But the center of that heart was kept inviolate, possessed solely and completely by her only child—her daughter, whom she loved beyond all else. If anyone or anything threatened her daughter’s happiness or well being, she, like a lioness defending her cub, would rise in wrath, ready to do battle.

“It was nothing worth speaking of, Mama,” Elinor said, hoping her mother would not do battle over this. “I’m surprised you heard of it.”

“Heard of it? Everyone’s heard of it, from your uncle Henry to Samuel in the stable. They’re all whispering about it.”

“But why? There was nothing to it. Julian merely mistook Felicia for me at first glance. Merely a little misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“Then why are you crying?” Lady Selby cocked her head at her daughter with a look that combined suspicion with concern.

“I wasn’t! I … d-didn’t—!” Elinor insisted bravely, but, quite against her will, her chin begin to tremble, a certain sign that she was about to cry again. She turned away so that her mother might not see.

But her mother could always sense her pain. “Oh, my poor, sweet Elinor!” she murmured in heartfelt sympathy, sitting down beside her on the bed and throwing her arms around the girl. Elinor dropped her head on her mother’s shoulder and surrendered to sobs.

Elinor was not the sort, however, to indulge herself in waterworks for very long. After a few moments she lifted her head and wiped her cheeks. “You m-mustn’t make too much of this, Mama,” she said, gulping down what remained of her tears. “I’m only c-crying for Julian, not myself.”

“For Julian? Why on earth—?”

“Because he’s spent five lonely years dreaming of coming home to a lovely young betrothed, and now he finds himself faced with a faded hag!”

“Hag?” Martha Selby cried, outraged. “My beautiful daughter a hag?”

Elinor shook her head. “Look at me, Mama. Really look at me. Not as a mother, but as a man might see me who remembers me as I was five years ago. Then you’ll see that I’m … I’m”—it was hard for her to say the word—“unrecognizable.”

“What balderdash!” Lady Selby rose to her feet in magisterial dignity and, taking her daughter’s face in her hands, tilted it up and studied it. “No wonder Miles lost patience with you. I admit you’re looking a bit peaked—after all, you’ve been troubled with a head cold all week—but anyone with normal eyesight and a grain of sense can see beyond the pallor of illness to the beauty in this face!”

“Oh, Mama, really!” the daughter objected, blowing her nose. “Beauty, indeed.”

“Beauty I saw, and beauty I mean! If you ask me, Julian Henshaw is a fool.”

“Well, he’s the fool I love. And I’m afraid he’s disappointed in me.”

“In that case, my love, we must do something about it. If you think I’ll permit His Lordship Lovebourne—or any other man, for that matter—to think my daughter a hag, you’re out in your reckoning. Get up, child, and let’s brighten you up a bit. If Lord Lovebourne needs to be reminded of the girl he fell in love with, we’ll remind him.”