Free A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau by Mary Balogh Page B

I
feel
pale.” She smiled. “Now that you are here, I shall go out again. We will go shopping tomorrow morning. I noticed when you arrived that there was a hole in the palm of your glove. I daresay there were no shops of note in the village close to Clarence’s where you might have bought new ones. I am glad of it. Now I have an excuse to buy them for you as a gift. I was still in Switzerland at the time of your birthday, was I not?”
    “Oh, Helena.” Her aunt was flustered. “You do not need to be buying me presents. I wore those old gloves because they are comfortable and no one would see them in the carriage.”
    Helena smiled. Mrs. Letitia Cross was a widow, like herself. But Mr. Cross had not left her with an independence. Her meager stipend barely enabled her to keep herself decently clothed. She had to rely on various relatives to house her and feed her and convey her from place to place.
    “I need gloves, too,” Helena said, “and perhaps a muff. I need a warm cloak and warm dresses for a British winter. Ugh! It seems to be upon us already. Why can no one seem to build up the fires decently in this house?” She got up and jerked on the bell pull.
    “But Helena, my dear.” Her aunt laughed. “It is a magnificent fire. One would need a quizzing glass to be able to detect the fires in Clarence’s hearths, I do declare. Though I must not complain. They were kind to me. The children and the governess were not allowed fires in their bedchambers either.”
    “I shall have one built half up your chimney tonight,” Helena said. And then she turned to speak irritably toHobbes, who looked expressionlessly at the roaring fire and said he would send someone immediately with more coals.
    “I think I may go to Italy for Christmas,” Helena said, throwing herself restlessly back onto her chair. “It will be warmer there. And the celebrations will be less cloying, less purely hypocritical than they are here. The Povises will be going at the end of November, I daresay, and there is always a party with them. I shall make one of their number. And you will make another. You will like Italy.”
    “I will not put you to so much expense,” Mrs. Cross said with quiet dignity. “Besides, I do not have the wardrobe for it. And I am too old to be jauntering around foreign parts.”
    Helena clucked her tongue. “How old
are
you?” she asked. “You speak as if you are an octogenarian.”
    “I am fifty-eight,” her aunt replied. “I thought you planned to stay here for the winter, Helena. And for the spring. You said you longed to see an English spring again.”
    Helena got restlessly to her feet and walked over to the window, although it was far from the fire, which a maid had just built up. “I am bored with England,” she said. “The sun never shines here. What is the point of an English spring, Aunt, and English daffodils and snowdrops and bluebells when the sun never shines on them?”
    “Has something happened?” her aunt asked her. “Are you unhappy about something, Helena?”
    Her niece laughed. “Of course something has happened,” she said. “Many things. I have been to dinners and dances and soirées and private concerts and have seen the same faces wherever I go. Pleasant faces. People with pleasant conversation. How dull it is, Letty, to see the same faces and listen to the same conversation wherever one goes. And no one has been obligingenough to do anything even slightly scandalous to give us all something more lively to discuss. How respectable the world has become!”
    “There is no special gentleman?” her aunt asked. It was always her opinion that Helena should search for another husband, though she had never done so herself in twenty years of widowhood.
    Helena did not turn from the window. “There is no special gentleman, Aunt,” she said. “There never will be. I have no wish for there to be. I value my freedom far too much.”
    The street outside was quite busy, she noticed, but there