Citit - A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-25T21:00:00+00:00

SHE WARMED HER HANDS before the fire and stared into the flames and felt like crying. Not that she would cry, of course. She could not do so. She had been unable to cry since before Papa died. And she would not cry anyway when he would be coming into her room at any moment.

Christmas was going to escape her this year, she thought. Oh, it had seemed all day as if it was to be there with all the joy and wonder and magic that it usually offered. But it was not to be so. The decorations had failed to warm her heart on her return to the drawing room from the library, and the Christmas carols had failed to make her remember Bethlehem and a stable and a child and the meaning of it all. She had suddenly, with a great stabbing of grief, missed her father—and wished that he had not made her promise to enjoy Christmas for him. How could one force oneself to enjoy Christmas?

Her family’s teasing had failed to amuse her. Uncle Sam had wanted to know, in a voice that had drawn the attention of everyone in the room, where they had been, and the witticisms had flown from Uncle Sam to Uncle Ben to Uncle Harry, and Aunt Eunice and Aunt Irene had advised the two of them to take no notice, and Aunt Ruth and Muriel and Susan had blushed. And then Tom had noticed where she was standing and pointed out the fact to her husband, laughing.

So he had been forced to join her beneath the kissing bough and set his hands on her shoulders and kiss her on the lips, while the teasing and affectionate jokes had resumed and Aunt Ruth had blessed her soul.

Eleanor shivered. There was to be no happy Christmas after all. And yet she had promised Papa.

Quite by accident she had met Wilfred’s eyes across the room when the kiss was over. He had not even been disguising the look of desperate unhappiness on his face.

And now her husband was coming to her, she thought, shivering again. Because his pride had been hurt. Because he had realized that she had never wanted his precious title and was not groveling at his feet with gratitude. Because he felt the need to make her his possession and destroy her own pride.

But she did not want it like this. She had been fooling herself since their arrival in the country. Not imagining that he loved her or even felt any real affection for her—no, definitely nothing as fanciful as that. But hoping perhaps that there could be peace, respect, even a mild friendship between them. But that hope was all destroyed now because he had found out about her feelings for Wilfred.

Wilfred! But she could not spare thoughts for him now. She would not. She had married someone else and there was only her marriage now. There was no point in pining for a love that could never flourish again.

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