Page 10 of A Christmas Love Redeemed

Chapter Nine

The Christmas ball at the Darlingtons’ grand house was one of the highlights of the season. A couple of hundred people already packed the ballroom, spilling into the anterooms and, braving the cold and the soft blanket of snow, out on to the terrace.

The already splendid house had been decorated for the season with boughs of greenery, strategically placed mistletoe and swags of red velvet, illuminated by hundreds of candles in the brilliant cut chandeliers.

‘Lady Maxwell,’ the major domo intoned, but no one even looked Hannah’s way as she stepped into the crowded ballroom.

Except for one person.

Sophie Westhall pushed through the crowd. She grabbed Hannah’s arm, her fingers digging painfully into the flesh as she dragged Hannah into a shadowy nook.

From Sophie’s high colour and the spittle forming around her lips, Hannah concluded the Honourable Sophie Westhall was not pleased

‘You have no right to be here!’

Hannah shook her arm free and produced the invitation card.

‘I have every right to be here,’ she said calmly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, Sophie, I am sure your friends will be wondering where you have gone.’

The encounter had unnerved her, and Hannah selected an uncomfortable gilded chair, which offered a good vantage of the room.

She spread out the grey silk of her skirts and laid her gloved hands in her lap.

If Fabien was to be among the invited guests tonight, she would see him long before he noticed her.

But it was not Fabien who found her. Lord Easterbrook loomed up in front of her, a glass of champagne in his hand.

‘Lady Maxwell. You are quite alone. May I offer you a drink?’

She smiled and thanked him as he handed her the glass.

Unbidden, he hitched his coat tails and took a seat beside her.

‘There is no need to keep me company, your Lordship,’ Hannah said.

He coughed. ‘Lady Maxwell, I wish to apologise on behalf of Miss Westhall.’

Hannah shrugged. ‘What for? She is not your responsibility?’

‘Yet,’ he said, and his mouth took on a downward cast. ‘I was privy to her recounting of her treatment of you and, to be honest, I was appalled. To read and destroy someone’s private correspondence and then to dismiss you out of hand…’

If he had had a chin, it would have been quivering with outrage.

Hannah laid her hand over his.

‘Thank you. You are very kind, and Sophie is entirely undeserving of you.’

He looked at the dance floor where Sophie was dancing with her friend Louise’s brother and hefted a sigh.

‘I will have to offer for her in the new year. My parents are expecting an engagement by the end of this season.’

‘She will lead you a merry dance.’

‘I know.’

He looked so miserable she almost patted his knee in sympathy.

‘I have no advice to offer on the subject of unhappy marriages,’ she said, and her breath caught.

Fabien had just arrived with his sister, the Countess of Lydbury, on his arm.

Lady Darlington descended on him, and after a brief exchange, he offered her his arm for the next dance. The whole room seemed to hold its collective breath as they danced. They made a perfect couple.

Lord Easterbrook looked from the couple on the floor to Hannah. He harrumphed and rose to his feet. ‘The next dance is the supper dance,’ he said. ‘Sophie will be expecting… Please excuse me.’

She waved her fan at him. ‘Of course. Thank you for your kindness, my Lord, and believe me when I say I wish you happy.’

He bowed, and she watched him push through the crowd to rejoin Sophie and her friends. Sophie cast Hannah a hateful glance, but Lord Easterbrook took her arm and led her out on to the floor.

Watching Fabien and Elizabeth Darlington together, Hannah’s confidence began to ebb. This had been a terrible mistake. She did not belong in his world. What right did she have to think he still entertained feelings for her, after all these years?

Maybe the letter Sophie had destroyed had spoken of love in a past tense. What if he had been telling her that it was all over and she should stay away? Her breath constricted in her throat, and she rose from her shadowed seat.

Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she slipped out onto the terrace.

The snow-covered garden stretched down to the Thames and the bright lights from the house sparkled in the pristine whiteness and the dark depths of the river.

She turned her face to the stars, fighting the wave of loneliness and desolation that swept over her.

A choking sob escaped, drawn away on the cold river breeze.

‘It is too cold to be out here.’

She started at the once familiar voice, the breath stopping in her throat. She could not move, didn’t dare look around in case the man who stood behind her was nothing more than her imagination.

‘I like the cold. It reminds me I am alive,’ she said, wondering how one correctly addressed French aristocracy and adding, ‘my lord.’

‘My lord?’ His voice held a murmur of amusement. ‘What happened to “Fabien”?’

‘Fabien was a boy I knew a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I do not believe I would recognise him anymore. I would be surprised if he recognised me.’

The snow on the terrace crunched beneath his feet as he moved towards her. He stood so close she could almost feel his warm breath on her neck. If he touched her, she would melt.

‘But he has never forgotten you, Hannah Linton. As soon as I had parole, I wrote to you, but your mother replied, saying that you had married that man Maxwell and I was not to write again.’

A choked sob rose in Hannah’s throat, and she leaned her gloved hands on the wall of the terrace. The snow soaked through them, but she hardly felt the pain of the cold dampness.

‘I know. It was too cruel, Fabien. I destroyed that letter. If my husband had found it …’ She swallowed back the tears. ‘I told Mama to write to you.’

‘Too cruel?’

He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she shrank from his warmth as he gently turned her to face him.

She forced herself to look up at him, taking in the man he had become.

He stood with his back to the brightly lit ballroom, his face shadowed and immobile, like the carved face of a statue.

A face she had known so well, harder now than it had been all those years ago, but still the face of Fabien Brassard, her first and only love.

‘Did you think I married Maxwell willingly? I was the price of his silence. He would have seen Mama and me both hang for harbouring an enemy.’

‘But why marriage? What did you have that he wanted so badly?’

She laughed, a short, bitter laugh. ‘My body, Fabien. He wanted sons but in that I failed him.’

There had been pregnancies… and miscarriages and then, mercifully, Maxwell’s death.

His grip on her shoulder tightened for a moment and then he released her, spreading his hands in a gesture of futility.

‘You paid a heavy price for my freedom. I abandoned you to a terrible fate with that monster. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?’

‘Forgive you ...?’

Forgive you? I have never stopped loving you, dreaming that, despite everything, you would return and rescue me, but you never came...

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ she said at last. ‘Maxwell died in a hunting accident. It was the happiest day of my life.’

He lifted her right hand and grimaced. ‘Your glove is wet. Allow me.’

He peeled off the long grey glove and drew an audible breath as the little garnet ring sparkled in the light flooding from the ballroom, like a ruby. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the ring.

‘The first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me …’ The familiar words of the Christmas carol drifted out through the open door

‘Carollers,’ Hannah said. ‘I haven’t truly celebrated Christmas since the day they took you away. How could I celebrate a season of happiness and love without you in my life?’

He placed a finger under his chin and raised her face to the light, a gentle smile curving the corners of his lips. ‘Nine years is a long time to wait … Is it too late for Fabien and Hannah?’

He kissed each finger in turn and, turning her hand over, brushed his lips across her palm before drawing her into his arms. She melted into his warmth, suddenly conscious of the cold and her inadequate gown.

Their lips met and they entwined as the long years slipped away and they were once more just Fabien and Hannah.

When they broke apart the carollers were singing. ‘The fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five golden rings …’

He smiled. ‘Happy Christmas, Hannah Linton.’

As he bent to kiss her again, she whispered, ‘Happy Christmas, Fabien Brassard.’