Jessica's mind was in a daze. She had been half expecting a reply to her hostess's letter some time over Christmas. Indeed, until a week or so ago, she had been wondering if her grandfather would make the journey to Hendon Park for Christmas. But only now did she realize how very unprepared she was to meet him again.
More than two years had passed since they had met last, and that parting had been a bitter one.
She did not stop to go to her room to tidy herself. She passed her hand over her hair as she ran lightly down the stairs to make sure that her curls were not too wayward, and smoothed out the creases of her dress. She would be cool. Affectionate but cool. She would show him that she loved him but could live very well without him.
Jessica paused outside the doors leading into the salon, schooled her features into bright welcome, took a deep breath, and nodded to the liveried footman who was waiting to open the door for her.
The first person she saw when she entered the room was the Earl of Rutherford, standing with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind his back, looking grim and surely more handsome than she remembered him to be. She could feel the color draining from her face. There has been some mistake, she thought, some trick.
But at almost the same moment she was aware of her grandfather rising from a winged chair, the dowager beside him, smiling with benevolent triumph. Her grandfather looked very familiar though she had not seen him for so long. A little more stooped, perhaps. But Grandpapa nevertheless. Her very own. The only relative of her very own.
"Grandpapa," she said, holding on to her dignity, smiling politely, and advancing on him with both hands outstretched.
"Well, Jessica," he said gruffly, "you have led me a merry dance, my girl. I was beginning to think I would not see you again this side of the grave."
"Oh, Grandpapa," she said, her outstretched hands reaching up suddenly to encircle his neck as she hurled herself against him, wondering for one startled moment who it was that was sobbing so loudly.
It was a humbling experience, the Earl of Rutherford considered, to find himself so totally ignored. He had been away from her for three weeks, living and breathing Jess Moore, scarce able to live through the days until he would see her again, until he could try once more to persuade her to be his wife. And it looked for all the world as if she in the meanwhile had forgotten his very existence.
There had been that moment, of course, when she had entered the blue salon and seen only him. There had been no unawareness of his existence, no indifference in her face for that brief spell. He had been about to start forward to catch her before she swooned. But it had lasted only a moment. She had soon been distracted. And there had been nothing like that first look in the whole day since. And who could say now what it had meant? Acute embarrassment at coming face to face with him again most probably.
He watched her now covertly from across the drawing room, sitting close beside Heddingly, her arm linked through his, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with happiness. They were in conversation with Faith and Aubrey. It was impossible to hear the topic on which they talked. The room was crowded to overflowing with his own family and aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins' children galore, in addition to special guests like the marquess, Jess, and Godfrey. The week of Christmas was the one time of the year when the nursery brood were allowed to spill downstairs on numerous occasions. No one minded. It all added to that special atmosphere of the season.
He was happy for her. Remembering how she had appeared to him during that week at Lord Barrie's, he could imagine how very lonely her life had been for the past two years with no family of her own around her. It was hard for him to picture life without family. His was always there to exasperate him, to criticize him, to interfere in his affairs, to love him. Above all, he supposed, to give him a sense of his own identity. Jess had been without that for more than two years.
The scene in the blue salon had been very affecting. It was the only time he had ever seen Jess completely out of control of herself. Her face had crumpled as she hurled herself into old Heddingly's arms, and she had sobbed there loud and long before the marquess had given over kissing her hair, patting her back, and blinking his eyes fiercely and had drawn a large square of linen from a pocket and put it into one of her hands.
His grandmother had also been blowing her nose, Rutherford recalled, her face severe, muttering about the drafts at Hendon that always succeeded in giving her a cold over Christmas. And he had had to clasp his hands behind his back until his knuckles almost cracked and regard his boots with particular concentration to keep from showing his own emotion.
She had stopped eventually and availed herself of the handkerchief. And she had sat on a sofa beside Heddingly, as she did now, his hand firmly clasped in hers, her eyes wide on his face, almost as if she believed that if she lost touch with him and stopped seeing him he would disappear again.
Not a look in his direction.
"We have Charles to thank for your grandpapa's arrival, my dear Jessica," his grandmother had said during the conversation that ensued. "The marquess had decided that he did not own a traveling carriage fit for the journey. A letter would have had to suffice until the weather grew warmer. But Charles brought him."
She had looked at him then. Through him, rather. He had had the impression that she did not see him at all.
"Thank you, my lord," she had said before turning and smiling with warm affection at the old man again, laying her cheek against his shoulder for a moment.
No questions of how it had come about that he had gone to her grandfather. No queries about his health, about his whereabouts for the past three weeks. No polite wishes that his morning's journey had been a pleasant one. No sign of any gladness to see him. Or of displeasure in seeing him. No reaction at all.;
"Charles." Hope was tapping his arm. "Claude has asked you twice already if you wish to play a game of billiards. You look as if you might be a million miles away."
The cousin in question laughed. "There must be a female in it," he said. "And where have you been for the last three weeks anyway, Charles? Is she to appear in London during the coming Season?"
The group around him all joined in the laughter.
"My lips are sealed," he said, grinning. "You don't think I would confide in you, Claude, do you, you puppy? An older cousin has to have some secrets. And I thought you had learned long ago not to humiliate yourself by challenging me to a game of billiards. It seems I have to refresh your memory. Are you coming, Godfrey?" He got to his feet.
"I shall stay to keep your sister company," Sir Godfrey replied. "I know that I would be drawn into challenging you too. And I know just as surely that you would crush me as you always do. You run along, and I shall stay here and hold on to my self-esteem."
Lord Rutherford put his arm across the shoulders of a tall, thin young lad who had been hovering in the vicinity of his group for several minutes.
"Are you coming too, Julius?" he asked. "Have you really grown a foot since last year, or is it just my imagination? Can I interest you in a game of billiards?"
Young Julius was beaming with pride as he left the room with his idol's hand still resting casually on his shoulder.
"I understand that the pond is to be scraped off tomorrow for the children to skate on," Sir Godfrey said. "And you are to accompany them, Lady Hope?"
"Oh," she said, flashing him an apologetic smile, "skating at Christmas time has always been traditional, Sir Godfrey, when there is ice. We are not always so fortunate, of course. We all go, you know. The distinctions between children and adults become somewhat blurred at this time of year."
"And is a mere family friend permitted to join the fun?" he asked.