‘I must have the muff and the heavy cloak with the hood.’ Both were garments that Hannah had bought for her with Alex’s money. Should she try to pay him back? Or return them, perhaps? But she would never find respectable employment without respectable clothes on her back. He wouldn’t laugh about that, he would say it was foolish pride, and perhaps it was.
It was difficult at first to keep the smile on her face when she went downstairs to join the family in the hall, but the view from the door when Garnett flung it open took her breath away.
It had begun to snow and there, in a semicircle at the foot of the steps, was a group of carol singers. They launched into ‘Adeste Fidelis’ as the light spilled out down the whitened steps and illuminated their faces and beside her a fine tenor voice picked up the verse.
‘“Adeste fideles, læti triumphantes. Venite, venite in Bethlehem. Natum videte, regem angelorum. Venite adoremus…”’
It was Alex. Beyond him Lady Moreland added her contralto and Maria joined her. Tess began to sing, translating in her head. ‘“Come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…”’
Soon they were all singing, footmen and butler as well, and even a deep bass rumble from Alex’s father. There was silence when the last notes died away, then the singers began another carol, one that Tess, raised on the convent’s hymns, did not know: ‘Christians Awake!’
The rest of the staff had come out, too, and gathered round behind the villagers. Everyone sang and she stood and watched Alex, saw him smile at his mother, heard his voice, clear on the cold air, and knew she would remember this for the rest of her life.
One more carol and the staff were passing round glasses of punch, the farm wagon came round to carry the singers back to the village and the family coaches pulled up.
‘You are a dreadful fraud,’ Tess said to Alex as he helped her into the first carriage. ‘The things you said about carol singers!’
She expected him to joke, to pick up her rallying tone, but his face was serious as he settled her in the seat and stepped down. ‘I had forgotten the simple beauty of it,’ he said. Then he did smile. ‘Mama, mind that slippery patch.’ He helped his mother to her place, then Maria and his father. Matthew climbed in, assisting Dorcas, and Alex shut the door.
‘Is Alex—Lord Weybourn—not coming?’ Tess felt something like panic, which was foolish.
‘He has gone up on the box. Said something about clearing his head,’ Lord Moreland said with a grunt.
At least mine is clear enough, Tess thought. No room for daydreams now. Two days to get through, then I can ask Alex to send me back to London. I can go to Hannah’s lodging house. I have enough money to support myself for a few weeks. Perhaps Hannah will give me a reference.
*
The church was ancient and simple, its interior glowing with candlelight and made festive with evergreen swags along the pews. Up in the gallery the band was readying their instruments; there was a scraping from the fiddles, the deep boom of the serpent, the quick tootle of a flute.
Tess followed the family to the great box pew at the front of the nave and settled into a corner created by the pew butting up against a medieval tomb, an ornate box with the full-size effigies of a knight in armour and his lady lying on the top.
‘That’s Hugo de Tempest,’ Maria whispered.
Tess was grateful for the embroidered cushion on the hard oak bench seat and the carpet on the stone floor. The hassocks were embroidered, too, and she knelt on hers and did her best to calm her thoughts and turn them in an appropriate direction. Then she sat and fixed her gaze on the haughty profile of the recumbent Hugo and tried not to think about his descendant sitting four feet away from her.
*
Alex sat, knelt, stood and sang with his mind fixed on one thing, one person. As the congregation settled down for the sermon he shifted slightly on the pew so he could see Tess’s profile.
She was no longer his little nun. She was groomed and well dressed and had found the confidence to fit in with his family. And she was beautiful, he realised, watching the still, calm profile set against the frigid stone carving of the tomb. He had fallen in love with a woman without once thinking about beauty, and yet he had always expected it of any of the women he
had kept over the years.
He was dazzled by her body, there was no denying it, but it was Tess he had fallen in love with, not her face. His family liked her already, he had seen how competent, how caring she was with the staff in his own house. She would be a perfect countess—if only he could persuade her that she would be accepted. Damn the Ellerys. Why they had to build Sethcombe Hall next door and not in furthest Northumberland…
*
Alex was not certain afterwards when the idea had come to him. Possibly at some time between the end of the sermon and the blessing, certainly before he had shepherded his small flock down the aisle and abandoned his mother to Matthew’s support while he took his father’s arm.
‘Stop fussing, Alexander.’
‘As you say, sir. But I’d be grateful if you would be careful of your health. I have no wish to be using this signet except at your direction for many a long day.’
‘Ha! Humbug.’ But he smiled.
His mother hustled the earl off to his bed the moment they reached the house, Maria on their heels. Matthew had vanished. In front of him Tess was climbing the stairs slowly, back straight, cloak trailing behind her.
He followed her up quietly and caught her in the corridor. ‘Tess.’