Falling Stars

“You shouldn’t have waited up, all the same,” Julius reproved his brother. “It’s past three o’clock, and in a few hours the house will erupt into chaos. You may be able to sleep through the racket, but Christina will be awakened at dawn’s crack by overexcited children. By nightfall she’ll be too tired to dance at the Yuletide ball. In consequence of which, several gentlemen are sure to blow their brains out. Really, you’re most inconsiderate.”

“It isn’t his fault,” Christina said before Marcus could retort on his brother. “I nagged him to tell me about Paris, then Greece, until he’s hoarse from talking. Moreover, the twins will never think of waking me. They’ll be too busy interfering with the party preparations and being tripped over by servants.”

“And I shall ask the gentlemen to step outside to shoot themselves or hang themselves or whatever their disappointment moves them to do,” said Marcus. “We can easily collect the corpses next morning.”

“There, it’s all settled.” Penny patted her husband’s cheek. “What a fuss you make over nothing, Julius. Come to bed.”

Marcus kept by Christina as they trailed upstairs after the other couple, but he didn’t say a word. He continued on with her, walking to the guest wing, although his room was in the wing opposite. She should have pointed this out to him, and meant to, but she couldn’t find the right words. Every imagined sentence seemed to attach too much significance to what was surely no more than absent- mindedness. Marcus had said before that he was weary, and he did appear lost in thought at present.

When they reached her door, she paused. “Thank you for giving me your company.” Her voice was carefully polite. “You were generous to indulge my curiosity, and very patient with my ignorance.”

“One could hardly expect you to know what most of your government doesn’t. You at least ask intelligent questions. And your mind is open to new ideas.”

The servants had left two candles lit in the hall. In the flickering light it was hard to read his face. The troubled expression she discerned might simply be shadows.

“I like to learn,” she said. “I told you my life had been narrow.”

“Yes, you did. I’d thought...” He looked away. “But you mean to make up for that, I see. It’ll be good for you to go abroad, and good for your little girls. I’m... I’m glad your great-aunt goes with you. She is Julius’s godmother, you may recall.”

“Yes, I remember.” If her parents, rather than her great-aunt, had chaperoned her ten years ago, there would have been no stolen moments with Marcus Greyson in sitting rooms or gardens or woodland paths.

“She’ll be an excellent traveling companion,” Marcus said. “She’s highly knowledgeable and far more liberal minded than most of her generation. Equally important, she’ll see that no one takes advantage of you. Innkeepers and shopkeepers, I mean. And guides. The Continent is a net of perils for the unwary.”

He shook his head. “But I’m keeping you from your rest.” He moved to open the door for her.

His coat sleeve brushed her arm, a breath of a touch, soft wool against her skin. For one pulsing moment they stood frozen, and the air between them warmed and thickened. Christina felt the way she had earlier when their gazes had locked: as though they were teetering on the brink of a precipice. She was afraid that if he gave the smallest tug, she would fall... and he was bending toward her. But he drew back quickly, almost in the same breath.

He clasped his hands behind his back. “Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” she said.

Then he turned and swiftly walked away.

***

The following day, while the two women dealt with the last minute frenzy of preparation for the ball, Marcus and Julius gathered greenery outdoors, with the dubious assistance of four rambunctious children. The girls were supposed to supervise only, according to Marcus’s stern orders. They couldn’t seem to do so, however, without inspecting every evergreen branch and pricking their fingers on holly. Then they must tumble about in the cart with the boys and crush their fancy bonnets and lose their mittens—and generally turn themselves into dirty little frights, as Marcus unchivalrously told them.

“What will your mama say?” he asked as he was wrestling Delia’s hideously fussy bonnet back into place for the hundredth time.

“Off with those dirty things and into the bath!” she shrieked.

Livy giggled, which made Delia giggle, too, and the boys mocked them, squealing like pigs. Delia instantly dashed off in pursuit of Kit, while Livy went after his brother. The bonnets tumbled askew again, and mittens dropped into the dirt. By the time they returned to the house, ah four children looked as though they’d spent the last month mucking out the stables.

Leaving Julius and the boys to carry the greenery to the ballroom, Marcus planted Livy on the antique porter’s chair by the door and began tugging off her boots. Delia, as might be expected, couldn’t wait for assistance. She was sitting on the cold floor wrestling with her muddy footwear when Christina entered the vestibule.

“Good heavens, where did these little ragamuffins come from?” she asked, her voice laced with amusement.

“A gypsy,” Marcus answered. “He gave me these disorderly creatures in trade for Delia and Livy.”

“No, no! It’s me, Mama,” Delia cried. “He didn’t give us away.”

“I’m sure he wishes he did.” She shook her head. “I suppose you’ve been driving Mr. Greyson out of his wits.”

“Oh, no, we were helping him,” said Livy. She fixed an earnest blue gaze upon Marcus. “We did help, didn’t we?”

“Certainly,” he said. “I never could have found such lovely boughs without you.” After carefully setting the right boot down next to its mate, he rose and turned to Christina. “I’m afraid we’ve lost a red mitten. I’m told a squirrel made off with it. Also, our bonnets are...” He gestured helplessly at the soiled, mangled bonnets. “I believe the only solution is to burn them. I am sorry. I should have—”

“Nonsense,” Christina said briskly. “We’ve plenty more. Heaps of them, just waiting to be destroyed.” She stepped nearer to add in a low voice, “The aunts, you know. Unfortunate tastes in millinery, yet they will keep sending the silly things.”

“I did wonder,” he said, reflexively lowering his own voice to the same conspiratorial pitch. “You’re not at all fussy in your own attire, yet the hats were awash in ribbons and ruffles.”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “They are ghastly, aren’t they? I dread the arrival of those packages, because the instant the girls don their finery, I want to break out in whoops. One of these days I’m sure to strangle, trying not to.”

“Mama, you’re telling secre

ts,” Delia reproached. She bolted upright and grabbed her mother’s hand. “Tell me.”

“Me, too,” said Livy, scrambling down from the chair. She tugged at Marcus’s cuff. “Tell me what she said, Mr. Greyson.”

He scooped Livy up on one arm, then held out his other for Delia. With a grin, she released her mother, and let herself be taken up as well.

“Really, Marcus, you mustn’t,” Christina protested. “They’re too big to be carried.”

He headed down the hall, obliging her to follow. “I can hardly let them run about the cold floor in their stocking feet.”

“They’re not nearly as delicate as they appear, I assure you.”

Ignoring her, he proceeded up the stairs.

“Tell us the secret,” said Delia.

He shook his head.

“Please,” her sister coaxed. “We won’t tell anybody.”

“Neither will I,” he said. “I’m a very good secret keeper. I shan’t tell your mama’s, just as I shan’t tell yours.”

Christina, mounting the stairs beside him, looked up sharply. “Oh, they’ve been telling secrets, have they?”

“Just one,” he said. “But my lips are sealed.”

“Very well,” she said. “We shall simply have to pry one of your own out of you, to make it even.”

The twins looked at Marcus, then at each other, and giggled.

“I see,” said their mama. “He’s already told you one, has he? Then I shall have to extract a secret all by myself. A deep, dark one,” she added in the same hollow tones she’d used when she read Frankenstein.

Marcus knew the ominous voice was for the twins’ benefit. His flesh prickled all the same. The girls loved it, of course and, snuggling closer, expressed their hopes that his secret would be quite ghastly and horrible.

He tried to convince himself he had no dark secrets to be extracted, thus no reason to feel anxious. His life, as Christina had remarked the night before, was open to public view, mistresses and commercial endeavors alike.