A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh Page B

horseman beside the road, his horse held stationary while he looked toward the approaching carriage.
A highwayman
, she thought, and was about to turn to her husband to give the alarm. But the rider turned his horse’s head and galloped off ahead of them. He must have been merely uncertain of his direction, she thought.
    How much farther?
    “We will be at the village in a few minutes’ time,” her husband said suddenly, as if he had read her thoughts, “and at the house ten minutes after that.”
    It was the most he had said all at once since their journey began. Perhaps in the last week. She did not turn her eyes away from the window.
    “We will be here for the next year,” he said. “This is the place and these are the people with whom you will grow familiar, my lady. I believe it would be as well for us to forget about the past week, to put it behind us. Since we must endure each other’s company, we might as well do it with a measure of civility.”
    She swallowed. He was holding out an olive branch again.
    “And next week we will have guests to entertain,” he said. “Twenty-four of them, to be exact. It would be churlish of us to be so at odds with each other that we cannot give them a happy Christmas. Do you not agree?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Very well, then,” he said. There was a short silence. “I put an end to my liaison with Alice Freeman a few days before you spoke to me about her. I beg your pardon for not having done so before our marriage.”
    She felt only humiliation. When she had spoken so shrewishly, he had already finished with his mistress. And he had begged her pardon. She wanted to beg his for having broken their agreement, for having given them both a week of silence and unpleasantness. She searched around in her head for suitable words.
    But her attention was distracted. Bells? Even over the noise of the carriage and horses, she could hear bells pealing.
    “Oh, Lord,” her husband said, “I was afraid of this.”
    She looked at him inquiringly.
    “If you have any smiles in you, my lady,” he said, “you had better don them now. We are about to be given a traditional country welcome.”
    “What?” She stared at him blankly.
    “The Earl of Falloden is arriving home with his new bride,” he said. “We must be greeted accordingly. I wonder how they knew we were approaching.”
    The horseman
, Eleanor thought. And she felt her heart thumping as the carriage entered a village street and she saw that every window and door was hung with white bows and every inhabitant seemed to be out on the street, some of them waving handkerchiefs, all of them smiling broadly.
    “Smile!” her husband commanded. “And raise your hand in greeting.”
    Eleanor obeyed. And for the first time had some realization of how her marriage was to change her life, of what it meant to be a countess.
    The carriage drew to a halt outside the village inn and a clerical gentleman was bowing to her as her husband handed her out and a lady was curtsying at his side. The Reverend Jeremiah Blodell was honored to make the acquaintance of her ladyship, the Countess of Falloden, and he begged the honor of presenting his good wife, Mrs. Blodell. Eleanor checked her first impulse, which was to reach out her right hand, and inclined her head instead, smiling at the vicar and his wife.
    And then her husband extended his arm and led her through the lobby of the inn, where two maids in mobcaps curtsied to the ground, up the stairs to the assembly rooms, and out onto the balcony that overlooked the street. It was not a large village, but it seemed to Eleanor that every inhabitant must be in the street below. To her it looked to be a dense enough crowd. Someone called for three cheers, and the crowd complied with enthusiasm.
    When they quieted down, her husband took her by the hand and presented her to the crowd as his bride and the new Countess of Falloden. After the cheer that greeted his announcement and his brief words