Page 64 of The Widow’s Christmas Surprise

Maria had had enough of Lord Wetherby. She should have just made good on her promise to his father to give either of them the cut direct when she saw them again. “Then who the dickens do you mean?”

“Why our child, of course, Maria.”

Though unable to speak, Maria’s mouth had dropped open, her brow furrowed in an attempt to make some sense out of his words. Her friends, however, wore curious expressions, as if they might, heaven forbid, give some credence to his claim.

Finally, she said, “You must be mad.”

“I assure you, I am not.” His face bore the expression of a repentant rogue, who has definitely sinned and enjoyed it, but would have you believe he is sorry now. An expression Anthony had apparently cultivated and could produce at a moment’s notice. “Do you not remember? We agreed that if you found yourself increasing, you would write to me and we would make arrangements to marry.”

“Get out!” Maria strode toward him exactly as she had done to his father. “This is now my house, not Kersey property. You will get out now before I have the footmen fetched to throw you out.”

“You don’t need to wait for footmen, Lady Kersey.” Rob spoke up and punched Jemmy in the arm. “We’re old hands at moving unconscious bodies, aren’t we, Brack?” He gave Anthony a fiendish glare. “We’d be happy to oblige you this instant.”

“Maria.” Anthony seemed to ignore all the threats, but maintained a calm and soothing manner. “You haven’t even told me if you have suspicions. However, if you didn’t have any you would have said it straightaway.” He grinned at her and her stomach turned. “Do you think you are carrying my child?”

“No.” It took every ounce of strength of will to refrain from pummeling his smirking face. “There is no way on this earth that I am carrying your child because I have never, ever been intimate with you, Lord Wetherby, and never will be. So take this little scheme of yours and try it on some other woman. It will not work on me.”

“I can produce proof, if you insist.”

“You can do no such thing.” The man was mad. What proof was he going to produce? The rock that smashed his face when she dropped them to the ground during the mistletoe gathering? Would he bring in the imaginary bird to testify what it had seen? “It’s preposterous. It never happened for there to be any proof.”

Her friends, however, had begun to eye her askance. Dear lord, why would they not believe her? “Then show it to me.”

To her astonishment, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and produced two black jet jeweled hairpins. She looked closer. They looked just like the ones she had been wearing when—

“I found these in the dowager house after you left.”

Her hand going to her throat, Maria gasped. Dear God, he knew. Anthony knew about her tryst with Hugh the day she fell through the ice. They had been in such a hurry to get back they had left the chamber somewhat disarrayed. She’d missed the hairpins later that night, but didn’t remember where she might have lost them. Now she knew.

“Are they yours, Maria?” Fanny asked, her gaze darting from Maria to Jane to Anthony.

She should simply lie to Fanny. Say they were not hers. Or tell the truth, as Jane had stressed all along. Her friends already knew about Hugh, knew that Anthony was spouting lies. So why were they sending questioning glances her way? The gentlemen were carefully avoiding her gaze now. In a case like this, did everyone assume the man was telling the truth and the woman was lying?

And suddenly Maria was running. Out the door, up the stairs, down the corridor to her bedchamber. She raced in, heart pounding, then whirled around and slammed the door. Suddenly drained, she leaned against the door, laid her head on the panel and burst into tears.

How was she to prove to everyone that she’d been in the dowager house with Hugh, if Hugh was not here to defend her against Anthony’s lies?

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” The soothing ritual hair-brushing had helped calm Maria once more after the disastrous events of the evening. At least her friends had rallied around her after she’d left in tears. According to Jane, Anthony had been escorted from the house by the gentlemen of the party. Not quite by the seat of his pants, as Rob and Jemmy had hoped, but forcefully enough that he had gotten the idea he was not welcome. Jane had reported this information to her later, when she’d come up to check on Maria before she went to bed.

Putting the brush down, Maria picked up a pot of hand cream and spread a bit of it on her skin and began to work it in. The small nightly rituals always helped her to relax and hopefully to have a good night’s sleep, although that might be stretching it tonight.

A slight tapping on the door, made Maria sit up quickly and grab her robe. “Who is it?”

“Jane. Can you open the door?”

Her cousin had presumably gone to bed over an hour ago, but Maria dutifully opened the door, finding Jane, tea tray with tea and biscuits, in hand. “What are you doing?”

“I thought a little Christmas repast would not be amiss.” She set the tray on the low table in the part of the bedchamber furnished as a sitting room, with sofa and chairs, and poured two cups. “Here, have a biscuit.” She took up one, thin and crisp with chocolate sprinkled on top. “I think Cook may have been hiding these for tomorrow, but as it is after midnight, it is tomorrow.”

“I am not particularly hungry, Jane.”

That apparently made no difference to her cousin, who thrust the biscuit into her hands with the admonishment, “Eat.”

Dutifully, Maria bit into the biscuit, and quickly decided Jane’s idea had been sound.

“Have you thought any more about what you plan to do about Wetherby?” Jane stirred milk into her tea briskly, avoiding looking at Maria.