Under The Mistletoe (29 page)

And that encounter led, unknown to Bedford until later, to a visit to the attic to find the relics of Christmases past.

“Papa!” Dora burst into the library, where Bedford was trying to read, though it was hard to bring his thoughts to bear on the book opened before him. She was moving at a run past the footman who held the door open for her, and her face was flushed and pretty with an excitement that she could barely contain. “Papa, come to the attic with me. We have been looking at Christmas. The dearest bells. And the star! May we have an evergreen bough, Papa? Mrs. Morgan says there were always evergreens. May we? Do put down the silly book and come.”

He put down the silly book and came. Or rather was dragged by an insistent little hand and a voice brimming with an excitement he had thought her incapable of.

And of course, he thought as soon as he looked into the opened boxes in the attic and dismissed a rather uncomfortable and apologetic Mrs. Morgan . . . Of course. How could he have forgotten? The evergreen boughs, decorated with crystal balls and bells that tinkled and twinkled every time a door was opened or a draft blew down a chimney. The evergreen boughs that had brought the smell of Christmas right inside the house.

And one year the candles on the boughs, until they had been forbidden forever after . . . after the great fire, when the branch had been singed black and a whole circle of carpet ruined, for he had collided with the bough during blindman's buff and tipped it over . . . They must be only thankful that he had not burned too, his mother had said, hugging him while his father had scolded. And someone had been smothering hysterical giggles through it all. Lilias.

“May we have an evergreen bough, Papa? May we?” Dora's voice was almost a wail, there was so much anxiety in her tone.

“There are enough decorations here for a whole forest of boughs,” he said with a laugh. “There used to be some in the nursery and dining room as well as a whole great tree in the drawing room.”

“A tree, Papa. Just one whole tree in the nursery,” she said, and reached up her arms to be picked up when he smiled down at her.

“Just one, then,” he said. “We will go out and find one ourselves and cut it down, shall we? I think the rain stopped about an hour ago.”

“Yes,” she said, hugging his neck and kissing his cheek.

It was only when they were outside and she was tripping along at his side, her gloved hand firmly clasped in his, that she had her great idea. Though to her it seemed quite natural.

“We will take one for Megan and Andrew and Miss Angove as well,” she announced. “Just a little one because they have such a small room. But there are so many bells and balls. We will take them before luncheon, Papa, so that I may still have my sleep ready for tonight. They will be happy, won't they?”

“I think they have enough, poppet,” he said. “They are making their own Christmas. They will not want our offerings.”

“Oh, yes, they will,” she said happily. “You said Christmas is for giving, Papa. They will be happy if we give them a whole evergreen tree. Besides, I want to see the baby Jesus. He was not finished yesterday. Such a dear little manger, Papa. Miss Angove was going to make the smoth—the swathering clothes.”

“Was she?” he said, his heart sinking. Christmas was for giving, he had told her, and she had just thrown it back in his teeth. How could he refuse to give his daughter happiness?

“Just a little tree, then,” he said. “Papa has only two hands, you know.”

She chuckled. “But they are big hands, Papa,” she said. “Miss Angove is going to teach me to sew when I am five.”

“Is she?” he said, his lips tightening.

“Yes,” she said. “It will be more fun with her than with Nurse.”

And so they found themselves little more than an hour later yet again knocking on the door of the cottage, Bedford found, Dora at his side, jumping up and down.

“I want to tell, Papa,” she told him. The evergreen and the box of decorations, including the great star, were still inside the carriage.

And she did tell, rushing through the door, tearing at her cloak, and whisking herself behind the kitchen door for the pinafore just as if she had lived there all her life. And soon Megan was squealing and
giggling and Andrew was exclaiming in delight and offering to accompany the marquess into the garden to fetch a pail of earth to set the tree in—a whole tree, and not just a bough!—and Lilias was clearing a small table and covering it with a worn lace cloth close to the window.

And there he was, Bedford discovered half an hour later, his coat discarded, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his neckcloth askew, balanced on a kitchen chair and pounding a nail into the ceiling. For the great star, it seemed, had not been brought for the Christmas tree at all—“How silly, Papa,” Dora had said with a giggle. “It would be too big”—but to hang over the Nativity scene.

“Just look at the darling baby Jesus,” Dora was saying in a voice of wonder while everyone else was gazing upward at the star Bedford was suspending from the nail.

And then they were all standing in the room, gazing about them at all the splendor and wonder of Christmas, just as if it had come already: the holly boughs and the tree hung with bells and crystal balls, all catching the light from the outdoors and from the fire and the rudely carved Nativity scene with its bright and outsize star and its minute baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.

“Lilias is standing beneath the mistletoe,” Megan said suddenly and in great delight.

Dora clapped her hands and laughed.

And he met her eyes from three feet away and saw the dismay in them and the flush of color that rose to her cheeks, and he was no longer sure that it was all artifice. It was a thin and large-eyed face. It was beautiful.

“Then I had better kiss her,” Andrew said in a tone of some resignation. “Again.” He pecked her noisily on the cheek and she moved swiftly to the window to still a bell that was swaying and tinkling.

“Time to go, poppet,” the Marquess of Bedford said.

There was a chorus of protests.

“All right, then,” he said. “Dora may stay for another half hour. But no caroling and no church tonight.”

Five minutes later he sank thankfully back against the velvet upholstery of his carriage. He had thought himself hardened to all feeling. He had thought that he could never be deceived again, never caught out in trusting where he should not trust. He would never be caught because he would never trust anyone ever again. It was safer that way.

His saner, more rational, more cautious, more hardened self told
him that it was all a ruse, that she was an opportunist who was using all her feminine wiles to trap him and save herself and her brother and sister from a dreary and impoverished future.

His madder, more irrational, more incautious, more gullible self saw a mental image of her eyes lighting up when she saw the tree and the ornaments and their effect on the two children in her charge. And saw her below him as he stood on the chair, her arms half raised as if she expected to be able to catch him if he fell. And saw the look of Christmas in her eyes as she stood in the middle of her living room looking about her. And the flustered look of pure beauty when she realized that she was standing beneath the mistletoe.

Had she known that she stood there? It was impossible to tell. And it made all the difference in the world. Had she known or had she not?

Even more important, did he care either way? Did he still regret that it had been her brother who had stepped forward to kiss her?

No, he must not, he thought, closing his eyes. He must not. He must not.

“Must I sleep all afternoon?” Dora asked him. “May we decorate our evergreen first, Papa?”

“We will do it immediately after luncheon,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her sternly. “And then you are going to sleep all afternoon.”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

 

For the past few years Lilias had been the oldest of the carol singers. But none of the others had been willing for her to retire.

“But, Miss Angove,” Christina Simmonds had protested when she had suggested it two years before, “what would we do without you? You are the only one who can really sing.”

“Besides,” Henry Hammett had added, with a wink for his friend, Leonard Small, “if one of the other girls were to start the carols, Miss Angove, the rest of us would have to either dig a trench to reach the low notes or carry a ladder around with us to hit the high ones.”

A deal of giggling from the girls and rib-digging from the young men had followed his words, and Lilias had agreed to stay.

She was not to be the oldest this year, though. Most of the young people were inclined to be intimidated when they first saw the Marquess of Bedford as one of their number. Most of them had only glimpsed him from a distance since his return home, and most of them were too young to remember that during his youth he had joined in all the village activities.

However, after singing at a few houses and consuming a few mince pies and a couple of mugs of wassail, they no longer found him such a forbidding and remote figure. And the usual jokes and laughter accompanied them around the village.

The younger children formed their own group, Dora firmly in the middle of them, clinging to Megan's hand. The marquess carried one of the lanterns and held it each time they sang, as he had always used to do, above Lilias's shoulder so that she could see her music.

She was very aware of him and wished she were not. Apart from the fact that the other faces around them had changed, there was a strange, disturbing feeling of having gone back in time. There was Stephen's gloved hand holding the lantern above her, and Stephen's voice singing the carols at her right ear, and Stephen's hand at the small of her back once as they crossed the threshold into one home.

She had to make a conscious effort to remember that he was not Stephen, that he was the Marquess of Bedford. She had to look at him deliberately to note the broadness of his shoulders and chest beneath the capes of his coat, showing her that he was no longer the slender young man of her memories. And she had to look into his face to see the harsh lines and the cynical eyes—though not as cynical as they had been a week before, surely.

She brought her reactions under control and bent over a very elderly gentleman in a parlor they had been invited into who had grasped her wrist with one gnarled hand.

“Miss Lilias,” he said, beaming up at her with toothless gums, “and Lord Stephen.” He shook her arm up and down and was obviously so pleased with what he had said that he said it again. “Miss Lilias and Lord Stephen.”

Lilias smiled and kissed his cheek and wished him a happy Christmas. And the marquess, whom she had not realized was quite so close, took the old man's free hand between both of his and spoke to him by name.

In the voice of Stephen, Lilias thought, straightening up.

The children were all very tired by the time they had finished their calls and the church bells had begun to ring. But not a single one of them was prepared to admit the fact and be taken home to the comfort of a bed.

Dora was yawning loudly and clutching Lilias's cloak.

“I'll take you home, poppet,” Bedford said, leaning down to pick her up. “Enough for one day.”

But she whisked herself behind a fold of Lilias's cloak and evaded
her father's arms. “But you promised, Papa,” she said. “And I slept all afternoon. I was good.”

“Yes, you were good,” he said, reaching out a hand to take one of hers. “You may see the day out to its very end, then.”

And somehow, Lilias found, the child's other hand made its way into hers and they climbed the steps to the church together, the three of them, just as if they were a family. People turned from their pews to look at the marquess, and nodded and smiled at them. Megan and Andrew were already sitting in their usual pew, two seats from the front.

Lilias smiled down at Dora when they reached the padded pew that had always belonged to the marquess's family, and released her hand. She proceeded on her way to join her brother and sister.

“But, Papa,” she heard the child say aloud behind her, “I want to sit by Megan.”

A few moments after Lilias had knelt down on her kneeler, she felt a small figure push past her from behind and heard the sounds of shuffling as Megan and Andrew moved farther along the pew. And when she rose to sit on the pew herself, it was to find Dora sitting between her and Megan, and the Marquess of Bedford on her other side. She picked up her Psalter and thumbed through its pages.

There were candles and evergreen branches and the Nativity scene before the altar. And the church bells before the service, and the organ and the singing during it, and the Christmas readings. And the sermon. And the church packed with neighbors and friends and family. There were love and joy and peace.

It was Christmas.

Christmas as it had always been—and as it would never be again. She had to concentrate all her attention on her Psalter and swallow several times. And a hand moved toward her so that she almost lifted her own to meet it halfway. But it came to rest on his leg and the fingers drummed a few times before falling still.