A Yuletide Treasure (24 page)

“Myron?” he said.

“Yes, old man. It’s me. Wake up, do.”

“Myron!” Philip jerked awake, clutching at the man before him, staring with astounded eyes. “My God, they said... What in heaven’s name happened to you? Where’s your arm?”

“Buried on an island. It was the arm or me, but that’s a long tale for a winter’s evening. This young lady says my Beulah is ill. Where is she?”

Philip opened the bedroom door and stood in the opening, his arm tight around Camilla. Sir Myron went down on one knee before the armchair that held his wife. Lady LaCorte looked just as usual, except that her abundant hair lay loose around her shoulders. Yet every few seconds long shudders passed through her body, shaking her and setting her teeth to chattering. Against her bosom, clutched tight, she held her child. “He’s going to die, Doctor,” she said, not looking at this stranger who had entered. “I’ve lost my husband, and now I’m going to lose my son. I just know it.”

“You haven’t lost anything, Beulah. I’m here.” Captain LaCorte lifted her chin with his fingers. For a moment, she stared; then she looked away, closing her eyes. She pressed her trembling fingertips to the center of her forehead. “I really am mad,” she said. “I’ve heard the voices whisper it when they thought I couldn’t hear, but it’s true.”

“No, it isn’t. I always told you I’d come back to you, no matter what stood in my way. Am I a liar, Beulah?”

She laughed. “You always were.”

“Let me see my son.”

Her arm fell away a little from her body, and Captain LaCorte took his child in his arm. “A fine boy,” he said, nodding to Nanny Mallow, who was already there to take the child. As she hurried away, Camilla was relieved beyond speech to hear the baby cough.

Philip’s arm about her shoulder drew her back out of the room. “They’ll be all right now. Where do you suppose he came from? Former king of a cannibal isle, if I know Myron. Or maybe he was taken to safety by the lost islanders of Atlantis. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

“Ahem,” Camilla said. Going up on tiptoe, she surprised him with a kiss. He didn’t hesitate long before taking command of it. “That’s what I wanted to know,” she said with a sigh. “Go and dress yourself in your finest attire,” she added. “It’s Christmas Eve, and we have much to be thankful for.”

Several hours later, gaiety infused every inch of the common rooms. The greenery that the stable lads had hoarded was brought in with suitable revelry and hung in boughs over windows and doors. The kissing balls the maids had been working on were hung in spots most likely to bring their prey to doom while Samson lit candles with a wild lack of worry over their cost. Mrs. Twainsbury found herself in the kitchen, drinking an amazingly mellow cup of chocolate while watching Mrs. Lamsard create a feast out of seemingly nothing.

As for Camilla and Philip, he followed her from room to room as she bustled about the small tasks of Christmas. Every time she passed beneath mistletoe, he kissed her, echoed by screams of delight from Nell and Grace, who followed him, urging him to “do it again, Uncle Philip,” and racing away every time he threatened to kiss one of them. Camilla found herself working less and loitering more under the cunningly wrought balls of holly and ivy, ribbons and baubles, the branch of mistletoe hanging beneath.

“Aren’t you supposed to take a berry each time?” she asked.

“If I do that, soon there are no more berries and no more kisses,” he said.

“Oh. I see. That is something to worry about.”

“Not for you,” he said, kissing her again. “Never for you.”

When the waits came to sing in the darkness beyond the lamps by the front door, everyone in the house who could came to listen. As the voices, man and woman’s, boy and girl’s, rang out and faded into the distance of the stars, Camilla leaned her head on Philip’s shoulder and let the peace of the season fill her heart and soul. Wherever time would take them, whatever fate brought them, she didn’t need to fear that she’d ever lose her home. Love was her home, and she carried it with her.

Copyright © 2003 by Cynthia Pratt

Originally published by Zebra (ISBN 0821774883)

Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are

fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is

coincidental.