Under The Mistletoe (21 page)

She felt so happy by the time they were finished that she thought she might well burst with it. She was surrounded by Christmas—by the sights and smells of it. She could smell the pine boughs, and there were interesting smells wafting up from the kitchens. Particularly the smell of Christmas puddings.

“Oh, it is so very beautiful,” she said, her hands clasped to her bosom when they were all finished and were all standing admiring their efforts. “If only we had some ribbons for bows.”

“Oh, yes,” Deborah said. “Red ones and green ones.”

Viscount Buckley sighed. “Ribbons and bows,” he said. “And bells, too, I suppose? Doubtless you will find what you need in the village, Miss Craggs. Go there if you must and purchase whatever you need and have the bill sent to me.”

“Oh.” She turned to him with glowing eyes. “May I? Oh, thank you, my lord.”

He looked at her and made her a little mocking bow. And she remembered the earth-shattering feeling of his lips touching hers and wondered if he realized what an enormous treasure this Christmas was going to be to her in memory. The most precious treasure of her life.

Veronica was tugging at her skirt. “May I come too, Miss Jane?” she asked.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she said, hearing in some surprise the unexpected endearment she had used. “I will need you to help me choose.”

“And I will come too, Craggs,” Deborah said. But she flushed suddenly and added, “
Miss
Craggs.” And then she extended both arms and twirled into the steps of a waltz. “Uncle Warren,” she said, “do you think we may dance on Christmas Day?”

Deborah had completely changed since the visits she had paid with her uncle during the morning. She had come rushing into the
house on their return home to announce to Jane that she was to have a party of her very own on Christmas Day. Fifteen young people were to come during the afternoon for walks and games and were to stay for the evening while their parents—and her uncle—engaged in an adult party at the home of the Oxendens. Even the seventeen-year-old and very dashing George Oxenden had decided to come to Cosway, though his parents had agreed to allow him to attend the adult party if he wished.

Jane saw the viscount grimace. “A dance?” he said. “And who is to provide the music, pray?”

But Deborah made it instantly clear that the idea had not come to her on the spur of the moment. “Mr. George Oxenden told me that his aunt plays the pianoforte rather well,” she said, “and that she would be only too pleased to be with the young people rather than with the adults on Christmas Day.”

Her uncle looked skeptical. “I will have to see what can be arranged,” he said.

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Warren,” she said, darting back across the room to hug him. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever, after all, I just know it.”

The viscount raised his eyebrows and looked at Jane.

Jane could only agree with his niece.

But there was work to be done. The village shop had to be visited and yards of the widest, brightest ribbon to be chosen and measured. Jane felt guilty when she was told the total cost, but she did not change her purchases. Viscount Buckley was a wealthy man, was he not? When Veronica gazed admiringly and rather longingly at some porcelain bells, she even added three to her purchases, a dreadful extravagance. But they would look lovely hanging from the holly on the mantel in the drawing room.

And then she discovered during a visit to the kitchen that the servants were murmuring over the fact that there was to be no Yule log. The head gardener was only too delighted to go in search of the largest one he could find when Jane insisted that they must have one. A Yule log! She had not even thought of it. She knew so little about Christmas.

During the same visit she learned that one of the grooms was skilled with his hands and loved to whittle on wood whenever he had a few spare moments. When Jane admired a spoon he was carving for his girl in the village, he offered to carve a small crib for the drawing room. And that other detail of her dream returned to Jane. Time was
short, but the groom agreed to try to carve a baby Jesus to go inside the crib, and a Mary and Joseph to kneel beside it, and perhaps even a shepherd or two and an animal or two to worship and adore.

The decorations would be complete, Jane decided, standing alone in the drawing room after the ribbons and bells had been added to all the greenery, if only there could be a Nativity scene in the window.

Oh, Christmas would be complete. She twirled around and around rather as Deborah had done and thought of the little bonnet and muff for Veronica and the small bottle of perfume for Deborah she had had set aside in the village shop as Christmas gifts. They would take all the meager hoard of money in her purse, but she could not resist. She had never bought Christmas presents before. She had nothing for Viscount Buckley, but it would be inappropriate anyway to give a gentleman a gift.

For Deborah's sake she was going to make this a wonderful Christmas. And for Veronica's sake. Veronica was quietly obedient, but Jane knew that the child was still hiding inside herself. And she knew from long experience how that felt. She was going to do her very best to see that Christmas brought the child out of herself again, even if it was only to a realization of her grief and her insecurity. At least then she could be properly comforted.

If there could be any meaningful comfort. Jane stopped twirling. Her heart chilled to the memory of the viscount's asking how he was to find his daughter a good home. He intended to send the child away again to be cared for by strangers. They would be strangers, no matter how kindly they might be.

Oh, for the viscount's sake, too, this must be a wonderful Christmas. He must be made to see that love was everything, that family was everything. Why could people who had always had family not see that? Why could he not see that his daughter was his most priceless possession?

And for her own sake she was going to see that this Christmas was celebrated to the limit. It was her first and might well be her last. It was going to be a Christmas to remember for a lifetime.

Yes, it was. Oh, yes, indeed it was.

She twirled again.

 

Christmas Eve dawned gray and gloomy, and Viscount Buckley, surrounded by all the foolish sights of Christmas, his nostrils assailed by all the smells of it, felt his irritation return. Because she—Miss Jane Craggs, the tyrant—had persuaded him into the madness of allowing
a party for young people to take place in his home tomorrow, he had been faced with the necessity of absenting himself from that home. And so he was facing the unspeakable monotony of a Christmas gathering at the Oxendens'. He was being forced to enjoy himself.

Well, it could not be done. Just look at the weather. He did just that, standing at the window of his bedchamber, gazing out at raw, cheerless December.

But one hour later he felt foolish. How was it he had recognized none of the signs when they had been as plain as the nose on his face? For of course the grayness and the gloom were harbingers of snow, and before the morning was even half over, it was falling so thickly that he could scarcely see six feet beyond the window. And it was settling too, just like a white blanket being spread.

Good Lord, snow!
He could not remember when it had last fallen at Christmastime. Certainly not the year Elise had humiliated him and broken his foolish young heart. It had been raining that year and blowing a gale. Typical British winter weather. This was not typical at all. He wondered if Veronica had seen the snow, and was halfway up the stairs to the nursery before he realized how strange it was that he had thought of sharing the sight of snow with a child. But he continued on his way.

They were all in there, Veronica and Deborah kneeling on the window seat, their noses pressed against the glass, Miss Craggs standing behind them.

“Look, my lord.” She was the only one who had glanced back to see who was coming through the door. “Snow. We are going to have a white Christmas. Can you conceive of anything more wonderful?”

Sometime before she returned to Miss Phillpotts's school he was going to have to sit down and have a good talk with Miss Jane Craggs. There was something deep inside the woman that could occasionally break through to her face and make her almost incredibly beautiful. She was beautiful now, flushed and wide-eyed and animated. And all over the fact that it was snowing for Christmas.

He found himself wondering quite inappropriately what her face would look like as he was making love to her. Totally inappropriately! He had a mistress waiting for him in London with whose services he was more than satisfied. He had had her for only two months. He had not even begun to tire of her yet.

“I am trying,” he said in belated answer to her question. “And at the moment I can think of nothing.”

She smiled at him and his heart and his stomach danced a pas de deux.

Good Lord, he wanted her, the gray and prim Miss Craggs.

“Look, Papa,” his daughter was saying. “Look at the trees. They are magic.”

He strolled over to the window and stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Jane Craggs, looking out on a Christmas wonderland.

“And so they are,” he said, setting his hand on the child's soft curls. “I have just had a thought. There used to be sleds when I was a boy. I wonder what happened to them.”

“Sleds?” Deborah turned her attention to him, “Oh, Uncle Warren, could we go sledding tomorrow. A sledding party. Do you think so? How many are there?”

“Wait a minute,” he said, holding up one hand. “I am not even sure they still exist. I suppose you are going to insist that I get on my greatcoat and my topboots and wade out to the stables without further delay.”

Yes. Three pairs of eyes confirmed him in his suspicions. And then three voices informed him that they were coming with him, and Jane Craggs was bundling Veronica inside her coat and winding her inside her scarf and burying her beneath her hat while Deborah darted out to don her own outdoor clothes.

“I knew,” Miss Craggs said, looking up at him with a face that was still beautiful, “that this was going to be a perfect Christmas. I just knew it.”

How could it be perfect for her, he wondered, when she had been brought here merely as a glorified servant to chaperon a sullen girl and then had been saddled with the responsibility of caring for an illegitimate child, whose presence in the house might well have offended her sensibilities? How could it be perfect when she was away from her own family?

But there was that light in her eyes and that beauty in her face, and he knew that she was not lying.

And he knew suddenly that for the first time in many yeas there was hope in him. The hope that somehow she might be right, that somehow this might be the perfect Christmas.

That somehow the magic might come back.

There were four sleds, three of them somewhat dilapidated. But he was assured that by the morrow they would be in perfect condition.

“Well, Veronica,” he said as they were wading back to the house with the snow falling thickly about them and onto them, “are you going to ride on a sled tomorrow too? Faster than lightning down a hill?”

“No, Papa,” she said.

“With me?” he asked her. “If I ride with you and hold you tight?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said gravely.

He could not ask for a more docile and obedient child. Nancy had brought her up well. And yet he could not help remembering what Jane Craggs had said about her—that she was hiding inside herself. And wondering how she could know such a thing, if it were so. But he was beginning to believe that perhaps it was true. Over the past few days the child had joined in all the activities, and she had made a great friend of the kitchen cat, whom he had found curled impertinently in his favorite chair in the drawing room, of all places, just the day before. But there had been no exuberance in her as there had been in Deborah and even in Miss Craggs.

He was beginning to worry about Veronica. The sooner he found her a good home to go to, the better it would be for her. She needed a mother and father to care for her. As soon as Christmas was over he must set Aubrey to work on it. It must take priority over all else.

“Look at me,” Deborah shrieked suddenly, and she hurled herself backward into a smooth drift of snow, swished her arms and legs to the sides, and got up carefully. “Look. A perfect angel.”

“Which you assuredly are not,” he said, looking at the snow caked all over her back.

She giggled at him. “I dare you to try it, Uncle Warren,” she said.

“It certainly does not behoove my dignity to be making snow angels,” he said.

But he did it anyway because it had never been his way to resist a dare. And then they were all doing it until they had a whole army of angels fast disappearing beneath the still-falling snow. Like a parcel of children, he thought in some disgust, instead of two adults, one young person, and one child.

“This must be the multitude of the heavenly host that sang with the angel Gabriel to Mary,” he said. “I do not know about the rest of you, but I have snow trickling down my neck and turning to water. It does not feel comfortable at all. I think hot drinks at the house are called for.”