"I am the one who cannot wake up, Mama," he had explained to her in some excitement. "I miss what the angel says and have to be told by Stephen and dragged off to Bethlehem. I have to yawn the whole time until I see the baby."
Judith smiled at the memory of Rupert practicing his yawns.
“It is hard to yawn, Mama,'' he had said, "when you are not tired."
"I am sure you will do quite splendidly when the time comes," she had assured him.
Kate climbed onto her lap and stared expectantly at the empty stage area.
And there was the ball to come. The dancing. She had always loved dancing. And he had asked her to save the opening set and at least one waltz for him.
There was a growing glow of excitement in her. There had been little time all day to exchange more than the occasional glance and word with him. But his looks had been warm, full of an awareness of what had happened between them the evening before. During the ball they would touch again and talk again. Perhaps he would find the chance to take her aside and declare his feelings.
He loved her. She knew he did. She could see it in his eyes whenever she looked into them. He loved her as she loved him.
She wanted him to kiss her again as he had kissed her the night before. She wanted him to hold her. She wanted to hold him. She wanted more than those kisses. She wanted everything. Her cheeks grew warm at the thought.
"There is Aunt Amy," Kate said, pointing across the ballroom to where Amy was taking her place at the pianoforte.
Conversation about them was dying away as attention turned expectantly to the empty half of the ballroom. Judith smiled and rubbed a cheek against Kate's curls and caught the marquess's eye across the room.
Amy sat down on the bench behind the pianoforte and looked about the ballroom at all the splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen who had come for his lordship's ball. And she made sure that her music was in proper order on the music rest. She set her hands in her lap and waited for Mary and Joseph to trudge through the ballroom doors on their weary way to Bethlehem.
She had always loved Christmas because of church and the caroling and the decorating and because it always brought her nieces and nephews to a house that was usually quiet and lonely. And she had always liked to have her brothers and their wives close to her again, reminding her that she was part of a family. But she had never experienced a Christmas as wonderful as this one.
There was Lord Denbigh and the courteous, kindly manner in which he tried to see to it that all his guests were comfortable and entertained. And his interest in Judith, which would surely blossom into a splendid match for her sister-in-law, who deserved more happiness than she could have known with Andrew. And there were the other guests, all amiable, even the unfortunately tedious Mr. Rockford, and willing to accept her as an equal.
And there were the children. All the wonderful children with their exuberance and mischief, their fun and their wrangling, their sad and funny stories from their past, and their capacity to bring joy into any adult's heart.
And the snow and the food and the decorating and skating and snowball fights and… oh, and everything.
And Spencer. Amy could feel her heart thumping faster. She had never had a gentleman friend. Never anyone to call her by name and to talk with her and laugh with her and throw snowballs at her and set a careless arm about her shoulders. No one had ever kissed her beneath the mistletoe except her brothers.
Spencer had kissed her twice under the mistletoe and once without. He had kissed her outside the ballroom doors a few minutes before. The children had been ready in their dressing room, though a few of them had still been dashing about in
near hysteria. Mrs. Harrison had told Amy that she might take her place and they would try not to keep her waiting longer than half an hour or so-those last words spoken with a harassed look tossed at the ceiling.
Spencer had accompanied her from the dressing room and through the great hall to the ballroom doors, one arm about her shoulders.
"You are a real sport, Amy," he had said. "I do not know what we would have done without you."
"It is not over yet," she had said. "Perhaps I will suffer from a massive dose of stage fright and suddenly find myself with ten thumbs."
He had bent his head and kissed her firmly on the lips. "You could not let us down if you tried, Amy," he had said. "There is far too much love in you for the children. And far too much common sense too."
He had opened the ballroom door for her and winked at her as she passed through.
Friendly kisses all? she wondered, lifting a hand to touch her lips. Or had there been more to them? A real affection, perhaps. Her eyes grew dreamy. She wished… Oh, she wished she were fifteen years younger and six inches taller and beautiful. Or pretty at least. She wished…
The ballroom door opened again and Amy could see two frightened faces beyond it with Spencer beaming down at them. Mary and Joseph were approaching Bethlehem.
Mary and Joseph were approaching Bethlehem. She was tired and brave and cross and not always careful in her choice of words. And he was strong and tender and reassuring- and could not resist returning one insult rather sharply. They were a loving and weary and very human couple.
The innkeeper, harassed by an unusually packed house and bad-tempered and demanding guests, would have turned away the couple from faraway Galilee without a qualm of conscience, but his wife fiercely defended the right of a woman just about to give birth to be given some place other than the street. Hands on hips, she browbeat the poor man until he suggested the stable, his voice heavy with sarcasm. And then she drove him out with a broom to clean a manger ready for the baby.
The Bible story, though beautifully written, the Marquess of Denbigh thought, somehow took the humanity out of the players. His ragamuffins from the slums of London put the humanity right back in and made a strangely touching, almost a moving, experience out of it.
The wise men called one another all kinds of idiot as they argued over which route would take them in the direction of the star, but all of them gave the impression that they would have followed it through quicksand if that was the way it pointed. The shepherds, except for the one who remained snoring and whistling on the ground, cursed the air blue in their terror at the appearance of the unknown but soon dropped their jaws in wonder and awe. The angel told them to shut up and pay attention. The choir sang like angels only slightly off-key.
And then Mary in the stable was bending protectively over the manger, warning the shepherds to stay back because she did not want them passing any sickness on to her baby. And she shushed one of the kings, who spoke too loudly for her liking. And she beamed down at the manger and reached down with a tickling finger just as if it were a real baby lying there and not just a doll from the nursery.
Joseph folded his arms, frowned about at the whole gathering, including the angel, and tried to look tough. Anyone who had it in his mind to harm the baby was obviously going to have to go through him first.
Rupert Easton was certainly never going to be able to earn a living as an actor, the marquess thought with amusement, watching the boy yawn and stretch with exaggerated gestures until he gasped at sight of the baby and fell to his knees.
The marquess glanced across the room at Judith. She was leaning forward in her chair, one arm about her daughter, smiling broadly and watching her son intently. He would be prepared to wager that there were tears in her eyes.
And indeed, he thought, there were probably several eyes in the room that were not quite dry. For all the occasional irreverence of their language, these children were bringing