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.
She was saved by a loud and lengthy yawn and a small head burrowing itself between her arm and the back of the pew. She turned and smiled down at Dora and skipped one arm behind her and the other under her knees so that she could lift her onto her lap and pillow the tired head against her breast. The child was asleep almost instantly.
The marquess’s eyes, when Lilias turned her head to look into them, were very blue and wide open. And quite, quite inscrutable. When the organ began to play the closing hymn, and before the bells began to peal out again the good news of a child’s birth, he stood and took his child into his own arms so that Lilias could stand and sing.
His carriage was waiting outside the church, but Lilias refused a ride for herself and her brother and sister.
“It is such a short distance to walk,” she said.
He set the still-sleeping Dora down on the carriage seat and turned back to them. “I shall say good-night, then,” he said. He held out a hand for Megan’s. “Thank you for inviting Dora. I don’t think you know how happy you have made a small child.” He took Andrew’s hand. “You may come to the house the day after tomorrow, if your sister approves, and we will take that ride I have promised you.”
“Oh, ripping,” Andrew said excitedly.
Bedford turned to Lilias and took her hand in his. He searched her face with his eyes and seemed about to say something. But he merely clasped her hand more tightly.
“Happy Christmas, Lilias,” he said.
“Happy Christmas, Stephen.”
She had said the words and heard them a hundred times that evening, Lilias thought as she turned away and made her way along the street with the two tired children. But the last two times burned themselves on her mind, and she felt herself smiling and happy… and swallowing back tears.
Christmas Day.Chill and dry but heavy with gray clouds out-of-doors.
Warm with the glow and the smells and the goodwill of the season indoors. It did not matter that there was no soft white snow to trudge through, no snow to form into snowballs to hurl at shrieking relatives, no hills of snow to slide down and fall into, no ice to skate on. It did not matter. Christmas was indoors.
The goose was cooking, and the vegetables, saved from the summer’s garden, were simmering. The plum pudding, part of the contents of the basket that had come from the hall, was warming. The light from the fire and the window was glinting off the crystal balls on the tree and off the star suspended from the ceiling. The bells occasionally tinkled when someone walked by and created a draft. And the baby Jesus, wrapped warmly in swaddling clothes in his manger, was being adored by Mary and Joseph, the Three Kings, an angel with one wing larger than the other, one shepherd, and one sheep, which might as easily have passed for a fox.
Megan was seated cross-legged on the floor close to the fire, rocking her new doll to sleep and gazing in wonder at the porcelain perfection of its face. Andrew was jerking his new watch from a pocket every five minutes to make sure that the goose was not being overcooked. And Lilias sat watching them, a smile on her face.
It was their last Christmas together, at least for a very long time. And their best for several years. She did not regret for a moment the humiliation she had had to suffer in going to the hall to beg for what she had needed to make it a memorable Christmas. And she did not regret that he had come to despise her and even hate her for that begging.
It did not matter. For now it was Christmas, and she had one week left in this cottage and with these children. And she had seen the wonder in their eyes when they had seen their presents that morning. They would have a day together that she would hug to herself in memory for many long months to come.
If there was a restlessness, an emptiness, a strange sense of something missing, then she would not think of it. For she could not bring back Papa or Philip, or Mama from even longer ago. She could not bring back the Christmases at the hall with their charades and blindman’s buff and forfeits and sometimes their dancing. She could not bring back those rare and magical white Christmases when they had all spilled outdoors and been reluctant to go back inside even for the foods of Christmas.
And she could not bring Stephen back. For though he had stood beside her last evening when they had gone caroling and sat beside her at church, and though he had taken her hand in his at the end of the evening and wished her a happy Christmas and called her by her name, he was not Stephen. He was the Marquess of Bedford, serious and aloof. And he disliked her, even hated her, perhaps.
She must count her blessings-so many of them-and keep all her attention and all her love and hope within these four walls for today. She would not think of either the past or the future today.
She glanced across the room to the small table where the evergreen stood, and beneath it the box with the ill-fitting lid that Andrew had carved for her, and the carefully hemmed cotton handkerchief with the embroidered forget-me-not that Megan had made for her during stolen private moments over the past few weeks. She smiled again.
“I wish Dora could see my doll,” Megan said. “Do you think she has had anything as grand, Lilias?”
“I can hardly wait for tomorrow,” Andrew said, consulting his watch once more. “Do you think his lordship will let me ride one of his prime goers, Lilias?”
Dora was playing quietly with her own new doll. Indeed, she looked almost like a doll herself, her father thought, glancing across the nursery at her. She was dressed all in her Christmas finery with quantities of satin and lace, and large pink satin bows in her hair, which her nurse had dressed painstakingly in masses of shining dark ringlets.
The child was singing one of her newly learned carols to the doll.
They had opened their own gifts and distributed gifts to the servants, but it was still barely midmorning. Bedford turned to stare out the window. A gray world met his eyes. Those were surely snow clouds overhead, but they were stubbornly retaining their load. If only it had snowed, he thought. He could have taken Dora outside. He could have played in the snow with her all day long and seen that flush of color in her cheeks and that light of pleasure in her eyes that he had not seen a great deal during her short life.
Perhaps he should, after all, have organized some sort of party at the house. There had always used to be a large gathering there for Christmas. But he had come late and without a great deal of warning.
Most of the neighbors had made their plans for the day already.
Perhaps he should have accepted one of the numerous invitations he had received since his arrival. But none of them had seemed to be for family gatherings. It would have meant packing Dora off upstairs to someone’s nursery with other children while he was entertained by the other adults. With cards, doubtless, or dancing. He had been greedy for a Christmas spent with his daughter. He loved her with an almost fierce ache, he had discovered when he had finally taken her from her grandparents’ home the previous spring.
But perhaps he should have accepted one of those invitations. Perhaps Dora would have enjoyed being with other children instead of with him or her nurse all day long. Perhaps he had been selfish.