by Mary Balogh
She was having trouble with her breathing.
“A man really ought to be rewarded,” he murmured, “for risking both his life and his boots.”
He intended to kiss her?
She had shared the intimacy of the marriage bed with him on fourteen successive nights. She had taken his seed into her womb and borne his child. Yet she felt suddenly as if they had never touched at all.
Certainly he had never kissed her.
“Oh, how foolish!” she said in what she hoped was a light tone, turning sharply away. “All the magic will be gone from the mistletoe even before we take it back to the house.”
“Well, there is something in that,” her husband said from behind her, his tone matching her own. “But I reserve the right to be the first to test it there after the kissing bough has been made and hung-with the lady of my choice.”
Miranda and Anthony laughed. Elizabeth forced herself to turn her head back toward her husband and join in their laughter. Had he really wanted to kiss her? He was looking at her with narrowed eyes, an unreadable expression in them.
Had she ruined the morning?
But he strode up beside her, and they led the way out of the deeper woods. Soon they could hear other voices and see the other groups busy about their tasks. Indeed, when they reached their starting point, they found an impressive mound of greenery waiting to be hauled to the house.
“How are we going to get it there?” Cousin Alex asked, lifting his beaver hat in order to scratch his head through unruly chestnut curls.
“Carry it?” Peregrine suggested.
But Mr. Chambers, as they might have expected, had organized everything in advance. Gardeners were to bring carts drawn by teams of horses, he explained. Indeed, they came into sight, raising clouds of snow, almost before he had finished explaining.
And so they all trudged empty-handed back to the house, having to wade through snow that was considerably deeper than it had been when they set out. Elizabeth did not know who it was who began singing “The Holly and the Ivy,” but soon they were all singing lustily and not particularly musically and following it with other Christmas carols. Mr. Chambers, who was walking beside her, four-year-old Louisa perched on one of his shoulders, had a good tenor voice, she discovered.
Elizabeth felt awkward and shy with him. Why had she avoided his kiss?
She had wanted it. But had he laid claim to kissing her later beneath the kissing bough? With the lady of my choice. Surely that must be what he had meant. He was not angry with her, then?
She would not think of his being angry. She would not think of her own lost opportunity. There was much to look forward to for the rest of the day. At this particular moment she was chilly, untidy, weary, heavy with milk-and suddenly so filled to the brim with happiness that somehow it seemed more painful than pleasurable.
The children were shooed off to the nursery as soon as they returned to the house. They ate luncheon up there, and some of the younger ones, despite loud protests, were put to bed for a sleep afterward. But all were promised by Edwin, who stayed with them while Elizabeth was feeding Jeremy, that they could come down and help afterward.
“Children have never been allowed out of the nursery during our family gatherings,” his wife told him as they made their way downstairs later.
He did not know if she was rebuking him for the promise he had made the children or for suggesting that they bring Jeremy downstairs with them now since he had not gone back to sleep after his feeding. He was tucked into the crook of one of Edwin’s arms.
“I was brought up with the idea that children are to be enjoyed as an integral part of a family,” he said. “Am I spoiling your Christmas, Elizabeth?”
“No.” She spoke quickly, though he was not convinced that she meant it.
And yet he could have sworn that she had enjoyed the morning outdoors after the first few minutes, when he had expected her to return to the house at any moment. She had looked startlingly, vividly lovely while engaging in the snowball fight and laughing helplessly. He had found himself aching with longing to have all that animation and joy focused on him.
“What are your family Christmases usually like?” he asked.
She walked down half a flight of stairs before answering. “There is a great deal of eating,” she said. “And drinking.And card playing and billiards.And sleeping.”
“Do you enjoy them?”
“I have always hated Christmas,” she said with quiet vehemence.
There was no chance for further conversation. They were entering the dining room, where everyone else was already gathered. There was a minor sensation, as Edwin had expected, over the appearance of Jeremy.
Predictably, Lady Templar, completely ignoring her son-in-law, ordered Elizabeth to summon his nurse to take him back to the nursery.
“It is Mr. Chambers’s wish that Jeremy stay with us until he becomes cross or tired, Mama,” his wife explained with her usual quiet dignity.
“That child will be ruined,” her mother said tartly.
“By spending time with his papa?” Elizabeth said. “Surely not.”
“Well, do not say I did not warn you,” her mother told her.
Edwin realized suddenly in just how awkward a situation he had placed his wife, who had always obeyed her mother without question, he guessed, and yet who must also have been brought up to believe that she must give the same unquestioned obedience to her husband after she married. Now he was forcing her into making a difficult choice. So far it seemed that she was putting duty to her husband ahead of compliance with her mother’s will.
What her will was he did not know. Had she ever exercised it? Had she ever been given a chance? If he had a daughter, he thought, he would want to raise her to think and act for herself, to have opinions, to balance personal identity against duty.
If he had a daughter…
He wished suddenly that he could go back and deal differently with his marriage after his father’s death last year. He wished he had persevered more to make something workable of what had begun so inauspiciously.
He sat at the table, Jeremy nestled in the crook of one arm, and proceeded to eat his luncheon one-handed. Only for a short while, though. The baby went from hand to hand about the table during the meal, to the delight of most of the lady guests and the silent, haughty disapproval of Lady Templar.
When it came time to decorate the house later, Lady Templar and a few of the other older relatives retreated to the morning room. Elizabeth’s uncle Oswald removed to the library with his son, Peregrine, and a couple of the children to work on the carving of the Nativity scene. It would be as well, Edwin thought with an inward chuckle when he peeped in there once, if his mother-in-law did not stray in that direction. There were wood shavings, tools, and unrecognizable wooden objects strewn everywhere.
The drawing room was a hive of industry. A few ladies were tying lavish bows out of the satin ribbon from the village shop and attaching the little brass bells that had been found there too. A few of the more intrepid young people were risking making pincushions out of their fingers as they fashioned wreaths and sprays out of the holly and then attached a bow to each. A large group was earnestly engaged in designing a kissing bough, using all available materials and weaving in the all-important mistletoe. Three young girls, too old for the schoolroom set but not quite old enough to be accepted as adults, took turns holding Jeremy and the other baby, who had also been brought down. A few children darted happily about doing nothing in particular and getting under everyone’s feet. A couple of men were balanced on chairs, pinning decorations to wall sconces and pictures and door frames while their womenfolk tilted their heads from one side to another and advised raising the decoration half an inch to the right and then one and a half inches to the left. In the dining room much the same thing was going on.
On the grand staircase two footmen and a parlor maid, who had jumped eagerly into the spirit of things, were twining ivy about the banister.
Edwin did his share of climbing and precarious leaning. But he also recognized the yearning of some of the children to feel useful. He took several of them astride his shoulders while they reached high to balance a pine bough along the top of a picture frame or to spread holly along the top of the mantel. He could do the job at least twice as fast without their “help,” of course, but there was no hurry. This was what Christmas was all about.
They were almost finished when Lord and Lady Templar and the others who had retired from the chaos entered the drawing room with the announcement that the tea tray had been sent for. But the kissing bough group had just declared that it was ready for hanging.
“Do let us put it up before the tray arrives,” Elizabeth said, looking flushed and animated and quite incredibly beautiful. “In the center of the ceiling between the two chandeliers, I believe. Does everyone agree?”
There was a buzz of acquiescence, a smattering of applause, and a few stray giggles. The family had livened up considerably since the day before, Edwin thought.
“If you believe, Lizzie, that I am going-” Lady Templar began.
“Cut line, Gertrude,” Lord Templar said.
Edwin smiled at his wife. “The lady of the house must be humored,” he said. “The center of the ceiling it will be, and now, before tea. We will need the ladder. Is it still in the dining room? Jonathan, would you fetch it, please? With Charles to help you?”
Five minutes later, he was perched in his shirtsleeves at the top of the high ladder beneath the coved ceiling, securing the gaily decorated kissing bough in its place while a chorus of conflicting advice came from below. Elizabeth stood at the foot of the ladder, her face upturned, Jeremy asleep openmouthed against her shoulder.
“Oh, that is perfect,” she said before he descended carefully.
“Now,” he remarked when he was safely down, “kissing boughs are not merely pretty decorations, you know. They have a practical function. And there is an obscure law, I believe, that the master of the house must be first to put it to use.”
Elizabeth turned that look of beauty on him. She also blushed and looked the nineteen-year-old she was, even though she was holding the baby. Her lips parted. She did not, as she had done in the woods during the morning, turn abruptly away or try to avoid what was coming.
She closed her eyes just before his lips touched hers. Her lips were trembling. They were also soft and still slightly parted, warm and moist. It was strange that after his wedding to an aristocratic iceberg he had performed his duty in the marriage bed but had never found the courage to kiss her. He had wanted to quite desperately.
But she was not an iceberg after all, he realized-perhaps he had been realizing it all day. Perhaps she did not like him, perhaps she resented his coming here with such little notice, but she was not frigid.
The kiss, very public and therefore very chaste, lasted for perhaps ten seconds.
Then it was over.
Their first kiss.
He slid one arm about Elizabeth’s waist, the baby nestled between them, and smiled into her eyes while several members of her family laughed or whistled or clapped their hands. Was it just Christmas that was putting this flush in her cheeks, this glow in her eyes, this warmth in his heart? he wondered.
But this was not the time to muse on the answer.
“I would have to say,” he said, looking about him and grinning, “that the kissing bough works very well indeed. I invite any skeptics to try it for themselves.”
Bertie drew a laughing Annabelle beneath the bough, and Lady Templar haughtily demanded her husband’s arm to lead her to a chair by the fire.
Edwin organized the removal of the ladder and other clearing-up tasks, and the tea trays were carried in while cousins and fiancés and a few older spouses merrily jostled for position beneath the kissing bough.
Elizabeth disappeared upstairs, the baby having woken up at the increased noise to the discovery that he was very hungry indeed.
This family, Edwin thought, was really not very unlike any other of his acquaintances once the repressive influence of Lady Templar was challenged and busy activities were offered. There was beginning to be both the look and the feel of Christmas about Wyldwood.
By dinnertime, Elizabeth was feeling quite weary from the unaccustomed activity and excitement, but she also knew that she did not want this day to come to an end. It was by far the happiest of her life. It was also the day during which she had really fallen in love with her husband. Oh, it was true that she had been dazzled by him the first time she saw him, only to be disappointed and disillusioned soon after. But she had been wrong about him for a whole year. He was not humorless or without character or personality. Quite the contrary. He was far more like his father than she had realized.
She wondered if he understood just how totally he had transformed their usual Christmas.
She wondered if he realized how very affected she had been by her first kiss, public and brief as it had been. She had relived it over and over again while feeding Jeremy afterward, her cheeks hot with pleasure. But it was not only the kiss she had recalled, startlingly intimate and wonderful as it had been. She had also remembered his smile, warm, almost tender, and directed fully at her, while his arm had circled her waist and their child had been safely nestled between them.
It was the sort of memory on which she would feed during the lonely times ahead.
But the happy novelty of this Christmas was still not over, as she discovered after dinner, even before she rose to lead the ladies to the drawing room so that the gentlemen might be left to their port. Uncle Oswald cleared his throat and spoke up for everyone at the table to hear.
“The Nativity scene is completed,” he announced, “and will be set up in the drawing room after dinner with the help of the children. I have been up to the nursery to arrange it. They will all come down, with your permission, Lizzie.”
“Definitely not again today, Oswald,” Lady Templar said. “It is far too close to their bedtime. I daresay that even in the homes of the middle classes children are not allowed into the drawing room during the evening.”
But Elizabeth had spoken up at the same moment. “Oh, yes, certainly,” she said, clasping her hands to her bosom. “What a lovely surprise!”
“It is Christmas Eve,” Uncle Oswald continued, “and the story of the Nativity must be told. Edwin has agreed to do it.”
So Mr. Chambers had been a part of these secret plans too, had he? He smiled at Elizabeth along the length of the table, and she felt her heart turn over. Was it possible that he liked her a little better today than he had before? But he was speaking to her.
“For such an important family celebration,” he asked, “shall we have Jeremy brought down too, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” she said quickly before her mother could finish drawing breath to answer for her. “Having our children about us must be a part of all future family gatherings at Wyldwood. Especially Christmas. Christmas is about children-about a child.”
“Oh, I do agree with you, Lizzie,” Annabelle said fervently. “Don’t you, Bertie?”
“You know I do, Bella,” he said, though he cast a swift, self-conscious glance at his mother as he spoke.
Half an hour later all the adults and children, except those involved in the unveiling of the Nativity scene, were seated expectantly in the drawing room, one large family group, sharing together the warm anticipation of the approaching holy day.
Finally the door opened and Mr. Chambers came inside. He stepped to one side and opened the great leather-bound Bible he carried, while a hush fell on the gathering.
“ ‘And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,’ ” he read in a rich, clear voice.
&
nbsp; As he read Saint Luke’s account of the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, two of the children came through the door, one carrying a folded piece of sacking, which he proceeded to spread out on the floor beneath the center window, and the other a roughly carved manger filled with straw, which she set down on the sacking.
“ ‘And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manager; because there was no room for them in the inn.’ ”
Three more children entered, one carrying Joseph, another Mary, and the third the baby Jesus, wrapped tightly in a piece of white cloth. He was laid carefully on the straw, and his parents were set down on either side of the manger.
A group of shepherds, all carved together out of one piece of wood, came next.
“ ‘And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone ’round about them: and they were sore afraid.’ ”
Two children entered, bearing a paper angel and a paper star, which they pinned to the curtain above the stable.
“ ‘Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’ ” Mr.
Chambers closed the book as Uncle Oswald stepped quietly into the room.
There was no applause. It was perhaps the best compliment to the skill of Uncle Oswald, whose figures were large and rudely carved and yet evocative of the ageless wonder of the Christmas story.
There was a moment of silence, during which Elizabeth, holding Jeremy, fought tears and failed to stop one from trickling down each cheek.
“Thank you,” she said. She swallowed and spoke more firmly. “Oh, thank you so very much, Uncle Oswald, children, and M… and Edwin. This is the crowning moment of a truly wonderful day.”
There was a chorus of voices then-the adults complimenting the performers and the carver, the children explaining loudly to anyone who would listen how they had been told to walk slowly and had almost forgotten but had remembered at the last moment and then could not remember whether Mary went at the right side of the manger or the left or whether the angel went above or below the star. Someone wanted to know why there were no Wise Men, and Uncle Oswald explained that they appeared only in Saint Matthew’s gospel, and he had had no time to carve them anyway.