Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  She was going to feel safe. She already did. Papa had said he would keep her safe forever and ever. But the baby had not heard him.

  “Aunt Ursula said she was almost sure there would be,” Rupert said. His voice was his own again, and it was trembling so that Caroline knew that he very badly wanted for there to be presents. “For all of us.”

  “Oh,” Patricia said on a sigh. “Do you think, Rupert? Do you think she is always right?”

  “I think maybe she always is,” Rupert said carefully.

  And then the door opened again and Aunt Ursula and Uncle Timothy were there, hand in hand and smiling. Nurse left the room quietly.

  “I think,” Aunt Ursula said after they had all exchanged greetings, “you had better all come down to the drawing room. There are some strange parcels down there. And each of your names seems to be on more than one.”

  Patricia shrieked.

  Rupert jumped up and down three times on the spot.

  “Of course, if no one is interested . . .” Uncle Timothy said. He was grinning.

  Rupert and Patricia collided in the doorway and disappeared from sight. Aunt Ursula laughed.

  “Come, sweetheart,” she said and reached out a hand to Caroline.

  But Caroline hung back. “I have to go to the nursery,” she said. “You go on and I will come after.”

  Both Aunt Ursula and Uncle Timothy looked closely at her. They were still holding hands, Caroline noticed. It looked nice.

  “Very well,” Uncle Timothy said. “We will hold back the troops downstairs until you come.”

  And so Caroline went to the nursery and tiptoed inside and leaned over the cot. The baby was looking up at her, his little fists waving in the air. She smiled at him and lifted him carefully into her arms. She carried him all the way downstairs, her arms held out carefully in front of her. She took the stairs slowly, one at a time, so that she would not trip and fall. They had left the door of the drawing room open for her.

  “Here she is,” Uncle Timothy said. He was standing by the fire, under the mistletoe. Aunt Ursula was beside him.

  “Caroline. Look.” Patricia’s voice was still almost a shriek.

  “Presents,” Rupert cried in his dearest boy’s voice. “For all of us, Caroline.”

  But Caroline stepped carefully into the room and looked neither to the right nor to the left.

  “What is it?” Aunt Ursula asked gently.

  “You have hurt your hands?” Uncle Timothy asked, a look of concern on his face.

  “I have brought the baby,” Caroline said.

  “The baby.” Aunt Ursula looked as if she did not understand. She glanced at Uncle Timothy and he glanced at her.

  “It is his birthday party,” Caroline said. “We decorated the room for him. Look, he is awake. He wants Mama.”

  “Mama?” Uncle Timothy looked puzzled for a moment longer, but only for a moment. Caroline could see that he understood then as she had known he would. And Aunt Ursula too. She leaned down and stretched out her arms.

  “You had better hand him to me, then,” she said. “My, what a beautiful baby.” She took the baby carefully into her own arms and smiled down at him and rocked him. “Look at him, Timothy.”

  “He does not know that he has a mama and papa and that he will be kept safe forever and ever,” Caroline explained. “But now he will know.”

  She was surprised when she saw that Aunt Ursula was crying and that Uncle Timothy was blinking his eyes. But they were not sad tears. She could feel that.

  “Yes, now he will know,” Uncle Timothy said. “He will know that he has a mama and papa and a home where they will always be with him until he is a man. And that they will love him every day of his life. And his brother and his sisters too. His mama and papa are going to be married and live together always so that his family can always be together.”

  “We are really going to live with you?” Rupert said. “Always? There is really to be no orphanage?”

  “We are going to be with you and play with you every day?” Patricia asked.

  Aunt Ursula nodded and smiled. She would have wiped her tears away, Caroline knew, if she had not been holding the baby.

  “What is the baby’s name?” Patricia asked politely.

  “Why, Jesus, of course,” Aunt Ursula said before Caroline could open her mouth to speak.

  “Under the Bethlehem star,” Uncle Timothy said, glancing up, “where one would expect to find him.”

  “Caroline has such an imagination,” Rupert said fondly but apologetically. “She will grow out of it.”

  “I hope not,” Aunt Ursula said with a smile.

  “And since this baby is too small to open presents or even appreciate them,” Uncle Timothy said, “how about you children opening your parcels instead?”

  Rupert and Patricia darted over to the window ledge and the parcels with whoops of delight. Caroline waited a few moments to watch Uncle Timothy smile into Aunt Ursula’s eyes and lean carefully across the baby to kiss her on the lips.