He seemed different today. His mood was lighthearted, and that bitter tang which had darkened his voice, his face, ever since his wife left him seemed to have gone.
‘You seem very cheerful,’ she almost accused.
‘It’s called the Christmas spirit,’ Henry said. ‘And if you aren’t careful, when you get back from delivering that child to its mother I may have found some mistletoe! ’
Ruth was appalled to find herself blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘Don’t talk daft!’ she muttered, moving towards the door with the baby over her shoulder.
‘Daft, am I? Well, for that, if I can’t find any mistletoe I’ll do without. You don’t need mistletoe to snatch a kiss!’
His grin was wicked; his eyes gleamed with warm amusement.
Ruth hurriedly left the room, feeling oddly breathless. She had never dared admit to herself how strong her feelings were for Henry. You’re too old to dream, she had always told herself. Don’t be so stupid. He’s married, anyway. Are you out of your mind?
She had almost managed to fool herself into believing she thought of Henry as just a friend—but she had never fooled his wife. Gwen had been far too shrewd, not to mention a woman with a poisonous tongue and a mind like a steel trap.
Embarrassed, humiliated, Ruth would have died rather than admit Gwen was right. She’d been terrified Gwen had told him, appalled at the thought that he might guess how she felt. Ever since that day when Gwen had accused her of chasing Henry, Ruth had put on a polite, friendly but offhand mask with him.
Even when Gwen ran off with her toy boy Ruth had gone on trying to convince Henry that all she felt was friendship towards him, nothing more, and Henry’s own humiliation and bitterness had made it easy.
Suddenly their relationship had altered—she didn’t know why or when.
Ross was already awake and out of bed. For a second when his eyes had flicked open he hadn’t remembered where he was; the tiny box room was shadowy, although the sun rising outside flashed glittering reflections of snow on to the ceiling. As his memory had brought him up to speed he’d sat up, jumped out of bed, and put on the well-washed old dressing gown Ruth had found for him last night. It was rather short on him and he felt ridiculous.
When he carefully opened Dylan’s door the room was empty. The bedclothes were flung back but no sign of Dylan.
His heart stopped, then began to race in panic. Where was she? Where was the baby?
Then the bathroom door opened and Dylan appeared, wearing a long, lemon-coloured cotton nightie which blew back against her, outlining the round breasts, small waist and slim hips in a way that went straight to Ross’s head. Seeing him, she stopped to look at him, her blue eyes wide before she smiled, a tremulous, quivering smile that touched him so deeply he didn’t even smile back, just looked at her passionately.
‘Hello.’ His voice was deep, husky.
‘Hello,’ she said, in a shy little-girl murmur, as if they were total strangers, and limped towards the bed.
He hadn’t noticed any limp yesterday; he stiffened. ‘What have you done? Why are you limping?” He followed her across the room.
Climbing into bed, Dylan pulled the covers up over herself and sat up against the pillows. ‘I hurt my ankle when I crashed, but it’s getting better already; it was just a sprain.’
‘Let me see.’
She pushed her foot out from under the bedclothes and he gingerly inspected it, his fingers gentle.
‘It looks painful—does it hurt much?’
‘Only when I walk. The swelling is going down now.’
‘Has Henry seen it?’
‘Of course!’ She drew her foot back under the covers. ‘He said it wasn’t serious and would soon heal.’ Changing the subject, she asked him, ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I must have done. I don’t remember a thing after I put out the light until I woke up a few minutes ago.’ He sat on the edge of her bed to kiss her lingeringly. ‘Mmm...you’ve had a shower. Your skin is damp and smells flowery.’
Dylan suddenly realised he had slept naked. His dressing gown had fallen open over his legs and she could see the rough hair on his bare thigh. Her breathing was suddenly faster, ragged with excitement. Ross glanced down to see what she was staring at and inhaled sharply. Taking one of her hands, he placed it on his thigh, watching her with a burning desire in his dark grey eyes.
Dylan’s fingers slid upward over the short dark curls of hair, touched him intimately, feeling his flesh harden and stir; he shut his eyes, groaning her name.
‘It’s been so long...’
‘Too long,’ she whispered.
Neither of them had heard Ruth coming up the stairs. Luckily a stair on the landing creaked loudly before she walked into the room. Dylan had time to snatch her hand back, and Ross hurriedly stood up, dragging his dressing gown together while his back was towards the door. They were both red and breathing fast.
‘Here’s Mummy,’ Ruth told the baby, carrying her over to Dylan. ‘I said you would see her in a minute, didn’t I? Say Happy Christmas!’
‘Christmas!’ repeated Ross, taken aback. ‘I’d forgotten all about it!’
Holding out her arms, Dylan took the child, smiling into those wide, staring blue eyes.
‘Hello, darling. Happy Christmas to you, too—did you sleep all night?’
‘She was very good,’ Ruth lied. ‘A real Christmas angel.’
Dylan ran a finger down the baby’s cheek. ‘She smells so nice!’ Then she noticed the clothes the baby was wearing and blinked in surprise. ‘Where did you get those?’ The dress was a faded blue gingham with lacy cuffs and collar, and looked a little odd but rather sweet on the baby, especially as it was rather short on her dimpled legs. On top of that the baby was wearing a tiny blue knitted cardigan of a curiously old-fashioned design.
Ruth laughed. ‘I stole them.’
‘Stole them?’ Dylan repeated, wide-eyed.
‘I never throw anything away,’ Ruth admitted. ‘I still have most of my old toys in the little box room, including two dolls with china faces and soft bodies. I know it’s daft...’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Dylan contradicted, smiling at her. ‘I’ve kept a couple of my own dolls, and my old teddy, although he’s very battered and has lost an eye.’
‘I’m glad I’m not the only sentimental idiot!’ Ruth laughed. ‘While I was getting the room ready for your husband yesterday, I realised my dolls were the same size as the baby, so I took their clothes off and washed and tumbled-dried them. I left them in front of the range all night, and put them on the baby after I bathed her just now—they fit her perfectly. I think my mother must have used some of my old baby clothes to dress my dolls after she bought them.’
‘Recycling with a vengeance,’ said Ross, laughing. ‘How wonderful. She looks adorable in them, too.’ He ran a hand over the baby’s head. ‘Look at all that hair! I had the idea babies were born bald.’
‘Some are, according to Henry.’ Ruth turned her head, sniffing. ‘I smell bacon and coffee. I’ll leave the baby with you, Dylan. What do you fancy for breakfast? Egg and bacon? Fruit and cereal? Coffee or tea?’
‘Whatever you’re having, thank you.’
‘Okay. How about you, Ross?’
‘I’ll have the same, too, thanks. This is really very kind of you, Ruth. It must be a nuisance having your Christmas ruined this way.’
‘It isn’t being ruined! I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed Christmas this much,’ Ruth said, smiling as she went back downstairs.
‘What a nice woman,’ Ross said, about to sit down on the bed again. But Dylan shooed him away.
‘Go and have a shower before breakfast. You haven’t much time, judging by that gorgeous smell of bacon!’
He went, laughing but reluctant, and Dylan cradled her baby, moved by the feel of her small, warm body. ‘You’re beautiful, do you know that?’
The dark blue eyes gazed up at her.
‘Yes, you do know, don
’t you?’ Dylan laughed, kissing the tiny button nose. ‘Hungry? Yes, I thought you would be.’
She opened her nightdress.
Ruth brought up her breakfast on a tray half an hour later and found the baby fast asleep, pink and contented, in her mother’s arms.
‘Give her to me. I’ll take her back downstairs and put her into the basket. Is feeding her getting any easier?’
‘She seems to enjoy it; that’s the main thing. What are you putting in her bottle, Ruth? Cow’s milk?’
‘No, Henry very thoughtfully brought along some more powdered feed, a couple of bottles and some sterilising tablets on his last run. Not to mention some disposable nappies, which make life much easier. Now, you eat your breakfast, then you can have a nap.’
Dylan looked at the bran flakes with sliced banana, the covered plate of bacon and egg, the toast and coffee.
‘It all looks marvellous, and I am starving, but if I keep eating like this I shall be even fatter than when I was pregnant!’ she moaned.
‘You can’t diet while you’re breastfeeding,’ said Ruth, taking the baby out and closing the door.
After she had eaten her breakfast and put the tray on the floor Dylan lay back, sunlight on her closed lids, in a trance of happiness.
Downstairs Ruth put the baby into her wicker basket in the sunny sitting room while Cleo watched, slit eyes bright green.
‘It’s a baby,’ Ruth told her. ‘And you stay away from it, do you hear me?’ She covered the baby and shooed Cleo out of the room, closing the door firmly.
Tail lashing in affront, Cleo walked off into the kitchen and curled up in a patch of sunlight on the mat, from where she could see Fred mooching around the garden, gloomily looking for green things poking through the blanket of white snow.
Henry was talking on the mobile phone. ‘Well, that’s a wonder! If there are any emergencies, I shall be here all day at Ruth’s cottage. Oh, and Meg... Happy Christmas!’
He switched off and met Ruth’s questioning stare. ‘My message service,’ he explained. ‘Nobody needs me so far, touch wood. No really serious problems have come up overnight. Look, Ross and I are going off to see what we can scavenge to make this a real Christmas. We may be gone an hour or so, but apparently the temperature is rising again and there’s a thaw on the way, so we’re unlikely to run into any difficulty.’
‘The shops will all be shut! And anyway, I found a very big chicken in my deep freeze. I’ve been thawing it out in the microwave; I’ll start cooking it in half an hour.’
Henry wagged a finger at her. ‘The village store will open up for me! Jack has been a patient of mine for donkey’s years; he owes me a favour. Start cooking your chicken; I’ll bring back whatever else I can find.’
While they were gone Ruth prepared the chicken, stuffing it with a mixture of the herbs she grew on her windowsill and some chestnuts she had in her larder. She had meant to roast them whole, in their skins, instead she peeled them, then chopped them up very small. Before she put the bird into the oven she pushed a whole unpeeled orange into the mouth of the cavity to give a faintly orangey flavour to the meat, then laid strips of bacon criss-cross over the top.
By the time Henry and Ross returned the whole house was full of the scent of roasting chicken.
The two men stamped their boots on the mat before coming indoors, faces healthily flushed after their tussle with the wind, smelling of fresh, cold air, and bringing waves of it in with them.
Each of them carried a couple of carrier bags, but they refused to let Ruth see the contents of all the bags. Ross vanished into the sitting room with the two he carried, but Henry put his bags on the kitchen table.
‘These are full of food. You can unpack them and see what a treasure trove we found!’ Henry announced proudly.
Her face lit up as she saw that they had managed to get a Christmas pudding, a string bag of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts, a small Christmas cake, biscuits, fruit, half a dozen cartons of milk and several of orange juice.
‘That’s marvellous,’ Ruth said gratefully to Henry, as he helped her put everything into cupboards.
‘I checked what you had in your larder before we went, to make sure I didn’t buy stuff you already had—you didn’t intend to have Christmas at all, did you?’
‘Any more than you did,’ she drily told him.
He grimaced. ‘True—but, do you know? I’m enjoying it for the first time in years. How about you?’
She nodded, smiling. ‘I’m having a wonderful time.’
Henry put his hand into his trouser pocket and produced something green; he held it over her head, leaned down and kissed her on her startled lips.
Eyes wide and bright, Ruth recklessly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
Then, flushed and laughing, they looked at each other as if neither had ever really seen the other before.
‘Happy Christmas, Ruth!’ he said, warmth and gentleness in his face, and she happily echoed the words.
‘Happy Christmas, Henry.’
He took a deep, audible breath, then plunged on, ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me?’
Ruth didn’t believe her ears; lips parted in a gasp of shock, she gazed back at him for a second or two, almost made some shy, embarrassed response which might have frozen them both for another year or two, then threw modesty to the winds and huskily said, ‘Yes! Oh, yes, Henry!’
Ross carried Dylan, in her nightie and dressing gown, downstairs just after two o’clock. ‘Don’t drop me, will you?’ she said, a little nervously, both arms around his neck as he picked her up from the bed. ‘Are you sure I won’t be too heavy for you?’
He hoisted her closer to him, the soft folds of her clothes trailing over his arm. ‘Now you’ve had the baby you’re as light as a feather again! And more beautiful than you ever were!’
She hid her face in his throat, her mouth pressing into him. ‘Flatterer!’
At the foot of the stairs, he said, ‘Now, close your eyes!’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve got a surprise for you!’
Laughing, she shut her eyes, and Ross walked through the door of the sitting room. Dylan inhaled a familiar scent of pine, reminding her of the forest around their home.
‘You can look now!’ he told her, and she opened her eyes, blinking in the dazzle of coloured lights on a very tall Christmas tree.
‘Oh! How lovely!’ Dylan gazed in delight at the fairy lights, winking on and off, red and blue and gold among the dark green branches.
A silver tinsel star was perched on top of the tree and there was a little pile of wrapped gifts underneath. The room was hung with glittering gold and red tinsel chains which reflected the dancing firelight in the hearth, in front of which stood Henry and Ruth, watching her, flushed and smiling.
‘Ross did it all himself,’ Ruth said. ‘He even found some holly, with a few berries on it!’
‘And some mistletoe,’ said Henry,. ‘A happy Christmas, Dylan.’ He held a bottle of champagne in one hand, a glass in the other. He poured a glass, bubbles winking at the brim, while Ross carefully put Dylan into a chair in front of the fire. Henry handed her the glass of champagne, saying, ‘Before we have lunch we thought we would drink to you two and your baby. You’ve made this the best Christmas either of us can remember—a Christmas we’ll never forget!’
‘We’re going to be married, Dylan,’ Ruth said huskily, very pink and shy, looking years younger.
‘Oh, how marvellous. I’m so glad!’ Dylan glowed with delight.
Ross looked stunned for a few seconds, then he recovered, smiling, and raised the glass of champagne Henry had just given him. ‘What great news. Congratulations, both of you. Henry, you’re a lucky man. You’ll be getting a wife nearly as wonderful as mine. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
‘We will be,’ Henry firmly told him. ‘I should have got around to proposing to her long ago, but I was always so busy, and I’m a slow thinker. It wasn’
t until I saw her looking after Dylan and the baby that I realised just how I felt about her. She’s one in a million, and I’m grabbing her while I have the chance.’
Ruth laughed. ‘I’m grabbing you, too. At our age we can’t afford to waste any more time.’
‘We won’t. And stop talking as if we’re old; we’re not—we’ve got the best years of our lives ahead of us!’ he assured her. ‘We’ll have to sit down and plan our honeymoon tomorrow. We’ll go somewhere neither of us has ever been. When you’re starting life over again you should grab every new experience you can!’
She laughed, flushed and excited.
‘We owe both of you an enormous debt,’ Ross said, sitting down on the arm of Dylan’s chair. ‘We’re very grateful. We can never thank you enough for what you did for us.’
‘You’ve already repaid us,’ Henry said. ‘If Dylan hadn’t crashed her car out there we might have gone on for years without realising how much we needed each other. She changed our lives.’
Dylan and Ruth smiled silently at each other as their men talked, then Ruth gave an exclamation. ‘The roast potatoes! They’ll be burnt black if I don’t get them out soon! Excuse me, won’t you?’
She hurried out of the room. Henry said, ‘She’ll need some help—sorry. You two finish your champagne. We’ll give you a shout when lunch is ready.’
As he went out Ross looked down at Dylan, amusement in his eyes. ‘How about that bombshell, then? Who’d have expected that?’
‘Me,’ she said firmly. ‘It was as clear as day to me that Ruth loved him, and she’s such a darling. I was just afraid he would never get round to realising what a great wife she would be.’
‘Why do women always have to know everything?’ Ross asked drily, then glanced up at the ceiling. ‘See where I put your chair?’
Dylan threw a look upwards, saw the piece of mistletoe suspended over her head, and gave him a teasing look. ‘Opportunist!’
He leaned down to kiss her, one hand softly stroking her neck and the full curve of her breast ‘I love you, darling,’ he whispered against her yielding mouth.
The Yuletide Child Page 16