A Magical Christmas Present

by Eugenia Riley

  Did he mean the he would have to do the same to her? She gazed intently into his eyes, and suddenly knew it was not so, however much her fears may have tried to persuade her otherwise. This warmth in his eyes was meant for her alone, speaking of a desire that matched that in her own heart. A tingling awareness of his nearness ran across her skin. She wanted to touch him, and wanted him to touch her. She wanted to feel his lips pressed against hers, and his arms coming around her, enveloping her in the quiet strength that hid beneath his humble exterior.

  She swayed toward him, one hand rising to lie against the broad warmth of his chest. He inclined his head to where their lips were a bare inch apart, her breath mingling with his. She caught a faint scent of spices and soap from his skin, and felt his heart beating beneath her palm.

  They held the pose for an eternal moment, their breathing the only sound in the dark corridor, and then he reached up and clasped her hand on his chest, bringing it down. “Your family will be wondering where you’ve gone off to,” he said, drawing back.

  She ducked her head, disappointment cold upon her skin. At his prompting she slid her hand up to the crook of his arm, and let him lead her back to the party.

  It was almost 2:00 A.M. and still Catherine could not sleep. Amy breathed heavily in her bed, only her face visible under the mound of covers, and the house was quiet. Despite the late hour, despite the eggnog from earlier in the evening, and despite the questionable relief of having made a final, irrevocable, face-to-face rejection of Mr. Rose, she could not rest.

  It was not the anticipation of Christmas morning that had her tossing and turning. It was that long moment in the hall, when she had been on the verge of kissing Mr. Goodman. He had known what she wanted, and had wisely, honorably, chosen against stealing a kiss from her in the dark hallway of her brother’s house, while she was yet vulnerable from the trouble with Mr. Rose.

  Damn Mr. Goodman, and his noble heart. She had wanted that kiss.

  And what if she had gotten it? What if she had squeezed a declaration of love from Mr. Goodman, what would she have done then? Would she truly be willing to stay in Woodbridge, to be Mr. Goodman’s wife, if he would have her?

  In a heartbeat.

  The opera, the symphony, the theater, the artists and the writers, the bustle and sense of something new around the next corner that was New York; all that she would gladly give up, perhaps even without Mr. Goodman to go to. She was weary of New York, and the lifestyle in which she did not fit except with constant effort. She preferred unsophisticated Woodbridge, where her awkward watercolor could hang upon a wall without comment. She could be herself here, and most especially she could be herself with Mr. Goodman.

  She heard a faint jingling of sleigh bells, jing a jing a jing, coming from outside, breaking into her thoughts. A reluctant smile sneaked its way onto her lips. Santa?

  Jing a jing a jing.

  Who would be out at this hour? She slipped from under the covers, and wrapping her robe around her against the chill, went to the window, picking up her spectacles on the way. She put them on, and moved aside the curtain to look at the moonlit night.

  A sleigh was coming down the middle of the icy lane, drawn by two bay horses. As she watched, it came to a halt and a figure in a bulky bearskin coat hopped out, rummaged in the bags of goods piled in back, and then came toward her house.

  She dropped the curtain, heart thumping, standing frozen for a moment, and then she threw off her robe and dashed for her clothes, cursing under her breath at all the fastenings it took to get them on.

  Corsetless, her skirt half unbuttoned and her coat covering the equally undone state of her bodice, she dashed down the stairs in her socks and sat on the seat by the door, shoving her feet into her boots, wrapping the laces several times around her ankles in lieu of lacing them. She was out the door a second later, taking only a moment to notice the two small packages on the front step, running carefully on the icy ground to where the sleigh now waited, several houses down.

  She reached it just as Mr. Goodman returned from another house. He stopped in his tracks when he saw her. Her breath was coming in gasps after her slippery sprint, and she hung onto the side of his sleigh.

  “Miss Linwood!” he whispered loudly, “What in God’s name are you doing out here?”

  “As if you should be the one asking me such a question, Mr. Goodman! What are you doing out here, is more to the point,” she whispered back, as conscious as he of how easily their voices would carry in the night.

  “It’s a secret. No one was supposed to see me.”

  “You might have thought to take the bells off your horses, if you were so anxious to go undetected.”

  “I did,” he said with exaggerated patience.

  “For heaven’s sake, I heard them from my room,” she said, moving toward the horses to point out his obvious error. She squinted, then moved her hands over the leather harnesses. There were no bells.

  He raised his brows at her from over the backs of the horses.

  “But…I heard, them,” she said. “Did someone else go by?”

  “You’re the only moving creature I’ve seen. You know, Miss Linwood, you have an uncanny knack for catching me at tasks where I would prefer to remain undiscovered.”

  “Poor you,” she said, and gave him a mock pout. She climbed into the sleigh.

  “Miss Linwood! Come down from there!”

  “I am going with you. I couldn’t sleep, and this promises to be much more entertaining than staring at the ceiling all night.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then climbed up next to her and took the reins, setting the horses in motion with a light slap. “I’m going to be out all night, you know. You’re going to get very cold.”

  She found the buffalo skin that was shoved to one side in a crumpled heap, and shook it out. “I shall be quite comfortable.” As the horses trotted down the center of the street, it began to snow, light feathery flakes that fell gently around them. “Look, it’s snowing,” she said, then cocked her head to the side, frowning. “It’s odd to see that, with the moon so bright.”

  He looked up at the night sky with her, to where the sky was nearly free of clouds. “Perhaps it is being blown off the trees and rooftops.”

  “Mmm,” she said doubtfully. There was no wind.

  The snow, as if possessed of a mind of its own, followed them in gently gusting flurries as they made their rounds of the town, and traveled out to the neighborhoods where the mill workers lived with their large families, Mr. Goodman stopping at houses where there were children and leaving gifts upon the doorstep. The snow swirled behind them as they drove out to farms, and it covered their tracks when they left, removing all traces of their passing. At the far edge of her hearing, Catherine thought she could detect the faint jingling of sleigh bells.

  Catherine soon took the reins, leaving Mr. Goodman free to dig in his sacks for the right gift for the next house, and she did not feel the cold. They worked in silent concert, anticipating the needs and movements of each other. The hours of the night seemed to stretch into infinity, even as they flew by. It should not have been possible to make as many stops as they did, Catherine knew, yet somehow there was always time for one more, until the sacks were empty and the first faint light of dawn reached into the sky.

  With dawn turning quickly to morning, she handed the reins to Mr. Goodman and he drove her back to her house. He helped her down from the sleigh, and led her up the walk to her front steps. During the night they had said nothing of what was in their hearts, and yet Catherine felt that an understanding had been silently reached, that during their early morning ride a bond had been formed between them that was meant to last a lifetime.

  “Mr. Goodman,” she said softly, looking up at him, as he paused with her atop the steps.

  Silence held them, and Catherine felt a magnetic pull as he looked at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling, the soft blue loving and accepting her exactly as she was. He bent his head down
and his lips gently took hers. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of his kiss move through her. His mouth moved over hers, nipping and caressing, and she happily answered with caresses of her own, her arms going around his neck as he in turn held her close, exploring her mouth, her cheeks, her brow.

  She did not know how many ages had passed when she came to her senses, her face tucked into his neck as he held her, his cheek resting atop her head. She blinked and pulled back, still slightly dazed. He had the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

  “Mistletoe,” he said.

  She blinked at him, and he nodded upward. She followed his gaze, to the ball of mistletoe she had forgotten, hanging above the steps.

  “I should have brought you here sooner,” she said.

  Will smiled, watching the snow settle on Catherine’s hair, still not quite believing that he had won her heart.

  “Just what did you leave for us?” she asked, bending down to pick up the packages he had left in front of her door. “One for Amy, I see, and look here,” she said, grinning mischievously, “one for me.”

  “You can open it now, if you like.” It was a small, portable set of watercolors meant for use outdoors. Amy had once told him that Catherine liked to paint, and he knew she’d done the touching portrait of her grandmother, in the parlor.

  She tore the paper off, revealing a flat box covered in pale, silvery-blue silk. She froze for a moment, then touched the silk and glanced up at him with a knowing look.

  He was too stunned to speak. That was not the box he had wrapped yesterday afternoon. He had never seen it before, and yet that had been his wrapping paper, and his handwriting addressing the box to Miss Linwood.

  She lifted off the lid, and there in the center of a bed of white satin sat a platinum ring. “Oh, Mr. Goodman,” she sighed, and lifted the ring from its bed. It was studded randomly with tiny diamonds. “Snowflakes,” she said, and there were tears shimmering in her eyes.

  He bent closer, and saw that indeed there were small snowflakes etched into the surface of the platinum, between the glittering diamonds. It was a ring he would have chosen for her if he had had the chance, after their magical sleigh ride tonight.

  She pulled the glove off her left hand, and then held out her hand, fingers parted. He stared at that white hand, and at the ring she held in the other. There seemed only one thing to say, only one thing to do.

  “Will you marry me, Miss Linwood?” he asked, his voice gone suddenly hoarse.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Beyond words.”

  “Then yes, Mr. Goodman, I will marry you,” she said, and a tear like crystal ran down her cheek. “For I love you, too.”

  He took the ring and placed it upon her finger as the snow continued to fall, soft and pure as the feathers from an angel’s wings. She threw her arms around him, and he closed his eyes in thanksgiving to whatever heavenly force had put that blue box and ring inside his wrapping paper.

  He held her, and in the distance he heard the faint, magical jingling of sleigh bells.

  VICTORIA ALEXANDER

  Promises to Keep

  This story is dedicated to my dad, who taught me to believe.

  December 24, 1996

  This was absurd. Ridiculous. If anyone spotted her here they’d lock her up and throw away the key. She shifted her weight impatiently from one foot to the other and summoned the composure born of a lifetime of wheeling and dealing in a man’s world to keep her face expressionless, cool, and controlled.

  The line in front of her proceeded at an agonizingly slow pace, feeding the joyous excitement of the youngsters before her and increasing her own sense of foolishness and embarrassment and, yes, perhaps a touch of fear. She was unaccustomed to lines, to waiting even a minute for what she wanted. And she was not used to fear.

  The line moved ahead one space. Tension tightened her stomach. Did all women in their seventies act with this odd disregard for sense and sensibility? Did the realization that one was closer to the end of life than the beginning somehow trigger impetuous fits of irrational behavior? Was she succumbing to some irreversible geriatric disease? Dementia? Or worse? Or was she simply, finally, taking a hard look at a long life and finding the assets far overshadowed by the deficits?

  Mothers with bright-eyed, stuffy-nosed charges in tow eyed her with mingled caution and curiosity. She ignored the impulse to return their speculative gazes with the scathing, superior glare that had put many a recalcitrant employee or bull-headed business rival firmly in his place and instead drew a deep, steadying breath.

  The line progressed. Her firm step belied the anger spiraling within her. How dare these women stare at her with such impertinence as if she were a doddering old fool? Obviously these housewives and baby factories had no idea of who she was. Or rather, she corrected to herself, who she had once been.

  Absently she stepped forward, her thoughts far from the lush department store surroundings. Katherine Bedford had been a name in the world of business long before these women were born. In a day and age when most women in the corporate arena had taken dictation and the word “career” was synonymous with “husband hunting” she had parlayed a tiny, regional company into an international conglomerate. And eventually sold it for millions. Her picture once graced the cover of Time.

  “Ma’am?”

  Her attention snapped to the man seated before her. In spite of his red suit, masses of white, curly hair and snowy beard, the face confronting her was that of a young man in his thirties, no more.

  Her heart sank. This was simply another department store Santa. A seasonal worker. A temporary employee. There was no magic here. Still…

  She squared her shoulders and trapped his gaze with hers. “I’m here to ask for my gift.”

  “Lady.” The Santa’s gaze slid to the teenage elf standing off to one side in a silent plea for help. The girl, who obviously would be more at home in a T-shirt and jeans than elf ware, shrugged as if to say he was on his own. “Lady,” he said again.

  She stepped closer and clenched her teeth. “Please.”

  Confusion colored the Santa’s face. “I…” His voice lowered. “I’m just here for the kids.”

  Katherine bit back an irritated retort, annoyed more at herself than at him. This was a foolish, futile, last-ditch attempt to salvage something she’d lost long ago. To change what couldn’t be changed. Perhaps she was in her dotage after all. Even so, she had come this far. Katherine Bedford never gave up on anything without a fight.

  She leaned forward until her face was just inches from his and stared into uneasy, pale blue eyes. “Once, you offered me a gift, a Christmas present. And I didn’t take it.”

  “Lady, I…” He hesitated and a subtle change washed through his eyes. They deepened, darkened to the hue of blue-black midnight. The shade of a winter evening. The color of Christmas Eve.

  “You said you didn’t need it.” His voice came richer, wise and intense.

  Her breath caught in her throat. The world around her, the line of children, the gaudy retail decorations, the junior elf all faded. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. She didn’t want to.

  “I was wrong,” she said simply.

  Compassion gentled his voice. “It’s too late now, you know.”

  “Is it?” She fought back a rising sense of desperation. “Why?”

  “You’ve lived your life. Made your choices.” He raised his shoulders slightly in a gesture of inevitability. “You can’t go back.”

  “You promised me a gift,” she said, stubbornly refusing to succumb to sheer panic and outright failure. She was so close.

  He studied her for a long, silent moment. “What do you want, Katie?”

  Katie. No one had called her Katie in longer than she could remember. No one would have dared. Hope surged through her.

  “Katie?”

  “I want”—the words tumbled out of their own accord—“I want a second chance.”

  “A second chance?” Amuse
ment danced in his eyes. “And do you deserve a second chance?”

  Long years of ruthless deals and hardheaded decisions flashed through her mind. A lifetime of ambition and success. A lifetime alone.

  “No,” she said simply.

  He laughed, a deep, genuine ho-ho-ho that somehow lifted her spirit and renewed her soul. “You never were a liar, Katie, I’ll grant you that.”

  “I just thought…I had hoped…” She stared, speechless, unable to recall the last time, if ever, she had been at a loss for words. “You did promise.”

  He lifted a bushy white brow. “Santa always keeps his promises.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  Katherine shot the elf an angry glare.

  “The other children are waiting,” the teen said in that self-important way of people who abruptly rise to a position of power.

  Katherine’s gaze snapped back to the Santa. He shook his head as if waking from a dream.

  “I am sorry, lady,” he said, his eyes again pale, his voice immature and ordinary. “I just work here.”

  She stared for a moment, then nodded abruptly and turned, her position at once taken by an eager child. She stepped away briskly, slowed, turned, and studied the scene.

  Santa sat on his throne, children lined before him, a cheery elf by his side. Swags of red and gold cascaded around him and billowed above the aisles of the posh store. The final frenzied day of Christmas shopping was in high gear with only a few hours left to go. Crowds of last-minute gift seekers scurried past with expressions of panic or tired satisfaction. Had nothing changed at all?

  Or had everything?

  She walked through the quiet house and paused for a moment to listen to the sound of silence, of emptiness. Where was everyone? Of course, she chided herself, the staff was gone, given the day off. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. Annoyance shot through her at being alone, but she pushed the unworthy thought aside. The small number required to attend to her needs these days were excellent workers, loyal and competent. Good people. They deserved to spend the holidays at home with their families. It wasn’t their fault she had no family of her own.