by Mary Balogh
Judith had joined in one of the relay races and had raced the length of the ballroom and back, her skirt held above very trim ankles, her face glowing with the fun of it. His heart had somersaulted.
And now it was almost time for the outside guests to arrive, earlier than usual so that they could watch the children's pageant before the ball began and the children were herded off to bed.
It was no wonder he was feeling like a scarecrow, the marquess thought, turning to leave the room so that he could be sure of being downstairs before the first arrival.
***
No one had played a single hand of cards all day. And except for the wine at dinner, she had not noticed anyone drinking any alcohol. What a difference from Christmas at Ammanlea, Judith thought, taking a chair in the marquess's ballroom, nodding to neighbors she had noticed at church the night before, and waiting for the pageant to begin.
This Christmas had been wonderful. If there were not one more moment of it to come, it would be the best Christmas
she had ever known. But there was more to come. There was the pageant that the children had worked so hard to prepare and Rupert's excitement at being a shepherd.
"I am the one who cannot wake up, Mama," he had explained to her in some excitement. "I miss what the angel says and have to be told by Stephen and dragged off to Bethlehem. I have to yawn the whole time until I see the baby."
Judith smiled at the memory of Rupert practicing his yawns.
“It is hard to yawn, Mama,'' he had said, "when you are not tired."
"I am sure you will do quite splendidly when the time comes," she had assured him.
Kate climbed onto her lap and stared expectantly at the empty stage area.
And there was the ball to come. The dancing. She had always loved dancing. And he had asked her to save the opening set and at least one waltz for him.
There was a growing glow of excitement in her. There had been little time all day to exchange more than the occasional glance and word with him. But his looks had been warm, full of an awareness of what had happened between them the evening before. During the ball they would touch again and talk again. Perhaps he would find the chance to take her aside and declare his feelings.
He loved her. She knew he did. She could see it in his eyes whenever she looked into them. He loved her as she loved him.
She wanted him to kiss her again as he had kissed her the night before. She wanted him to hold her. She wanted to hold him. She wanted more than those kisses. She wanted everything. Her cheeks grew warm at the thought.
"There is Aunt Amy," Kate said, pointing across the ballroom to where Amy was taking her place at the pianoforte.
Conversation about them was dying away as attention turned expectantly to the empty half of the ballroom. Judith smiled and rubbed a cheek against Kate's curls and caught the marquess's eye across the room.
***
Amy sat down on the bench behind the pianoforte and looked about the ballroom at all the splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen who had come for his lordship's ball. And she made sure that her music was in proper order on the music rest. She set her hands in her lap and waited for Mary and Joseph to trudge through the ballroom doors on their weary way to Bethlehem.
She had always loved Christmas because of church and the caroling and the decorating and because it always brought her nieces and nephews to a house that was usually quiet and lonely. And she had always liked to have her brothers and their wives close to her again, reminding her that she was part of a family. But she had never experienced a Christmas as wonderful as this one.
There was Lord Denbigh and the courteous, kindly manner in which he tried to see to it that all his guests were comfortable and entertained. And his interest in Judith, which would surely blossom into a splendid match for her sister-in-law, who deserved more happiness than she could have known with Andrew. And there were the other guests, all amiable, even the unfortunately tedious Mr. Rockford, and willing to accept her as an equal.
And there were the children. All the wonderful children with their exuberance and mischief, their fun and their wrangling, their sad and funny stories from their past, and their capacity to bring joy into any adult's heart.
And the snow and the food and the decorating and skating and snowball fights and… oh, and everything.
And Spencer. Amy could feel her heart thumping faster. She had never had a gentleman friend. Never anyone to call her by name and to talk with her and laugh with her and throw snowballs at her and set a careless arm about her shoulders. No one had ever kissed her beneath the mistletoe except her brothers.
Spencer had kissed her twice under the mistletoe and once without. He had kissed her outside the ballroom doors a few minutes before. The children had been ready in their dressing room, though a few of them had still been dashing about in
near hysteria. Mrs. Harrison had told Amy that she might take her place and they would try not to keep her waiting longer than half an hour or so-those last words spoken with a harassed look tossed at the ceiling.
Spencer had accompanied her from the dressing room and through the great hall to the ballroom doors, one arm about her shoulders.
"You are a real sport, Amy," he had said. "I do not know what we would have done without you."
"It is not over yet," she had said. "Perhaps I will suffer from a massive dose of stage fright and suddenly find myself with ten thumbs."
He had bent his head and kissed her firmly on the lips. "You could not let us down if you tried, Amy," he had said. "There is far too much love in you for the children. And far too much common sense too."
He had opened the ballroom door for her and winked at her as she passed through.
Friendly kisses all? she wondered, lifting a hand to touch her lips. Or had there been more to them? A real affection, perhaps. Her eyes grew dreamy. She wished… Oh, she wished she were fifteen years younger and six inches taller and beautiful. Or pretty at least. She wished…
The ballroom door opened again and Amy could see two frightened faces beyond it with Spencer beaming down at them. Mary and Joseph were approaching Bethlehem.
***
Mary and Joseph were approaching Bethlehem. She was tired and brave and cross and not always careful in her choice of words. And he was strong and tender and reassuring- and could not resist returning one insult rather sharply. They were a loving and weary and very human couple.
The innkeeper, harassed by an unusually packed house and bad-tempered and demanding guests, would have turned away the couple from faraway Galilee without a qualm of conscience, but his wife fiercely defended the right of a woman just about to give birth to be given some place other than the street. Hands on hips, she browbeat the poor man until he suggested the stable, his voice heavy with sarcasm. And then she drove him out with a broom to clean a manger ready for the baby.
The Bible story, though beautifully written, the Marquess of Denbigh thought, somehow took the humanity out of the players. His ragamuffins from the slums of London put the humanity right back in and made a strangely touching, almost a moving, experience out of it.
The wise men called one another all kinds of idiot as they argued over which route would take them in the direction of the star, but all of them gave the impression that they would have followed it through quicksand if that was the way it pointed. The shepherds, except for the one who remained snoring and whistling on the ground, cursed the air blue in their terror at the appearance of the unknown but soon dropped their jaws in wonder and awe. The angel told them to shut up and pay attention. The choir sang like angels only slightly off-key.
And then Mary in the stable was bending protectively over the manger, warning the shepherds to stay back because she did not want them passing any sickness on to her baby. And she shushed one of the kings, who spoke too loudly for her liking. And she beamed down at the manger and reached down with a tickling finger just as if it were a real baby lying there and not just a doll from the nursery.
/>
Joseph folded his arms, frowned about at the whole gathering, including the angel, and tried to look tough. Anyone who had it in his mind to harm the baby was obviously going to have to go through him first.
Rupert Easton was certainly never going to be able to earn a living as an actor, the marquess thought with amusement, watching the boy yawn and stretch with exaggerated gestures until he gasped at sight of the baby and fell to his knees.
The marquess glanced across the room at Judith. She was leaning forward in her chair, one arm about her daughter, smiling broadly and watching her son intently. He would be prepared to wager that there were tears in her eyes.
And indeed, he thought, there were probably several eyes in the room that were not quite dry. For all the occasional irreverence of their language, these children were bringing
alive a story so familiar that sometimes it lost its wonder. Into a very human world, a world full of darkness and imperfection and violence, a savior was being born. And despite everything, despite all the human darkness of the world, he was being welcomed and loved and protected-and worshiped.
There was a sudden and unexpected ache in Lord Denbigh's heart. And a reminder of something that had eluded his conscious mind for the moment. So much darknesss. And so much light. Especially at Christmas. Light to dispel the darkness. A single candle to put the darkness to flight. A Christmas candle.
Unless the darkness fought against it too stubbornly and snuffed it forever.
He joined in the loud and appreciative applause that greeted the ending of the pageant, and found that he had to blink his own eyes several times.
***
She was late for the ball. It had taken a long time to quiet Rupert's excitement after the success of the pageant. All of the children had been made much of by the assembled adults before being finally herded off to the dining room for refreshments before bed. All of them had been in a mood to swing from the chandeliers, as Mr. Cornwell had put it.
Long after Kate had been tucked into bed, Judith had sat in the nursery with Rupert on her lap, reading a story to him, assuring him that yes indeed, she had heard him snoring, and that yes, certainly his yawns had been very convincing, and finally singing lullabies to him just as if he were an infant again, her fingers running through his soft auburn curls.
She wondered if Mrs. Harrison and Mr. Cornwell were having a similarly hard time getting the other children settled down. And gracious, they had twenty to cope with, not just one. She suspected that Amy was helping them, too, and probably Mrs. Webber.
Her son was growing up already, she thought as she got to her feet eventually and carried him to his bed. He was getting heavy. She looked down at his sleeping face with love and a little regret. She wished she could have kept him as a baby for a little longer. She thought of Mrs. Richards' newborn and of how it had felt in her arms. She wished she could have another child. Kate was three years old already.
A dark-haired baby… Would he ask her that night? she wondered. Had she refined too much on a kiss? They had after all been walking alone along a dark driveway. They would have had to be almost inhuman not to have given in to the temptation of the moment. Perhaps he had no intention of making her an offer. Perhaps he did not love her.
But he did. She had seen it in his eyes, those keen heavy-lidded eyes that had used to disturb her, frighten her. She had seen it in his eyes. He did love her.
She was late. The dancing had already started when she reached the ballroom. But she was not the last, she saw, looking about her. Mr. Cornwell, Mrs. Harrison, and Amy had still not come down. The marquess was dancing with an older lady. He was dressed with all the formality of a London ball, and was all gold and white, his silk knee breeches, embroidered waistcoat, and brocaded evening coat all varying shades of gold, his stockings and linen of gleaming white.
Had she ever thought that he was not a handsome man? she wondered. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears.
"I thought you had deserted me completely when you did not appear for our dance," he said with a smile, coming to her as soon as the set ended. "Did you finally get your children to sleep?"
"Yes," she said. "Rupert was very excited."
"I suppose," he said, "that deciding to have them perform their pageant just before bedtime was not a great idea. I have too little experience with children, I am afraid."
"But they have taken a wonderful feeling to bed with them," she said. "They did very well and were well praised for it."
"One thing I have learned about children in the past two years," he said. "They will respond to one word of praise faster than to ten of criticism. They need to feel good about themselves, as we all do. Good comes out of love and evil
out of hatred. And here I am mouthing platitudes. Come and dance with me."
She smiled and remembered the very stiff and formal and unsmiling gentleman to whom she had been betrothed for two months a long time ago. And the harsh, morose gentleman whom she had met again in London just a few weeks before. She looked up at the man who had just said with easy informality, "Come and dance with me."
It was a very intricate country dance, which she remembered only with difficulty and great concentration. Some people who attempted it did not know it at all. There was a great deal of laughter in the room as couples or individuals occasionally went spinning off in quite the wrong direction. Both the marquess and Judith were laughing as he spun her down the set after they had been separated for some of the patterns.
"There you are again at last," he said. "Did you promise to save a waltz for me, Judith? If not, promise now."
"I promise," she said, and they were separated again. She was dancing with a very large gentleman who was wheezing rather alarmingly from his exertions.
It was quite the most wonderful ball she had ever attended, she decided, looking about her at the twirling dancers and the berry-laden holly and up to the stars that twisted and glinted with the lights of dozens of candles above them in the chandeliers. By London standards it would not have been described as a great squeeze by any stretch of the imagination, but still to her it was wonderful beyond words.
She was back with Lord Denbigh again. "What a wonderful ball this is," she told him.
"You are not trying to flatter the host are you, Mrs. Easton?" he asked her.
"Yes, I am," she said. "I also mean it."
He smiled at her before they parted company yet again.
She would have been looking forward to their waltz with some impatience if she had not also wanted to live through and savor every moment of the evening.
***
"I have never seen them so excited or so puffed up with their own worth," Mr. Corn well said.
''They had every right to be," Mrs. Harrison said. “They did quite splendidly even if in the final performance they disregarded or forgot every suggestion we had made to them about their use of the English language. My only consolation is that half the audience probably had never even heard some of the words before. Perhaps they assumed they were Latin or Greek."
Amy laughed. “I could have hugged every one of them,'' she said.
"I believe you did," Mr. Comwell said.
The three of them were standing in the doorway of the ballroom, watching the vigorous country dance that had already been in progress by the time they arrived. Mrs. Harrison was being beckoned by the marquess's aunts and made her way to the empty chair beside them.
"Well, dear," Mr. Cornwell said, "Christmas is almost over."
Amy looked sharply up at him. "Yes," she said. "But it has been wonderful, and the glow of it will carry us all forward for some time to come."
"I sometimes worry about my boys," he said with a sigh. "And about the girls too. Shall we stroll? It seems that this set is not nearly finished yet." She set her arm through his and they began to stroll out into the great hall. "I worry about what will happen to them when we finally have to let them out into the world to fend for themselves."
"But
you will not let that happen until they have been well prepared for some employment, will you?" she said. "And I believe that his lordship will help them find positions."
"Yes," he said. "But will they forget everything else they have learned? Love and sharing and respect and courtesy toward others and belief in themselves and everything else?''
Amy chuckled. "I do believe, Spencer," she said, "that you are sounding like any father anywhere. You are busy giving your charges wings but are afraid to let them fly. If they are loved, they will love. And they will carry with them everything else you have taught them and shown them and been to them."
everything else you have taught them and shown them and been to them."
He patted her hand. "You are a beautiful little person, Amy Easton," he said. "Where have you been hiding all my life?"
She laughed. “That is the first time I have ever been called beautiful," she said. "My family hid me at home. They were afraid I would be hurt if I went out into the world. They clipped my wings, you see."
"Was it smallpox?" he asked her.
She nodded. "Only me," she said. "It afflicted no one else in the family. For which I can only be thankful, of course."
"If they had only allowed you from home," he said, "you would have been called beautiful many times, Amy. Your beauty fairly bursts out from inside you."
"Oh," she said.
He worked his arm free of hers and set it about her shoulders. "And the exterior is not unpleasing either," he said. "Have you allowed a few pockmarks to influence your image of yourself?"
"Oh," she said, "I stopped even thinking about my:ppearance years ago. We have to accept ourselves as we are, do we not, or live with eternal misery."
"I wish…"he said, and stopped. He smiled at her. "I wish I had met you ten years ago, Amy, and had a fortune as large as Max's."
She swallowed. "I have never believed that wealth necessarily brings happiness," she told him. "And age makes no difference to anything." She looked up at him, liking and affection and hope in her eyes.