A Sprinkling of Christmas Magic

by Elizabeth Rolls

  ‘They’re not gone.’ How strange that he had been wishing they were gone or different somehow, while she’d been wishing for the opposite. ‘We’re all still here.’

  ‘But Mrs Moffat’s daughter is married and has a baby. Meredith is engaged. Alyson has a beau. Mrs Anderson...’

  ‘Is still old,’ they both said in unison, laughing together.

  ‘See, everything is still the same.’

  ‘Well, perhaps.’ Catherine conceded with a smile, mischief roaming in her eyes as they glided over the cut on his face, or maybe not. Maybe he was too sensitive about it. ‘Except that cut on your cheek. That’s definitely new. How did you get it?’

  Ah, he wasn’t going to escape. ‘Would you believe me if I said my valet cut me while shaving?’ Finn tried. The whole episode had been painful.

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were full of laughter and he knew she knew the truth.

  ‘I’m going to get Meredith for this.’ Finn blew out a breath, but he wasn’t really angry. He shook his head and gave a little groan. ‘She told you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Catherine sobered. ‘It must have hurt.’ He knew, too, that she meant it in all ways, not just the physical.

  ‘It did, but we didn’t suit.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t have anyone special?’

  ‘No, hence Lady Eliza.’ Finn gave a wry smile. ‘My mother will not stop until I’ve picked one.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’ Catherine cocked her head to one side. ‘I would have thought you’d be the first. I rather suspected I’d come home and find you married with a baby or two.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Finn asked softly, staring back. How had he never noticed the flecks of blue in those green eyes before? It was those flecks that gave her eyes the impression of being sea-green, instead of mossy.

  Those eyes had lured him in momentarily. He wished he hadn’t asked. With anyone else such a question would be far too intimate to ask and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Please don’t let it be because of the title, he thought, or because all he was capable of was doing his duty as opposed to mustering any depth of affection. Too many people had thought that in his past.

  ‘It’s who you are, Finn. Your family is important to you. It stands to reason you’d want to have a family of your own,’ Catherine answered.

  ‘Some day,’ he answered. She was right, of course; family was important. He loved his sisters and his brother even though he often disagreed with Channing’s approach to life. ‘Speaking of family, how is yours? I trust they’ll be along in a day or two.’ It might be better to steer this conversation back to safer ground.

  ‘Tomorrow. My father’s nearly done with his latest book. It’s a treatise on local crop-rotation methods. He interviewed every farmer in the area for it. But you probably know that,’ Catherine added hastily.

  Finn nodded. ‘I do know. I was interviewed for it, too.’ He liked the quiet, scholarly Robert Emerson. The two of them could talk for hours about things that would put the average person to sleep within moments. But that didn’t mean Robert Emerson was dull. He had a way about him of pulling people in, putting them at ease just by being himself. Perhaps Catherine had got that particular talent from him.

  ‘And Lady Eliza, does she share your devotion to family?’ Catherine persisted, clearly unready to let the prior subject drop.

  Finn shook his head. ‘I don’t think Lady Eliza shares much of anything with me.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Catherine made a mock grimace. ‘Was she as bad as all that? I thought she seemed passable.’

  ‘Oh, she was,’ Finn put in quickly. ‘She just wasn’t for me.’ There’d been a lot of women who just weren’t for him. ‘I suppose you could say I’ve wanted something that’s not yet been available.’

  ‘Or someone?’ Catherine replied astutely, her words not all that different from his father’s, but she was no longer looking at him, but out over the guests. Finn could guess who her eyes sought, but finding it wouldn’t make her happy. Suddenly he didn’t want Catherine to find Channing, didn’t want her to see him fawning over Lady Alina Marliss and her delectable charms.

  Finn rose, blocking her view of the room. ‘Come with me, I have an idea.’ Everyone here were old acquaintances. No one would think twice if he stepped out of the party with a long-time family friend.

  They slipped out of the drawing room, her hand in his as they made their way along a darker corridor. ‘Where are we going?’ Her skirts were gathered in her free hand to keep up.

  He tossed a smile over his shoulder. ‘Take a smell, you know where.’ Finn held the door open to the darkened kitchen. Cook would be having a short break before she came back to prepare the tea cart at eleven.

  ‘Ah, the cider’s on the stove already.’ Catherine breathed deeply and so did he, taking in the cloves and cinnamon.

  Finn rummaged through the cupboards until he found two mugs. He poured a ladle full of cider in to each mug. ‘You can’t tell me this has changed since you left.’

  Catherine sipped, hands wrapped around the mug. ‘Not at all. Mmmm. This is good.’ She grinned at him over the rim. ‘Do you suppose there’s any gingerbread?’

  Finn whipped a white cloth off a plate in the centre of the long work table. ‘Right here.’

  Catherine took a bite of the hard biscuit and its icing. ‘Perfect. No torte, or mousse, could be as good as Deverill cider and gingerbread.’

  Finn took a bite too. ‘Do you remember the year all five of us sneaked down to the kitchen and ate gingerbread until we were sick?’

  Catherine groaned. ‘I do. I thought I’d never want to eat gingerbread again, but apparently I was wrong because we were back at it the next year.’

  ‘And the year after that. I suspect we had a little help from Cook by then.’ It had become a Deverill children’s tradition to sneak into the kitchen and gobble gingerbread and cider the opening night of the holiday house party. After that first year, Cook had discreetly seen to it that they were well supplied.

  ‘Are you ready for our next stop?’ Finn took her hand and they were off again into the dark corridors of the hall. He stopped at the back door and shrugged out of his evening coat. ‘You’ll want this. It’s still snowing outside.’

  ‘Outside?’ Catherine wriggled into Finn’s evening coat. It held his heat and it smelled like him—apples and spice. She pushed up the sleeves to free her hands. Was Finn really that big? His shoulders were enormous if the coat was anything to go by.

  ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’ Finn looked down at her feet. ‘If we’re fast, we might be able to salvage your slippers.’

  They sped across the snow-dusted lawn towards the barns, snowflakes twinkling in their hair like wet diamonds. Tomorrow there’d be several inches on the ground if it snowed through the night. Finn pushed aside the stable door and she stepped inside. It was warm and full of the smell of hay and horses. She instantly knew who they’d come to see. ‘Druid!’ Catherine set off down the aisle, skirts held high.

  She stopped in front of a stall containing a white mare. ‘Druid, it’s me.’ The mare nickered and stuck her head over the stall door. Catherine stroked her long nose. ‘I can’t believe she’s still here.’ She heard the quiver in her own voice.

  ‘Of course she’s still here.’ Finn came up behind her, offering the mare a treat. ‘She turned nineteen this autumn. She’s not young, but she’s got years of riding left in her, probably even a fence or two. She’s been well taken care of.’

  ‘I remember the day we brought her home,’ Catherine said wistfully. She’d been so very touched the Deverills had got her a horse to keep at the stables. It had been like an unofficial declaration of membership into the family.

  ‘I remember the day she tossed you in the stream.’ Finn laughed.

  Catherine elbowed him in
the ribs. ‘You would remember that.’

  ‘And I remember the day you took your first jump on her, the old hedge by Anderson’s farm,’ Finn said more seriously.

  Catherine turned to face him. ‘It’s good to remember.’

  A little smile played along the seam of Finn’s mouth. ‘There’s someone else who wants to see you.’ He gave a little whistle and Catherine’s mouth went slack. Out of the tack room came a shepherd, more grey than brown in his coat. He walked with a bit of a limp, but his eyes were alert and his ears were pricked up at attention.

  ‘Hamish!’ Catherine held her hand out to the dog. ‘He’s still walking after all these years.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps you missed your calling. You should have been an animal doctor.’

  She studied Finn. ‘You’ve been generous tonight.’ He’d always been generous in his own quiet ways. He was the eldest, but he’d made time for them all, joining them for picnics, no doubt forced into the role of chaperon by his parents. But he’d never complained. She’d not been lying when she’d said family was important to him. He’d been a good brother to them, yet tonight, standing here in the barn, his jacket draped about her, she didn’t feel as if she was with her brother, but with a friend, a good friend. It was an entirely new way to see Finn. Tonight he didn’t seem so dour, so serious.

  ‘I wanted you to see not everything changes. Much is as you left it.’

  Druid took that moment to nudge her rather roughly in the back. Catherine stumbled most ungracefully into Finn, her nose colliding with his chest. ‘Easy, now, maybe that cider was stronger than I thought,’ Finn joked, gripping her arms to steady her.

  ‘It was Druid! She pushed me with her nose,’ Catherine protested with a laugh, but she could feel her cheeks flushing as she looked up at Finn. Such close proximity had never bothered her in the past, but tonight she was acutely aware that she wore his coat, that it smelled of him, all spice and nutmeg and apples, that his chest where her nose had been crushed was a plane of muscle beneath his shirt. No wonder it hurt.

  She rubbed at the side of her nose. ‘Ow, your chest is hard.’

  Finn laughed, but didn’t release her. ‘You’ll live.’ Something warm sparked in his dark eyes and that warmth transformed his whole face. The austere cut of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the set of his brow were suddenly alive. There was nothing dour or withdrawn about this man, so unlike the polite statue that had greeted her in the drawing room upon her arrival. She’d seen signs certainly, when he’d talked of his science, but now the man was in full evidence. His dark head tipped, his lips parted and for a fleeting moment her heart raced at the thought: he is going to kiss me. Finn Deverill is going to kiss me. But he didn’t and the moment was gone as quickly as it came.

  ‘We’d best be getting back.’ Finn stepped away. ‘We wouldn’t want to miss the best part of the evening—a second round of cider and gingerbread.’

  But Catherine thought she might have already missed the best the evening had to offer, which was an entirely ridiculous conclusion because her fairy tale didn’t involve Finn Deverill, it involved his brother.

  Chapter Three

  December 22nd

  The sleighs were waiting in front of Deverill Hall after a jolly breakfast featuring every early morning delight imaginable: shirred eggs, sausages, fried potatoes, toast, Cook’s famous cinnamon buns and smoked salmon, no doubt caught in the cold rivers of the countryside. Catherine thought she might burst out of her clothes, but that didn’t stop her from heaping her plate high in celebration. No one in Paris did breakfast like a proper English household.

  Afterwards, full and happy and ready to embrace the elements, which weren’t all that dangerous—the overnight snow had stopped and the skies had cleared, leaving the day perfect with blue sky over head and crisp snow on the ground—the guests made their way outside where the countess was organising everyone into sleighs.

  ‘Catherine, over here.’ The countess gestured. ‘You can ride with Meredith and Marcus.’

  That was the plan at least. How she ended up with Channing and Lady Alina was a bit of a social mystery. No sooner had she put her foot on the rung of the sleigh to join Meredith then Channing had called out from his sleigh, ‘Mother, Catherine is to ride over here with us. I haven’t seen her the entire time and I want a good visit with her.’

  Catherine could see the idea didn’t please the countess. A little furrow formed on her brow as she mentally tried to rearrange the seating to accommodate the change, but Channing was faster. ‘Mother, Alyson and Ellis can ride with Meredith and Marcus instead.’ Channing held out a hand to her before his mother could argue. ‘Come on, Cat, I’ll help you in.’

  ‘Catherine, please,’ she said softly, gripping his gloved hand and stepping in.

  They were joined eventually by Lord Richard because the countess abhorred uneven numbers the way nature abhors a vacuum, but it hardly mattered. Channing had invited her of his own accord to ride in his sleigh. Surely that signified as interest.

  Channing made the necessary introductions, settling lap robes for the ladies. It gave Catherine time to study Lady Alina, who was undeniably stunning and unique with her platinum-blonde hair and blue eyes, almost as blue as Channing’s. She looked like the queen of the frost and she was dressed like it too in a habit of bright blue the same shade as the dress she’d worn yesterday.

  ‘It’s my signature colour,’ Alina said somewhat coolly when Catherine commented on how well it suited her.

  ‘Our Catie is just home from Paris. She can tell you all the latest fashions from the Continent, m’dear.’ Channing patted Lady Alina’s hand, but he was looking at her. She could almost forgive him for the abbreviation of her name. Almost.

  ‘Catie?’ Lady Alina caught it immediately, her gaze shifting from Channing to her and back again. Catherine didn’t think anything got past her.

  ‘I prefer Catherine,’ Catherine said hastily.

  Channing dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand. ‘No one named Catherine actually goes by it. They’re Caties or Cats or Cathys or even Kits,’ he protested good naturedly as the sleigh took off behind Meredith’s.

  ‘Channing’s right.’ Alina offered coyly, an arm sliding through his almost possessively. ‘You need a nickname, something distinctive to set you apart.’ Channing? She called him by his first name? Catherine had never heard any woman do that. Surely Channing would correct the familiarity. It should be Mr Deverill. Her heart sank. She called Finn and Channing by their first names because it was expected. She was as good as family. But this platinum-haired woman had no such claims.

  ‘I must disagree,’ Catherine said, wanting to be argumentative. She didn’t much like this special guest of Channing’s. ‘Many great women in history have used their full name: Catherine the Great, Katherine of Aragon, Catherine de Medici, Catherine Parr, Catherine of Valois.’ Catherine drew a breath and tossed Channing a flirty smile. ‘None of them, I assure you, was ever addressed publicly as Cat.’

  Channing laughed and held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘You have me there. I couldn’t argue either way. I haven’t heard of half of them. Catherine of Valois? Are you sure that’s a real person?’

  ‘That’s because you always wheedled out of your lessons.’ Catherine was starting to enjoy herself as the sleigh runners sped over the snow to the lake.

  ‘Catherine of Valois married Henry V. If I remember correctly, she was considered a beauty in her day.’ Lord Richard entered the conversation with his nervously wrapped compliment clearly intended to come to her aid. Catherine felt badly for having left him out. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

  She turned a beaming smile in his direction to make reparation for her neglect. ‘Do you enjoy your history, Lord Richard?’

  ‘Yes, very much so,’ he replied, but Catherine saw the beginnings of infatuation in
his eyes and heard the unspoken message. She would have to tread carefully here with his feelings. Her interests lay elsewhere—in fact, they lay just across the seat from him and she could feel Channing’s eyes on her as the sleighs pulled up to the frozen lake. The lake on the Deverill property could always be expected to be solidly frozen by Christmas. She couldn’t recall a year it wasn’t. The skating outing was a traditional highlight of the Christmas party.

  Catherine loved to skate. Her own skates had been carefully packed earlier that morning and she was eager to get them on. There was the general hubbub of getting skates distributed and laced and then she was on the ice, sailing across the smooth surface. Catherine executed a turn and nearly collided with Channing.

  He steadied her. ‘Sorry, thought you saw me coming. Come skate with me?’

  ‘Where’s Lady Alina?’ Catherine looked over Channing’s shoulder, half-expecting to see the frost queen materialise.

  ‘She’s not skating.’ Channing gestured towards the shore where a large pavilion had been set up for those who wished to watch the skating. Lunch would be served there later. Channing held out his hands, crossed at the wrists. ‘Do you remember this?’

  She did. Catherine crossed her hands too and gripped his. ‘We were the only ones who were any good at it.’

  ‘Do you think we still are?’ Channing was laughing, a wide grin on his face, his blue eyes dancing as he began to spin them. They used the tension of their arms to spin faster. Catherine threw back her head, the blue of the skies whirling in a blur as they spun. She was going to be dizzy when they stopped, but she didn’t care. Right now she was skating with Channing on a perfect winter morning and he had come to her. He’d even walked away from the frost queen, at least temporarily.

  They began to slow. Halting gradually did help the dizziness factor. By the time they stopped, a crowd had gathered about them, clapping and cheering. The children clamoured for a try. ‘Spin me, spin me! Show me how.’ Channing gave her an apologetic shrug, but he wasn’t disappointed in the attention. He grabbed up one of the children and began explaining how to do it.