She shook her head at him. “Thank you. No doubt I’ll see you in the next few days.” She paused, scanning his face through the darkness, then tipped her head to him. “Good night.”
He echoed the farewell, then stood and watched as she walked on. She reached the gate, opened it, and went up the path to the door.
Callum lingered just long enough to see her open the door, then swung around and walked away into the darkness, letting the shadows veil him from anyone inside the cottage.
Every impulse he possessed had insisted he walk Honor all the way to her door, but he couldn’t risk the professor seeing him.
Not yet. Not before he’d located the hoard.
After shutting the door behind her, Honor set the folder on the small side table, unbuttoned her coat, shrugged it off, and hung the heavy garment on the hook behind the door. For an instant, she paused and let her mind range over the events of her afternoon, ultimately focusing on the sensations and stirrings Callum Harris’s glances had provoked. Primed by that magical interlude on the ice, was she reading too much into his attentiveness? Or was there something truly there—something, some emotional connection, growing between them?
After a moment of staring into space, she shook herself and whispered, “I have no clue. And no time to daydream and wonder.” With that reminder of her pressing duties, she went through to the cottage’s kitchen. The pot Mrs. Hatchett had left on the stove emitted a delicious aroma, but not even such an enticing smell had managed to rouse her uncle.
Smiling fondly, she walked through the archway into the small sitting room he’d commandeered as his study. “Come along, Uncle Hildebrand. It’s time to eat.”
“Heh? What?” Her uncle looked up at her and blinked several times as if to bring her into focus. Then he glanced at the windows, which now looked out into darkness. “Damn it.” He slumped, frustration in his face. “I’ve only just started making progress. Where did the day go?”
“The same place yesterday went,” Honor dryly replied. “And you’ve let the fire go out again.”
Her uncle turned to stare at the fireplace. “So I have.”
He sounded so surprised, Honor had to battle an affectionate grin. “Why don’t you get it going again, while I lay the table?”
Hildebrand Webster looked at the papers strewn over the small desk behind which he sat and heaved a heavy sigh. “I suppose I’d better.” He rose and rumbled, “I’m not at all sure I’ll have this done in time.”
Honor walked back to the kitchen, but called over her shoulder, “You always grumble—but you always manage. And this time, as the society is honoring you, you really don’t have a choice.”
Chapter 9
The next morning, Callum was back in the Dutton Grange library, carefully perusing yet another tome dealing with the Roman occupation of the area, when Jamie, George, and Lottie burst in.
“There you are!” Jamie skidded to a halt at the end of the table.
“When we couldn’t find you on the green, Henry told us you were here,” George said.
By then, Lottie had reached Callum; she caught his hand in both of hers and tugged. “But you have to come to the pageant.”
Callum pushed away from the table. “Pageant?” He looked from Lottie to her brothers.
“The village pageant,” Jamie explained. “It’s one of Little Moseley’s Christmas events.”
“Everyone in the village comes,” George assured him. “You can never tell what might happen.”
“It’s important to be there to find out.” Lottie tugged again.
With a last glance at the boring text, Callum allowed himself to be drawn to his feet and towed out of the library.
Jamie opened the front door, explaining Hendricks’s absence with “Most people will already be there.”
“And the rest will soon follow,” George added.
Callum lifted his greatcoat from the rack, shrugged into it, then walked with the trio out into a day that, in keeping with the days before, remained unrelievedly threatening. There’d been a decent snowfall the night before, and low clouds still hovered, but none had yet attained the puffy, steel-gray state that would signal further falls. Blessedly, the wind had eased, leaving a mere wisp of icy air intermittently brushing over any exposed skin. With the scent of winter wrapping about them, Callum strode beside the children down the drive, touched by the realization that, not finding him on the green where, apparently, the village was gathering, they’d come to fetch him.
They reached the lane and came face-to-face with Honor, carrying the folder containing the professor’s papers.
She smiled at Callum and the children. “Are you going somewhere?”
“To the pageant!” the youthful trio chorused and promptly informed her that she absolutely had to attend, too.
Honor looked at the folder.
Callum held out a hand. “Let me run that up to the library for you. It won’t take me a minute.”
She hesitated, but the children were looking encouraging and impatient, so she relinquished the folder.
Callum loped back to the house, set the folder on the library table, and ran back again; he had long legs—as he’d foretold, the task hadn’t taken him long. And the folder being in the Grange library ensured Honor would return there later, after the pageant had run its course.
He rejoined the others in time to hear Honor stand firm over disturbing her uncle. “He’s working hard to finish the paper he’s writing—he has to have it completed by the end of the year—and events like the pageant are not the sort of entertainments he enjoys. If we haul him out, he’ll fret and fume and scowl the whole time.”
Truer words were never spoken.
When the children looked unconvinced, Callum said, “Now you’ve successfully corralled me and Miss Webster, you’ll have to act as our guides. How much time do we have until the pageant starts?”
As he’d anticipated, the children didn’t have watches and so weren’t sure. They forgot about the professor and urged Callum and Honor to hurry toward the village green.
“The village pageant,” Jamie explained, “is really a re-enactment of the Nativity, with boys and girls from the village playing the various roles.”
“But with real animals.” George looked up at Callum and Honor, and his grin couldn’t have been wider. “Duggins, the donkey—the one that carries Mary to the stable—is a little unpredictable.”
“Sometimes, he behaves,” Lottie translated, “but sometimes, he doesn’t.”
“And then there are the sheep.” Jamie glanced at George. “I wonder if they’ll bolt again this year.”
George looked at Callum and Honor and explained, “At the end of the play, the sheep always want to rush into the crowd.”
“They have ever since we’ve been coming here, to Little Moseley and the pageant,” Lottie said.
“Although last year,” Jamie admitted, “none of the sheep got very far.”
It was plain that the children considered the unpredictable pageant a highlight of Christmas in Little Moseley. As they reached the white expanse of the village green and saw the crowd thronging the snowy sward, Callum murmured to Honor, “It appears the pageant is a universal favorite.”
Everyone he’d encountered in the village seemed to be there, along with many others he hadn’t yet met. Although the villagers all knew each other and the event was clearly for locals, everyone who saw them smiled, and those who knew them hailed them in welcome.
Callum and Honor were soon smiling and nodding to right and left.
Jamie, George, and Lottie towed and herded them along; the trio clearly had some specific destination in mind.
Sure enough, after tacking and weaving up a slight, in-parts-slippery incline, they joined Henry and his four friends, along with Melissa and Mandy, all of whom were standing with their backs to the stone wall at the side of the vicarage garden and had saved places for the three children and Honor and Callum.
After guiding his
small band into position, Jamie proudly declared, “This is the best vantage point.”
Although she was leaning this way and that to see between shoulders and heads, Lottie stated categorically, “From here, you can see everything.”
Callum exchanged a smiling glance with Honor, then looked down at Lottie, standing before him. After a second, he bent and whispered in her ear, “If you like, when it starts, I’ll lift you up to my shoulder. You’ll see even more from there.”
She turned wide eyes on him, then hesitated and said, “Mama says I’m a bit heavy now.”
He fought to keep a straight face as he rose. “After our adventure in the well, I’m fairly sure I can manage. We’ll see.”
Her smile bloomed, and she nodded and returned to tracking what was going forward on the green.
Farther along the wall, Dagenham, standing beside Melissa, dipped his head to hers. “I wonder if Duggins will behave himself. I heard someone say that this year’s Mary was rather sturdy and wasn’t happy about having to ride a donkey.”
“I can’t imagine Duggins will notice one way or the other,” Melissa replied. “From all I’ve heard, he’s more likely to decide to be difficult simply because he can. And I can’t say I blame our Mary, whoever she is. Anyone having to ride Duggins, even over such a short distance, is surely tempting fate.”
Dagenham chuckled. “I heard Longfellow say that Duggins has always been an ornery beast.”
Melissa lowered her voice. “Apparently, this year, they’ve decided to add goats. That might also be…interesting.”
“Indeed.” Dagenham grinned and looked out over the excited crowd. “I have to say that in terms of village Christmas events, the Little Moseley pageant is a perennial success. It’s clearly a fixture for everyone round about and draws people together, which is the whole purpose of Christmas events.”
Melissa nodded. She leaned to her left and stretched up on her toes, the better to peer in the direction from which the parading Mary, Joseph, and donkey would come; her foot slipped on a snow-slicked rock, and she gasped and started to tumble.
Hard hands clamped about her shoulders; they drew her back and steadied her. “Careful,” Dagenham murmured.
A frisson of sensation shot down Melissa’s arms from where his hands gripped so firmly; sensation of another stripe slid down her spine, fueled by his tone and the warmth of his breath as it teased the tendrils of hair by her ear.
Her shoulder brushed his chest. They were close enough for her to sense the steely strength of him—the warmth of his hard body—as he all but braced her against him.
She dragged in a breath, then couldn’t release it. She managed a small nod and settled, planting her feet; only then did his hands fall away.
She was blushing, but while shifting to put her back to the wall, she slanted him a grateful glance. “Thank you.”
His eyes met hers, and for just a second, despite being part of a large crowd, they seemed to fall into each other’s eyes, and there was no one else on the planet but them.
A heartbeat passed, then slowly, solemnly, he inclined his head. “It was entirely my pleasure.”
Still feeling the lingering heat of his hands imprinted on her skin, Melissa fought down her blush and faced forward once more.
Mandy, on Dagenham’s other side, tapped his arm. “Can you see what’s happening?”
Dagenham obediently looked and reported, “All seems ready at the stable.” He swung his gaze the other way. “And Mary’s just being helped aboard Duggins.”
Expectation rippled through the crowd, and people craned their necks, looking toward the mustering area on the lower slope of the rise screening the lake.
Along with Honor, Callum followed the others’ gazes. Then he traced the winding avenue being quickly cleared by the three younger members of the Whitesheaf family; employing the same good-humored tactics they used to manage their customers in the Arms, the trio were creating a path through the crowd, linking the knot of impatient, costumed children and the supposed stable—a makeshift construction, much like a large fairground booth, that had been erected on the green, closer to the lane, with the stable’s rear opposite the Arms’ front façade.
Callum had felt Honor’s gaze touch his face, then slide away. He hesitated, then glanced at her and saw she’d followed his gaze to the stable. “The men were putting that up this morning, when I walked past,” he said. “I didn’t realize this was what it was for.”
She threw him a smiling glance. “I’ve seen Nativity plays before, but always in a church. I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you?”
He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s a regional Christmas rite.”
On reaching the stable, the Whitesheafs had joined what Callum realized was the regular church choir, who stood in ranks to one side of the booth—the side opposite a collection of animals. He peered into the stable. “I can see a manger and a calf, sheep, goats, and… Are those ducks?”
“Geese, I think.” Honor added, “Apparently, one of the farmers manages a flock of geese that supplies birds for the village’s Christmas tables.”
“It’s interesting seeing what different villages about the country do,” Callum said.
Honor grinned. “My uncle insists that community celebrations are critical to passing on traditions, which impart valuable lessons about how a particular society functions.”
Callum wryly nodded. “A historian’s view, but nevertheless true.”
“Look!” Honor pointed to their left. “The procession’s starting.”
All eyes focused on Mary, perched rather precariously atop the gray-brown donkey now trotting along the path. Joseph, in flowing sheets and a blue robe with a low turban wound about his head, was battling to keep the donkey from breaking into a run.
Callum leaned down as Lottie looked up hopefully. He smiled and reached for her waist. “Let’s see how strong I am.” He hefted her easily and settled her on his left shoulder.
Lottie smothered a squeal of delight and wrapped one arm about Callum’s head.
Assured she was stable, he returned his gaze to the Holy Couple, to see Mary, teeth gritted and with the doll that represented Baby Jesus slung in a shawl across her chest, gripping the donkey’s mane in white-knuckled fists as she jounced on the beast’s bony back.
Joseph was almost running alongside.
At that moment, Mr. Moody raised his baton, then swept it down, and the choir commenced what sounded like a Christmas serenade.
The donkey’s ears went back, and he stopped short, front legs stiff with hooves digging into the snowy ground, all but tipping Mary over his head. She shrieked and hung on as Joseph was jerked to a halt as the rope tether unexpectedly pulled taut. Joseph’s headgear was too loose and slid down his face.
The crowd held its breath.
The choir—unaware of the drama—sang on.
Disaster loomed as the principal characters in the re-enactment teetered on the brink of hysteria or tears. Or both.
Then Lord Longfellow, who’d been following the donkey, loomed at the beast’s shoulder and tugged on the tether. “Come on, Duggins. Let’s go.”
To the watching crowd, Longfellow appeared to merely wave his arm, indicating the path ahead, but Lottie’s eyes were sharp. She clutched Callum’s head more tightly and reported, “Lord Longfellow has a carrot.”
Callum chuckled. “His lordship is obviously one who likes to be prepared for all eventualities.”
“Duggins is his donkey.” Henry grinned. “M’sister says the grouchy beast will often only deign to follow Longfellow and refuses to behave for anyone else.”
Joseph righted his turban, Mary visibly hauled in a breath and wriggled into a more secure position atop Duggins, and the procession continued without further incident. The choir completed their introductory piece just as the Holy Couple reached their destination. The pair deserted Duggins as rapidly as they could and took refuge within the stable, and Reverend Colebatch’s voice rose and
carried over the gathering as he read what Callum assumed was a specially scripted account of the Nativity tale.
Shepherds duly arrived, leading more calves, several gamboling lambs, and two bumptious kids.
The three Magi were called forth and came striding along the path, bearing gifts that appeared to be church lamps and censers, all of which emitted wafts of incense, readily discernible in the crisp, cold air.
From her elevated perch, Lottie kept up a whispered reportage, directing the others’ eyes to this curious happening, then that.
Ultimately, Reverend Colebatch called on the Heavenly Host, and three young girls, draped in flowing white sheets with small feathered wings attached to their backs, skipped along the path, eventually joining the group gathered in the stable about the manger, welcoming the Holy Babe to the world.
Mr. Moody stepped forward, raised his baton, and the choir launched into a triumphal chorus.
When the joyful voices faded, the crowd, their faces lit with much the same emotion, waited, patient and silent. Then Reverend Colebatch walked forward, halted before the stable, and into the expectant silence intoned a special benediction, bringing the pageant to a close.
Leaning his head close to Melissa’s, Dagenham whispered, “The singing wasn’t as effective as ours last year—that silence at the end wasn’t as shivery and tight.” He met her eyes as she glanced at him. “But still, the singing was a nice touch. Compared to the first pageant I witnessed two years ago, this, with the singing, was definitely more engaging.”
Melissa lowered her gaze to his lips, then drew in a breath and nodded. “More memorable,” she whispered, rather breathlessly, back.
Meanwhile, Lottie had had Callum set her down, and her sharp ears had caught Dagenham’s comment and Melissa’s reply. She eyed the pair innocently. “I think the pageant changes a little every year.”
Jamie nodded. “This year’s wasn’t exactly the same as last time.”
George added, “I think Reverend Colebatch must adjust things to fit in all the children who want to take part. We haven’t seen the Heavenly Host before.”
Lady Osbaldestone’s Plum Puddings: Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Chronicles Volume 3 Page 15