Christy was blessing them: “May the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep thy hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
“Amen.”
Anne put away her prayer book and her hymnal, relieved that the service was over. She didn’t know what she was going to do about Christy; but if she was going to renounce him, it would be easier to do if she didn’t have to look at him.
The reprieve would be brief, though: he and forty village children and their parents were coming to her house in two hours for the annual Christmas revel.
***
The great hall refused to look intimate, in spite of the best efforts of every housemaid, kitchen maid, footboy, and stable lad Anne had set to work on the project. The dimensions of the vast, echoing chamber defied coziness no matter how many boughs of holly, ivy, spruce, or pine were lugged in and dutifully hung from its burnt, mile-high rafters. But with a Nativity scene complete with manger and live lambs, a Christmas tree laden with holly berries and lit candles, and a Yule log crackling in the enormous fireplace hearth, no one could deny that the place looked festive. As soon as the children began arriving, the distinction between cozy and festive became irrelevant in any case, and the new challenge was trying to be heard over the din.
“What can I do to help?” Miss Weedie almost had to shout. “Just give me your worst job and forget all about me.” She looked tall and gawky in a dress of plum-purple bombazine that didn’t become her; in fact, it looked as if it might have belonged originally to her mother. But her anxious smile was kindness itself, and Anne had grown extremely fond of her faded prettiness and the frowzy blond hair that wouldn’t stay put no matter how many pins she stuck in it.
Anne looked around, feeling a bit overwhelmed. The adult residents of Wyckerley might be in awe of Lady D’Aubrey, but their children definitely weren’t, and they were making free with her great hall as if it were the village green on May Day. Just then a little girl of about four barreled into her hip. Anne bore the impact sturdily, but the child toppled over backward and landed on her behind. Before she could cry, Anne knelt down and pulled her into her arms. “Well, hello!” she exclaimed brightly. “How in the world did that happen?” She kissed one sticky cheek, and the little girl smiled at her shyly. “What’s your name?”
“Birdie,” she mumbled.
“Birdie? That’s a pretty name. Do you know what mine is?”
“No.”
“No?” She made an amazed face that tickled Birdie and made her giggle. “You don’t know who I am?”
“You’re the Hall lady. We’re to curtsey when we see you an’ say ‘Good day, m’lady’” Her little snub features lit up. “I know your name,” she crowed. “It’s M’lady!”
Anne laughed. “I guess it is,” she said, and stole another quick kiss before Birdie scrambled up and ran off. Anne rose to her feet a little wistfully. She’d known it before, of course, but until now it had never hit her with such force—one of the problems with ruling out marriage was that one also ruled out children.
To Miss Weedie she said, “It was so good of you to come. How is your mother today?”
“She’s better, thank you, and asked me to tell you in particular how much she enjoyed the pumpkin soup. Miss Pine is sitting with her while I’m here.”
“Then I’m indebted to Miss Pine as well.”
Miss Weedie blushed. “How can I help you?” she repeated.
“You can tell me whose idea it was to give the boys whistles for presents and let them open them up before the party even begins!”
Miss Weedie, who always took her literally, looked confused, then worried.
“It was mine,” Anne explained, laughing. “Collie Horrocks, our groom, is a wood-carver in his spare time, and I set him to making twenty-five whistles two weeks ago. Now I wish I’d given them out as farewell presents, so the children could drive their parents mad at home with the dratted things.” Miss Weedie tsked sympathetically. “Well, if you really want to do something, I suppose you could start helping Miss Mareton get them quiet and organized for the Nativity play. That’s the first order of business, I believe.”
Immediately Miss Weedie’s customary air of tentativeness fell away and she drew herself up, full of purpose. “Right, then. My lady,” she remembered to add, and marched off to do her duty. Oh, of course, Anne remembered, she’d been the village school-teacher years and years ago. She’d been Christy’s teacher, in fact. Good—then she was in her element.
And there was Christy, over by the Christmas tree, sipping hot cider and talking to Captain Carnock. A little boy of about three had his arms wrapped around his left leg and was trying to climb it. He stopped talking to the captain long enough to bend over and haul the little boy up into his arms. Well, what else? Anne grumped to herself. Didn’t it just have to be that he was marvelous with children?
“I’ve never seen the great hall looking so cheery. You’ve quite transformed the place, Lady D’Aubrey.”
Anne turned with a start to see Mayor Vanstone at her side, looking tall, sleek, and faintly seal-like with his elegantly graying hair combed straight back from his forehead. “It’s the children who’ve transformed it,” she demurred. “I’m so glad you and Miss Vanstone could come.”
“We wouldn’t miss it. Everyone is in your debt for carrying on with the tradition in spite of your terrible loss.”
“Oh, do you think so? It occurred to me that some might think carrying on with it showed disrespect for my late husband,” she said deliberately. Indeed, she’d heard through the grapevine that that was exactly what Honoria Vanstone had been saying.
“Not at all,” he denied smoothly. “It’s an event the children eagerly anticipate, and only a very churlish person would construe the continuation of it as anything but a kind and benevolent act by our most beloved ladyship.”
She could only agree: Honoria was churlish. But it was hard not to smile at his description of herself, or to ask him if he was referring to her or the Blessed Virgin. She couldn’t wait to repeat this conversation to Christy.
That is, if he ever spoke to her again, about anything. Now he was across the way, helping Miss Mareton and Miss Weedie get the Nativity play youngsters in their proper places for the start of the performance. “Sorry?” she said, realizing the mayor had asked her a question.
“I say, I wonder if you might be free one evening next week. Honoria has been hoping you would dine with us—and I, too, it goes without saying. It would, of course, be a very quiet evening, en famille, in keeping with your state of mourning. Or, I should say,” he added quickly, “with the state of mourning of all of us.”
“How kind. It sounds delightful. Thank you so much.” It sounded no such thing; she could hardly imagine anything more tedious. But he was the mayor, and she was still the head of Lynton Great Hall; she felt an obligation to be attentive, at least for a little longer, to the exigencies of local politics.
Not that she fooled herself that Eustace Vanstone was inviting her to dinner for the sole purpose of discussing policies and programs for the benefit of Wyckerley. This wasn’t the first time he’d paid his stiff court to her since Geoffrey’s death, although it was the most direct. Unless she was grievously misreading the signs, Mayor Vanstone had designs on her. She wished she knew a way to communicate to him the absolute hopelessness of his suit without causing embarrassment. And hopeless it was, and not only because she didn’t fancy him. Even if she were mad for him, she would still have to decline a marriage proposal, because accepting it would make her Honoria’s stepmother. Gads!
The Nativity play started. Tommy Nineways, the churchwarden’s son, played Joseph, and it was immediately clear that nepotism rather than dramatic talent had played a major role in the casting. Mary, on the other hand, was played by Sally Wooten—Christy tutored her brothers, Anne recalled—and except
for a bad moment when she dropped the Christ Child doll on the floor, Sally seemed born for the stage. All in all, the performance was sweet and touching and very funny; more than one adult watching it had to resort to coughing into a handkerchief to smother uncontrollable laughter.
Anne’s enjoyment was tempered by having to watch Margaret Mareton stand next to Christy throughout the play, whispering to him, bumping shoulders, sometimes leaning against him as if overcome with pride in her fledgling thespians. She was an undeniably pretty girl, with shiny black hair and big serious brown eyes. But Anne didn’t care for her. Where was her sense of decorum? She was the Sunday school teacher, for heaven’s sake; children looked up to her as a model of propriety. Why was she leaning against the vicar in a public place? In any place, if it came to that?
Sophie Deene led the children in carols after the Nativity play, everyone gathered round the candlelit Christmas tree. Anne joined in as well as she could, in a rusty alto that was at least an octave below the children’s reedy sopranos. As loose and casual as this event necessarily was because of the children, she was nevertheless aware of the abiding stiffness with which most people still treated her, worse now because of her “bereavement.” When she’d been Geoffrey’s wife, she was an object of speculation and curiosity. As his widow, she was that and more; she’d become someone to whom no one knew quite what to say.
And Christy thought he wanted her for his wife. If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny. She looked across the sea of singing faces at Mrs. Nineways, the churchwarden’s wife, and Mrs. Woodworth, the curate’s; they smiled and nodded, acknowledging her through the strains of “Good King Wenceslas.” Laura Woodworth was a small, compact woman, in perpetual motion, busy as a beaver; she tirelessly visited the parish’s sick, who frequently got well—so Christy said—because she bullied them into it. Emmaline Nineways was shy and retiring, a genuinely religious woman, if her attendance and demeanor at church were any indication.
Anne knew herself to be neither devout nor dynamic, and she knew as well that, deep down, the people of Wyckerley would never really come to trust her. She would end up a burden to Christy, not a help—assuming she wanted to be his wife, which she didn’t.
After the singing came the present-opening, a mad, scrambling event that Miss Mareton and her helpers were hard put to keep civilized. Besides whistles for the boys and cornstalk dolls for the girls—constructed by the housemaids over a furious two-day marathon—Anne had ordered pencils and paper tablets from a stationer in Tavistock; they’d arrived yesterday, in the very nick of time. In addition, Captain Carnock had generously donated several bushels of apples, and Mr. Farnsworth, owner of Wyckerley’s only inn, the First and Last, had contributed a barrel of spiced cider. The mayor’s gift was a tree, to be planted next spring on the village green in the children’s name, complete with plaque. But the individually wrapped cakes and candies that Lynton Hall’s kitchen maids had been baking for days got the warmest reception, which ought not to have come as a surprise. “I should’ve made that the farewell gift,” Anne wailed to a laughing Miss Weedie. “Now they won’t eat their supper!”
A baseless fear; Mrs. Fruit and the maids barely got the food laid out on the long trestle tables before the children proceeded to devour it. If Christy had meant to say grace before the meal, their locustlike descent changed his mind. He watched the rout from a distance, hands in his pockets, talking to Captain Carnock again and looking unbearably handsome in his “full holy blacks.” Honoria Vanstone was saying something to her, but Anne didn’t hear it. Over the heads of two dozen people, Christy’s eyes suddenly met hers. The clamor of voices died away and all the bodies around her became as insubstantial as ghosts. Neither of them smiled; the silent message that passed between them was no laughing matter. But when the odd, out-of-time moment ended and reality flooded back, she felt a grim relief. Christy wasn’t ignoring her because he’d given her up. Oh, no. And none of the pain in store for them had diminished a whit. Nothing had changed. They were still obsessed.
All the contrition she’d felt in church this morning vanished, along with her good intentions. She was tired of pretending nothing had happened, tired of treating Christy as an acquaintance. Tired of his public politeness. Tired of watching women like Margaret Mareton hang on him like barnacles.
“I’ve just remembered something I must tell the vicar,” she said abruptly, cutting Honoria Vanstone off in the middle of a sentence. “Excuse me, will you?” Not waiting for the answer, she handed her punch cup to a passing servant and made for Christy in a determined straight line.
She didn’t know what her excuse was going to be until it came out of her mouth. “I’ve come upon a little volume of sermons in the library. Reverend Morrell. I thought it might interest you. It looks quite old. There are some notes in the margins that are quite intriguing, too,” she embellished recklessly. “Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, very much,” he said seriously—so seriously, she was afraid he had actually believed her. “Would you excuse me?” he asked Captain Carnock, who bowed to them both and said, “Not at all,” several times.
Leading the way out of the great hall and down the paneled corridor to the library, her nerves, already tight, stretched to the breaking point. All she could think of was, What if, on top of everything else that was already wrong or probably would go wrong between them, Christy was disappointed when he found out there weren’t any sermons?
She opened the library door herself and stood back to let him enter; then she closed it and stood with her back against it—barring it, in effect. He turned around in the center of the unlit, unheated room and looked at her expectantly.
“I lied about the sermons.”
He wasn’t disappointed. A slow smile lit up his face with the radiance of sunshine. He came toward her—and all at once she was afraid of him, because he was so beautiful. What if he wins? she had time to think before he touched her. Without asking, he slipped his hands inside the little jacket that went over her best mourning dress. It thrilled her so, that one act of possession, that she gasped. His arms went all the way around, and they stood pressed together, not moving, just feeling each other’s deep breathing. Already she loved the hard solidness of his body, the strength in his arms; embracing him was like embracing a thick stone pillar. No, wrong image, too cold. Like embracing a tree, warm and vital and firmly planted in the ground. Unshakable.
She loosened her arms and pulled back to see his face. “I thought you were going to get me,” she accused.
“I am.” His smile shattered her, kicked the last prop out from under her. “I thought you were going to seduce me.”
She licked her lips. “I am.”
His smile faded. When he kissed her, any illusion that she was the one in control of this situation disappeared, like strong light dissipating a shadow. She closed her eyes and let go of herself, forgetting everything except the pleasure rising inside, soft and irresistible, the tenderest yielding. So this was it; this was what her woman’s body had been made for. The revelation made her sigh, and hold on tighter so she couldn’t lose it. It was as if she’d been covered with a layer of scales all her life, and Christy’s touch had made them fall away. Now she felt like Eve, naked in the garden, and without an ounce of shame.
When he stopped kissing her, she felt like an opium addict deprived of her drug. “Merry Christmas,” he murmured.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered back, not letting go of him.
“We can’t stay here long.”
She had an inspiration. “Stay for dinner. After everyone leaves, you stay.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Maretons have invited me to their house.”
“Margaret Mareton?”
“Her family.”
“That—Sunday school teacher who can’t keep her hands off you?” His brows shot up; his ice-blue ey
es were pools of innocent amazement. “Do you like her?” she pressed. “She’s mad for you. Well, do you?”
“Yes, I like her,” he answered, maddeningly ingenuous.
“She’d marry you.”
“She probably would.”
“You know I’m jealous of her.”
“I know.” He brought his fingers to her cheek and softly caressed her. “It’s the nicest thing that’s happened to me in days. Since I saw you last.”
“Why didn’t you try to see me before now?”
He looked down, thinking, and she knew that whatever he was going to say, it would be the truth. Talking with Christy was not like talking with anyone else she’d ever known. “I wanted to see you,” he said slowly. “Every day. Most days I couldn’t because I was too busy with meetings, commitments, the dean’s visit. I couldn’t get away.”
“And the other days?”
He held her hands between his, their fingers pointing upward, prayer-fashion. “I was afraid,” he said quietly.
His honesty gave her the courage to say, “I was afraid, too. But I wanted you to come. Every day I hoped you would.” Their lips met again in a soft, breathless kiss. She was flirting with surrender, but she didn’t care. “Oh, Christy, I don’t want to scare you away, I just want to be with you!”
“Meet me tomorrow, Anne. We’ll go for a walk.”
“A walk? Yes, yes,” she said quickly, “a walk. Lovely.” She’d go to a public hanging if he asked her, and count it a fine outing. “When?”
“Three o’clock? We could meet at the crossroads.”
“Three o’clock.”
“Pray it doesn’t rain,” he said, a teasing gleam in his eye.