by Carla Kelly
Cecilia laughed, in spite of herself. “My goodness.”
“Do you mind the idea?” Lucinda asked, doubt perfectly visible in her eyes.
Did she mind? Cecilia sat down again and considered the matter, putting it to that scrutiny she usually reserved for scholarship. Did she mind being thought well of by a man whose exploits had been known to her for some time, and whom she had admired for several years, without even knowing him? Her face grew warm as she thought of his grip on her waist as they left the smoky manor in the middle of the night. “He doesn’t even know me,” she protested weakly.
“As to that, Miss Ambrose, I have been writing him about you,” Lucinda said.
“You have what?” she asked in amazement.
Her pupil shrugged. “He wanted to know if there was anyone interesting in my school, and I told him about you.” She hesitated. “I even painted him a little picture.”
“Of me?” she asked quietly. Me with my olive skin and slanted eyes, she thought.
“Of you, my most interesting teacher ever,” was Lucinda’s equally dignified reply. “He’s no ordinary man.”
And I am certainly no ordinary English woman, she thought. She reached across the table, took Lucinda’s hand, and squeezed it briefly. “You are the most wonderful children.”
Janet laughed. “No, we’re not! We probably are as selfish and ungrateful as Uncle Trevor imagines. But do you know, we aim to be better.” She grew serious and asked again, “How can we help our uncle?”
“Leave him to me,” Cecilia said. “I know he does not want you to know about Jimmy Daw, or he would have told you long before now, Janet. How can I get time alone with him?”
Davy was on his feet then. “Lucinda, do you remember how fun it was last Christmas to spend it in the stable?”
“What?” Cecilia asked. “You probably needn’t be that drastic!”
“You know, Miss Ambrose,” Janet said. “There is that legend that on the night of Christ’s birth, the animals start to speak.” She nudged her brother. “What did Davy do last year but insist that he be allowed to spend the night in the stable! Mama was shocked, but Papa enjoyed the whole thing.” She looked at her younger brother and sister. “We will be in the stable. The footman can light a good fire, and we have plenty of blankets.”
The other children nodded, and Cecilia could almost touch the relief in the room. Precious ones, she thought, you will do anything to help your uncle, won’t you? No, you most certainly do not require fixing. “Very well,” she said. “Janet …” She stopped. “Oh, I should be calling you Lady Janet.”
“I don’t think that matters … Cecilia,” the young woman replied. “I will make arrangements with Mrs. Grey, and we will go to the stables after dinner.” She looked at her siblings. “Cecilia, we love him. We hope you can help him because I do believe you love him, too.”
They were all quiet that afternoon, soberly putting Christmas treats and cakes into boxes for delivery to other great houses in the neighborhood on Boxing Day, arranging holly on mantelpieces, and getting ready for their parents’ return on Christmas. After an hour’s fruitless attempt to read in the sitting room, Cecilia went for a walk instead. How sterile the landscape was, with everything shut tight for a long winter. Little snow had fallen yet, but as she started back toward the dower house, it began, small flakes at first and then larger ones. Soon the late afternoon sky was filled with miniature jewels, set to transform the land and send it to sleep under a blanket of white. She stood in the modest driveway of the dower house and watched the workers leave the manor for the final time. Some of them called happy Christmas to her. She looked at the house again, wondering why it was that the most joyous season of the year should cause such pain in some. With a start, she realized that her preoccupation with Lord Trevor and his personal nightmare had quite driven out her own longing for her family in far-off India. “Tonight, I hope I remember all the wonderful things you taught me,” she said out loud. “Especially that God is good and Christmas is more than sweets and gifts.”
Before dinner, she went to the book room, squared her shoulders, and knocked on the door. When Lord Trevor did not answer, she opened the door.
He sat probably as he had sat all day, staring at his case files, which Davy had alphabetized and chronologized. Everything was tidy, except for his disordered mind. When she had been standing in the doorway for some time, he looked at her as though for one brief moment he did not recognize her. She thought she saw relief in his eyes, or maybe she only hoped she did.
“Dinner is ready, Lord Trevor,” she said quietly. “We hope you will join us.”
He shook his head, then deliberately turned around in his chair to face the window. She closed the door, chilled right down to the marrow in her bones.
Dinner was quiet, eaten quickly with small talk that trailed off into long pauses. A letter had come that afternoon from York with the good news that the marquis and marchioness would arrive at Chase Hall in time for dinner tomorrow. “I wish they were here right now,” Davy said finally, making no attempt to disguise his fear.
“They’ll be here tomorrow,” she soothed. “Davy, I promise to take very good care of your uncle.”
Her words seemed to reassure them all, and she could only applaud her acting ability, a talent she had not been aware of before this night. After a sweet course that no one ate, Janet rose from the table and calmly invited her younger brother and sister to follow her. Cecilia followed them into the hall, and waited there until they returned from their rooms bundled against the cold.
Janet looked almost cheerful. She tucked her arm through Lucinda’s and reached for Davy. “Do you know, this is my last Christmas to be a child,” she said to Cecilia. “I will be married in February, and this part of my life will be over.” She looked at her siblings. “Lucinda, you will marry someday, and even you, Davy!” He made a face at her, and she laughed softly. “I am lucky, Miss Ambrose, and I did need reminding.”
“We all do, now and then,” Cecilia replied. She opened the door, and kissed each of them as they passed through. “If you get cold, come back inside, of course, but do leave me alone in the book room with your uncle.”
‘Take good care of him,” Lucinda begged.
“I will,” she said. “I promise you.”
Easier said than done. When the house was quiet, she found a shawl, wrapped it tight around her for courage, and went to the book room. She knocked. When he did not answer, she let herself into the room.
He sat at the desk still. This time there was only one file in front of him. He looked at her and his eyes were dark and troubled. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice harsh.
“The children wanted to spend Christmas in the stable,” she said. “It’s a silly thing.”
“I remember when they did that, years ago,” he said. “I remember …” Then he looked at the file before him, and he was silent.
Her heart in her throat, she came into the room and around the desk to stand beside him. “Is that Jimmy Daw’s file?” she asked.
He put his hand over the name, as though to protect it. She wanted to touch him, to put her arms around his shoulders and press her cheek against his, all the while murmuring something in his ear that he might interpret as comfort. Instead, she moved to the front of the desk again and pulled up a chair.
“He died eleven years ago this night, didn’t he?” She kept her voice normal, conversational.
Lord Trevor narrowed his eyes and glared at her. “You know he did. I told you.”
“What is it you do on Christmas Eve to remember him?” There.
Silence. “Shouldn’t you be in bed, Miss Ambrose?” he asked finally, in a most dismissive tone.
She smiled and leaned forward. “No. It’s Christmas Eve, and the children are busy. I think I will just stay here with you, and see what you do to remember Jimmy Daw, because that’s what you do, isn’t it? You probably plan this all year.”
More silence.
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“Do you go to church? Read from the Bible? Work on someone else’s charts? Visit old friends in the City? Have dinner out with your fellow barristers? Sing Christmas carols? Squeeze in another good work or two?” She stopped, hating the sound of her own rising voice and its relentless questions. She looked him straight in the eye. “Or do you just sit at your desk all day, alone and depressed?”
He leaped to his feet, fire in his eyes, and slammed the file onto the table like a truncheon. “I don’t need this!”
She looked away, frightened, but held herself completely still in the chair. She studied his face, his empty eyes. With courage she knew she did not possess, she stood in front of him until they were practically toe to toe. “Do you hate yourself, apathetic about your own life, because you failed one little boy?”
He raised his hand and she steadied herself, because she knew it was going to hurt, considering his size and the look in his eyes. Almost without thinking, she grabbed him around the waist and pulled him close to her in a fierce grip. She closed her eyes and waited for him to send her flying across the room. She tightened her grip on the ties on his waistcoat. All right, she thought, you’ll have to pry me off to hurt me.
To her unspeakable relief, the file dropped to the floor and his arms went around her. She released her grip and began to run her hands along his back instead. ‘Trevor, it’s going to be all right. Really it is,” she murmured.
He began to sob then as he rested his chin on her hair. “All through Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day, Cecilia,” he said, when he could speak, “I can’t do anything. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. If one of the other barristers at the Inn didn’t come and force me to take care of myself last Christmas, I would have wasted away.” He leaned against her until his weight almost toppled her. “Please stop me! I don’t want to die!”
Holding him so close that she could feel his waistcoat buttons against her, she understood the enormity of his guilt, as irrational as it seemed to her logical mind. She moved him toward the sofa and sat down. He released her only to sink down beside her and lay his head in her lap. She twitched her shawl off her shoulders, spread it over him, and rested her hand on his hair—did he never comb it, ever?—as he cried. Sitting back, she felt his exhaustion and remorse seeping into her very skin. As he cried and agonized, she had the tiniest inkling of the Gethsemane that her dear foster father spoke of from the pulpit, upon occasion. “Bless your heart,” she whispered, “you’re atoning for the sins of the world. My dear, no mortal can do that! What’s more, it’s been done, and you don’t have to.”
“That’s your theology,” he managed to gasp, before agony engulfed him again.
“And I am utterly convinced of it, dear sir,” she said. Cecilia pushed on his shoulder until he was forced to raise himself and look at her. She kissed his forehead. “Even someone as young as Davy understands that we celebrate Christmas because Christ gave us hope! Dear man, you’re dragging around chains that He took care of long ago.” She kissed him again, even though his face was wet and slimy now. “I really think it’s time you stopped.”
“But Jimmy’s dead!”
It was a lament for the ages, and she felt suddenly as old and tired as he, as though he had communicated the matter into her in a way that was almost intimate. She considered it, and understood her own faith, perhaps for the first time. “Yes, Jimmy Daw is dead,” she whispered finally as he lowered himself back to her lap, his arm around her this time. “And you have done more to honor his memory than any other human being. Every child you save is a testimony to your goodness, and a memorial to Jimmy Daw. I know it is. I believe it.”
He didn’t say anything, but he had stopped crying. She knew he was listening this time. She cleared her throat, and wiped her own eyes with a hand that shook. “May I tell you how we are going to celebrate Christmas Eve next year? We are going to remember all the children you have saved. We are going to thank Kind Providence that you have the health and wealth to do this desperately hard work.”
“We are?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper.
“We are,” she replied firmly. “You are not going to do it alone ever again.”
What am I saying? she asked herself, waiting for the utter foolishness of her declaration to overtake her. When nothing of the kind happened, she bowed her head over his, then rested her cheek against his hair. “You’re a good man, Trevor Chase. I even think I love you.”
“Cecilia,” was all he said, and she smiled, thinking how tired he must be. She could feel his whole body relaxing. After a long time of silence, she moved her legs, and he sat up.
“I believe I will go to bed now,” she told him. “Or should I stay?”
He shook his head, and reached for a handkerchief. He blew his nose vigorously. “No, it’s fine. You can go.”
She gathered up her shawl and went to the door. “Good night, and happy Christmas, Trevor,” she said, and blew him a kiss.
The house was so quiet. She pulled herself up the stairs, practically hand over hand, and went into the girls’ room. The bed looked far more inviting than her own little cot. Since they were in the stable, she shucked off her clothing down to her shimmy and crawled in.
She was nearly asleep when Lord Trevor opened the door, came to the bed, and stood there. “I threw the file on the fire,” he said, his voice sounding as uncertain as a small child’s.
“Good,” she told him, and after only the slightest hesitation, pulled back the blankets.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“Never more so.”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” he told her as he took off his shoes, then started on his waistcoat. “I’m so tired.”
“I know you are, but I have to know one more thing. I think you know what it is.”
He sat down on the bed, and rested his head in his hands. “I do. I was going to go back to my chambers this year, lock the door, and stay in there until …” He stopped, unable to speak.
Cecilia sat up and leaned her head against his back. “My goodness, Trevor, my goodness,” she whispered. “What … what changed your mind?”
“Well, I had to stay here with the children when Hugo and Maria bolted, but even then …” He turned around and put his arm around her. “Then you came, and I had second thoughts. I didn’t plan on falling in love.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Are you as skeptical as I am?”
“Probably. But, you looked so defeated in the book room tonight.”
“I don’t know what would have happened, considering how matters had changed. I suppose I’ll never know,” he told her as she put her arms around him. “I think I was counting on you to stop me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Cecilia.”
He lay down beside her and gathered her close. With a sigh, she threw her arm over his chest and rested her head in that nice spot below his collarbone. His hand was warm against her back. Her feet were cold and he flinched a little when she put them on his legs, but then he kissed her neck, and she fell asleep.
He was gone in the morning. She got up and dressed quickly, then hurried downstairs. She heard laughter from the breakfast room, his laughter. She opened the door.
“Lucy, you are telling me that your graceless scamp of a little brother actually stood over by the horses and began to talk?” asked Lord Trevor. The picture of relaxation, he slouched negligently in his chair, with his arm along the back of Lucinda’s chair.
Janet giggled. “He scared Lucy so bad that she jumped up and stepped in the water bucket the footman had left by the lantern!”
“Did not!”
“Oh, we both saw it!”
Lord Trevor held up both hands. “I’ve never met more disgraceful children,” he scolded, but anyone with even the slightest hearing could have picked out the amusement in his voice. “It’s never too late for my prosy lecture. Good morning, Miss Ambrose, how do you do?”
I know my face is red, she
thought. “I do well,” she replied. “Happy Christmas to you all.”
Lord Trevor pushed out a chair with his foot. “Have a seat, my dear Miss Ambrose. I’ve told my long-suffering relatives all about my silliness next door at the manor. They have agreed that a week in the dower house was not too unpleasant.” He smiled at them all. “And now they will move their belongings back, with some help from Mrs. Grey and the footman.”
“Mama is coming home today,” Davy said.
“I received a letter from Lysander only a few minutes ago,” Janet said, holding out a piece of paper. She smiled at Cecilia. “He promises to come as soon as all contagion is gone.”
Cecilia poured a cup of tea and sat down, just as the children rose and left the room. Davy even looked back and winked. “Scamp,” she murmured under her breath, trying to concentrate on the tea before her, and not on Lord Trevor, who had decided to put his arm on her chair now. In another moment his hand rested on her shoulder, and then his fingers outlined her ear.
“You’re making this tea hard to drink,” she commented.
“It isn’t very good tea, anyway,” he told her as he took the cup from her hand and pushed it away. He cleared his throat. “Cecilia—Miss Ambrose—it has certainly come to my attention that I … er … uh … may have compromised you last night.”
I love him, she thought, looking at him in his rumpled clothes, with his hair in need of cutting. I wonder why he does not stand closer to his razor, she thought. His eyes were tired, to be sure, but the hopeless look that had been increasing hour by hour on Christmas Eve was gone. She turned in her chair to face him.
“I would say that you certainly did compromise me. How loud you snore! What do you intend to do about it?”
“What, my snoring?”
She laughed and leaned toward him. He put his hand around her neck, drew her closer, and kissed her forehead.
“I suppose I must make you an offer now, eh?” he asked, the grin not gone from his face.
“I would like that,” she told him. “We’ll be an odd couple, don’t you think?”
