by Various
Her fingers came into his hair, cradling him like a mother might her child and pressing him closer.
‘I do and I will, my love. It’s for ever.’
* * *
She felt him move against her in a way that was no longer quiet and measured. It was as if her words had unleashed something in him far more primal and desperate. He was breathing faster and his heartbeat raced against her own, until the rhythm of both synchronised and matched.
‘Let me have you, sweetheart. Let me make you mine.’
His hand slid lower into the very warmth of her, in between her legs and then up into the wet centre that throbbed at his touch, his finger inside her now, thick and hard.
And she wanted him to take away her choice, to plunder and seed and own, to lie there and know the sheer beauty of possession and passion, to understand that in giving there is also a taking, and a price.
The price of love.
The waves began small at first and then they raged against the barriers of her flesh.
‘What is happening, Will, here with me?’ Alarm warred with ecstasy, but still she needed to know. Those first and fumbled promises with Joseph Burnley had been nothing like these ones primed in fire and shock. She suddenly could not breathe properly, could not take in enough air to fill her lungs, all logic gone with the feel of him inside her stroking and seeking.
‘You are so wet.’ His words now. Was that good or bad or something else entirely? She cried out as the release took her, feeding off one wave until the next one built, until her body lay stretched with the want of it, the silken mysteries of the flesh.
He was magic and unknown, the throb of her lifted now on to hardness, on to him and a new belonging, a thickness that filled her completely and made her press in to gain closeness.
‘Shh.’ He gentled her now, as he might have comforted his horses, his hand at her neck stilling her and then his mouth holding her to the passion as he pushed in further, into the very centre of her where she could feel only pleasure and a welcomed core of loss.
Loss of herself. Loss of her body as it joined deep with his, slick and wet and hot. No little loss either, but a growing burning need that dissolved into an ache of release until she cried out and her nails dug into his hard-hewn muscle, clinging to hold him there, to know the magic of for ever, to mark him as he had her.
He pushed harder now and faster and then he too stilled, his head thrown back so that the corded muscle and veins of his throat were blue with tension.
She felt his seed, spreading, hot, deep in the fertility of her womanhood, easing the swollen bruising, branding her with himself.
And finally he collapsed on top of her, though he rolled even as she felt the weight, joined together, his eyes meeting hers.
‘Thank you.’ His words, husky and raw, the accent softer tonight, almost lost.
‘I love you,’ she gave him back, and saw the spark of it in his eyes, too, green and gold and smiling.
* * *
Much later she sat with him in the moonlight spilling in through undrawn curtains, both sated from their lovemaking as he played her a tune in the darkness, close and quiet.
The harmonica rose against the night and fell with the melody, a gospel song, she thought, a song of redemption and salvation and love.
Like the Advent promised. She smiled and cuddled in, the Christmas spirit with its hope and joy so close.
The tune had changed now and the first drifts of ‘Silent Night’ filled the room. All was calm and bright and beautiful in her world, and it felt as if it was only them in the entire universe, a small pocket of warmth and love and truth.
‘I think I was always waiting for you, Will,’ she said as he took a drink from his glass on the side table. Whisky, she thought, from the wedding luncheon and fine. ‘But I was waiting on the other side of the earth until you came for me.’
‘Perhaps then it was all meant to be, my love. My grandmother’s letter that brought me here, Warrington’s greed that helped me meet you, even Rupert’s anger that he could never quite control. It’s like a story winding down to a happy ending.’
‘Just us,’ she answered and he put the glass down and she settled beneath him, the heat on his breath promising exactly that.
* * *
Linden Park was alight with the colour of the season as the last candle of Advent was lit with all of them present. The Dowager Duchess of Melton had come to stay as had her mother and her two brothers so that this year it was an occasion for the complete family, much to the delight of Alejandra Howard.
On the floor behind them in the dining room bursting with decoration and pine boughs and sweet treats of all different natures, her two small nephews played with crinkled paper and a special ball of papier-mâché that Alejandra called a piñata and swore it was filled with delicacies.
Above them on the walls the portraits of her father and her lost brother watched them, too, each frame bedecked with colourful ribbon and a part of this family whether in life or in death. Remembered and celebrated.
No one is ever lost, Christine thought. No one falls into obscurity if they are still in the hearts of those alive who love them.
She took Will’s hand under the table and felt his fingers come around her own.
Family had its ups and its downs, its good and its bad. But in the end it was what Christmas was about.
A time to make peace, a time to restore love, a time of redemption and new beginnings.
Like hers and Will’s. Like Elizabeth Maythorne, who had taken the smallest of Lucien’s children on her lap now and was singing to him a song from her past, years and years old and still beautiful.
The white candle, the final offering of Advent caught, flickered and flared amidst the wreath of greenery, its light cast across the table.
Purity.
Breathing in, she leaned across to her husband and wished him a very happy Christmas.
* * * * *
Cinderella’s
Perfect Christmas
Annie Burrows
Since Christmas (for me) is all about family,
I’d like to welcome Tommy into ours.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Chapter One
‘I’m entitled to Christmas Day off,’ said Mrs Hughes, planting her hands on her hips. ‘And nothing nor nobody is going to stop me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Alice, taken aback. ‘Nor do I quite see how I could.’ She had no authority over anyone at Blackthorne Hall. Never had, and never would.
‘I know you bin ill,’ went on Mrs Hughes, wagging her head. ‘But you ain’t as ill as what you been making out. Not this last couple of days, at any rate.’
Suddenly Alice couldn’t meet the housekeeper’s eyes. Mrs Hughes had been the only one to come up here to her room, regularly. Only she had known exactly how sick Alice had been. Neither Aunt Minnie nor Uncle Walter had come near. Her cousins had only hovered on the threshold once or twice and that had been to let her know how angry they were.
‘It’s just typical of you to contract the influenza at the most inconvenient moment,’ Naomi had said. ‘We’re bound to catch it if we have to be cooped up in the coach with you all the way to Caldicott Abbey.’
‘And end up sneezing all over the Earl of Lowton,’ had put in Ruth for good measure. ‘Which will put paid to our chances of getting him to fall for either of us.’
Alice had kept the reflection that he wasn’t likely to fall for either of them anyway to herself. The widow
ed Earl was bound to have the pick of society’s beauties, if he ever decided to marry again—and her cousins were no beauties.
Not that it was going to stop them from doing their utmost to entrap the poor man. It wasn’t every day that girls like them received invitations to the same house party where such a high-ranking man was the guest of honour.
She’d shivered. Half from the chills running up and down her spine and half at the prospect of having to watch her cousins carry out the plans they’d been hatching ever since they’d heard that an earl had agreed to spend part of the season with the old friend from his schooldays who now owned Caldicott Abbey. Hadn’t the poor man suffered enough already? According to the gossip, there had been some sort of scandal surrounding his first marriage, which had meant he’d been obliged to live abroad in a state of penury. Even after his wife had died, the rift with her aristocratic family hadn’t been healed. So that when he had succeeded to a title of his own, and could have returned and taken up his rightful place in society, he’d been in no hurry to do so. And now he was about to spend his first Christmas back in England under attack from two of the most avaricious and determined husband-hunters in the county.
‘I just hope you don’t transmit your horrid complaint to the servants,’ Ruth had scolded from the doorway, on seeing that shiver. ‘They’ll be sure to pass it on to us. And I shall end up with a nose as red as yours, which will put paid to any hope of getting the Earl to fall for me over Christmas,’ she’d said bitterly.
‘It would be just like her,’ put in Naomi, ‘to develop an inflammation of the lung, or something. Just when we need her most.’
Needed her to fetch and carry. To tend to their clothes and help them change, and do their hair and generally be at their beck and call. As well as suffering all the other slights and indignities that were the lot of poor relations when visiting grand houses. Neither guest nor servant, she wouldn’t really belong anywhere.
Just once, she’d like to have the liberty to celebrate Christmas herself. Paid servants like Mrs Hughes got a day off, or a gift, or a bonus of some sort. And their masters attended parties and balls and feasts.
Why not poor relations? Was it really too much to ask?
And that was when Naomi had uttered the fatal words. ‘You had better hurry up and get well, Alice Waverly, or we won’t be taking you with us.’
They’d really leave her behind? There was actually a chance she could escape the relentless drudgery—and at Christmas to boot?
It had sounded too good to be true. Nevertheless, she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to fake a dry, hacking cough if she heard anyone walking along the landing, and speaking to Mrs Hughes only in a faint, croaky voice. And, miraculously, no order had come for her to get up and pack her things. Just to be on the safe side, she’d stayed in bed until she’d heard the carriage bearing her aunt, uncle and cousins go rattling down the drive.
‘Not that I’m blaming you, mind,’ Mrs Hughes added, rather less severely. ‘I can see exactly why you’d want to be spared that sort of Christmas. Only you are up to looking after yourself now. Aren’t you?’
Guiltily, Alice nodded her head.
‘Just as I thought. But look at that sky.’ The housekeeper waved one arm in the direction of Alice’s bedroom window.
Alice could see thick, brownish clouds roiling over the moors.
‘Jem says it’s going to snow real bad before the day’s out. He come over just now special, to warn me that if I wanted to get over to my sister’s place I’d better go quick smart, or I won’t be getting there at all. Not on foot.’
‘Well, then of course you must go,’ said Alice, suddenly understanding Mrs Hughes’s disquiet. Jem was Uncle Walter’s shepherd. And something of a weather prophet. If he said it was going to snow so much that nobody would be able to travel anywhere on foot for the next few days, then that was exactly what would happen.
‘I am going,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Only, well, I won’t be able to bake those pies as I promised you before I go. Nor even start mixing of the cake.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mrs H.,’ Alice assured her. And she almost meant it, because she’d never really been able to believe in the cake and pies in the first place. She could still hardly believe her luck at being left to her own devices for more than a whole week while the family went off to celebrate Christmas elsewhere as it was. One miracle at Christmas was more than anyone could ask for.
‘Susan can cook, a bit. And Billy can do any fetching and carrying as wants doing. You will be fine,’ said Mrs Hughes, as if to reassure herself as much as Alice.
‘I am sure I will,’ said Alice. ‘You get off and enjoy your visit to your family.’
Not five minutes later, Alice heard the kitchen door slam. She went to look out of the window, but the frost was too thick for her to see out. She pulled her sleeve down over her wrist and rubbed a tiny square through which she could peer down to the back lane. Sure enough, there went the crown of Mrs Hughes’s bonnet, distorted by the shawl she’d tied over it, bobbing along on the other side of the hedge. And not a moment too soon by the looks of things. Tiny flakes of snow were already starting to swirl past her window.
She gave a little laugh of sheer delight. She was alone in the house, apart from the scullery maid and boot boy. And therefore free to celebrate Christmas however she chose.
She wondered what Susan could cook. She couldn’t wait to find out. She shucked the eiderdown she’d wrapped round her shoulders, draped it neatly over the foot of her bed, and made her way down to the kitchen.
Susan was leaning with her back against the sink at which she spent the majority of her day, her arms folded. Several strands of lank, greasy hair had escaped her mobcap and straggled across her sullen face.
‘Mrs H. told me that Jem warned her of a blizzard, so she had to leave before we’re cut off,’ said Alice. ‘And she told me that you would do the cooking while she’s away.’
Susan’s eyes took on a wary look.
‘I ain’t allowed to do no more ’n stir soup and gravy. Or chop things.’
‘But wouldn’t you like to have a go at making something?’
Was there a flicker of interest in the girl’s eyes?
‘After all,’ Alice pointed out, ‘Mrs H. is supposed to be training you up as a kitchen maid.’ It was the condition on which the orphanage had sent her to Blackthorne Hall.
‘It will be good practice for you,’ she said, as a further inducement. Susan was the third scullery maid her aunt and uncle had acquired this way since Alice had been brought here. According to Mrs Hughes, they always ran off once she’d taught them enough for them to find work elsewhere.
‘Mrs H. won’t let me help meself to things out of the larder.’
‘You won’t be helping yourself,’ Alice said. ‘You will be fetching out ingredients to make meals for me and Billy.’
Susan’s eyes flicked in the direction of the boot boy, who was gazing out of the window at the whirling snowflakes.
‘Billy would be very impressed if he could see you presiding over the stove,’ said Alice, hoping that the scullery maid’s infatuation with the boot boy might, for once, come in handy.
Susan slouched over to the larder, leaned up against the open door and folded her arms across her stomach again.
Alice followed, to see what provisions the cook-housekeeper had left. The shelves looked depressingly bare. She couldn’t help looking at the empty space on the lower shelf, where, if it hadn’t been for the threat of a blizzard, there might have been a couple of pies and a cake.
Though it wasn’t as if she’d ever had a pie baked especially for her, before. So how could she complain about the lack of one now? She was well used to existing on everyone else’s leftovers. At least she wasn’t going to have to do that this Christmas. For the first time since she�
�d come to live at Blackthorne Hall, she could choose exactly what she ate.
Provided that Susan knew how to cook it, that was.
‘I dunno,’ said Susan hesitantly. ‘I could...only...Miss Alice...’ She shifted from one foot to the other. ‘You won’t tell Mrs H. it was me as took things out of the larder? Only I don’t want to be accused of being light-fingered and lose me place.’
Conditions might not be all that comfortable for a scullery maid in Blackthorne Hall, but Susan had nowhere else to go. ‘I tell you what,’ she told the anxious girl. ‘You need only point to what you want to make our meals and I will bring it out of the larder. Then we can both truthfully say that I was responsible.’
Susan shot her a sly grin. ‘That’d work.’ She scanned the shelves. ‘I could make us all a suet pudding. Suet’s easy. Just mix it and boil it.’
It wasn’t a pie, but a suet pudding would at least fill them up. ‘That sounds wonderful, Susan.’
The girl brightened up a bit more. ‘I’ll need some flour.’ She pointed to the bin. ‘And suet,’ she added, as Alice went to fetch the brass scoop with which to measure out the ingredients. ‘Raisins,’ she added daringly. ‘And spices...’
Alice hesitated. It was starting to sound as though Susan intended to do more than mix and boil a simple pudding.
But then why shouldn’t they take what they could to feed themselves? Nobody was going to give them anything, not even though it was so close to Christmas.
There might be hell to pay when her Cartwright cousins returned, and they discovered she’d been helping herself to expensive ingredients from the larder.
But in the meantime, they might as well enjoy themselves.
* * *
‘Susan, that was delicious,’ said Alice some time later as she pushed her empty plate away. After putting the pudding on to steam, Susan had taken the ingredients that should have gone into the pies and made them into a sort of hash. Meanwhile the wind picked up, turning the snow into the blizzard Jem had forecast. Before very long they couldn’t see much more than a foot from the kitchen window. It was just as well Mrs Hughes had set out when she did. With the way the wind was blowing, the snow would be settling in drifts, so that it would be hard to distinguish hedge from ditch, never mind make out the road to her sister’s farm.
