Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  The drawing room was full, Emma found to her vast relief less than half an hour later, when she and her aunt had changed their frocks and washed their hands and faces and combed their hair. There were far more guests than she had expected. She had anticipated a family gathering, extended to include the families of in-laws.

  She did not look about her. She allowed her brother to take her arm, answered his queries about the journey, greeted Sophia’s younger sister, Lady Patricia, and her husband, Lord Hodges, and took a seat beside the former, far from the fire and the center of activity. She hoped that with her pale lavender frock and white lace cap she would blend unnoticeably into the background. Almost all of the other ladies were far more becomingly dressed, and several of them were younger and far prettier than she.

  She kept her eyes focused on the small group of people close to her and Lady Patricia.

  “Ah, here come the children,” Lady Patricia said, looking across to the doorway and smiling. “They have been chafing at the bit all afternoon, waiting for the promised moment when they might join the adults in the drawing room for tea. I don’t know how you feel about having a room invaded by infants, Emma. I am sure some of our guests will be horrified. But what is Christmas without children?”

  There were several of them, Emma saw. All of them had obviously been released from a nurse’s care only moments before. There was not a curl or a bow or a shirt cuff out of place.

  And looking across the room, Emma noticed for the first time all the signs of Christmas—the holly and ivy looped about the walls and draping every painting and mirror, the evergreen boughs decorated with large green and red bows of satin, the silver bells and the candles. And the elaborately decorated kissing bough at the center of the room.

  One small girl stood still just inside the door, looking about her. She did not immediately proceed to the side of a parent as the other children did. She was a small, solemn child, too thin and too plain for the heavy dark ringlets that covered her head. They were all wrong for her, Emma thought absently.

  And then the child looked directly at her, and Emma could see even across the room that the child’s large dark eyes took away her plainness and gave her a strange, unexpected beauty. Emma felt herself smiling as the child held her gaze.

  And then she realized in some surprise that the child was crossing the room toward her, never removing her eyes from her.

  “Hello.” Emma said a little uncertainly when the girl stopped in front of her. “What is your name?”

  The child said nothing, but looked up at her solemnly and steadily.

  Emma felt a little uncomfortable. She had never had a great deal to do with children. Lady Patricia, she could hear, was talking to a gangly young boy who was complaining about something.

  The little girl reached out a hand and touched Emma’s knee before withdrawing the hand. Emma leaned forward and smiled.

  “I am Emma Milford,” she said. “Would you like to shake my hand?” She extended her hand. The child’s eyes dropped to it, and she laid her own slowly in it. Emma closed her hand around the child’s and shook it. “I am pleased to meet you,” she said. “A happy Christmas to you. May I know whom I have the pleasure of meeting?”

  The child looked up into her eyes again and then suddenly—Emma did not quite know how it came about—she was on her lap, sitting still and straight-backed, her legs dangling above the floor.

  “Well,” Emma said, pleased and not a little flattered. “What a lovely welcome indeed. I have been traveling all day and am in a roomful of near-strangers, and suddenly I have a friend. Are you ready for your tea? I certainly am.”

  Two large dark eyes looked up at her from a thin and strangely familiar face, and then the child leaned sideways and all those dark ringlets were against Emma’s breast. She closed one arm about the child, startled, and hugged her close. She felt near to tears for no reason that she could fathom except that she was an old maid with two nieces and a nephew who had never been very partial to being held and cuddled by a mere aunt.

  Who was this strange, silent little child with the dark, beautiful eyes and thin, familiar face?

  But of course! The answer came to her in a rush even as someone came to stand in front of her, cutting off her view of the rest of the room and everyone in it.

  She raised her eyes with a physical effort to look into gray eyes that were much like his daughter’s in the rather narrow face that he had also passed along to the child. She had forgotten the bump in his nose, where he had broken it as a boy, a feature that destroyed all chance he might have had of being classically handsome, though it made him impossibly attractive, she had once thought. And she had forgotten that the thickness of his dark hair made it somewhat unruly.

  He had not changed in nine years. Not really. There were perhaps more years, more experience, more character in his face. He had been only twenty-tree at that time. A very young man.

  “Hello, Emma,” he said.

  “Hello, Edwin.”

  Unconsciously she held his child closer. She should have called him Lord Radbrook, she thought. But then, he should have called her Miss Milford. She was very conscious of her simple frock and lace cap, of her plainly dressed hair—all of them planned with him very much in mind. To show him that nine years had passed, that she had not come with any silly notion of renewing an old romance, that she had come merely because his parents had invited her and it would have been uncivil to have refused.

  “I see you have been making friends with Anna,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “She does not talk, you know,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Her new mama was not pretty, the child was thinking. But she had a sweet and a kind face, and when she smiled, one knew that the smile was not meant for herself, to make herself prettier or to draw attention her way, but to make the other person feel good.

  Her hands were soft and slim. And warm. And her bosom was warm and comfortable. She felt just exactly as Anna had expected a mama would feel.

  She did not smell of roses. The scent was something not quite as strong or as sweet. Anna closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in. Violets. That was it. Her new mama smelled of violets.

  Emma Milford. That was what the lady had called herself. And Papa had called her Emma. But Anna did not need the name. She was Mama. Anna had known it almost as soon as she had stepped into the drawing room.

  She had thought it out for herself the night before while lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. And she had thought the same way again that morning. If her wish was to come true, then surely it would come true today, on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas Day. Grandpapa and Grandmama were expecting several new visitors today, but none tomorrow.

  Her new mama would come today.

  And so she had entered the drawing room with a mingled confidence in Christmas wishes and anxiety lest this be the very one that would not come true. She had looked about her carefully at all the ladies. Miss Chadwick, looking prettier even than usual, was laughing up at her papa, so that he did not immediately notice Anna’s entrance. There were several other unknown ladies, a few of them of the approximate age she expected her new mama to be. But none of them had seemed right. She had felt no recognition for any of them.

  Until she had spotted the lady at the far end of the drawing room, close to the great windows, seated on a low chair near Aunt Patricia. The quiet lady in a lavender dress and wearing a lace cap on her smooth brown hair. A lady who was neither pretty nor vivacious. A lady who smiled at her in a thoroughly kindly and comfortable manner from across the room.

  And walking toward her across the drawing room, with not one twinge of uncertainty or unease, Anna had felt sorry for her cousins, who had one more night of excitement and suspense to live through before they would see the fulfillment of their own wishes, while hers had been granted on Christmas Eve.

  She was contented, she thought, her cheek nestled against her new mama’s bosom, her nostrils draw
ing in the warm and subtle scent of violets. She was happy. It was going to be the best Christmas ever.

  “Anna,” her papa was saying, “let me take you over to the tray for mince pies and lemonade. It looks as if the children are being allowed to go first. Miss Milford will need both hands for her plate and her tea.”

  But Anna did not move, and her new mama did not relax her hold on her.

  “Anna?” her father said. He sounded perplexed.

  “Please,” the lady said. Her voice was soft and musical. Anna had noticed that right at the start. “Let her stay if she wishes. I have so little chance to be with children.”

  Anna’s eyes looked up to her father, though she did not raise her head. He was standing very still, his hands clasped behind him. He was feeling it too, she thought, smiling without ever moving a facial muscle. Papa could feel it too. As of course he must. He was going to have to marry her new mama.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “But please don’t allow her to annoy you. You must be tired after your journey.”

  His words suggested a concern for her comfort, Emma thought. But his jaw was tight. A pulse beat there. And when he turned to walk away, it was with abrupt, rather jerky movements. He was angry.

  As well he might be. She had been at Williston Hall for less than an hour, and already she held his daughter in her arms, and the child had refused to go to him.

  Anna Gwent had not spoken since the horror of her mother’s death almost three years before, Sophia and Peter had told her. Father and daughter were virtually inseparable. And he doted on her as if she were the only item of value in the universe.

  Yes, she could hardly blame him for being angry.

  “Shall we share a plate?” she asked Anna when a footman offered her one and then displayed a plate of cakes and pastries for her selection.

  The child nodded.

  “Which one would you like?” Emma asked.

  Anna pointed to an angel cake smothered in white cream, and the footman set it on the plate with the mince pie that Emma had chosen.

  “Oh, Christmas goodies,” Emma said with a sigh. “Are we going to get fat, Anna?”

  The child stared solemnly up at her before reaching for her cake.

  Emma raised her eyes and looked unwillingly across the room. He was talking with a very pretty blond young lady and looking over the girl’s shoulder quite directly at her. Or at his daughter. It was hard to tell which.

  The evening of Christmas Eve began with a lively banquet, at which thirty family members and guests sat down. The children ate upstairs, though they were to join the adults in the drawing room afterward for games until the carolers would arrive from the village. Their visit was traditional and always eagerly anticipated. Then those children who so wished would go to church with their parents. They were always given the choice, though no self-respecting child beyond the age of three ever went to the warmth and coziness of his bed when there was a chance to endure all the self-inflicted torture of staying up until after midnight.

  Lord Radbrook found himself seated beside Roberta Chadwick at dinner. She was dressed in a delicate white confection of a gown in defiance of the season and looked as pure and as lovely as a lily—a lily sparkling in the sunshine. There was always a brightness about Roberta that drew eyes her way quite regardless of her blond beauty.

  He had never seen her without the sparkle, Lord Radbrook thought. She would be a constantly cheerful companion throughout life, even if her conversation was far from profound. She would bring light and gaiety into Anna’s life, and those were qualities his child needed more than anything.

  She would accept him, he was sure. He sensed that she favored him, though she was not so ill-bred as to openly fawn upon him. Indeed, she spent as much time during dinner conversing and laughing with the young Viscount Treadwell at her other side as she did with him.

  He talked when he was able with Miss Beynon to his left. And when his head was turned her way, he could see Emma at the far end of the table. She was wearing blue tonight, the dress simple and high-necked and long-sleeved. Her head was bare of the cap she had worn that afternoon, but her hair was dressed as simply, drawn back smoothly over her ears and knotted at the neck. Her face looked serene as she talked with Colonel Porchester beside her.

  He had a sudden and unbidden memory of that same face full of life and laughter and that brown hair cut short and curled about her face. He saw that same body lithe beneath light muslin, tripping lightly across the park and beside the lake, her hand in his. That same slim hand that now held her fork.

  She had changed. She had aged. And not for the better.

  He felt his jaw tighten with anger. How had she lured Anna onto her lap at teatime? Had she hoped to impress him? Anna was shy even with her relatives. She almost never had anything to do with strangers.

  He put the thought from his mind and turned to Roberta, who had finished her conversation with the viscount and was smiling his way.

  But his irritation returned when the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room after being left to their port for a short while. The children were already downstairs, but Anna did not even notice his arrival. She was standing in the center window with Emma, holding her hand and gazing at her with the look she normally reserved only for him. Emma was stooped down beside her. Amid all the noise and laughter in the room, the two of them seemed set apart in a little world of silence and contentment.

  Almost unwillingly he strolled toward them.

  Anna had sat patiently upstairs while her nurse recurled her hair into its myriad ringlets, and she had smoothed her hands carefully over the pink silk frills of her second-best dress—the best was to be reserved for Christmas Day—so that the creases would fall out. But inside she had been bursting with excitement. She had had to be reminded to eat her dinner, and she had scarcely listened to the chatter and arguments of her cousins.

  When the children had been summoned to the drawing room, she had flown down the stairs with the others instead of holding back until last as she usually did. And she had glanced about the room with bright eyes, ignoring—indeed, not even seeing—the gentle and welcoming smile of her grandmother, and darted across the room to take the hand of her new mama.

  “You have made a friend, Emma,” Marjorie Fotheringale said with a laugh. “I noticed that Anna sat on your lap at teatime.” She smiled fondly down at the child and touched one of her ringlets. “Anna is very special in this family.”

  But Anna was not prepared to become a third party in an adult conversation. She tugged on her mama’s hand, drawing her toward her very favorite spot in the house at Christmas, the Bethlehem scene that was always set up in the central window.

  “Ah,” Emma said, “a Nativity scene. It is a very lovely one, too.”

  Anna looked up at her. She did not know the word her new mama had used. But yes, it was lovely. Someone had made it especially for Grandmama. She pointed to the baby Jesus in his manger.

  She loved the baby Jesus because he looked like a real baby. One chubby arm waved aimlessly in the air while the baby sucked on the thumb of the other hand. His chubby legs were bent. All his limbs were free of the swaddling clothes, which was not the idea of swaddling clothes at all, Aunt Sophia had said once. But Anna did not care. She loved this baby far more than the one at church, with his arms stretched out as if to bless the world, Uncle Humphrey had explained, and the halo about his smiling face. That baby did not look real.

  “He is a very happy baby, is he not?” Emma said. “I wonder if the straw is scratching his skin.”

  Anna looked up at her again. She had always wondered the same thing. It was the only thing about the whole scene that had bothered her.

  “But I daresay it is not,” Emma said. “He does not look upset, does he? And I am sure his mama would make sure he is comfortable. She has eyes for only him, see?”

  Mary was bending over the manger, gazing down at the baby Jesus. But her hands were not clasped in prayer, as we
re the Virgin’s at the church. She was holding to the edge of the manger and smiling. She was not worshiping the baby; she was loving him. Anna touched the shoulder of the figure and smoothed one finger down its back.

  Emma stooped down beside her. “I think she is very proud of her baby, don’t you?” she said. “But what mama would not be proud of her child?” She released the child’s hand and set an arm loosely about her thin waist, watching the small finger smooth lightly over Mary’s robe.

  “Anna,” a voice said from behind them, “you are keeping Miss Milford from the company. It is not very polite.”

  Emma looked around sharply and dropped her arm from the child’s waist. “We were looking at the Nativity scene,” she said foolishly, and was aware suddenly of a little hand taking hers and drawing it about her waist again.

  “Yes,” he said. “Anna has always been fascinated by it. I think it is because the sculptor emphasized realism rather than the idea that this is the Holy Family.”

  Anna took his hand in hers and pointed to the figure of Joseph.

  He chuckled. “Ah, yes, poor Joseph,” he said. “Always in the background.” He stooped down on his haunches and looked more closely. “But this one is more human than most, is he not? He looks rather pleased with himself actually, and he definitely looks as if he would take on the world to protect mother and child. I do believe that he is about to hint quite firmly to the shepherds that it is time to take themselves off back to the hills.”

  Anna held to her father’s hand and rested one cheek on Emma’s shoulder as they all gazed silently at the Nativity scene for a while.

  “Snow,” Lord Radbrook said at last, looking beyond the stable and its silent figures to the uncovered window beyond. “It has set up a furious debate about whether we should go to church in the village or not. My father’s head groom has given it as his opinion that the fall is not yet thick enough to make carriage travel hazardous, though doubtless by morning we will have to travel by sleigh or by foot. What about it, Anna? Shall we go?”