Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  She thought her Aunt Ursula and Uncle Timothy were the most wonderful people in the world. She loved them.

  She was glad they were the baby’s mama and papa. She was glad they were her mama and papa and Rupert’s and Patricia’s. She was glad they were one family and would all live together forever and ever.

  “Amen,” she whispered.

  She was searching for sanity. Only two days ago she had been traveling down from London and she had been entirely herself. She had been confident and contented—except that she had had a problem to deal with. She had known who she was and she had been happy with the way her life was developing. Two days ago she had lived her life according to reason rather than feelings. Living on one’s emotions was a dreadful way to live. She had stopped living that way years before and she had been happier for it.

  Two days ago she had stepped out of her carriage and found herself in a different world. Perhaps in a different universe. She was no longer certain of anything and her mind was in too much of a turmoil for her to be contented. She was no longer sure that her former life—former! As if it were all years or eons ago—was not dull and barren. In this world, in this universe, she was living very much on her emotions; and there was something dreadfully unsettling about it. And something rather wonderful too. She had discovered that she liked children after all. She had discovered that she loved these three children. She could not bear the thought of being separated from them again after Christmas, and yet she was sure that he would fight her for them.

  She would fight him tooth and nail.

  She had been so sure that no man could ever arouse her feelings again, so sure that she could never desire a man again. And she had liked it that way. Life had been peaceful for a number of years, especially since Carlyle’s death.

  But he had kissed her beneath the mistletoe outdoors in full view of the children, and even this new universe had tipped upside down. Throughout the walk home and the couple of hours they had spent decorating the drawing room and the extra couple of hours it had taken to fashion and paint a large wooden star to hang beside the mistletoe in front of the fire because Caroline had asked about a star with an irresistibly wistful look in her eyes—throughout all that, she had been intensely aware of him, of his attractiveness, of his maleness. And her body was reacting to him in a way it had not really reacted since Vauxhall. Even on her wedding night it had not reacted so.

  She wanted him. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers again. She wanted to feel his body against her own. She wanted his hands on her. She wanted him inside her body. She wanted him there even though her only experiences with intimacy—during the first month of her marriage—had been disappointing at best, distasteful at worst.

  She wanted him. But she could not want him. When she was back, in her own world—within the next few days—she would no longer want him. Her life would return to normal.

  But she wanted babies of her own. Her body ached for the experience of motherhood as it had not for almost nine years. But she was seven-and-twenty already. It was too late. She would never be a mother.

  She wanted his child. He would make such a wonderful father.

  And so she searched for sanity as they set out for church during the evening. They walked, since the distance was not great and the snow was still deep. Rupert and Patricia held her hands while Caroline rode in Timothy’s arms, his greatcoat wrapped about her for extra warmth.

  If she did not hold very firmly to sanity, she thought as they took their seats in a pew close to the front and admired the Nativity scene set up before the altar and listened to the bells ringing from the bell tower—if she did not keep very firm touch with reality, she was going to start imagining that they really were a family. Caroline had been transferred to her lap. Patricia was at one side of her; Rupert was at one side of Timothy. But they were next to each other, their shoulders almost touching. She could feel his body heat. She could smell the snuff he used and the soap.

  Christmas had always been an enjoyable time because it was a time of heightened social activities and extra feasting. Church attendance had always been pleasant because everyone who had stayed in town was there, most of them at the same church, and they always lingered to talk afterward. She had always enjoyed the holiday.

  She had never realized fully until now that it was a holiday for families. That it was about birth and parenthood and love. And about hope and commitment. She realized it tonight.

  And sanity disappeared without a trace.

  By the time the service ended, Caroline was asleep against her bosom, her mouth slack about the thumb she had sucked, and Patricia was sleeping against her arm. Rupert was leaning against Timothy’s, but he was awake and sat up valiantly.

  “Can you carry her?” Timothy asked, turning his head, only inches away from her own, and nodding down at Caroline. “I’ll take Patricia.”

  And so they walked home side by side, each carrying a child, while Rupert trudged along between them, firmly denying that he was tired. And they carried the girls up to the nursery, and she stayed to help their nurse undress them and put them to bed. She kissed them and smiled tenderly at them, even though they were both more than half-asleep.

  “Good night, Aunt Ursula,” Patricia murmured.

  “The party is tomorrow?” Caroline asked sleepily. She yawned. “The baby will be surprised. Won’t he, Mama?”

  She touched the backs of her fingers to the child’s hair and wondered what dreamland she was in. Something ached in the back of her throat.

  “Wonderfully surprised,” she said before going into Rupert’s room to wish him a good night and to assure him in answer to his question that yes, she really believed there might be presents in the morning for his sisters. And maybe for him too.

  She met Timothy in the hall outside the bedrooms and took his offered arm. But he led her toward the stairs instead of to her room, late as the hour was.

  “Christmas punch,” he said, “before we retire for the night.”

  She allowed him to lead her downward without protest. But there was a decision to make, she sensed. Soon. Sanity or madness. She tried to tell herself to be strong and to remain sane.

  But she wanted to be mad. Mad now and ever after.

  She had hurt him badly once. Very badly. He had even wondered for a while if he would survive, though he had realized even at the time that the thought was rather ridiculous. One did not die of a broken heart. And the fault had been in large measure his. He had lashed out at her when Marjorie had eloped with her brother with accusations that could almost make his hair stand on end in retrospect.

  The difference was that with him it had been merely temper. With her it had been actual dislike and indifference. She had turned to another man as if their relationship had never been and had married him and presumably lived happily with him for seven years.

  He did not care to recall the pain she had left him in. It was a pain he had vowed would never be repeated. He would never allow himself to love again.

  Just two days ago the mere sight of her had irritated him. He had wanted nothing to do with her. And the two days had progressed anything but smoothly. They had been civil to each other for the sake of the children, but hostility had poked through the thin veneer of civility on occasion.

  He must keep his lips firmly buttoned up until they could get away from each other within the next couple of days. He would be able to see things clearly enough once he was back in his own world—with the children. There was no way on this earth she was going to take the children away from him.

  He loved them.

  Why the devil had he brought her downstairs for punch, he asked himself, when it was after midnight and he did not wish to be alone with her? He retrieved his arm when they entered the drawing room, forgot all about the punch, which was warm and inviting in a bowl on the sideboard, and crossed the room to stand unconsciously beneath the mistletoe—and the Christmas star—and rest an elbow on the mantel. He stared into the flames of
the fire.

  “They need parents, Ursula,” he heard himself say. “Not a mother. Not a father. Both. Parents. Plural.”

  “Yes,” she said softly from somewhere behind him.

  And he knew that he had stepped irrevocably into the unknown.

  “You and me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  His hand opened and closed against the mantel. “Not for a few months with one and then a few with the other,” he said. “With both of us in one house all the time.”

  “Yes.”

  What the devil was he saying? What the devil was he doing? But whatever it was, it was too late now to go back. He could think of nothing more to say except the final words. The final question.

  But they hated each other, did they not?

  He turned his head and looked at her. She was standing in the middle of the room, her arms at her sides. Her face was pale. Her eyes looked haunted.

  “Ursula,” he asked her, “why did you marry him?”

  “I don’t know.” He watched her swallow. “There was scandal. There might well have been ostracism. You were gone. There was so much pain. And he asked me. It—it seemed like a good idea.”

  “Poor devil,” he said, though he could still feel nothing but intense dislike for her late husband.

  “I believe he used me too,” she said. “We deserved each other. It was not—well, not really a marriage. Not after the first few weeks. There were no children. There was not really”—she flushed—“not really the possibility.”

  In seven years Carlyle had bedded her for only the first few weeks? Why?

  “We rubbed along well enough together,” she said. “We both had what we wanted out of the marriage, I believe.”

  “What was it you wanted?” he asked her.

  “Peace,” she said. “I wanted to stop feeling. Feelings hurt. Love hurts.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Her eyes were filled with pain suddenly. “You said you would have come back,” she said. “Would you?”

  “Of course I would have come back,” he said. “I loved you. I suffered hell on your wedding night.”

  “Ah.” She covered her face with her hands.

  “Did you really believe it was all over?” he asked her.

  “Yes.” Her voice was dull and low against her hands.

  “What were your feelings?” He had picked up her agony.

  “I did not want to live,” she said. “I did not know how I was to drag myself through another fifty years or so of living.”

  There was a long silence, which he had no idea how to break. She stood where she was and kept her hands over her face.

  “Ursula,” he said at last and waited for her to look up at him with suffering eyes. He reached out his free arm. “Come here.”

  She came slowly and did not stop until her body rested against his own and her face was nestled in the folds of his neckcloth. He felt her draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly through her mouth. He closed his arms about her.

  “If we do what you suggest for the children,” she said, “it will be just for their sakes. Will it not?”

  He understood the uncertainty behind the question, the need for reassurance. The need for him to say the hardest three words in the language to string together. Though he had had no problem with them once.

  “The children are more important than you or I,” he said. “Their need for love and security and parents to lean on is almost a tangible thing. We can supply that need, and we must.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He lowered his head to rub his cheek across her hair. It was as soft and silky as he remembered it.

  “They will be our family,” she said. “Almost as we planned it. But—”

  “But?” he said when she did not continue.

  Her hands clutched the lapels of his coat. Tightly.

  “I wish I had waited for you to come,” she said. “I wish I had known that you would come. We might have loved and had a family of your own. It is too late now.”

  “Too late?” He took her by the upper arms and moved her back far enough that he could look down into her face. “How old are you, Ursula? Seven-and-twenty? Eight-and-twenty?”

  “Seven,” she said.

  “I was unaware,” he said, “that a woman’s fertile years are over so soon. And I have not noticed any tendency to impotence in myself even though I have passed my thirtieth birthday.”

  She blushed and her hands reached for the top button of his waistcoat. Just like Caroline. Her eyes watched her hands.

  He lowered his head close to hers. “Maybe we should try,” he murmured to her, “and find out if even at our advanced ages we can produce a child of our own. Shall we?”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Or children,” he said. “Shall we be really clever and try to produce two? Or four? Boy, girl—”

  “—boy, girl,” she finished for him and laughed softly, though her eyes and her hands were still on his button.

  “Don’t twist too hard,” he said. “My valet will be inordinately cross if I take a waistcoat upstairs with me minus one button.”

  Her hands stilled and she set her forehead against them.

  “Timothy,” she said, “these two days have been the happiest of my life.”

  He listened to her in some surprise. But she was right. They had been the happiest of his too. And that included all of the three months between his first meeting with her and the breaking of their betrothal.

  “And of mine,” he said. There was a short pause. “Shall I say it first?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. “I will feel foolish if I say it first and it turns out that you were not about to say that at all.”

  “But it is all right for me to make an idiot of myself,” he said. He rubbed his chin across the top of her head. “I love you, Ursula.”

  “I love you, Timothy,” she said so quickly that they finished almost together.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked. “Do you want it on one knee?”

  “No,” she said. “How foolish. And yes. No for the bended knee, that is, and yes for marrying you. Will we regret it, do you suppose? When Christmas is over and we are back home and all this is a memory?”

  “The children will not be gone when Christmas is over,” he said. “And my love will not be gone. Or yours. It never did die, did it, just as mine did not.”

  “No.” She sighed and lifted her face at last to look at him. Oh, so close. “It never did. The only way I could deal with it was to kill all feeling in myself. And convince myself that what I felt—or did not feel—was peace and contentment. I never stopped loving you. I never will.”

  He swallowed. If this was unreality, he never wanted the real world back. He closed the gap of a few inches between their mouths.

  They moaned in unison and then had to pull back in order to laugh together. And to gaze into each other’s eyes.

  And to return to the serious business of embracing.

  A long time later he raised his head and sighed. “I believe we had better go up to bed,” he said. “Separately, though doing so may well kill me and you too if I am reading the signs correctly. But it would be in bad taste to take to the floor here—a notion that has crossed both our minds during the past several minutes. And in bad taste to share the same bed in our nephew and nieces’ house. Can you wait until our wedding night?”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Approximately twenty-four hours after the soonest moment we can return to London,” he said.

  “Will you spring your horses?” she asked.

  “Actually,” he said, “I am going to get them to spread their wings.”

  He touched noses with her and they both laughed at the absurdity.

  “We will make love for the first time on our wedding night,” he said. “Sleep now and for the next few nights while you can. I shall be keeping you busy once we are married.”

  “Will you?” She buried her face again
st his neckcloth briefly once more. “How wonderful that sounds. Promise?”

  He chuckled and hugged her tightly to him before releasing her and offering his arm.

  “Propriety, my lady,” he said. “Propriety.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said meekly, laying her arm along the top of his.

  They walked upstairs in silence. He kissed her outside the door to her room and reluctantly stepped away from her. Her eyes were shining so with love that for a moment he felt weak-kneed.

  “Happy Christmas, Timothy,” she said.

  “Happy Christmas, Ursula,” he said, making her a half bow. “The mistletoe works quite superbly, by the way.”

  “Sweetheart.”

  “My love.”

  They laughed quietly. Their laughter sounded little different from the children’s giggles earlier in the day. They were being childish. It felt wonderful. He blew her a kiss. She blew one right back.

  He opened his own door and stepped inside.

  “Enough,” he said.

  “Agreed.”

  She closed her door before he did.

  Nurse had helped them dress and had brushed her curls and was combing Patricia’s hair more carefully. She was telling Patricia not to squirm, but she was saying it in her kind voice. Patricia was too excited to sit still. Caroline was excited too, but she could keep excitement deep inside herself so that people would not call her silly.

  And then Rupert came into their room. He was dressed and washed and combed and he was bursting with excitement too. He was usually not allowed to come into the girls’ room. It was not proper, Nurse always said. But nothing was said today. Nurse even smiled at him as she bade him good morning.

  “Do you think, Rupert?” Patricia asked him, her eyes meeting his in the mirror. “Do you think?”

  “I am not sure,” Rupert said. He switched to his man’s voice. “I do not care as long as Caroline gets at least one. And I hope there is one for you too, Patricia.”

  “Oh, but I do not want one unless there is one for you,” she said. “Caroline is the important one. She is only four.”

  Caroline knew they were talking about presents. But she did not really care if there were none. It was not her birthday, after all, but the baby’s. And they had decorated the drawing room downstairs for him as a surprise. They were going to take him down there afterward and they were all going to wish him a happy birthday. And they were all going to kiss him and coo over him. She was going to spin the Christmas star for him to look up at. And Mama and Papa were going to be there, and he was going to feel safe.