My First Noel
Page 6
“Humble birth. Briefly elevated and cast back down yet again. But it’s not so bad, really. I could have been shot by your neighbor tonight. I could be dead. Instead, here I am in a warm house with a beautiful woman who thought, for the briefest of moments, that I can walk on water, cure the sick and raise the dead.” He grinned, and again Katharine was struck by how strong and white his teeth were, how his mouth was made for smiling and yet his eyes were dark and warm, their depths such that she felt she could lose herself in them forever.
“Happy Christmas, Noel O’ Flaherty.”
“Happy Christmas, Lady Katharine.”
She poured tea into his cup, poured some into her own, found some leftover little cakes that the cook had made the day before yesterday. They were stale and crumbly and should have been thrown out for the birds, but in the wee hours of Christmas morning, nothing had ever tasted better.
From out in the hall, a clock chimed. Two o’clock in the morning.
“So I’m off at dawn,” Mr. O’ Flaherty said. “And you, Lady Katharine?”
She looked down into her tea, as though the few leaf-bits in the bottom of her cup would yield an answer. Something profound, something holy had happened here tonight. What would she do with the gift of rebirth, of hope, that had been given to her? She’d spent years bitterly lamenting the unfairness of life and the fickle cruelty of men; never would she have thought to hold the mirror up to herself and look at what was reflected back at her and acknowledge the true source of that bitterness. And never, oh dear lord, never, would she have thought to put into words what she’d seen and share that shame with another person. But there was something about this man that saw through all pretension; something about him that felt safe, something about him that encouraged her to peel the blankets from her cowardly soul and present it to him in all its naked honesty.
“I guess I’ll start by making a list of the people I may have hurt,” she said, her face warmed by the steam rising from her cup. “And then I’m going to make my apologies, beg their forgiveness, and try to be a better person.”
He smiled gently.
She kept looking into her cup. “I would never have thought to do that, you know. And before tonight, I most certainly wouldn’t have. But you came and I had that…that dream.” Again, she thought of the voice in her dream, how it had been so close that it could have arisen from her very soul, and she felt the press of tears all over again. “The fault isn’t with other people. It’s with me.”
She felt Mr. O’ Flaherty’s warm, dark eyes on her, his quiet acceptance of all that she was, warts and all, without judgment. Shame welled up inside of her, a sense of sorrow and regret that was so strong that it pushed the tears into her sinuses, there to threaten her eyes until she had to hastily blink them back so that he would not see them. “Juliet and Amy never did anything to me to make me hate them so—except marry the men I expected to have.”
“You would marry for expectation, and not love?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
He looked at her and smiled. “No.”
She sniffed back the tears, trying not to cry.
“Sometimes, Katharine—” he had called her by her Christian name, and the warmth of his voice, his words, slipped deeper into those cracks in her heart that had opened and were now causing her all sorts of pain—“we don’t get the things we expect, the things we think are promised to us—and we’re not meant to.” He eyed her levelly from above his cup. “The things we most want are not always the things we most need.”
She nodded, thinking of the hollow triumph she had felt when she and Mama had deliberately tried to hurt Lord Gareth’s wife, Juliet, with words. Words borne of hurt and loss, words that had felt good at the time she’d nastily spoken them but had, much later, lodged in her conscience like indigestion that wouldn’t pass and weighed it down with shame. A tear slipped down her cheek. Words that hurt others were like that, weren’t they? They tasted good going down. But once there, they just made you feel…well, sick.
“You are a wise man, Mr. O’ Flaherty.”
He smiled and took another sip of his tea, patiently waiting for her to continue.
“I have some apologies to make,” she continued quietly. “Starting with Juliet de Montforte. And then I’m going to do everything I can to help you get your home back.”
He reached out and took her hand, laying his fingers over hers where it rested on the scarred, stained old table. Katharine looked at that strong hand. She ought to pull away, but she didn’t. There was something about this man that comforted and steadied her. Something that filled those cracks in her heart with a warm balm, with understanding and kindness, healing and forgiveness. No, he was not the other man born on Christmas, but there was still something very special about him, something that not only accepted her for who she was, but encouraged her to be all that she could be.
“I will feel better for having made those apologies, won’t I?”
“I’d lay money on it.” He grinned. “If I had any.”
She smiled, pulled her fingers from his to retrieve her reticule and slid it across the table to him. “Perhaps this will keep you fed and sheltered for at least a little while. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.”
His eyes darkened with gratitude. “You don’t have to do that, Lady Katharine.”
She looked down. “I know. But I want to.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, quietly accepting her gift and then taking her hand once more. “I will never forget your kindnesses toward me.”
“And what of you, Mr. O’ Flaherty? Where will you go?”
“Back down to London, I imagine.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. The gesture was one of friendship, but nevertheless it made Katharine aware of the warmth of his skin, the feel of his fingertip and the strength of his hand. She let him twine his fingers around hers in quiet solidarity. There was more than just physical strength to this man. His root core was one of strength as well, more than likely earned the hard way through the general wear and tear of life and all that it threw at a person. “I was never meant to be a highwayman and truth be told, I was certainly not much good at it. No, I’ll ride back down to London and try again to reclaim what is supposedly mine. And if not…well, perhaps I can figure out a way to get back into the army.”
They sat there together, the tea growing cold in their cups, the storm beginning to blow itself out beyond the dark window that looked out over the downs.
“I think I will miss you, Mr. O’ Flaherty,” Katherine said so quietly that she wasn’t even sure that she’d said it. “I’ve only known you for a short time, but you have impacted my life in a way that nobody else ever has. You’ve found and softened the hard edges of my heart. You’ve given me hope that there’s more to the rest of my life than what I’d envisioned. Thank you for that, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, Lady Katharine.”
She looked at him, her hand still tucked in his, her brow raised.
“Thank yourself. You were the one who opened that door to this wintry night, and to me. You were the one who invited me into your home. You were the one who found the true peace and spirit of the season by doing something you might never have thought, or wanted, to do.” He squeezed her hand and stood up. “’Tis when we give of ourselves to others, that we gain the most in return.”
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
He took and bowed over her hand. “In a few hours, I’ll be gone. And as I’ve touched your life, so you’ve touched mine. I will never forget you.” His eyes were dark above her knuckles, and she wished, absurdly, that he would sweep her into his arms and kiss her here by this dying fire, near these empty tea cups, in the firelit gloom of a deserted kitchen. But he did not. Instead, he straightened up, wincing a bit with the sudden pain, and retrieved his coat and hat. “Good night, Lady Katharine.”
“Good night, Mr. O’ Flaherty.”
He turned and walked away. Outside, the wind, depleted now of snow and sleet and as empty as Katharine’s heart suddenly felt, pushed against the cold black pane of glass and then whistled off into the night, chasing a destiny that only it could see.
The fire dimmed.
And Katharine was, as she had been for most of her life, alone.
* * *
The world had changed that night nearly two thousand years before, changed in a way that would never be the same and on this night, perhaps as holy in its own way as that long-ago one in a distant town called Bethlehem, in a world that was still capable of producing miracles, Lady Katharine Farnsley’s world also changed in a way that would never be the same.
She sat alone in the darkened kitchen, her thoughts her own, the clock out in the great hall wearily chiming off the hours. The black pane of the window eventually began to lighten as dawn, still far off, crept over the snow-covered landscape and claimed the day for its own.
Christmas morning.
She and Perry had exchanged no gifts, hung no decorations, had not even attended church the night before. They had gone to bed as if it were a night like any other, cold and dark, wintry and wet, nothing special about it at all even if it was Christmas Eve.
No gifts had been exchanged, but with her opening that door to a stranger, Katharine’s world had been rocked on its axis, and she knew again, as the night began its slow-fade from outside the window, that she had been given the greatest gift of all.
Upstairs, Perry slept on in his alcohol-induced slumber, oblivious to the holy miracle that had taken place in his sister’s heart. And somewhere beyond the kitchen and far out in another part of the house, Katharine heard the quiet easing-open of the great door that led to the outside, and to the world beyond.
The cook’s heavy woolen cloak hung near the door, old but serviceable above a pair of stout boots into which a pair of woolen mittens were stuffed. Seized by an impulse that was as sudden as it was true, as inspired as it was honest, Katharine shoved her feet into the boots and was just reaching for the cloak when she heard the big heavy door out in the hall quietly close. The crunch of footfalls in the snow outside. The silence that followed, filled with emptiness and loss and the sudden knowledge that the second very best gift she had ever received was about to leave her life forever.
She ran upstairs to change into the warmest clothes she had. She dashed off a note to Perry, grabbed the cloak, ran from the house and nearly slipped in fresh, newly-fallen snow as she tore open the front door with far more abandon than the person who had just passed through it. The heavy expectancy of dawn still hung over the world, a world of frozen boughs and branches, slowly whitening pastures, snow sifting down from a tree overhead and a cold, clean wind full of promise.
Fresh footprints led toward the stables.
Dawn was coming, but night had not yet relinquished the Eve to the Christmas, and above the stable the morning star hung, the brightest thing in the night, the brightest thing in the sky.
Mr. O’ Flaherty came out, leading his horse.
He paused, looked back towards the house—and saw Katharine.
For a moment, neither said a word. And then he smiled and reached a hand out to her in invitation, and Lady Katharine Farnsley, former shrew, was running across the frozen courtyard towards him, her hair flying out behind her and her cheeks reddening with cold and girlish delight.
He opened his arms to her, and she went into them.
His lips were warm against hers, his sheltering embrace something she wanted to feel for the rest of her life. Whether or not that gift would be granted her, she did not know. Whether or not she and Noel O’ Flaherty would find happiness with each other, she could not predict. But she did know that if she didn’t follow her own Christmas star, the joy she had discovered on this very special night would wither away like the snow would when the sun found it at last.
“You don’t want to wait for your brother?” he asked, leading his horse to the mounting block. “We’ll need his help.”
“He’ll catch up to us,” she said simply, and allowed him to steady her as she deftly climbed up into the saddle. A moment later he was behind her, his chest warm against her back, his arms safely enclosing her.
Nollaig O’ Flaherty grinned and set his heels to the pied mare’s flanks. Her sturdy feet were as round as dinner plates, the fetlocks already balling up with newly-fallen snow as she snorted and, eager to be off, moved off across the white lawn. Her hoofprints, the edges caught by the first thin rays of the Christmas morning dawn, followed them as the mare trotted down the drive and out to the road that would take them to Ravenscombe and from there, to London.
And above their heads, searing what remained of the night with beauty and guiding the mare’s path as steady and true as that long ago beacon above a little town called Bethlehem, the morning star stood.
the end
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Danelle Harmon has written sixteen critically acclaimed and award-winning books, with many being published all over the world and translated into numerous languages. A Massachusetts native, she has lived in Great Britain though these days she and her English husband make their home in New England with their daughter and numerous animals including four dogs, an Egyptian Arabian horse, and a flock of pet chickens. Danelle enjoys reading, spending time with family, friends and her pets, and sailing her Melonseed skiff, Kestrel II. She welcomes email from her readers and can be reached at Danelle@danelleharmon.com or through any of the means listed below:
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