by Mary Balogh
The child’s arms tightened about his neck. “You are all right, mate,” he said in his high little voice. “For a while I thought you would not be, but you are. I am happy. I am always happy. Always. Forever and ever.”
The innocence of childhood, Elliott thought, closing his eyes and hugging the child even closer to him. Children believed that happiness could last forever. But happiness could be worked on. And love could be worked on so that neither need ever be totally lost even during the inevitable hard times of life.
He kissed the child’s soft, freckled cheek and got to his feet. His eyes were swimming with tears. June, he saw, was clasped in Mrs. Parkes’s arms and was openly sobbing.
“I’ll come back,” she was saying. “I promise I will come back. You have been so good. I love you so dearly.”
And then finally they were on their way, seated side by side on the high seat of his curricle, both looking back as much as they could and for as long as they could until they had turned onto the road and the cottage and the two waving figures of their hosts had disappeared from sight.
“Elliott.” He was guiding the horses with one hand. His other hand was clasped tightly in hers. She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “How is it possible to feel so deliriously happy and so wretchedly miserable all at once?”
He could give no answer. He could only turn his head for a moment and kiss her briefly.
“It was strange,” she said a short while later. “Very strange. It is strange. What was the meaning of it all?”
He could offer no explanation. But he knew she was referring not only to the events of the past two days but to the strange happenings of this afternoon too. The snow clearing from the road like that was somewhat uncanny. So was the fact that almost instantly he began to recognize landmarks, as he was sure she did too. They were no farther than two or three miles from Hammond. And yet the cottage and its immediate surroundings had looked quite unfamiliar. Only two or three miles—and yet within that space and the time it took to travel it in his curricle the snow got less and less until by the time they passed through the village and through the gates into the park and onto the driveway it had disappeared altogether. Without a trace.
Within two or three miles? In less than an hour of travel?
The thing was, he was beginning to feel the meaning of it all even if he could not yet translate feeling into thoughts or words.
“I think this was the meaning,” he said, lifting their clasped hands to his lips and kissing the back of hers.
“Yes,” she said quietly, and he knew that for her too there was intuition but no full understanding yet.
It seemed to June that everyone must have gathered in the hall. It was crowded with family members and family friends and even the children—it was Christmas Day after all.
The duke was there, rubbing his hands together as if he were washing them. And the duchess was beside him, her hands clasped to her bosom. June’s papa and stepmama were there, her arm drawn through his, his free hand covering hers. Everyone was there. Aunt Martha was there too, a little removed from most of the others, though she did have two children hanging off each arm.
They all wore identical expressions with the possible exception of the children. Expressions of bright expectation mingled perhaps with a little anxiety. They looked as if they were all holding their collective breaths.
None of them looked frantic with worry, though.
She and Elliott stood hand in hand in the doorway for a moment and then stepped inside the hall.
And noise ensued.
Everyone spoke at once. Everyone talked loudly in an effort to be heard above everyone else. Everyone was trying to kiss them or shake their hands or slap them on the back or do all three at once. There was a great deal of laughter. Children, delirious with exuberance, were darting about amongst legs and skirts.
The duke finally made himself heard while the noise level subsided to a mere loud murmur. He held their clasped hands in both of his and patted them. Yet he appeared not to have a great deal to say after all.
“Well, my boy and my girl,” he said. “Well. This was certainly worth waiting for. It was indeed.”
“Dear Elliott. Dear June.” The duchess sniffed against a lace handkerchief. “This is the best Christmas gift of them all. Not that I am belittling any of the wonderful gifts I have been blessed with this day. But this is better than all.”
“This was worth waiting for,” the duke said, to be original.
“We are so very sorry to have worried you all,” Elliott said, including the whole gathering in his glance. “You must have realized that we had been delayed, though no one else seems to have been. But you must have been worried even so. There was just no way of getting word to you.”
“But there was word,” the duke said above a swell of protesting sound around him. “There was a note from Mrs. Parkes. Do you not remember asking her to send a note, my boy?” He shook his head. “Your mind must have been preoccupied with other matters.”
There was a gust of laughter. Some of it, especially from the male members of the family, sounded suspiciously bawdy.
“From Mrs. Parkes?” It was Elliott who spoke. June’s mouth opened but no sound came out.
“She wrote to say you had decided to stay at her guest house until this afternoon,” the duke said. “That you had decided to try to settle your differences before coming home.”
The duchess was dabbing at her eyes. June could see that her stepmama was biting her upper lip.
“She wrote?” Elliott’s voice was faint. “When?”
“The afternoon before last,” the duke said. “Her letter arrived just after teatime and just before your valet and June’s maid. So of course we did not worry, my boy. But we have all eagerly awaited your arrival today. One look at your faces has given us the answer we have all awaited. And clasped hands, my boy. Not the thing at all, you know.” He coughed and then laughed heartily, together with the rest of his family and guests.
“The afternoon before last.” Elliott exchanged looks with June. “But who was the messenger? And how did he get through all the snow? Unless he came before the snow fell. But how could they have known then . . .”
June felt her head swimming. She felt herself take one more dizzying step forward to understanding.
“The snow?” the duchess said, puzzled.
“The snow?” Other voices, loud with merriment, took up the question.
“Where were you, Elliott, m’lad? The North Pole?”
“Never peeped out of your bedroom window, did you, Elliott, to see what the weather was doing?”
“Imagined yourself marooned by blizzards, did you?”
“We have never had a drier, milder Christmas,” the duchess said. “Much to the children’s disappointment.” She clapped her hands. “Upstairs everyone for tea. It is half an hour late already. If we do not eat soon, none of us will have appetites for the Christmas goose.”
There were loud protests as everyone surged in the direction of the grand staircase.
Elliott and June looked at each other, their hands clasped almost painfully. She could see from his expression that, like her, bewilderment was mingled with the dawning of incredible understanding.
Lady Martha, standing alone now in the shadows of the hall, watched them with shining, tear-filled eyes and then looked upward to the high ceiling and beyond it in spirit to give silent thanks.
Strangely reluctant as he had been to leave the cottage where he and June had spent two days, Elliott rejoiced at being back with his family to celebrate the end of Christmas Day. This year the family gathering was complete. This year he had his wife with him.
And so this year was the most blessed Christmas of all.
The good wishes of his family, the sentimental tears of the ladies, and the hearty and often risqué congratulations of the men should have embarrassed him. But he felt the warmth behind the good wishes and he felt fully for the first time the wonder of fam
ily—the wider family of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins as well as the smaller family of two, formed by his wife and himself.
They feasted on goose and Christmas pudding and all the trimmings until they were fit to burst. And they danced through the evening and on into the night until their feet were ready to drop off. It was no formal ball, for which Elliott was profoundly thankful. He danced at least half the sets with his wife.
And then, late as it was when they went to bed, and tired as they were, they stayed awake almost until dawn, making love and talking alternately.
One thing they were agreed upon. On the afternoon of the day preceding Christmas Eve, they had both stepped outside the bounds of reality into some shared yet unreal experience.
“It should be frightening to think about,” June said, curled warmly against his chest. “But it is not.”
“We should wonder about our sanity,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “But I have never felt more sane.”
“There was no snow,” she said.
“Mrs. Parkes sent a message,” he said.
“They knew we were coming, Elliott. They were waiting for us.”
“And they planned for us to come home this afternoon. The road cleared for us.”
“Whatever it was,” she said, “it was good. It had to be good, Elliott. It felt good. There was a feeling there. I could have stayed there forever except I knew that I had to come back, that this is where we must live. In the real world.”
“It had to be good,” he said. “Three days ago, June, I hated the thought of you. You hated the thought of me.” He swallowed and tightened his hold of her. “It had to be good. It had to be, my beloved.”
“Elliott.” She raised her head and kissed his lips. “Elliott, nobody recognized our description of them even though they live only a few miles away. And no one knows of any such cottage.”
“Except for the derelict one that has not been lived in for twenty years or more,” he said.
She sighed. It was not altogether a sad sound.
“Yes,” he said, just as if she had spoken. “Yes, my love. Tomorrow. We will go back there tomorrow.”
“Elliott,” she said, “I love them so very, very much. My heart aches with love for them. For near strangers. Are they strangers?”
“He said a peculiar thing this morning—yesterday morning,” Elliott said. “He said I was all right. That he had not been sure I would be but was certain now. To what was he referring? I did not really think about it at the time.”
“She told me that when we married it was the wrong time,” June said. “That now was the right time. She did not even know us five years ago. Did she?”
He kissed her—deeply. “When I first saw Joss,” he said, “I thought he was a light.”
“And so did I,” she whispered, “when I first saw Mrs. Parkes.”
He lifted her over him to lie on top of him and tucked the blankets and his arms about her. She snuggled her head into his shoulder and sighed once again.
They did not talk anymore—or make love. They lay in quiet happiness and wonder until they fell asleep.
The cottage and the shed beside it were very derelict indeed. It was clearly many years since either had been used. The faded thatch had gaping holes in it. The door of the house hung at a crazy angle from its hinges. The door of the shed was missing altogether. The house held nothing but leaves and assorted rubble inside.
There was not a trace of snow.
“But it is undoubtedly the place,” Elliott said quietly.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, it is.”
They had dismounted from their horses and stood hand in hand just outside the door of the cottage.
“Shall we go in?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. She felt afraid. Afraid of the unknown, the supernatural. Afraid to dabble in it again now that she knew it for what it was. For what it must be.
But with her eyes closed and her hand clasped in Elliott’s, she could feel only a sense of almost overwhelming peace.
“Yes,” she said.
There was nothing in there, of course. Only a sense of aching nostalgia. And yet there was something after all.
“It had to be good,” Elliott said, echoing her own thoughts. “It is still here, that feeling. Contentment, peace. Love. Even though everything else is gone.”
“Who were they?” she asked. “Elliott, were they—?” She found it almost impossible to say the word. “Or did we imagine them?”
But he was drawing her across the room toward the window even as she spoke. He reached out his free hand and touched something on the windowsill and then picked it up. He held it out on the palm of his hand to show her without saying a word.
A roughly carved but cheeky-looking little angel without wings—but with definite freckles and protruding ears—lay on his palm.
“Oh, Elliott.” She turned her face in to his shoulder. She felt his forehead come down to rest against the side of her head.
“Mrs. Parkes,” she said, “you are there, are you not? You are always there. Though I do not suppose that is your name. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I do love you so.”
“Joss, you little rascal,” he said, naked affection in his voice. “You little rascal. You must come back again and try swimming or tree-climbing or bareback riding. It is fun to be a little boy.”
It was surely imagination this time, that echo of joyous and merry laughter.
“Elliott.” She turned to stand against him and wrapped her arms about his waist. She looked up into his face. “She said we were going to have a child. A son. Conceived at Christmas.”
They stood gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling slowly and tearfully.
“While we were guarded by angels,” he said.
He had put it into words at last.
“Yes,” she said. It was all she could say.
He kissed her.
Table of Contents
Cover
Reader letter
Copyright page
Title page
Table of Contents
The Wassail Bowl
The Bond Street Carolers
Guarded by Angels
