While You Were Dreaming

by Celeste Bradley

  Instead, the child opened his mouth and uttered nothing at all.

  The rest of the children began to giggle now. Norah ached a little. He could be no more than seven or eight years and it was clear that the moment of singing before a stranger was too much for him.

  Mortified, the boy tried again. A painful squeak was all he managed before clapping his mouth shut and turning a deep red.

  The monkeys in the loft erupted into actual laughter then. The little boy fled the loft.

  The moment Norah heard his little boots pounding down the stairs, she made for the front door of the church. She was already standing outside braced for impact when he raced out onto the steps.

  She caught him in her arms and swung him around to set him on his feet again. “Goodness, there’s a runaway horse in the church!”

  She chattered on matter-of-factly as the child, his explosive departure interrupted, seemed to fold in on himself.

  “Now I suppose you’ll tell me that you’re in ‘a terrible hurry and excuse me, miss’ but I do believe that you ought to have a think first.”

  She sat him down on the top step and settled down beside him. There was no point in worrying about the state of her very ordinary gown or her nondescript gray cloak. Emmeline would never sit on a step, but Norah had no silks to ruin.

  “I love that part of the song.” Norah hummed for a moment. Then she sang lightly, “In Bethlehem, in Israel,

  This blessed Babe was born

  And laid within a manger

  Upon this blessed morn.”

  On the inner side of the doorway, John halted and listened. Miss Norah Grey’s singing voice was very fine, the ancient words lilting and poignant in her breathy soprano.

  “The which His Mother Mary

  Did nothing take in scorn.”

  Miss Grey let the melody trail off and sighed. “It’s one of those songs that is both happy and a little sad, isn’t it? Christmas is like that, too. We are happy because we feast and celebrate and give gifts. We are sad because someone good and fine is gone now.”

  Sniffle. “Jesus.”

  “Oh yes, Jesus… and other people. People that I miss. Is there someone you miss at Christmas time?”

  Inside the church, John could’ve kicked himself. He’d known perfectly well that little Arthur’s grandmother had passed on last spring. He’d presided over the funeral, for pity sake! Now that he bothered to have a thought outside his own situation, he recalled that the elder Mrs. Tanner’s greatest joy had been Arthur’s fine voice and his role as soloist in the choir.

  “My Nan, Miss. It doesn’t seem right singin’ on Christmas without her.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. My father loved to play chess with me. After he passed away, I couldn’t even touch the game without wanting to cry.”

  John leaned to one side to see Miss Grey take skinny Artie Tanner under one arm, tucking him against her side.

  “You’ve left your coat inside, you know,” she told him. “You’d best fetch it before you go home.” Her tone was gentle but matter-of-fact. “What would your Nan say if you walked home without your coat?”

  Little Artie sniffled. “She’d have said I’d no more sense than a day-old chick.” He rubbed his sleeve over his eyes. “And she’d flick my ear but good, she would.” He rubbed his un-flicked ear woefully.

  “And what would she say if she knew you’d left your choir practice?”

  “She’d have given me a biscuit for the hurt feelings and then she’d have made me scrub the pots for running out on a promise. And she’d have marched me back to say me regrets to the vicar.”

  John felt as though he ought to step in now, summoned as it were. Yet he was fascinated by Miss Grey’s actions and he really wouldn’t mind seeing if she had some sort of solution for little Artie.

  “But you’ve sung your part in rehearsal before. Why didn’t you want to sing it for me?”

  “‘Twasn’t you, miss. Seeing you there, I thought about the manor and how everybody was goin’ to be there...”

  “Everyone but your Nan.”

  “Yes, miss.” He scrubbed at his face again.

  “What is your name?”

  “Artie. Arthur Tanner, miss.”

  “Mr. Tanner, I am Miss Norah Grey. I’m a guest of Lord Matthias at Havensbeck Manor.”

  “Oh yes, miss. I know. Everybody knows you. Mrs. Higgins told my auntie, who told my mum, who told my da over dinner last night. You save people.”

  John smiled behind his concealing door. The Legendary Miss Grey.

  He heard a squeal and a protest coming from the choral loft above his head. He’d have to fetch Artie back inside and get back on task or something was going to go very awry upstairs.

  John took one step closer to the door.

  “That’s right, I do save people. Shall I save you too?”

  What? John enjoyed Miss Grey’s flights of originality, but he didn’t want her to mislead a young boy.

  “Yes, miss. Only could you save my mum instead?”

  “Why does your mum need saving?”

  “She’s too upset. She was so tired from the new babe that she missed Stir-Up Sunday!”

  “Oh dear. That’s a shame.”

  It certainly was. John knew that Stir-Up Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent, was the day in which every cook in England put their Christmas pudding in the sack to age. It would be far too late for Mrs. Tanner to begin now, only days from Christmas, which meant there would be no figgy pudding, that heavy, chewy cake stuffed with dried fruit and candied peel, at the Tanner house.

  “She meant to do it. But it was Nan who always made it and my mum didn’t recollect to get all the ingree—ingrid—”

  “Ingredients, yes.” Miss Grey sighed. “The recipe calls for a great many.”

  “So if I could, miss, I’d like to give my saving to my mum.”

  “Hmm. I suppose... if you can complete the heroic quests, that is.”

  “Quests, miss? Like, slayin’ dragons and such?”

  “Oh, nothing so easy as that. You must complete three quests. It’s traditional.”

  John bit back a laugh. She was mad, completely mad. He pressed closer to the door, unwilling to miss a word.

  “Yes, miss!”

  “Very well. Firstly, you must go inside and apologize to the vicar and your fellow singers. Soloist is a position of great responsibility, you know. It’s like...like bearing the standard for the entire army! If the standard bearer goes down, the flag goes down and the battle is lost. You wouldn’t want that to happen at the performance, would you?”

  “No, miss!”

  John could tell that little Artie was much impressed with his responsibility now.

  “Secondly, you must help your mother at home. From now until the New Year, you must do one of your mother’s chores so that she can rest. No one else can bear children but a mother, but anyone can put a hand to washing the dishes. Soldiers wash dishes, after all.”

  “They do?”

  “Of course! A soldier doesn’t take his mother with him to battle, does he?”

  Miss Grey was going to have little Arthur Tanner enlisting at any moment. There was a thud and then giddy laughter from above. John dithered. He should get back to work but...

  I want to know the third condition.

  He told himself he was looking out for little Artie, but he knew he was simply outrageously curious what the ingenious Miss Grey would say next.

  “Alright, miss. I’ll do the dishes every day. What else I got to do?”

  “Thirdly, you will sing your very best at the performance, because you are not singing at Christmastime without your Nan. She will be watching from Heaven, you know.”

  “Oh.” Then, in a tiny awestruck voice, “With Jesus?”

  “I should think so, yes,” Miss Grey replied calmly. “It is his birthday, after all.”

  John managed to sc
ramble several steps back from the door before he laughed.

  Chapter 9

  A

  FTER THRUSTING LITTLE Arthur Tanner back inside, Norah had waved away Vicar Barton’s invitation to come back into the church. She’d done enough to disrupt what was likely one of the last rehearsals before the performance.

  She only wished she knew why the vicar had smiled so warmly at her when she departed.

  You have a lovely smile.

  Ruthlessly, Norah tore that thought away and stomped across the square to the inn. She had a mission now.

  At first she had simply assumed that she could purchase a figgy pudding somewhere, but this wasn’t London or even Leeds. However, inns had cooks, so it seemed a good place to start.

  After consulting the stout, smiling man, who turned out to be the innkeeper, Mr. Cranston, and who beamed painfully at her the entire time, he in turn brought out his wife. She bustled out from the kitchens, drying her hands on a towel and looking as busy as every homemaker must be just days before a celebration.

  I, who have no home to make, am not busy.

  Mrs. Cranston looked much less irritated after her husband introduced Norah properly. “Oh my, miss! How can I help you, Miss Grey?”

  When Norah told the story of promising to help the Tanners with their Christmas pudding deficit, Mrs. Cranston looked rather desperately as if she wanted to cry.

  “Oh poor Mrs. Tanner. She’s such a young thing, too. She must be in a tizzy for sure. And I never knew. Old Mrs. Tanner made the best figgy pudding in the county and it would have been a tall order to live up to, even if she hadn’t missed Stir-Up Sunday.”

  “I thought perhaps, being an inn, that you might have a spare pudding I could purchase for the Tanners?” Norah wasn’t an heiress, but she had a few shillings of her own and little else to spend them on.

  “Oh, aye. I made up a dozen. All gone up to t’hall, Miss Grey. Lady Bernadette arranged it. Paid me too much, but that’s her way, to keep the custom in the village instead of sending away for fancy London goods. And there’s no point to having that foreign manor cook have a go at a good Staffordshire figgy pudding!”

  The “foreign” cook was from London, Norah happened to know.

  Mrs. Cranston wrung her hands in her apron. “And it was Mrs. Tanner’s recipe and all! Oh, I tried for ages to cajole that woman into sharing it—and she only did it this year when she knew she was close to passing. I should’ve thought it out on my own, miss. I’m that crushed that I didn’t.”

  Norah was disappointed that it wouldn’t be so simple. She surely didn’t have enough coin to impress a prominent cook, who likely wouldn’t sell one of milady’s puddings anyway. Still, she had a secret weapon, didn’t she?

  No one ever refused Lady Emmeline anything.

  “OH, HELLO VICAR!”

  Swathed in knitted wool, red-cheeked and cheerful in defiance of the cold, Mr. Cranston stood guard at the door to his inn, the better to guide newcomers within to spend their coin.

  When the children had settled down and given a single good rendition of their repertoire, John had released them. They were ready, even little Artie, who had stepped up and sung his piece with gusto. More rehearsal would only exhaust them and cause John frustration. One lad was in the thick of masculine voice change and two others trembled on the brink of it. Tiny Ruthie Higgins couldn’t actually pronounce “Chrithmath.”

  Or “Jethuth.”

  Perfection was not the point. Joyous celebration was the object, and the little beasts certainly had their joy down pat.

  So John, duty done and seeing the path set down in the snow by a decisive pair of lady’s boots heading from the church steps toward the inn, had ambled over to see if Miss Grey would like to walk back to Havensbeck with him.

  “Good day, Mr. Cranston. Is Miss Grey about?”

  Mr. Cranston nodded sadly. “Oh aye. Poor thing.”

  John might have several opinions on prickly, tart-tongued, clever Miss Norah Grey, but “poor thing” had never crossed his thoughts.

  “Oh? How so?”

  Mr. Cranston sighed. “It’s the village, you know. It can’t be helped.”

  John frowned at the man. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why is Miss Grey to be pitied?”

  Mr. Cranston peered at John with something that might be curiosity. He took a breath, a serious one, as if he might be about to lay some particular enlightenment upon John. Then he shook his head. “Oh no reason, Vicar. Only her being disappointed about the pudding is all.”

  John had scarcely had the story from Cranston, regarding Miss Grey’s quest to repair the puddingless Tanner family, before Miss Grey herself emerged from the inn. She had a tiny line between her brows that went away as she saw him. Her eyes went bright and somehow more green and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth but didn’t quite emerge.

  Quite correct. Don’t let the rest of the world see that smile.

  It’s mine.

  Which was a very strange thought. Then again, it had been a strange day, hadn’t it?

  John stuck out an exaggerated elbow. “Your carriage awaits, milady.”

  She raised a brow. “We are on foot, Vicar Barton.”

  “‘Tis a snow carriage, Miss Grey.” I think there might be something wrong with me.

  She smirked. “With invisible ice horses, I assume?”

  John bowed. “And wheels made of giant snowflakes. But we mustn’t tarry. ‘Tis a slow-moving vehicle.”

  She snorted. “Hardly faster than a man can walk, I hear.”

  He straightened and smiled into her eyes. She was, once past all the sniping and snarling, a most amusing companion.

  As they strolled away, John heard Mr. Cranston muttering.

  “Poor little thing.”

  WHEN NORAH AND Vicar Barton reentered Havensbeck Manor, Norah was laughing at the vicar’s tale of little Ruthie Higgins taking revenge on two of the boys who teased her about her lisp. Ruthie had set her biscuits from her lunch down and turned her back on them. When the two lads began to howl and run for the pump by the watering trough outside, they didn’t dare tell John how they’d come to be eating someone else’s lunch. Ruthie had batted her big eyes in astonishment and never said a word about how she’d sandwiched a thick layer of black pepper between the sweet biscuits, sealed with a bit of butter.

  “It was Mrs. Higgins who told me the tale. I would have pointed out that she was boasting about her granddaughter’s mischief to the wrong party, but I didn’t want pepper in my biscuits!”

  Norah was still grinning as they left their coats with two footmen in the foyer and entered the main hall.

  Norah had intended to dash upstairs and change out of her boots and her gown with its wet hem, but then she stopped at the sight of the entire household gathered there. It was chaos, or at least a rather chaotic order. Everyone was involved in hanging ridiculous amounts of greenery and shimmering bits and bobs from anything that might hold them.

  Even the chandelier was heavily festooned! Norah frowned up at it and wondered if she ought to mention the historically adversarial relationship of pine resin and flame.

  “Don’t fret, Nottie! Lord Matthias made it quite safe.”

  “Emmeline?” Norah peered past a trio of chambermaids who were rolling out simply miles of cheerful red ribbon to see that it was Emmeline indeed.

  Her cousin sat in the center of the hall upon an upholstered chair with her feet up on an embroidered stool. So enthroned, she was absolutely swathed in throws and furs. She looked radiant and happy and very much better.

  Norah put off changing to check on Em.

  “Oh Nottie, don’t fuss! Jasper is an absolute darling and I am resting, I really am. I was so bored up in that room by myself!”

  Norah was fairly certain Emmeline hadn’t been alone for even a single second since arriving at Havensbeck, but she couldn’t deny the claim of boredom. She herself would be driven most rig
hteously barmy after days in one room.

  Norah felt John Barton at her side. He gave off a warmth. It felt like knowing when one has come close to the hearth. However, when she turned to smile at him, he seemed entirely fixed upon Emmeline.

  As for Emmeline, she immediately went from bubbly and eager to wan and brave as she smiled tremulously up at him.

  Resentment roiled within Norah. As always it was a mixed emotion, for she was as resentful that Emmeline was never allowed to be her own sweet, silly self around men as she was that Emmeline had so effortlessly entranced John Barton.

  “Well,” Norah said stiffly, “don’t get Mr. Jasper in trouble with her ladyship by overdoing yourself.” With that she turned on her heel and marched away from the both of them.

  Back in her chamber, she changed quickly into dry things and if she spent a bit longer on her hair than usual, it was only out of respect for her hosts.

  It certainly wasn’t for the benefit of John Barton. She could spend a year before her mirror and not a moment of it would do her any good standing next to Emmeline.

  As the forever battle of devil and angel, envy and love, wrestled on within her, Norah made herself return to the hall. She refused to deny herself an entertaining afternoon simply because Vicar John Barton forgot she existed on a regular basis.

  It wasn’t even his fault that he was blinded. Every male in the hall seemed to orbit around Emmeline’s glamorous planet. Bees to a flower. With one exception.

  Lord Matthias appeared to find Emmeline quite agreeable but it was in Lady Bernadette’s glow that he basked. The poor man looked somehow both starved and self-satisfied at the same moment whenever his wife smiled brightly at him.

  How does she do it? And does she give lessons?

  “Oh Miss Grey!” The Havensbeck butler bustled up to Norah. “I wonder if you might assist young Brand and Tanner in hanging the garland on the stair? They mean well but they simply don’t have an ounce of good taste between them. It looks like they’re putting up a fence!”