Emmeline sniffled. “Dark! Oh, yes, the candles are like daggers, Nottie!”
Norah looked around for Miss Higgins. She finally spotted the maid half-hidden behind a potted palm. With, ahem, Mr. Tanner. Oh my goodness.
She turned Emmeline aside. “Let’s let Miss Higgins enjoy the ball, Em. I have you, pet. We’ll take you right upstairs and then I’ll fetch you a cup of weak tea and a bit of toast. Did you have very much champagne, Emmie?”
“No. Perhaps. I don’t recall. I danced and danced! Oh, Nottie, country balls are ever so much more fun than Society balls. No one counted my waltzes or made me sit out every third dance or made me drink that awful warm lemonade like at Almack’s.” She leaned heavily on Norah and staggered a little. “Oh my head,” she whispered. “Shhh...”
Lady Bernadette came out of nowhere and took Emmeline’s other arm. “Here we go, Lady Emmeline. Just a few stairs ahead.” She glanced at Norah as they headed for the door. “And what about you, Miss Grey? Have you had enough merry-making, or would you like to return to the ball?”
Norah shook her head quickly. She’d very nearly spilled her broken heart out at Vicar Barton’s feet like a tray of broken china so that he dare take a step until Jasper had someone sweep her up and put her into the dustbin. There was no telling what she might do if she returned to the ball.
No, she had danced her dance. It was time she saw to picking up her broken bits and mending them as best she could.
JOHN WATCHED NORAH, Emmeline and Bernadette leave the ballroom. Even after they were out of sight, he continued to gaze thoughtfully at the doorway.
“Something on your mind, Vicar?”
John looked hard at Matthias. Here might be someone who knew a thing or two about the world shifting sideways on a man when a woman looked at him a certain way.
“How did you know you wanted to marry her?”
After a reflective moment, Matthias tilted his head. “I was going to ask you which time. Then I realized it doesn’t matter. It’s comfortably cut and dried, John. Ask yourself one question.” Matthias looked up into the glitter of the chandelier above them. “How do you feel about waking up next to her for the rest of your life?”
John felt that jolt again, that shock like ice water, only warmer and more wonderful. “I’d actually hate to contemplate the alternative, if I’m honest.”
“Hmm.” Matthias rocked back on his heels a few times. “Well, well. You know, I could have a word with Lord Bester on your behalf, if you’d like.”
John, who had lost the thread a bit while contemplating waking up next to Norah, all sleepy eyes and tumbled hair and warm, welcoming softness, only mumbled an absentminded “Thank you, my lord.”
Chapter 17
R
ISING EARLY ON Christmas Day, John left the manor and walked through a silent, silvery morning into Haven. He lead a quiet little service in the church that was, unsurprisingly, very poorly attended indeed. No matter. When the ball’s survivors had rested and fed and nursed their aching heads into the afternoon, John meant to do it all again at sundown.
After he made his farewells to the five elderly folk who had faced down the icy morning, John made a stop at the vicarage.
For two days, John had been trying to come up with a gift for Norah. It had not been until last night that he’d realized the obvious.
He had found items among his belongings for everyone else in the family. On the dining table before him lay a heavy, gilt-trimmed book on the Battle of Hastings for Lord Bester. He had chosen a silver page marker for Lady Blythe and a Chinese silk one for Mrs. Grey. People always seemed to think a man who carried a bible needed more page markers!
He was quite enthusiastic over his gift for Matthias, oddly enough. Even at the worst of his misery, he’d known that the gold Roman coin he’d found when digging his new cistern was meant for the Lord of Havensbeck.
Possibly because it did, technically belong to him. If anything, John’s “gift” consisted of unearthing, carefully polishing and finding a small velvet bag to present his lordship’s own coin to him.
For Simon, John had one of his old lead soldiers. It had been his favorite as a boy and it was one of the few things he’d taken from his home when he became a man. It was a cavalry officer on a long-legged horse. The paint was chipped but still bright. John thought Simon would enjoy it.
Lady Bernadette would receive one of the cuttings from the rose bush in front of the vicarage, which she had admired. Since John had brought the original from the gardens of the Bishop’s Palace at Gloucester, the rose did not actually belong to Matthias. John had started many cuttings but only two had survived. The other he meant to give to Sarah Goodrich, who had cared for him more than his own mother had while he’d studied with the vicar.
For the vicar, he had a letter. There was never a man less interested in material possessions than Vicar Goodrich, so John had written down for the vicar his gratitude for being shown another way, a better way, to serve.
He had two other gifts in his pocket. A lady’s lapel pin, the sort of thing worn on a riding habit, figured of a gold fox with an amethyst eye. It was a simple thing he’d purchased on his travels because the expressive little fox amused him. This was clearly destined to belong to Lady Emmeline.
He only had one thing of much value left. He didn’t take it out to put with the others, for it was nothing like them. Simply holding it in his hand caused a curious exhilaration in his soul. And yes, a little bit of panic as well.
“NOTTIE, LOOK! IT’S starting to snow! Goodness, Staffordshire has much more snow than London, or the Abbey.” Emmeline sighed and pressed her nose to the window glass like a child. “It is pretty but so cold! I shouldn’t like to see it every Christmas morning, would you?”
Norah took another sip of her tea and gave an noncommittal “Mmm.”
As a matter of fact, I would, if it wouldn’t remind me of painful things.
They were having a late breakfast in Emmeline’s sitting room. Norah was dressed but Emmeline still felt a bit unsteady and was resisting dressing at all. Wrapped in her heavy velvet dressing gown, she sat by the window with her feet curled beneath her and gazed at the falling whiteness.
“Do you think it is snowing everywhere as it is here?”
Norah moved to stand behind Em and stroked a gentle hand over her forehead. “No pet. I daresay it is raining in London. How is your headache? Better?”
Emmeline cast Norah a fondly irritated glare over her shoulder. “If someone asks me that just once more, I believe I shall scream.”
Norah laughed ruefully. “Don’t do that. I’m much too sore from dancing to sit on you right now.” She stretched her arms over her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever danced so much, not even if you put every ball and assembly together in one evening!”
Emmeline leaned her forehead against the cold glass and smiled as she closed her eyes. “It was marvelous, wasn’t it? We shall come back every year, I think. After all, we are part of the family!” She sighed. “John is such a wonderful dancer. Imagine how fine he will look in proper evening silks!”
Norah honestly could not imagine a man like John in silks. A man who remade his house and dug terrace stones with his own hands? Oh, those hands.
Norah hid her disquiet by pouring herself another cup of tea, though she didn’t want it. The family was about to grow, wasn’t it?
Cousin John. Even trying it out in the privacy of her own mind made Norah’s belly flip unpleasantly. If Emmeline was as a sister to her, then John Barton must become as a brother. That simple fact would burden Norah with a shocking secret. She wasn’t sure she could bear up under it, she who had always endeavored to be honest, even if she could not manage to be truly good.
Therefore, she feared she must leave the Abbey and Emmeline behind her, her uncle and great-aunt and even Mama as well. Poor Mama would be too terrified to leave Lady Blythe and her precious security behind to accompany Norah into
the world.
Did love always ruin lives as hers was to be ruined? That would make picturesque little Haven—charming, magical Haven!—into a cursed place, not a blessed one!
She covered her face with her hands, knowing that Emmeline was too immersed in her own sickly feelings to notice Norah’s. I have been so unwise, and now I should accept that I must pay. Yet an old anger did twist within her, that lifelong sense of injustice that although she had done nothing wrong, she had been born unbeautiful ... and look what it had cost her!
Such unworthy thoughts on a sacred day! She shook herself out of her selfish stew and took a breath. If she were to lose her family soon, then she ought not to waste this last, lovely Christmas on dreading the future.
She turned to Emmeline with a smile. “I have a gift for you!”
It was a dainty pair of earbobs of opal and gold. Norah had inherited them from her and Emmeline’s grandmother, the sister of Great-Aunt Blythe, and Norah knew Emmeline had always admired them.
“Really? For me!” Emmeline squealed like a little girl being gifted a new doll and scrambled out of the window seat. She ran to kiss Norah on the cheek. “I don’t see how you can bear to part with them!” Taking the little silk case, Emmeline danced to the dressing table to put them on her earlobes. Then she whirled to face Norah. “What do you think?”
Norah shook her head. “I think you shall start a new fashion of opals and dressing gowns, you lazy moppet. Why don’t you get dressed now?”
“Oh, but I have a gift for you, too!”
Norah blinked. Gift-giving, at least the non-spontaneous kind, wasn’t one of Emmeline’s strong suits. Planning ahead to bring a gift along on their journey was practically unheard of!
It was a soft thing wrapped in pretty tissue. Norah opened it to find a lovely silk reticule of green and cream, embroidered all over with charming little flowers. “Because you love the garden at the Abbey,” Emmeline chirped. “See, I’ve done the daisy and the columbine and the peony—”
Norah stared at her cousin. “You made this? For me?”
Emmeline grinned. “Oh, it’s been such a trial! I cannot tell you how many times you almost caught me with my needle! Once I had to stuff it in my bodice, you ran into the library so fast!”
Norah bit her lip and stroked the lovely thing. “I cannot believe you made this for me. It is so much work!”
Emmeline wrinkled her nose. “Well, it was supposed to be for your sixteenth birthday, so you can see I was not diligent at all.”
Norah laughed. Even while the tears of broken-heartedness and loss streamed down her face, she laughed so hard she got the hiccups. When she caught her breath and wiped her eyes, she gazed at silly, sweet, perfectly beautiful Emmeline without remembering to be envious for once in her life. “Promise me that I will never lose you, Emmie. No matter where the world takes us, promise me that we shall always be so close as we are now.”
Emmeline leaped into Norah’s arms and hugged her more tightly than one might expect of such a delicate beauty. “Don’t worry, Nottie. We shall be together forever!”
WHEN NORAH AND Emmeline joined the family downstairs, it was for a lazy luncheon, picked from a serving table and consumed casually without wait-staff.
“I’ve given most everyone the day to rest and see their families,” Lady Bernadette told them. “Only Cook wouldn’t budge, so we shall at least eat.”
No one had much appetite but young Simon, who went back to the serving table twice for more cold ham. “When is John coming back? He said he had a surprise for me.”
Norah realized that she and Emmeline did not have a gift for John Barton. They’d known enough about the Havensbeck family to have chosen a few things like a silver hairbrush set for Lady Bernadette and a set of jet-buttoned cuff-chains for Lord Matthias. For Simon, Norah had steered Emmeline away from a pretty miniature china tea set toward a book on snakes and lizards, with detailed illustrations of the consumption of frogs that made Emmeline pull a face. “Really?”
“Oh yes,” Norah answered. She had sometimes played with the commoner children who lived around the Abbey—something Emmeline had never been allowed to do—so she spoke from experience. “Boys adore snakes.” Personally, she thought snakes were all right, as long as they stayed on the pages of the book.
Uncle Bester also gained an ostentatious set of cuff-chains and Mama and Great-Aunt Blythe received very pretty page markers. Emmeline had paid for everything, of course, but since Norah had helped her choose wisely, Emmeline insisted that the gifts were from both of them. Yet they had nothing for the surprise family friend, Vicar John Barton.
Swiftly, Norah ran up to her chamber, to a little escritoire in the corner. It was left fully supplied for guests. Soon she was scratching away, unaware that she wrote with a sad little smile on her face.
WHEN JOHN ARRIVED at the manor, energized by the weather and just a little numbed in the extremities, the cheerful parlor full of Greys and Goodriches and Havensbeck occupants felt like stepping into his own home. Better, for he was met with cries of welcome and smiles beamed from every point in the room.
It was great fun handing out his gifts. Simon was giddy over the soldier and Bernadette immediately rushed off to water the little cutting. Matthias seemed very impressed by the coin and suggested that they tear down the vicarage to look for more.
His lordship certainly had a strange sense of humor.
Lord Bester’s eyes lit up at the great thumping history book. Lady Blythe and Mrs. Grey exclaimed that they truly needed page markers and wasn’t he a thoughtful lad?
Sarah Goodrich also fled the room to water her little rose, leading John to suspect he’d been doing it wrong. Vicar Goodrich read his letter silently and then carefully folded it up, placing it into his breast pocket over his heart. He didn’t say a word, but when he tilted his head to look up at John, there was a suspicious shine in his mentor’s eyes.
Then Lady Emmeline handed John a letter of his own.
He opened it to read aloud, “A Pamphlet on the Preparation of Parsnips.”
John laughed until his belly ached. As he wiped at his streaming eyes, he saw Bernadette reenter the room and cast a knowing look at Matthias. That was when John noticed that everyone seemed to be staring at him. He felt a sudden urge to surreptitiously check that his trouser buttons were completely fastened.
Not knowing what else to do, he remained very still and tried not to fidget. “Ah, is there something I ought to know?”
“Ha!” Lord Bester shouted it more than laughed it. He shook a finger at John and approached him with his beefy hand stuck out. “My boy!”
John blinked and allowed Lord Bester to pump his hand. Oh no. He had a sudden recollection of Matthias saying he would speak to Bester...
Well, this was regrettably public but that didn’t really matter, did it? “I’d meant to speak to you privately, my lord—”
“Privately! Ha!” Bester clapped him on the back so hard that John would have staggered were he not a head taller than the older man. “Oh you’re a sly one, Barton!”
John blinked. “No, I’m truly not.” This wasn’t right. He needed to speak to Norah.
He looked around for her, but all he saw was Lady Emmeline, who suddenly looked rather sickly and wide-eyed. Then he saw gray skirts swish away through the parlor door. Norah? “Wait—”
“Emmeline, come on, no need to be shy!” Lady Blythe towed Lady Emmeline closer, followed by Mrs. Grey, her face wreathed in smiles.
“Wait, but I—” John felt as if he’d gone a little mad. Nothing was making sense. He looked down at Lady Emmeline, hoping she would say something, anything to stop what was happening. Her gaze was fixed blindly on a far wall, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Then it hit him that it might already be too late. Somehow, the entire family had formed the impression that John had been courting Lady Emmeline! That was absurd! Yes, he’d once brought her a plate of food a
nd he’d taken her for a drive and then he’d danced with her a few times—well, rather a lot perhaps—but it was just a family party, so dancing didn’t mean—
If he felt numb and horrified, it was nothing to Lady Emmeline’s condition. She reeled slightly on her feet, as if she felt blown over by her father’s blustery plans. Clearly, for all her flirtatious ways, she had no real desire to wed him either!
John’s thoughts sped like a panicked horse. I have to stop this. If someone actually utters the word “engagement” it will ruin everything!
Once it had been uttered out loud, John could not refute an engagement, not without besmirching Lady Emmeline’s reputation and absolutely scourging his own name. He’d lose his position as well, for the Church wanted no such untrustworthy servants!
Releasing Bernadette to wed the man she loved was one thing. The engagement had never left the family and had been dissolved in the course of a single morning. But to refute Lady Emmeline when her father clearly wanted the match and then to propose to her cousin? At the Greys’ level of society, the gossip would storm for years!
He would have to see it through. Lady Emmeline would have to see it through. They would be forced to marry.
Then a new and more terrible panic seized him.
Oh heavens, what must Norah think? She’d fled the room, she must have been under the same impression—
Norah!
Then it happened. Mrs. Grey clapped her hands, her expression rapturous. “Isn’t it romantic!”
No, please, no don’t say it!
Mrs. Grey smiled at them all. “A Christmas enga—”
“Emmeline!”
Chapter 18
E
MMELINE!”
While You Were Dreaming Page 15
