against her fingers. “Do you think it a good solution, Estelle? Are you pleased?” He looked almost anxious.
“And you did all this without a word to me?” she asked in some wonder.
“You did it to save me some pain, Allan? Did you do it for me?”
His smile was a little twisted. “I must confess to a certain fondness for the little imp,” he said. “But yes, Estelle. I thought it might make you happy. Does it?”
“Yes.” She leaped to her feet in some agitation and stood quite unwittingly beneath the mistletoe.
He said nothing for a few moments, but he got to his feet eventually and came to stand behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Now this is an invitation impossible to resist,” he said, lowering his head and kissing the back of her neck.
She turned quickly and stared at him in some amazement. He had never-ever-held her or kissed her outside her bed. She had not even quite realized that he was so tall and that he would feel thus against her-strong and warm and very safe.
He lowered his head, and his mouth came down open on hers.
And how could a kiss when one was standing and fully clothed and in a public room that might possibly be entered by someone else at any moment seem every bit as erotic as any of the kisses they had shared in bed, when his hands were beneath her nightgown against her naked flesh and when his body was in intimate embrace with hers?
But it was so. She felt an aching weakness spiral downward from her throat to her knees.
When he removed his mouth from hers, it was only to set his forehead against her own and gaze downward at her lips.
“I want to give you your gift tonight,” he said. “Now. I want to do it privately. No one else would understand. May I?”
Her senses were swimming, but she smiled at him. “I feel the same way about mine to you,” she said. “Yes, now, tonight, Allan.Just the two of us.” She ran across the room to where they had all piled their gifts and came back to him with a small parcel in her hands. He had removed his from a pocket.
“Open mine first,” he said, and he watched her face as she did so. They were both still standing very close together, underneath the mistletoe.
“It is not the original,” he said quickly as she opened the velvet box.
“It is not nearly as lovely. There were nine sapphires, were there not?
I could not remember, but these do not look right. But I want you to have it anyway. Will you, Estelle? Will you wear it?” He took it from the box and slid it onto her nerveless finger.
“Allan!” she whispered. “But why?”
He was not sure he could explain. He had never been good with words.
Especially with her. “You called it the Star of Bethlehem,” he said. “I always loved that name, because it suggested Christmas and love and peace and hope. All the things I have ever wanted for you. And with you.
I felt I could only tell you with the ring. Never in words.Until now.”
He laughed softly. “It must be the mistletoe. I am not the man for you, Estelle. You are so beautiful, so full of life. So… glittering! I have always envied those other men and wanted to be like them. And I have been horribly jealous and tried to make your life a misery. But I have not meant to. And after Christmas you can go away with your parents, and no one will know that we are separated. There will be no stigma on your name. But you will be free of my taciturn and morose presence.” He smiled fleetingly. “My marble-statue self. But perhaps the ring will help you to remember me a little more kindly. Will it?”
“Allan!” She whispered his name. And looked down at the ring on her finger, the ring that was not the Star of Bethlehem, but that she knew would be just as precious to her. And she noticed the parcel lying forgotten in her hands. She held it out to him. “Open yours.”
He was disappointed that she said no more. He tried to keep his hands from trembling as he opened her gift.
He stood smiling down at the silver snuffbox with its turquoise-studded lid a moment later. “It is the very one I could not persuade Humber to sell me,” he said. “You succeeded, Estelle? You remembered that I wanted it for my collection? Thank you, my dear. I will always treasure it.”
But she was looking anxiously into his eyes. “Open it,” she said. “There is something else inside. It is not really a present. I mean, it is not for you. It fits me. But I lost the other-yes, I did, Allan. I lost it all, though I have been afraid to tell you. But I wanted you to have this so that you would know that I did not do so carelessly.”
He lifted the lid of the snuffbox and stood staring down at a diamond ring set with nine sapphires. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and questioning.
“I didn’t mean to lose it,” she said. “I have broken my heart over it, Allan. It was my most treasured possession. Because it was your first gift to me, and because at the time I thought it was a symbol of what our marriage would be. And because I spoiled that hope by going about a great deal with my friends when I might have stayed with you, and by flirting quite deliberately with other men when you were so quiet and never told me that I meant anything to you. Because I wanted you to know that my behavior has never shown my true sentiments. Those other men have meant nothing whatsoever to me. I have never allowed any of them to touch more than my fingers. You are the only person-the only one, Allan-who occupies the center of my world. The only one I can’t bear to think of spending my life without.
“Because I wanted you to keep the ring when you send me away after Christmas, so that perhaps you will come to know that I love you and only you. And so that perhaps you will want to bring me home again someday and put it on my finger again.” She flashed him a nervous smile.
“I have given it to you, you see, in the hope that you will give it back to me one day. Now, is that not the perfect gift?”
He lifted the ring from the snuffbox, slipped the box into a pocket, and took her right hand in his. He slid the ring onto her third finger and looked up into her face. “Perfect,” he said. “Now you have two gifts and I have one. I do not need to keep the ring for even one minute, you see, Estelle.”
The look in his eyes paralyzed her and held her speechless.
“It is the most wonderful gift I have ever had,” he said. “It is yourself you are giving me, is it not, Estelle?”
She nodded mutely.
“Come, then,” he said. “Give me your second and most precious gift.”
She moved into his arms and laid one cheek against his broad shoulder.
She closed her eyes and relaxed all her weight against him.
“Do you understand that my gift is identical to yours in all ways?” he murmured against her ear.
“Yes.” She did not open her eyes or raise her head. She lifted her hand to touch his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Except that your ring has only eight sapphires.”
He laughed softly.
“You love me, Allan?” She closed her eyes even more tightly.
“I always have,” he said. “I knew it the moment I put the Star of Bethlehem on your finger two years ago. I am not good at showing it, am I?”
She raised her head suddenly and gazed into his eyes. “How is it possible,” she said, “for two people to be married for almost two years and live close to each other all that time and really not know each other at all?”
He smiled ruefully. “It is rather frightening, is it not?” he said. “But think of what a wonderful time we have ahead of us, Estelle. I have so much to tell you, if I can find the words. And there is so much I want to know about you.”
“I may find too many words,” she said. “You know that I can’t be stopped once I start, Allan.”
“But always to other people before,” he said. “Very rarely to me, because you must have thought that I did not want to hear. Oh, Estelle.”
He hugged her to him and rocked her.
Her arms were wrapped about his chest. She held up her two hands behind his back and giggled suddenly. “I love my two presents,” she said. “One on each hand. But I love the third present even more, Allan. The one I hold in my arms.”
“This was an inspired choice of location for mistletoe,” he said, kissing her again. “Perhaps we should take it upstairs with us, Estelle, and hang it over the bed.”
