child.
“This must be the multitude of the heavenly host that sang with the angel Gabriel to Mary,” he said. “I do not know about the rest of you, but I have snow trickling down my neck and turning to water. It does not feel comfortable at all. I think hot drinks at the house are called for.”
“Veronica has made the best angels,” Deborah said generously. “Look how dainty they are.”
It was the first time she had mentioned his daughter by name, the viscount thought.
“That is because she is a real little angel,” he said, stooping down impulsively and sweeping the child up into his arms. “Are you cold, Veronica?”
“A little, Papa,” she admitted.
She weighed almost nothing at all. He tightened his hold on her and realized something suddenly. He was going to miss her when she went away. He was always going to be wondering if she were happy, if she were being loved properly, if she were hiding inside herself.
“Snuggle close,” he said. “I shall have you inside where it is warm before you know it.”
Miss Craggs, he noticed, was watching him with shining eyes-and shining red nose. She looked more beautiful than ever. Which was a strange thought to have when, really, she was not beautiful at all.
At first she was going to go to church alone. It was something she had always done on Christmas Eve and something she wanted to do more than ever here. She had seen the picturesque stone church on her journeys to the village. And the thought of trudging through snow in order to reach it was somehow appealing. It would bring another part of her dream to life.
She asked Veronica at dinner-the child still ate in the dining room with the adults-if she would mind not being sat with tonight until she slept.
Jane explained her reason.
“I promise to look in on you as soon as I return,” she said.
But Veronica looked at her rather wistfully. “May I come too, Miss Jane?” she asked.
It would be very late for a child to be up, but Viscount Buckley immediately gave his permission and announced his intention of attending church, too. And then Deborah wondered aloud if Mr. George Oxenden would be at church, blushed, and declared that anyway she always enjoyed a Christmas service.
And so they walked together the mile to the church, the snow being rather too deep for the carriage wheels, Veronica between Jane and the viscount, holding to a hand of each, while Deborah half tripped along beside them. And they sat together in church, Veronica once again between the two adults until after a series of yawns she climbed onto Jane’s lap and snuggled close. Jane was unable to stand for the final hymn, but she sat holding the child, thinking about the birth of the Christ child and understanding for the first time the ecstasy Mary must have felt to have her baby even though she had had to give birth far from home and inside a stable.
Christmas, Jane thought, was the most wonderful, wonderful time of the year.
They walked home after the viscount had greeted his neighbors and Deborah had chatted with her new friends, the Oxenden sisters, and had been rewarded with a nod and a smile and a Christmas greeting from their elder brother. Jane sat holding the sleeping child on her lap while she waited for them.
And then Viscount Buckley was bending over her in the pew and opening his greatcoat and lifting his daughter into his own arms and wrapping the coat about her. Jane smiled at him. Oh, he felt it too. What a tender paternal gesture! He loved the child and would keep her with him.
Of course he would. It was something she, Jane, would be able to console herself with when she was back at Miss Phillpotts’s. Though she would not think of that. Not yet. She was going to have her one wonderful Christmas first.
And wonderful it was, too, she thought as they approached the house in a night that was curiously bright despite the fact that there were clouds overhead-more snow clouds. It was her dream come true, even though not every window in the house blazed with light. But close enough to her dream to make her believe for once in her life in miracles.
Deborah was yawning and ready for bed by the time they reached the house. She went straight to her room. Veronica stirred and grumbled in her father’s arms as he carried her upstairs. Jane followed him and undressed the child in her bedchamber while he waited in the nursery. He came to stand in the doorway as he always did after Jane had tucked her up in bed. She was only half-awake.
“Good night, Mama,” she said.
Jane could hardly speak past the ache in her throat. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said softly.
“Good night, Papa.”
“Good night, Veronica,” he said.
Jane sat for a few minutes on the side of the bed, though it was obvious that the child had slipped back into sleep. She was too embarrassed to face the viscount. But when she rose and turned to leave the room, she found that he was still standing in the doorway.
“I ordered hot cider sent to the library,” he said. “Come with me there?”
She longed to be able to escape to her room. Or a part of her did, anyway-that part that was flustered and even frightened at the thought of being alone with him. But the other part of herself, the part that was living and enjoying this Christmas to the full, leaped with gladness. She was going to sit and talk with him again? She only hoped that she would be able to think of something to say, that her mind would not turn blank.
When they reached the library, he motioned her to the chair she had occupied once before. He ladled hot cider into two glasses and handed her one before seating himself at the other side of the fire.
She had never drunk cider before. It was hot and tasted of cinnamon and other unidentified spices. It was delicious. She looked into the glass and concentrated her attention on it. She could not think of anything to say. She wished she had made some excuse after all and gone to bed.
“You were going to spend Christmas alone at the school?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She looked up at him unwillingly.
“Where does your family live?” he asked. “Was it too far for you to travel?”
She had never talked about herself. There was nothing to talk about. She could be of no possible interest to anyone except herself.
“I have no family,” she said. She was not particularly given to self-pity, either. But the words sounded horribly forlorn. She looked down into her drink again.
“Ah,” he said, “I am sorry. Have they been long deceased?”
“I believe,” she said after rejecting her first impulse, which was to invent a mythical warm and loving family, “I was the product of a union much like yours and Veronica’s mother’s. I do not know who my mother was. I believe she must have died when I was very young. Or perhaps she merely did not want to be burdened with me. I do not know my father, either. He put me into an orphanage until I was old enough to go to Miss Phillpotts’s school. He supported me there until I was seventeen. I have earned my way there since.”
He said nothing for a long time. She kept her eyes on her drink, but she did not lift it to her mouth. She knew her hand would shake if she tried it.
“You have never known a family,” he said very quietly at last.
“No.” But she did not want him to think that she was trying to enlist his pity. “The orphanage was a good one. The school is an expensive one.
He cared enough to make sure that my material needs were catered to and that I had a good enough education to make my way in the world.”
“But you stayed at the school,” he said. “Why?”
How could she explain that, cold and cheerless as it was, the school was the only home she had known, that it was the only anchor in her existence? How could she explain how the thought of being cast adrift in unfamiliar surroundings, without even the illusion of home and family, terrified her?
“I suppose,” she said, “I drifted into staying there.”
“In an environment that is wholly female,” he said. “Have you never wanted to find yourself a husband and have a family of your own, Miss Craggs?”
Oh, it was a cruel question. How could she find a husband for herself?
Even if she left Miss Phillpotts’s, what could she hope to do except teach somewhere else or perhaps be someone’s governess? There was no hope of matrimony for someone like her. And a family of her own? How could she even dream of a family when there was no possibility of a husband?
