opportunist who was using all her feminine wiles to trap him and save herself and her brother and sister from a dreary and impoverished future.
His madder, more irrational, more incautious, more gullible self saw a mental image of her eyes lighting up when she saw the tree and the ornaments and their effect on the two children in her charge. And saw her below him as he stood on the chair, her arms half raised as if she expected to be able to catch him if he fell. And saw the look of Christmas in her eyes as she stood in the middle of her living room looking about her. And the flustered look of pure beauty when she realized that she was standing beneath the mistletoe.
Had she known that she stood there? It was impossible to tell. And it made all the difference in the world. Had she known or had she not?
Even more important, did he care either way? Did he still regret that it had been her brother who had stepped forward to kiss her?
No, he must not, he thought, closing his eyes. He must not. He must not.
“Must I sleep all afternoon?” Dora asked him. “May we decorate our evergreen first, Papa?”
“We will do it immediately after luncheon,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her sternly. “And then you are going to sleep all afternoon.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said.
For the past few years Lilias had been the oldest of the carol singers.
But none of the others had been willing for her to retire.
“But, Miss Angove,” Christina Simmonds had protested when she had suggested it two years before, “what would we do without you? You are the only one who can really sing.”
“Besides,” Henry Hammett had added, with a wink for his friend, Leonard Small, “if one of the other girls were to start the carols, Miss Angove, the rest of us would have to either dig a trench to reach the low notes or carry a ladder around with us to hit the high ones.”
A deal of giggling from the girls and rib-digging from the young men had followed his words, and Lilias had agreed to stay.
She was not to be the oldest this year, though. Most of the young people were inclined to be intimidated when they first saw the Marquess of Bedford as one of their number. Most of them had only glimpsed him from a distance since his return home, and most of them were too young to remember that during his youth he had joined in all the village activities.
However, after singing at a few houses and consuming a few mince pies and a couple of mugs of wassail, they no longer found him such a forbidding and remote figure. And the usual jokes and laughter accompanied them around the village.
The younger children formed their own group, Dora firmly in the middle of them, clinging to Megan’s hand. The marquess carried one of the lanterns and held it each time they sang, as he had always used to do, above Lilias’s shoulder so that she could see her music.
She was very aware of him and wished she were not. Apart from the fact that the other faces around them had changed, there was a strange, disturbing feeling of having gone back in time. There was Stephen’s gloved hand holding the lantern above her, and Stephen’s voice singing the carols at her right ear, and Stephen’s hand at the small of her back once as they crossed the threshold into one home.
She had to make a conscious effort to remember that he was not Stephen, that he was the Marquess of Bedford. She had to look at him deliberately to note the broadness of his shoulders and chest beneath the capes of his coat, showing her that he was no longer the slender young man of her memories. And she had to look into his face to see the harsh lines and the cynical eyes-though not as cynical as they had been a week before, surely.
She brought her reactions under control and bent over a very elderly gentleman in a parlor they had been invited into who had grasped her wrist with one gnarled hand.
“Miss Lilias,” he said, beaming up at her with toothless gums, “and Lord Stephen.” He shook her arm up and down and was obviously so pleased with what he had said that he said it again. “Miss Lilias and Lord Stephen.”
Lilias smiled and kissed his cheek and wished him a happy Christmas. And the marquess, whom she had not realized was quite so close, took the old man’s free hand between both of his and spoke to him by name.
In the voice of Stephen, Lilias thought, straightening up.
The children were all very tired by the time they had finished their calls and the church bells had begun to ring. But not a single one of them was prepared to admit the fact and be taken home to the comfort of a bed.
Dora was yawning loudly and clutching Lilias’s cloak.
“I’ll take you home, poppet,” Bedford said, leaning down to pick her up.
“Enough for one day.”
But she whisked herself behind a fold of Lilias’s cloak and evaded her father’s arms. “But you promised, Papa,” she said. “And I slept all afternoon. I was good.”
“Yes, you were good,” he said, reaching out a hand to take one of hers.
“You may see the day out to its very end, then.”
And somehow, Lilias found, the child’s other hand made its way into hers and they climbed the steps to the church together, the three of them, just as if they were a family. People turned from their pews to look at the marquess, and nodded and smiled at them. Megan and Andrew were already sitting in their usual pew, two seats from the front.
Lilias smiled down at Dora when they reached the padded pew that had always belonged to the marquess’s family, and released her hand. She proceeded on her way to join her brother and sister.
“But, Papa,” she heard the child say aloud behind her, “I want to sit by Megan.”
A few moments after Lilias had knelt down on her kneeler, she felt a small figure push past her from behind and heard the sounds of shuffling as Megan and Andrew moved farther along the pew. And when she rose to sit on the pew herself, it was to find Dora sitting between her and Megan, and the Marquess of Bedford on her other side. She picked up her Psalter and thumbed through its pages.
There were candles and evergreen branches and the Nativity scene before the altar. And the church bells before the service, and the organ and the singing during it, and the Christmas readings. And the sermon. And the church packed with neighbors and friends and family. There were love and joy and peace.
It was Christmas.
Christmas as it had always been-and as it would never be again. She had to concentrate all her attention on her Psalter and swallow several times. And a hand moved toward her so that she almost lifted her own to meet it halfway. But it came to rest on his leg and the fingers drummed a few times before falling still.
She was saved by a loud and lengthy yawn and a small head burrowing itself between her arm and the back of the pew. She turned and smiled down at Dora and skipped one arm behind her and the other under her knees so that she could lift her onto her lap and pillow the tired head against her breast. The child was asleep almost instantly.
The marquess’s eyes, when Lilias turned her head to look into them, were very blue and wide open. And quite, quite inscrutable. When the organ began to play the closing hymn, and before the bells began to peal out again the good news of a child’s birth, he stood and took his child into his own arms so that Lilias could stand and sing.
His carriage was waiting outside the church, but Lilias refused a ride for herself and her brother and sister.
“It is such a short distance to walk,” she said.
He set the still-sleeping Dora down on the carriage seat and turned back to them. “I shall say good-night, then,” he said. He held out a hand for Megan’s. “Thank you for inviting Dora. I don’t think you know how happy you have made a small child.” He took Andrew’s hand. “You may come to the house the day after tomorrow, if your sister approves, and we will take that ride I have promised you.”
“Oh, ripping,” Andrew said excitedly.
Bedford turned to Lilias and took her hand in his. He searched her face with his eyes and seemed about to say something. But he merely clasped her hand more tightly.
“Happy Christmas, Lilias,” he said.
“Happy Christmas, Stephen.”
She had said the words and heard them a hundred times that evening, Lilias thought as she turned away and made her way along the street with the two tired children. But the last two times burned themselves on her mind,
