Authors: Father Christmas
“Nothing improper at all, Cousin. Open it.”
He was right, there was nothing to take exception about in a plain gold locket, except that it was empty. “I meant it for locks of the twins’ hair,” he explained. Of course there was nothing to do then but for Graceanne to find her embroidery scissors and cut a curl from each boy. Prudence gnashed her teeth. The children were showing more forbearance.
Pru’s gift, when Ware finally got around to her, was too big for a jewelry box. She wasn’t quite successful in hiding her disappointment, no matter how inappropriate such a present might have been. Graceanne was relieved when the chit managed to show proper enthusiasm for the charming ceramic dresser mirror with its painted figures on the back, though she wished her sister could have refrained from throwing her arms around the duke in appreciation. He stepped back hastily enough, she noted, saying something about a pretty bauble for a pretty reflection, calculated to feed the young girl’s vanity. Which was just what Prudence didn’t need, Graceanne thought.
“Mama says pretty is as pretty does. What does that mean, Collie?”
“Uh, it means it’s time to open another of your presents, bantling. Here, these two, I think. They are to share.” One was a small tin trumpet, the other a little drum.
Prudence left off admiring her blond ringlets in the mirror to groan, but a frosty glare from Graceanne kept her in her seat. The next package contained a pair of child-sized wooden swords.
“So you can play at pirates and soldiers, all kinds of games, even St. George and the dragon.”
Graceanne half expected him to produce the dragon next, but it was Mrs. Beckwith who groaned this time, thinking of the vases they could knock over, the furniture those swords could gouge. “I think I’ll just take my lovely gift to the dining room before the table gets set.”
Prudence and the vicar both offered to wheel her, but Pru won, so Beckwith decided he could get a bit of reading in before luncheon.
“Will you join us, Your Grace?” Mrs. Beckwith asked from the doorway. For once she was not at all embarrassed to make the invitation, not with a fine goose cooking,
Graceanne’s minced meat pies heating up, and her new china. Why, her table would be fine enough for the Prince Regent himself.
“I am sorry,” the duke said, “but I am expected home for luncheon with my aunt. Another time, perhaps. But I would like to invite you all for tea this afternoon. The kitchens have been busy, although there are just two of us. And the castle is looking quite festive.”
The vicar declined at the word
festive.
He intended to spend the afternoon of this holy day in church, praying. Mrs. Beckwith, torn between the pleading look on Prudence’s face and the disapproval on her husband’s, was decided by Willy’s “Us, too, Collie?’
And Ware’s “Of course you, too, halfling.”
“I think I’ve had too much excitement for one day, Your Grace, but thank you. Yes, Prudence, you may go without me, if Graceanne accepts.”
The boys were tugging on her skirts and Pru was looking like she’d cosh her with the mirror if Graceanne said no. Outmaneuvered again, if her plan was to avoid the licentious lord, she nodded. Pru made her best curtsy and sighed, “Until later, Cousin Leland.” Good, he’d be busy fending off her little sister.
When all the Beckwiths were gone, Ware let the boys loose on the rest of the packages. Under the maelstrom of wrappings and ribbons, Graceanne saw puzzles and picture books and tin soldiers, but also some vastly inappropriate gifts, like cricket bats and dart sets.
After everything was unwrapped and the children were playing with the boxes, Leland asked, “Will you excuse me? I have to—”
“It’s out back,” Leslie told him.
“Empty my shoe.”
He must have been like a child in the toy shop, Graceanne reflected while Leland was gone, buying everything that appealed to him, without regard for age or ability. Cricket bats and swords and darts, my goodness. He might as well hand the boys a cannon and be done with it. And that drum and trumpet were enough to give a mother a headache just looking at them.
Leland came back with yet another gift, another horror for Graceanne. This one wiggled and barked, and had a red bow around its neck. “Oh, dear, Papa will never let them keep a dog.”
Leland was on the floor with the children and the pup. “Then the little fellow can stay at the castle, and the boys can come visit.”
“You tell them that,” she answered with a touch of bitterness. The twins were delirious. A dog of their own was even better than snow. And it wasn’t just any dog, Ware declared, it was a real, honest-to-goodness, purebred collie. So the twins instantly and simultaneously named the dog Duke, since their own duke was Collie.
“Makes sense to me,” Leland agreed. “Duke it is.”
Graceanne felt she was drowning. “But are you sure it’s a boy?”
“Yes, Mama. See, here’s his—”
“I think Duke needs to go outside. Run get your coats and mittens.” Graceanne started to gather some of the toys, the catastrophes waiting to happen. Then she turned to the duke, still sitting on the floor with the puppy, looking up at her like a naughty boy. “I can’t help but see a pattern here, Your Grace.” She held up the dart set and waved it at him. “This is the stuff of a parent’s nightmare. Cricket bats for three-year-olds? And a dog? Come, you had to have known better.”
He just grinned, the same grin Willy and Les wore when they escaped Meg and picked Mrs. Beckwith’s last flowers, “For you, Mama.”
“I didn’t think you’d find me out so soon.” Leland stood and looked down at her, seeming not at all like a little boy anymore. She took one step backward and would have toppled over the toy drum if he hadn’t put his arms out to steady her. Leland removed his hands from her shoulder, but not instantly. He gave her one more smile, then bent to pick up the drum.
“I bought everything the vicar would hate the most, the noisiest, most destructive toys I could find.” He grinned again. “That way, he’ll throw you out and you’ll have no choice but to move to the castle.”
Dangerous. The man was positively dangerous. And endearing, which of course made him more dangerous. He returned after luncheon to fetch them in a sleigh, for the twins’ sake, he said, but his own face was glowing with excitement. Graceanne couldn’t have thought of a better treat for a snowy Christmas afternoon. Prudence could. Her hair would be mussed, her complexion wind-damaged. She went anyway, rather than sit home bored when all her friends were getting ready for the party at Squire’s. Besides, none of the other local belles had been invited to her cousin the duke’s, so she went, but not graciously.
The twins, on the other hand, were in alt, even though Duke got left behind in the barn “to keep Posy company.” It was a big sled, with two large, shaggy farm horses to pull it and bells ringing everywhere. They tried to keep their wet boots from Prudence’s skirts, they really did.
Not even Prudence could keep to her crotchets when she entered Ware Hold’s Great Hall. Graceanne and the boys had already seen the immense room decorated, of course, but not like this.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” said Leland, standing proudly to one side, right where the liveried footmen would have been if they both hadn’t succumbed to the grippe right about the time they heard who was coming to tea. Leland’s surprise was a magnificent fir tree, eighteen feet high at least, decked top to bottom with glowing candles in holders. When his guests had looked their wide-eyed fill, Prudence even clapping her hands, he explained, “It’s a Christmas tree. Actually it’s a German tradition, called a
tannenbaum.
Princess Caroline had one, and the idea took hold in London. I found them so charming, I wanted one for the castle.”
Pru giggled then. “Papa would have conniptions! Not just heathen, but Hanoverian to boot. Why, I thought he’d go off in a swoon when you mentioned Father Christmas this morning.”
Graceanne smiled, too. “That’s a lovely tradition and this one is…is wondrous! It’s magnificent, Cousin Leland, but are you sure it’s safe?” She kept a steely grip on each boy’s wrist.
“Of course it is. Milsom here wouldn’t let anything untoward happen to his castle. Look over in the corner, where there are buckets of water. And a footman is on duty whenever the candles are lit, although dashed if I know where he’s gone. Milsom will see someone in his place, I’m sure.”
“Stop being such a spoilsport, Gracie.”
The duke laughed and swung one of the boys up in his arms. “Willy?”
“No, silly, I’m Leslie!”
He shrugged and turned to the boys’ mother. “Yes, Grace, don’t be a marplot. It’s Christmas, time for magic, not worrying! But come, Aunt Eudora is waiting in the Adams parlor, with the wassail bowl.”
“Oh, good,” chirruped Prudence, not soothing Graceanne’s nerves a whit.
The Adams parlor was to the rear of the castle, in the modern wing. It wasn’t quite as large as the Great Hall, just large enough to fit the entire congregation of the Warefield church. Instead, it held one old lady and another Christmas tree. This one was only ten or twelve feet high, and it was decorated with red bows instead of candles.
“See, nothing to worry about.”
Nothing except the Axminster carpet, the Queen Anne chairs, the Chippendale tables, the Dutch Masters paintings, and the old lady.
“Don’t expect me to play nursemaid while you get up a flirtation with some mealy-mouthed vicar’s daughter, nevvy.”
Thinking she was the object of the supposed flirtation, and delighted that it be so, Pru replied for the duke: “Oh, I’m not at all mealy-mouthed, Lady Eudora. And you don’t have to worry about the children. Grace hardly trusts me to watch them, so she wouldn’t let an old tartar—that is, she wouldn’t expect anyone else to baby-sit the brats.”
Graceanne didn’t know where to look, except at Leland, who was covering his laughter with a cough. Lady Eudora banged her cane on the floor a few times, then declared, “At least this one’s got some spirit. Do you play, girl?”
“Play? The pianoforte? Only indifferently, my lady. Grace usually plays while I sing.” She fluttered her eyelashes in the duke’s direction. “I’ve been told I have a pretty voice.” She’d been told she sang like an angel and looked divine by the candlelight atop an instrument. “Would you like me to perform?”
“Faugh,” Aunt Eudora answered. “Every prunes-and-prisms chit in London trills her notes and thumps away at the pianoforte. I meant do you play cards?”
Pru’s face fell. She’d really wanted to impress the duke.
“Our father would not permit gaming,” Graceanne reminded the old lady, who started to hobble away in disgust, back to the wassail bowl.
“But I’ve always wanted to learn!” Pru almost shouted, lest Ware think her some country gapeseed, which she was, of course.
Eudora turned around. “That’s more like it. You’ll do, gel. What did you say your name was?” And she started to lead Prudence away, toward a card table set up at the opposite end of the room.
Pru looked back helplessly. “But I thought His Grace…”
“M’newy’s feeling patriarchal. It’s enough to make a person bilious. Come. And bring two cups of that lamb’s wool.”
“Not for money, Aunt Eudora,” Leland called after them as Graceanne murmured, “Oh, dear, and you said she cheated.”
“What, are you afraid I’ll be having your sister raiding the poor box like that skinflint father of yours?” Lady Eudora turned back to Prudence. “Don’t worry, gel, I’ll lay out your stake. Pennies only, makes the game more interesting, don’t you know.”
“And I can keep whatever I win?”
“Oh, dear,” Graceanne said again, louder.
Leland chuckled and took her arm. “I think Miss Prudence can handle herself.” He led her toward an inlaid table where the wassail bowl sat. The boys had already found the tray of sugarplums next to it. Graceanne had no way of knowing how many the platter used to contain, but she suspected the Ware staff would not send up a half-empty plate. Well, it was Christmas.
“A toast,” Leland was saying, holding out a cup of the warmed brew. When she took it he poured another and raised his. “To Christmas. To good cheer and goodwill.”
“To peace,” Graceanne added, taking a cautious sip. It was delicious, this mixture of ale and spices. She sipped again. The duke, meanwhile, was offering a taste to each of the boys from his own cup. “I don’t think they should—”
“A tiny bit won’t hurt, just to toast the holiday. Besides, they need to experience more of the world, more than they ever will in the vicarage.”
Oh, well, she thought, it was Christmas.
Leland was leading the boys across the room toward the decorated tree. “Do you know, I think Father Christmas made a mistake this year.”
“Grandpa says there’s no such thing, Collie.”
“Ah, then perhaps that’s why he got confused. You see, Father Christmas cannot deliver presents where no one believes in him, that’s the rule. So he had to leave some gifts here instead of at the vicarage.”
“Do you believe in Father Christmas, Collie?”
“Well, I’d like to,” Leland said, rummaging under the low branches to the rear of the tree. “But I particularly wished for a pair of matched grays for my new phaeton, and look what he delivered instead.” He pulled out from underneath the tree two identical wooden rocking horses, with real manes and tails, leather harness, and glass eyes. The boys jumped aboard and neighed and whoaed and rocked until Graceanne nervously started chewing on her lip.
“That is a most wonderful surprise, Cousin. But are you quite sure…?”
“That they can’t pull my phaeton? Definitely.” He brushed pine needles off his shoulder, then led her to a nearby sofa, where she could watch the boys’ antics. “Come, you must learn to relax more. They’ll be fine, I promise. You cannot keep them wrapped in cotton wool, you know, and expect them to grow up to be decent men.”
Graceanne hadn’t been thinking of the twins so much as the carpet.
“I couldn’t bring the rocking horses with me in the curricle this morning, of course, so I’ll have someone haul them over to the vicarage in a wagon as soon as the weather clears. My man will make sure they get up to the nursery, out of the vicar’s way.”
Good, then she’d only have to worry about them wearing holes in the wood flooring and falling through into Papa’s bedroom. She had another sip of the wassail. Leland was right, there was no use worrying today. She stared over at him as he watched Willy dismount and ask Les if he wanted to ride the other horse awhile. The fond affection she saw in the duke’s smile made her say, “You’d make a wonderful father.”
He sat up straighter and, she swore, puffed his chest out. She might have complimented his prowess with the ribbons or at culping wafers. “I would, wouldn’t I?”
“Well, yes, if you ever managed to tell your children apart.”
“Unfair, Grade, you’ve had three years to work with your peapod brood! Furthermore, I have the perfect solution right here.” He took a small box out of his pocket and called the boys to him when they seemed to be tiring of the wooden horses. “Here, my lads, is one last present on this most special of days.”
Les climbed into his lap and Willy leaned against his leg for a closer look. “That’s girl stuff, Collie,” he said when the box was open.
“Not at all. See, I have a ring on, and a stickpin. I thought of getting you signet rings, but your fingers are growing too fast, so I settled on these. Look, these are your initials,
L
for Leslie,
W
for Willy. They are stickpins for your neckcloths, just like mine.”
“Silly, we don’t wear neckcloths. We’re just boys!”
“Yes, but you have lapels on your coats, and collars on your shirts. Boutonnieres are au courant.”
“What’s a ‘boot on ears’?”
“What’s ‘awker aunt’?”
“It means all the fashionable gentlemen are wearing pins in their buttonholes.”
“Especially those who don’t know their name,” their mother teased with a giggle. “Perhaps you’ll even start a new fashion for gentlemen who tend to get castaway, little pins with their addresses engraved on them, so the Watch can send them home in a hackney.” She giggled again.
The duke eyed her narrowly, then moved the wassail cup away from her reach. “Enough of that, my girl, or you’ll be the one needing help finding your way home. Here, Les, Willy, not only will you be all the crack, but no one can mix you up again.”
“But we don’t get mixed.”
“And Mama doesn’t get mixed.”
“But poor, old, silly Cousin Leland does, so won’t you help him out?” At their nods, he took the
W
and reached for the boy on his lap. Graceanne coughed delicately. He switched to the boy by his leg. When he had both pins affixed on their collars, Leland sat back with a satisfied smile. “There. Now, why don’t you go ride the horses a few more minutes before Milsom comes to get you for tea?”
“They really should have a nap,” Graceanne worried.
“On Christmas? Gammon, they can sleep the rest of the year.”
While the grown-ups were debating, the level of Graceanne’s wassail cup was descending. By the time Milsom arrived, both boys were sound asleep under the Christmas tree. Ware sent him off to fetch tea for the adults, except Aunt Eudora, who was also sleeping, her head on the card table. Pru wandered around admiring the furnishings and the decorations, then joined Graceanne and the duke when two footmen and the butler brought in the tea things.
As soon as everything was laid out to Milsom’s satisfaction, he snapped his fingers to the footmen and nodded at the sleeping children. Small boys sprawled on His Grace’s carpet did not fit Milsom’s dignity. The twins were removed from the parlor like so many dirty dishes.
After an elegant tea, the three adults moved to the pianoforte in the corner, the finest instrument Graceanne had ever played. Prudence had recovered from the morning’s indisposition and sang beautifully, directing her voice and soulful gaze at the duke. Graceanne joined in for some of the old carols and Ware hummed along. He truly had abominable pitch, but, begging their pardons, enjoyed himself nevertheless. Then Pru sang some Gaelic carols by herself. Graceanne didn’t want to know where or how she learned them, not today.
They stopped singing when the boys ran into the room, energies back to full gallop. Milsom bowed.
Leland told Graceanne, “See, no loud noises, no alarums.”
“I do see. Thank you, Mr. Milsom.”
Milsom bowed. “My pleasure, madam. And the steward says the door to the wine cellar can be repaired tomorrow, Your Grace.”
His precious wine cellar? With the bottles laid down in his father’s time?
Her babies put to sleep in the damp, dark caverns beneath this place?
Prudence was tired of being ignored. “Do you know, Cousin Leland, you’ve done such a lovely job of decorating for the holidays, I don’t understand how you forgot the mistletoe.” Milsom sniffed and bowed himself out as Pru struck a pose next to the fireplace. “I helped Lucy Maxton make the kissing bough for the manor, and I think it’s quite one of the nicest Christmas traditions, don’t you?”
“Oh, quite!” He gathered up both boys, one under each arm, and carried them toward Prudence, who was, of course, standing under a beribboned bunch of the berries. “Les, Willy, here’s a lesson a gentleman should learn early in life: Snatch kisses whenever you can!” And he held them up to kiss the cheek Prudence begrudgingly presented. He lightly bussed her forehead, almost as an afterthought, before bending down to the twins’ level. “Now, why don’t you try getting your mother over here, Willy, ah, Leslie?” He looked in vain for an initial. “The deuce! Did you lose the pins already?”
“We put them on the horsies, Collie.”
“So they don’t get mixed in the wagon!”
He sighed. “Bright lads. Now, why don’t you be even more clever and drag your mother under the mistletoe?”
They giggled, Prudence bristled, and Graceanne said, “Come, boys, it’s time we went home.”
Then the butler was at the door, handing out the wraps. “Blast, Milsom, this is not the time to be so dashed efficient!”
“Yes, Your Grace. Your mittens, Master Wellesley.”
Leland waited, but no one corrected the butler. “Lucky guess. Fifty-fifty odds, anyway.” Milsom sniffed.