Mistletoe Courtship (19 page)

“It's not the decorations God looks for, Ethan. It's how people decorate their hearts.”

“Well said. Point conceded. Ah…I enjoyed the decorations you made for the Christmas Festival.”

“Since you obviously enjoy debating, perhaps you shouldn't give up on running for public office. For the record…
Congressman,
I do enjoy decorating—for others.” She stabbed at a log with enough force to send a shower of sparks shooting up the chimney. “For the present moment, however, let's leave
it that the dearth of decorations here is because I simply don't have time, and this cottage is cluttered enough.”

“You may rest assured I won't run for public office. I'm not interested in debates—except with you.” The quip elicited nothing but silence. His voice gentled. “I think I understand more than you realize, Clara. A year ago I barely noted the Christmas season at all, much less sang ‘Joy to the World' in a church.”

Floorboards creaked as he made his way to the fireplace. The flames cast brooding shadows over Clara's face, accentuating the strong bones of her cheeks, the straight uncompromising line of her nose. But the wide mouth was trying not to tremble. Compelled by a force he no longer wanted to ignore, Ethan waited until she hung the poker on its hook, then lifted her to her feet and clasped both her hands in his. “This year, I'm finding my way back to Christmas. Your family, this town—and you—are part of the reason. Grace seems to be a concept we human beings have trouble accepting, as well as dispensing—except at Christmastime. Your outside is full of grace, Clara. Over the past weeks I've watched you scatter it freely over everything and everyone, except yourself. A little bit ago, outside, I felt that grace when without any censure you allowed me to share secrets that have festered inside for years. Trouble is, I think you're nursing a secret pain or two of your own, hiding it deep, somewhere inside where nobody can see.”

“I don't want you to believe I—”

“But you let
me
see it.” He talked over her, ignoring the interruption. “Clara…you let me see a part of you I've never known.” Before he could regret the impulse, he lifted her hands and brushed a kiss over the backs of her knuckles. “I'll take you up on your offer of refreshments another day. I've some thinking to do, about you, about me. About…” he released her hands so he could trace the furrow between her brows with his
index finger “…things.” When Clara opened her mouth he shook his head at her, adding softly, “While I'm thinking, perhaps you would write a letter—to me? Only sign your real name, this time. Write me a letter, Clara.”

W
rite Ethan a letter. For the next two days Clara crammed so many activities into the hours between sunrise and midnight she scarce had a moment to eat, or even scribble a recipe for Eleanor. Nim padded after her whenever she was home, meowing pitifully and snuggling close, the tilted eyes reproaching her for her neglect.

At one o'clock on Thursday morning, after lying sleepless while the cat kneaded her shoulder and groomed her face with his rough tongue, in order to salve her conscience Clara got up and darted through the cottage, robe and gown flapping as she pulled a piece of string for the cat to chase until they both collapsed back into bed.

She could find time to placate her pet, but Ethan Harcourt was another ball of string entirely.

No matter how busy she stayed, the string
he
had cleverly dangled kept tickling her nose, no matter how many times she pushed it out of the way. Tonight she would see Ethan again, at the dinner with Albert and Bertha. Sure as oaks dropped acorns Ethan would find a way to bring up his bizarre notion that she should write him a letter.

Write Ethan a letter…How about:
Dear sir, your request for a letter, sharing personal intimacies similar to those you confided out by my garden shed on Tuesday past, exceeds the bounds of social convention even for someone who prides herself on ignoring them. If you desire written correspondence—you go first.

Her imagined sauciness prompted Clara's first laugh in days, and she dressed with a pinch less trepidation for the evening. Her peacock-blue dress costume further bolstered her confidence—with its oversize leg-o'-mutton sleeves and figured silk skirt she might light up the room brighter than Albert's hundred-light chandelier, but nobody could accuse her of looking like a drab mouse with a drippy nose.

Words possessed such power. A soft tongue, Proverbs warned, could break a bone. And a careless tongue could wound a heart forever.
You're nothing but a dull, skinny, brown beetle, and your pointy nose always drips…I'd rather kiss a mouse in a mud hole than Clara Penrose.
Her first introduction to boys, Albert's best friend Petey Fitzsimmons, should have offered sufficient warning. But at thirteen…Clara absently smoothed her fingers down the bright blue sleeve, over and over. At nineteen, older but no wiser, the man her parents selected for her husband should have cured her forever of all romantic notions….
No man will ever want a bag of bones with a tongue like a cheese slicer…
Those had been Mortimer's parting words. The taunts had lost their sharp sting, but even now the memories could not always be silenced.

And apparently she still hadn't learned to accept what couldn't be changed.

Defiantly Clara pulled on her cloak, pinned her hat over her topknot, then dashed out into the cold December night to the carriage Albert had sent to fetch her.

By the time the coachman turned the ostentatious brougham
into the equally ostentatious drive leading to the three-storied masonry mansion Albert had had built five years earlier, an idea had sprung forth in Clara's mind to counter Ethan's suggestion that she write him a letter.

Come morning, she would set her mind as well as her feet to the task.

 

“Clara! How colorful you look!” Bertha greeted her with plump, moist hands and a bosomy hug. “I've always envied a woman who could carry off that shade of blue—Nan! Come out from behind that urn at once. You know your papa warned you about slipping downstairs after bedtime.”

“Want to see Auntie Clara.” At six years, the youngest daughter, Nan, with her flaxen hair and blue eyes, bore an uncanny resemblance to her aunt Louise. Yet she was a studious child who preferred reading to dolls. Clara adored her.

“Hello, sweetkins.” She knelt and cuddled the slight form. “You should obey your parents,” she whispered in her ear, “but I'm very glad to see you.”

“Papa says you wear clothes that re-resemble Joseph's cloak of many colors,” Nan whispered back, and above them Bertha choked. “But I think you're beautiful, like a rainbow.” After pressing a damp kiss to Clara's cheek, the child scampered back up the wide staircase.
The power of words…

“Don't look so mortified,” Clara reassured Bertha. “I rather like the comparison to a rainbow. Might even pass that one along to Albert.”

Confidence intact, she sailed down the hall toward the salon, and the sound of Ethan's deep baritone voice.

Dinner was a disaster.

For some inexplicable reason Ethan was remote, even austere, not revealing by word or expression his visit with Clara on Tuesday. In fact, for most of the evening they scarcely
exchanged a sentence. Because he was seated beside Louise's fiancé, Mr. Eppling, on the same side of the table as Clara, little opportunity arose at dinner to engage him in conversation, intimate or challenging. After the meal Albert promptly herded the men into the library. Bertha was summoned by the children's nanny to check on three-year-old Abner, who had woken up and refused to go back to sleep without his mama.

Clara's mother and Louise pounced upon her the moment Bertha disappeared.

“Really, Clara, challenging your brother and Mr. Penrose on pro bono counsel for the poor and elderly? Must you always trot out the radical bent of your mind and beat us over the head with it?”

Louise smacked a dramatic hand to her brow. “Mother, for goodness' sake let it rest! Why not brag about her generous heart instead. Despite her peculiar personality and ‘radical mind,' she still has one, you know.”

“Hmmph. And people are forever taking advantage of that as well.” Mavis Penrose lifted the lorgnette she'd taken to wearing the past year and examined Clara. “Are you eating properly? You look as though you've lost weight. I'll have the cook send over some chicken soup, but you really should consider curtailing some of your charitable activities. I won't have you sicken with a cold or something more unpleasant, like influenza, for Christmas, Clara.”

“I wouldn't dream of it, Mother.”

“You know Clara,” Louise observed dryly. “The more charity work she does, the healthier she grows.” She gave her mother a brief peck on the cheek, then stepped back. Mavis Penrose discouraged affectionate displays of any kind. “At this point there's little we can do to change her inclinations. However—” in a gentle swirl of rose-colored taffeta Louise turned to Clara “—I do refuse to give up trying to instill at least
a paragraph of style sense in your book-crammed brain. This evening offers the perfect illustration. I don't know how many times I've explained to you that that shade of blue—unlike the gown I picked out for you to wear at the Festival—is not good for your complexion. Turns it frightfully sallow.” Louise shuddered. “Remember how Dr. Harcourt couldn't take his eyes off you last Saturday? That's hardly been the case this evening. He's not even looked your way. I wanted to kick Har—um, Mr. Eppling, for prattling on about the best fishing spots on the Potomac. We can't do anything about your costume, but let me at least refashion your hair, and I promise you'll command the doctor's undivided attention. You'd look stunning with a simple Grecian knot, sister. It would soften your face, possibly even help with that sallowness.”

Clara batted her sister's hands away. “Don't touch my hair. I know you well. The last time I submitted to your pleas I looked like a—”

She stopped, her mind churning. Hadn't she decided on the drive over here to call Ethan's hand, by pursuing
him
with the same disregard for decorum he had displayed? Already her head was full of plans—baking him gingerbread men, leaving a basket full of Christmas greens anonymously on his porch, and yes, she planned to write him some kind of note on the most over-romanticized Christmas card she could buy at the stationer's. Perhaps he regretted his display of affection on Tuesday. Equally possible, however, Clara had not adequately signaled her reciprocal feelings, hence his distance this evening. Men, Louise reminded her frequently, might avoid overtly flirtatious females, but they still required sufficient encouragement to fan the flame. “What's the point in striking a match to wet wood?” she'd pointed out several days earlier.

Time to prove you're
not
a coward, Clara.
Swallowing hard, she lifted her hands, tugging out combs and pins until her hair
unfurled down her back and shoulders. “There. Do your worst. Consider this a Christmas gift.”

For a humming span of time her mother and sister gawked at her as though she'd…well, as though she had announced her intention of playing the part of Delilah, with Dr. Harcourt an unknowing Samson.

“Hurry up,” she said, thrusting pins and combs at Louise. “The gentlemen won't linger in the library indefinitely, suffering through Albert's and Father's ponderous speeches. Imagine the scandal, all of them trooping in here and me with my hair down.” Her mother would suffer apoplexy for sure if she knew Ethan Harcourt had held her hands in his, had even brushed a kiss against her knuckles when they'd been at Clara's cottage, alone. Unchaperoned.

Or that Clara longed for more.

Fifteen minutes later, the sound of masculine voices swelled, echoing down the hall into the sitting room. Louise frantically stuffed the last pin in place. Clara had no idea what her sister had fashioned, since there was no mirror available, but she figured her hair now looked as different from her usual topknot as Louise could manage. The stage was set. She would maneuver herself close enough to force Ethan's attention, then commence whatever appropriate feminine behavior her panicked brain divulged, to indicate her reciprocal interest.

The gentlemen filled the entry, resplendent in their black tie and tails, Dr. Harcourt in the middle of the group. The hard planes and angles of his face looked more relaxed than when he first arrived. He half turned to her father. “…and I look forward to speaking with you on the matter soon.”

“Anytime, sir,” Clarence Penrose replied, clapping a hand on Ethan's shoulder. “Canterbury's fortunate to have acquired such a knowledgeable healer of bodies. But I must say again,
Doctor, that Congress has lost a powerful voice. Perhaps in a few more years, you'll reconsider.”

Bertha rejoined the party. Chatting and smiling, she wove her way through the men, urging them to partake of dessert and coffee. Then she spied Clara. Her mouth dropped open in dumbfounded silence. Close to bolting, Clara fixed what she hoped was a congenial expression on her face.

Dreamlike, she watched Albert frown when he glanced down at his wife, watched Harry hurry over to Louise, Willy to the plate of Christmas petit fours on the sideboard.

Watched Dr. Harcourt finally turn away from her father to face the ladies—and Clara. His eyes flared wide, then narrowed to slits that reminded Clara more of a rattlesnake's stare than an admiring gentlemen struck dumb by a lady's beauty. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Ladies.” Ignoring Clara as though she had melted into the wallpaper, he bowed to Bertha. “Thank you for opening your home to a newcomer, Mrs. Penrose. Mr. Penrose is fortunate to have so accomplished a hostess for a wife.”

“Clara?” Holding a delicate china plate piled with confections, Willie elbowed his way past the other men. Though twenty-one, he had not perfected the fine art of dissembling. “What in the name of Abe's aces have you done to your hair? You look like—you look…”

“Absolutely lovely,” Mr. Harcourt finished smoothly, his eyes darkened to a fiery emerald green. “And now, I must beg your leave. It's late.”

He turned on his heel, nodded to the others, and strode down the hall, leaving behind him a widening pool of silence.