Promise Me This (33 page)

But does Aunt Maggie love Daniel?
Michael wondered.
Surely they’re longtime friends. But they seem so natural, so comfortable together. Has Aunt Maggie seen Daniel as a friend for so long that she cannot imagine him as a man to share her bed?
Michael felt his own neck flame at such a question. Still, he wondered.

On the twenty-third of December, Michael, at Maggie’s instigation and Daniel’s direction, cut one of the small evergreens from Annie’s Evergreen Garden and shaved its uneven branches.

Tall enough to stand proudly on the parlor table, the little tree filled the room with Christmas fragrance. Maggie searched the drawers for candles as Daniel and Michael clamped small tin candleholders and wired glittering pinecones and sweet gum balls to the tree’s branches.

When they’d placed a punched tin star on top of the tree and lit the candles in the darkened room, the three stood back.

“Oh, it’s lovely, isn’t it? Thank you, gentlemen!” Aunt Maggie clasped her hands with the delight of a child, and instantly Michael remembered Megan Marie. He’d not thought of her for weeks, and he wondered how that could be.

“Aye,” Daniel said. “She is lovely.”

Michael noticed Daniel wasn’t looking at the tree at all, but at Maggie. And Michael had to agree; she looked something like an angel, fresh in the yellow glow of the tree lights.

Maggie caught the twinkle in Daniel’s eye and blushed. She laughed, then looked away, but not before the candlelight danced between them.

On Christmas Eve, Maggie cooked a goose, roasted apples and onions, and concocted a savory sage-and-onion stuffing with the magic of herbs dried from last summer’s garden. Parsnips, potatoes, squash, and the summer’s canned green beans rounded out the meal.

“We’ll have our Christmas pudding tomorrow,” Maggie said. “We’ll enjoy it more when we’re not so very stuffed.”

Michael was stuffed, to be sure, and more than glad to stretch long on the hearth rug by the fire.

But Maggie prodded him with the toe of her shoe. “Up, then, and wash and comb your curly locks, Michael Dunnagan. We leave for church in half an hour.”

“Just twenty minutes’ sleep, Aunt Maggie. There, you’re a sainted aunt, then. You wouldn’t drive a poor, hardworking orphan out into the bitter cold, now, would you?”

Maggie tapped her toe and dug her fist into her hip, but Michael rushed on. “The sky says it’s begging to snow. We could all stay home by this good, warm fire if you like,” he pleaded.

“If the Sweet Jesus could leave the peace of heaven and come down to earth and eat and sleep with sinners . . .” Aunt Maggie was clearly winding up for a sermon, and Michael covered his ears with a chair pillow.

She pulled the pillow away. “If He could suffer and die and rise again so the likes of us can spend eternity with Him in the heavens above, then we can surely pull our weary bones off the floor and march to the church for a hymn and a prayer and a bit of thanksgiving on the eve of His birth, Michael Dunnagan! A bit of snow never hurt a soul!” Maggie prodded him again, this time more severely.

Washed and brushed and bundled against the cold, Michael hefted onto the church doors the evergreen wreaths he and Daniel had fashioned. Maggie tied each wreath with a bow of bright-scarlet ribbon, pulling their long and festive tails nearly to the threshold, then stood back to admire them.

Daniel helped to light the outside church lanterns and guide horses and buggies to their appointed spots, far enough from the motorcars to avoid the spooking backfire of unreliable engines.

Michael’s breath caught as he stepped into the little white church, reverently aglow in the wash of its wall lanterns, filled with the music of its organ pipes and choir echoing,
“Gloria, gloria, gloria—in excelsis Deo.”
He did not need to know the exact meaning of the words to understand that the melody, the phrasing, the bellowed low and high bell tones of the organ, combined with the bright and shimmering eyes of the ten-member choir—their mouths all formed in perfect Os—re-created the songs of the angels on that first Christmas night.

Michael had learned by heart all the words of the carols sung in the church services of the past two Christmases. They were the most glorious songs he’d ever heard. There were days when he had worked alone in the fields throughout the year that he’d fairly shouted the words—perfect expressions of joy and thanksgiving for all he had been given.

That he, Michael Timothy Dunnagan, was alive, well, loved by a real family, and standing in the vestibule of a church to hear such a thing was, to him, the greatest miracle of all.
If only you could see this, Annie!
Michael realized with surprise that it was the first time he’d not directed such a wish toward Owen or even toward his long-lost Megan Marie.

When the invitation came for silent prayers, Michael knelt at the altar rail and prayed earnestly,
Sweet Jesus, You already know my prayer is for Annie’s keeping through this war, for her safe and merciful passage across the sea. Until that time comes, show her Your tender care as You’ve shown it me. Lift her heart this Christmastide; remind her of Your great love for her, the love Owen gave her, and the love that awaits her here . . . of Aunt Maggie and . . . and of me.
Michael shifted uncomfortably on his knees.
I don’t know why You’ve blessed me with this grand life, Sweet Jesus. I know it should be Owen kneeling here, not me. So make me worthy of this gift. Show me what You’d have me do, how You’d have me live. And if Owen is there with You now, wish him a merry Christmas for me, if You will, sir. Tell him I’ve not given up on getting Annie here, but that she’s a mite stubborn.

Michael wondered through the sermon about his feelings for Annie. It was not the same protective love he’d felt all his life for sweet Megan Marie, no longer bound up in guilt or regret. It was not even the same he’d felt when he’d promised Owen to do all in his power to bring her to America.

Something held him back from saying just what it had become, as if he had no right to name the wonder, no right to feel such things for a young woman so highborn as Annie. And yet, as the pastor told again the story of the Lord of lords having come to earth as the babe of a peasant woman, His first night spent in the hay-filled manger of a stable, Michael’s heart lifted. If God in heaven did not think it wrong or mean to be poor, then perhaps Annie would not look at him as a Belfast gutter rat but see him as a man who would willingly lay down his life for her and love and protect her till the day he died.

After the service, Michael pulled the carriage round to the front of the church and waited for Maggie and Daniel, but they did not come through the door. He saw Reverend Tenney’s wife snuff the candles in the windows and the reverend himself lower the gas lamps. Together they locked the door, nodded to Michael, and headed off into the dark toward their home across the way. Still, Maggie and Daniel did not come.

Michael tied the horse and walked round the back of the church. At the far end of the cemetery, just beneath the drape of an old fir tree, Daniel and Maggie stood, lit by the lamp of Daniel’s lantern, before the stone of Sean Allen. Michael watched as the couple—for he’d gradually come to think of them in that way—knelt on the ground, their own hands clasped and placed atop the stone. Michael felt he was spying, eavesdropping on something intimate and sacred, and turned to go. He was halfway to the buggy when he heard his name.

“Michael!” Daniel called, and Michael turned again, surprised by the laughter in Daniel’s voice and the returning song in Maggie’s. “We’ve something glad to tell you!”

Michael stood beside Daniel McKenica as he pledged his vows to Maggie Allen in the front parlor of Allen’s Run Gardens on Christmas Day—a fitting and happily solemn ceremony for that blessed day. Reverend and Mrs. Tenney stayed for tea and to share the celebration. It was the first wedding Michael could remember attending, and it held all the joy and intimacy he could imagine. He only wished Annie were there to share it. He wished Annie could be there to share it all.

Unmindful of the muddy, rat-infested trenches that snaked through the fields of Belgium and France just across the channel, Christmas erupted in the shops and squares of London with as much levity, color, and excess as it had in holiday seasons past.

Bells of the great cathedrals pealed through the dusk and into the night, and church choirs sang in many-part harmony their Christmas cantatas. Butchers and bakers hired extra workers to match their flurry of orders. Hawkers of chestnuts, holly, and evergreen wreaths and swags shouted their wares from snowy street corners, while others peddled from door to door. But Christmas at the Spragues’ was a quiet affair.

“It simply is not comely to celebrate when so many are in mourning,” Mrs. Sprague said, looking over their very ordinary Boxing Day tea.

“No,” Connie agreed. “And I’ve no heart for it. I don’t understand how anyone can celebrate this year.”

“It is a needed diversion,” Mr. Sprague said, “and a reminder of hope. Let us not begrudge Christmas.”

“Hope is past for some, Father.”

“Hope is eternal, thank God—even in the midst of war. Just ask those boys in the trenches.”

“It is the trenches I’m thinking of,” Connie replied. “I cannot love our warm and dry and well-fed Christmas when our fellows are freezing, squatting in trenches and tunnels amid dead bodies, two feet of water, and human waste.”

“Oh, Constance.” Mrs. Sprague sighed but did not censure her daughter.

“Owen loved Christmas,” Annie remembered aloud, “and I with him. But it doesn’t seem the same anymore—especially this year.” She laid aside her spoon, weary of pretending to eat. If she didn’t take her thoughts off Owen, she knew she would weep.
What,
she wondered,
is Michael doing this day?
Her heart quickened.
Oh dear—that’s not helping either.
She sighed, determined to change the subject. “Did you hear that Bernice’s older brother went missing at Ypres?”

“Gilbert? When?” Connie paled.

“None of the family has heard from him since the middle of November. They didn’t want to believe that . . . They wanted to . . .” Annie looked down, unable to say the words aloud. “But I saw Bernice this morning outside the chemist’s. She said her father and mother received a telegram Christmas morning from the BEF. Mr. Langford is still hoping that Gilbert will turn up among the wounded or as a war prisoner, but Bernice doesn’t believe it. She said Gil would never miss his Christmas pudding—even in a bundle through the mail. She’s certain that if he were alive, he would have found a way to let them know in time for Christmas.”

Mrs. Sprague shook her head. “So many young ones. I cannot take it in.” She returned her cup to its saucer, her tea untouched. “We should send round a box of baked goods and sweets for the children and some of the orchard fruit your client sent us, Edwin. There is far more than we can use before it spoils. May we use the car tomorrow, dear, to deliver?”

“We should deliver the car,” Mr. Sprague said, staring moodily into the fire.

“Give the Langfords our car? But, Edwin, isn’t that extreme?”

“Not the Langfords, my dear,” he responded testily. “We should contribute our car to the war effort. There is a call for large touring cars and lorries to be used as ambulances.”

“Father! It would be just the thing!” Connie clapped her hands.

“It is little enough,” he said.

“We can make do—” Mrs. Sprague nodded once—“just as we did in all the years before we owned an automobile.”

“Father,” Connie begged, “teach me to drive before you send the car. Please.”

“And me,” Annie piped up. “Teach me, too, please.”

“The idea!” Mrs. Sprague fussed.

But Mr. Sprague studied his daughter and Annie for several moments before answering. “Yes, you should both learn to drive.”

“Edwin!”

“If they find themselves nursing abroad, I want our girls to know how to drive an ambulance. It will do neither them nor their wounded any good to have all the touring cars in the world donated if someone does not know how to drive the machine out of a battle zone.”