Mary Balogh - Under the Mistletoe

On the grand staircase two footmen and a parlor maid, who had jumped eagerly into the spirit of things, were twining ivy about the banister.

Elizabeth was moving from group to group, helping, advising, encouraging. In the absence of her mother, she had come naturally into her own as hostess, and glowed with what appeared to be pure pleasure.

Edwin did his share of climbing and precarious leaning. But he also recognized the yearning of some of the children to feel useful. He took several of them astride his shoulders while they reached high to balance a pine bough along the top of a picture frame or to spread holly along the top of the mantel. He could do the job at least twice as fast without their “help,” of course, but there was no hurry. This was what Christmas was all about.

They were almost finished when Lord and Lady Templar and the others who had retired from the chaos entered the drawing room with the announcement that the tea tray had been sent for. But the kissing bough group had just declared that it was ready for hanging.

“Do let us put it up before the tray arrives,” Elizabeth said, looking flushed and animated and quite incredibly beautiful. “In the center of the ceiling between the two chandeliers, I believe. Does everyone agree?”

There was a buzz of acquiescence, a smattering of applause, and a few stray giggles. The family had livened up considerably since the day before, Edwin thought.

“If you believe, Lizzie, that I am going-” Lady Templar began.

“Cut line, Gertrude,” Lord Templar said.

Edwin smiled at his wife. “The lady of the house must be humored,” he said. “The center of the ceiling it will be, and now, before tea. We will need the ladder. Is it still in the dining room? Jonathan, would you fetch it, please? With Charles to help you?”

Five minutes later, he was perched in his shirtsleeves at the top of the high ladder beneath the coved ceiling, securing the gaily decorated kissing bough in its place while a chorus of conflicting advice came from below. Elizabeth stood at the foot of the ladder, her face upturned, Jeremy asleep openmouthed against her shoulder.

“Oh, that is perfect,” she said before he descended carefully.

“Now,” he remarked when he was safely down, “kissing boughs are not merely pretty decorations, you know. They have a practical function. And there is an obscure law, I believe, that the master of the house must be first to put it to use.”

Elizabeth turned that look of beauty on him. She also blushed and looked the nineteen-year-old she was, even though she was holding the baby. Her lips parted. She did not, as she had done in the woods during the morning, turn abruptly away or try to avoid what was coming.

She closed her eyes just before his lips touched hers. Her lips were trembling. They were also soft and still slightly parted, warm and moist. It was strange that after his wedding to an aristocratic iceberg he had performed his duty in the marriage bed but had never found the courage to kiss her. He had wanted to quite desperately.

But she was not an iceberg after all, he realized-perhaps he had been realizing it all day. Perhaps she did not like him, perhaps she resented his coming here with such little notice, but she was not frigid.

The kiss, very public and therefore very chaste, lasted for perhaps ten seconds.

Then it was over.

Their first kiss.

He slid one arm about Elizabeth’s waist, the baby nestled between them, and smiled into her eyes while several members of her family laughed or whistled or clapped their hands. Was it just Christmas that was putting this flush in her cheeks, this glow in her eyes, this warmth in his heart? he wondered.

But this was not the time to muse on the answer.

“I would have to say,” he said, looking about him and grinning, “that the kissing bough works very well indeed. I invite any skeptics to try it for themselves.”

Bertie drew a laughing Annabelle beneath the bough, and Lady Templar haughtily demanded her husband’s arm to lead her to a chair by the fire.

Edwin organized the removal of the ladder and other clearing-up tasks, and the tea trays were carried in while cousins and fiancés and a few older spouses merrily jostled for position beneath the kissing bough.

Elizabeth disappeared upstairs, the baby having woken up at the increased noise to the discovery that he was very hungry indeed.

This family, Edwin thought, was really not very unlike any other of his acquaintances once the repressive influence of Lady Templar was challenged and busy activities were offered. There was beginning to be both the look and the feel of Christmas about Wyldwood.

By dinnertime, Elizabeth was feeling quite weary from the unaccustomed activity and excitement, but she also knew that she did not want this day to come to an end. It was by far the happiest of her life. It was also the day during which she had really fallen in love with her husband. Oh, it was true that she had been dazzled by him the first time she saw him, only to be disappointed and disillusioned soon after. But she had been wrong about him for a whole year. He was not humorless or without character or personality. Quite the contrary. He was far more like his father than she had realized.

She wondered if he understood just how totally he had transformed their usual Christmas.

She wondered if he realized how very affected she had been by her first kiss, public and brief as it had been. She had relived it over and over again while feeding Jeremy afterward, her cheeks hot with pleasure. But it was not only the kiss she had recalled, startlingly intimate and wonderful as it had been. She had also remembered his smile, warm, almost tender, and directed fully at her, while his arm had circled her waist and their child had been safely nestled between them.

It was the sort of memory on which she would feed during the lonely times ahead.

But the happy novelty of this Christmas was still not over, as she discovered after dinner, even before she rose to lead the ladies to the drawing room so that the gentlemen might be left to their port. Uncle Oswald cleared his throat and spoke up for everyone at the table to hear.

“The Nativity scene is completed,” he announced, “and will be set up in the drawing room after dinner with the help of the children. I have been up to the nursery to arrange it. They will all come down, with your permission, Lizzie.”

“Definitely not again today, Oswald,” Lady Templar said. “It is far too close to their bedtime. I daresay that even in the homes of the middle classes children are not allowed into the drawing room during the evening.”

But Elizabeth had spoken up at the same moment. “Oh, yes, certainly,” she said, clasping her hands to her bosom. “What a lovely surprise!”

“It is Christmas Eve,” Uncle Oswald continued, “and the story of the Nativity must be told. Edwin has agreed to do it.”

So Mr. Chambers had been a part of these secret plans too, had he? He smiled at Elizabeth along the length of the table, and she felt her heart turn over. Was it possible that he liked her a little better today than he had before? But he was speaking to her.

“For such an important family celebration,” he asked, “shall we have Jeremy brought down too, Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” she said quickly before her mother could finish drawing breath to answer for her. “Having our children about us must be a part of all future family gatherings at Wyldwood. Especially Christmas. Christmas is about children-about a child.”

“Oh, I do agree with you, Lizzie,” Annabelle said fervently. “Don’t you, Bertie?”

“You know I do, Bella,” he said, though he cast a swift, self-conscious glance at his mother as he spoke.