Marian's Christmas Wish (2 page)

Marian’s enjoyment lingered no longer than the first
hour after luncheon. Lady Wynswich had already taken herself off for her
afternoon nap, which caused Marian no dissatisfaction—in fact, quite the
opposite. Her mother had been impossible during their meal in the breakfast
parlor, eyeing both of her daughters with that superior air that spoke of
hidden knowledge.

“My dear girls,” she said, “Percy will be here by
nightfall, depend upon it. I have told Billings to instruct the maid to air out
his room
and
the best
guest room.” She had paused and looked around, her eyes bright with something
very like mischief. “Ariadne, wouldn’t you like to know what Percy has planned
for you?”

“No, Mama, I would not,” replied Ariadne. “Whatever it
is can keep.”

If she was disappointed at this lack of interest, Lady
Wynswich did not show it. With a laugh that she quickly stifled with one hand,
and with an airy wave of the other hand, she floated from the breakfast room
and hummed her way up the stairs.

Marian cast a speaking glance at her sister. “I told
you, Ariadne.”

“So you did. I must talk to Sam, and soon!”

As she spoke, Billings entered the room and proved to
the Wynswich daughters that Christmas was, indeed, a season of miracles. “Miss
Wynswich,” he said, speaking to Ariadne, “the vicar waits in the parlor.”

“Touché,” exclaimed Marian, and turned back to the remainder
of her cold sandwich. “Go tell Sam to ‘screw his courage to the sticky point,’
as our brother used to say, and get on with his courtship.”

“How odd that you should mention Master Wynswich,” said
the butler. “He awaits with the Reverend Beddoe.”

The sisters looked at each other with dismay, and
Marian returned the sandwich to plate, uneaten. “Good God, whatever has he done
now,” she said. “Ariadne, does not the term at Eton end one week from tomorrow?”

Ariadne nodded. A frown began to crease its way between
her eyes. Automatically she rubbed at it. “What do you suppose that dreadful
brother of ours has done now?” The light that had come into her face at Billings’ mention of the vicar dimmed as her eyes narrowed. “Oh, if he is in the basket
again, I shall go distracted.”

“Yes,” agreed Marian, “and Mama will suffer one of her
celebrated palpitations, and cry and groan, and then take him to her bosom. ‘How
like Papa you are,’ she will cry until we are all tired of it. Ariadne, I want
to box his ears.”

Ariadne rose. “Let us forge ahead, Mare. And do brush
those crumbs off your lap. I wonder that you will ever be a proper lady.”

Marian made a face at Ariadne’s back and followed her
into the parlor. When they were scarcely over the threshold, the vicar leapt to
his feet. Marian watched in amusement at the blush that began probably
somewhere deep in his chest and zoomed up beyond his hairline and onto the top
of his head.

I wonder if he will do that when they have been married
for years and years and their grandchildren are grouped around them, Marian
thought. As he hurried forward to shake hands with Ariadne, Marian concluded
that he would. And he will probably cast those cow eyes on her, even when they
are in their dotage. I don’t think I shall ever fall in love.

“The Misses Wynswich,” he exclaimed, and then turned
his attention to Ariadne. “There is no accounting for fate. I was coming here
in the gig to discuss the hanging of the greens in the church next week, and
whom should I encounter on the road but Alistair?”

And there you should have left him, thought Marian,
even as she smiled and hurried to her brother, who sat rather far removed from
the tableau, by the doorway.

Anyone even remotely acquainted with the Wynswiches
would have entertained no doubts over Alistair’s parentage. He was quick on his
feet and slim as his sisters, and possessed his mother’s lively brown eyes and
his papa’s curly chestnut hair.

Marian looked closer. What had the dratted boy done to
his hair? “Alistair, turn around,” she commanded.

Her younger brother did as he was bid. “This was not
the greeting I expected from you, of all people, Mare,” he said.

“Good God, Alistair,” Marian exclaimed, “how could you?”
She looked at her sister for support, but Ariadne and Sam Beddoe were involved
in each other’s eyes, so there was no artillery from that quarter.

Alistair shrugged himself out of his greatcoat and
touched the back of his hair, which had been cropped until not a single wavy
lock remained. “The Byron look was last season, Mare,” he said. “This is a
Brutus. At least, as close as Etheridge could come, working by a candle’s glow
after lights-out.”

Marian sighed and held out her arms. “Alistair, you are
a sore trial. Come give me a hug.”

Alistair grinned. He grabbed his sister up in a bear’s
embrace and towed her around the room before setting her down. “Mare, you are
getting shorter. Or did I grow?”

“You grew, Alistair,” she replied, out of breath.

She glanced at Ariadne. Her sister and the vicar had
found the sofa and were sitting there, staring at each other. No, I shall never
fall in love, thought Marian again. It is entirely too tedious.

She disengaged herself from Alistair and turned to her
sister. “Ariadne, dear, I believe the vicar has come to talk about the hanging
of the greens in the chapel?”

The vicar gave a start and blushed again. He seemed
bereft of speech, so Marian continued, “Remember, sir, the fourth Sunday in
Advent? Greens? Church?” She smiled at him wickedly. “Devon?”

The blush deepened. “Ah, yes, Marian. Ah, yes.”

Ariadne gazed at him as though he had declared a deep
profundity worthy of encapsulation in Sunday’s sermon. Marian sighed again, and
took Alistair by the arm. “Come on, dear brother, let us go to the bookroom.
Perhaps eventually they will remember what year it is.”

She hurried down the hall, pulling Alistair after her,
glancing up at the stairs to make sure that her mother had not come down yet.
They would be safe in the bookroom. Lady Wynswich never came near it.

Marian sat her brother down and pulled up a chair next
to him. “Alistair, what mischief are you in now? I know the term at Eton does not end until one week from tomorrow.”

His calm self-assurance, an additional legacy from his
father, deserted him for the first time. Alistair ran his finger around the
inside of his grimy collar.

“Gracious, Alistair, don’t you ever wash at school?”
asked Marian. “Your collar is a disgrace.”

He patted it and straightened his neckcloth, which was
no cleaner. “Of course we wash! But you see, Mare, it was a wager. You know,
who could go the longest without being called down. I won.”

“I am relieved. Now what are you doing here?”

Alistair was silent a moment, as if considering all
avenues of the strategy he had developed in the long walk from Picton to
Covenden Hall. Looking into Marian’s clear eyes and watching how her lips
tightened together in such a thin line, he discarded them all.

“You see, my dear, it was another wager.” He looked
around him. “Etheridge wagered that I could not compose a set of bawdy lines to
‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’” He couldn’t bear the look in Marian’s eyes and
transferred his gaze to the map of Europe on the wall beyond her shoulder. “And
how was I to know that the Archbishop of Canterbury would be visiting his
grandsons—and regular little mewling things they are, too—in the next set of
rooms? He took exception to my composition. And really, Mare, I wasn’t singing
loud.”

Marian opened and closed her mouth several times in
perfect imitation of a mackerel. “In fact . . . Oh, Mare, he cut up stiff about
it. The dean told me to take myself off.” He slumped in the chair. “A letter is
to follow.”

“Oh, Alistair! I . . .”

“Do words fail you, sister?” he asked hopefully when
she continued to stare at him, her eyes wide.

“Indeed they do not,” she snapped. She jumped up and
began to pace back and forth about the room.

Alistair watched her come and go. “I was hoping they
would, actually, Mare. It is the season to be jolly.”

She picked up a paperweight on the desk and would have
thrown it at him, except that she feared the racket would have brought the
entire household into the room. She slammed it down on the desk, marched in
front of him, and slapped him on both shoulders. He reeled back in his chair
and nearly spilled himself out.

“Alistair, you are a ninny! Percy is due here any
minute from Belgium . . .”

It was Alistair’s turn to imitate the mackerel. “Good
God. I had no idea. Then he . . .”

“...
will read the letter. Oh,
Alistair, he is bringing company, too, important company. And Mama will have
hysterics.”

They were both silent, Alistair waiting out the storm
that he knew from long experience would end soon, and Marian unable to think of
anything to say. She felt her Christmas plans coming down about her ears. First
Percy and the would-be suitor, and now Alistair bumbling about. All it needed
was . . .

Someone knocked at the door. Grateful for the
diversion, Alistair opened it so fast that the boy outside gasped. He recovered
quickly and came into the room.

It was the stableboy and he carried a cat in his arms,
a particularly ugly cat, soaking wet, and obviously soon to be a mother. The
creature was plastered with mud. Whether its coat was brown or gray, Marian
could not be sure.

The boy looked from the sister to the brother. His face
brightened. “Alistair! I mean, well, hello!” He looked back to the sister
again. “Begging your pardon, Miss Wynswich, but I found this cat out by the
main road. The dogs were teasing it. I thought you might . . . well, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Hand it here, and thank you.” The boy
relinquished his burden, grinned at Alistair, and executed a quick march from
the bookroom before Marian could change her mind.

Marian sat down next to Alistair again and wrapped her
apron around the cat. The babies in its belly squirmed and tumbled into each
other as she rubbed the cat dry. The animal began to purr, and the sound was a
balm to her jangled nerves. She smiled and scratched the cat under the chin.

“And I suppose you have a sad story to tell, too, if
only you could talk,” she said, addressing the animal. “Something about a
misspent kittenhood and the perfidy of toms.” Marian looked at her brother. “Since
everything and everyone conspires against me this Christmas, we shall simply
have to make the best of it.” Her tone became decisive. “Alistair, you will
take yourself off to the guest room. No, the second-best one. I’ll contrive to
bring you up some dinner later. It would be better, I think, if Mama did not
know you were about yet, and your own room is too close to hers. She would hear
you. If you will lie low, I may have the chance to talk to Percy before he
finds out . . . or receives that letter.”

“I think the archbishop is sending one, too,” said
Alistair. Marian winced. “I wonder, brother, does the Church of England
excommunicate entire families?”

“Surely not minors, Mare,” said Alistair. “We are safe!”

“No, we are not, you great big looby! Oh, take the cot
in the dressing closet. Who knows, but Mama may stick her head in the room. At
least then she will not see you. And take this cat and clean it up. I will send
up some food for it, too.”

Alistair felt himself on more sure ground. “Mare, are
you never going to outgrow your
tendre
for strays and waifs?”

She fixed him with a glare that made perspiration break
out on his upper lip. “Alistair! Don’t try me! Now take yourself up the back
stairs, and for the Lord’s sake, don’t show yourself. Billings will fetch your
valise.”

Marian took off her apron, wrapped the cat in it, and
handed the bundle to her brother, who kissed her on the cheek and darted out of
the room. In a moment she heard him on the backstairs, whistling to himself.
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “We got past the worst interview, didn’t we,
Alistair?” she said out loud. “Mama you can wrap around your little finger, and
you will depend upon me to carry you through an interview with Percy.”

She went to the window and pressed her nose against the
glass. The action teased a smile to her lips. When she was a little girl and
did that, Papa would rush outside and press his face against
t
he glass and kiss her through
the pane.