Page 5 of A Merry Christmas
“I remember.” He smiled faintly. “When we were children, I always tried to arrange it so I would be the one to hand over the ginger cake, thinking it would earn me extra thanks.”
“And did it?”
“Only from the ones under ten. Their parents generally thanked my mother.”
The door swung open, admitting Mrs. Fielding and Mrs. Roxton, both wrapped in shawls despite the kitchen’s heat.
“There you are, Joshua,” his mother said with satisfaction, as though she had been hoping to find him here. “Merry has nearly finished packing the last of the hampers. We thought you might be the one to drive her about to deliver them.”
Joshua glanced at Merry, whose expression was carefully neutral. “Is that so?”
“It will save the grooms the trouble,” Mrs. Roxton added, entirely too innocently. “And you know the tenants—they will be glad to see you both.”
He might have objected—but two pairs of maternal eyes were fixed upon him in expectation, and he had faced down less daunting odds in battle. “Very well,” he said, with a slight bow. “If Miss Roxton feels able to endure my company for the morning.”
Merry gave a little curtsy, her tone perfectly polite. “If Captain Fielding is certain the task will not prove too dull after his…adventures.”
He smiled knowingly, enjoying her verbal sparring, despite them both knowing full well their mothers were throwing them together for a purpose.
They finished packing the last two hampers together, side by side at the table. Joshua found it impossible not to notice the faint scent of lavender water clinging to her despite the kitchen aromas.
By the time they carried the baskets out to the courtyard, the pale winter sun had risen over the frosted hedgerows. A light dusting of snow had fallen in the night, just enough to whiten the gravel. The family’s cart was waiting, harnessed to a sturdy bay cob, his breath steaming in the air.
Two of Joshua’s nephews came pelting out as they were loading the baskets. “Uncle Joshua, may we come?” cried Roger, his cheeks scarlet from the cold.
“Not today,” Joshua said, lifting him onto the cart’s step so he could peer in at the hampers. “You would eat half the sweetmeats before they reached the tenants.”
“I would not!” Roger protested hotly—then spoiled the effect by snatching a candied plum from the top of one parcel and popping it in his mouth.
Merry laughed, ruffling the boy’s hair. “We will bring you back something from Mrs. Hobson’s kitchen if you let us go in peace.”
That promise was enough to send both boys racing back into the house, calling for plum cake.
They set out at a steady trot, the wheels crunching softly over the snowy lane. The air was sharp and bright, the fields on either side lying in winter sleep beneath a silver veil of frost. Joshua took the reins easily—it was the first time in years he had driven along these roads, yet every turn was as familiar as the lines on his own palm.
At the first cottage, a white-haired woman opened the door even before they knocked. “Well, if it is not Miss Merry and young Master Joshua!” she exclaimed, beaming. “Come in, come in, you will freeze out there.”
They left her with the hamper and a promise of carols on Christmas Eve. At the second, they were mobbed by three children in patched coats who all wanted to carry something in. Merry crouched to their level, producing a packet of sugar biscuits tied in red ribbon. “One each, mind you,” she said, in the tone of someone well-accustomed to enforcing fairness.
At the third cottage, a thin man with a cough accepted the hamper with quiet gratitude. Joshua remembered his face—he had been a younger man when Joshua had last seen him, hale and broad-shouldered. Time and hardship had pared him down. Joshua pressed a crown into his hand, murmuring something about it being from the King’s army, and the man’s eyes brightened.
By the time they had made their way along the outer lane and back toward the village, Merry’s cheeks were pink from the cold and her breath clouded in the air. Yet she had not once complained, and her cheer seemed to warm each doorstep they visited.
“You are good at this,” Joshua said as they turned toward the High Street.
“At what?”
“Making people feel they matter. You know every name, and half their stories.”
“It is hardly difficult when you have lived here all your life,” she said lightly. “Besides, people do matter. And at Christmas most of all.”
He glanced at her, but she was looking ahead, her profile calm in the winter light.
“Indeed.”
Merry had awokenwith the particular cheer which belonged to Christmas week and to work that promised usefulness. Long before most of the house had stirred, she had slipped from her room, coaxed her hair into something like order, and gone down to the kitchen, there to marshal jars, parcels, and papered packets into neat tiers within wicker hampers. She liked the arithmetic of it: two loaves, a cut of beef, a round of cheese, a pot of jam, candles, beans, and a bundle of comfits tied up with red ribbon for small hands. It pleased her to think of those hands untying the bow.
When Captain Fielding appeared at the kitchen door—fair from the cold, fair in himself, and all the more striking for the plainness of his coat—she had schooled her countenance to composure. If her heart had executed a small and ridiculous leap, no one need suspect it. He had that soldier’s way of taking in a room at once, and then fastening upon the work to be done as if it were no matter. She was not sorry his mother and hers had contrived that they should deliver the hampers together—she was only sorry for his choosing last evening to imply he might extract her from a danger that did not exist.
