Page 8 of A Merry Christmas
Her gaze flicked up then, quick and searching. “Then there has never been anyone? Not even a girl in Spain, or Portugal?”
He shook his head. “There was never time; and perhaps—” He stopped himself, for he had not meant to speak so plainly. “Perhaps Idid not wish to bind anyone to uncertainty. Soldiers do not always return.”
For a moment she was silent, and he thought he had ended the matter, but then she spoke softly, almost as if to herself. “That is very noble, Captain. Yet even soldiers must have hearts.”
He did not answer, because anything he said would be too much, and too soon. Instead he bent his head as though studying the ivy in her hand. “What of you, Merry? Have you already given yours away?”
She coloured, whether with vexation or honesty he could not tell. “That is hardly a question I am bound to answer.”
“No,” he said, with a trace of a smile, “but you asked me.”
Her eyes flashed then, the green deepening. “Perhaps I only wanted to know what sort of man thought he had the right to pronounce upon my suitors. If you had a sweetheart, at least I could forgive you the arrogance. Without one, it seems nothing but presumption.”
Joshua felt the sting of the words, but beneath it was a kind of admiration. She was never timid, this Merry. She challenged him as no one else dared. “Then I must hope you will forgive me in time,” he said, “for I do not retract my warning.”
She regarded him for a long moment, then turned away, placing the sprig of ivy on the mantel. “We shall see, Captain. We shall see.”
If a young lady were sensible,she would keep her thoughts in as good order as a basket of coloured thread—every shade in its proper place, untangled. Merry had long suspected she was not that variety of young lady, for the moment she stepped away from Captain Fielding with her bravado still bright upon her tongue—We shall see, Captain. We shall see—her thoughts flew up like startled starlings and refused to be coaxed down again.
However, the hall made a picture to soothe any irritation. The yule log, which the gentlemen had brought in with much masculine bustle and grunting, burned at last as if it had found its home in the largehearth. Evergreen garlands were looped along the mantels, ivy adorned every angle, and white-berried mistletoe was wreathed with scarlet ribbon and hung. The air smelt of burning oak and the sort of spice which promised plum pudding in some near future.
“Miss Merry,” said Mrs. Fielding, who, with a small silver knife and the inexhaustible calm of a queen, carried a plate of ginger cake, “if you will only take this tray to the music-room, and save us a stampede until after the decorations are finished, I should be most grateful.”
“I am all obedience,” Merry replied, which made Mrs. Fielding laugh and say something about miracles at Christmas-tide. “As it happens, I was on my way there to put up some decorations.”
The music-room had always been her favourite room at Wychwood. Its tall eastern windows were white at the corners now where the snow made lace against the panes, and the pianoforte shone with pampered gloss. Merry set down the tray and took a long breath. The scene in the hall—the heat, the hum, the comfortable confusion—had warmed her body and disordered her mind.
She did not sit. If she sat she would think, and she had not yet decided whether thought was an ally. Instead, she set about laying a short garland of holly around the pianoforte. A little droop at the centre, she mused, two sprigs thrust just so and a narrow ribbon to keep the whole from drooping.
She was engaged in tying the ribbon when Penelope—Mrs. Lennox for some years now—appeared in the doorway with a skein of green twine upon her arm.
“There you are. I told Mama you had not deserted, but she would have it you were setting up a rival wassail in here.”
“If I were,” Merry said, “it should be better spiced than Papa’s.”
“Blasphemy,” Penelope returned, smiling. “Do you want help?”
“I want five more pairs of hands that understand what I mean without my saying it. You will do admirably.” She held out the ribbon’s end. “Only here…a little tighter, please.”
Penelope obeyed, then studied her sister’s face as one studies asentence for the second meaning it obstinately conceals. “You have been spending much time with Captain Fielding.”
“You make it sound as if I had been committing a faux pas or that it was not entirely the machinations of our mother and Mrs. Fielding.”
“You always look just a little pleased with yourself after a skirmish,” Penelope said.
“Skirmish?” Merry echoed, affecting ignorance, though the word pricked her conscience. She had gone into the fray with her head up and her temper in arms and had come out with neither entirely victorious.
Penelope secured the bow. “He is handsome in the fair way, and he makes me think of iron nails correctly hammered—useful, strong, not to be done without. I suppose that is from being in the army.”
“I dare say,” Merry said, as if the whole matter were of no consequence at all. “He believes Mr. Tremaine to be a rogue.”
“I remember Mr. Tremaine as a boy,” Penelope said, her tone the sort people used about the weather—acknowledging what cannot be altered by opinions. “He was very fine at cricket and very poor at truth.”
“Perhaps he has mended his ways,” Merry said, her voice brisk because it cost her something to say it.
“Yes. Perhaps,” Penelope allowed. “Do not take offence, Sister. I am not your enemy.”
“My heart is not yet set for or against him.”
