Page 84 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
The phrase “You are not what I expected” floated up from his memory, spoken in Pearl’s voice, quiet, candid, entirely unguarded. He tested the words on his tongue and found them both a challenge and an invitation.
He was a fool, he decided, for believing any proposal of his would be met with anything but polite refusal. Still, this was likely the only chance he’d ever get to rectify what was missing in his life. He would try again.
“My dear Lady Graveley, I cannot—no, that’s absurd. Pearl, forgive me for presuming—worse, still worse…”
He broke off, massaging his forehead, and wondered if he should have drafted a letter instead. He would have, if not for the certainty that she would read between every line, discovering the cowardice there and never quite forgiving it.
He resumed his circuit, this time in reverse, hoping superstition might unbind the tongue where logic had failed. Halfway through, he heard a sound so out of place it took a moment to identify. A child’s cry, the sharp, solitary kind that is quickly stifled but never quite vanishes.
Victor let the silence settle, hoping it might resolve itself, but the sound came again, less muffled, more insistent. He considered ignoring it. He considered summoning a maid. But the sound was coming from the main hall, so close he should tend to it himself. With a grunt, he yanked open the door and stepped into the corridor.
He followed the sound toward the drawing room at the front of the house, which at this hour should have been empty, save for the cold vigilance of the maid’s morning rounds.
But it wasn’t empty.
There, at the foot of the Christmas tree sat Alice, curled into a knot, her face pressed to her knees. Even from the door, he could see the evidence of ruin, the streaks of tears on her cheeks, the tremor in her small fists.
She didn’t notice him. He was grateful for it. For a long moment, he hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. He had fought with men twice his size and carried wounded animals from theedge of death, but this… this was a hazard he was entirely unqualified for.
Still, he cleared his throat and stepped into the room, boots treading with deliberate care over the scatter of needles on the rug.
“Lady Alice,” he said, his voice emerging softer than intended. “What in heaven’s name—” He stopped, realizing at once that admonishment wasn’t the correct approach. He tried again. “What troubles you?”
She looked up, her face swollen and streaked, but still composed enough to regard him with suspicion. She scrubbed at her eyes, leaving a rawness around them that made her seem, for an instant, both much older and much younger than her ten years.
“It’s nothing, Your Grace,” she managed, the syllables catching.
Victor squatted, which proved nearly catastrophic, as his knees popped and his balance wavered, but he settled himself beside her at the base of the tree.
“Nothing, is it?” he said, his tone dry. “Then the tree must be weeping in sympathy.”
Alice sniffed, a valiant effort at dignity. “I only—” She stopped, biting her lip until color returned to it. “I miss Papa,” she said, and the effort of the words undid her all over again.
Victor, caught off guard, was silent for a time. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and offered it with a tentative hand. Alice took it, her movements careful. She pressed it to her nose and then, more delicately, to her eyes.
“Christmas was his favorite,” she said. “He’d wake us up early. He’d—he’d always drop the pudding, on purpose, just to see if we’d laugh. Even if it was still burning.”
Victor pictured Percy, the madcap, the born entertainer, so unlike the somber men of the Abbey’s long, frowning line. Hefelt a pang, unwelcome and immediate, at the thought of him reduced to a memory in a child’s voice. “He was good at that. Making the best of things, no matter how they started.”
Alice nodded vigorously. “Mama says we’re supposed to be brave, but sometimes…” She trailed off, unwilling or unable to name the thing.
“Bravery isn’t always loud,” he said after a moment. “Sometimes it’s sitting perfectly still until the sadness tires of you.”
Alice considered this, her brow furrowing. “Do you ever tire of it?”
“Not so far. But I’ve seen it happen.”
Victor could feel the heaviness of Alice’s grief, a kind of emotional aftershock that reminded him, painfully, of the night he’d spent in this very room after his own father died, unable to do anything but stare at the row of empty decanters on the sideboard and wonder what came next.
He looked at Alice then, really looked, and saw not only the sorrow but the dogged hope beneath it—the part of her that still believed in Christmas, even as the world conspired to snatch it away. “Would you like to hear a story?” he asked, surprised by his own offer.
Alice’s eyes, red-rimmed but luminous, widened in interest. “What kind of story?”
Victor settled his back against the trunk of the tree, dislodging a flurry of needles that drifted onto his shoulder. “A story about your father, when he was exactly your age.”
The change in Alice was immediate. She shifted closer, legs tucked beneath her.
Victor let his mind wander back through the haze of years and the endless, identical winters, to a day when Percy had dragged him, at great personal risk, onto the ice of Rettendon’s lower pond. He recalled the shouts, the triumphant cries, thecrack and splinter of the ice beneath their boots, the panic as they tumbled into the freezing water.
