Page 85 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
“Your father decided, on a dare from his own brother, that he could skate the length of the pond without falling. He made it halfway before his feet went in two directions at once, and down he went, right through the ice. I nearly followed, but caught myself on a willow root. The gardener had to fetch us both out with a rake.”
Alice giggled, despite herself. Victor seized on the sound, nurturing it. “Your father was convinced he’d invented a new way of swimming. He called it ‘ice-jumping.’ For days afterward, he claimed he was developing scales like a fish, and that he’d soon be able to out-swim the Abbey’s pike.”
Alice wiped her eyes with the handkerchief, her breathing easier now. “Did he really?”
“He did,” Victor said, straight-faced. “And for a week, I believed him.”
They sat together in the shifting light, the room’s silence no longer a threat but a gentle enclosure. Victor watched the little girl compose herself, watched the grief recede, watched her fingers relax their grip on the handkerchief.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said after a while. “I think I’ll be brave now.”
Victor nodded, resisting the urge to ruffle her hair. “You already are.”
She offered him a tentative smile, then unfolded her legs and stood, the motion graceless but sincere. She paused at the door, turned, and said, “I’m glad we’re here.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she was gone, her footsteps receding into the distance.
Victor remained at the foot of the tree for a long while, staring at the place where Alice had been. The room was silent again, but the echo of her presence lingered. He wondered if, inthe end, there was anything more to be done than to sit with sorrow until it grew tired.
The next time he rehearsed his speech, it felt different. Less a campaign, more a benediction.
He would not let the Abbey devour another child’s laughter. He would not let it win.
He stood, brushed the needles from his seat, and resolved to speak to Pearl before the sun set, even if it meant risking everything he had left.
Chapter Seven
On Christmas Eve, Pearl made her way to the drawing room, parcels stacked in her arms. The gifts were wrapped in paper, each trimmed with meticulous gold ribbon. Two for the girls—Alice’s lumpy and nearly coming apart at the corners, Susie’s perfectly squared—and another for the dowager, whose taste for extravagance was legendary and whose appetite for gratitude even more so. The last was a slim, improbably heavy box, wound with a simple band of white silk.
She could see Victor already, backlit and unmoving in a brown leather chair by the fire. His gaze was fixed not on the flames or the baubles or the glittering tree, but straight ahead—at nothing, or perhaps at her. In the shadows, his outline seemed carved from marble, the lines of his body tensed as if waiting for the next disaster. The glass in his hand caught the light. The brandy inside it barely moved.
Pearl kneeled next to the tree, arranging the parcels with the precision of a jeweler. She set Alice’s in the foreground, Susie’s just behind, the dowager’s at a slight tilt to display its absurd bow. The last package she nestled just within reach of the fireside chair. Victor tracked the movement with a flick of his eyes.
She sat back on her heels, studying the tree.
“The Abbey’s never had this much activity in December.”
Pearl smiled. “The girls have been enjoying themselves. They’ve never seen so much snow.”
“They’re good girls. Strong. Not easily cowed.”
“Like their father,” she whispered.
Victor shook his head. “Like you.”
“I brought you a gift.” Pearl nodded at the white-silk package, her hands suddenly restless in her lap. “It’s not much. But it felt wrong not to.”
He looked at the box as if it might detonate. “I don’t need gifts,” he said, the words flat but not unkind. His knuckles whitened where they gripped the armrest.
She shrugged. “No one ever does.”
Victor stood abruptly. For a moment, she thought he might leave—she half-hoped he would, if only to spare her the embarrassment of the moment. Instead, he paced to the window, then back to the fire, his shoes tapping on the floor.
He stopped directly in front of her, the fire painting his face in sharp relief. He looked older in this light, but not diminished. Distilled, perhaps, like the liquor he pretended not to savor.
He spoke without preamble. “I’m not good at this,” he said, gesturing to the room, to the tree. “Tradition. Ceremony. I’ve spent most of my life making sure I’d never have to stand in rooms like this and say things that can’t be unsaid.”
Pearl felt her heart thrum, a fragile and traitorous bird. “You don’t have to,” she began, but he cut her off with a raised hand.
