Aunt Dimity's Christmas (25 page)

I ran a hand through my already disheveled curls and thought a moment. “Did the children know why they moved to London?”

Felicity did. She was old enough to be told the truth, but Christopher was far too young
.

“Do you think Kit ever knew about his father's suicide attempts?” I asked.

I doubt the topic was discussed at dinner. The family was very careful of Sir Miles's reputation. But I knew the moment he
showed me his dreadful memoir that he was as potty as a tin of shrimp
.

I sat bolt upright. “When did he show you his memoir?”

Years ago, before he left Anscombe Manor. When he told me that he planned to leave those horrid pictures to his son, I nearly struck him
.

I gazed at Reginald, who seemed to nod in the flickering firelight, as if to confirm my growing suspicions. “Did Felicity get along with Christopher?”

She told everyone who'd listen that she loved her baby brother to distraction, but I was never taken in. She resented that child from the moment he was born. Christopher was angelic, you see, and Felicity … wasn't. Why do you ask
?

I gripped the arm of the chair, torn between rage and relief. “Because Felicity's played an unspeakably cruel joke on her brother….”

With mounting anger, I recounted Lady Havorford's accusations and the devastating effect they'd had on Kit. As I described his journey of atonement, the souls he'd prayed for and the people he'd helped along the way, I began to feel a certain sense of pity for the woman whose lies had sent him on his pilgrimage. Felicity Havorford had all the wealth in the world and Kit had nothing, but I knew who was the richer of the two.

Dimity was less forgiving than I.
I imagine Felicity bridled when you mentioned Christopher's donation to the soup kitchen in Stepney
.

“She said he wasted his inheritance on undeserving strangers,” I told her.

There you are, then. She hates Christopher for letting the money go out of the family, not for murdering his father. I imagine that was her aim all along—playing upon his guilt in order to coerce him into transmitting his inheritance to her son
.

“But she's already wealthy,” I pointed out, giving the devil her due.

In debt up to her eyeteeth, I shouldn't wonder. She always was. Don't waste your pity on Felicity Havorford, Lori. It was monstrous of her to tell such wicked lies and naïve of Christopher to believe them. A few heated words from an overwrought teenager didn't drive Sir Miles mad. The war did
.

“I suspected as much,” I said.

Your instincts served you well. Sir Miles Anscombe was a casualty of war just as surely as if his plane had been shot down. His wounds were invisible, but fatal nonetheless, and he sustained them long before Christopher was born. And now Felicity has compounded her wickedness by abandoning her brother in his hour of need
.

“Don't worry about Kit,” I said. “Julian and I will take care of him. We both owe Kit an awful lot. He saved Julian's life, and …” I looked into the fire and saw once more the candles burning in Saint Joseph's Church. “He helped me, too.”

In what way
?

“He forced me to look at things I didn't want to see,” I said, “and remember things I wanted to forget. If Kit hadn't come to the cottage, I wouldn't have gone to Saint Benedict's. And if I hadn't gone to Saint Benedict's, I wouldn't have realized how much I have in common with the men there.”

He reminded you of the difficult times you've been through. Not everyone would welcome such a reminder
.

“I fought it tooth and nail.” I let my gaze travel around the room, from the exquisite antique ornaments dangling from the mantel's garland to the fine old oak desk standing before the ivy-webbed window. “I'd gotten too fat and sassy, Dimity. I'd paid my dues, so I thought I was entitled
to my blessings. Kit reminded me that blessings aren't a right—they're a gift. I'm no more entitled to them than the men at Saint Benedict's, and I'm ashamed of myself for not remembering it sooner.”

Shame can be a useful tool, if it inspires you to share your blessings. You have the Westwood Trust at your command, Lori. You can use it to heal many wounds
.

“I will,” I assured her, “but it's not enough for me right now to help people from a distance. I'm going back to Saint Benedict's to work, and I'm bringing the boys with me. I don't want Rob and Will growing up in a cocoon. They'll head the Westwood Trust one day. They have to know, from the inside, why it's so important.”

So finding a tramp in your drive wasn't such a dreadful nuisance after all
.

“It was a blessing in one heck of a disguise.” I smiled briefly, then let my thoughts drift back to Kit. “Kit must have finished his pilgrimage,” I said. “That's why he tried to burn the scroll. But why did he come here? Why did he choose to end his journey at the cottage?”

For a moment, the page remained blank. Then the handwriting began to curl slowly across the page, as if Dimity were drawing on memories so distant that it took time for her to piece the words together.

Christopher was ten years old when Miles Anscombe sold Anscombe Manor. A few days before the family left for London, Christopher rode over to visit me. He told me he was terrified of living in the city, but he made me promise not to tell his father. Sir Miles wasn't afraid of anything, he said. Sir Miles would be ashamed to learn that his son was such a coward
.

Christopher brought along a wooden box, filed with his father's medals. He showed them to me, as if offering proof of his father's bravery, and he told me that whenever he felt frightened,
he would look at the medals and remind himself that he was a hero's son. As he turned to go, he promised to come back one day, when he'd grown into the kind of man his father could be proud of

I think Christopher was simply keeping his promise
.

The fire snapped and hissed, and the wind moaned in the chimney. There are many kinds of bravery, I mused, and many battlefields. If medals were awarded for compassion, Kit would be as highly decorated as his father.

There was a knock at the study door. I barely had time to close the journal before Bill strode in and stood before me, tapping his foot.

“Time's up,” he declared.

I put the journal on the ottoman, wedged snugly between Reginald and Lancaster, and allowed myself to be pulled to my feet and hustled down the hallway.

“What's the hurry?” I demanded, as he pushed me out of the front door.

“You'll find out,” he replied.

The blinking lights had, mercifully, been doused. A velvet breeze caressed my face and the waxing moon sailed through ragged clouds, silvering the cottage and throwing aquamarine shadows across the snow.

“Bill—” I began.

“Hush,” he said. “Listen.”

I held my breath and heard, faintly, through the crisp night air, Saint George's bells ringing a joyous peal. We stood for a moment in silence, listening to the midnight bells; then Bill put his arms around me.

“I'm sorry about the way things worked out this year,” he said. “If I recall correctly, you and I were supposed to spend the past two weeks curled up in front of the hearth, surrounded by our family.”

“Our family's grown a lot since you've been away,” I told
him. “It stretches beyond the cottage, beyond the village, to a world of people we haven't even met.”

“It sounds as if we'll need a bigger hearth next year,” said Bill.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“How can I object to anything that makes your eyes shine so brightly?” He tilted my chin up. “Still, you have to admit, this Christmas didn't go exactly as planned.”

I thought of Kit and Julian, of Saint Benedict's and Saint Joseph's, of the poor, the sick, the hungry, the insane, and I thought of all the blessings I could share, all the candles I could light to keep the darkness of despair at bay.

“It went as planned,” I said, “by someone showing me a better way to celebrate his Son's birthday.” Rejoicing, I lifted my face to the stars and whispered, “Merry Christmas.”

K
it woke up three days after Christmas. Dr. Pritchard telephoned the following morning to tell me that his patient was alert and much stronger than expected, as if, as Matron had predicted, his body had simply needed a good, long rest to recover from its many deprivations.

I drove to Oxford in the canary-yellow Range Rover Bill had presented to me on Christmas morning. My beloved Morris Mini would serve for local jaunts, he'd reasoned, but regular trips to Saint Benedict's called for something more reliable. I was so pleased with my new toy that I kept smiling even after he told me that he'd chosen the eye-popping color “to give other drivers fair warning” of my presence on the road.

I brought with me the funds raised by the Nativity play, boxes of food collected by the villagers, and most of the toys Bill and I had purchased for the twins. The food and funds would go to Saint Benedict's, but the toys would find a home in the children's wards at the Radcliffe. Will and
Rob, who'd spent their first Christmas playing happily with empty boxes and wrapping paper, would never miss them.

Kit had been disconnected from the bank of monitors and moved from the glass-walled cubicle to a private room, but Nurse Willoughby was still in attendance. When I asked after Julian, she told me that he'd missed his morning rounds two days in a row, owing to a massive plumbing failure at Saint Benedict's. She looked at me askance when the distressing news brought a smile to my face, and left me at the door to Kit's room with the usual admonitions about overtiring our patient.

Kit was dozing when I entered. His hospital bed had been cranked into its upright position, and the lamp on the bedside table had been left on. The room was pleasant but anonymous. I saw no sign of Christmas anywhere, save for the brightly wrapped gifts the villagers had sent, which lay unopened on the windowsill.

Kit's close-cropped hair had grown out enough to need combing since I'd last seen him, but he was still clean-shaven. The windburned patches on his face had healed, and his collarbones no longer protruded so sharply beneath the pale-blue hospital gown. His hands, lying peacefully atop the coverlet, were miraculously unblemished by frostbite. I hung my coat on the back of the door, set the canvas carryall on the bedside table, and stood gazing at his hands, remembering the first time I'd seen them, splayed in the snow beneath my lilac bushes.

“You've been here before,” said a voice. It was low and musical, every bit as magical as Anne Somerville and Father Danos had remembered it.

“Yes.” I gazed into the violet eyes I'd first seen scarcely ten days ago and felt as if I'd known them all of my life. “I'm Lori. Lori Shepherd.”

“My good angel,” said Kit. “Nurse Willoughby's told me about you.”

“Nurse Willoughby's prone to exaggeration,” I warned. “I've got a long way to go before I earn my wings.”

“Nurse Willoughby also told me that Dimity Westwood is dead.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “She died at about the same time you started your journey. I don't suppose you spent much time scanning obits while you were on the road.”

“I had other, more practical uses for newspaper.” Kit's eyes twinkled briefly, then clouded over. “I still can't believe she's gone. I somehow thought she'd go on forever, like the Pyms.”

“Why did you need to see her so badly?” I asked. “I mean, the weather was so awful and you were so sick …”

“I was too ill to know how ill I was.” Kit smoothed the edge of the coverlet with his fingers. “But Dimity was always a part of the plan. Once I'd finished my journey, I wasn't sure what to do next. I hoped Dimity would tell me.”

“You came to her for advice,” I said.

“And to thank her. She helped me once before, you see.” His restless hands became still. “When my mother died, Dimity told me that grief could be a teacher. It could make me more aware of other people's pain and better able to ease it. I was too young to understand her then, but years later her words came back to me. They were like a beacon, lighting the way through the darkest days of my life. If it hadn't been for Dimity, grief might have overwhelmed me. Instead, it became my ally, helping me to help others.” Kit's lips quirked upward in a small, ironic smile. “I even brought a gift for her, to thank her for her guidance.”

I took the suede pouch from the carryall and passed it to
him, saying, “This was in your coat pocket when my husband and I found you.”

Kit opened the pouch, but instead of spilling the contents onto the coverlet, he fished out a single item and placed it in my palm. “It's a Pathfinder badge,” he said softly. “I wanted Dimity to have it. I wish I could have told her how much her words meant to me.”