Marian's Christmas Wish (3 page)

“Dear, foolish Papa,” she said softly, her lips still
against the glass. “Why did you leave me the burden of this whole family?”

Percy had no idea of the state of affairs at Covenden
Hall. As much as she now dreaded his arrival, and what it might mean
id
Ariadne and Alistair, she longed for it. She yearned to
cut away some of the weight she bore and pitch it onto his shoulders for a
change. The treaty talks could go hang, for all she cared. “It is high time
those Americans quit brangling and wrangling and you came home, Percy,” she
told the window.

She rested her cheek against the glass and closed her
eyes. “Oh, Papa, I am weary of being the only sensible person in this entire
household. It’s not fair.”

The bookroom was cold, and the chill finally penetrated
through her dress. She went into the hall, standing still as Hillings passed
her carrying Alistair’s valise.

“The second-best guest room, ma’am?” he asked.

She nodded and wondered only a second how it was that
the servants knew entirely what was going on. “And not a word to Lady Wynswich,
mind.”

“Oh, no, miss,” he replied. “Cook has already started
on Alistair’s favorite dinner. I’ll see that he gets it.”

She waved him on, marveling how the world loved rascals
so, while the virtuous were only put upon. I shall ask the vicar to compose a
sermon on the topic, she thought as she approached the parlor. That is, if his
wits have returned in any quantity at all. Ariadne simply must bring him up to
scratch so we can have good sermons again, sermons where he doesn’t stammer and
blush, track back upon himself, and stare continually at Ariadne.

The object of her thoughts stood at the parlor door,
bidding farewell to Ariadne. He had possessed himself of his greatcoat and hat
again, but he had not yet freed himself from Ariadne’s handclasp. Marian
watched them a moment and resolved anew never to fall in love. I have not the
temperament for it, she decided as Sam finally let go and turned like a blind
man toward the front door. Marian hurried to open it for him so he did not
tumble into the frame.

After seeing her love safely out the door, Ariadne
began a meditative progress toward her room.

Marian took her by the hand. “My dear, did you suggest
to Sam that he approach Percy, and soon?”

Marian’s words had the effect of cold water flung
without warning. Ariadne’s chin came up. “Marian, it is almost Christmas, and
that subject will be a sore one to Percy. Why must you be so practical-minded?”

“Because someone must, Ariadne dear,” Marian began, and
then stopped. The one who needed stiffening was the vicar. Likely this would
fall her task, too. She sighed and hugged her older sister. “It’s just that
there must be some strategy, my dear. Christmas may come and go, and you might
find yourself pitchforked into an engagement entirely of Mama’s—or Percy’s
choosing.” The stricken look in Ariadne’s eyes almost quelled her own spirits,
but she plunged on. “I shall talk to Sam myself, dear. Goodness knows someone
must
...”

Dinner was an unrelieved tedium and two hours late in
the bargain, as Lady Wynswich fretted and stewed and held the cook at bay, waiting
for Percy to arrive. “Depend upon it, he has forgotten us,” she declared
finally in despairing tones as she tore herself away from the window and
cascaded gracefully onto her fainting couch. “Ariadne, my smelling salts!” She
wept into her handkerchief. “I do not know what will become of us if Percy does
not do as he ought.”

Marian brought her the salts, uncapped them, and waved
them expertly under her nose. “Mama, you know that is not the case. Likely he
was held up and will arrive later. If you succumb to vapors, you know how that
makes your eyes redden and your nose run.”

Lady Wynswich recovered sufficiently to glare at her
younger child. “You are an unfeeling girl,” she stated, and motioned to
Ariadne, who sat down on the sofa and began to chafe her mother’s wrists. “Ariadne
knows how to conduct herself. Marian, make yourself useful and watch at the
window.”

No one arrived. When Billings appeared in the doorway
for the tenth or eleventh time, Lady Wynswich raised herself from her couch and
directed her daughters to help her to her feet. “For we must keep up our
strength, dear girls. Let us dine.”

Dine they did, on food that had waited too long
belowstairs. Lady Wynswich dabbed at her eyes and pushed away her half-eaten
food. “Marian, how are we to manage with such a cook? Whatever will Percy’s
guest think? This venison is the ruination of every hope of our family.”

“Mama, it is no such thing,” Marian said. “It would
have been excellent two hours ago.” The stubborn glint returned to Mama’s eyes,
so Marian trod carefully. “I recommend, dear, that Ariadne make you a tisane
and you go to bed. Now, do not protest! It is unlikely in the extreme that
Percy will arrive any later. He was merely delayed and will be here in the
morning.”

The overdone venison had stripped Lady Wynswich of all
fight. She nodded, fought back tears, and let herself be led away by her older
daughter, uttering, “Unworthiest of sons” and “Unfeeling daughter” as she made
her invalid’s progress up the stairs.

Marian could only sigh with relief and wish herself
elsewhere. She thought of Alistair in the second guest room, and resolved to
pay him a clandestine visit, but her heart was not in it. He will rave on about
Eton and the tricks he has pulled, and how he has outrun his quarterly
allowance, and I shall grow quite distracted. Better to find a book and carry
it upstairs.

How lonely the library was, how cold. Marian went
straight to the Roman philosophers. Something bracing and practical would suit
her frame of mind: this was not a time for Greeks. She ran her finger across
several titles and changed her mind. This was not even a time for books, she
decided as she touched the back of Papa’s wing chair, drawn up before the dark
hearth, and quietly left the room.

Billings
sat in the hallway, his chin nodding over his chest. “I
will wait up awhile, miss,” he said, “in case Percy should come.”

She smiled at him and went to her room; she sat
cross-legged on the bed in her flannel nightgown and wrapped her long black
hair in rags on the hope that there would be a tiny suggestion of curls in the
morning. The fact that she had not inherited the famous Wynswich hair was only
another jostle of cruel fate, a circumstance that she seldom troubled herself
about, but that seemed on this night only one more indication of disaster to
come. There was no tidings of great joy in her heart when she finally closed
her eyes.

It was well after midnight when she sat up in bed,
wondering for only a second what had awakened her, and then realizing that
Percy was home. She got out of bed and padded to the door. She opened it a
crack and listened in appreciation to Mama’s tears and admonitions, her
exclamations of delight. “Dear lady, you are in your element now,” she said.
Marian tiptoed into the hall, knelt on the landing, and peered through the
railing.

Percy stood almost directly below her. Tears started in
her eyes, but she brushed them away. He had taken off his hat, and the famous
Wynswich chestnut hair gleamed in the little light. Lady Wynswich was clasped
tight in his arms. “How long you have been, my son,” she murmured over and over
as she held him close.

“Not so long this time, Mama. Only a year. And Mama, we
have company.”

Two other gentlemen stood in the shadows of the front
hall. Marian pulled her nightgown down over her bare feet. Two gentlemen? How
dreadful. She had been right all along. Percy had produced not one, but two
worthy suitors for Ariadne. One was quite tall, so tall that his high-crowned
beaver hat brushed the greenery draped in the hall. The other man was much
shorter and quite round. Marian fancied she heard his stays creak as he leaned
forward to shake her mother’s hand. She giggled and then put her hand over her
mouth.

No one appeared to hear her except the tall man. He
looked in her general direction and then tipped his hat to her and smiled. Or
she thought he smiled. With the smallest wave of her hand, she got quietly to
her feet and ran back to her room.

She closed the door on an agonizing thought that made
her suck in her breath. Two gentlemen. One of them would surely be assigned to
the second-best guest room.

Marian stood rooted to the spot and briefly considered
the idea of confessing everything to her mother and revealing Alistair’s
whereabouts. Her courage deserted her. She stayed where she was, and prayed
that whoever got the room would be too tired to do anything but go to bed, and
leave the unpacking and any probable trips to the dressing room for the morrow.

She considered prayer for a moment and then discarded
the idea. Not many Sundays past, the vicar had expounded on the folly of
calling upon the Lord for help when one had not prayed for a long while. I will
not be a hypocrite, she told herself as she climbed back in bed and waited for
the ax to fall.

It did not. In a quake, she heard the gentlemen moving
down the hall and into the guest rooms. Her mother and Percy stood outside the
door talking quietly for a few more minutes, and then the doors to their rooms
closed, too. All was silent. Marian relaxed gradually, sinking deeper and
deeper into her featherbed. Perhaps Alistair had gone down the hall to his own
room, after all.

Her wish was not to be realized. A scream echoed and
then reechoed from the second-best guest room. The door opened with a bang that
rattled the window in her room. Marian leapt from her bed and flung back her
door in time to see Alistair running down the hall, a sheet clutched around his
middle.

Clad in his nightgown, the little round man stood in
the middle of the hall. As she watched, horrified, he sat down and fell back in
a faint. Marian darted into her room and snatched up the smelling salts that
her mother insisted they all carry. She waved the bottle under the man’s nose,
even as Percy burst out of his room and Lady Wynswich came shrieking down the
hall, shouting, “Murder! Murder!” in a voice not the least infirm.

The door to the best guest room opened and the tall man
stood there in the shadows. Marian only glanced at him and turned her attention
to the little man on the floor. Percy was at her side now, his arm under the
man’s head. “Sir William? Sir William? I say, are you all right?”

“He faints at card tricks, balloon ascensions, and military
reviews, my dear Percy,” said the voice from the other doorway. “Or so my
acquaintance through the years testifies. Give him a moment. He will be fine.”
He stifled what sounded remarkably like a laugh, and asked, “I want to know who
it was running down the hall. He is remarkably fleet.”

Marian could not look at Percy. “That was Alistair.”

“Alistair!” Percy dropped the little man back on the
carpet. “Alistair! Marian, he is not supposed to be here. Oh, what have you
been up to?”

By now, Lady Wynswich’s cries had awakened Ariadne, who
came into the hall, saw the scene of carnage spread before her, and burst into
noisy tears of her own.

Alistair had collected himself and watched from the
safety of the landing. Draping his sheet around him in a more statesmanlike
fashion, he came padding toward the group gathered about the man on the floor.

“I was as surprised as he was, Mare,” he said, and
continued his stately progress down the hall.

Percy could only stare in wonder at the devastation
about him. The silence grew until it almost hummed, and then it was supplanted
by another sound, the squeaks and mewings of tiny kittens. With another muffled
laugh, the shadowy man went next door.

Marian put her hand to her mouth. “Good God! My
kittens!” She ran into the second-best guest room on the heels of the other
gentleman. He stopped and she bumped into him in the dark.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she gasped. “It’s the cat. I
forgot. Oh, and kittens, too. Dear me, whatever must you be thinking? Percy
will murder me. He will ship me to Australia.”

She stepped away from the tall man, grateful that it
was dark and no one could see her hair in its disgraceful rags, and her flannel
nightgown. She listened for the mewings and got down on her hands and knees,
feeling under the bed.

The tall man joined her. “Here they are,” he said. “I
can reach them if I stretch out. Hold out your hands, my dear, here they come.”

She sat on the floor as he deposited two slimy kittens
into her lap, followed by a cat, who was grunting softly. He sat down next to
her on the floor. “I fear she is not quite through yet.” He ran his hands over
the cat’s abdomen. “Perhaps you had better take her into another room. Sir
William is decidedly fussy about his bedmates.”