“If you could just place it there,” she murmured, gesturing to the corridor that spilled from the foyer to the main living quarters.
As the young servant climbed the tall ladder to position the arrangement in its respective place, Katherine studied it with her head tilted.
The only kissing to be done under the kissing bough would be servants stealing secret moments; there’d be no kisses for the lady of the manor.
She shoved aside her melancholy, and reached for a cluster of hollies.
A loud knock sounded on the front door, and the red berries slipped from her fingers onto the green bough she’d moved onto.
Katherine furrowed her brow and looked to the front entrance, and then over to Wrinkleton.
The old butler scratched his thinning white hair, head cocked at an odd angle, clearly accustomed to a shocking lack of visitors through the years.
The pounding ceased so that Katherine suspected she might have imagined it, but then that could not account for Wrinkleton hearing the very same…
Another knock.
That sprung Wrinkleton from his shock, and the butler hurried with a step better suited to a man many years his junior. He pulled the door open. The tall, commanding figure in the entranceway froze, hand mid-knock. The gentleman shifted the bundle in his arms.
Katherine stared at the entranceway. Her eyes widened, her heart suspended in a breath at the precious trim frame in the doorway.
She cried out and sprinted across the stone floor. “Aldora!” Her sister just made her way into the foyer when Katherine flung her arms around her sister.
Aldora wrapped her arms around Katherine, and because she was so very lonely, and in need of a lovingly familiar face, she promptly burst into tears. “Wh-what are you d-doing here?” She blubbered like a babe who’d taken its first fall.
Aldora leaned away from her. Through the thick frames of her spectacles, she peered at Katherine, a dark frown on her lips. “How could we not come? We arrived in London only to discover you wed and were whisked off for the holiday?” She pursed her lips, and glanced around with guarded caution in her eyes.
Katherine stepped away from her sister’s comforting embrace, and turned to greet her brother-in-law, Michael.
He stood, with a resolute set to his jaw, and a hard glint in his eyes. He perused the room, and then focused on Katherine. “Congratulations are in order. I’d like to meet your husband,” the clipped words more a command than a congratulations.
Katherine shivered, imagining the steely edge in her brother-in-laws words would drive most men to terror.
“Papa, snow, more snow. I see Papa. I see more.”
Then the veneer of ice melted as Michael’s attention shifted to his and Aldora’s just two-year-old daughter.
He dropped a kiss atop her crown of brown curls. “It’s too cold, Lizzie. We’ll rest, and eat, and then I’m sure your Aunt Katherine would dearly love to play with you.”
Katherine’s heart flipped within her breast as a yearning unfolded in her belly with a life-like force as Lizzie looked to her with impossibly wide brown eyes.
A big smile filled the babe’s chubby, dimpled cheeks, and Katherine’s throat worked up and down.
As if of their own volition, her arms opened. Lizzie struggled against her father’s embrace a moment, until Michael turned her over into Katherine’s arms.
Katherine held her cradled to her heart. She pressed her cheek along the top of Lizzie’s brown curls, and inhaled the unmistakable scent of the child’s innocence. “Oh, sweet Lizzie, how I’ve missed you. Have you come to visit me for Christmas?”
Lizzie nodded against her. “Papa say cakes and tarts.”
Katherine leaned back and nodded solemnly. “Oh, absolutely, cakes and tarts for the Christmas feast. There could be no more perfect treat.”
Lizzie’s grin widened.
From over the top of girl’s head, Katherine noted Wrinkleton. The servant shifted back and forth, with tentative glances stolen about the wide-foyer, as though he feared the castle were on the cusp of being stormed.
“Wrinkleton, will you inform the housekeeper to have the finest guest chambers prepared. My family will be spending Christmas with us.”
Jasper stared down at the neat columns upon the opened ledger. He inked the far right column, and tossed his pen down onto the otherwise immaculate surface of his desk.
Embers from the blazing fire within the hearth cracked and popped in the quiet. Jasper leaned back in the folds of his winged back chair, and stared into the dancing reddish-orange flames.
He was a bloody coward.
Since the moment he and Katherine had returned from their outing in the snow, and she’d slipped her small, fragile hand into his larger one, she’d unleashed an inexplicable panic within him. Jasper had fled her side that day, and avoided his wife.