Regency Christmas Wishes(91)

“Come now!” she said into the first moment of silence that presented itself. “This is hardly fair! Neither Rexford nor Laughton was here then, and they can’t help but be bored to flinders by our reminiscences.”

Her sister shot her a grateful look. But her brothers jeered.

“What?” Harry asked, incredulous. “Speak for yourself, sweetings. Who could resist that tale?”

“And we tell it so well they’d have to see the point. Don’t you, my lord?” George asked. “And you, Laughton?”

“Indeed,” Jonathan said as Laughton also hastily agreed.

“You just don’t want us telling them about that time you ate the mistletoe berries instead of chucking them over your shoulder when you made a wish, as you were supposed to do, Pam. Gad!” Kit said with a shudder. “I’ll never forget how sick you were. Not from the berries, I doubt they had time to sit in your stomach long enough. But from that brew Mama kept pouring into you to get you to relinquish them.”

“Now, now,” his father admonished him, “no more of that, sir, if you please. Some of us are still eating breakfast.”

“What?” Kit cried. “And you with an iron stomach? Taking her part, are you, Father? Don’t you want Rexford to hear what Pam said to Mama—when she could speak again, that is. Well, I remember. She said she never knew she was supposed to pluck them after a kiss, she thought it was after a wish!”

“Worse than that,” Harry said with a grin, “she thought she was supposed to eat them, not toss them over her shoulder.”

“She never could resist a berry,” Kit laughingly agreed. “We told her they were poisonous, but would she listen? Never. Remember?”

“I remembered,” his mother said, shaking her head. “That’s why I told Dr. Foster to check her ears as well as her stomach when he got here.”

The company roared at the old familiar story and Pamela smiled at the memory in spite of herself. She was relieved to see that her husband seemed genuinely amused as well. She was grateful, though she felt uncomfortable now. Her unease wasn’t about any embarrassing tales her loving family could tell him, but because she finally realized what a dead bore he must find them all.

Now that she was aware of the problem, her joy in the day was ruined. The situation didn’t improve as the day went on.

The trip in the sleigh to get the Yule log was enlivened by stories of every other such trip they’d ever taken, back to the first Arthur ancestor who ever strode over English soil, or so Pamela thought in despair. The ho ho ho’s were louder than the thuds of the axe as the Yule log was cut, as the merry company remembered the time Grandfather almost lost his thumb at the same task, and what he said in his own defense.

She and her sisters and the children went on to cut mistletoe, and she had to hear the story of her unfortunate taste in berries again. She was sure someone was telling it to Jonathan too. Then, when the men rejoined them, after they’d hauled the log into the front hall and wrestled it into the hearth in the main salon, she had to watch him endure the stories about how Percival had fallen out of the oak that year when he’d reached for an elusive strand of mistletoe. Then he was regaled with tales of little Cousin Orwell and the mishap in the holly bush, young Mary and her strange reaction to the ivy crown she’d insisted on wearing, and yet again, the story of how her mama and father had met under a ball of mistletoe at a local dance. The story still brought a fond smile to her lips, but she couldn’t help realizing it might not be as fascinating to her husband.

How tedious and unsophisticated he must think her family, she thought sadly as she watched her husband smile at a story her father was telling. Jonathan was so urbane that her father would have no idea that his listener was being bored to flinders. She herself would not have known if he hadn’t told her. She might get angry when her husband responded to anger with that insufferable icy calm, but now she realized concealing his emotions was a gift as well as a powerful weapon. She felt hopelessly outclassed. How could she ever measure up to him?

How unfair he must believe her to be as well, she thought. And with good cause. She resented his highhandedness in forcing her to share the holiday with a previous lover. But here she was, insisting that he pass the holiday with her family, being regaled with stories of family and simple country folk he didn’t have a thing in common with. She’d trimmed his hair because she’d had to endure those nights with the Fanshawes, even before they behaved so badly. He hadn’t said a word of criticism of her family, except in his own defense.