“I do,” he said, as solemnly as any bridegroom.
“Thank you. I don’t know why you should! Now I see that whenever we get together, and at Christmas, especially, the same stories get told, the same things are done. It’s comforting for us, but you must be at wits’ end! I know we couldn’t have stayed at the Fanshawes’, but surely, this isn’t much better for you than their house was for me. Well, safer, of course,” she said thoughtfully. “But not better. My family forgets everything and everyone but their own history, and if you weren’t there when it happened, hearing it retold cannot be a treat. And that is mostly what we do. You must have felt so alone. Even when I was so misused by the Fanshawes, I had you as my ally. Your only ally here has been my beetle-loving brother-in-law. Perhaps as the others marry it will get better, but as for now? I do apologize.”
He smiled. “Don’t,” he said. “It was churlish of me to complain. I think I only did so in order to have my own back at you. Because you were so very right, and it’s hard for me to admit I was wrong. Listen, my love,” he said, his hands on her shoulders as he looked down into her eyes. “There’s not a thing wrong with your family. I didn’t really have one, not as such, and so I didn’t understand. I wasn’t hatched from an egg, but what I grew up with was nothing like this! I had nurses and governesses, and then I was sent to school. When I came home for the holidays—if I came home for the holidays—it was to be left by myself in the nursery.
“Your family is a tightly knit group of people who dearly love each other,” he said. His gray eyes warmed to the color of a summer’s fog as he smiled. “That’s both wonderful and remarkable to me. I can only hope that in time I do something foolish enough, or downright stupid enough, to be included in your family’s ongoing chronicles.”
His voice became slow and serious, and his eyes searched hers. “You wouldn’t be as bright and open as you are if you’d come from a family like mine. I thank your mother and father for nurturing you the way they have done. You screeched at me the other day, and I admit, I was appalled. At least I was until I realized it was because I never learned to love loudly enough. Don’t apologize for your family, be proud of them. I wish we could create the same sort of family together, you and I. I think we only need time enough to do so. Time and love and caring enough. Then, eventually, we will have our own myths and legends and lore to bore our children’s spouses with. If, that is, you’ll bear with me long enough?”
“Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, and went into his opened arms. She hugged him, hard. “I so wish I hadn’t been such a fool.”
“I’m so glad you were,” he said against her hair.
She reared back and glowered at him. “You don’t have to agree!”
He laughed. “Yes, I do. Shall we have another fight? Where will you sleep tonight? You’re running out of sanctuaries, you know, and December is such a cold month. Now, there’s the stuff of stories to keep telling our descendants!”
She smiled. “Yes. True. Jonathan?”
“Mmm,” he said as he dragged her close again and inhaled the camellia she’d pinned in her hair.
“I wish we hadn’t argued.”
“If we had not, how would we have come to this?”
“What have we come to?”
“A beginning,” he said. “I now understand that I must roar at you when I am cross with you, which I imagine I shall be again, in due time. You now know that I freeze solid when I am most upset. Fire and ice. We are a perfect December match, you and I, the very spirit of a wonderful Christmas night—if we can just remember to always add faith and love and joy. We can learn to live with each other, my love. We will.” He bent his head to see her expression. “What do you think?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “We must. For I do love you so much that I cannot bear it when we are at odds.”
“So we shall,” he said. “And as for now? We’ll spend this Christmas with your family, and then, next year, we’ll have them all come and start a new tradition with ours. What do you think?”
She nodded. “I think that’s a grand idea. But it will take more than one new baby to make them give up their traditions. I think we’ll have to come here next year and add to their tradition. All three of us.”
She felt his breath catch.
“It’s so?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, keeping her head down so he couldn’t see her smile. “It might be. It could be. I do wish it would be.”