Christmas Rose Read online

  The house had been turned inside out and the nursery was spotless. And all week hired boys from the village had been out cutting greens, and the house looked and smelled like an evergreen forest.

  The weather had been dry and cold, and Madeline shooed the nurse who was carrying Rose ahead of her into the house. Mrs. Rogers was there to greet them, of course, as were some of the servants. The others had placed themselves strategically so that they could catch a glimpse of the baby. They were all hoping that the little orphan would prove just the thing to bring the master and mistress the happiness they seemed to have lost.

  Mrs. Rogers had taken Rose from the nurse, and when Madeline and Jonathan got inside she was lifting her up to let her bat at the mistletoe hanging in the main hall,

  Madeline looked around her. The smell of fir and pine reminded her of the Christmases of her childhood. She had shut those memories away when she had realized she would never be recreating them for her own children. But one whiff had opened the door to that closed room, and all the anticipation and excitement from the past returned.

  “You have done a splendid job decorating, Mrs. Rogers,” said Jonathan.

  “Thank you, my lord. And the nursery is ready for the baby.”

  “Rose, Mrs. Rogers. Lady Rose,” replied Madeline, reaching her arms out for the little girl. “Let me take her up, Jonathan, and get her settled, and then we can have our supper.’’

  “It will be served within the hour, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rogers.” Madeline hurried up the main staircase, murmuring to Rose about her new room, which was “ever so big.”

  “She is a lovely child, my lord,” said Mrs. Rogers.

  “Yes, isn’t she? We were lucky my cousin died, although that is not quite the way I meant to put it,” replied Jonathan with a rueful smile.

  “And you had no idea at all that you were named guardians?’’

  “None at all. She just ... ah ... arrived on our doorstep, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Well, she has come to a good family, lucky child,” said Mrs. Rogers.

  “I think so, Mrs. Rogers. I think so too.”

  Of course they had to visit Madeline’s parents the next day. Both the baron and his lady were speechless with surprise as they were introduced to their new grandchild.

  “But Madeline,” her mother said when she had found her voice. “Wherever did she come from?” She stopped, confused and embarrassed.

  “We are telling people that she is the orphaned daughter of one of Jonathan’s far-flung cousins, and he was made guardian in the will.”

  “You are telling people?”

  “Yes, Mother. The truth is ...” Madeline thought she had been prepared to tell them, but all of a sudden it seemed so preposterous. And what if they couldn’t love Rose the way she herself was beginning to?

  “The truth is,” said Jonathan, quite calmly and matter-of-factly, “that she was left on our doorstep. We thought it only right, however, to tell you the truth.”

  “On your doorstep?” said Madeline’s father. “Why she could be anyone’s child!”

  “We know she was not kidnapped, Father, for we had a constable investigate. But you are right—there is no way of knowing who her mother was, except that she was a good one.’’

  “A good one, to abandon her child!” exclaimed Lady Mansfield.

  “The baby’s clothes were clean and well made, and she wore a little hat that was hand-crocheted and hand-embroidered. And she left her with us, and not on some ash heap. And we are going to keep her, Mother,” finished Maddy in a rush.

  “Well, well, she seems a healthy enough child, Dorothy,” said the baron to his wife. “And it is a little girl. No question of her inheriting the title. And we have wanted another grandchild.” He pulled out his watch and dangled it in front of Rose, who smiled and grabbed it and put it directly in her mouth to start chewing it.

  “You’d better take it back, Father, or you will have her teeth marks all over it,” protested Maddy.

  “Then they will just join her mother’s,” said the baron with a smile. “This was one of your favorite toys when you were little Rose’s age.”

  They all watched the baby teething and drooling for a few minutes, as though it were quite the most intelligent thing she could be doing, and a few tears slipped down Madeline’s cheeks. It felt as though some pattern had been made complete, something made whole, as Rose added her teeth marks to her mother’s. At that moment Maddy realized she was a mother. Unconventionally, suddenly, and miraculously, a mother.

  That night was Christmas Eve, and after an early supper Rose was sent up to bed so that Jonathan and Madeline could wrap her presents. She had needed a whole wardrobe, of course, but Madeline hadn’t been able to resist a silver teething ring and an exquisitely dressed French doll.

  “She’ll break her, you know,” said Jonathan as she unfolded the tissue paper and showed it to him.

  “For now, she will only be to look at.”

  “Good, because I got her this one.” He pulled out a soft rag doll with yellow yarn hair and bright red cheeks and mouth.

  “Oh, Jonathan, she looks ...”

  “Like a tart. I know, I know,” he said with mock despair. “But she is soft, unbreakable, and the only one they had left in the store.”

  They both looked at each other and started to laugh. It was the first time they had laughed together in a long time, and it closed the distance between them better than anything else could have done.

  “Oh, Jonathan, this is so much fun,” said Madeline when she was finally able to stop giggling.

  "It is, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, she won’t know what it is all about anyway, but she’ll love tearing the paper.” Madeline stood up, her arms full of ribbons and paper. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and Jonathan thought she had never looked so beautiful.

  “She will have a lovely Christmas. Her first.”

  “That is right. It is her first, and it will be with us. She won’t remember, of course, but somehow, it is important to me.”

  Jonathan got up and moved over to his wife.

  “Madeline.”

  “Yes, Jonathan?” Just as she looked up, Jonathan leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips. Her eyes opened in surprise.

  “You are under a bunch of mistletoe, Maddy,” he said, unwilling to let her know that she could have been standing under a bunch of straw for all he cared. He couldn’t have stopped himself, for she looked so much like the old Maddy, the girl he had married.

  “Oh.” Madeline blushed. The kiss had been quick and light, but it had awakened memories of their first kisses. She had not wanted Jonathan to touch her for so long, for his touch and her response had reminded her of the uselessness of their loving one another. Other men had kissed her over the years. Some of their kisses she had enjoyed, some not. But she had never gone further than those kisses, whatever the gossips had thought. But now she both wanted and was afraid of wanting Jonathan’s kiss. What if it was merely a whim?

  “I had better go up,” she said, her voice shaky. “Rose wakes early, and I want to see her face when she sees all the presents.” Madeline turned and hurried up the stairs.

  Well, thought Jonathan, that kiss, quick as it was, was the first physical contact they had had in years. Perhaps it was the beginning of something better.

  * * *

  Christmas morning dawned clear and cold. Rose was up with the sun, and the nurse brought her into Maddy’s room just as she had been instructed, Madeline was sitting up in bed with one of Rose’s presents beside her.

  “Just put her here next to me, Nancy.”

  The nurse plopped Rose down, and Maddy handed her the package.

  It went into her mouth, paper and all, of course. Madeline laughed. “No, no, Rosie. It is for chewing, but first we must unwrap it.” She helped pull the paper off, and Rose’s eyes got wide with delight at the shiny silver teething ring.

 
; “And listen,” said Madeline, “there are some lovely beans inside that make it rattle.” Rose grabbed for it and chewed on it contentedly. “Shall we wake your papa?” Maddy asked, almost without thinking. “He has something for you too.”

  Madeline knocked at the connecting door, and Jonathan groaned.

  “Are you awake, Jonathan?”

  “Now I am,” he muttered into his pillow. “Yes, Madeline. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no, Rose wanted to show you her present.”

  “Bring her in.”

  And so Rose and Madeline came in and perched on his bed. Both looked delightfully tousled and informal. “Now where is Papa’s gift for Rosie?” asked Madeline.

  “Right here.” Jonathan reached over the side of the bed. “Here you are, sweetheart. Right into the mouth, paper and all!”

  “Of course. It seems to be what they do at this age.”

  Jonathan retrieved the package and removed the paper. He held the rag doll up in front of Rose. “Good morning, Lady Rose," he said in falsetto.

  Rose dropped the silver ring and put out her hands for the doll. She patted its cheeks and pulled its hair and immediately started chewing on an arm.

  “Oh, poor Miss Jones,” said Jonathan.

  “Miss Jones?”

  “That’s the way I think of her. Miss Jones, no better nor she should be,” said Jonathan with a twinkle in his eye.

  Madeline hit him playfully. “You are terrible, Jonathan.”

  But Miss Jones she remained. Miss Jones came to breakfast with them and watched while Rose mushed her scrambled eggs with her fingers. Miss Jones came to church with them and then came out of church with Jonathan and Rose, who had started to cry at the first Christmas carol. Jonathan felt like one in a long unbroken line of papas carrying their infants out before they disrupted the service.

  Miss Jones came to Grandma and Grandpa’s with them for dinner. And Miss Jones, that night and every night, went to bed with Rose. And indeed, after a week, Jonathan announced that Miss Jones was beginning to look much more respectable, as her paint began to wear off a little. It was just as well, for respectable or not, Rose would not go anywhere without her.

  On New Year’s Eve, after Rose fell asleep, Madeline joined Jonathan by the fire. They had made some visits during the day, and he had been dressed in his blue superfine. But she noticed that he had changed into buckskins and corduroy. He looked so handsome sitting there, quietly drinking brandy by the fire, that she felt a sharp pang of longing. She missed his arms around her, she missed his kisses, and most of all, she missed their lovemaking. But she didn’t know whether he did. There were all those widows, after all.

  “Why have you changed, Jonathan?”

  “It is New Year’s Eve, Maddy. The night for wassailing. I thought I’d go up to the apple orchard with everyone.”

  “Oh, Jonathan, I had forgotten. Can I come with you?”

  “Now, Madeline, remember the trouble we got into the year you got caught!’’

  “Well, I was only twelve! I’m a grown married woman now. Surely I can do what I like.”

  “You’ll have to change,” warned Jonathan.

  She was down in ten minutes, dressed in a worn gown and with an old woolen cloak thrown over her. She had tucked her hair into an old woolen cap, and her eyes were bright with excitement. Jonathan realized he hadn’t seen her look so alive in a long time.

  It was a cold night and there was frost on the ground, so Jonathan reached out and grasped her hand as they walked over the uneven grass to the orchard. Most of their neighbors were there before them, carrying pine torches and guns and bearing buckets of cider.

  They gathered around the oldest of the apple trees, one whose main branches were as thick as a man’s body, and formed a large circle, and Maddy and Jonathan were separated by the jostling, good-natured crowd. Old Jared Cooper started them off, his bass voice booming out as they began to circle the tree:

  “Old apple tree, we’ll wassail thee

  And hoping that them wilt bear

  The Lord does know where we shall be

  To be merry another year.

  To blow well and to bear well

  And so merry let us be

  Let everyone drink up his cup

  Here’s health to the old apple tree!”

  As they circled round, Madeline felt herself a part of a whole larger circle. Generations and generations of villagers had sung this song and poured their cider into the ground around the tree to make it rich and fertile, and so the trees would bear, even the oldest. Any other year she would have been reminded of her barrenness. But this year, with Rose, she felt a part of it all, and she threw her head back and shouted with them, feeling the last of her bitterness leave her with the yelling and the shooting.

  There was, of course, a jug of apple brandy that did not get poured on the ground, but passed around. She and Jonathan drank their share and by the time they had joined hands to return home they were both “fizzy” but with drink or joy they could not have said.

  Jonathan did not let go of her hand even when they were inside the house. They stood there in the hall, hands linked, smiling at one another, the loving feeling of their shared childhood returned to them.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Yes, Maddy?”

  “Perhaps you didn’t notice, but we are standing under mistletoe.”

  “Oh.” He just stood there. Maddy stood on tiptoe and pulled him down for a kiss.

  “Maddy.”

  “Yes, Jonathan?”

  “We could go on kissing here, but it would be much warmer upstairs?" Jonathan ended with a question in his voice.

  Madeline tugged at his hand and led him upstairs. “Your room,” she whispered. “In case Nancy brings Rose in early.”

  They dropped their clothes on the floor and crawled under Jonathan’s comforter. Suddenly they were as shy as newlyweds. Jonathan leaned over and kissed Maddy long and hard. She slid underneath him and ran her hands over his body.

  “Oh, Maddy,” he groaned, and buried his face in her shoulder. She could feel him getting hard against her, and all of a sudden she wanted him, wanted him for his and her pleasure alone—not to make a baby, not to make her feel like she had accomplished what women were supposed to—just to feel him slip inside her and bring them as close together as it was humanly possible to be. She reached down and lightly brushed him with her fingers and he seemed to himself and to her to grow even bigger.

  Their first coupling was quick and fierce. It had been so long for both of them that neither could wait. But they made love twice more that night, each time more slowly, as both realized that they had years ahead of them to enjoy each others’ bodies again and again.

  By the time morning came, neither could tell where one left off and the other began. Her pleasure became his pleasure, and they both smelled and tasted of one another. At one point, in fact, Maddy had licked the sweat off Jonathan’s shoulders, and he had turned over and touched each breast, lifting the nipples gently with his tongue. She had pulled him close, wrapping her legs around him, and that had started off another round of lovemaking.

  As the sun rose, Jonathan looked down at his wife, who was cuddled close into his body. He gave the top of her head a kiss, just to see if she was awake. She turned in his arms and smiled up at him.

  “Oh, Maddy,” he said without thinking, “I have missed you so much these past few years.” He wished he could take the words back almost immediately, for they revealed so much to her. And she had seemingly done very well without him.

  “Have you, Jonathan? Even when you were making love to your widows?”

  Jonathan smiled a wry smile. He was already in, he may as well go all the way. “I never did make love to any of those widows, Maddy. Oh, I kissed a few, but that is as far as it went.”

  The closeness between them was so precious and new that Jonathan had no desire to question his wife along the same lines. He didn’t want to know the truth; nay, he
didn’t care, now that he had her back.

  Maddy was silent a moment. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Lord Wrentham or Sir Humphry?”

  “Whatever happened between you has happened already. I don’t need to know.”

  “You are the more courageous in loving, Jonathan,” confessed Maddy. “I was afraid to tell you how much I had missed you. And my pride may not have let me admit that nothing happened between me and my cicisbeos. Oh, sometimes I wanted it to happen, but just when we were at a dangerous moment something made me stop. I think I still had some hope, buried down deep, that our marriage could return to what it once was.”

  “And what about that hope now, Maddy?” Jonathan asked gently, pushing back a lock of her hair with his finger.

  “Oh, Jonathan, I couldn’t have you touch me, I couldn’t feel like a wife to you and feel such a failure as a woman.”

  “Madeline, I never felt you were a failure. And I have been thinking lately . . . That is ... Perhaps sometimes it is the man who is at fault?”

  “Let us not even think of it again. We have Rose now. I am so grateful you let me keep her.”

  “And I am so happy you wanted to, Maddy.” He glanced out the window, where the sun was shining on the frost-covered fields and trees, making the whole world sparkle. “Look,” he said, and she turned her head. “It is a beginning of another year. I wish you a happy new year, my dear wife.”

  “Happy new year, Jonathan.”

  Chapter 2

  If it had not snowed, if she had not taken Rose out into the garden to see her first snow and make her a little snowman, if she had only sent Nancy out to look for Miss Jones, whom Rose had set down and forgotten in the excitement, if she had not been down on her hands and knees looking behind a bush . . .

  If, if, if, thought Madeline as she sat stiffly on the edge of her bed, looking down into the garden.

  But she had gone out herself, for as she had told Nancy, “I’ll find her quicker.” And she had been on her hands and knees for a moment. Just the moment when the scullery maid came out to empty dirty water from the sink and get a quick hug from the stable lad, who just “happened” to come along.