Marian's Christmas Wish Read Free Page B

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.