Title: The Winner's Circle
Author: dancesabove
Rating: K+
Content: Family, romance
Disclaimer: The characters in Foyle's War were created by Anthony Horowitz. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
A/N: Thanks as always to my dear GiuliettaC for wonderful additions/beta work.
"Daddy!" The little girl stamped her foot angrily. It made her soft red-gold hair bob in loose curls around her face. Ellie had been unusually short-tempered today, much to the bewilderment of her father. Although he was somewhat amused by her resemblance to her mother when she was annoyed about something, Christopher was relieved to note that bad grace usually lasted only a very short time in both females.
Foyle turned. "What is it now?" he asked humorously.
"Dis place!" the child demanded, pointing at a shop window with a display of draperies and accoutrements of interior decoration.
He wrinkled his brow, perplexed, not having noticed anything in passing that he thought would be of even fleeting interest to his easily distracted daughter. They really did need to be getting home in time for dinner…
Ellie stamped again, and he suppressed a laugh.
"All right, all right!" he strolled back to where she was gazing into the window, her fingers glued to the pane on each side of her head.
Oh... he thought. So that's it.
There stood an Ellie-sized horse, most probably made of plaster, but adorned with some variety of shimmering metallic leaf (yellow foil, perhaps?)—but it looked like a horse of gold. Its red velvet saddle set it off quite splendidly before a red and gold curtain, in which the tiniest suggestion of a horseshoe pattern was evident.
The child looked up at him with sparkling and excited eyes.
"Pretty pony, Daddy!"
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" he said, hand coming down to rest upon the small shoulder as he bent.
Christopher's daughter nodded vigorously. Since her blue eyes had learned to focus, any image of a horse seemed to enchant her—magazine photograph, calendar picture—even the worn-out mare who pulled the milk cart through their part of Hastings. Foyle wondered idly where the closest stables were…
"We'll be late for dinner if we don't hurry up now," he whispered into her ear, lifting the three-year-old and swinging her onto his back before breaking into a gentle play-trot.
Ellie giggled delightedly, her little arms tightening around her father's neck as she joyously accepted him as a substitute steed.
Their neighbourhood, a winding lane only a few hundred yards from the Old Town, was hilly. Christopher was so out of breath as their house hove into view, and his rider so thrilled, that Samantha, waiting anxiously on the front steps, forgave them their several minutes' tardiness for dinner.
"Look at the pair of you!" Grinning, Sam helped Ellie down and, once they were all inside the hallway, patted the child's small behind with an instruction to run along and wash her hands. She flashed a glance at Christopher that seemed to say that he was as hopeless as the child, but then, impulsively, she hugged him. He sighed contentedly in her embrace, happy as he so often was these days: a comfortable home; enjoying his new work; his son safe. And he had a miracle of a wife and a winsome little girl who was usually well behaved.
"I must have a word with you about this young lady," he intoned with pretended gravity, causing a suspicious Ellie to scamper back and push herself between them, determined not to be discussed, or excluded from parental hugging.
Indulgently, the adults parted to make room for their small girl, then, due attention lavished, ushered her towards the dining room. Sam hastened to the kitchen, suddenly remembering the vegetables left simmering on the hob.
"What young lady?" Ellie wanted to know suspiciously, as Christopher lowered her into her little wooden high-chair and pushed her closer to the dining table.
"You know perfectly well 'what young lady'," Sam chimed in as she sailed past with a serving dish of potatoes and placed it on the table.
"Need any help?" Christopher asked her, but she shook her head.
"No, you go on and sit. But you can carve the chicken."
"Mmm! Chicken!" Christopher looked at Ellie with teasing, enlarged eyes and upraised eyebrows. She giggled.
At last Sam brought in some peas and a plate of bread rolls and said, "There!"
Her husband quickly rose to seat her. She shook her head slightly in wonderment at the old-fashioned gallantry—in the four years of their marriage, it had not abated. Sam wagered that not many wives still received such treatment, in their home or out of it. She squelched a sudden smile and turned to Ellie.
"I understand, my girl, that you were not quite as good today as you might have been?"
"Mommy," the tot told her importantly, "you are talking and we haven't even said our prayers."
Sam and Christopher burst out laughing, and their daughter looked at them with bemusement, but also with some measure of naïve delight at having caused their laughter.
"You're perfectly right, sweetheart," her father said, still chuckling. "Your mother sets store by these things. Why don't you give a blessing?"
Not one to shirk a challenge, Ellie made a tight fist round her spoon and screwed her eyes up, concentrating.
"For what we are about to eat…" prompted Sam gently.
"Maider Law Makeus Tooly Fankle!" completed Ellie decisively, regarding the assembled company in triumph.
Christopher's face crumpled into a broad grin that warmed Samantha in places best not mentioned at the dinner table. "Wull, there's my girl!" he widened his eyes. "Where would we be without the law?"
Thereupon he stood and carved the chicken.
The mystery of Ellie's grumpy behaviour earlier in the day was somewhat solved by her inability to eat with her usual enthusiasm. Though Sam adjudged it only a mild cold, she read Ellie her favourite book—one with numerous colourful illustrations of horses—and tucked her in a little earlier than usual.
Coming down the stairs as quietly as she could, she found Christopher sitting with a book before the hearth. She had been so stealthy—a new skill acquired since Ellie's birth— that her husband wasn't aware of her as she stood in the frame of the old parlour entryway and watched his half-profile in the mellow light for a moment. He just seemed to get more handsome to her every year, and she especially loved the pensive, almost penetrative cast of his features when he was lost in thought about something.
He had put the book down and leaned forward with splayed hands toward the fireplace, though at this time of year there was no fire. Then Sam felt a leap in her stomach as he suddenly put his head down in his hands.
"Darling!" she hurried to him and knelt beside him. He looked up at her with surprise, a hint of a smile beginning on his lips.
"You looked so forlorn, there, for a moment..." she blustered, sensing that he was all right now… still, the episode had shaken her.
At first Christopher didn't speak, just tilted his head to indicate that she should sit on the settee beside him. Then he smiled at her, a look of love in his eyes.
"It's like this," he began painstakingly, stroking a stray tendril of her light hair back into its upsweep. "Nnnot many men… can say to themselves, as often as I can…, 'I must be the most fortunate man in the world.' But every time I think it, there's a part of me that remembers… hhhow I nearly deprived myself of any of it. And I just get overwhelmed with... I don't know. Something. A sadness for what I would not have had..."
Christopher had looked down, and when he raised his eyes to Sam's she saw tears in them. "Foolishness…" he murmured.
Sam shook her head adamantly and pulled his head to her shoulder. Her hand softly passed over his hair and brow, and they sat for nearly a minute in the evening quiet.
"Christopher."
Something about her tone made him raise his head to look at her again.
"What would you say if I told you we were going to have a baby?"