This is Christmas.
Marguerite St. Just's mother had a tiny wooden angel, carved for her by a sickly uncle her children had never known, that she kept packed carefully away until the first day of December and that then sat in state on the mantle until Epiphany had come and gone. It had gilt wings, a harp strung with thread, and a slip of faded, frayed white silk for a sash, and Marguerite loved to be lifted to the mantle and stare at the tiny smile and the sharp folds of the gown. The first Christmas after her mother died, her father unpacked it at the proper time and returned it to its place on the mantle - and Marguerite saw him, nearly every night, touch the angel before he went to sleep, and stand silent before the cold hearth, weeping.
So a few days before Christmas she woke up in the night and carefully, silently, pushed a stool to the hearth, stood on tiptoe and balanced at last on the grate, and snatched at the angel. She kept it beneath her pillow and whispered to it and cried, and she hid it there to keep her father from his sorrow.
When he noticed the loss her father was frantic, and Marguerite, frightened and trembling, finally told him where the angel was hidden...and then her father knew something, and he took his little daughter in his arms, and they replaced the angel together. Then he held her and rocked her, and taught her something about memory, and tears, and love beyond forgetting.
This is Christmas.
Percy was frightened by the loud crowds at the holiday markets, and the heady scents at the cathedral, and the sweet cakes sat like stone in his stomach and made him ill. His father took him grimly, deliberately, as one performs a duty one does not expect to do well, and like a student set a lesson he know he cannot complete Percy peered hesitantly at the stalls and the toys and the confections, and under his father's eye he uncertainly chose a gift for himself, a gift for his father, a gift for his mother. His father bought a mug of the fragrant gluhwine and drank it swiftly; he handed Percy a flagon to warm his hands but would not let him drink it.
On Christmas day the child opened the carved horse he had chosen, wrapped in brightly colored paper by the servants, and handed his father the fine writing paper for the letters his father never wrote. Then he placed his small hand in his father's and they climbed together to the attic of the lodgings. It was a quiet day for his mother; she sat unmoving when he placed the book in her hands, placed her hands unresistingly where he put them as he paged through it, looked where he pointed as he showed her the beautiful pictures, the elegant watercolors. And when he was done his father lifted him and he kissed her cold cheek, and she looked at him with a dim irritation worse than any passion.
That afternoon he slipped from the house and found his way back to the market, and with a coin stolen from his father's pocket bought a warm flagon of wine. He sat on the steps of the cathedral and breathed the dusky citrus scent and hugged the warmth to him, though a sip had told him that he wanted nothing more of the bitter brew. And the bells tolling the hour had a sweetness that hurt him, and many revelers paused in their laughing and singing to spare an uncertain glance for the well-dressed little boy shivering on the cathedral steps, tears falling into his hot wine. He did not go home until the sun was setting, and was unsurprised to find no one had missed him.
This is Christmas.
Her embroidery is knotted, her drawing lacks proportion, her verse never scans, and her pocket money has been spent three times over for a leather-bound notebook for Armand. And so Marguerite squirms in an agony of humiliation when Suzanne gives her an elegantly wrapped package, a book of beautiful poems. There is an unspoilt sweetness in her friend's eyes, a sincere love in her embrace, and Marguerite knows that Suzanne knows the secret shame of her turned frocks and darned stockings, knows that Suzanne expects nothing in return for this gift that would have cost Marguerite's father a month's wages.
But in spite of herself Marguerite lies awake at night, wracking her brains for a gift, an idea. Suzanne's birthday was in the springtime and so Marguerite had saved for weeks for picnic delicacies, and the girls had spent a glorious Sunday afternoon by a secret glade Marguerite had found. But there was nowhere to picnic in the December snow, and no flowers and delicacies to gather now. And to take her mind off her failure, Margot slips to an alcove where a candle will not be noticed, and opens her book, and reads the poems to herself...and finds herself laughing at her own interpretations.
Two days later she draws Suzanne into an empty room, seats her in a brocade chair, slips behind a makeshift curtain, and reemerges in a costume culled from the frocks of girls already gone home for the holidays. She reads poem after poem, sly or furious or pathetic, and Suzanne, eyes wide in delight, laughs or gasps or weeps on cue, and at the end claps until her hands are sore.
This is Christmas.
They spend it in Paris, for the first time in many years, and for the first time in many years Percy forgets his promise to himself, and when his father says something he flashes back, angrily.
And Algernon responds in anger, and words are said that are better not, and then Algernon withdraws into the coldness that Percy cannot pierce and only knows to match with his own icy scorn. And Percy is a hot-headed youth, spoiled to believe that he can have whatever he wants except his father's love, and what he wants now is safety, is warmth, is smiles without obligation attached. And like a much younger boy he climbs from his window and runs along half-familiar Paris streets in a gathering snowfall, and fetches up at last, winded and blue with cold, against a humble but warmly lit flat in a neighborhood desperately poor and as desperately respectable.
Marguerite gapes at him when she opens the door.
"Percy!"
And Percy is still wise enough now to know better than charm or flippancy. He meets her eyes and is simply her friend.
"Can I stay here, a while?"
She watched him uncertainly, and something softened in her face, and she took his hand and drew him in.
"Armand, Papa...this is Percy, my friend."
And that is how he meets the studious brother, suspicious at first and then warming, surprised at how he laughs at this young aristo's jokes. This is when he speaks to the thoughtful father, who does not need to threaten or hint but merely smiles at the boy with a quiet trust that raises in Percy an obscure but powerful desire to be good to this man's daughter. This is the first Christmas when he learns that fires, and presents, and warmed wine are things to be enjoyed, and he stays until dark, learning French carols and family games, and goes home in the dark warmed by wine and laughter and something it will take him many years to put a name to.
This is Christmas.
"If you let go, I'm going to go flying. There's more weight to this dress than in most of your body."
"It's the miracle of centrifugal force. I'm rather tempted."
"Percy!"
He has a roguish smile that he saves particularly for those women who could be charmed by a roguish smile. That is not the smile he gives her now - it's a frank grin, that only she ever sees. Marguerite swats him, gently.
"This dance calls for only a certain amount of spinning. If you're trying to make me dizzy and look silly, you're succeeding at both. If you're trying to dance, you're rather failing."
Without saying a word, he begins slowly to release one hand...and Marguerite feels herself spinning wildly to the left.
"Percival!"
By the time the song ends he is grinning again, and Marguerite glowers at him under her disheveled curls.
"I'm sitting this one out...I need air."
"Tsk. All that robust French blood and can't take a little exercise..."
She takes his hand absentmindedly and, with the practiced motions of a little sister, twists his pinky finger until he whimpers an apology. Smiling smugly, she releases him and he follows her, suitably chastened, onto the balcony.
It is a clear night, sprinkled with stars, and somewhere not too far away a group is singing carols. The clock chimes the hour and Marguerite leans against a balustrade damp with snow.
"I'm Cinderella tonight, you know...I need to leave in time for midnight mass with Armand."
"I shall gather up any errant shoes. I know how you would feel about being pursued by monarchy."
"Mmm." She tosses her head back, lifting her hair to let the frosty air trickle along her shoulder blades. He follows her gaze, and speaks softly.
"And they followed the star..."
She turns to him, smiles.
"I was thinking of the shepherds, out under the sky."
Percy grins again.
"Well, that's sense, isn't it? I care about the kings...you the peasants."
It's still a jest, and she laughs...but there's an uncertain note in the laughter, and she's suddenly conscious that his suit does not match, in cut or expense, her thrice-mended gown. It's invisible here in the darkness, but it would have been plain in the ballroom.
She tells herself it is only the heat that makes her pull away when he lays his hand, questioningly, on hers. And that only the chill made her shiver at his touch.
This is Christmas.
The crowded church, all the tenants craning to see her, her fumbling pauses as she begins again and again to make the sign of the cross and stops herself just in time. The strangeness of the English carols, like a thick bland taste in her mouth.
The crowded balls, full of endless introductions and women who can express more scorn with an eyebrow than she could have declaiming a dozen pages. The one allowed dance with Percy - they are, after all, newlyweds - and then the endless trips round the floor with men who either ogle or ignore her.
The crowded shops, servants to carry her purchases, shopkeepers bowing, the curious glances boring into her back every time she tells them where to send the bill. She finally takes off her gloves, tired of the smirks of the women who assume her a mistress. Her wedding ring seems to burn her hand.
The crowded home, pocked with mistletoe and holly and ivy, servants in every corner, a respectful "If my lady desires anything..." chasing her into every secret corner and secluded chair.
By the time the last guests leave, she feels like a hunted thing. Percy vanishes after the last carriage, and she feels only a deep and abiding relief; Armand is already asleep, the servants busy elsewhere, and like a fox scarcely believing its luck she finds her way to her bedroom unaccosted, and locks the door behind her, blessing whatever harried cook or housekeeper has pressed her timid maid into service.
She undresses herself, brushes out her own hair, sings "Il Est Ne" to herself like a lullaby until her pulse slows and her breathing settles. She is homesick passionately, homesick for a home that has not existed for years - she misses her father with an ache that leaves her breathless, misses the school pageant and the red gown she wore when she was sixteen. She is tired enough to weep with exhaustion and terribly afraid that if she starts she will never stop.
And she has wrapped herself in the tattered shawl she wore against the Channel winds, because it smells of home and knowing who she is, and she is sitting before her fire watching Paris burn in the flames when there is a knock at the door.
"I've done it myself, Louise. Thank you."
"Marguerite...it's me."
She breathes deep.
"Percy...I want..."
"Just for a minute. Please."
She sighs again, rises, unlocks and opens the door.
He stands there like a child, stocking feet beneath a dressing gown, the same naked hope in his eyes as that day long ago. He is holding a small box that she knows - from the ragged corners - he has wrapped himself. And two steaming flagons balanced precariously in his other hand, one ready to spill.
"If you could, um, take that, I'm about to..."
She snatches at it hastily, and breathes in the scent.
"Wine! Percy, this smells glorious..."
He smiles, sidling in and bumping the door closed behind him with one foot.
"I know the real Christmas isn't until tomorrow, but I wanted...I always used to drink this, Christmas Eve, wherever we were. And I thought...I tasted it first in France, up in the north..."
The steam spirals into her eyes, and surely that's where the tears are coming from. She blinks up at him, smiles, and nods to him to follow her to the hearth. She sets the flagon on the floor and is ready to follow it when he holds out his hand abruptly, with the ungainly motions of a much younger man. There is none of his self-confidence here as the lord of the manor or the leader of men...he is the boy she met in the courtyard, older than his years and so afraid to be wrong.
"This is for you."
So much of the time here she is playing a role, Lady Marguerite Blakeney, as scripted and stage-managed as any part in her resume. So much of the time she is alone, eluding the servants in a strange game of hide-and-seek, watching the road with a mute and frightened appeal, knowing how terribly easy it is for her to lose the only two people she has left. And it is such rare strange moments that she stands here, with him, with her lord, her husband, her lover.
Her friend.
She takes it with a smile, and opens it with her eyes on him. And only when she feels threadbare silk against her fingers does she look down to see her mother's angel.
"They auction off...for funds, you see. But I know where they store it, before it's appraised."
Her eyes shoot up to him, wide and questioning, anxiety turning quickly to anger.
"I didn't take any risks!" he forestalls her, hastily. "Hardly any guards, and they never knew I was there. There's some more...Armand told me what was most important, the papers and such. I was afraid that could have been broken, but I found it, under a pile of dishes..."
In her mind's eye she is seeing the stripped apartment, the cold hearth, the wreck of the home she had known for so long, seeing the little things she had found one by one and made their own sold to strangers with cold eyes and greasy pawn-brokers with dirty hands. But in her hands she is holding her mother's angel, and sweet-smelling steam is in her eyes, and as the tears spill over and splash down her cheeks her friend is suddenly grasping at her shoulders, his voice full of apology.
"Margot, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...I know how you loved it, and I wanted you to have it..."
She takes a deep breath, dashes at her eyes with one hand, finds the strength to smile at him.
"Percy, it's..."
She has to choke a sob.
"Thank you."
She draws in air again, turns away, sets it, gingerly, among the holly on the mantelpiece. And then turns to him again, her cheeks wet and her nose reddening and her lips trembling, and she takes his breath away. When she kneels beside the fire, he kneels beside her as if entranced.
She hoists the flagon, and through her tears grins.
"A toast. Happy Christmas, Percy."
Shakily, he smiles back, and taps his mug against hers. The stolid earthenware makes a dull, heavy sound that, absurdly, makes them laugh.
"Happy Christmas, Margot."
He leans against the armchair and she leans against his shoulder, and wraps the warm old shawl around them both. He pulls one arm around her and she winds one hand in his. And this is home.
This is Christmas.