XXV

Jean loved Christmastime. She loved the joy in the warm air, she loved the songs, she loved the rituals and traditions, she loved the excitement of the children, and she loved that in all the years she'd been without a family of her own, she was able to feel part of everyone else's.

This year was very different than all those in the past, of course. Christopher had sent her a present, which was very sweet, and she'd of course already sent ones to him and his wife, Ruby. She sent one for Jack, as well, for Christopher to forward on to his wayward younger brother.

But Jean did not have a tree of her own to decorate and place gifts under this year. She had always put one up for Doctor Blake. He never bothered with any of it, but she knew he had enjoyed seeing it. The ornaments were old and beautiful. He once told her they had belonged to his wife; some she had brought over from France and some she had painted herself. Jean thought they were beautiful and she'd kept them when Doctor Blake died. Now she was even gladder that she had.

Lucien had ordered an enormous tree for St. Catherine's to sit in the corner by the door and, at Jean's request, he had ordered a much smaller one for the rectory. And a week before Christmas, she had surprised him with the ornaments that had once belonged to his father that she had kept. They decorated the tree together and he told her the most wonderful stories about all the ornaments he remembered from his childhood. He'd nearly begun to cry when it was all said and done. They sat on the sofa together, snuggled up and sharing a bit of Lucien's whiskey—he only drank with her nowadays—and gazed at their beautiful tree.

Today, however, it was time to decorate the big tree inside the church. Jean had collected her prized flowers from both her garden at home and the rectory to create the most beautiful displays she could imagine. Lucien was up on a ladder stringing the lights and tinsel.

"Did you used to do this all yourself?" she asked him, wondering how he'd ever managed.

"Oh no, the volunteers would usually take care of everything. I didn't care at all," he told her.

"But now you do care?"

He smiled down at her from where he stood atop the ladder. "Yes. Now I care. When the inquiries about the decorations started coming in, I thanked everyone for the offer and politely declined. I thought it would be more fun for us to do it ourselves."

"Yes, it is nice," she agreed.

Lucien came down from the ladder and stepped back to examine his work. Jean joined him, resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her waist. "I think it's looking alright, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so. But you're missing a patch up there of the tinsel."

"Where?" he asked somewhat frantically.

She laughed, unable to help herself. "I'm teasing. You've done a wonderful job, Lucien."

He turned and just beamed at her, his hands resting loosely on her hips.

Jean in turn placed her hands on his chest, doing her best to ignore the white collar denoting his position that they both flouted nowadays. "What are you smiling at?" she asked.

"You. I do love it when you say my name, Jean."

She felt herself blush and smile in return. She liked it when he said her name, too. "Enough of that for now," she chided, patting his chest and stepping away. "I'll go get that next box of decorations for the storage cupboard."

"Need any help?"

"No, I can manage," she replied.

Lucien watched as Jean walked away through the nave of the church to the hallway leading to the storage room. He quite enjoyed how she walked. The extremely seductive swish of her hips. Christ, she was beautiful. It boggled the mind to think that he now quite regularly got to hold her in his arms and call her by her name and hear her call him Lucien and smile at him. He loved her quite desperately, and the tenuous barriers that still kept them apart were in great danger of shattering. Part of him was terrified of that, of crossing the line and breaking his vows wholly and completely. But part of him—a much bigger part, if he was honest with himself—was aching to crash through that divide and be with her properly.

At any moment of any given day, there was a refrain in Lucien's head, calling out to him, calling out to her: I want you, I need you, I love you. Thus far, he had been able to resist giving it voice. He did not know how much longer he'd be able to. How much longer he'd bear keeping himself from her.

He shook himself. Enough of that for now. There were things to do. A tree to decorate. And though she'd said she was teasing, Lucien could see now that there was actually a patch of the tree he'd missed with the tinsel.

Jean returned soon enough, carrying an enormous box. Lucien rushed to help her. "Here, give me that," he offered.

"I told you, I can manage," she insisted.

"Alright, have it your way," he conceded.

She carried the box all the way over to the tree, though he did hover nearby in case she faltered. She didn't, of course. Jean never faltered. She knew what she was about. She could do anything.

"Right, this box has the ornaments and some garland for other parts of the church if you want to get a start on that," Lucien suggested.

Jean nodded and took the long lines of shimmering garland out of the box and carefully took them over to one of the side chapels. Lucien got started with the ornaments. These weren't nearly as nice as the ones Jean had brought for the little tree at the rectory. He couldn't even put into words what it meant to him that she had saved his mother's ornaments. Of course, she hadn't known that at the time. But she had wanted to save those decorations from her time with his father. She'd told him how she would decorate a tree by herself every year and Dad would only ever say that it looked nice. But apparently he'd told Jean a story or two about some of the ornaments and those stories made them special to her. They were special to him, too. He could still see it in his mind's eye, helping his mother take each delicate glass bauble out of the box, unwrapping them from their paper protection and hanging each one carefully up on the tree. The tree was always small and set up on a table in the front window of the house, he recalled. There were glass balls from France, there were porcelain bells hand-painted by his mother, and there was even one that he'd written his name inside. He'd gotten to show that to Jean. She was amazed she'd never noticed it before, in all the years she'd been putting it up on a tree.

Thinking about Jean made Lucien want to be with her. So, under the guise of checking on her progress, he abandoned his task and went to the shadowy chapel off to the side where she was humming to herself and hanging garland.

"How's it going?" he asked, approaching her from behind.

"Oh just fine. Do you think the gold looks alright here?" she asked in return. Her arms were stretched up as she secured the garland on the molding that framed the chapel entrance.

"Beautiful," he replied. Though he was more admiring her than the garland.

Jean tacked up the garland and then turned to face him. "Look what else I found," she said, holding up something in her hand.

He took a step closer to see what it was. The light was quite dim over in this little corner of the church. "Is that mistletoe?"

"I think it is," she said with a light laugh. "Some of those volunteers must have hidden it amongst the decorations. Heaven knows what for."

"Well, I think it's obvious what for," he replied.

She hummed in agreement. "True." Jean spun the little dried sprig in her fingers. "My very first kiss was under the mistletoe just before Christmas."

"Oh? Was that with your Christopher?" he asked, delighting in the image of Jean, young and lithe and lovely and blushing as she had her very first kiss.

"No, actually. It was a boy in my class named David. We were eight years old. We both had older brothers and sisters, and he told me that his sister said when you see mistletoe, you're supposed to kiss. So I told him to go ahead and do it, and he did," she laughed. "Not the most proper kiss in the world, but it was very sweet. Poor thing couldn't look me in the eye for a year after."

"Well, I'm sure he was just nervous. All boys are awkward around girls when they're young."

Jean scoffed, "I can't imagine you ever were."

"I just hid it better than the others," he whispered conspiratorially.

She laughed at that. And then, without any other warning, Jean held the mistletoe up over their heads, got up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.