The Christmas Child

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‘You’re mad!’

‘No. Fairy godmother or angel of mercy. Either will do me so take your pick. You’re going to get a make-over, and you’re going to like it. And even if you don’t, I’m pretty sure James will.’

No, he wouldn’t. Mattie’s thoughts were mutinous. He picked me because I’m comfortable, soothing, not a raver. A mouse.

‘He proposed to me as I am,’ she pointed out tartly. ‘Warts and all.’

‘And full marks for playing your cards right! I told you to, remember?’ Dawn grinned back at her. ‘But your transformation will be the icing on the cake as far as he’s concerned. Haven’t I always told you you could be really gorgeous if you put your mind to it and stopped dressing like your own grandmother? Now I’m going to prove myself right.’

A vivid flash of memory. Her mother buttoning her into yet another frilly dress, tying ribbons in her hair. Sitting back on her heels surveying the unpromising result with an exasperated frown. ‘I don’t know why I bother—stand up straight, child, and stop scowling! Why can’t you be more like your little friend, Dawn? I don’t know where you got your plain looks from—certainly not from my side of the family!’

For the very first time a stab of defiance had gone through her. What if she were to prove her mother’s opinion of her irredeemable plainness wrong? Could she? Maybe with her best friend’s advice on clothes that might actually suit her instead of merely keeping her decently covered she could look a little more interesting?

But the three days they’d spent in London had left her with very mixed emotions. Arriving home late yesterday evening with what seemed like a trailer-load of exclusive carrierbags, a bucketful of cosmetics, seventy-five per cent less hair and a severe hole in her current account, she’d begun to have serious doubts.

Without her friend’s enthusiasm, energy and sheer pushing power she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the exercise.

True, her hair felt better for being styled into a sleek, jaw-length bob. It looked better, too. Shinier, the colour a richer shade of chestnut. But the clothes she’d been dragooned into buying—she wasn’t too sure about them; not sure at all, if she was honest.

She didn’t feel like herself any more. James wanted a quiet, unobtrusive wife to cope with the business entertaining he had to do, to stop other women making a play for him because after the Fiona fiasco he was off the lot of them. Would he call the whole thing off when he saw her like this because a tarty-looking wife was not what he wanted?

She glanced down at the narrow, butter-soft, cream-coloured leather trousers, the high-heeled ankle boots that admittedly made her legs look longer and more elegant than they really were, and shivered.

And if he did call the wedding off, would that be such a bad thing? The thought edged its way into her brain and stuck there.

She’d probably overreacted to the way her father had neglected to give her even a tiny hint of his far-reaching future plans, she thought with a miserable flash of insight. She’d put her whole future happiness on the line when she’d agreed to such a sterile relationship with a man who could never love her.

It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if she couldn’t love him, either. But she could. And did.

When the train finally arrived she scanned the alighting passengers, chewing on the corner of her lower lip, saw her father and straightened her shoulders. He would have walked straight past her until she touched his arm and said with unprecedented sharpness, ‘You could have used your mobile and warned me your train was running an hour late. And unless you want to end up as an accident statistic you can drive home.’

She’d been brooding over his insulting secrecy, the way he hadn’t bothered to so much as mention his future plans to her, not even when she and James had told him of their marriage, and her annoyance spiked her voice. But Edward Trent didn’t comment on her less than welcoming greeting.

His eyes widened. ‘Mattie? Good Lord, I didn’t recognise you—what have you done to yourself?’

Which didn’t augur well. What if James’ reaction was the same? Incredulous shock!

He scrutinised her under the platform lights. ‘It’s not like you to wear bright colours—you look like a stranger! And you didn’t get that fancy outfit in one of the local shops.’

‘Dawn and I went up to London for a day or so,’ she responded stiffly. He was grinning now. Actually grinning. Did she look that funny? She must do. He never commented on what she was wearing and he certainly didn’t burst into laughter at her appearance.

‘I might have known she’d be behind it.’ He chuckled. ‘She’s always been a flashy dresser. Pretty with it, mind. By the way, like the way you’ve done your hair. Cut some of it off, have you?’ He started to walk. ‘Let’s get a move on. Damned cold, standing here.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Mattie muttered, following. So it was all right to wear bright clothes, but only if you were pretty! And she most certainly wasn’t!

The fragile confidence in her new appearance, brought to tenuous life by Dawn’s insistence on her visiting a top hair stylist, learning how to apply make-up properly, choosing the designer labels that her friend vowed suited her so well, had never been strong and was rapidly ebbing away completely.

Thankfully, her father was only too happy to take her ignition keys. He didn’t rate her driving skills any more than James did. She settled herself into the passenger seat and sank into her dreary thoughts.

The jaunt to London had been an expensive waste. She should never have let Dawn talk her into trying to turn herself into something she wasn’t. The only sensible thing to do was push the new clothes she’d splurged out on into the very back of her wardrobe and go back to wearing the plain, serviceable things she was used to and felt comfortable in.

And the second sensible thing to do was phone James. Tonight. Explain that she’d reconsidered, call the wedding off.

It was the only course of action to take, she told herself sternly when the car finally swept up the driveway to Berrington House. She couldn’t imagine what had made her accept his cold-blooded proposal in the first place.

But she could. Of course she could, she reminded herself as she stood in the hallway waiting for her father to garage her car. When her father had taken James into his confidence, told him he was thinking of taking full retirement, of selling the family home and moving into an apartment with Mrs Flax to look after him, he had overlooked her entirely, just as if she didn’t even exist.

It had felt like abandonment. Brought back the feelings of betrayal and inadequacy she’d experienced when her mother had walked out all those years ago, never to get in touch again, or remember her birthdays, or even ask how she was.

It had made marriage to James, even a marriage that would be no marriage at all, seem like a haven of security.

She was going to have no part of it.

She could stand on her own, make a life for herself. She could travel, take up private tutoring. With her qualifications she could easily find employment teaching English to Spanish children—or French, German or Italian. She wasn’t the hopelessly vague and impractical creature everyone seemed to think she was.

‘I think you have something to tell me,’ she stated as her father closed the door behind him, dropped his light leather suitcase on the floor and began to unbutton his overcoat.

‘I have?’

‘I think so.’ They were going to have this out before she phoned James to tell him she wouldn’t marry him. Tonight she was going to take the initiative for probably the first time in her life, even if the thought of turning James down did make her feel weak and tearful. ‘Retirement, handing over the shares in the business to me, an apartment in town for you and Mrs Flax. Does that jog your memory?’

‘Ah.’ He had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘So James told you. I would have told you—’

‘When?’ she broke in. ‘When the new owners moved in here and you finally remembered I existed, couldn’t really be left behind like a piece of unwanted furniture they could either make use of, or throw on the nearest skip?’

If possible, he looked more incredulous than he had at the station when confronted by her new appearance. He wasn’t used to her standing up for herself.

‘Nothing like that!’ he answered gruffly. ‘Look, let’s go through and make cocoa. I fancy an early night, and while we drink it I’ll explain everything.’

Tight-lipped, Mattie led the way to the kitchen and took a bottle of the white wine left over from Christmas out of the fridge and busied herself with the corkscrew. She felt in need of something stronger than the ritualistic bedtime mug of cocoa.

Apart from raising one bushy eyebrow, Edward said nothing, just set about making his own hot drink, and when that was done he found his daughter looking at him almost aggressively over the rim of her glass.

‘Sit down, Mattie. You weren’t meant to feel left out of my plans.’

‘Then why was I?’ she returned, but less sharply. He really did look tired, she thought with a pang, and she normally didn’t have a confrontational bone in her body.

She did as he’d suggested and joined him at the table, cradling the bowl of her wineglass in her small, long-fingered hands. ‘Have you reached a firm decision about moving?’ she asked, determined to cool down for his sake.

‘Yes,’ he acknowledged. ‘But only forty-eight hours ago when I found the ideal apartment. Since my GP advised me to take things more easily—no, it’s nothing to worry about,’ he said quickly, seeing the sudden flare of anxiety in her eyes. ‘Problems with blood pressure, nothing that can’t be sorted. But it did start me thinking. James is more than capable of running the business without my input. And I could sell out to him, but I’d rather the shares went to you, stayed in the family.

‘Naturally, I discussed the possibility with him. And this barn of a place—’ he spread his hands expressively ‘—the three of us have rattled around here for too long. I sounded Mrs Flax—Emily—out. I said nothing definite, of course. An apartment in London would be easier for her to cope with. Close to the things that make life more agreeable. Emily and I share several interests—light opera, the theatre, visiting museums, Italian restaurants, that sort of thing. And more of a social life for you, I thought. You spend too much time alone here.

‘And then you and James dropped your marriage bombshell and you were out of the frame where my plans were concerned. What had been vague ideas became a little more solid then. So I spent the week in London. Apartment hunting, meetings with the company solicitor arranging for my shares to be transferred to your name. And I hadn’t mentioned any of this to you.’

His eyes smiled at her. ‘Not because I’d overlooked you, but because nothing was definite, not at that stage. You’re not the most practical person I know, happiest when shut away with your work. I didn’t want you getting into a flap until I’d really decided that the move, if I were to make it, would work.’

‘You thought I’d run around like a headless chicken,’ Mattie commented wryly. It seemed that everyone had an unflattering opinion of her. And no doubt she had earned it. Well, she thought robustly, things were going to change. She was going to change.

She swallowed her wine and poured herself another glass, opened her mouth to tell her father that her marriage to James was off, then closed it again as something inside her tightened into a painful knot.

James himself had to be the first to know of her decision; she owed him that much. She asked instead, ‘So did you find a suitable apartment for you—and Emily?’

Was there more to this than met the eye? Mrs Flax had been with them for years, since Mattie’s mother had gone to pieces after the death of her idolised baby son. A year or two younger than Mattie’s father, the widowed Emily Flax was a capable, still handsome woman, kindly and caring. It would be wonderful if they married. Her father deserved to be happy after the dark years of loneliness.

‘Yes. About a ten-minute walk from James’ house in Belgravia, so we’ll be able to see a lot of each other after you’re married. Did you see much of James while you and Dawn were in London?’

‘No.’

Nothing. As far as she knew he had no idea she’d been away from Berrington for the past few days. Though he might have phoned. She’d check the answer machine for messages before she got in touch with him. The only contact she’d had with him since she’d agreed to marry him had been his calls to keep her up to date with the arrangement he was making: a simple civil ceremony, no fuss, no honeymoon because in the circumstances there was no point—which was unflattering but completely understandable when they both knew their marriage wouldn’t be a real one, she thought, her heart aching.

Her father, on the point of rising, sank back in his seat, a frown pulling his brows together. ‘I can’t pretend I wasn’t delighted when James told me you were to marry. I guess every father wants to hand the safe keeping and happiness of his daughter over to a man he can trust implicitly. But until recently he was engaged to that awful woman. You must have discussed it, of course. But are you sure he can make you happy?’

He could, if he loved her. He could make her the happiest, most ecstatic woman on the planet. But he didn’t. And wearing his wedding ring would make her unspeakably miserable, she knew that now. But time enough to tell her father the whole thing was off in the morning, after she’d phoned James.

‘Let me worry about that,’ she evaded, taking his empty cocoa mug over to the sink. ‘Why don’t you turn in? You did say you needed an early night. It’s gone ten o’clock already.’

And she needed time to mentally reinforce her decision to phone James and tell him she couldn’t marry him, explain that it would be wrong for both of them. Despite what he’d said, he was a normal male, with all the needs that implied. Sooner or later he’d face a temptation he would find almost impossible to resist, he’d meet some gorgeous woman who would make him forget he’d said he wouldn’t stray, make a mockery of his cynical statement that he was off the whole idea of sex.

And if he succumbed to that type of temptation he’d be riddled with guilt because he’d made a promise to her, one that was impossible to keep, and he would suffer because he was an honourable man. And she would suffer, too. Unbearably.

She barely heard her father’s goodnight and only realised she was alone when the silence tortured her nerve-endings. Time to bite the bullet, to quash the foolish, flickering hope that, given time, he could learn to love her, that their marriage could become a real one.

It simply wasn’t going to happen.

Passing through the hall on her way to the study, she slid the silk-covered buttons of her jacket from their moorings and shrugged out of it. The thought of what she was going to have to say to James was making her overheat. She’d be throwing away something so very precious.

Her throat closed up, everything inside her tightening. It was as if she were going to the dentist for a particularly gruelling session of deep-root fillings! Only worse.

She turned to head for the study and the phone but the sound of the main door opening had her swinging back, the sound of James’ voice startling her violently.

‘So you are here. I was worried; you didn’t answer my calls, Mattie—’

His voice faded. Mattie stared at him. Framed by the blackness of the night beyond the open doorway, he looked mysterious, dangerous and compellingly gorgeous. How could she tell him she wouldn’t marry him when she wanted him, adored him, with every atom of her being?