I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,129

an instruction to read Persuasion.’

‘What?’

‘He—’

Jack was interrupted as the noise level in the room rose; people were being drawn to the windows and then started to pour out of the French doors into the grounds.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Mary. Her first thought was a fire, or some other sort of an emergency. She saw Luke and Bridge ahead waving them forward so she and Jack joined the throng, moved outside onto the terrace and straight into a blizzard of snow.

The flakes were the size of feathers, drifting down to the ground, defying the sun to melt them; the air was full of them dancing like tiny ballerinas from Swan Lake. Robin’s joyful yell sounded from nearby. ‘I knew it. I knew he’d show up to his own funeral. He said he would.’ Robin turned a slow full circle, his mouth a deep, blissful curve of wonderment, his arms out, hands open, catching them as they fell.

Charlie. The Figgy Hollow Six were all here, present and correct.

Jack placed a gentle finger on Mary’s chin, turned her to face him. He swallowed, kept a picture of that Burberry knight forefront in his mind.

‘You pierce my soul, Mary Holly Clementine Padgett. I am half-agony, half-hope. Tell me not that I am too late. If you had any feelings for me, have they gone forever? I offer myself to you.’

He saw Mary’s mouth drop open, her soft, full lips painted a dark rose pink that he really really wanted to kiss.

‘It’s misquoted to fit,’ Jack went on. ‘I’m no Captain Wentworth, I’m a posh cowardly twit but you are every bit Anne Elliot: proper, capable, worthy, a blossom. I read the book cover to cover. It was lovely. You are lovely. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman because I can’t get you out of my head. Am I too late?’

Snow was landing on her long dark eyelashes, her cheeks, her hair. He was sure he could hear the beat of her heart, or maybe it was his own beating loudly enough for two, galloping like the steed of a knight. His hands came up to cup her face and his head bent. He tasted snowflakes on her lips.

* * *

Luke and Bridge stood with the others, in awe and delight, the snow falling now as heavily as if someone in the sky had split a giant pillow and was shaking goose down onto them.

Luke turned around for a second then gave Bridge a nudging alert.

‘I think you just might have lost your new PA,’ he said.

Bridge looked behind her, saw Jack and Mary in a tight embrace, bodies pressed together, snogging like teenagers, oblivious to everything except their magical snowy world of two.

‘Halle-bloody-lujah,’ she said.

The Following Christmas

Epilogue

Mary peeled off a first-class stamp and stuck it in the corner of the envelope containing Robin’s Christmas card. She hoped he would be okay, this first Christmas without Charlie. They rang each other a lot to talk and he was doing well, considering. But then Robin had a fantastic circle of friends who looked out for him and cared for him. He was spending Christmas Day with Charlie’s nephew Reuben, who was, according to Robin, a virtuoso in the kitchen. Reuben would be chef-ing to impress, as he would be cooking for Bridge too.

She and Reuben had been seeing each other since they first met at Charlie’s funeral. ‘Love at first sight,’ Bridge had said, something about as expected as the freak blizzard. She had been a swooning mess of dribble for days afterwards, not to mention insecurity, but that was what new love did to people, made them live through that knife-edge uncertainty, sleep-robbing anticipation, trying to second-guess what the other was thinking. A rite of passage; and when the ship did steady, ironically that was the heady phase people hankered for again. As Anne Elliot in Persuasion so masterfully put it, When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.

Mary knew this first hand, because she’d had it with Jack for too long, but then it was his turn. For once, she’d been the one holding the cards. She knew she was in love with him, he conveniently didn’t know that she’d been mooning over him for four years; it had been his time to work for it and worry that she felt the same, to stress over the uncertainty and parity.

She thought Bridge might have been annoyed with her for messing her about and leaving so soon after