He pauses. “No, I believe we can do both. First the caroling, and then the party, with only an hour’s ride between them.”
I open my mouth.
“Oh, and decorating. I left off decorating twenty-first-century Thorne Manor so we might do it together. We’ll need to squeeze it in somewhere. That won’t be a problem, will it?”
I open my mouth. What comes out is a soft whine, audible only to the cats.
William looks thoughtful. “Or—and I realize this is a mad thought—but hear me out. Or we could send our regrets on all counts, postpone the decorating, and you could spend the day in bed.”
My mouth opens again.
“No,” he says quickly. “That’s silly. Forget I mentioned it.” He sets the tray before me. “You can’t possibly be tired. It isn’t as if you slept the entire ride home from the ball, so exhausted that you didn’t even stir.”
“I—”
“Didn’t stir despite driving through a blizzard, with me cursing the entire way.”
“I—”
“Didn’t stir despite the fact that we nearly plowed into a sheep.”
“A sheep? In winter?”
He throws up his hands. “Exactly my point. A white sheep during a whiteout. Fortunately, your husband is an excellent horse trainer, whose steed scented the beast and stopped for it. Then I had to check the ewe’s markings and return her to her owner, who lost her in the fall. Yet somehow, my wife, kept sleeping. Soundly enough that I checked her pulse not less than five times, only to begin worrying that while the signs of life remained strong, perhaps she was suffering some sort of pregnancy-induced coma, one that would explain her not waking despite sharing her open-sleigh bed with a sheep.”
“With a . . .?” I peer at him. “Okay, now you’re making things up.”
He walks to a chair, picks up my discarded corset and plucks off a strand of wool. “There was a sheep. And so, worrying about your health, I shook you awake. Do you remember what you said?”
“No . . .”
“You mumbled something about the woolen blanket smelling damp, and then went back to sleep. Which suggests you were very, very tired. Except, if that were the case, you’d have told me, instead of letting me drag you hither and yon.”
“I’ve enjoyed being dragged hither and yon.”
He gives me a stern look. “Perhaps. Yet maybe, in my excitement to give you a perfect first Christmas together, I forgot you are a six-months pregnant professor on holidays, who flew across an ocean to see me. I failed to consider that you may be—humor me here—a wee bit exhausted.”
I lift my thumb and forefinger. “A wee bit.”
He sits on the edge of the bed and stretches his hands as far apart as they’ll go. “A wee bit.”
I laugh and twist to fall into his arms, nearly upsetting my tea cup. He rescues it and hands it to me, and I take a long sip.
“Yes,” I say. “I should have told you. I just didn’t want to interfere with your plans, which were lovely and delightful, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.”
“But now you’ll thoroughly enjoy a well-deserved day in bed?”
“I will. Tomorrow.”
He sighs.
I lift a hand. “Today, I will spend a few more hours in bed. Then I would like to speak to Mary. I wish to offer her a position, if that’s all right with you.”
His expression tells me I’ve made the right decision even before he says, “It is most certainly all right with me.”
“Then, while I won’t have Mary start until after the holidays, I would like to let her know as soon as possible. May we do that?”
“We may. We could stop by her family’s home this evening.”
“You did mention caroling. Is that really a thing?”
He sighs. “In High Thornesbury, it is most definitely a thing. To my eternal dismay. Eleven months of the year, the villagers know to stay at the bottom of my hill. But come mid-December, they all begin tramping up, expecting Seville oranges and a cup of smoking bishop. A simple glass of mulled wine isn’t good enough, not since that bloody Christmas Carol story. They all want smoking bishop.”
“Well, I shall help Mrs. Shaw make the punch, but, since caroling is a tradition, I have an idea . . .”
It’s early evening, and we’re bundled up against the winter’s chill, walking along the front path of a tidy little cottage I know only too well. In my world, it belongs to Freya and Del. I’ve passed it many times in this world, and never known who