The Yuletide Child, Charlotte Lamb [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

the wind, smelling of fresh, cold air, and bringing waves of it in with them.

Each of them carried a couple of carrier bags, but they refused to let Ruth see the contents of all the bags. Ross vanished into the sitting room with the two he carried, but Henry put his bags on the kitchen table.

‘These are full of food. You can unpack them and see what a treasure trove we found!’ Henry announced proudly.

Her face lit up as she saw that they had managed to get a Christmas pudding, a string bag of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts, a small Christmas cake, biscuits, fruit, half a dozen cartons of milk and several of orange juice.

‘That’s marvellous,’ Ruth said gratefully to Henry, as he helped her put everything into cupboards.

‘I checked what you had in your larder before we went, to make sure I didn’t buy stuff you already had—you didn’t intend to have Christmas at all, did you?’

‘Any more than you did,’ she drily told him.

He grimaced. ‘True—but, do you know? I’m enjoying it for the first time in years. How about you?’

She nodded, smiling. ‘I’m having a wonderful time.’

Henry put his hand into his trouser pocket and produced something green; he held it over her head, leaned down and kissed her on her startled lips.

Eyes wide and bright, Ruth recklessly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

Then, flushed and laughing, they looked at each other as if neither had ever really seen the other before.

‘Happy Christmas, Ruth!’ he said, warmth and gentleness in his face, and she happily echoed the words.

‘Happy Christmas, Henry.’

He took a deep, audible breath, then plunged on, ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me?’

Ruth didn’t believe her ears; lips parted in a gasp of shock, she gazed back at him for a second or two, almost made some shy, embarrassed response which might have frozen them both for another year or two, then threw modesty to the winds and huskily said, ‘Yes! Oh, yes, Henry!’

Ross carried Dylan, in her nightie and dressing gown, downstairs just after two o’clock. ‘Don’t drop me, will you?’ she said, a little nervously, both arms around his neck as he picked her up from the bed. ‘Are you sure I won’t be too heavy for you?’

He hoisted her closer to him, the soft folds of her clothes trailing over his arm. ‘Now you’ve had the baby you’re as light as a feather again! And more beautiful than you ever were!’

She hid her face in his throat, her mouth pressing into him. ‘Flatterer!’

At the foot of the stairs, he said, ‘Now, close your eyes!’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve got a surprise for you!’

Laughing, she shut her eyes, and Ross walked through the door of the sitting room. Dylan inhaled a familiar scent of pine, reminding her of the forest around their home.

‘You can look now!’ he told her, and she opened her eyes, blinking in the dazzle of coloured lights on a very tall Christmas tree.

‘Oh! How lovely!’ Dylan gazed in delight at the fairy lights, winking on and off, red and blue and gold among the dark green branches.

A silver tinsel star was perched on top of the tree and there was a little pile of wrapped gifts underneath. The room was hung with glittering gold and red tinsel chains which reflected the dancing firelight in the hearth, in front of which stood Henry and Ruth, watching her, flushed and smiling.

‘Ross did it all himself,’ Ruth said. ‘He even found some holly, with a few berries on it!’

‘And some mistletoe,’ said Henry,. ‘A happy Christmas, Dylan.’ He held a bottle of champagne in one hand, a glass in the other. He poured a glass, bubbles winking at the brim, while Ross carefully put Dylan into a chair in front of the fire. Henry handed her the glass of champagne, saying, ‘Before we have lunch we thought we would drink to you two and your baby. You’ve made this the best Christmas either of us can remember—a Christmas we’ll never forget!’

‘We’re going to be married, Dylan,’ Ruth said huskily, very pink and shy, looking years younger.

‘Oh, how marvellous. I’m so glad!’ Dylan glowed with delight.

Ross looked stunned for a few seconds, then he recovered, smiling, and raised the glass of champagne Henry had just given him. ‘What great news. Congratulations, both of you. Henry, you’re a lucky man. You’ll be getting a wife nearly as wonderful as mine. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’

‘We will be,’ Henry firmly told him. ‘I should have got around to proposing to her long ago, but I was always so busy, and I’m a slow thinker. It wasn’t until I saw her looking after Dylan and the baby that I realised just how I felt about her. She’s one in a million, and I’m grabbing her while I have the chance.’

Ruth laughed. ‘I’m grabbing you, too. At our age we can’t afford to waste any more time.’

‘We won’t. And stop talking as if we’re old; we’re not—we’ve got the best years of our lives ahead of us!’ he assured her. ‘We’ll have to sit down and plan our honeymoon tomorrow. We’ll go somewhere neither of us has ever been. When you’re starting life over again you should grab every new experience you can!’

She laughed, flushed and excited.

‘We owe both of you an enormous debt,’ Ross said, sitting down on the arm of Dylan’s chair. ‘We’re very grateful. We can never thank you enough for what you did for us.’

‘You’ve already repaid us,’ Henry said. ‘If Dylan hadn’t crashed her car out there we might have gone on for years without realising how much we needed each other. She changed our lives.’

Dylan and Ruth smiled silently at each other as their men talked, then Ruth gave an exclamation. ‘The roastpotatoes! They’ll be burnt black if I don’t get them out soon! Excuse me, won’t you?’

She hurried out of the room. Henry said, ‘She’ll need some help—sorry. You two finish your champagne. We’ll give you a