Tamsin never spoke of her childhood, at least not to Julia. Julia knew that Tamsin worked herself into exhaustion putting every ounce of magic into Christmas that she could stuff into it and she figured Tammy was holding up a tradition (even if it was hard to envision Monique stuffing a stocking, it wasn’t hard to envision her ordering Mrs. K to do so).
“Neither,” Douglas replied and Julia’s hand stilled in the process of following him along the stockings tipping into them the American Christmas chocolates her mother had sent.
“Neither?” she stared at him confused.
Douglas didn’t answer.
Julia tried again. “Did you open your presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?”
Finished with the oranges, he started to sort the presents in a box marked “Stocking Stuffers”.
“We received our present at dinner.”
His tone invited no further questioning but she was too stunned by this strange piece of information to let it slide. What did he mean, “present”, in singular, and whoever heard of a child getting one present at dinner?
Thinking he didn’t understand her question, she clarified, “No, I mean when you were children.”
He continued his work, seeming engrossed in it.
“At dinner,” was all he said.
An uneasy feeling stole through her. Even Monique (who was, thankfully, taking the holiday with friends in Munich) could not be so cold as to give her children one present at Christmas dinner.
She pressed on. “What was your favourite present ever?”
“My father gave me some stock in Microsoft. I made a fortune on it.”
She gasped, she couldn’t stop herself. “When you were a child, your parents gave you stock for your Christmas present?”
Douglas shrugged, completely calm, he began to stuff the sorted presents in the stockings. “Every year. Practical and long-lasting.”
These words slammed into Julia like sledgehammers.
Christmas presents were not meant to be practical and long-lasting. They were meant to be impractical and no parent was allowed to get angry if the child broke them or lost interest in them before New Year’s. It was Christmas Law.
She had no idea if those sentiments were Douglas’s, his mother’s or his father’s.
Julia had met Douglas’s father, a charming man who was always absently kind to Julia and who adored his daughter obviously. Julia always felt that Tamsin hadn’t returned his adoration. That, for some reason, there was an intangible unpleasantness underlying this and she was always too uncomfortable (considering her own relationship with her father) to ask her sister-in-law about it.
For Douglas’s part, he and his father seemed to tolerate each other but were obviously not close. Julia had always put it down to Douglas’s reserve and what she thought was the way of aristocratic families. She’d never much thought of it. Maxwell Ashton had been a far sight friendlier than Monique but he had died a few years after Tammy and Gav’s wedding and Julia had never really come to know him.
Julia was no longer working, just watching Douglas as he went about this new business diligently. She realised with surprise, rising alarm and a sense of tenderness, that Douglas Ashton, Baron Blackbourne was uncomfortable.
She moved toward him and gently took the stocking he was stuffing away.
“Can you lay the presents in that bag under the tree?” she asked quietly, avoiding his eyes because she knew if she looked at him the jig would be up. He’d know how she felt immediately. She was certain her heart was in her eyes. She continued, making her voice soft. “And then, I’m afraid, you’re going to have to eat the mince pie and have a go at that sherry.” She indicated Santa’s treat. “I’ll have Rudolf’s carrot.”
“I’m not sure you gave yourself the best end of that deal,” he commented, his voice bland.
She flashed a too-brilliant smile at him, a smile meant to hide her unease, and said, “We Americans are not overly fond of mince pies and sherry, or at least this American isn’t.”
He gave her an assessing look and she turned her attention quickly to completing the stockings and started to babble. “How people think Santa can drink sherry at every house and not bumble around drunkenly, giving out the wrong presents and tipping over the tree, is beyond me.”
“You think only the sherry consumption aspect of the concept of Father Christmas is hard to believe?”
She dumped talcum powder into the bottom of the discarded stocking stuffer box. “Oh yes,” she replied, too brightly, “magic can explain a lot of things but if I had thousands of glasses of sherry, Christmas would be a mess and I’m not just talking about leaving the wrong presents for the wrong child under the tree.”
She heard him chuckle and felt an enormous sense of relief that his awkwardness was gone and she’d been the one to manage the Herculean feat of dispelling it.
She straightened from the box, turned to him and watched him down the sherry in one gulp, the strong muscles in his neck moving in a way that, watching them, she found herself spellbound.
“Julia?” he queried when he had long since completed his gastronomical act as Santa and she just continued to stare.
She jumped then, intent on hiding her reaction, she cried with false lightness, “Okay! One last bit. Step in this box and then you have to stamp the powder around the carpet.”
He looked at her as if she’d gone mad.
“It’ll look like Santa got snow all over the floor,” she explained then ordered, “Be sure to walk over to the plate with the goodies.”
“Julia, that’s powder,” Douglas pointed out the obvious.
“A four year old won’t know that.”
“I think Ruby is far more perceptive than that. There’s rarely snow in Somerset.”
Julia walked up to him and, for reasons unknown, perhaps because of how she felt about hearing that he received stock certificates for Christmas as a child (which she still could not quite wrap her mind around), she lightly put her hand on his chest and said, “A child will see past powder and weather patterns when it comes to the magic of Christmas. Trust me. I’ve had enough Christmas mornings with those children that I know.”
He looked down at her hand on his chest, his eyes warming and she quickly pulled away.
Dutifully, he stomped in the box and around the carpet and she tried not to laugh because he looked positively disgruntled. In a perfect world, she’d giggle at him, tease him and then kiss him for doing it regardless of his distaste for the act. But now, she just walked over to Rudolf’s carrot and munched away, trying to pretend she didn’t notice anything at all.