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“Since it’s a Saturday, my bothers don’t have to work, and they’ll be probably doing last-minute shopping for their wives. My sisters-in-law would be wrapping gifts and trying to keep the kids from going crazy and wishing their husbands were home to help. My sister would have all of her shopping done, and she’d be meeting up with friends and having a festive lunch with them. Mom would be doing a zillion things at once, planning out dinner for today and tomorrow, doing her own wrapping, polishing the silver and setting the table. And Dad, he’s such a love, would just be trying to stay out of my mom’s way.”
“That’s a lot of activity.”
“I know. It gets so loud when everyone’s together.” She made a face at him. “You’d probably hate it. Too much noise. Too much chaos.”
“Tell me everybody’s names,” he said.
“And their ages and what they do?” she teased.
“Why not?”
“Or why don’t we just do the names. That might be easiest.”
“Fine, but let’s start with the brother that bought the cottage at his son’s school. Who was that?” Alec asked.
“That was my oldest brother, Tom. Tom and Kristine had hoped to get away for their tenth anniversary, but Kristine got pregnant again with twins and couldn’t travel for a while.”
“How did they feel when they found out they were having twins?”
“Overwhelmed initially but Kristine is a great mom and they are the cutest family.”
“So where are you in the birth order?”
“It’s Tom, Ben, Noah, me, and, last but not least, Eloise, but we call her Ella. She’s the baby. She’s twenty-five and not married, either.”
“Is she anything like you?”
“She’s much smarter, and much prettier—”
“I don’t believe that,” he interrupted, his voice dropping low, a husky note making his tone even deeper. “You have something rare, and I can’t quite explain it, but it’s a kind of magic, and it makes you absolutely beautiful.”
Cara just looked at him. There were no words. She, who never ran out of things to say, was completely speechless.
“It’s okay,” he said, smiling at her in a way that filled her with butterflies. “You don’t have to say anything. I just thought you should know.” And then he returned his attention to the half dozen skillets and pans covering the huge stove.
*
The day passedwithout any fuss or stress. Everyone found something to do, with Emma, Dorothy and Uncle Frederick playing a game of Scrabble in the library in front of the fire, while Alec walked his dogs and helped Cara brown the meat for her spaghetti sauce.
Maybe spaghetti bolognaise wasn’t a traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Derbyshire, but it was something Cara knew how to make, and Alec assured her that everyone was delighted just to have a hot meal, and so she pulled together the pasta, garlic bread, and salad.
The aunts volunteered to do dishes, but Alec stayed with them, assisting. Uncle Frederick sat by the fire in the library and Cara went to join him.
“Alec told me he met your former beau at Haddon Hall the other day,” Uncle Frederick said, putting his glassed on to see her better. “What a small world to bump into that chap here.”
Cara curled her legs up under her in the big wing chair, making a mental note to one day have a big leather wing chair of her own. Old leather chairs were incredibly comfortable. “I know. It’s hard to believe.”
“Alec said you two were engaged.”
She nodded. “For almost a year.”
“When did it end?”
“August.”
The older man studied her for a long moment. “Is this making you uncomfortable?” he asked. “I don’t want to do that.”
“No. I’m happy to talk about him with you. He’s in the past, but he was important to me for quite a long time.”
