Page 2 of The Twelve Days of Christmas

It would be churlish to refuse Mrs Denby.

Frances had, after all, no plans. She had intended to return home by way of a pretty walk along the boundary wall of Wakely Hall (for the countryside was most affecting this time of year when the frost was newly settled on the foliage and glittering like tiny white crystals), then thought to spend the rest of the day reading at leisure within the small apartment set out for her use, blessedly some rooms removed from her tiresome charges.

The Pépin girls would have no need of her today, she had been promised so by their mother, who fully understood Frances’ preference for solitude this time of year.

But of all the days for Mrs Denby to ask of Frances such a deplorable favour!

That woman was waiting patiently for her answer.

‘I …’ Frances took a shuddering breath and quenched her pride. ‘I shall ask the vicar directly.’

A look of relief crossed Mrs Denby’s face.

‘You have my gratitude, Miss Partridge, truly you do,’ and though Frances had never confided in the cook of her past troubles, servant gossip at the time had undoubtedly acquainted her with at least some of the particulars, so it must be assumed her gratitude was genuine.

As if to clarify the fact, the cook patted Frances’ hand again and smiling said, ‘’Twill be fine, just you see. ’

Frances wanted to counter such a reassuring comment with a doubtful one of her own but the fourth and final servants’ trap had descended upon them, and with Mrs Wilson clearly impatient to be gone Frances chose to hold her tongue.

Instead, she watched with an acute feeling of foreboding as the housekeeper made room for Mrs Denby on the bench, the trap sprang forwards on its wheels, and the echoing clop of horses’ hooves transported the small party down Merrywake’s frosted road towards the comforting familiarity of Wakely Hall.

For Witherington Soppe, the Christmas period was a time he considered to be a thoroughly miserable affair.

He had not always found it so – as a youth (when he would gallivant about his ancestral home of Heysten Park without a care in the world), he rather enjoyed the pleasantries of the season and looked forward to it with keen optimism – but age and experience had garnered in him a sense of acute melancholy and aggravation that seemed to worsen year upon year, a most inconvenient state of mind for a vicar.

Was it not his duty to always keep his spirits cheerful, especially at this holiest of holy times? Did the Bible not say that a merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance? But alas, Witherington’s heart was not merry, and had not been so these past fifty years.

Christmas Day was especially difficult. It was an unpleasant reminder of all he had lost, and to perform a wedding on that day as well was a particularly heavy blow.

Still, Witherington thought, as he removed his vestments, the worst was over, and it relieved him greatly to escape as quickly as his old legs would carry him through the orchard and push the heavy door of the parsonage tightly closed, shutting out the crisp December chill.

His home was everything Witherington purported to be – dignified, neat, tidy – and though a trifle larger than he found entirely comfortable for a widowed gentleman of two-and-seventy, well, there was not much help for it.

The parsonage had once belonged to a vicar who had, unlike himself and Eliza, been blessed with a family and made great use of its many rooms, rooms which Witherington decided some years ago to shut off.

What need had he for a dining room when he barely received guests?

What use for three bedrooms and two sitting rooms, when one of each would serve perfectly well?

And with Mrs Jenkins to administer to the kitchen and other chambers necessary to domestic habituality, he had no need to venture forth into any one of them.

The library was the only room in the parsonage that he put to good use, and it was there Witherington found himself heading, with every intention of seating himself by the fire with a treatise on how to cultivate winter roses until that lady brought him his supper tray.

It was a sizeable library, each shelf carefully organised by subject – A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections and Olney Hymns were nestled amongst other texts such as The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ , Baskerville’s Book of Common Prayer , and the King James Bible (from which he composed his sermons), where further shelves kept a far wider collection of titles pertaining to horticulture.

Of course, one might become thoroughly sick of reading after a while, and when such an occasion occurred Witherington could be found putting his knowledge to the test by tending his garden and orchard, tasks to which he lost many an hour.

It was often said that gardening was good for the soul, a perfect remedy for disappointment and loneliness; certainly, the task of pruning rose bushes and eradicating weeds from his turnip patch afforded him a feeling as near to pleasure as it were possible for him to muster.

And when that feeling had dissipated, he would take himself off for a long walk with his sketchbook and endeavour to document the local flora and fauna of Merrywake, though always in the opposite direction to Wakely Hall.

Today, however, was not one of those days.

Today, he would read. Mrs Jenkins had already lit the fire, setting the library most charmingly in warming shades to make up for the lack of morning sun streaming through the west-facing windows, and the sight of it gave him cause to endeavour a rare smile.

Crossing the worn Persian rug, Witherington came to stand before one of the bookshelves; his prized copy of James Clarke’s A Catalogue was pushed aside in favour of a set of papers resting next to it and then, with something like a contented sigh, Witherington donned his spectacles and settled down in the armchair with A Treatise on the Venereal Rose, keen to spend the next few hours absorbed within its fascinating pages.

Thus, too, he would have done, were it not for the jangle of the front doorbell which sounded that very instant.

Witherington lowered the treatise. Mrs Jenkins was not a live-in housekeeper – she came twice a day to ensure the typical domestic duties were carried out and that the vicar was well fed. Beyond this, he was very much left to his own devices and therefore required to answer his own front door.

How aggravating! Who would think to call on him on Christmas Day, when it was supposed the people of Merrywake would be happily ensconced in their own residences?

Why bother the Reverend Soppe just at the point at which he was to distract himself from his unwanted memories?

And it must be said that the last person Witherington expected to find on the other side of the door was the very subject of those memories herself.

‘Good morning, vicar,’ said the lady standing stoutly on the other side of the door, and it took Witherington one breathless moment to respond.

‘Miss Partridge. How do you do.’

Neither spoke further, but each watched the other warily.

Frances, who had taken such great pains these past years to never look at the man beyond a fleeting moment when circumstance necessitated it, perceived in him a great change up close – he was still uncommonly tall, but what had once been a lithe figure now appeared over-thin; his cheeks were hollowed, his skin pale, and though Reverend Soppe did not look ill per se, he had lost the gangly puppy-dog look of the young and exuberant man she remembered.

In fact, the exuberance which Frances once took such delight in appeared to be all but vanished; the vicar of Merrywake’s expression was as grey as his thinning hair.

Witherington, too, found Miss Partridge vastly changed, but in this he felt no great shock – he had often perceived the lady when she attended church, marked with something akin to regret (though he should never admit to such a thing) that she always chose to sit herself in one of the middle pews rather than in the permitted benches close to the Pépin brood.

Still, she had never sat far enough away to prevent his marking that she had, in contrast to himself, developed over the years a fuller figure than the one she possessed at eighteen, and a decided roundness to her face.

Only now that she was but an arm’s length away from him could Witherington see her still-pretty curls were peppered silver, and when she addressed him so coldly as ‘vicar’ just then, that Miss Partridge had at some point acquired a tiny chip in one of her front teeth.

‘Vicar,’ said Frances again, hoping her nervousness did not betray itself in the wobble of her voice. ‘Forgive my intrusion on such a day, but I come on an errand.’

‘An errand?’

The reply was sharp, hostile, and in that moment her regret at agreeing to the cook’s request was profound.

Still, he had no right, no right whatsoever, to speak to her in such a derogatory tone, not when it was he who had jilted her , and so Frances squared her shoulders and gave the best expression of scorned affront she could muster.

‘On behalf of Mrs Denby. She has asked if you would be willing to spare some of your pears.’

‘My pears.’

It was not a question. As the words left his mouth the reverend had raised a finger to his face, pulled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles half an inch down the line of his crooked nose and peered at Frances over them.

She spared the fleeting and frustratingly maudlin thought that Witherington never used to wear spectacles, before raising her chin in defiance.

‘Of course, vicar, I would not have come myself except that Mrs Denby was required back at the hall and had no one else to spare to call on you.’

Silence. A muscle twitched in his sinewy jaw. Frances drew herself taller.