The Heart Of Christmas. Mary Balogh

blinking her eyes. She had not thought it would come for her this year except in the form of an ugly selfsacrifice. But for all the lies and deceptions—with every glance down at her hands she saw the false wedding ring—Christmas had come. Christmas, she reminded herself, and the reminder had never been more apt, was for sinners, and they were all sinners: Mr. Hollander, Debbie, Viscount Folingsby and her. But Christmas had found them out, despite themselves, in the form of the clergyman and his family, stranded by a snowstorm. And Christmas was offering all its boundless love and forgiveness to them in the form of the bread and the wine, which were still at this moment just those two commodities.

      A child had been born on this night more than eighteen hundred years ago, and he was about to be born again as he had been each year since then and would be each year in the future. Constant birth. Constant hope. Constant love.

      “My dear friends.” The clergyman’s voice was quiet, serene, imposing, unlike the voice of the Reverend Moffatt who had conversed with them over tea and dinner. He smiled about at each one of them in turn, bathing them—or so it seemed—in the warmth and peace and wonder of the season.

      And so the service began.

      It ended more than an hour later with the joyful singing of one last hymn. They all sang lustily, Verity noticed, herself included. Even one of the coachmen, who was noticeably tone-deaf, and the housekeeper, who sang with pronounced vibrato. Mr. Hollander had a strong tenor voice. Debbie sang with a Yorkshire accent. David Moffatt sang his heart out to a tune of his own devising. They would not have made a reputable choir. But it did not matter. They made a joyful noise. They were celebrating Christmas.

      And then Mrs. Moffatt spoke up, a mere few seconds after her husband had said the final words of the service and wished them all the compliments of the season.

      “I do apologize, Mr. and Mrs. Hollander,” she said, “for all the inconvenience I am about to cause you. Henry, my dear, I do believe we are going to have a Christmas child.”