The Christmas Child

The Christmas Child
Diana Hamilton

James Carter's proposal of marriage was a surprise to Matilda Trent. Nevertheless, Mattie loved James, and she accepted - intending to prove she could be more to him than just a convenient wife.The result was unexpected - a baby due at Christmas! But before Mattie could tell James she was expecting, she discovered something that forced her to keep her joyful news a secret.

“You look so beautiful.”

James’s eyes had that drenched look they always had after they’d made love, Mattie thought. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But beautiful? Well, she did her best. The russet-colored silk dress she was wearing was one of the “must haves” her friend had insisted she buy all those months ago. Soon she wouldn’t be able to get into it.

Which was why she hadn’t wanted to come here tonight. She needed to tell James she was pregnant.

DIANA HAMILTON is a true romantic and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairy-tale Tudor house where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But despite an often chaotic lifestyle, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.

The Christmas Child

Diana Hamilton

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘SO IT’S going to be your usual quiet Christmas,’ Dawn stated from the depths of the armchair which was cosily close to the state-of-the-art kitchen range. ‘Poor old you! You really should learn to have fun, Matts—you never know, you might get to like it!’ Her soft, pretty mouth formed a small moue of condemnation as she wriggled her curvy body with barely suppressed excitement and Mattie, glancing across at her oldest and best friend, wondered if her mother would have loved her if she’d been more like Dawn, pretty and curvy, outgoing and bubbly, instead of—

She pushed the thought roughly away. All that was over. Her mother had died nine years ago, for heaven’s sake, when Mattie had been just sixteen and there was no point at all in dwelling on the past—nothing would bring it back, or alter it.

‘Whereas your place will be bursting at the seams,’ Mattie put in through a gentle smile, sensing her friend’s excitement and knowing the reason for it. She reached for her reading glasses and peered at the recipe book. At Christmas time especially, The Old Rectory on the other side of the picture-book Sussex village would act like a magnet for the large and happily uncomplicated family Dawn’s parents had created. And the rambling, slightly shabby house would be filled with children and grandchildren, love and laughter.

In stark contrast to the rather austere grandeur of this place, the home she shared with her widowed father.

‘The whole shooting match,’ Dawn agreed comfortably, her hazel eyes bright as she raised her left hand and gazed at the emerald sparkling on her ring finger. ‘Plus Frank and his parents,’ she added breathily. ‘They’ll be arriving tomorrow, Christmas Eve, so you’re invited for lunch on Christmas Day—bring your father—with Mrs Flax being away it will save you having to cook. And I won’t take no for an answer. I can’t wait to introduce my brand-new fiancé to my very best friend.’

‘Sorry.’ Mattie fed flour onto the kitchen scales. ‘But James is spending the holiday here; he phoned this morning and invited himself.’ Her heart squeezed painfully beneath her breast as she spoke his name. He must be feeling dreadful. His plans for Christmas would have been far more glamorous, much more romantic than a quiet few days out in the sticks. ‘I know you’re going to say bring him too, but I don’t think he’ll feel like partying—not under the circumstances.’

More than half expecting her friend to persist, she tipped the flour into the mixing bowl with such a gesture of finality that airy clouds of it rose palely to the ceiling.

But far from insisting that her invitation be accepted, Dawn said, ‘Wow!’ wriggling round in the chair, resting her elbows on the fatly padded arm, cupping her chin in her hands. ‘Major tear-mopping time coming up?’

‘I don’t think James Carter knows how to cry,’ Mattie stated, her tone matter-of-fact. In all the years she had known him, as the son of her father’s business partner, and later, at the relatively young age of twenty-five, stepping into his father’s shoes at his death around eleven years ago, she had never seen him show a strong emotion. He was always self-assured, completely collected, detached. Almost frighteningly remote at times, seeming to live in a world where nothing could touch him.

But right now he must be hurting. Being so publicly jilted by the woman he’d intended to marry had to be a painful experience. But, knowing him as well as she did, she was sure he wouldn’t show it.

‘Well, he wouldn’t parade his feelings in public,’ Dawn conceded. ‘But with his parents both dead now, you and your dad are the closest thing to a family he has, so he might cry on your shoulders. And I guess his ego has taken a heck of a pounding if nothing else. I mean, when you look back a couple of months to those burblings in the gossip columns about the wedding of the year—“Society Beauty, the Hon. Fiona Campbell-Blair to Wed Business Tycoon,” and her quoted as saying it would be a marriage made in heaven and how besotted with each other they were, and then, only last week her ladyship announces that she’s called the whole thing off because, and again I quote, “Jimmy didn’t live up to her high expectations”—well, I mean, he’s got to be feeling absolutely gutted.’

‘Probably,’ Mattie responded tightly, wishing her friend would drop the subject. She hated to think of James being hurt and she wanted to take the wretched Fiona’s elegant neck in her own two hands and do her a serious damage! And she couldn’t imagine any woman who wasn’t certifiably insane jilting a man who was as starkly, compellingly male as James Carter.

‘Look,’ she suggested, ‘why don’t you make coffee?’ Anything to stop this post-mortem prattling. She peered again at the recipe book and began rubbing butter into the flour. ‘I’m trying to make pastry for mince pies here. I just wish Mrs Flax hadn’t decided to take her annual leave right now!’

When their housekeeper had announced she wanted a winter break in the sun with her sister she had had their blessing. Mattie’s dad had never liked the festive season—not after his wife, Mattie’s mother, had walked out on them all those years ago—so they tended to treat Christmas as just another ordinary day. But with James expected she was going to produce all the trimmings. Even if it killed her!

‘Consider it done.’ Dawn unwound herself and wandered over to the table, casting her eyes over the recipe Mattie was so laboriously following. ‘It says add water, but you’ll get a much nicer result if you use beaten egg instead,’ she advised. ‘Want me to take over? I’ve been helping Mum with the cooking practically since I was born and you’re nothing but an academic. Brainy but a total fluff-head when it comes to anything practical.’

‘Then it’s time I mended my ways,’ Mattie responded lightly, resisting the impulse to clutch the mixing bowl jealously to her under-endowed chest. She couldn’t do much for James—she had enough common sense to be fully aware of that—but she could and she would, and with her own hands, make a proper Christmas for him.

‘On your own head be it—or should I say on your guest’s stomach lie it!’

Mattie grimaced wryly as her friend swung away to fill the kettle. Although only a couple of weeks separated them in age, she sometimes felt a thousand years old around the ebullient Dawn. A point reinforced when the other girl tossed over her shoulder, ‘Play your cards right, Matts, and you could catch him on the rebound.’

Mattie dropped the rolling-pin on the floured board as a savage pain thrust its jagged way through her. Closely followed by a searing anger that made her voice dagger-sharp. ‘Sometimes, Dawn, you talk like a particularly stupid ten-year-old!’

James Carter wouldn’t look twice at the plain, insignificant Matilda Trent. He went for the beautiful ones, the stylishly elegant ones. Women like his ex-fiancée. Women who stood out in a crowd, not ones who faded into the wallpaper. Dawn had to know that; how could she not?

‘If you say so.’ Unfazed by the rebuke, Dawn brewed coffee. ‘But think about it. Before I went to work in Richmond the two of us were practically joined at the hip, which means, of course, that I saw him almost as often as you did.’ She reached for mugs from the dresser, found the milk and sugar. ‘Around you, he always seemed sort of—protective, gentle. It’s difficult to put a finger on it, but there’s definitely a healthy dollop of affection there. And after being dumped by that high-class, empty-headed trollop he’s going to appreciate someone who’s intelligent, loyal, nice to know, calm. You fell in love with him eleven whole years ago when you were fourteen, you know you did, so go for it, Matts.’

Calm! She was seething! Dawn had stuck a knife between her ribs and was blithely twisting it—too insensitive to imagine how much it was hurting!

Golden eyes narrowing behind her lenses, Mattie snapped, ‘I got a crush on James around the same time you “fell in love” with our science master, remember? I grew out of it before you switched your eternal devotion to some mangy pop star or other! So drop it, will you?’

Only the trouble was, she was lying—she hadn’t grown out of it at all. She’d tried to, heaven knew she had. But her feelings for James, kept secret for so long now, had stubbornly refused to do anything but grow until they were positively awesome.

James slid from behind the wheel of the Jaguar, locked it and pocketed the key. A million stars patterned the winter night sky and the frosty air bit into his lungs as he pulled in a deep breath and felt himself begin to relax. Despite the turmoil going on in his life he could still recognise the magic of Christmas Eve. Strange, that.

Lights glowed dimly from a couple of curtained windows, but otherwise the stately bulk of Berrington House was in darkness. On the drive out from London he’d been having second thoughts about the wisdom of spending the festive season with the Trents. But standing here, in the silence, he knew he’d been right to invite himself to stay for two or three days.

After the messy drama of the past week it was what he needed. The flavour of that final scene with the woman he’d decided to marry was a sour taste in his mouth. And as for what had happened—unconsciously, he shrugged wide, hard-boned shoulders, the twist of his mouth cynical—he could understand why Fiona had gone to the press even though he deplored the way she’d made the breakup so damned public.