Hannah was dumbfounded. Not to mention rabidly curious. “My lady?”

“That forfeit you asked of my brother today …”

Hannah paled a little. “Was that wrong of me? I’m so sorry. I would never have”

“No. No, it’s not that. You did nothing wrong at all. It’s what my brother gave to you that I found so…well, surprising.”

“The toy solider?” Hannah whispered. “Why was that surprising?” She had not thought it all that unusual. Many men carried little tokens with them, such as locks of hair from loved ones, or luck charms or touch pieces such as a coin or medal.

“That soldier came from a set that Rafe had when he was a little boy. Having met my father, you won’t be surprised to learn that he was quite strict with his children. At least when he was there, which thank God wasn’t often. But Father has always had very unreasonable expectations of my brothers, especially Rafe, because he’s the oldest. Father wanted Rafe to succeed at everything, so he was punished severely if he was ever second best. But at the same time, Father didn’t want to be overshadowed, so he took every opportunity to shame or degrade Rafe when he was the best.”

“Oh,” Hannah said softly, filled with sympathy for the boy that Rafe had been. “Did your mother do nothing to intervene?”

Lillian made a scoffing sound. “She’s always been a silly creature who cares more for parties and social status than anything else. I’m sure she expended far more thought on her gowns and jewels than she did on any of her children. So whatever Father decided, Mother was more than willing to go along with it, as long as he kept paying the bills.”

After a moment’s pause, the contempt vanished from Lillian’s tone, replaced by melancholy. “We rarely ever saw Rafe. Because my father wanted him to be a serious, studious boy, he was never allowed to play with other children. He was always with tutors, studying or being taught sports and riding…but he was never allowed one moment of freedom. One of Rafe’s few escapes was his set of little soldiers he would stage battles and skirmishes with them, and while he studied, he would line them up on his desk to keep him company.” A faint smile came to her lips. “And Rafe would roam at night. Sometimes I would hear him sneaking along the hallway, and I knew he was going downstairs or outside, just for a chance to breathe freely.”

The countess paused as they neared the library. “Let’s stop here for a moment it’s not quite eight, and I’m sure the children are still gathering.”

Hannah nodded wordlessly.

“One night,” Lillian continued, “Daisy was ill, and they kept her in the nursery. I had to sleep in another room in case the fever was catching. I was frightened for my sister, and I woke in the middle of the night crying. Rafe heard me and came to ask what was the matter. I told him how worried I was for Daisy, and also about a terrible nightmare I’d had. So Rafe went to his room, and came back with one of his soldiers. An infantryman. Rafe put it on the table by my bed, and told me, ‘This is the bravest and most stalwart of all my men. He’ll stand guard over you during the night, and chase off all your worries and bad dreams.’” The countess smiled absently at the memory. “And it worked.”

“How lovely,” Hannah said softly. “So that’s the significance of the soldier?”

“Well, not entirely. You see …” Lillian took a deep breath, as if she found it difficult to continue. “The very next day, the tutor told Father that he believed the toy soldiers were distracting Rafe from his studies. So Father got rid of all of them. Gone forever. Rafe never shed a tearbut I saw something terrible in his eyes, as if something had been destroyed in him. I took the infantryman from my nightstand and gave it to him. The only soldier left. And I think” She swallowed hard, and a shimmer of tears appeared in her dark brown eyes. “I think he’s carried it for all these years as if it were some fragment of his heart he wanted to keep safe.”

Hannah wasn’t aware of her own tears until she felt them slide down both cheeks. She wiped at them hastily, blotting them with her sleeve. Her throat hurt, and she cleared it, and when she spoke, her voice was rusty. “Why did he give it to me?”

The countess seemed oddly relieved, or reassured, by the signs of her emotion. “I don’t know, Hannah. It’s left to you to find out the significance of it. But I can tell you this: it was not a casual gesture.”

AFTER COMPOSING HERSELF, HANNAH WENT INTO THE LIBRARY in something of a daze. The children were all there, seated on the floor, consuming sugar biscuits and warm milk. A smile tugged at Hannah’s lips as she saw more children clustered beneath the library table as if it were a fort.

Seating herself in the large chair, she ceremoniously opened the book, but before she could read a word, a plate of biscuits was put in her lap, and a cup of milk was offered to her, and one of the girls put a paper silver crown on her head. After eating a biscuit and submitting to a minute or two of carryings-on, Hannah quieted the giggling children and began to read:

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me.”

As Scrooge went on his travels with the second Spirit, and they visited the Cratchits’ humble but happy home, Hannah was aware of Rafe Bowman’s lean, dark form entering the room. He went to a shadowy corner and stood there, watching and listening. Hannah paused for a moment and looked back at him. She felt an anguished clutch of her heart, and a surge of ardent need, and a sense of remarkable foolishness as she sat there wearing a paper crown. She had no idea why Bowman would have come without Natalie to listen to the next part of the story. Or why merely being in the same room with him was enough to start her heart clattering like a mechanical loom.