Twelfth Day of Christmas #4
“Heavens to bunnies,” said Charming. “Usually half the folk go eat or walk around the house, but it’s like every Jack and June in jolly old England decided to dance right now.”
Kestrel was concentrating on breathing. She gripped Tom’s arm with one hand and wrapped her other arm through Charming’s. She just had to hang on until people realized it was too crowded and left the ballroom. Any second now.
Nobody was leaving. There were annoyed shouts, and Kestrel could hear Andrews trying to call out commands.
But there was no relief in the press of bodies.
Kestrel took a hopeless breath and waited for a torrent of panic to engulf her.
And yet, by the exhale, the panic still hadn’t shown up.
She closed her eyes and scanned her body.
The speedier beat of her heart and prickle in her toes were entirely manageable.
With a deeper breath, more space seemed to open up—not around her, but inside her.
“I’m okay,” she whispered to herself.
She felt her slippers press into the floor, grounding her.
She felt openness above her head rising to the cupid-carved ceiling, as if connecting her to the entire universe.
And she felt space around her heart, offering it plenty of room to beat.
The thrumming seemed to chant—I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay. . .
Underneath the hubbub, she thought she heard her name: “Miss Spinster?”
I’m here, she thought. I’m in the ballroom. I’m in the universe. I’m at home in myself.
“OUT OF MY WAY!” It was not an angry shout. It was a firm, clear command.
The crowd parted like a herd of sheep at the sound of their shepherd, and Hank walked into the cleared space.
He was wearing the formal black jacket and breeches and white cravat, but he didn’t look civilized.
His eyes were wild and intense as he scanned the crowd.
She knew he was looking for her, so she let go of Charming and Tom, wiggled past a couple of people, and stepped into the empty space around him. His face relaxed.
“Do you need—”
“I’m okay,” she said. And she had been, even without him. But she was glad to be with him. Happy to see his face, to feel the energy of his nearness.
“If you can’t ride on my back in that dress, I can carry you over my shoulder—Ope.” His expression softened as he seemed to really see her. “Doggone it, Kes, but you look gorgeous.”
She smiled. He smiled back. They stood there, smiling at each other.
The spell was finally broken by Gussie loudly whispering to Jerome, “It’s just like in the stories, isn’t it? A perfect moment.”
Kestrel became aware that the music had stopped and everyone was staring at them, causing her to feel uncharacteristically embarrassed.
Hank had been her secret in Austenland, a messy and painful past colliding with a complex and uncertain present in a strange but wonderful space. But now, there was no hiding.
“This room is dangerously crowded,” said Hank.
Kestrel nodded, grateful for an immediate task.
In her camp counselor voice, she called out, “For safety reasons, we need to make space. The five couples closest to the south door and five couples closest to the north door, go and have your dinner now. When you come back to dance, others will rotate out.”
Andrews piped up from where he was pinned in the back of the room. “Yes, what Miss Spinster said!”
“Apologies, Colonel Andrews!” she shouted toward the sound of his voice.
“I adore you, my love!” he shouted back.
As couples departed, the room seemed to relax and air flowed again.
Mrs. Wattlesbrook had managed to work her way toward the musicians and was instructing them to begin the prelude to the next dance.
All seemed managed. So Kestrel’s eyes returned to Hank.
Magically, he was still there—in Austenland, at the ball, and staring as if he didn’t care to look anywhere else.
And then, as if he were a sophisticated nineteenth-century gentlemen, he bowed and said, “Miss Spinster.”
“Woo,” she said.
She hadn’t meant to say it. She hadn’t even realized how much that word had grown inside her since last night. No one could have known that when she opened her mouth in front of Hank it would fall out as if she were a gumball machine full of tiny round woos.
“What?” said Hank, looking up from his bow.
“Woo,” Kestrel said, and then, thinking quickly, added, “hoo. Woo-hoo.”
“Woo-hoo?”
Kestrel put her fist in the air and tried it again, this time with feeling. “Woo-hoo! A ball!”
Hank shook his head, laughing. “I have no idea where that came from, but I love it so much.”
Kestrel and Hank hadn’t moved, and yet they found themselves in the center of two dancing lines, as men and women had taken their places to their right and left.
Tom was standing at Hank’s shoulder, and he looked between them with curiosity. “Mr. Kern, are you attempting to steal my dance partner?”
Kestrel expected Hank to be polite and defer, but instead he squared his shoulders and said, “Yes, I am.”
Tom straightened, chest out, but Kestrel raised a placating hand.
“Sorry, Tom,” said Kestrel. “I did promise Mr. Kern a dance.”
Tom bowed his head in acquiescence. But before stepping away, he held Hank’s gaze a moment and said, “Mr. Kern, if you do not take good care of Miss Spinster, we shall have words.”
The music began again. Hank reached out his hand, Kestrel took it, and they stepped together. Kestrel anticipated having to walk him through the dance, but he knew every turn and bow, every hand grab and spin. And all the while, he smiled.
Dancing with Hank, everything became so clear, the truth was like a sound vibrating at a frequency only she could detect: I love Hank.
I love Hank and only him. Kestrel didn’t want a second-place Tom.
She didn’t want any more one-to-four-week relationships that were briefly fun and ended before she could get attached. She wanted him.
She just liked everything about him. The way he moved with the surety of a man who worked with his hands.
His little smile when he knew he was being silly.
His ideas and thoughts and the tender, careful manner in which he shared them.
How he smelled when she laid her head on his shoulder and breathed him in.
As Hank held her hand through a movement, even her feelings about his betrayal began to soften like ocean rocks beaten into sand.
He’d known his family his whole life and her only a couple of years.
What a terrible choice. Part of her still ached and wished that she had been worth trading for the entire Kern family.
But other parts were softening, realizing that two years ago, they had both done the best they could with who they’d been.
Kestrel found herself next to Mrs. Martinez, and when Hank and Mr. Houlihan walked around another couple, Mrs. Martinez whispered conspiratorially, “Mr. Kern was so set on learning the dances. We spent hours at it.”
“You practiced with him?” asked Kestrel.
Mrs. Martinez nodded, her eyes alit. “He was determined to be proficient, so he could show you that he took it seriously.”
When the song ended, Hank and Kestrel, in silent agreement, stepped to the side to give other people a turn.
The next song offered a quick-quick-slow beat, and in a corner of the ballroom, Kestrel and Hank fell into a two-step.
A very close two-step. Soon their feet gave up stepping in favor of a sway in which their bodies could stay in complete contact.
He was so large, she felt like Beauty dancing with her Beast. Her cheek rested on his chest. She breathed him in. Her body hummed the word—home.
When she opened her eyes, she spied Andrews in a similarly close two-step with Mr. Houlihan, the Irishman’s eyes blissfully closed.
Andrews’s attention zeroed in on Kestrel, and he mouthed, “You and Kern?”
She mouthed back, “You and Houlihan?”
With his fingertip, Andrews pressed a precocious dimple into his cheek.
When Hank and Kestrel took a break to grab some nourishment in the dining room, Mrs. Wattlesbrook was taking a rest herself, the sweat of exertion delicately misting her brow. Her dance partner, Neville, bowed and left to fetch punch.
“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Wattlesbrook,” Kestrel said, serving herself from the sideboard. She skipped the “brawn,” which looked like chunks of meat squished in a gelatin mold. But she took a cold meat pie and fresh fruit from artfully heaped mounds.
“This truly has been the best Christmas ever,” said Mrs. Wattlesbrook.
“Rather,” Kestrel said and wagged her eyebrows.
Wattlesbrook seemed to take Kestrel’s implication, and her flush of exertion turned to a deeper blush.
“Hey, no shame in love,” Kestrel said, sitting beside her. “Or romance. If I were judge, jury, and cheerleader, I’d say, Get it, girl. Get. It.”
Wattlesbrook’s smile was small and only pressed one side of her mouth, but still, it was a smile. “Perhaps I shall.”
“Perhaps you shall continue to get it,” said Kestrel.
“Here you are, Mrs. Wattlesbrook,” said Neville, offering her a crystal glass of punch.
“Please, Neville, you must call me Marion.”
“Ah.” Neville’s voice trembled with emotion. “Marion. Maid Marion.”
Hank gave Kestrel a significant look, and Kestrel nodded in agreement. This was adorable.
Andrews and Houlihan passed through, filling their pockets with sweets as if about to sneak off somewhere.
Andrews cut a thick slice of the bread-like Twelfth Night cake full of rum-soaked raisins and apples and placed it between Kestrel and Hank, saying, “It’s positively criminal to miss the pudding on Twelfth Night. ”
“By pudding do you mean the cake?” asked Kestrel. “I’m never clear on the meaning of pudding.”
Andrews patted her head adoringly. “Cake, pie, custard, trifle—it’s all pudding, love.”