You're all I need underneath the tree

by Tamara267

Summary:

Sat on the floor of their playroom, Marcus watched on as his sister paced back and forth in front of the window, muttering to herself as she tried to figure out how she could still get what she wanted if Santa didn’t exist. Because this time, and this time only, Marcus thought Tab’s stubbornness might just come in useful.

Because, whatever they had told their mother, there was only one thing the Campbell-Black children wanted this Christmas.

A stepmother.

A fic in which Rupert and Taggie get Parent-Trapped. Sort of.

Notes:

• For silverjubilees.

For Mack, who has brought more joy, love and light to our little community than I could ever hope to describe. I hope this fic hugs you close and holds you tight, dearest.

There had been no letters to Father Christmas in the Gordon house this year. Now that both Campbell-Black children had made it out of Junior School, their mother had decided that it was well past time for them to leave the myth of Santa behind. And if she could leave behind the world of biting raw carrots, and signing a different name on presents she’d spent hard-earned money on, all the better. Helen was especially happy with herself, since telling the children meant that the days of outlandish presents were over, on the sensible side of the family, at least, and all she’d have to shop for were books, clothes, and the odd treat or two. Marcus had taken it about as well as could be expected, giving a stoic nod of his little head and offering a tremulous smile. Tabitha… well, she had been Tabitha. 

There had been tears, and a tantrum, and, on Helen’s end, more than one urge to throttle the man she’d been stupid enough to procreate with. Tabitha Campbell-Black was nothing short of her father’s double. She had already been winning trophies for several years, and with a shiny new gold under her belt from the mounted games that summer, she was more or less convinced that she was unstoppable, and utterly unwilling to accept that sometimes, just sometimes, she couldn’t have her own way. 

That didn’t sit quite so well with her brother, Marcus Campbell-Black, who was more or less allergic to conflict. He thought it had probably been his sister’s second word— the first being ‘NO’. He had shaken his head when she’d spent an afternoon screaming and shouting that Santa simply had to be real, not sure how she even had the breath to go on for so long. Now, he was sitting on the floor of their playroom, watching on as she paced back and forth in front of the window, muttering to herself as she tried to figure out how she could still get what she wanted if Santa didn’t exist. Because this time, and this time only, he thought Tab’s stubbornness might just come in useful. 

Because, whatever they had told their mother, there was only one thing the Campbell-Black children wanted this Christmas. 

A stepmother. 

If Rupert had a bit more pep to his step this festive season, he didn’t think anyone would blame him. England had just drawn Ireland and the Soviet Union for their first matches in the Euros, Venturer had won the Franchise bid, and the children were spending Christmas at Penscombe for the first time since the divorce. Everything was, as Freddie liked to say, coming up Campbell-Black. Or so Rupert had thought.

“Right, you two,” he said, watching his little hurricanes race down the stairs, “Wash up, I’m making dinner, and it’s all hands on deck tonight.”

In a bit of spectacularly bad timing, Mrs Bodkin had been called away on ‘urgent business’ just that morning. She’d left him with little more than a well-stocked pantry and some hastily scrawled recipes, squeezing his hand on the way out of the door and promising ‘he’d manage’. He couldn’t resent her too much— she adored the children, and only an act of God could have taken her away across the holiday season— but it was bloody terrifying all the same. 

Thundering footsteps saw the children into the kitchen, where they waited for their orders with wide-eyed patience. He tilted his head at them, not quite able to put his finger on what was wrong with the picture in front of him. Shaking his head, Rupert did his best to get them moving, setting Tab to potato peeling and Marcus on carrot dicing, and tried not to despair as he found himself standing  in front of the oven with a ham in hand. 

Watching her father struggle with the Aga, Tab gave Marcus ‘The Nod’, putting her peeler down, ready to make her getaway. Marcus, being Marcus, gave her a frantic shake of his head in return. Of course, her brother lost his nerve when it mattered. That was why she would be the Olympian, and he would be stuck behind a stuffy old piano for the rest of his life. She glared at him and gave an insistent nod in Daddy’s direction. This bit of the plan would only work if Marcus helped. So far, Tab had been able to do the heavy lifting— persuading Mummy that they really did want to spend Christmas at Penscombe, and Mrs Bodkin that all they really wanted was some alone time with Daddy. But Tab couldn’t be in two places at once, and that meant Marcus had to do his bit. 

Stomping over to him, she hissed in his ear, “All you have to do is talk to him!!”

“B-but—”

“I know where you’ve been keeping those new Mozart scores. And I’ll be feeding them to Rocky if you don’t. Get. Over. There.” 

She gave a grin as Marcus shot to Daddy’s side, only giving herself a moment to enjoy her father’s shocked expression as Marcus started to babble about boarding school before making her way to the hall with quick steps. Dialling the number from memory, and praying she had it right, Tabitha finally got to put her grand plan into motion. 

 

 

Rupert had learned, even in his rather hands-off experience of parenthood, that quiet could never be trusted. Watching on as Marcus and Tab diligently washed the dishes from his first, failed attempt at making the gravy, he tried to puzzle out what trouble they could have possibly gotten themselves into in the scant hours that they had been at Penscombe. 

He didn’t have to wonder for long. In the hall, the door-bell trilled, and the children exchanged excited glances as Rupert threw the tea towel over his shoulder with a sigh. He made his way to the front door at a quick clip, squinting through the distortions of the glass to try and divine who his children had summoned. 

A tall, lithe figure waited for him, a swirl of burnt orange peeking through the blur of colours as he closed the final feet between him and the door. He hesitated, hand hovering above the handle as he realised who waited on the other side. Oh, he should have known. Of course his children had managed to find the last person he would ever have wanted to witness his disastrous attempt at domestics.

Hanging his head and taking a moment to steady his nerves, Rupert closed his fingers around the cold brass before him. Twisting the door handle, he pasted a smile across his face as it opened to reveal the lovely girl next door. 

Taggie greeted him with a dimpled smile, taking his breath away in a moment. It had been too long since she’d graced the halls of Penscombe, yet here she was, looking for all the world like there was nowhere else she’d rather be. 

“Which one of my little darlings told on me?” asked Rupert, moving aside to let her in. 

The long line of her throat was revealed as she threw her head back in a laugh, before turning twinkling eyes on him, “Which do you think?”

Tabitha. Of course. 

“Look,” he started, following her through to the kitchen, “I don’t think I was doing too badly—” 

Taggie stopped still before him, frozen with her scarf still halfway around her neck. When she looked back at him, her tongue touched smile took his breath away. “Not badly at all, if your goal was complete destruction.”

Rupert struggled to respond as Taggie pressed her scarf and coat into his hands, the residual heat of her body soaking into his fingertips. Luckily, his dear children were on hand to provide a distraction, barrelling into Taggie with cries of delight.

“Thank God you’re here!” said Tabitha, voice muffled as she buried her face in Tag’s stomach. “Daddy doesn’t know how to feed us.”

Taggie chuckled as she gave the children a squeeze. “I’m sure that’s not true. What are we making? Or trying to make?”

“A gammon dinner,” Rupert told her, “Honestly, even I can’t mess up meat and two veg.”

There was that tongue touched smile again, there and gone in a heartbeat as Taggie schooled her features into something more serious. “I see. How long’s our meat been in?”

“Uhhh…”

“We haven’t put it in yet,” said Marcus, “Dad wanted to get the vegetables done first.”

If the way Taggie’s lips pressed together in a thin white line and her eyes screwed shut, that had been a mistake. Rupert thought she might have been angry, but when she opened them again they sparkled with laughter. 

“Come on, let’s see what we can rustle up.”

 

 

Under Taggie’s expert hand, their meal came together in a trice. All the necessary ingredients for a spag bol were scavenged from his pantry, the children set back to peeling carrots for what Taggie called a ‘mirepoix’ while he was relegated to the sink to clean up his own mess. 

Rupert, elbow deep in sudsy water, felt Taggie’s presence behind him in the same way he had felt the sun on his neck in his competition days– an ever-present burn, heating him through right to the core.  

Her voice was like a melody, weaving alongside the children’s and charming them into being more helpful than Rupert could have managed with a world’s worth of bribes. As he dried his hands, he leaned against the worktop, watching as Taggie dragged over a chair, inviting Tab to step up onto it as she showed the girl how to reduce the onions for a sauce. 

“You know,” said Tab, voice suspiciously angelic as she peered into the pan, “This is Daddy’s favourite. He always gets Mrs B to make it when we’re here.”

Rupert’s cheeks heated, and he looked away with a cough. It was a fairly unrevealing statement on the surface. But he could still remember the downturn of her lips as he left her to dinner alone, and the acid hot ache in his stomach as he’d walked away. 

The Rupert she’d known then, of course, had been one of fine wine and finer dining. Hardly likely to indulge her for a meal dished out on chipped crockery and eaten at a scuffed-up kitchen table. He wondered if she knew him better than that, now. If she could fathom the way he craved those same home comforts, waking up from dreams with the scent of red wine and basil still tart beneath his nose. 

Her smile was kind when he finally worked up the courage to meet her eyes. Soft with something he might dare to call affection, if he were a braver man. 

“It’s one of my favourites too. We’d better hope he still likes it when it’s me cooking it, hm?”

“I think he’ll like it even better,” said Tab with a sugary sweet voice.

Marcus, feeling all of the embarrassment his sister wouldn’t, kept himself busy with the last of the carrots. He liked Taggie, liked how she didn’t shout at him when he added too many of the carrots at once, and asked him lots of questions about his music while she stirred in the celery. And better than that, she listened, really listened, when he told her about school, and piano recitals, and the score he couldn’t quite get right, in a way only his mother ever had.

His Dad was different with her, too. Quieter. Softer. Willing to be bossed around, like he wouldn’t have bitten the head off of anyone else that tried. Dad didn’t argue when Taggie asked him to boil some water for the pasta, and allowed himself to be fussed over when he dripped blood red tomato sauce right down the front of his white shirt. That, Marcus thought, would have gotten a scolding from anyone else, but Taggie simply laughed, dabbing at the stain with a cloth and sighing over how useless it was. 

There was a funny sort of smile on Dad’s face, twitching down at one side like he didn’t want anyone to see. It stayed there as Taggie turned to dish out dinner, and Marcus found himself well and truly rooting for Tab’s plan for the first time. It would be nice, if his Dad smiled more. He might smile at Marcus more then, too. 

“Does anyone want any cheese?” asked Taggie as they settled around the kitchen table, waving a block of po-dah-know and a little grater. “I promise it’s lovely.”

“Alright, Angel,” said his father, taking his seat, “Tempt me.”

Marcus’ journey to his own chair was interrupted by the sharp bite of Tab’s elbow in his ribs, her eyebrows high as she nodded at their Dad and Taggie. I know he mouthed, batting off her next attempt to jab at him.

“Careful Tabbycat,” called their Dad across the table, “You’d hate to pull something right before training picks up again.”

Tab sat back with a huff, though her mood soon brightened when Taggie set a plateful of pasta in front of her. Marcus felt a little sick watching her shovel it in, though when he looked to Taggie, expecting sympathy, he found that her cheeks were quite chipmunk-like too. 

A shock of uncharacteristic giggles burst from him at the sight. He tried, and failed, to hide them behind his hand, but they only got worse when Taggie slurped up another string of spaghetti. He made eye contact with her just as a fat drop of sauce splattered onto her nose, and that was it. Ribs shuddering, eyes leaking, Marcus wasn’t sure the last time he laughed so hard. 

Soon, all four of them were in hysterics, breathless laughter replacing the sound of scraping cutlery. It took an age for them to calm down, another round of giggles starting each time one caught the other’s eye. It was a miracle they managed to get through the meal at all, after that. 

 

 

Plates scraped clean, Marcus was full to bursting by the time Taggie pushed her chair back from the table, bidding them goodnight with her sunshine smile. 

“Let me walk you out,” said Dad, hand hovering at her back. “Why don’t you two clear the table, hm?”

Their footsteps had barely carried them out of the kitchen before Tabitha abandoned clearing duties. “Come on, I’m not missing this.”

“Missing what?” asked Marcus, baffled as he followed his sister out of the room on tiptoes.

She shushed him, pulling him to hide behind the staircase, tucked into the recess of the understairs cupboard’s door. “He’s saying goodnight,” she whispered, “This is where they’re meant to kiss.”

“Tab, I don’t think they’ll–” 

A sticky hand clamped over his mouth, and Marcus recoiled in disgust, barely containing his protests. Why did his sister have to be so awful so very much of the time?

“Listen!”

“Thank you for coming tonight,” Dad was saying, “I’m sorry that you had to abandon your evening.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, not at all! And I was only throwing together some last minute bits for the Fayre tomorrow, you saved me worrying over it all, really.”

“Still. I– I hope you know how much I– we appreciate you.”

There was a beat of silence, and Tab’s head poked out from behind the doorway. Marcus followed along, wondering if she was right about the kissing. Instead, his Dad and Taggie were just smiling at each other, like a VHS tape put on pause. 

Tab let out a sound that would be more at home in a kennel, and Marcus pulled her back, sure she was about to get them rumbled. She whipped round to glare at him, and he just held a finger to his lips– see how she liked being shushed!

“A-anyway,” said Taggie, “G-goodnight, Rupert.”

“Night, Tag.”

The front door opened and closed, and as the dogs started their ritual barking, Marcus and Tabitha exchanged a frustrated look.

“Well, that didn’t work,” said Marcus, a little put out, even though he had never expected it to work in the first place.

“Don’t worry. I have a pla–”

“I sure hope those dishes are sparkling,” called their father, footsteps coming closer, “I’d hate for you to have to spend your mornings mucking out the stables!”

“I’m not doing that for anything!” hissed Tab, already bolting from behind the door. 

Marcus, closer to their escape route than she was, found himself shoved out of the way, the better to make her exit. He couldn’t quite get his feet under him, slipping about on the hall tiles like a badly drawn cartoon. His bum met the floor with a thump, and the stars had barely cleared from his eyes when he found his Dad standing over him, cross-armed and frowning.

“You know,” he said, a smirk growing, “If you two ever decide to go into a life of crime, you’d better find yourself a more loyal getaway driver.”

 

 

The Chalford Christmas Fayre was a staple of the Cotswolds’ festive calendar, and Taggie had barely had a moment to breathe all day. Stacks of sausage rolls, mountains of mince pies, and more marzipan mice than she could count had been bought up by the ravenous crowds of Rutshire, and now she was down to her last few trays of food. The stollen stars had been something of an experiment, but she really had expected her rhubarb tarts to do better, especially since she’d grown the rhubarb herself. 

Rearranging the nearly full tray with a sigh, she completely missed the small form heading towards her with all the precision of an Exocet missile. The collision was almost enough to send her crashing into the table, steadying herself at the last minute as her hands raised on instinct to protect the child pressed against her. Confusion reigned until she spotted the little strawberry-blond head peaking out from a tweed coat, and a smile rose to her lips.

“Marcus! Are you alright?”

If she were honest, she had hoped she would see the Campbell-Blacks at the Fayre, an irrational drip of disappointment running through her with every hour that passed without their presence. It seemed, though, that they were simply running a little late, Rupert and Tabitha just visible across the Main Hall as they struggled to follow Marcus through the crowd. 

“Yes!” puffed the boy, “I didn’t want you to leave before we had the chance to say hello.”

“I’m not going anywhere just yet! You really shouldn’t run off from your Daddy, you know?”

Rupert looked more than a little harried as he closed the final steps between them, Tab’s hand held firmly in his as the crowd ebbed around them. He was dressed for the weather, a long houndstooth coat shrouding him from the cold, and a great red scarf peeking out from underneath it. 

“I don’t want to hear any talk of a recession, there are far too many people out today,” he huffed, like he was picking up the thread of a conversation they were halfway through. 

Taggie warmed as he gave her a quick smile, though it soon died when he turned to his son. “What were you thinking running off like that?”

“I was only finding Taggie!” protested Marcus. “I thought she might like to come around the market with us.”

The boy turned pleading eyes first to Taggie, then Rupert, whose eyes raised his eyes to hers with a long suffering look. She wondered if the children had spent their morning running circles around him– he certainly looked ruffled enough for it. Though, she could have hardly looked much better. Remembering herself all at once, she stepped back from Marcus, trying not to blush at letting the boy cling for so long. An effort that wasn’t helped when she stumbled right back into her stall. 

Rupert’s hand shot out to steady her, the heat of his hand burning through the thin fabric of her blouse. She swallowed, stuttering over her words as she tried to thank him. The world froze, for a moment, but it could never stay that way for long with children about. 

“Oh, you have to, Taggie!!” piped up Tab, breaking the spell. “It’s no fun going around with boys!”

“Taggie might be busy, you two,” said Rupert, voice stern as he narrowed his eyes. “You corralled enough of her time yesterday…”

Marcus had the good grace to blush, but Tab’s smile only widened. They were such darling things, she could happily spend all day with them. 

“I’m not busy,” she said, a bit too quickly for her own liking, “I mean– I’ve not really got all that much left to sell.”

Rupert turned to take in the nearly empty stall she was leaning against. Pleasure flushed through her as his face lit up, a quirked eyebrow and that tormenting grin aimed her way as he nodded at the rhubarb tarts. 

“Go on then,” she sighed, though it was a token protest. They had always been his favourites.  

Quick as a whip, Rupert swiped one of the pastries, biting into it and smearing red across his lips with a groan. 

“Rutshire doesn’t have a lick of taste if they’ve left you with these,”  he said, tongue peeking out in a way that made Taggie a little dizzy, “I could eat a dozen.”

Her lips curved up into a shy smile, and she ducked her head, not quite able to look at him as her cheeks heated. Scuffing her shoe on the old parquet floor, she warred with indecision. She had done well today, and money wasn’t quite so tight now that they knew they would have the funds from the franchise. It wouldn’t be the worst thing, to leave a little early, would it?

Rupert’s eyes were still on her when she looked up, and the look in them made the decision for her. Taggie would give far more than a few pounds to spend a little time with him.

“Why don’t we do just that?” She plucked another pair of tarts off the pile, handing them to Rupert’s drooling children, letting their cheers soothe her doubts. “Give me a sec to shut up shop, and we can have a good nosy around the stalls before they close.”

“Why don’t I take care of it?” Rupert asked, then nodded his head at the bustle behind him, “I’m sure these two would much rather have your opinion on all of this festive bol– bother than mine.”

Fingers sticky with rhubarb, Marcus’ small hand slipped into hers without a word, and Tab bounced at her side, waiting while Taggie unbuckled her money belt to do the same. Taggie lingered for a second as she pressed it into Rupert’s leather-gloved palm, heart skipping at how natural it all felt. Her burdens swapped for his, an easy tag-team negotiated with scarcely a word. 

He left them with a mouthed ‘Good Luck’ and a wink, and Taggie found herself being dragged along by her two charges, their eyes lighting up as they chattered on. The other stalls were still well stocked, selling everything from stained glass ornaments to scented candles. 

“We’ve spent the whole morning decorating,” said Tab, toying with the string on an orange garland. “We’ve got enough paperchains to wrap around Aintree! Twice!”

“It seemed pretty well decorated to me last night,” replied Taggie with a laugh, “You’ll be rivalling the North Pole if you’re not careful.”

“I don’t see what’s so wrong with that!”

Dropping the garland with a pout, Tab reached up to tug Taggie along to the next stall, sure that the right thing was waiting at one of them. Though she didn’t know what the right thing was yet, exactly. 

It had taken her and Marcus hours to link all of those paper chains together, especially once their father had fallen asleep on the sofa, but she was determined that Penscombe had to be as magical as possible this Christmas, and she was not taking any chances. 

She’d made doubly sure of that today, dragging her father to the Post Office in Chalford to send off a last-ditch letter to Santa. It had, of course, been a complete coincidence that the Fayre happened to be on, and Taggie happened to be there. 

“Dad said it looked like Whoville,” sighed Marcus. “And didn’t like it very much when Tab asked if that meant he was the Grinch.”

“It was only a little joke,” pouted Tab. Really, Daddy didn’t have enough of a sense of humour. “I know he’s not really green!”

Pride filled her as Taggie sputtered a laugh beside her, before frowning in that way that grown-ups did when they knew they weren’t supposed to find things funny. 

“You know, I always loved that film growing up. There’s something special about learning to love, don’t you think?”

What an opportunity, presented to her right on a plate! It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if Taggie had ever been in love, maybe even recently, when the tall figure of her father appeared over the woman’s shoulder. 

“Of course you enjoy seeing a villain redeemed,” said Daddy, missing the point entirely, “I think that might be your speciality.”

The pair of them stood in a weird silence, just staring at each other, again. Tab had to try very hard not to sigh. How was she meant to make them fall in love, if they wouldn’t even speak to each other?

Feeling the heavy weight of future happiness resting on her shoulders, Tab reached forward and took both Taggie and her father by the hand, pulling them along to one of the stalls she’d seen earlier. “Can I have some hair ribbons, Daddy? I think they’ll be really pretty when I’m riding!”

 

Rupert soon found himself with purchases piled high in his arms, his wallet pressed into Taggie’s hands as he played Father Christmas. There were some forest green ribbons for Tab, a bookmark or three for Marcus, and even some ‘gourmet’ treats for the dogs. 

Eventually, he called uncle, having Tag fish two five pound notes out of his wallet and levelling his children with his most serious stare. 

“One chance, and one chance only— you can go and explore on your own. But! You cannot leave this room, and you must keep me or Taggie in sight at all times, okay? And if anyone strange tries to talk to you, just shout and we’ll be there.”

They gave twin nods before racing off, money clutched in hand like they’d robbed the treasury. Rupert stood with a groan, knees creaking. “I don’t think I ever had that much energy. I don’t know where they get it from.”

“Oh,” sighed Taggie, “Like they’re not both just like you.”

She reached up to try and take some of the bags from his arms, but Rupert waved her off. He wasn’t so old and decrepit that he couldn’t carry a bit of shopping. Not yet, anyway. 

“Hardly. Tab, I’ll give you, is a little too much like me. But Marcus is Helen’s through and through.”

He tried not to sound bitter as he said it. Rupert loved his children, and each of them had set down their own little moorings in his heart, never to be undone. But it was never easy with Marcus, the way it was with Tab. He would have blamed Helen, once. Or the inexperience of youth, before Taggie. Now, he knew that the truth was much more likely to be that he had never really tried, and having not tried for so long, he was a little lost on where to start.

Taggie hummed, pulling him from his thoughts. If only everything was as easy as talking to her. He felt like he could place the bruised and battered flesh of his heart in her hands, and she would cradle it close, without even thinking to judge the state of it. 

“Not when he smiles,” she said, “No, when he smiles, that’s all you.” 

Rupert stopped in the centre of the walkway, a little bowled over. He ached at the thought of it, Marcus’ gap-toothed smile and the way it always seemed to be a little crooked. Rupert had never really considered such a happy expression to belong on his own face, but perhaps that was another thing Taggie had taught him. 

The silence between them stretched for a few beats too long, broken only by the grumbles of their fellow shoppers as they had to manoeuvre around them. Taggie, ever sensitive to the slightest hint of disapproval, moved them along with a stumbling sigh.

“Have you got another kitchen disaster planned for tonight?” she asked. 

“I certainly hope not,” Rupert said, furious with himself as he blushed. 

It was a rather pretty look on Taggie, curls all frizzed and freckles darkening as pink seeped through her cheeks like the first stroke of a watercolour sky. But it was simply embarrassing for a grown man. If he kept it up, he would have to grow a beard, the better to hide it. 

“I could come round again, if you like?” asked Taggie, “I need to drop in on Gertrude, but I’ve not got anything on… I could cook for us.”

Thinking of her dancing around his kitchen again, so soon after she’d last left it, Rupert felt himself to be in a particular sort of danger. It had been easy to welcome her into his home last night, letting her root around in cupboards and rifle through his drawers as she saved him from his own failings. But it was easier still to imagine Penscombe as her home, soaked through with the little hints of domesticity he had so reviled in the past. 

With a shake of his head, Rupert told himself to get a grip. She was just being kind, as she always was, and even that was more likely to be for the children’s sake than his. 

“I promised the children a takeaway—” said Rupert, and panic lanced through him as her face fell, “But, you’re welcome to– You should–  Come anyway, Tag.”

“Oh! Well… are you sure you wouldn’t mind the extra company? I know you don’t get to see the children all that often…”

“I could never mind your company, Angel.” 

 

 

Radio Two blared out from Rupert’s stereo, tinny Christmas music filtering through the room. Father and daughter were on their feet, working on giving themselves a tummy ache as they danced around. 

“Feleez Nahveedad!” shouted Tab, terribly out of tune, joined by her father in the next breath. “Feliz Navidad!”

Taggie, still working her way through a tub of chow mein, almost choked on her noodles at the sight. They were sat in the living room, formalities tossed aside in favour of a warm fire and a soft place to sit. They’d been surprised by snow on the way out of the Fayre, and by the time she and Rupert had hefted all of her coolboxes to her car, they had been little better than twin blocks of ice. 

“I think you might have all the musical talent in the family,” she told Marcus in a mock-whisper, “They wouldn’t let these two into a charity choir.”

Marcus gaped at her, scandalised, and Taggie took the opportunity to slip one of her spring rolls into his container. Rupert and Tabitha had gone at the food like hyenas, wolfing down everything in sight, so she had stolen a few extra of each side, knowing Marcus would be too shy to do so himself. Watching his little smile as he noticed it, a pleased thrill ran through Taggie.

Sighing to herself in satisfaction, she snuggled further into the sofa cushions with a shake of her head. So much for not knowing where the children got their energy from— Taggie had no idea how Rupert had it in him to bounce around so soon after eating. Taggie would have lost her dinner. 

As the music shifted to the softer tones of Bing Crosby, the littlest and largest Campbell-Blacks flopped back into their seats. Rupert was a little red-faced with the exertion, but Tab was still brimming with energy. “Do you want to play a game? Mummy bought me Uno for my birthday and I’ve not had a chance to play it yet!”

The girl was on her feet at the first affirmative-sounding syllable from Rupert, dashing out of the room to fetch her card deck. Rupert watched his little hurricane leave with a huff of a laugh, so endearing that Taggie wanted to bottle it. 

Deciding that she needed to make a move, lest she get caught being cow-eyed, Tag started to tidy away the mess from their meal. Rupert, however, had other ideas, pressing her back into the sofa with a firm hand. 

“I’ll take care of it, Angel,” he said, and Taggie swallowed as he took the blanket from the back of the sofa and draped it over her, fingers skimming across her thighs. “You keep warm.”

Taggie felt like she was quite warm enough, a little flustered as she watched him spirit things through to the kitchen. He didn’t help matters when he returned with two steaming cups of tea in hand— one black with honey, just how she liked it. 

He leaned close as she wrapped her hands around it, the heat tingling right to her toes. 

“I slipped a little brandy into it,” he whispered, sending a shudder through her as his breath ghosted over the shell of her ear, “You might need it if you’re to survive Tab’s competitive streak.”

“Th-thank you,” she managed to choke out, lungs not working quite right until he had returned to his seat on the other sofa, a safe distance away. 

It was something of a godsend when the girl in question came tumbling back into the room, game clutched above her head like a warrior with her prize. 

“Come on!” she cried, diving for the coffee table, “Let’s play!!”

Uno had always been one of Taggie’s favourite games, something with rules that were easy to remember, and could be stuffed into coat pockets to be played with Cait during dress rehearsals with Mummy, or long treks on the tube to go find Daddy at the BBC. She’d told Tab all about it during her visit in the autumn, and she was more than a little charmed that the girl had asked for a copy of her own. 

The cards were tipped out on the tortoise shell surface of Rupert’s low table, then collected back in by Tab’s eager little hands, her version, it seemed, of shuffling. Rupert leaned over to her with a roll of his eyes, taking the deck so that he could sort through them himself. With the kind of patience that Taggie rarely saw him direct to others, Rupert showed Tab how to hold the cards on the table, bending their edges to flick them together. He was careful, guiding her small hands into the right position, and getting her to try twice more before his daughter’s patience ran out and she shoved the pile back at him to sort out. 

Taggie dragged her attention away from the precise movements of Rupert’s long fingers, roving up to the slightly safer territory of his face as she quietly told him that they’d each need seven cards. 

“Can we play your special version, Taggie?” Tab asked with a wheedling voice, “The one with the magic numbers? 

That earned a protest from Rupert, who was already picking at his card pile with a dubious eye. “Let’s give me a chance to get my head around the standard version, shall we?” 

“Oh but pleeeeease, Taggie made it sound so fun! And you know Mummy and Malise won’t let me play like that!”

Indecision was clear on Rupert’s face, stuck between his natural desire not to make a fool of himself, and the seemingly endless competition between him and his ex-wife. Tab, already sharpening her skills as a huntress, pressed the advantage. 

“You could always team up with Taggie,” she said, “I’m sure she won’t mind showing you how it works… Right, Taggie?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind!” 

After a little more back and forth, Rupert moved around the table, coming to settle at Taggie’s side. He was torn between delight and terror as she unfolded the blanket to cover them both, shuffling closer until their knees knocked together. 

“We’ll, uh, both need to be able to see the cards,” she said in explanation, like there could be a world where Rupert objected to having her so close. 

“Alright,” he said, taking up his hand. He could absolutely do this. Of course he could. He was a gold medalist, for Christ’s sake. “Why are they different colours, and what the fuck is a magic number?”

 

 

Taggie was in peals of laughter as Rupert drew card after card, his hand swelling to truly disastrous proportions. He would feel worse about it, he supposed, if the feeling of her giggles, puffed out in little gusts of breath against his neck, didn’t feel so much like victory.

“This doesn’t feel particularly fair,” grumbled Rupert. 

“It doesn’t have to be fair,” said Tab, gleeful in victory, “That’s just the way of the game!”

“You know,” he said to Tag in a low voice, “We’re about to be trounced by a pair of pre-teens.”

The heady scent of her, orange blossom and honey, was enough to have his head spinning, but the conspiratorial smile she gave him in response nearly finished him off.

“No, we aren’t,” she murmured, “Just have a bit of patience. I’m actually quite alright at this, you know.”

She stayed there, head pillowed on his shoulder, soft body pressed to his side in one long line of heat. He almost missed the excited flourish with which Tab put down her penultimate card, calling Uno with a smirk that wouldn’t look out of place on his own face.

The eyes of both his children turned to him as his turn came around, but it was Taggie who reached to make their move. She plucked a card from his hand with flair, pure delight etched across her face as she placed a seven on the top of the deck.

“We’ll be taking that, thank you very much, Tab.”

His daughter’s mouth dropped open in an outraged squawk as Taggie leaned over the table to take her singular card, and gestured for Rupert to hand over their own stacked deck. 

“That’s not fair!” 

“Well, you know what they say,” grinned Rupert, then pitched his voice up in poor imitation, “That’s just the way of the game!”

Tabitha let out a little growl as she tried to arrange the cards into something her much smaller hands could hold, watching on with wide eyes as Marcus made his play. As if the betrayal by her father and Taggie wasn’t insulting enough, Marcus rubbed salt in the wound, giggling to himself as he forced her to skip a turn. 

Huffing, Tab let her cards flutter to the floor, crossing her arms as her father, now with only one card to play instead of twenty, stretched to place his final card down. She perked up a little, though, when he pulled Taggie close in victory, whispering something into her ear as they laughed together.

We’ve got them, thought Tab, biting her lip to keep her smile to herself. She had to look at least a little pathetic, if the next part of her plan was to work. She had thought she’d be leaving this bit to Marcus, but he was too busy laughing at her to have a hope of deploying convincing puppy dog eyes.

“I can’t believe I lost,” she said in a wobbly voice, “I never lose.”

“It had to happen sometime,” said Marcus.

Tab shot him a nasty glare, before remembering she was supposed to be miserable. “But now I’m really sad… Do you think I can pick the movie, Taggie?”

“Now hold on—” tried her father, but Tabitha was on a roll.

“You are staying to watch it with us, aren’t you?”

Taggie’s smile slipped a little, and the slightest niggle of guilt trickled down Tab’s neck, before she’d brushed it aside. They’d thank her, once they were married with lots of babies. 

“Oh, well, I’d love to, b—”

“I knew you would!” Tab darted to her feet, rushing around the table to take Taggie by the hand, “We can get the snacks, the boys can clean up.”

She tugged Taggie out of the room, turning around to stick her tongue out at her father and brother as they called her a sore loser. She might have lost Uno, but everything was going perfectly to plan for her to win a much bigger prize. 

 

 

Taggie returned to the living room to find that it more closely resembled a marshmallow. While she and Tab heaped bowls high with treats in the kitchen, Rupert had led Marcus on quite the expedition upstairs, trailing down what must have been every duvet and blanket to create a great big den in the middle of the room, furniture pushed to its edges.

Marcus’ head peeked out from under a pile of blankets, while Rupert was trying to persuade Blue and Beaver out from another. Taggie settled in beside Marcus, smiling down at Tab when she curled into her side.

“Oh, I see how it is,” said Rupert, “Now that Taggie’s here, no one cares about boring old Dad. I’ll just watch the film by myself shall I?”

“NO!” chorused the children, the pair of them scrabbling over to where Rupert was shuffling through a pile of VHS tapes. 

Taggie pulled a bowl of Smarties her way, shoving a handful in her mouth as the Campbell-Blacks squabbled about what film to watch. Rupert’s smooth voice held strong against the increasingly strident ones of his children, negotiating meticulously until they found two options that all three could agree on. He waved the Chosen Ones were at her, then paused when he realised that would be of less than no use. 

“Just press play,” she laughed, “Or we’ll all be snoring through them anyway.”

The children were surely headed for a crash, spinning around in that manic way that usually accompanied too much sugar and too long a day. And, in all honesty, she thought she might be in for a little light napping as well. Penscombe’s warmth had soaked into her, easing all of the aches and pains that had come as she’d run herself ragged over the last weeks and months. As Rupert and the children joined her under the covers, she could think of far worse places to rest her head. 

Rupert’s fingertips stretched to rest on the cushion behind her head, and Taggie hoped she could be forgiven for wishing he’d close the distance, dreaming of the feel of his fingers carding through her hair. Lit up by the glow of the television, the blue light of the PAUSE screen picking out the silver in his hair, he was more handsome to her than ever. It wasn’t fair, how good he could look even in the most rumpled of states.  And worse, he seemed utterly unaware of it, sprawled out against the foot of the sofa like he didn’t have a care in the world. 

Hardly ten minutes of  the film had lapsed before both of their little charges were snoring, thoughts of a movie marathon forgotten in favour of a snooze in their father’s arms. 

Holding her breath, Taggie leaned forward and tried to fish the remote out of the blankets without disturbing either of them. She knocked the volume down a few notches, then turned towards Rupert, stretching out one socked foot to brush against the bare skin of his ankle. He looked at her with an inquisitive brow, and she couldn’t help but smile as the full weight of his attention turned to her. 

It had been lovely, to spend so much time with him and the children in the last couple of days, but it hadn’t been enough to satisfy the itch that had bothered her for weeks, now, desperate for a little time alone with him. 

“I think you might have been a bit ambitious,” she whispered, “Picking out a double feature.”

Rupert’s smile was indulgent as he looked down at his children, and Taggie found herself falling just a little more in love with him as she took in the tender tilt of his lips. “They’ve had an exciting few days.”

She hummed. “It must be nice to have them for the holidays.”

“You can’t imagine. I didn’t even get to speak to them last year. Whatever changed Helen’s mind, it’s a godsend– I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to spend Christmas with them again.”

“I’m glad she did. Change her mind, that is. It’s an awful thing, being away from your family for Christmas. They’re much too small for it. And you’re too good a father not to be able to spend such a special time with them.”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s all that special to me. I’m a bit of a grinch, really.”

“Don’t lie,” she laughed, “I’ve seen that Santa suit you’ve got tucked away.”

For some reason, Rupert’s cheeks flushed crimson at that, but for all he’d piqued her curiosity, he barrelled ahead, steering the conversation away before she could ask. 

“Alright, alright. I suppose it’s not terrible. But I simply do not understand all these twee little films. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that I’ve liked.”

“Really? Not one?” 

She let the silence swell, her doubtful expression colouring the air between them until Rupert gave in. 

“Maybe… Maybe one… I suppose I’ve always been a fan of…”

His voice trailed off into a low mumble, indiscernible to Taggie’s ears. For a man who could talk the hind legs off a horse when put in front of a crowd, there was something reticent, perhaps even a little shy, about him when he was alone. It made Taggie all the more desperate to peer into his brain, and unspool all of those quiet inner workings that the world never got to see. 

“A fan of..?” she prompted, unwilling to let the topic fizzle away like so many others had between them over recent months. 

“Snoopy,” confessed Rupert, at last. “Or Charlie Brown. You know, the one with the sad little tree?”

Taggie was terrified to think what her face was doing. She felt such an overwhelming wave of affection for the man in front of her, who tried so hard to show the world nothing other than sharp edges, yet hid the softest of hearts underneath. 

The urge to do something stupid was almost too strong to resist as his eyes met hers. A confession, a tangle of fingers, a press of lips. All of them played out in her mind’s eye, destined to go no further thanks to the children, and dogs, that filled the space between them.

“Of course, you’d like the ones with the dogs,” she said instead, breaking away from his gaze with a cough. “Next, you’ll be telling me you cry when you watch Lassie.”

Regretting her earlier insistence, Taggie turned back to the television, trying to persuade her focus back to it. On the screen, two felt reindeer were dancing around one another, and she sighed. Even Rudolph had better luck in love than she did. 

“What about you?” asked Rupert, nudging his way back into her thoughts with all the grace of a Labrador. “You must have a favourite?”

“Hmm, not really, I guess I like them all. I’m not sure I remember ever watching one all the way through– I normally just catch whatever’s on the telly while I get dinner ready.”

“Right… Right.”

The quiet, so comfortable a moment ago, turned stilted, and Taggie chewed on her lip, reaching for something to add. 

“I always preferred pantos, I think. Mummy did a few of them, before she packed it all in. Everyone laughing, all the theatrics… Daddy used to pile us all onto the tube on Christmas Eve, and bribe us with sweets to keep quiet while we watched. It was lovely.”

Christmas was probably the happiest her mother was, in those few years. The thrill of being back on stage, even in a ridiculous costume, had given the season a special charm for Maud, and the rest of the O’Haras had followed along, enjoying the rare patch of familial felicity. Taggie hadn’t even minded when it meant that she was the one wrapping presents in the wee hours of Christmas morning, or tiptoeing around her Dad’s sore head as Pat and Cait ripped them open once the sun was up. 

There might never have been nights like this in the O’Hara household, but it had been home. The holidays had always meant happiness for them, in all of their weird little ways, and she suddenly missed them so hard her teeth hurt. 

“Anyway,” she said, mood soured, “I should probably let you get these two to bed.”

It might have been her imagination, but she was sure Rupert seemed… disappointed, even as he gave her a nod. The film was paused a moment later, and he turned to his children, stroking a careful hand over each of their heads as he tried to wake them. Marcus, she thought, was certainly still asleep, but there was a tell-tale twitch to Tabitha’s nose, and Taggie was sure she was pretending.

“They can get themselves to bed,” said Rupert, giving his daughter a poke, “Can’t you, munchkins?”

The girl huffed out a little laugh, but kept her eyes firmly closed. With a dangerous grin, Rupert reached over her tiny form, hands finding her sides with laser precision. Tabitha shrieked as she was tickled, all pretence of sleep forgotten. The loud noise sent the dogs barking, haring off towards the door on a panicked instinct, while Marcus startled bolt upright. He brought a hand to his bleary eyes, then dove out of the way of one of Tabitha’s flailing feet as she and Rupert continued their battle.

Taggie helped him up with a laugh of her own, something warm pooling in her tummy as Rupert hefted a still squealing Tab into his arms, carrying her to the doorway before letting her down. 

“Right, you two, bed!”

The pair giggled as they scampered out of the room, their heads bowed together as they headed for the stairs. Rupert chuckled, though that soon turned into a groan as he stretched.

“I don’t know if she’s growing or I’m shrinking, but one thing's for sure - she’s getting heavier.”

“You won’t be tossing her about like that for much longer, I suppose.”

“No,” said Rupert, voice wistful, “They’ll be grown up before I know it.”

Taggie’s smile was kind as she looked at him, and not for the first time that evening, his thoughts turned back to all the ways that he didn’t want to let her go. He had never thought he could enjoy these kinds of things– home-cooked meals and nights in front of the telly, boardgames played just to while away a few hours with the people you loved.

If he wasn’t careful, he knew, all of that would be gone in the blink of an eye, too. One day soon, Taggie would find some nice boy who was worthy of her, more than a washed-up old showjumper could ever hope to be. But he would try, if she let him. If he could just persuade her to give him the chance. 

With reluctance, he went to find her coat in the closet, breathing her in one last time as he draped it around her shoulders.

“Thank you for such a wonderful evening,” said Taggie as he walked her to the door. “I really have had the nicest of times.”

He had been so caught up in his worry that he had made himself, and his children, into another burden for her to carry, that he hadn’t quite considered that she might actually have been enjoying herself. Perhaps, then, this was it, the moment he’d been waiting so long for. The first step down a path he was so desperate to take. 

“We should uh–” His courage failed him, and the invitation died on his tongue. “I mean, you, you should be careful on your way home. The snow will still have the roads a mess, I’m sure.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s not far. Have a lovely Christmas, Rupert,” said Taggie, with a tone of finality that he didn’t like.

His heart clenched and he stopped her at the door. “We’ll see you at the carol service, won’t we?”

“Oh, I–” Her eyes skated away from his, and her hand twitched towards the door, like she might make a break for it. Rupert frowned at her and settled loose fingers around her elbow, drawing her closer.

“I thought it was your favourite part.”

“It- It is! But, Caitlin’s in Gstaad this year, and Patrick didn’t make it back from Australia in the end–”

“And you expect me to believe your father is missing out on an opportunity to mingle?”

“W-well, they’re in L-London, and I don’t think they’ll make it back on time.”

Rupert sensed that this was the crux of the matter. He tipped her chin up with his finger, forcing her to meet his eye. For a second, he swallowed down the usual swirl of want and longing that accompanied her proximity, certain there was something she wasn’t saying.

“That would be cutting it a little fine for Christmas, Angel, considering it’s a midnight service…”

“They aren’t coming back for Christmas,” she whispered, “It’s just me and Gertie this year.”

Helpless to the wave of emotion that crashed over him, Rupert rocked back from her. His fists clenched as he tried to bat down the burning rage she’d ignited in him, the urge to find and throttle Declan so strong he felt like he might breathe fire if he opened his mouth.

“What do you mean,” he grunted at last, “They aren’t coming back for Christmas?”

“They’re just… b-busy, I suppose. I think maybe they th-thought I’d go with them, o-or, or– Oh, I don’t know.”

How could anyone be so unfeeling to a creature as sweet as Taggie? Cheeks flushed with shame, fat tear drops gathering at her lashes, her pain lanced through him as surely as if it were his own. His hand tightened on her arm, the urge to fix, to take her broken heart in the safety of his own two hands, too overwhelming to resist. 

“You’ll come here,” said Rupert, “Spend the day with us. I’ve been meaning to drop your presents round anyway, and the children would love to see you. I’d lo–”

“No. No, thank you. It’s kind of you, really, but I couldn’t.”

“Taggie– at least–”

She shook her head and spun away from him, out the door and to her car before Rupert had a chance to stop her. He followed her out anyway, anger burned down to embers, and a fiercely cold swell of sadness left in its wake. He would figure something out. He would have to. 

 

As nighttime settled over Rutshire, Tabitha and Marcus clambered into their father’s BMW, buckled into the back for the short drive across the valley. Nerves twisted through Marcus’ stomach, his sister was practically bouncing in her seat with impatience, and Dad wasn’t much better, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel. 

Christmas Eve had been a busy one. They had spent the day running around the houses of Daddy’s friends, delivering cards and bottles of whiskey, while gathering what they needed to pull off one last surprise for the season.

“Do you think we should have brought it with us?” whispered Marcus, “What if she doesn’t want to come tomorrow?”

“She will!” hissed Tab, “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Stop gossiping, you two. Remember, you have to be on your best behaviour. The last thing I need is you sending Taggie running for the hills.”

The car rolled to a stop, headlights bathing the old stone of the Priory in a peachy glow. Marcus stared up at it in awe. It looked like something out of the gothic films his Mum was so fond of, vines winding along all of the walls, a turret crumbling to one side. 

He needed a minute to persuade himself to stop gaping, but Tab was out of the car in an instant, rushing to the front seat, where a great big box was balanced. The first of the Campbell-Black’s presents for Taggie was almost as big as his sister, but she hefted it up anyway, making a dash for the Priory’s door. 

“Tabitha, for f–” his Dad swore as he jumped out of the car to follow, having to cross the drive in quick strides to knock on the front door before she walked slap bang into it. Marcus followed at a jog, bracing himself on his knees to catch his breath when he reached the porch. Really, Tabitha was an absolute menace. 

The door opened to reveal a bemused looking Taggie, arms crossed and eyebrows raised as she took in the scene before her. Her dog rushed out of the door in the next second, growling and running rings around them.

“It’s alright, Gertrude,” said Dad, kneeling down to ruffle through her fur. “We’ve just come to take your mummy to the carol service.”

That got a frown out of Taggie, and Marcus winced. He had known surprising her was a bad idea, but no one had listened.  

“I know what you said, Tag, but come on. Throw a frock on and come out with us. Join us tomorrow. You really can’t spend Christmas on your own.”

Swallowing around a bubble of nerves, Marcus added his voice to the cause. “It really would be v-very nice if you did. Dad’s doing a reading, and me and Tab will be sat on our own with the Verekers if you don’t come.”

Taggie seemed torn, but that wasn’t going to stop Tabitha. She shoved the box into Marcus’ arms, sending him rocking back with an oomph, and trotted up to Taggie with her brightest smile. Digging into her pockets, Tab produced two long spools of ribbon and offered them to Taggie with wide eyes.

“I thought we could match…” 

Taggie gave Dad the same flat-eyed look that Mum gave Tabitha when she refused to eat her greens, and sighed. “You’re a horrible, horrible man, do you know that?”

His eyes whipped to his father, but he only gave Taggie an unrepentant grin, leaving Tabitha to twist the knife.

“Don’t you like them, Taggie?” she asked, voice all awobble, “They’re Campbell-Black Green.”

His sister really, truly terrified  him sometimes. 

 

 

Cotchester Cathedral was bathed in candlelight, glittering against the backdrop of gorgeous stained glass windows. Nestled into the thick woollen coat Rupert had gifted her, Taggie felt the magic of Christmas come alive for the first time that year. Without anyone at home, she hadn’t bothered with a tree or decorations, nor her usual array of baked goods, and it was a treat to take in a little sparkle before she returned to the cold of the Priory. 

Not that Rupert would accept that that was happening. 

“You know,” said Rupert, “You could have just brought the children’s presents with you in the morning. They might freeze in the car tonight.”

If Taggie rolled her eyes any harder, they would be liable to fall out of her head. She turned away from him with a tut, heading for their pew at the front of the church.

“I already told you, I’m not intruding on your Christmas–”

“Taggie,” interrupted Rupert, voice firm enough that her words died on her tongue. “I don’t care if I have to come down there and throw you over my shoulder. You’re not spending Christmas on your own, in a house without so much as a twig of holly to its name.”

There was a crowd waiting behind them down the aisle, and Taggie swallowed her grumbles, shepherding the Campbell-Blacks into the pew. Rupert took the seat at the end, the better to exit when his moment arrived, and Taggie was thankful for the children’s presence between them. She simply couldn’t think straight with him so close. 

They made their way through the usual hymns, voices rising and falling through Come all Ye Faithful, Hark the Herald Angel Sing, and Once in Royal David’s City. Marcus had the sweetest voice, face scrunched in concentration as he tried to hit the right notes, while Tabitha sung along with the casual abandon of a girl who only attended church once a year. 

The time for Rupert’s reading crept quickly upon them, and a tremble of anticipation ran through Taggie as he stood. The chatter of the room died down as Rupert approached the pulpit. He had a way of demanding attention without saying a word, and as he walked down the aisle with long, purposeful strides, Taggie felt the world  narrow down to him. 

The children’s sulking complaints of a boring night were forgotten as they turned to take in their father’s ascent. His crisp blue suit shone in the candlelight, the low glow illuminating him like a marble of old, all sharp lines and aristocratic features. 

Hush descended on the Cathedral as he cleared his throat, bracing himself against the lectern with a charming smile. “I suppose I should start by saying Merry Christmas, Everyone, but I imagine that by now you’ve all heard enough of that on the radio.”

He shifted as people laughed, fiddling with his cuffs, and Taggie straightened in her seat, attention pricked by the rare show of nerves. 

“It is an honour, as ever, to be welcomed here as we come together as a community, to celebrate this most special of times. This year, more so than any other. It has been a pleasure, and a privilege, to stand beside so many of you as we worked towards our common goals— be that in the world of politics, television, or the increasingly scandalous realm of the Chalford Bypass. Don’t worry, Bishop, I won’t be reading from one of Mrs Lucas' pamphlets, though they certainly sound like a sermon!"

Another wave of laughter passed through the crowd, but for once, Taggie didn’t join in. There was something hesitant written in the long lines of Rupert’s body as he focussed on the paper before him, and curiosity gnawed at her as he gave himself a nod, before looking out to the crowd once more. 

“I wracked my brains for what to read tonight, especially once my poor aide informed me nothing from Horse and Hound would do. But then I thought a little longer, and remembered that Christmas is about family, and about taking each other by the hand and walking together into a new world. I always find it to be a great relief when I know the shortest, darkest of days is behind us, as I’m sure we all do. And when I thought about light, and family, I found myself thinking about this tract from a dusty old book of poetry my grandmother read to me many moons ago at Penscombe. I hope it brings to mind brighter days, and precious things, for you as it has for me.”

A hot flush worked through Taggie as his eyes finally raised from the paper, no longer roving through the crowd, but settling directly upon their pew. Upon her. 

“Little silent Christmas tree,” he read, “You are so little, you are more like a flower. Who found you in the green forest, and were you very sorry to come away?”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Taggie followed the movement with rapt attention, every fibre of her being on edge as she waited for his next breath. There was a gravity to his tone, something more than his usual showmanship. A waver to his voice, and a flush of white across his knuckles. This meant something to him, more than just words spoken to a waiting crowd. 

“I will comfort you, 
because you smell so sweetly.
I will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would.”

There was a faint buzzing in her ears, the world fuzzing at the edges as his words sunk into her. Tabitha was whispering something, but it passed her by, half unheard. All the shepherds and wise men, perhaps even the Archangel himself, could have found their way into Cotchester Cathedral at that moment, and she was quite sure she would notice nothing at all. 

Nothing but Rupert, and the curve of his lips as they formed around words, vowels and consonants strung together in a way that thrummed through right to her bones, sinking into the marrow and taking hold for a lifetime. 

“The spangles that sleep all the year in a dark box, 
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
put up your little arms and I'll give them all to you to hold.”

His eyelashes fluttered closed, his chest expanded with a great inhale. The flicker of candlelight in his hazel eyes shone as brightly as any star as his gaze burrowed into her, certain and true. 

“Every finger shall have its ring, and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy… and my children and I will take hands, and looking up at our beautiful tree we'll dance and sing...”

Rupert’s heart was beating a mile a minute as he reached the end of the poem. He was deaf to his own voice as he wrapped things up with some well-meant platitudes and made a quick exit from the pulpit. His hands were clammy, the indent of the lectern still red on his palms. He gave them a quick swipe on his trousers as the Bishop came forward to clasp his hands, and was surely downright rude as he extricated himself with great speed and little delicacy. 

But Christ, he needed to get back to Taggie. To see her little face staring up at him as he spoke, and not reach out to her, had been torture. He was sure he had never been so nervous about a girl. Nor so bloody obvious about it. Whatever he’d intended, his heart was laid bare now. It felt, a little, like putting his foot into the stirrup, ready to mount up and enter the ring. 

She was waiting for him when he finally made his way back to their pew, standing with her hymn book in a prim hold, though her voice didn’t join the rest of the congregation. The remnants of tears glistened on her cheeks and he wanted, more than anything, to take her in his arms and swipe away at them. But Marcus stood between them, offering him a toothy smile, and as much as Rupert may have liked to brush the boy aside in that moment, he knew Taggie would never forgive him. 

And so Rupert let himself be carried through the rest of the service by decades old muscle memory, each hymn, reading and prayer chipping away at his fraying patience. When the night finally drew to a close, he felt no guilt at all for gliding past the well-wishers in a dash for the door. 

His hand was firm in the small of Taggie’s back as they cut through the crowd, her hands occupied by a child on either side. There were a few raised eyebrows from those they passed, and Rupert knew they looked like something out of a Mary Whitehouse campaign, a traditional family wrapped up in a bow. If only, he thought. 

His wish for that to be truth, rather than fantasy, was almost enough for him to forgive the children for dominating Taggie’s attention. He couldn’t blame them for clinging onto her– maybe if they held on hard enough, she would stay for longer than the handful of stolen moments they’d managed this week. Maybe, just maybe, she’d stay forever. 

 

 

The car’s heater rumbled as they drove down the country lanes back to Penscombe, and Taggie let herself sink back into the soft leather seat. Her eyes had hardly strayed from Rupert as he guided them through the twists and turns, a comfortable silence blooming between them as the children slept on in the back. 

“It was a wonderful reading, Rupert.”

His gaze strayed from the road for just a minute, blinking across to her as his lips ticked up in a smile. “I… I had hoped you would like it.”

Be brave, Taggie told herself. “I did. Very much.”

It was the understatement of the century. She felt fit to burst with affection for him. With love. After so long of wondering, finally, she knew. 

His hand strayed across the centre console, tangling his fingers with hers. “You will come tomorrow, won’t you?” 

She took his hand in both of hers, running delicate fingers over his knuckles. A shiver ran through him at the touch, and she swallowed. There was no point denying him anymore. She had a feeling the separation would be torture for them both.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll be there.”

There were a thousand more things to be said, but they left them to the side for the minute. Taggie let herself be soothed by the growl of the engine, the gentle back and forth of the suspension, and soon she found that her eyes fluttered closed, too. 

She woke to a gentle hand smoothing through her hair, whispers falling from Rupert’s lips as he tried to rouse her. There was something cracked open and raw about his expression when the sleep cleared from her eyes, and her heart skipped a beat at the sight. 

“They’ll be alright for a minute,” he said, nodding at the still-slumbering children, “Let me walk you to the door… there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Taggie stilled at that, doe-eyes wide, and she prayed to a God she couldn’t always believe in. Let this be it for us, she thought. Let tonight be the first of a hundred more, just like it.

The air was brisk as they left the warmth of the car, and Taggie braced herself as she slammed the door shut, desperate to make the porch and hear what Rupert had to say.  

The sound woke Marcus, blinking into consciousness in the dark of the car. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust enough for him to realise he and his sister were alone in the car, and a little longer to realise his Dad and Taggie were standing at the porch of her house, heads bowed together. 

“Tab,” he said, giving his sister a good shake, “Wake up!! Something’s happening!”

“Wha?” 

“Dad and Taggie, look!”

That woke her up.  A brief scuffle broke out as they each tried to press themselves against the window, and Tab, with her sharp elbows and sharper spirit, soon won. 

“What’s happening?”

“I think he’s kissing her!”

“Really? Wait, Tab, let me s—“

He scrambled to get a better look, squinting through the dark to try and see their silhouetted figures.  

“Why is he kissing her hair??” cried Tab, “That’s not how you’re supposed to do it.”

Their father would, Marcus thought, have a much better idea on how you were “supposed” to kiss someone than either of his children, but he chose not to point that out. 

“Maybe he doesn’t like her like we thought,” said Marcus, a stone sinking in his stomach. “Maybe he really does just want to be her friend.”

“Well he has to! He has to marry Taggie!! He can’t marry some horrible woman who doesn’t like us and will send us away and then we’ll never see him and—“

His sister’s voice broke off in a wobble, and with a great crash of panic, Marcus realised that she was crying. Marcus shushed her with a frantic look at his Dad and Taggie, growing only more desperate as they separated, long strides carrying their Dad back to the car. 

“It’s alright, Tab, it’s okay! I’m sure Dad just—“

Dad slipped back into the car without a word, then turned to them in surprise when he heard Tabitha’s snuffle.

“What on earth–”

Marcus wracked his brains for an excuse, but his sister was quicker to the draw, as per usual. 

“Marcus pulled my hair!” she cried, the lie tumbling off her tongue with ease.

“What?? No I didn’t! Dad, she’s lying, I swear–”

Dad gave a long sigh, turning back to the steering wheel and starting the engine. “You two had best learn how to get along by morning. I’d hate for Taggie to have to see you get coal in your stockings.”

Tab’s theatrics stuttered to a stop, her wide eyes swinging to meet Marcus’. They’d done it. They’d actually done it! Taggie was coming for Christmas!

 

 

Snow crunched under Taggie’s gumboots as she walked through the woods, the world turned to a winter wonderland overnight. Gertrude was performing quite the morning chorus as she gambolled through the drifts, and Taggie giggled along with her, laughter misting through the air.

“Come on, Gertie,” she cried as she crested the hill, “ I think we’ve got a big day ahead of us, don’t you?”

She could taste it on the tip of her tongue, the sense that something was just around the corner. It was there in the lingering tingle of Rupert‘s lips as they brushed across her forehead last night, and the butterflies blooming in her stomach as she took in the view.

The house before her looked like something out of a fairytale, sun glinting against the windows as they reflected the bright blue sky, snow delicately dusted across the rooftops as the sandstone gleamed in the winter light. Penscombe. The Pride of the Valley. 

Heat bloomed high on her cheeks as she gained the portico, knocking the snow off of her boots as she caught her breath. Taking in the glittering red door before her, Taggie was struck by a sudden fit of nerves, and her hands tightened around her basket. 

It’s just Rupert, she told herself. Though, that was hardly true. He wasn’t just anything. He was everything. 

Like she could sense her nerves, Gertrude butted her nose against the back of Taggie’s knee, sending her stumbling towards the door. 

“Alright, alright,” laughed Tag, “I’m going.”

The wood was frostbitten beneath her knuckles as she knocked, the sound too loud in the silence of the morning. She stepped back a little, waiting for the man of the house with bated breath.

The door opened with an ill-oiled groan of its hinges, revealing a pyjama-clad Rupert to her eager eyes. He was still sleep rumpled, hair sticking out at odd angles, even as he tried to smooth it down. She was utterly bowled over by the sight of him, heart fit to burst with how she loved him.

Rupert fared little better, staring at Taggie in a stupefied silence as he took in her rosy cheeks and bright eyes. His scarf was wrapped tight around her neck, resting atop the soft wool of her new coat. A curl of possessive want ran through him, fingers itching to reach out and touch. 

What had he been thinking, last night, asking her on a date when there were love confessions to be made? Pressing a kiss to her hair like some far flung uncle, when he could have kissed her, held her, and done any number of things that were highly inadvisable when his children waited for him in the car.

She raised an eyebrow at him, a sly smile forming, “Are you going to let me in sometime today, do you think?”

Cursing himself for keeping her outside in the cold like a fool, Rupert stepped aside, letting her and Gertrude dart into the warmth of the house. 

“Sorry, Angel,” he said in a low voice, “It’s been a while since I’ve been good enough for Santa to make a stop at Penscombe. Nevermind to drop something as lovely as you off.” 

She flushed the prettiest pink as she took in his words, and Rupert positively brimmed with pride to be the cause of it. He reached to take her basket from her, letting their fingers brush together as he did, only to get a shock as she slapped at his hand. 

“What was that for?” he hissed.

“It’s a surprise. Why are we whispering?”

“I don’t want to bring the hoards upon us quite yet.”

Rupert craned his head up the stairs, trying to divine out the sound of movement. Deciding they were safe, he ushered Taggie into the drawing room. The children weren’t the only ones he didn’t want her waking. 

“I’m surprised they didn’t have you up at the crack of dawn.”

Rupert reached for the teapot he’d left warming by the fire as Taggie settled herself on the rug. He’d gotten her favourite in especially, and the aromatic scent of darjeeling, mixed with the sweet orange of her perfume, was a comfort of its own. He poured them both a cup before settling beside her, watching as the Christmas lights twinkled in her eyes. 

“Oh, I’m sure they’d have liked to, but I put the clocks in their rooms back a few hours. Even my little horrors won’t wake me up at 3am.”

Taggie gaped at him, a shocked puff of air leaving her as she tried to suppress a laugh. Rupert gave in to the urge to smirk as a giddy feeling rushed through him. He could have this. Mornings, just the two of them, their lives winding into one another a little more every moment. The sound of her laughter, the joy of her light, just for him. 

“Besides,” he said, leaning forward to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, “Maybe I just wanted a moment alone with you.”

Her eyes flicked to his, and his hand slipped down to cup her jaw. He pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes for just a moment, her breath whispering across his lips as he closed the final inches between them. 

Millimetres from heaven, Rupert was sent skittering back as there was a BANG from upstairs, the children thundering down the hall with all of the grace of a herd of elephants. 

 

“Merry Christmas!” cried Tabitha, flinging herself into Taggie’s arms the second she saw her. “You came!!”

Beside Taggie, Daddy was grumbling, but Tabitha didn’t care, too happy in the warmth of Taggie’s arms.

“Well, I couldn’t let you open your presents without me, could I?” asked Taggie, holding out her other arm as Marcus came over, snuggling in beside her. “Merry Christmas, you two.”

“Merry Christmas,” said Marcus, and then, because he had to be better than Tab at everything, he flung himself at Daddy, cuddling close as he mumbled the same to him. 

Tab felt a little green as Daddy pulled him in close, abandoning Taggie to tug on his sleeve, impatient for a hug of her own.

“Remembered I exist, have you?” asked Daddy, but he pulled her into the hug anyway. 

He swung Tab up onto his shoulders, her squeals mixing with a tinkle of laughter from behind them.

“Enough monkey business, you lot,” said Taggie, “You’ve got quite the haul to get through.”

As much as Tab had had other things in mind for Christmas, she was only human. The reminder had her diving for the gifts under the tree, digging for hers until Taggie interrupted with a gentle hand, and they ended up handing out everyone’s together. 

Wrapping paper soon flew across the room, heaven for Gertrude and Beaver as they raced each other to see who could shred the most of it. 

There were new jodhpurs for Tab, some complicated scores for Marcus, and some fuddy horse books that Malise had helped them pick out for Daddy. They’d spent Christmas Eve rushing around the shops to make sure Taggie had some things she’d like too, rich hot chocolate, candied fruit and what Daddy promised were good bottles of wine waiting for her beneath the tree. 

At the bottom of each of the Campbell-Blacks’ piles, wrapped far more carefully than the others, were little bundles. Tab was the first to rip into hers, of course, pulling out a shocking pink jumper, a little TCB embroidered into the cuff.

Looking over at Marcus, he showed her his own submarine yellow one, while Daddy was already pulling on the blue one in his size. Tab was desperate to ask Taggie where hers was, but she didn’t want to spook her, not when she had her grand finale planned for later. 

“They’re gorgeous, Angel,” said Daddy, voice a little gravelly. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. I’ve always liked to knit. And you got me all these lovely things!”

“We got you a little more than that, actually,” he turned to Tab, who was bouncing up and down in excitement, “Why don’t you go get it, Tabbycat? You’re a big enough girl now, aren’t you?”

She gave an eager nod, stumbling for the door with a grin. She only made it two steps, though, before she stopped. Rolling her eyes at herself, Tab gave in to a rare flash of sisterly affection, and turned back to where Marcus was rooting around under the tree. 

“Marcus,” she hissed, getting his attention, “Come help me for a sec.”

“Are we getting–”

“Sshhhhh!” said Tab, dragging him out of the room “You’ll ruin the surprise!! She’s going to love it! And then she’s going to love us for picking it! And then all we have to do is find a way to make her love Daddy. Which might be a little more difficult, but I have a plan.”

“Maybe we should just—” interrupted Marcus, looking a little sick. 

“I said I have a plan! Come on, this is step one. Last one to the kitchen is a grinch!” 

The pair of them raced to the back of the house, their socked feet slipping along the waxed hall tiles, crashing through the door with shrieks of laughter. 

 

 

The children’s feet echoed down the hall as they returned, and Taggie found herself peering at the door, puzzled as to what they could possibly have fetched for her from the kitchen. 

“Don’t look so worried, darling,” said Rupert, “I promise you’ll like it.”

He settled himself behind her on the rug, warmth flooding through Taggie as the expanse of his palms covered her eyes. “Now be a good girl and don’t peek.”

She almost swallowed her tongue as his signet ring settled against her cheek and her eyelashes fluttered against his fingers. It was enough of a distraction that she missed the children’s entrance, jumping as Marcus’ voice told her to hold out her hands.

The next thing she knew, something warm and squirming was placed in them. Gertrude gave a yelp beside her, and Taggie’s eyes popped open as Rupert revealed the world to her once more. 

Her heart stopped at the sight before her, a tiny blond puppy cradled in the palm of her hands, a great red bow about its neck. “This– This can’t possibly be for me.”

“Well, it certainly isn’t for those two,” said Rupert, light voice belied by the intense look in his eyes, “They wheedled their own out of me.”

Gertrude gave another growl as Taggie burrowed her nose in the pup’s fur, but Tag’s guilt was soon soothed as Rupert pulled the dog into his arms. 

“It’s alright, girl,” whispered Rupert, “You know as well as I do that mummy has the biggest heart in the world, hm?” 

Taggie simply didn’t know what to do with herself, after that.

“He’s so lovely,” she said, vision a little blurred, “What shall we call him?”

“I called mine Dillard!” chimed Marcus, and Taggie offered him a soft smile. 

“And what did you call yours, Tab?”

“Fancy,” she said, uncharacteristically shy, “She, um, she had a funny walk.”

“Well, those both sound lovely.” Taggie stroked the pup behind the ears, deep in thought, “How about Carol? Although, I suppose that’s not a name for a boy. Carl?”

“You are not calling one of our dogs Carl,” said Rupert.

Our Dogs. God, he was trying to kill her. “Alright then, what do you think we should call him?”

“A good, strong name, for a good strong boy,” said Rupert. He leaned over Taggie’s shoulder with an indulgent smile, “How about Caesar? Or Caligula?”

His last suggestion came with a waggle of his eyebrows that had Taggie swatting at his shoulder with a glare, all too aware of what that emperor was famous for. 

“What about Claudius?” asked Marcus, “He was the emperor after Caligula, I think.”

“Claudius,” repeated Taggie with a hum, “Claud when he’s good. I think that sounds perfect.”

 

 

Rupert had done a far better job at prepping for dinner than he had on her first disastrous visit to Penscombe that week. Taggie found that the veg was all already chopped, the turkey in the oven, and the sausages waiting with their blankets in the fridge.

“Well, do I pass muster?” asked Rupert, peering over her shoulder as she swiped up some cranberry sauce with her little finger. “I may weep if not– I spent far too long on the phone with Mrs B yesterday.”

A tart tang burst across her tongue as she licked at it, not really aware of herself until she noticed that Rupert had gone a little cross-eyed. Letting her finger fall from her lips with a pop, she gave him a smile.

“You’ve done a brilliant job, really. I can’t believe there’s so little left to do.” 

There had been at least a bit of her that had expected to find herself roped into doing all of the Christmas cooking, as she did every year, but Rupert had even rustled up a plateful of profiteroles from somewhere, their dinner prepped from start to finish. It was still a novel concept, that someone might want her around simply for the sake of it, like time spent with her was its own reward. 

“I’d quite like to make sure you don’t lift a finger, but you’re twitchy just at the thought of watching me cook, aren’t you?”

“N-no… Of course not!” Taggie lied, and then confessed, “Maybe a little.”

Rupert’s chuckle was interrupted by a crash from the drawing room. Both of their eyes shot to the puppy pen, exchanging a look of twin suspicion at the sight of three puppies safely ensconced inside.

Rupert pressed a quieting finger to his lips and took her by the hand, leading her through the hall and into the drawing room by its second door. The children were nowhere to be seen, but their giggles echoed through the open door, and Taggie soon saw why.

There, hanging above an upended chintz chair, was the largest sprig of mistletoe Taggie had ever seen. 

“Oh my god,” she laughed, pressing a shocked hand to her mouth. 

“I think,” said Rupert, a low laugh rumbling through her back as he wrapped his arms around her, “The little shits have been trying to parent trap us.”

The chaos of the last week came together in her mind all at once, the machinations of children suddenly obvious to her inexpert eye. She looked up at him, leaning back in his arms. “I didn’t know we needed to be trapped.”

“I should fucking well hope not,” said Rupert, and then his mouth was on hers. 

She melted into him, reaching up to tangle her fingers in his hair. His lips were rougher than she remembered, chapped from the winter’s air, but she still felt that same swoop in her stomach as she turned in his arms and their bodies melded together. 

Rupert’s hand cupped her jaw as he deepened the kiss, the weight of his body leaning against hers until she found herself tripping back into the door. It closed behind her with a click, the carved panels pressing against her spine as Rupert crowded her. She would have been more embarrassed at the whimper she gave when they parted, were it not for the wild look in his dark eyes. 

“I love you,” she told him on a panted breath, “I should have said it last night—“

He swooped down for another kiss, teeth dragging across the soft flesh of her lip before he released her. “I know.”

Taggie’s head hit the door, and she looked up at him with a pout. “What do you mean, you know?”

“You’ll forgive an old man for his idiocy, won’t you? Asking you out last night, like some girl I’d met at a bar when I love you quite terribly.”

“Oh.” 

Taggie felt a little mad as he kissed her, and kissed her, I love you falling from his lips just as often as he could spare the breath to speak. 

“Rupert–” she said, in half-hearted protest, “The dinner–”

“Will keep.” 

“The children–”

“Have just received enough obnoxious toys to keep them happy for a good, long, while.”

 

 

Taggie was a sight for sore eyes in the winter’s light, hair frizzed a little at the temples, lips swollen and cheeks still flushed pink. It would be a crime to let his attention wander elsewhere when she was so radiant, and so he simply watched on, enjoying the view of her dimples and toothy smile while she pulled out the surprise held in her little basket.

It was only when he heard the children’s sighs of dismay that he persuaded himself to look, spotting what looked like an old jelly tin and a sack of flour set out on his kitchen table.

“What’s this, then, Angel?” he asked, giving Tabitha a look that told her to buck up and put her pout away before there was trouble.

“It’s a game we play every Christmas. Look–” She pulled a silver sixpence out from the bottom of the basket, holding it aloft for them all to see. “You want to get a hold of this, whoever does gets to make a special Christmas wish.”

“And the flour..?”

“Is what you have to get it from.”

With quick, practiced movements, Taggie upended the bag of flour into the jelly mould, then tipped out the resulting mass onto the table. She laughed to herself as a small landslide occurred, white powder slipping off to one side, before delicately settling the sixpence on top. 

When she was done, she rounded the table to stand behind Marcus, pressing a butter knife into his hand and guiding it forward with the gentle clasp of her own. 

“You want to slice away at the flour, until the bit under the coin is all that’s left. When it drops, you’ve got to try and fish it out with your teeth. First to manage it wins the coin, and a wish too.”

His son wore a trembling half-smile as he made the first cut, laser-focussed on the glide of the knife. Affection curled through him as his little boy bit his lip between his teeth, trying to suppress a smile. Rupert thought he might have seen more of that expression in the last few days than he had in a lifetime. It opened up something warm and sticky between his ribs, a great, swelling love for his beautiful family, the likes of which he had never felt before. 

It was Tab’s turn next, and she refused Taggie’s help with an imperious eyebrow, already too big for her nine-year-old boots. “What’s to stop me from just cutting right next to the coin on my first turn, to make sure I get it?”

“Well–” started Taggie, but Rupert cut across her.

“Good sportsmanship. And I know I’ve not raised a child of mine to be a cheat.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, giving her the same steady look he offered misbehaving foals. She would be great, one day, but if Rupert had learnt anything in the last year, it was that greatness was nothing without kindness, and he couldn’t bear the thought of his little Tabbycat living the same cold existence he had. 

With a gust of a sigh, she guided the knife to the edge of the mound, making a careful cut down the side. When she turned her eye back to Taggie, it was to find the older woman offering her a proud smile, and Tabitha turned pink with delight at the unspoken praise. 

One by one, their palms warmed the cold steel of the knife, whittling away at the flour until the tiniest of slithers remained, sixpence balanced precariously on top. Of course, when it came time for the penny to drop, it was Rupert’s turn. The tiniest glint of silver peeked out from under the pile of flour, and he raised an eyebrow at his gleeful… well his gleeful Taggie.

“Are you sure this wasn’t just a ploy to get me to embarrass myself, darling?”

“Oh, you do that easily enough on your own. Come on, don’t you want to make a wish?”

And he did, actually. There was one, very particular, very special wish he’d like to come true. What was it they said, about a sixpence and a shoe?

Rupert had become a little too familiar with the feeling of white powder under his nose in his youth, and he plunged into today’s offering with just as much gusto. He tried not to laugh, lest he really get a lungful, as he mouthed at the flour, fishing around with his lips until he managed to close his teeth around the cold curve of silver. 

Rising from the table, he offered his audience his sauciest smile, then let the coin drop into his palm.

“Well,” he said, wiping flour out of his eyes,  “I think I earned that, don’t you? Now which of you is going to help me clean up?”

The children groaned, pushing their chairs back from the table with mutters about checking on the puppies before making the quickest of exits. Rupert watched them scamper across the room with a chuckle– they weren’t the only ones capable of scheming. 

Reaching across the table to take Taggie by the hand, he pulled her around to come stand between his knees. He pressed a kiss to each of her fingertips before he let her go, worth the effort if only for the way it made her blush. With a small, private, smile she brushed at the flour on his face, running twin thumbs over his eyebrows with a light laugh.

“Thank you for indulging me,” she said. “Do you know what you’ll wish for?”

He hummed in the affirmative, but said no more. From this angle, her eyes seemed to glow, warm amber pools that would be heaven to be lost in. God, but he loved her. He had told her a hundred times that morning, and he would tell her a hundred more before the day was out. There was only one thing he could have possibly wished for at that moment, and there she was, wrapped up in cord and cotton, the best gift a man could ask for. 

Shifting a little, he turned back to the flour, a giddy thrill roaring through his chest as he reached towards it. With a careful touch, he started to carve out his wish, letters appearing one by one. 

Eyes fixed on her face, he watched as Taggie sounded it out, expression changing like the weather as she cycled through puzzlement and shock before landing on wonder. 

Rupert raised a finger to his lips, shushing her with a nod towards the children. “You know what they say about wishes. If you say them outloud, they won’t come true.”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, her body taut. He wasn’t known for being a patient man, but he would have waited a lifetime for her answer, if that was what she needed. Luckily for him, she reached out her hand in the next moment, ‘y e s’ carved into the flour, just below his own ‘w i l l  y o u  m a r r y  m e?’.

Pure, euphoric joy flooded through his veins as she turned back to him, and he tugged her down for a kiss, crushing their lips together without a care for who might see. She laughed against his lips, balancing herself on his knee as she wrapped her arms around him.

From behind her, one of the children gave a squawk, and Rupert pulled away, sure they’d been rumbled. Instead, he found that Claudius was earning his keep, the children watching on as he launched a burgeoning career as an escape artist. 

“Do you really mean it?” Taggie asked, breathless with delight. 

“Well, you know what they say. A Rupert is for life, not just for Christmas.”

 

 

Snow fell against the window as Boxing Day dawned, the bite in the air having kept Taggie burrowed in bed well past first light. The cold of the house was torture as she slipped out of bed, a shiver running through her as her feet met the hardwood floor. 

God, but why couldn’t she spend the day under a duvet? 

There was a soft snore from the bottom of the bed, and Taggie diverted for a moment, cooing at the dogs curled up there, running a hand over the soft head of her new pup. 

“I can’t believe you let them sleep on the bed,” grumbled a voice from behind her, Rupert appearing from under the covers in a mess of tangled curls.

“There’s no way this is the first time Beaver has slept up there,” said Taggie, tiptoeing across the room, hunting for her clothes “He practically kicked me out of bed.”

“No one would ever kick you out of bed, Angel.”

She found her blouse tossed across the fireguard, wrinkled to buggery and absolutely useless to her. A few feet away were her tights, the rip down them visible even before she tried to pull them on. Turning a glare at Rupert, she tossed the ruined garments at him, growling with displeasure when he just grinned.  

“Oh, don’t be like that, Tag. What’s a man meant to do? You look lovely in your clothes, darling, but you must admit, they look rather better on my bedroom floor.”

 

In the end, she found herself bundled up in one of Rupert’s jumpers and a pair of jodhpurs, trying her best to hide the fact that the bottoms of them were rolled up three times as she stuffed them into her gumboots.

Marcus and Tabitha had, thankfully, been far too excited to see her back at Penscombe to realise that she’d never actually left. After a quickly scoffed breakfast, the four of them pulled on the warmest coats they could find, the promise of fresh snow too tempting to resist.

A walk through the Bluebell Woods was always one of Taggie’s favourite pastimes, but with the sound of Tab chattering on about her plans for her pony at a mile a minute in one ear, and the dogs’ delight as they bounced through the snow in the other, she knew it would hold a special place in her heart forever.

Rupert walked a little ahead of them with Marcus, talking to the boy in soft tones about the different trees that made up the woods, pointing into the distance as he told him about the ancient oaks, planted by their ancestors at the end of the Civil War. Marcus, being far braver than Taggie had known him to be, started to scamper off in that direction, pausing to call his sister over so that they could explore together. 

Tabitha joined her brother at a gallop, grinning as she skipped between the trees. The week hadn’t turned out exactly as she’d hoped, and she was undeniably disappointed that her scheming had come to nothing. But looking back at Taggie and Daddy as he helped her over a fallen branch, she thought that she might still be able to pull it off, if she could persuade Mummy to let them come down to Penscombe for another weekend or two. 

She let Marcus drag her around looking for an oak for a little while, the least she could do after letting him fall from that chair yesterday, before boredom finally got to her. Giggling to herself, she bent down, letting the icy cold of the snow seep into her fingers as she took some up in her palm. 

It hit Marcus’ back with a splat, and soon they were chasing each other through the woods, snowballs flying as they trampled back to where Daddy and Tag waited on the path. Tab tripped as she ducked away from one of her brother’s missiles, crashing into Taggie and sending them both sprawling into the snow.

“Gosh,” said Daddy, grinning down at them as Tab rolled off of the older woman, “I’m not sure Taggie will let you be a bridesmaid after that, Tabbycat.”

There was a beat of silence, and then bedlam broke out. 

“Rupert–”

“Bridesmaid??”

“You’re getting married?!”

In the next moment, Marcus flung himself at Daddy at such speed that they both fell face first into the snow. Watching Daddy sputter as he spat snow out of his mouth, Tab curled into Taggie’s side, leaning up to whisper in her ear.

“I think this might be my favourite Christmas ever.”

Taggie pulled Tab close, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead as the boys tussled beside them.

“Mine too.”

 

Notes:

A thousand thank yous to the little elves that made this fic possible!! A special thank you to my dear, dear flour artist who made my proposal dreams come true, and to my axe wielding helper who held my hand while I tried (and failed) to get this thing down to 15k.

May santa leave you the bestest of gifts underneath the tree.