Page 27 of How the Duke Saved Christmas

“Bows?” He slid a puzzled glance at Clara, who muffled a soft laugh behind her glove.

“Just say yes to the bows, Uncle Michael,” Clara prompted, her face beaming at all the fun they were having.

Seeing her at that moment, he was reminded of why he’d persuaded her into coming out into the woods with them today and the importance of his promise to Anthony. The happy expression on her face nearly squelched the guilt he felt at manipulating her. The ends—of Clara having her life back—would more than justify the means.

He easily capitulated. “Yes.”

The children cheered, and Susannah put a piece of holly beneath the lead pony’s crownpiece. The animal flicked its ear back and forth in a futile attempt to dislodge it.

He walked back to the sledge, removed the axe from the box behind the bench, and mumbled, “I think I’ve lost control of my own house.”

“You have four children beneath your roof.” Clara’s low voice matched his. “You lost control the moment they came through the front door.”

“Don’t I know it.” Despite his feigned grumpiness, he loved having the children around. He wanted children of his own to fill the house and do all kinds of wonderful activities with, including chopping down their own tree every year to come. He wanted that so badly his gut ached.

The fact that he’d once planned to have that with Clara made other parts of him ache as well.

He returned to Margaret as she waited patiently by a stand of pine trees, and he pointed at a much smaller tree just off the edge of the meadow. One that wouldn’t require an army of engineers and ropes to pull it upright in the house.

“How about that tree there?” he suggested.

Margaret’s eyes followed his gloved hand. Then her shoulders slumped. “It’s tiny.”

“Actually,” Clara called out from the bench on the front of the sledge, “I think your uncle is right. That tree is exactly the same size as the one I remember seeing in the palace.”

“It is?” Margaret hurried through the snow to investigate the smaller tree more closely.

Michael walked backward just long enough to mouth,Thank you, to Clara.

She sent him a conspiratorial wink.

Dear God, she was lovely. Perched on the driver’s bench behind the team of draft ponies, with the fur-edged hood of her cream-colored cape framing her oval face, she exuded a warmth that contradicted the cold woods around them. Her blue eyes sparkled as much as the sunlight on the ice crystals that topped the layer of snow stretching across the countryside. The cold air—along with her amusement at watching the children put him through his paces this afternoon—had blushed her cheeks and lips, making them appear an even deeper carnation pink against her creamy skin.

Behind her, the sledge’s wagon bed was rapidly being filled with all kinds of greenery. Aaron and Benjamin were each on a race to pick more holly branches and cut more yew boughs than the other, while Susannah was busying herself with building a woodland cottage for her doll out of old branches and wood bits that had fallen beneath the trees.

Although the children were having a grand time traipsing through the woods, Michael knew he’d have to send the park’s gamekeeper out tomorrow to find better pieces of greenery that could be swapped out during the night without the children being any the wiser.

But collecting greenery wasn’t the point of this outing.

What mattered was that Clara was here with them.

“Yes, I think it will be a good tree,” Margaret announced, snagging back his attention.

He approached the pine and sized up the width of the trunk at its base and the direction the tree needed to fall. “Once it’s decorated, it will look splendid.” He gestured Margaret to move back toward the wagon and double-checked to make certain the other children weren’t anywhere near. “Stay back, everyone.”

The children did as instructed. Susannah barely glanced up as she fixed a pine needle roof onto her doll’s cottage, and Aaron took advantage of Benjamin’s distraction to slide another branch onto the sledge and move ahead in their competition.

Michael raised the axe and chopped at the tree’s base. A few minutes later, he straightened, once more checked the location of all four children, and pushed at the tree. A loud crack popped from its trunk, and it tumbled down into the snow and undergrowth.

The children cheered. So did Clara.

Michael took an exaggerated bow from the waist, as if he were Edmund Kean at Drury Lane.

“That was quite the sight,” Clara drawled as he carried the axe back to the sledge and carefully stowed it in the tool box behind the bench.

He couldn’t stop a grin from curling his lips. “Good to know I’ve got a second career in forestry if this dukedom thing doesn’t work out.”

Her soft laugh lilted through the snow-muffled woods around them. He hid his own smile as he put on a pair of leather work gloves and walked back to the felled tree. He used to love making her laugh, finding just the right witticism to make her giggle or to flash that beaming smile of hers that never failed to light up the entire room.