"Well?" he demanded.
"Well, if the wind didn't gust once more in that corner, rattling the lid on the trunk something fierce. I swear, it seemed almost as if the wind was trying to open it. It really was the strangest damned thing. Gave me the chills, I don't mind telling you. And that's when I remembered that old leather-wrapped thing I'd put in that trunk long before I ever came to Haverston to work—and that I was supposed to give it to your family as a gift. Stranger yet, soon as I did open the trunk, the wind stopped completely."
He laughed suddenly. "I can just hear what Amy would say about that if she'd been there. She'd insist it was my grandmother's ghost, or perhaps even her grandmother's ghost, making sure the journal got delivered. Good God, don't ever tell her about that wind, Molly. She really will think this old place is haunted."
"Nonsense. It was just a wind, likely stirred up by the heat in the room."
"Yes, obviously, yet my niece is a bit fanciful, so let's keep that part of your discovery to ourselves, shall we?" he suggested with a smile.
"If you insist."
"Now tell me who gave it to you all those years ago. You aren't old enough to have known my grandmother."
"No, but my grandmum was. And it all came back to me when I found it again, what she'd told me when she gave the present into my keeping. She'd been Anna Malory's personal maid, you know."
He grinned at her. "Now, how would I have known that, when you never bothered to mention it before?"
She blushed. "Well, I'd forgotten about that, too. I don't remember much about my grandmum, since I was so young when I knew her, and she died soon after she gave me that journal. And my mother never worked here at Haverston, so she'd had no dealings with the Malorys herself, nor ever had reason to mention them, which made it all the easier for me to forget about it. And it was more than ten years later before I came to work here myself, but even that didn't stir my memory."
"So Anna Malory gave it to your grandmother to deliver?"
"No, she gave it to her to give to me. Let me tell you what my grandmum told me, and maybe you'll understand I certainly didn't at the time, and still don't, but here it is, as best as I can remember. My grandmum was already Lady Malory's maid, but the lady summoned her one day, told her to sit and have tea with her, that they were going to be the best of friends. Grandma said the lady often laid strange things, and one of them she said that day, She said, 'We're going to be related, you know. It won't be for a very long time, and we won't see it happen, but it will happen, and you'll help it to happen when you give this to your granddaughter.' "
"The journal?"
Molly nodded. "Lady Malory had more to say about it, specific instructions actually. My grandmum admitted she'd thought the lady was daft at the time. After all, she didn't have a granddaughter yet. But the instructions she was given was to have her granddaughter—me; I'm the only one she ever got, after all—deliver the present to the Malory family for Christmas in the first quarter of the new century. Not to any specific member of the family, just to the family. And being a gift, she wanted it to look like a gift. And that's all she had to say about it. No, wait, there was one other thing. About the time of delivery. She said, 'I have the feeling that's when it will be of the most benefit.' "
Jason smiled slowly and gave his grandmother a silent thank-you. To Molly he said, "Amazing."
"You understand it, then?"
"Yes, and so will you, I think, as soon as you read it. But why didn't you leave a note with it, so we would have at least known who it was for, and who it was from? Not knowing turned it into quite a mystery, which is why the younguns didn't wait for Christmas to open it."
"Because it was for all of you, of course." And then she chuckled. "Besides, if it turned out to be nothing important, I wasn't going to own up to putting it there."
"Oh, it was important, sweetheart, and more than that, a valuable heirloom for this family. And I'm most definitely looking forward to hearing what you have to say after you read it."
She gave him a suspicious look. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like whatever's in that journal?"
"Possibly because you're so pigheaded stubborn about certain things."
"Now you're really starting to worry me, Jason Malory," she said in a grumbling tone.
He grinned. "No need to fret, love. Only good things will come of it, I promise."
"Yes, but good for whom?"
Christmas morning dawned bright if chilly at Haverston, though the parlor where most of the family was gathered was quite comfy, with a nice fire crackling. Jeremy had lit the small candles on the decorated tree. Though the extra light wasn't needed, the flickering flames fascinated the children, and the sweet scent from the candles was a nice touch. The last to arrive were James, Georgina, and their three younguns. Jack ran immediately to her oldest brother, Jeremy, whom she adored, and got her usual tickle and hug from him. Then, typically, she headed straight for Judy, ignoring everyone else, though she would make the rounds to greet the rest of her large family after the two young girls finished their morning whisperings.
Anthony, never one to let a prime moment pass, said to his tardy brother, "Now that you've managed to find that bed of yours again, having trouble getting out of it, eh?"
Anthony had got most of his teasing done yesterday, though. When he'd seen James in such obvious good spirits, he'd been unable to resist taunting, "What? No longer in a mood to pass out black eyes?"
"Put a lid on it, puppy," his brother had replied with a snort.
That never worked, at least not with Anthony anyway. "George has forgiven you, I take it?"
"George is having another baby, or babies, as the case may be," James said drolly.
