A Christmas to Remember: The Mistletoe Kiss\Roses for Christmas by Betty Neels

Author:Betty Neels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN
Published: 2004-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

There was no one at breakfast when she went downstairs in the morning. Cokker brought her coffee and toast, which she didn’t want. Later, she promised herself, when the professor had a few minutes to spare, she would explain about going back to England with Oom Domus. He would be pleased; it made a neat end to an awkward situation. Anneliese would have got her way, too… She hadn’t seen Anneliese after those few words; she supposed that she was spending the night here and would probably stay on now the professor was home.

Emmy got up and went to look out of the window. Ruerd was coming towards the house with Tip and Solly, coming from the direction of the shore. If she had the chance she would go once more just to watch the wintry North Sea and then walk back over the dunes along the path which would afford her a glimpse of the house beyond the garden. It was something she wanted to remember for always.

She went back upstairs before he reached the house; the children must be wakened and urged to dress and clean their teeth. Joke had said that they would be leaving that afternoon at the same time as Alemke and her husband and children.

‘Everyone else will go before lunch,’ she had told Emmy. ‘My mother and father will stay for lunch, of course, but Grandmother and Aunt Beatrix will go at the same time as the others.’

Cousins and aunts and uncles and family and friends began to take their leave soon after breakfast, and, once they had gone, Emmy suggested that she should take the children down for a last scamper on the sands.

‘Oh, would you?’ asked Joke. ‘Just for an hour, so they can let off steam? Nanny will be waiting for us when we get home. They’re going to miss you, Emmy.’

The professor was in his study with his father. Emmy bundled the children into their coats, wrapped herself up against the winter weather outside and hurried them away before he should return. She still had to tell him that she was leaving, but perhaps a brisk run out of doors would give her the courage to do so.

At the end of an hour, she marshalled her charges into some sort of order and went back to the house, and, since their boots and shoes were covered in damp sand and frost, they went in through the side door. It wasn’t until it was too late to retreat that she saw the professor standing there, holding the door open.

The children milled around him, chattering like magpies, but presently he said something to them and they trooped away, leaving Emmy without a backward glance. She did her best to slide past the professor’s bulk.

‘I’ll just go and help the children,’ she began. And then went on ashamed of her cowardice, ‘I wanted to see you, Professor. I’d like to go back to England today, if you don’t mind. Oom Domus said he would give me a lift this evening.

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