“You know, I think this is Pru at work from wherever she is. She loved you, and she loved us, and we all loved her. Can’t you just imagine her wanting us to be together, especially on Christmas?” The truth was that Emma could imagine it perfectly, and she nodded. “Now, my rakish younger brother is another story. He would have rather been in London, chasing around some beautiful girl, or a flock of them. Yorkshire was far too tame for him. Pru and I loved it here, but Phillip never did, from the time he turned eighteen. And where is your family?” he asked her.

“They’re not. My father died in the last war before I was born, and my mother when I was fifteen. I’ve been on my own since I turned eighteen. I went to nursing school, eventually became a midwife, and then I enlisted. And now here I am. Pru was like a sister to me,” she said in a gentle voice.

“She said the same thing about you,” he said, startled by her description of her origins, and life on her own. She was a little older than Pru, but not that much, and he was about to turn twenty-eight. He felt like an old man these days.

As the fire died down and the room got chilly, he took her up to the guest room his mother had suggested. Emma noticed that Lady Pommery had taken the journal with her to bed and she was pleased. The gift had been a success, and she had ended up spending the evening with Pru’s family, which she hadn’t expected and was enjoying more than she’d imagined, with such warm treatment from the Pommerys. The bedroom Max led her to was large and comfortable and looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long time.

She fell asleep thinking of Pru and woke to the sound of children laughing and talking, and thundering down the stairs to have breakfast, shepherded by the young women who took care of them.

Emma dressed in her uniform and joined the children in the kitchen. She was playing games with them when Max walked in, looking as impeccably put together as he had the night before. She felt a little bit intimidated by him. He seemed so sophisticated, handsome, and aristocratic, and he had been nothing but welcoming to her since she’d arrived.

“I’m so sorry. Did the little monsters wake you?” He put one of the younger ones on his lap, and Emma had an adorable little girl on hers. They chatted over the din, and one of the babysitters made them coffee, which they agreed was ghastly ever since the war, and they ate some of the leftover scones. His mother joined them shortly after and told the children that Father Christmas had left them some presents in the great hall. Max told Emma when his mother left the room that she had wrapped them all herself. The children followed her like the Pied Piper and Max and Emma could hear the noise in the hall as they opened their gifts. Pru’s mother managed to make it a happy day for all of them, despite what the Pommerys had been through that year, losing two children. She thanked Emma profusely again for Pru’s journal. She said she had already read half of it.