Read Online Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron - Free Book Online Page B

team—and were evenly scored. The hour grew late, and I believe most of us should have gone happily to bed without a murmur, but our hostess would have none of it. “One last attempt,” Eliza cried, “to decide the whole! In fairness, any of us may submit a teazing rhyme.” She glanced round the room and seized upon an empty porcelain bowl. “Place your folded clews anonymously here, and I shall chuse one. I shall read it aloud—and recuse myself from play.”
    Everyone on my team looked to me; with a sigh, I bent to my pad and pencil. Perhaps three minutes passed, during which only the soft hiss of settling embers in the drawing-room fire could be heard. My mother uttered a satisfied “Hah!” and tripped over to Eliza with her folded chit; James proffered another; I tossed mine into the bowl. No one else moved.
    “Come, come!” I chided. “We cannot have only Austens. At least three more charades must make up Eliza’s pot, or this shall be far too easy for some of us!”
    Perhaps two more minutes passed. Mr. L’Anglois and Mr. Edward Gambier sheepishly dropped twists of paper into the bowl. Cassandra forbore to add to the Austen weight. Miss Gambier, however, valiantly delivered a clew; and so, eventually, did Raphael West.
    Eliza twirled her fingers among the bits of paper and drew one forth. With a smile, she said, “This is one for the season! It is entitled ‘A Virgin Birth.’ ”
    My first is best seen in the Garden of Eden;
    My second will serve to bore holes in shoes
.
    By the time my third has set, this e’en
,
    Then any old name will do, that you chuse
.
    From its halting phrases, this was no Austen effort. We never titled our charades, from fear of giving away the solution. “Pray read it again, Eliza,” I begged. I was unaccountably stuck on the first word … best seen in the Garden of Eden …
    “Snake?” Thomas-Vere suggested. “Apple? Or shall we plump for the more mellifluous name of Mephistopheles?”
    “Too long,” William Chute said seriously.
    “Could it be tree?” I frowned. “Or perhaps Eve—with Eve being merely the first part of a longer word, such as …”
    “Awl,” Thomas-Vere mused. He tapped his pursed lips with his quizzing-glass, the picture of foppish distraction. “Eve-awl. Evil. It does give one to think. I had been wont to consider Eden as the absence of all evil.”
    “Surely that can have nothing to do with a Virgin Birth,” Chute pointed out.
    Miss Gambier cleared her throat. She was looking pallid; the lateness of the hour did not agree with her. “You are wrong, Miss Austen,” she said. “The first is not Eve, but Nature. I believe awl is correct, however, for the second.”
    “Natur-al,” William Chute pounced.
    “Natural … sun?” I attempted, considering the third word’s clew. “For the sun sets in the evening.” I felt my cheeks warm suddenly, as I heard the sense of what I had said. Natural son. A polite term for bastard.
    “Indeed,” Miss Gambier said. “The thing for which any old name will do.” She uttered the words with sharp bitterness, and rose abruptly from her chair.
    “Miss Gambier—” Eliza was staring at her, open-mouthed.
    “I have grown weary of this game,” she said brusquely. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Chute—but I must retire immediately.”
    “But we intended to close the night with Evensong in the Chapel,” Eliza protested. “Mr. Austen has been so good as to say he will preside—”
    “Aunt Louisa, may I escort you to your bedchamber?” Miss Gambier interrupted, ignoring the import of Eliza’s speech.
    “Thank you, my dear,” Lady Gambier whispered, and pulled herself to her feet with obvious effort. Although her frame was stout enough, her voice and aspect were frail; like her niece, she seemed about to drop where she stood. Mr. West caught her as she swayed and said tersely, “Gambier—a glass of brandy for your aunt.”
    The good lady protested, but was persuaded to resume her seat for