After dressing, Monet headed to the nursery to oversee breakfast. As the children ate, they discussed their day.
“I was thinking we could talk to Cook and see if she’d let us visit the kitchen later and make some Christmas cookies. I don’t know if you have a favorite kind
but I remember the delicious cuccidati we used to have at the palazzo, filled with figs, dates, walnuts, spices and a hint of orange.”
Elise, the housemaid, had just entered the room to collect the morning dishes and smiled as she heard mention of the Sicilian cookies. “Cuccidati are a lot of work, and I’m not sure Cook has all the ingredients right now, but I am certain you could make canestrelli or even pizzicati without too much effort. Would you like me to ask Cook?”
The children answered with a resounding yes and then after Elise had gone, Monet helped Antonio dress. Matteo and Rocca didn’t need or want help from her. Once hair was brushed, and teeth were clean, they resumed discussion about what to do after they were done with cookies—if Cook would allow them into the kitchen.
“Any ideas?” Monet asked them, buoyed by their eager faces. “Suggestions?”
“What could we do?” Matteo asked.
“Well, I suggest we go to the Christmas market in the village tonight,” Monet said. “We’ll go have dinner there and shop and see if we can’t find some pretty ornaments and trinkets to decorate our own Christmas tree.”
“But we don’t even have a Christmas tree,” Rocca reminded Monet.
“Then that is the first thing we’ll do today. We’ll go find a tree, and have someone help us cut it down and bring it in to the nursery.”
Matteo looked skeptical. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Father won’t like it.”
“We’re not putting it in his bedroom. Or his study. Or his living room. It’s going in your room.” Monet studied their suddenly pinched, anxious faces. They really were nervous and that wasn’t her intention. “Or,” she added thoughtfully, “we could just put it in my room. I would love a Christmas tree. It’d make my room so cozy at night and it’d make it smell wonderful during the day.”
“But then when we will see it?” Antonio asked. “I want a Christmas tree. I want a tree with pretty lights and ornaments and things.”
She drew Antonio onto her lap. “You can always come into my room. In fact, we can have evening stories and prayers in my room. It will be quite festive. Cookies and stories every night before bed.” Monet glanced from one face to the next. “How does that sound?”
“So nice...” Rocca said with a wistful sigh.
But Matteo looked troubled. “I still don’t think Papà will like it. He’ll say we’re being sneaky.”
“Then let’s not do it,” Monet said. “The last thing I want you to do is get in trouble. This is supposed to be a fun time of year, not a time for you to be troubled or anxious.”
For a moment no one said anything and then Antonio whispered, “So you’re not going to have a tree, Signorina Wilde?”
“I’d like one,” she answered truthfully. “Even if it’s just a very small tree. I could put it on the desk.”
“Or on that table by your couch,” Rocca said. “That way you could see it from your bed, too.”
Monet smiled. “That is a good idea. I’d like that.”
“Can we help decorate it?” Rocca asked.
“I want to, I want to,” Antonio cried. “Please can I help?”
“And help pick it out? We could all go look for it together.” Rocca looked hopeful. “We could even help cut it and carry it—”
“No, I think we’ll leave the cutting to someone else,” Monet interrupted with a smile. “But I don’t see why you couldn’t give me some advice. I can always use advice.”
“And then we will put it in your room. There’s no reason we can’t go there just at night and say good-night to the tree. It’s not being that sneaky. We’re just saying a quick good-night, and that shouldn’t make Papà too mad at us.” She darted a swift glance at Matteo, and then at Monet. “He’d just be mad at Monet.”
“But we don’t want Papà mad at Monet,” Matteo said irritably. “It’s not fair for her to get in trouble for something we want.”
“That’s true. If we really want a tree, then we should just tell him so,” Rocca said. “And if he shouts, he shouts.”
Matteo shook his head. “Papà doesn’t shout. He just frowns a lot and gets that expression that makes you think he’s never going to smile again.”
“I’ve seen that expression,” Monet said. “It wasn’t always that way, though. He used to smile a great deal. When he was younger, when I knew him before, he smiled all the time.”
“He smiled before Mamma died,” Matteo said quietly. “I remember our last Christmas here, before Antonio was born.” He looked at his sister. “Do you remember? It was the best Christmas. It was so happy. Like a fairy tale.”
The children fell silent. Monet’s chest suddenly ached and her eyes felt hot and gritty.
It was the best Christmas.
Like a fairy tale.
Their innocent words pricked her heart and made her want to wrap her arms around them and keep them safe.
What a hard time they’d had of it. How impossible to lose their mother, and their father, because they had lost Marcu, too. He’d lost all joy, and love, and tenderness. It was a tragedy on top of tragedy. She exhaled slowly, letting out some of the bottled air, and said quietly, “It can be that way again. It will be that way again, one day, I promise.”
“How?” Rocca asked.
Monet reached out to stroke the girl’s dark silky hair, and Rocca leaned into the caress and Monet gave her head another comforting touch. “Maybe it’s time we started reminding him of just how beautiful and special Christmas really is.”
* * *
It was an extremely busy day, packed with activities from baking cookies to sampling cookies, to dressing in winter gear to tramp through the snow-dusted garden in search of a tree somewhere on the grounds that would be the perfect tree. It took them nearly an hour before they found one they could all agree on, and then they went in search of a gardener to cut it down and bring it inside for them.
There was much discussion about where the tree should go in Monet’s room, and they moved it from spot to spot, all while Antonio begged to let them put it in the nursery. But Matteo was adamant that his father would be livid if he found it there and Monet agreed with Matteo. “We don’t want your father livid,” Monet said.
Once they had the tree positioned in its metal stand, they discussed how they should decorate it. The children made paper snowflakes and colored some stars, and just before they hung them on the tree, the butler appeared with a box of Christmas decorations he’d found in the attic. The children carefully went through the box, oohing and aahing at the old, and very fragile glass ornaments, and the wooden hand-carved ornaments depicting angels and wise men and shepherds and animals from the manger. They were still looking through all the ornaments, deciding which ones were small enough and light enough, to go on their little tree, when the butler returned with a long string of white lights.
The children abandoned the ornaments to help her wind the lights through the tree branches and then hang the ornaments they’d selected from the box, along with the white snowflakes they’d made. They were delighted with their finished product and begged to eat their dinner in front of the fire in her room so they could enjoy the tree. Cook made them a special meal of pizza and they all sat around on her living-room floor with their pizza and their homemade cookies, proud of everything they had accomplished today.
Monet smiled as the children chattered, telling herself everything was fine, but secretly, she had knots in her stomach, and her stomach cramped with anxiety.
Marcu wasn’t going to be happy when he returned.
Marcu would probably be livid.
This was exactly the kind of day he wouldn’t approve of, and yet the children were beyond thrilled. As they prepared for bed, they were positively giddy, reliving the day, and how they’d found the tree and picked ornaments from the box.
But fortunately, he wouldn’t be home just yet
. Fortunately they had another full day before he returned late tomorrow afternoon, or tomorrow night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WINTER STORM warnings worried Marcu, and he wrapped up his meetings early, and was in his helicopter flying north, when it became apparent it was foolish to try to land in Aosta. Snow had begun to fall and the wind was howling and the only way he’d make it to the castello tonight would be to drive from Milan. Fortunately, his assistant had booked a car for him, and the car was waiting at the Milan airport when the helicopter landed.
Relieved to be behind the wheel, Marcu left the city, and tried to relax as he got on the open road, but the sky was dark and ominous and the news reports indicated foul weather for the next few days, with this new storm being the worst so far this year.
As he drove, he wondered what the children had been doing, and he hoped Monet had gotten them outside for fresh air and exercise. He tried to think of the children but not Monet, which was impossible. The more he tried to block her from his thoughts, the more she consumed them.
He’d been so preoccupied with her even last night when he’d taken Vittoria to dinner. He hadn’t wanted to be at dinner with Vittoria. He sat across the table from her thinking that maybe Monet was right, maybe he was making a mistake, and not because he needed a warm wife, but the children needed a warm, tender mother. Only as he listened to Vittoria discuss the ski trip, and the people who would be there, and the parties they’d been invited to, his chest tightened, the air bottling in his lungs. Not once did she ask about his children. Not once did she express concern that it might be difficult for the children to be left behind for the holiday.
What if she was as cold and hard as he was?
What if the children suffered more if he married her?
“I have to tell you something,” he’d said, putting down his fork. “I kissed Monet, the woman who is staying with the children while Miss Sheldon is gone. It shouldn’t have happened, and it won’t happen again. I’m sorry—”