“You won’t rest till you get it out of me, will you? All I was saying was that Mr. Dermot Tregarland ought not to be here.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s the bridegroom, that’s why.”

“Well, he has to be here. We can’t have a wedding without him.”

“That’s true enough. But he should have stayed somewhere else…at a hotel or something.”

“There’s plenty of room here.”

“It ain’t right for bride and groom to sleep under the same roof on the day before their wedding. It’s unlucky.”

“Oh, Mrs. Mills, I never heard such nonsense. He’s been here before and we’ve visited his family. We were all under the same roof then. Nobody thought anything about it.”

“This is the night before the wedding.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s only yesterday you were a little ’un, Miss Violetta. There you were, sitting at my table and popping raisins in your mouth when you thought I wasn’t looking. And there was Dorabella with you. There’s things you have to learn. I can only tell you it’s unlucky for bride and groom to spend the night before the wedding under the same roof.”

I laughed. “Well, they’ll be married soon and it won’t matter about their being under the same roof.”

“I didn’t say it would. I’m only telling you what I’ve always heard. But I wouldn’t like Miss Dorabella to know.”

“Don’t worry. She wouldn’t care if she did.”

“That’s a fact. She never saw anything she didn’t want to.”

There was a glass jar of raisins on the table. I leaned forward, took one, and, smiling at Mrs. Mills, I put it into my mouth.

“You’re cheeky, you are,” said Mrs. Mills.

And I went out of the kitchen and remembered later that I had not told her there was an extra person for dinner.

It was Christmas Eve. The Yule log had been brought in. In the kitchen they were baking mince pies and preparing the mulled wine for the carol singers when, they came. Hampers were being sent to the people in the cottages. Caddington always kept up the traditions and customs of the past.

My uncle Charles with his family were with us, accompanied by Grandmother Lucie. The house was full.

Grandmothers Lucie and Belinda were closeted together, talking about old times. Their lives had been very much entwined—often dramatically—and there was a certain relationship between them, rather like that which had existed with my mother and my aunt Annabelinda who had died violently and mysteriously many years before. We did not talk about that. Grandmother Belinda did not like us to, and my mother was always reticent about her, too.

Christmas was a time for stirring memories, and I suspected that when Lucie and Belinda were together there was a great deal of talk of those early days.

Edward arrived with Gretchen. They were now engaged to be married.

I often thought what a significant time that had been in Germany. There would not have been these preparations for this wedding now but for that. Edward and Gretchen? Well, he had met her before, but I could not help feeling that the incidents we had seen in the Böhmerwald had precipitated them into a binding relationship. It had certainly made Edward see that he could not leave her in Germany.

There was much merriment at the dinner table that night. We pulled crackers and produced our paper hats and read our mottoes while we laughed at the useless little articles we found in them—hearts of mock-gold and silver, keyrings, tin whistles, and so on.

My father sat at the head of the table. He was very happy. He loved to have the family around him and he, at least, I was sure, had no qualms about the coming marriage, except perhaps to hope that Dermot would become more interested in the estate which would be his…as dedicated as Gordon Lewyth was to ensure its prosperity.

But that might be my imagination again. His daughter was marrying into a family in Cornwall whose position was similar to his own. And I supposed that was something most fathers would want for their daughters. It was really all very satisfactory.

When we rose from the table the carol singers arrived. I heard them in the courtyard. We all went out to greet them as we had every Christmas I remembered. We sang with them, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” all the carols which we knew so well. The singers came into the hall where Mrs. Mills was waiting with the mince pies and mulled wine.

“Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas…” The words echoed round the hall.

“Long life and happiness to Miss Dorabella.”

Dorabella, flushed, excited, beamed on them all. Dermot was beside her and everyone said what a beautiful bride she would make to stand beside such a handsome bridegroom.

At last the singers had departed and my mother said: “Now it is time for bed, I should say. We have a big day tomorrow.”

We retired to our rooms. I undressed and got into bed. I felt a certain sadness. This was the end of an era. Tomorrow she would be not so much my twin sister as Dermot’s wife.

I was not entirely surprised when she came to me. She stood by the bed. In her blue nightdress with dressing gown to match, her hair about her shoulders, she looked very young and in some ways vulnerable.

“Hello, Vee,” she said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“It’s cold out here.” She took off her dressing gown and let it fall to the floor, then she leaped in beside me.

We laughed.

“You all right?” I asked.

Her arms were tight about me. “H’m,” she murmured.

“You don’t sound sure. You’re not going to call the whole thing off, are you?”

She laughed. “You’re joking!”

“Nothing would surprise me with you.”

“No. I’m wildly, ecstatically happy.”

“Are you?”

“Well…”

“A little scared?”

“Perhaps.”

“They say marriage is a big undertaking.”

“Dermot will be all right. I can look after him.”

“You usually can, as you say, look after people.”

“As I have looked after you all these years?”

“Now it is you who are joking. As I remember, I did most of the looking after.”

“Yes, you have, dear sister. That’s true. And what I want is for you to go on doing it.”

“What! From miles away?”

“That’s what I don’t like about this…being miles away. It won’t be the same, will it?”

“Of course not! Talk sense. How could it be? You won’t be Miss Dorabella Denver any more. You’ll be Mrs. Dermot Tregarland.”

“I know.”

“Dorabella? Seriously, you are not having second thoughts, are you? It is rather late.”

“Oh, no. It’s just that I wish you were coming with me.”

“What! To Venice? A honeymoon à trois! I wonder what Dermot would think about that?”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant afterwards. I wish you were coming to Cornwall.”

“I shall come for a visit.”

“You will, won’t you? Often…”

“And you will come here.”

“Yes, there is that. But…I’d like you to be there all the time.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re a big girl now. You don’t need your alter ego there beside you all the time.”

“That’s just it. I do. I have been feeling this for some time. We are like one person. When you think of all that time before we were born…when most children are alone…we were there…growing together. We’re part of each other. There is something between us, something other people can’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“Of course you do. You are part of it. You were always there. Do you remember that frightful Miss Dobbs at school? She was always trying to separate us. ‘You must stand on your own feet, Dorabella.’ Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“I hated her because she wouldn’t let us sit together.”

“And you could not do your sums.”

“Which you were clever at, of course.”

“You would have been all right if you had tried. Miss Dobbs was right. You should have stood on your own feet.”