Elisabeth Fairchild (18 page)

“And was it?”

“My children were fine, mind you, but it were several weeks before I stopped looking
down in alarm every time my hand was grasped.”

He laughed. She meant him to laugh, and laughed as well, herself.

“I wonder where the ghost meant to lead you,” he said, even as he wondered,
Where does a ghost lover lead a dying man?

“I’ve no idea,” she said, “but it struck me strange afterward that I felt no fear
while I were holding that hand. No sense of ill will or malevolence at all coming
from whatever it was. Indeed, I was left with a feeling of sweetness as one can be
by the trusting grasp of a child’s hand. It were simply terrifying that I could see
nothing when I looked down.”

James
, Copeland thought, and took strange comfort in that thought. No time for more than
that. This talk of ghosts was followed by a chorus of “Happy Christmas!” and “What
a fine Yule log!” as the destination of the drawing room was made, and all of the
guests came together, cups in hand, a merry time on their minds.

The musicians filled the air with Christmas tunes, and trays of Christmas viands were
borne into the room, and a few brave souls sang or danced. Gabriel put in a tail-wagging
appearance, and went about the room greeting guests with laughing eyes and a wet nose
that made more than one poor soul start with surprise before saying with hearty laughter,
“Thought it were one of the ghosts I did, touchin’ me ’and, and only the dog’s cold
nose after all.”

Once again talk turned to ghosts, as it was remarked that the local dogs made a habit
of avoiding the path by the pond.

“Indeed,” the local squire said. “There has been more than one occasion when my Brownie
came ki-yi-yi-ing away from Broomhill, hackles raised, and he the bravest of hounds.”

The musicians plied them with spirited song. The servants ghosted through the room
with wine trays, and dainties to take the edge off of their hunger. The rooms grew
crowded to the bursting point, and Copeland, smiling, pleased, wishing to share his
joy with one guest in particular, realized more than once, with growing consternation,
that Belinda was not to be seen.

He could not remember when he had last caught sight of her. And there, even as he
thought of her, he glimpsed the back of her head. No mistaking her rosy-gold braids.
But before he could make his way to her side for a word, he was waylaid by another
of his neighbors with a spirited tale, and the next time he glanced up, she had vanished.

***

The crush of people Belinda did not know filled every one of the sitting rooms with
gossip’s deafening buzz, and none of it meant for her ears. She took joy in observing
the Earl revel in his social gathering. His face radiated good cheer. His passage
through the crowd was leisurely, his smile never faltering, never false. He loved
people. The locals knew it, felt it. They fawned on him like lapdogs, basking in the
glory of his attentions.

She could not imagine depriving him of such a moment, wondered why it should have
been her original intent, so wrong now, so distant the idea, and all of the emotions
that had spawned it. She did not want to intrude upon this dear man much longer, knowing
if she hung close he would feel obliged to spend his time introducing her, and she
in no mood for introductions.
Pointless, exhausting, awkward exchanges—given her situation. And his.
Their circumstances were so very different, and never the twain should meet but for
these few days, this wholly unexpected isolated Christmas they had been given the
gift of spending together.

She, too, had once taken pleasure in people. Now they taxed her energies. She drifted
always on the periphery of the gathering, listening in on a conversation or two, hovering
by the windows, speaking only to those, like herself, who looked lonely and out of
place.

Food and dancing did not interest her. She drifted past the watchful carved and painted
gazes in the stairway, and looked into the eyes of the green man in the portrait gallery.

He stared vacantly back.

“I know why you stay,” she said softly. “Why you walk the park and into the pond over
and over.”

No flicker of interest in the painted face. No raised brow.

“You relive the moment when you felt most keenly alive. You were in control in that
instant, weren’t you? In the saving of this man.” She looked about the gallery, at
the freshly gilded ceiling, at well-oiled paneling and garlanded wainscoting. “You
linger here, in the place you miss most, your greatest joy and greatest regret in
making the choices of that moment. It traps you, that pond, that moment, as surely
as I am trapped in a moment of mistletoe and broken promises.”

Her voice was wistful. She leaned close to whisper in the painted ear. “I know. I
made the same mistake. The mistake of a moment.” She glanced over her shoulder, afraid
someone would catch her communing with the past. There was no one there. No one to
see. “I shall miss him.”

From the stairs the faintest murmur of voices and laughter rose, a ghost of the party
below.

“Oh Lord, help me. I shall miss him.”

Shoulders bowed, she drifted next to the chapel, where noise wafted through the floor
as a muted, musical babble, like voices from the past, like the day of her wedding.
Hovering, restless, she stared at the baby in the manger, and whispered, “What am
I to do?”

No response. She lifted her eyes to the angels painted on the ceiling. “Tell me. What
am I to do?”

They met her with silence, the murmur from below indistinct. She closed her eyes and
listened for the truth, for answers, within.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The festivities went well. Cook’s brace of roasted ducks was received with almost
as much praise as was Davidson’s flaming plum pudding. A ready supply of wine, punch,
and cider kept everyone in good spirits and light on their feet, as the pipe trilled,
and bagpipes skirled, and the rooms twirled with whirling skirts, flying coattails,
and thumping heels.

Every room buzzed with happy chatter. Copeland’s every step was met with merry smiles
and twinkling eyes.

Just not the pair of eyes he was looking for. He could not find Miss Walcott. At first
he shrugged it off, convinced she had only stepped into another room temporarily,
perhaps found a new friend among his neighbors. And yet, a quarter hour or more slid
by, and then an hour, and he knew she had yet to help herself to the food, or the
punch bowl. She did not dance. She was not seated in any of the chairs clustered against
the walls, nor in either of the sitting rooms, kitchen, or conservatory.

Hide-and-seek
, he thought. Did she begin the game now?

He went room by room with the express point of finding her. He glanced out of the
drawing room windows, wondering if she felt compelled to step outside, to breathe
fresh air, and tilt her face to the last of the day’s sunshine. He did not see her.
Indeed, panic gripped his chest, squeezing at the happiness in his heart.

Where could she be? Why was she not here in the thick of the celebration? Did she
not enjoy the company? Did she not wish to be with him as much as he longed to have
her always near? This, their first separation after several days of living in one
another’s pockets, left him with mixed feelings.

He had grown accustomed to her presence, to the thrill of deep gray-blue eyes, to
the silken glow of her hair, to the rosy, teasing promise of her lips. He had grown
accustomed to the pale bell of her skirt always in the periphery of his vision, to
an expectation of the unexpected whenever she spoke.

Here he stood, in a room full of fresh faces, wanting only to look upon hers, hungry
for a familiar landscape, the liquid music of her voice, the thrill of her eyes meeting
his. He had spent every waking hour for the past three days in her company, almost
exclusively, and yet he could think of no one among the many gathered he would rather
spend his time with now.

***

Belinda came down the stairs, past the case clock that cruelly counted away the moments
left to her.
Tick. Tick.
The house’s heartbeat counted two more seconds gone forever. Who knew better than
she the passage of time, as inevitable as the melting of the snow? And yet she would
not emulate the clock, would not hasten the sun. Slowly down the blood-red runner
she went, footsteps muffled, softness beneath her slippers. What reason had she to
hurry? No reason. No plan. Not any more. She had been wrong before, so very wrong,
in her intent, in her rage, in her need for revenge. It was all gone from her now,
all slipped away into the snowy night, nothing left to beat her head against, her
heart, her soul.

She found answer to her prayers not in words, nothing so large as that; mind and heart
were simply possessed of a new feeling, a growing sense of relief and peace, like
a lifting of wings, like the last breath held, and then released—such deep release.
She was prepared to move on now, to return to her lot, to let go the past, and all
that she would cling to that could not be grasped; like melting ice; like hope when
there was not a breath of it left to fill the lungs.

She had only to say good-bye now, to gather herself, her things, to fill her eyes,
her energy, one last time with the wonder of him, this Copeland, her own personal
irony, the man with the broken heart who had mended hers.

A smothering welter of happy noise rose from the ballroom below. For an irrational
moment she wished it stilled. She was not part of that happy voicing of the Christmas
spirit. Her feet were not light in the dance. Her heart was not lifted with the expectation
of good food, and unexpected gifts, and the promise of a new year tick, tick, ticking
closer, like a mastiff’s toenails on wooden floors.

The New Year. God, could she bear it? Could she welcome another year the same as the
last? Hopeless? Loveless? Pointless?

She must. She would.

A child sat on the landing, peering through the banister’s carved faces, sucking on
a sugarplum, his hair an overturned bowl of silky blond curls.

“What a lovely Christmas.” He tilted his head to look at her, face and hands gloriously
sticky, the curls framing eyes of robin’s-egg blue—an earthbound cherub, his glee
contagious, dispersing the last wisps of her dark cloud of melancholy.

She sank down on the step beside him.

“Indeed,” she said. “Do you think so?”

He nodded solemnly. “Last Christmas—or was it the one before?—my brother carved me
a toy.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially and held out to her a carved cup on
a stick, a tiny wooden ball on a string, which he flipped into the air as he spoke,
catching the ball in the cup. “He kept it a secret, but I found it you see, at the
back of a drawer. And Mama embroidered a waistcoat for me.”

He leaned back that she might see.

“A very fine waistcoat,” she said.

He nodded again, curls bobbing. “And today I made snow angels in the lane, and I have
eaten so many sweets my tummy groans.”

“And thus, all your Christmas wishes come true?” she asked.

“Well . . . ” He bit his lower lip. “I should like to dance like that.” He pointed
below. “It looks like skating, with less reason to fall.”

She leaned down next to him, their golden curls mingling as they peered through the
banisters. Her gaze fixed on a familiar dark head with graying temples. Her host’s
eyes sparkled with a pleasure not unlike the light in the child’s eyes as he bent
to ask an old woman to dance.

How had she so completely lost that childlike joy? She must recapture it.

“One can always hope,” she said.

“I do hope.” He nodded vigorously, curls bobbing.

She rose.

The child turned to watch her with a look of disappointment. “Are you going?”

She gave a formal curtsy and held out her hand to him. “Would you care to dance?”

He stared at her hand a moment, considering, before he said in a pensive voice. “I
do not know how.”

She smiled. “Shall I teach you?”

The half-eaten sugarplum and the cup-and-ball toy proved but momentary dilemmas. He
popped the whole of the plum into his mouth, cheeks bulging, then dropped the toy
on the stairs and held out sticky hands.

She took them without hesitation. A little too much sweetness did not matter. So little
really mattered after all, but the joyful light in his eyes, the look of affection
when he spoke of his brother, his mother.

“Watch my feet,” she said. “See if you can mirror what they do.” Slowly at first,
so that he could learn the rhythm of steps, then with growing exuberance, they sailed
around the landing, bound in a happy whirl. She lifted him from his feet on occasion
that he might tread air rather than toes.

“May I cut in?” A familiar voice interrupted them, from the bottom of the stairs.

Their whirl slowed as the handsomely formal, smiling Lord Copeland made his way up
the stairs, up the Pompeian red runner, oak leaves scattering beneath his highly polished
pumps, shadows following his lead. The faces on the banisters watched wide-eyed. The
lad shyly ducked his head, dropped her hands, and bashfully sidled away.

“So this is where you have been hiding,” Copeland said.

“Not hiding. Dancing.” She winked at the lad. The carved imp in the newel post winked
back from beneath artfully carved locks.

Her host smiled, dimples quirking irresistibly, as amused as the imp in the newel
post. She must smile back.

“Do you enjoy dancing so much that you would do so alone?” Her host wore a boyish
grin—like the sticky-faced lad.

“Alone?” she asked. “Did you not see the lad?”

He took up her hands, and placing one upon his shoulder, whirled her into the movement
the music suggested. “I have eyes only for you. Was this lad handsome?”

“An angel,” she said, responding to the guiding pressure at her waist.

“And will this angel mind if I interrupt?” He pulled her closer than was strictly
proper, eyes twinkling merrily.

“Angels tend to be most forgiving,” she said.

The lad had disappeared, but his laughter lingered, echoing in the stairwell, a joyful
sound.

“And you?” His gaze remained fixed on her, the dark eyes smiling, teasing, flirtatious
as always, and yet there was something more. An intensity of feeling—of regret. “Do
you forgive me for ignoring you for such a long time?”

She looked down, at the sway of her skirt, at the press of his dark coat into the
whiteness. “You have a house full of guests. I did not think . . .”

He silenced her, finger pressed warm and gentle to her lips. “Only one guest really
matters.”

She must look up at him, must drink in the earnest affection that surfaced in his
gaze—the growing desire. Too long had she hungered for just such looks—such emotion—and
all of it meant for her.

He moved his hand, cupping her cheek. So sweet that touch. She leaned into it, eyes
closing. How could she go on without this? She must remember, must burn the heat of
his palm into her memory. How terrible to forget such bliss.

“My heart aches . . .” His voice seemed to come from a great distance.

Her eyes flew open. Indeed there was evidence of pain in his eyes. “Have you medicine?”

He pressed her hand to his chest. “Right here. You are the medicine I need.”

Her head whirled as they whirled with the music, her heart banged away as unevenly
as his was wont to do. “Like a leaf upon the wind,” she said.

“Dancing?” he asked with a wistful smile. All the while his gaze stayed fixed on hers.
The world might spin, but they two were in that way, unmoved.

“I am quite giddy with it,” she said, feeling the whirl seep within.

He took her hand to his lips when the music stopped. Her horizon steadied.

“Shall we play hide-and-seek?” he asked.

The clock on the landing chimed. She felt the limits of their time together closing
in as never before. “Not yet,” she said. “Not quite yet.”

A mischievous smile played about his mouth. “Perhaps when the guests are gone?” The
darkness of his eyes were alight with the potential of their time alone together once
more.

Night was coming. He looked forward to it. And strangely enough, for the first time
in what seemed an eternity, she longed for it as much as he.

“I will fetch you,” she whispered.

“How appropriate.” He leaned close, his cheek soft against hers. “For you are the
most fetching creature I know.” He turned his head, his breath soft and warm, sweet
with mulling spices and sugarplum, his mouth so close to hers that warmth hummed gently
against her lips. “Fetch your lips unto mine,” he whispered “in mistletoe kisses.”

“There is no mistletoe here.” Her protest was mild, not really a protest at all. She
knew he meant to kiss her, and she knew she meant to let him.

His lips brushed hers. “Are you certain?” he asked. With each word his mouth, the
heat of his breath, touched her—cheek, lip and chin—taking her breath away, speeding
the race of her heartbeat. Or was it his? “I thought you came bearing mistletoe.”

“I do,” she whispered, remembering the mistletoe, the sticky sap of the branch against
her hand. “I do,” she breathed into his mouth, remembering the words she had uttered,
the promises made, so long ago. And then she was beyond remembering. All thought,
all feeling was in the touch of his mouth to hers. She caught her breath, and in so
doing caught his, and together they sighed and leaned more fully into mutual need,
mutual desire.

Sweet, that kiss. It led to another. The music, the sound of the dance washed over
them, around them, Christmas music, and all that they heard was the music of their
mingled breathing, the murmurs of their mutual pleasure, as their kisses warmed, and
lips parted. They both went light-headed in the swim of a clinging embrace.