Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River (27 page)

“Is that an American custom?” Marianne asked. “I can’t imagine an entire dead tree in the drawing room.”

“Imagine it all lit up.”

“With candles? Isn’t that unsafe?”

“With candles that burn without wax drippings and with glittering crystal angels and colored glass balls, and beneath it a rainbow of wrapped presents, and—”

“Presents?” She looked as perplexed as the ostrich in the garden.

“Gifts.”

“Oh, you mean the Boxing Day gifts we give to the staff. That’s tomorrow.”

“You don’t give each other gifts?”

“Not on Christmas.”

“Not even a kiss under the mistletoe?” He nodded at an arrangement of boughs fastened under the deserted archway into the dining room.

“Oh, Mr. Nobody. Some of the faster sort play kissing games, but they don’t require greenery to do it.”

“Really? And have you taken part in such games?”

“
Not
really,” she answered. “And you?”

“Conveniently, I don’t remember,” he said.

“How dreadful!” The melting sympathy of her gaze left him tongue-tied. He’d never seen that in childhood, and had never wanted it when grown.

“No worse than ruination,” he said, narrowing his eyes as a fiendish thought snaked through his brain. If his scandalous forebear had lacked only a ruined virgin to gain admittance to the Yorick Club, surely Adrian was gazing into the tear-shined eyes of a guaranteed virgin. How despicable to truly ruin his rescuer.

He studied the room’s four corners of people dancing, gaming, card-playing. The Yule log by the fireplace was the one crude, dark spot in the interior winter wonderland of white paneling and marble.

A smudge of gray now perched atop the log. Fireplace ashes? No. A faint figure half out of focus. The ghastly child was now indoors, observing the quaint merriment with him. Her rags more resembled actual clothing, but were still tattered and dirty. The face . . . the face was fading and then sharpening as if existing on two levels, in two places and times.

Nausea engulfed him, and distaste. If this was an emissary of the heavenly side of the afterlife, he wanted none of it; never had.

He turned to Miss Marianne for rescue, for relief, seeking distraction in the reality of the festive, old-fashioned setting. Her watching blue-gray eyes were as clear as aquavit. He could use something stronger than wine and sherry, and guessed that footmen didn’t partake with their betters.

Maybe they could do something else.

He lifted Marianne’s hands as if for a dance. Instead, he whisked her into the demi-dark under the mass of holly and mistletoe. He looked up at tiny dolls of the Holy Family entwined with the traditional greens. Even better. Blasphemy.

“This is a kissing bough,” she explained.

He gazed long into those limpid eyes and then down to her neckline until her innocent blood turned her pinker than a hothouse rose.

“In America,” he told her, “any young woman caught under mistletoe must surrender a kiss.”

She presented an elegantly limp wrist of kid leather.

“I don’t kiss goats.” He used her hand to pull her close. “Especially not there.” He pulled a mistletoe berry from the sharp holly leaves above.

“My goodness, you are . . . tall.” She sounded breathless.

His kiss grazed her jawline and found the side of her neck, where a pulse beat strong but erratic. Her face was turning toward him for more and her mouth parting. No way was he going to end the first moment he’d felt alive since dying.

His lips dipped to her throat.

She gasped. “You already have your kiss.”

He reached up again. “One kiss for every berry.”

She gazed up, wide-eyed. Perhaps fifteen hard white nuggets nestled against the greens wafting heady pine scents. “My goodness, you’ll run out of places to kiss.”

Her goodness was exactly the point. “Then I’ll have to find more,” he murmured, moving his lips to her collarbone. He reached to pull down another berry, then kissed her lips, running his tongue over their plump freshness, untainted by makeup taste. She opened to his tongue like a lily to a bee. The rush of discovering such strong sensual instincts banished his body’s low-level ache for its drug of choice. He’d never had a kiss like this, unstinting despite being an impropriety in her time, and an innocent prelude in his time.

She had a giving heart, and it ached for him. And somehow that stung him, ruined the moment.

He pulled back. The hard berries dropped from his hand rolled across the stone floor, the sound lost in the lively tunes of fiddle and harpsichord.

She stood frozen in what to her must be a new, unimaginably sensual trance. Nothing hidden. Nothing calculated. His to seduce, to claim, to be seduced by. Yet she’d rejected his noble forebear without a second thought.

“I must go,” he said.

“But . . . there are so many more berries.”

“I am a footman.”

He slipped back into the drawing room, hoping she had the sense to wait. Glancing back he saw her standing, still dazed.

Why not? She’d captured more of Adrian Lord than a string of groupies ever could.

The path was clear: visit her bedroom tonight and ruin her in fact. She would actually enjoy it.

“You, American footman,” a drawling male voice hailed him. One of the hanky-waving fops gestured with his gold-topped cane. “We need to be seated for a snuff-taking.”

Adrian pirouetted on the stupid slipper sole and bowed to the circle of over-accessorized peacocks. No wonder they needed assistance. Their choking, chin-high neckwear kept their parakeet noses in the air and prevented them turning their heads. As he pushed the chairs under their lard butts, he saw the first fellow twist off his cane top, then reach to chains on his waistcoat dangling doll-house sized implements—a miniature golden rake and, Lord be, a spoon!

Adrian longed for the searing but uncomplicated kiss of Lady Cocaine as the fop pushed a small ridge of powder from the cane-top onto the back of his hand.

Powder.
Dingy impure stuff. Still. Adrian’s veins sang with an automatic rush of desire. He watched the fellow lift a hand to his beakish nose and . . . inhale. Now they were all doing it, producing diamond-studded gold and enamel pillboxes and doing lines of coke in front of God, the Devil, and everyone.

Nothing mattered. That Adrian was supposedly dead, that Heaven and Hell were feuding over his immortal soul, that Miss Marianne Merriweather was the most unlikely but succulent conquest of his career. He had to get one of those ample containers of retro-coke. He eyed the grandfather clock on the far wall. Almost midnight. Tomorrow would be “Boxing Day” indeed, with charity for all and coke for one.

The gentlemen drew up hare’s foots and handkerchiefs to pat their upper lips free of any untoward dust. Adrian swallowed. When would this charade of a party end?

Soon, it turned out. Adrian proved an adept footman as he helped each gentleman guest into heavy multi-collared coats and top hats. He reluctantly handed the gold-topped cane to its owner, but that was stage business. During the garbing, he’d also helped himself to three small boxes.

Already a thief, Adrian was giddy to be assigned a sleeping pallet in the butler’s pantry to guard the family silver, given only a cudgel, and left alone with the true love of his life.
He settled down in the dark with a feeble lantern on the counter and a chamber pot in the corner. He hated the primitive facilities, and those ninny fops didn’t seem promising company for an eternity of Hell, but their private stock was certainly an inducement to stay in their world and choose their presumed afterlife.

A scratching sound on the door forced instant stillness. Had one of Marianne’s critters gotten inside?

“Let me in,” a soft voice whispered.

He went to turn the latch, then paused. Who was out and about the house at this hour? Could it be the haunting child? Or, Miss Marianne, back for more kissing berries? That idea soothed his impatience. Turning the latch, a rustle of silks and a wave of scent rushed into his arms.

Her lips were already approaching his when Adrian grabbed her slim, gloved wrists and held her off. “Selina.”

“How convenient that they took you out of the musty old servants’ quarters and left you here all alone. And what a pity that you’re a nobody. You are the most eligible man to enter our circle since my ninny of a sister cast Lord Heathford out of it. Heathford was already flirting madly with me.”

“I choose my own poisons. Now, get back to bed before I cry ‘thief!’ and get
you
ruined.” He pushed her out and locked the door.

His hands shook as he fought the jeweled catch of the first box. Half the contents spilled over his knuckles, but, savoring the sharp, aching hunger, he greedily sniffed the entire line, waiting for the instant, hellish hit of paradise.

He expelled the powder with a violent sneeze.
Tobacco!
This stuff was tobacco dust. No wonder it was dusky brown. He tore open the other precious boxes and sniffed their contents. Same disgusting bedbug dirt!

Tossing the diamond-crusted enamel and gold trinkets away, Adrian fell onto his hard pallet, panting for heightened emotion lost. He found another drug invading his system. That G-rated kissing game with Marianne had been oddly exciting. Replaying it calmed him. He felt warm in a way far beyond the physical. He wanted to play it again. He was sure she would cooperate. But . . . if he’d rather stay here than ruin her in reality, as his disappointing forebear had been unable to achieve despite all his scandal-mongering . . . he couldn’t have her. Even disgraced as she was for rebuffing Lord Heathford, a nameless, penniless footman would hardly be accepted by her family.

They could run away. Without money? He’d run away once without money and look at him now. Well, look at where he had been in the real, modern world. Rich, famous. Infamous. An idol. A sex symbol.

Stoned out of his gourd and bored by everything anybody in his right mind could ever want.

His thoughts drifted back to Marianne. She wasn’t stupid. She knew those, as the soaps say, stolen moments with him were doubly ruinous, but she’d wanted them. That chick had . . . guts. Why?

Adrian realized for the first time in his rock idol life that he had fallen so low he was questioning
why
a woman would want to sleep with him. He punched the pallet in an effort to soften the filling and fell back into a welcome darkness.

***

At the crack of dawn somewhere, the butler, Lennox, counted the silverware, inspected the plate, and then sprung Adrian from pantry duty. He washed at the ewer and basin in the servants’ quarters, almost longing for the stable’s crude, cold shower. Water in Hell, he knew, would be much warmer. If there was any but tears.

Lennox then directed him to the grounds to assist Miss Marianne in tending her charges. “You must do some actual work,” Lennox said, aping his condescending betters of the Snuff Box Brigade. Adrian tried not to grin.

He hied outside, inhaling damp country air perfumed by earthy scents he couldn’t name. Somehow, his misadventure with the tobacco dust last night had dulled the edge of his addiction. In fact, he was anticipating a new obsession. He spotted Marianne’s graceful figure bending to the insane assortment of animals that had gathered around her with competing baas and whines and mews.

In the screened latticework that made a cage of the classically designed folly building, chirps and peeps added to a dissonant modern symphony. The music of nature, like Marianne, was surprisingly charming. He’d never heard it before, having gone from city slum to a parade of city arenas.

She led him to a bench, where a small wicker cage held a cat.

“A new Christmas folly?” he asked.

“Papa also lets me keep whatever wanders onto the grounds. I found this terrified three-legged cat lurking outside the folly this morning.” She put her hand inside, but jumped back when the creature hissed and spat. “He’ll take some taming.”

“Don’t we all.”

She shrugged. “The bird seed bags are heavy, if you don’t mind—”

“I’m at your command, don’t you remember?”

She just smiled.

So he sprinkled bags of seed in the folly, and in feeders near the brick walls defining the groomed grounds for the wild birds, while the goat and lamb and rabbit groomed the sward with their morning munching.

He also slipped up behind Marianne’s tempting nape, bare despite the outdoor jacket, and nibbled on her soft, warm skin. She turned and smiled.

“You can’t seriously consider consorting with a footman,” he told her.

“I suppose we could run away to be married in Gretna Green.”

“Married?” What an alien concept. She wasn’t modern enough to simply sleep with him though. “We can elope? In this day and age?”

“Of course the scandal would be tripled, but I’m used to that,” she said.

“You would marry me, a penniless stranger with no other occupation than plucking mistletoe berries from archways, and one so bereft of a memory that I don’t know half of what the commonest things are called.”
Bereft?
He was starting to talk like them.