Elisabeth Fairchild (15 page)

She forced a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. The bronzed gold of her hair
caught the snow’s fleeting, crystal perfection. “Back to where I belong.”

“I cannot convince you to stay?”

Snowflakes perched upon her collar, their lacelike delicacy no match for her beauty.
“If anyone could, it would be you.” Affection softened her gaze. “But like the snow,
I must melt away.”

What could he do but look at her, head swimming with a pleasant dizziness, heart thudding
with exertion and the promise in her voice. She gazed at him from eyes the color of
coal smoke.

They reached the end of the avenue. There he stepped into the lane busy with men and
horses, and the thud of axes. He began to see an end to it. The fall of tree limbs
blocking the lane would soon be cleared, and with that ending came another. Their
solitude would soon be a thing of the past. He mourned its passing already.

“It goes well,” he said, only to find she was no longer beside him. She stood, transfixed,
at the end of the lane, staring at the ground, at the footprints he had left in his
wake.

“I would go no farther.” She turned, pulling the hood closer about her shoulders,
as if chilled.

And he would warm her. He waved to the workers, nodding his appreciation to Peter
and his son, then fell into step with her. “Are you cold? Tired?”

“A little tired,” she agreed.

His heart beat faster to hear her say so. “Do you not sleep well?”

Face hidden, she walked on, her breath a white flag fluttering from hood’s edge.

“Tell me.”

She slid a look his way, around the hood’s edge, now beaded with snowflakes that sparkled
like diamonds. “You have made me far more comfortable than I deserve. Why do you ask?”

The woman of his dreams was not Miss Walcott, only his imagination at work. He could
see the truth of it in her eyes. Certainly the dream was not Henrietta—sweet Henrietta—who
even now struggled through snowbound roads to reach him, while some perverse part
of him wished that she might not arrive just yet, not today. He would have one more
day, one more night, just he and Miss Walcott alone.

“Do you sleep well, my lord? Or do the ghosts of Broomhill trouble you?” Her lips
curved upward as if they meant to form a smile, and could not quite succeed.

He stared at her a moment, with a twinge of guilt. Beneath him, his warm boots cut
fresh prints. “I dream,” he admitted. “Every night the same dream. What does that
mean, do you think?”

“That would depend upon the dream.”

“No nightmare, this. It is a good dream. A very good dream. One I would not wake from.
Indeed, if death is like unto this, I would go gladly.” He observed her carefully
as he spoke. Her cloak, long enough to drag in the snow, wiped the path smooth were
she walked.

She spread her hands, in much the same gesture she had used to feed the birds, and
said with the faintest of smiles, “If I were you, I would thank the Lord for such
a dream. Come!” With a childlike look of mischief, she held out her gloved hand. “We
must make snow angels.”

He trusted in the smile that made a Cupid’s bow of her mouth, trusted the tug of her
hand. Together they made angels, side by side, lining the avenue with winged silhouettes
beneath the gnarled oaks, flinging themselves joyfully into the drifts.

He was a child again. Carefree, ailing heart forgotten.

Making snow angels proved a very physical activity. He was soon out of breath, and
chilled from lying on the snowy ground, arms flailing to carve the wings, damp from
melting snow as he scissored legs to create angel robes.

She lay beside him, quiet, arms outstretched, their fingertips reaching, almost but
not quite touching, as the oaks swayed and creaked, clasping fleshless hands above,
dark boned against the gray curve of an endless sky. He turned his head away from
so vast and unpromising a prospect, to look at her, dark cloak outflung, winged not
like an angel but like a fallen bird. Golden tendrils drifted sunlight from the edge
of her hood. Her eyes, grayer than the sky for the blink of an instant, before she
smiled, seemed just as bleak, and far too wise for her years.

She sat up. The hood fell away as she rose with effortless grace. It occurred to him
she never seemed to lose her breath, to tire, even her hair refused to tumble any
way but artistically. And while his coat was wet at the hem, her cloak seemed impervious
to the snow.

“I am exhausted,” she claimed, looking cool, unruffled, eyes bright, almost translucent,
as if the last rays of sunlight were captured there.

“I think you are a liar,” he said playfully, knowing she did not wish to tire him.

She stilled, mouth frozen.

“You do not wheeze great clouds of steamy breath, as I do,” he teased.

She laughed, and in her laughter he knew he loved her.

He lay there in the snow at her feet, much struck by the desire to pull her down beside
him, for above them hung mistletoe, a great, berried clump, and he wished with all
his heart to kiss some color into the pale curve of her full-lipped mouth.

She stood, hand out, to help him up, and he was struck by thought of that day at the
pond. He could see it again, as if through misted glass. He had reached up to take
the hand of an angel, and found his uncle there ahead of her. He reached up to take
Belinda’s hand—another angel—his heart full of the past, of the future that would
not be.

In the instant that their hands met, an arrested look took possession of her eyes,
as if she knew—his thoughts—his fears—his past. It shocked him, that look in eyes
for a moment lightless, cold as ice—dangerous.

Far more dangerous, she did not help him up but allowed herself to fall down beside
him, falling lightly, in a flurry of disturbed snow, two angels ruined.

She subsided hip to hip with him, without complaint, her cloak, her body, blanketing
both of them, her hood falling down about her head as she leaned forward, so that
it seemed he entered a dark, woolen cave as his mouth sought hers.

She kissed him, lips chill, their heat within, and then she pulled back and looked
into his eyes, and said, “What are your intentions, my lord who would not marry?”

He would not be too serious—could not in the face of his sudden need for her—his dreamlike
desire—his dream woman in fading daylight. “I am bewitched,” he said with a playful
smile, and removed his glove that he might catch stray strands of glittering hair
between his fingertips, might push them away from the mouth he meant to kiss again.
“You charm me, Belinda Walcott, as no woman has ever charmed me.”

She exhaled heavily, sadness in her gaze, and kissed the fingertips in which he clutched
her hair. “And what does a dying man do with a charming woman?”

“Do you mean other than carols, snow angels, and mistletoe kisses?”

She nodded, smile fading, gray-blue eyes serious, not cold as he had imagined.

He licked wind-chapped lips, breathed deep the clean, snowy smell, and said with a
chuckle as he reached out to draw her closer, “One must cling to the spirit of Christmas,
and not let it slip away.”

Her breath came sharply as he drew her closer still. He could feel the rise and fall
of her ribs. His answer surprised her. She stared into his eyes for an intense moment
of building desire. It hung between them like the frost upon the air, waiting, silvered
with their mutual need.

He drew her to him then, and kissed her cool cheek, her throat, her chin. He pulled
her closer still, wanting all of her, in all the ways a man could want a woman, his
hands wandering, wayward, seeking out her softest curves beneath cover of their cloaks.
For a few heart-pounding moments she responded in kind, the heat of their passion
intoxicating, mutual, completely satisfying. Then, like snow, she melted from his
grasp, kissing the chill tip of his nose, planting one deeply satisfying kiss on his
lips, body pressed to his, passion undeniable. When she rose, the golden magic of
her hair slid through his fingers.

“Don’t go,” he begged.

So calm she looked, so collected, while his pulse raced, his heart like thunder in
his ears, and he felt good, better than good. He was elated, spirits soaring.

“Are not spirits, even Christmas spirits, by their very nature elusive, my lord?”
she asked, eyes sparkling, and with a swirl of her woolen cape, set off for Broomhill
with a low, seductive laugh.

***

He let her go in without him, preferring to watch her cloak whipping in the rising
breeze, kicking up a spray of snow at her heels. He lay watching the snow come down
like drifting feathers, and pondered the questions his feelings for her raised. What
was he to do with her? With Henrietta?

For almost the entirety of his life Copeland had imagined he and Henrietta must one
day marry. Have a family. It seemed all that was right and proper, and imminently
comfortable. He believed Henrietta had grown up feeling much the same way.

That all those years of unshakable certainty should be overturned, first by a physician’s
pronouncement and then by a few days spent in the company of a penniless music instructress,
rattled him. He found his legs weak beneath him as he rose, heart aching with the
growing conviction that until now, this day, this moment, this woman, he had never
known true passion, true love.

His affection for Henrietta was undiminished. No denying that they shared enduring
friendship, a comfortable and lasting affection; but his budding relationship with
Belinda, even in so short a time as they had shared, was something else again. His
blood raced whenever she was near. His heart danced. His hands yearned for the touching
of her. He could not stop smiling knowing that she had saved his life, given him a
Christmas gift unparalleled. He stood up smiling now, as the light faded from the
sky, and his stomach growled with hunger. His fingers grew stiff with cold. He could
not wait to share another evening by the fire, in her company. Another night.

Would nights with Belinda Walcott match his dream? Would he feel wrapped in a blessed,
all-encompassing, regenerating warmth if she shared his bed? What would a lifetime
of bliss be like? Dare he consider such a thing? His life had been deemed short. Must
he cut short what joy there was to be found in his numbered days?

Gabe bounded out to meet him, faithful creature, loving beast. So much loyalty to
be found in the dog’s eyes, golden-brown, like Henrietta’s, cheerful, and faithful
and unstinting in affection—like Henrietta. He ruffled the dog’s silken ears and leaned
down into a cloud of doggie breath to whisper, “What am I to do, Gabe?”

The spaniel whipped his tail about enthusiastically but offered no answer, and so
Copeland walked into the house, and up the stairs, that he might, for the first time
since taking possession of the house, use the chapel for its intended purpose—to pray
for answers.

Chapter Twenty-One

Broomhill Hall stood in pent, expectant stillness, like a child who waits to see what
St. Nick has stuffed into her stocking. The house awaited the gifts of guests, laughter,
and dancing feet. It waited, too, to see what Belinda Walcott would do.

She dreaded the coming feast, the invasion of guests and noise. She went down to dinner
with a sense of time compressed—hurried—precious.

Like a thread unwinding, the freshly polished banister slid through her fingers. She
could not call it back again, could not change what was already history. It had been
foolish of her to think she could, foolish to wallow in revenge and self-pity, and
fruitless dreams of a future that would never be, more foolish still to imagine what
love might bring.

Tonight would be her last evening alone with the master of Broomhill Hall, with the
dream of all that might have been. Tomorrow she must share him with a houseful of
people. The day after that—Christmas Day—she must return to a colorless and confined
existence that did not bear thinking of. Already, to the very core of her soul, she
began to miss his attentions, their intimate talks, his kisses. Oh Lord, his arms
about her! She would miss that most of all.

Unsure what Yuletide gifts she had to give, she knew only the desire to give her kind
host something wonderful, something unforgettable, a gift of the spirit.

He wore a thoughtful look as she came in, his features lighting in a most gratifying
manner when their eyes met, his nod warming the heart she had begun to believe permanently
frostbitten. And without a word exchanged she knew he was troubled, and that she was
the reason, for his smile never removed the seriousness from the beloved darkness
of his eyes, and the dimples she had learned to treasure only briefly showed themselves.

No dancing around the table this evening. No sweet exchange of glances. Their conversation
was limited—and yet he looked at her as if he had much to say that he would not divulge
in front of the servants.

She wondered, as their food was brought in, if he worried about dying, or his Henrietta,
or if his growing affections for her knit the stitch between his brows. He looked
often in her direction, and again came the gentlest of smiles, as if he had bad news
to share.

Had she not had enough to last an eternity and more?

She wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything would be all right, but she said
nothing, for she was not convinced of it herself. It was not her place, her time,
or her destiny.

At the end of the meal, as they were left to nibble on poached pears in brandied syrup,
she might have closed her eyes to savor every delicious moment with him had she not
been unwilling to miss a single instant when his gaze strayed in her direction—the
touch of his gaze far sweeter.

“Something troubles you,” she said.

He twirled his fork with an elegance of movement that fixed her attention on the beauty
of hands that stirred feeling she believed long dead. She knew she must tell him,
tell him everything.

“You trouble me,” he said.

“Not much longer.” She said it lightly, but truth lay heavy on her heart.

“Would you stay, if I asked you to?”

Sadness settled chill and unwanted in her heart. How long had she waited to hear just
such sentiment? Just such an invitation.

“How very kind of you to ask.”

“Not kindness prompted the suggestion.” The dimple played beside his mouth, but his
dark eyes were serious.

“No?” The sigh came from the very depths of her, all that she was, and all that she
had ever been. “I cannot stay, you know.”

“I do not know.” His chin squared with determination.

“We are of different worlds.”

He frowned and shook his head. “Not so different. I do not ask this lightly, you understand.”

“Nor do I lightly refuse, but I am granted only a few days at Christmas.” She would
not pity herself in that—must not. She could not, and maintain her composure.

He tipped his head, eyes dancing with mischief. “Cannot your pupils do without you
a little longer?”

She was tempted. Lord, how she was tempted. “It is not my choice to make.” She spoke
firmly, knowing it was true, knowing at last she should never have come.

He pressed his lips together before he said, in the same light tone, “Then, as a Christmas
gift . . .”

He caught her off guard. She drew in a breath. “You need not.”

He raised his hand, lips set, something serious in his expression. “Hear me out.”

She nodded.

“Shall I send you home?”

Not at all what she expected. The suggestion seemed in some way to close a door between
them, to shut out opportunity, to leave her gasping in the dark.

“Might I be the man who returns you to Man?” He forced a chuckle, the look in his
eyes one of intense sadness.

“You would send me so far?” she asked quietly, devastated beyond words.

He crossed his arms, bit down on his lower lip, and she knew without his saying another
word that he would do just that to please her, no matter how much it pained him.

“Is it not what you want?” he asked with desperation. Was there a trace of hope in
his eyes? “I thought it the perfect gift.”

She could not reply, could think of no words to express her feelings. No chance to—the
door opened, and in stepped Bolton.

Lord Copeland turned his head. “Yes?” he asked with an unusual trace of impatience.

“You asked to be informed.”

“Of?”

“The presence of footsteps leading to the pond, my lord.”

***

Into the cold darkness Lord Copeland plunged, three lamps to light the way, three
flickering circles.

His guest declined to accompany him.

“I do not care for the dark,” she said emphatically.

“Do pardon me. This cannot wait till morning.” Heart racing, a cloak hastily donned,
he joined the gardener’s son huddled in the cold, nose red, teeth chattering despite
mittens and muffler, his father’s cap pulled down about his ears. At his feet lanterns
shed tight circles of buttery light.

“I dared not walk all the way to pond’s edge, my lord,” he blurted as they set off,
“for fear of disturbing the marks.”

The lad’s breath came fast, as did his own. Between them their exhalations made a
ghost of their passage.

“They were not there earlier?” Copeland asked.

“No, my lord.”

“When did you last pass this way?”

“Just before supper, my lord. There!” he pointed. “Right there they begin.”

Copeland’s breath caught. His heart jumped. What he saw before him in the uncertain
circles of lamplight was illogical, completely illogical. He had not believed the
lad when he described it.

“As if a man were dropped down out of the sky.”

He echoed that awe. “Where did they come from? The snow is smooth beyond.”

“Untouched, my lord. It was their abruptness first captured my attention.”

“And those prints there, that stop and double back? Those are yours?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“What a curious puzzle.” Copeland held his lamp higher, following the prints in a
parallel course, the cold biting at his nose, packed snow crunching beneath his feet,
fresh snowflakes catching in his lashes. Their lanterns bobbed, glow worms pushing
aside night’s cloak, a darkness that in some deeply primal way terrified him, coupled
as it was with inexplicable footprints that began in the middle of nowhere and ended
at the light-catching edge of his frozen pond.

“Well, I think it safe to assume none of the locals made these.” He did not allow
his voice to quaver, though his insides seemed suddenly made of aspic.

“I asked about, my lord. No one is missing.”

A silence fell between them. They both stood staring, lost in thought. What little
wind there was made distant branches pop and crack beneath the weight of the snow.

“Well.” Copeland broke their mutual reverie. “We cannot stand about all night, staring
at the ground, now, can we?”

“No, my lord, much too cold. Best get back to the fire, and a cup of something to
warm you.”

“An excellent idea.” Copeland turned. “I would recommend the same to you.”

“Yes, my lord. But, begging your pardon, my lord, I almost forgot to tell you the
reason why I came this way to begin with.”

Copeland lifted the lamp high, that he might illuminate the lad’s wind-chapped face.
“Mmm?”

“The road, my lord. Is clear.”

***

Belinda watched the lanterns return to the house from her upstairs window. She watched
darkness close in behind Lord Copeland, and shivered.

Too well she knew the darkness.

The door, as it closed, echoed through the house. Below, the dog yelped a greeting
and was stilled. She felt the Earl of Broomhill Hall’s presence as he removed his
coat, snowflakes flying, wet dotting the floor—his boots. In her mind’s eyes she saw
him rub hands together blowing on his fingers, burying them in the dog’s ruff for
warmth and comfort.

She knew where he would go next. She went at once to meet him there.

He stood before his uncle’s portrait, dark locks glittering in the candlelight, dark
eyes fixed on the painting. The spaniel stood guard at his feet, hackles rising at
her approach, amber eyes following her.

Hand pressed to heaving chest, Lord Copeland whispered to his long dead ancestor,
“What does it mean, Uncle?”

Odd. She did not like to see him troubled now, his breathing agitated, his heart unruly
as she had once hoped to make it unruly.

She cleared her throat.

The dog growled.

“We played hide-and-seek when I was a child,” she said.

Copeland turned, surprised, eyes closing for a moment, lashes dark against his cheeks,
the hand at his chest falling to rest on the spaniel’s head. “Belinda!” He heaved
a great sigh. “You gave me and Gabe a start. Where did you spring from?”

“Man,” she said with an impish grin.

The spaniel tucked tail and insinuated himself into a position behind his master’s
legs.

“It’s only Belinda, old boy.” Lord Copeland laid a gentling hand upon the dog’s head,
and looked up at her as a boy would, through the dark, dripping curls of his forelock.
“You never told me if you would like to return to Man.”

She pressed her lips together and looked away—to study the portrait—the flat canvas
and paint of the past far easier to face than the well-rounded flesh and blood of
the present. “There is a thrill to the game of hide-and-seek. The thrill of the hunt,
of being pursued.”

He sounded a trifle confused in saying, “I know well the game.”

“There is something very invigorating about being sought, about finding the perfect
place in which to hide, some dilemma, too, for if one hides too well, the game passes
one by. In hiding too well, one is no longer part of the search.”

Gabe bolted for the stairs, his skittering downward passage hasty but sure-footed.

She ignored the poor beast, far more interested in her host’s reactions.

Copeland’s gaze traveled from the painting to the empty stairwell, and back to her
face. Realization dawned slowly. His eyes widened. “Unless you leave footprints in
the snow?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you believe ghosts can leave footprints, Miss Walcott? My uncle, perhaps, making
a mad dash for the same pond he pulled me from as a child? Or is this some earthly
prankster?”

“What purpose would it serve for your uncle to repeat an old behavior?”

He shook his head, brow knitting as he gazed up at the painted face. “To remind me?
Tease me? Warn me of danger?”

“Perhaps all three. Is the pond a danger?”

“It was, once.”

“And then, again, it might be no more than a prank.”

Dimples winked. “Ghostly pranks, Miss Walcott, or was this corporeal?”

“You wanted a ghost hunt, my lord. It seems someone, or something, would give you
exactly what you asked for this Christmas.”

“A gift then, is it?”

She arched her brows at that. “A gift of manifestation? Or is it no more than the
gift of the mysterious?”

“We all need a little mystery in our lives.” He smiled.

“Games,” she murmured, her gaze drawn to the paintings, to the memories. “Of hide-and-seek.”

“And do you mean to play hide-and-seek as well, Miss Walcott?”

“In what way, my lord?”

“In offering so abbreviated an accounting of your past, in avoiding my offer to send
you home.”

She allowed a hint of an answering smile to peep up at him from beneath her lashes.
“How do you know I hide anything?”

He laughed. “Don’t we all?”

She nodded slowly, and turned her back on past Copelands, interested only in this
one. “To tell would spoil the game, would it not?”

“Afraid I might stop seeking?” he asked playfully, with a mischievous waggle of his
brows.

He was flirting. She could not help but smile. She would miss this flirtatious banter.

“I possess no answer for that other than to wish you goodnight with the suggestion
we resume our games at a more suitable hour.”

“You would end the day?”

“To the contrary. I would begin the night. A gift—the hours of darkness: of rest,
and dreams—do you not agree?”

He laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners. He was at his most handsome when he laughed.
She could not get enough of his laughter. This, too, she would miss.

“The best of gifts,” he agreed.

“For the best Christmas ever,” she said.

***

Copeland did not hurry the day. He would not rush toward the night despite dreams’
lure. He sat in the drawing room listening to the crackle and pop of the fire, watching
the flames dance, wraiths on the hearth. He sipped a glass of wine, stroking Gabriel’s
silken ears, thinking about footprints in the snow, thinking of all that Belinda Walcott
had said, thinking about what it meant to have the best Christmas ever, perhaps the
last ever.