Elisabeth Fairchild (23 page)

Had he still had breath he would have gasped. So much joy in the joining, in the union
of their spirits, so much joy in Cope’s familiar features, the painting come alive
to wink at him and then wink out, as if he had never been there at all. Unable to
bear the thought she might wink out as well, he pulled her closer still, so that he
really did not know where he left off and she began.

His Christmas spirit. His beloved Christmas spirit.

She melded into him as ice melds into water, her energy and his becoming one, like
the sparks of light arcing from a burning Yule log, like flame rising from a brandied
pudding, like the crackle and snap of a Christmas cracker.

“My love.” Her voice vibrated in him like the strings of a harp, like the ringing
of a bell, warmed him like mulled wine, like a mistletoe kiss.

“Forever,” he murmured.

She nodded, swirling through him, like a gust of wind through a fire, sending sparks
whirling through and from him. For the blink of an eye, for the blowing out of a candle,
for a jot in the measure of eternity, she swept her arm, like a sprinkling of snowflakes,
like the flight of a snowy white owl, and below him he could see the dark waters of
the pond, and rushing away from it, one of the footmen, carrying his nephew, blue-lipped,
teeth chattering, coughing water, but breathing, alive.

“Time to say farewell.” Her face shimmered with the light of a star, flickering, light
dancing on features as perfectly chiseled as those of the alabaster figure who held
the mantel high. “Time to say farewell.”

He cried out.

She was not there, only the alabaster creature, made of stone, flickering in firelight.
His sister bent over the bed, her face lined with age, and worry.

“Brother, dear?”

“Margaret!” So dry his mouth, and yet the glad tone of his voice was undeniable.

She held a glass to his lips. How lovely the water tasted, so cool, so wet on parched
tongue.

“Better?”

Copeland nodded, the movement bringing pain, a surprising sensation. It startled a
moan from his lips.

“I shall just ring the bell. Marcus will . . .” She reached for the bellpull. He reached
for her hand.

“We did not know . . .” she said, chin quivering. “Did not think it possible you would
revive.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “The physician said—”

He worked his mouth, forced the words. “Time to say good-bye, my dear.”

She stopped talking, tears falling in earnest now, her hand clasped across her mouth,
a silent no as she sank into the chair beside the bed.

“No tears,” he murmured, gathering breath to go on. “It has been a gift, my being
here this long.”

The sound of her despair rivaled the moan of the wind.

He gathered energy to give her clinging hand a squeeze. “I will always be with you.
You have only to think of me and I am with you. I know this is true. Ask Marcus.”

He closed his eyes, thought of Belinda, and smiled.

“Don’t go.” Her voice slowed his leaving, but there was no staying him this time.
Marcus would understand, he would explain to Margaret about his spirit of Christmas,
the love of his life, of eternity. She stood hand outstretched in the doorway, letting
in the brilliant light of a thousand stars. “Copeland,” she called. “It is time.”

“Best Christmas ever,” he whispered with a smile upon his lips, and leapt gladly into
the light.

***

Marcus woke to the sound of a distant bell ringing, to the wail of the wind in the
flue, to the fleeting whisper of a dream he could not recall.

Copeland rushed to the forefront of his mind. Copeland had been in the dream, and
James—little James—his features so clear, and the dog—that spaniel—long dead—what
was its name? Gabe? Copeland had stood in the doorway calling,
Marcus!
a gift wrapped in white glowing in his arms, and James beside him, a cup-and-ball
in hand. So white the package had been. As if it held a star of bright, white light.
The spaniel had barked, like a bell ringing.

Copeland lay dying, and the bell was ringing. It could only mean one thing!

Heart racing, Marcus pushed himself up out of his brother’s old leather chair, fearing
the worst. Pulse thumping, he headed upstairs, surprised by the chill that hung in
the air at the bottom of stairs that smelled overpoweringly of evergreens.

The wind buffeted the door behind him, stirring the sound of bells on the Christmas
wreath. The noise slowed his steps, stirring his memory, something Copeland had said
long ago.

Memory spurred him to greater speed, and yet, even as he lifted his foot, to take
the steps, in his wake the door rattled, as if buffeted by the rough hand of the wind.
Marcus froze, and turned his head, transfixed. The wind whistled in through the low
spot on the threshold, brisk enough to rattle the doorknocker, with a sound out of
time, out of memory, out of the ashes.

Thock. Thock. Thock.

Three taps of the doorknocker and you will know it is me.

“Kirk?” How uncertain he sounded.

He knew, deep in his heart, he knew, as sparks and ash whirled like dervishes about
the old hearth. The flue in Copeland’s library wailed like a bagpipe, the noise haunting.
His certainty grew, lifting the hair at the nape of his neck. Dirge-like, the noise
sank down from a high note, briefly lilting, then sinking further, into a humming
sadness, mirth and melancholy inextricably bound, and then in a shower of brilliant
glowing sparks an acorn cap rolled from the hearth and Marcus went to pick it up,
fearing it might carry the fire into the room.

He stared at the thing in amazement, for the acorn cap was ice cold, unscorched by
the fire, of a size perfect for making a whistle, and jammed in the curved rim was
a perfect white berry. Mistletoe. Marcus smiled. Tears sprang from his eyes and a
sound of joyful sadness slipped his lips.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered as tears gleamed upon his cheeks and he wiped them
away feeling quite foolish, and yet in this moment perfectly willing to be foolish—to
believe. “To both of you, the best Christmas ever.”

He stared at the acorn cap in his hand with a sense of profound wonder, an otherworldly
wonder that did not fit comfortably within his understanding of the world. “Now get
yourselves to Heaven,” he said sharply. “That is where you both belong. Be sure to
take James with you, and Uncle Cope if he can be convinced. No more hanging about
the place. You will scare the children, and I cannot have that.”

He strode through the door, headed once again for the stairs, the acorn cap clutched
in his hand. He could hear Margaret calling his name. She must see this odd and wonderful
proof of Christmas miracles, before he put it away in the bride’s chest, for that
was surely where the acorn cap belonged.

As he made his way up, heart thumping with an excitement that reminded him of the
miracle of Kirk’s heart, he paused at the landing, and his voice echoed in the stairwell.
“You may come for Christmas, of course. Three taps on the doorknocker and a whistle
down the chimney and I will know it is you.”

As he set off up the stairs again he chuckled, and said under his breath, “Daft. I
know, I sound daft.”

Above him, high above, he thought he heard faint laughter, which made him smile, as
his heart filled with a rush of warmth he later described to Margaret as the spirit
of Christmas.

Author’s Note

This Christmas fiction of Broomhill Hall is loosely based on stories associated with
the real Bramshill House and the Earls of Cope and Brocket who lived in what is reputed
to be the most haunted house in Hampshire, near Hartley Wintney, where the carved
and painted bride’s chest is proudly displayed.

Keep reading for a special excerpt from another Regency Romance

by Elisabeth Fairchild

A GAME OF PATIENCE

Available now from InterMix

Eight-year-old Patience Ballard waited.

Seated in the tufted leather window seat in the yellow drawing room, she sat playing
the game that bore her name, feeling quite contrary to both. The ormolu clock on the
mantel served as her only companion, its languid ticking echoed by the gentle slap
of her cards against the dark and light polished wood of a small, Italian inlay card
table: the eight of spades, the queen of lozenges, not the face she was looking for.

She drummed the fingers of her right hand upon the table and pounced upon another
card. Still no king of hearts.

What she waited for she could not name, but like the missing heart it tingled in her
bones, her fingertips, her toes. It poised just ahead of her, just out of reach, in
the periphery of her vision, waiting for her to catch up to it. Something intangible
and wonderful. Life-changing.

She did not want to wait. She longed to throw herself into the anticipated mystery,
that wonderful unknown, but knew that was not how this game was played. She must wait,
as a clever player of Patience waits for kings and queens, knaves and aces to show
their faces, one by one.

No one had noticed her new ruby red dress.

Her mother had assured her they would, that she would be rewarded for the pains of
holding still for innumerable fittings, for the stays she must wear to fit into it.
Unending compliments and attention Mama had promised.

But it was not true. Lady Royston had murmured something about how pretty she looked,
and Lady Cavendish had smiled and nodded in agreement, but that was all that had happened.
No one else cared how she looked. Certainly the one she had hoped might give her a
compliment had said nothing.

Above her, songbirds in cages had been painted on the ceiling, and in the canary yellow
damask that lined the walls, birds flew. In her stupid, pinching stays she sat equally
caged, while the clock chimed the death of her childhood—her freedom—and the cards
were trapped facedown against the table.

“One ought not run and tumble in such a dress like any common hoyden,” her mother
had admonished her firmly.

Run and tumble? Indeed, one could not. She could barely sit calmly, stiff as a playing
card, without groaning in discomfort.

Added to her general state of breathlessness, the cards her mother insisted she play,
rather than traipsing about with the lads like some mannerless hoyden, seemed bent
on hiding from her. She needed a king—the king of hearts—and she had the strongest
feeling he was buried beneath her face cards, where it began to look as if he would
remain unavailable.

Patience was not quite clear just what a hoyden was, only that it was undesirable
to be one, but she would much rather be playing the part, if that was what she had
been doing these many years, with the boys, Richard and Pip.

Of the two boys Patience’s mother liked Richard best. He was, she told Patience, a
very smart lad, clever at his studies, not given to pranks, neat and tidy with his
belongings, and impeccably polite. A tall, dark, serious lad, Richard was the blackbird
to Pip’s canary. He was the much younger of two sons, and he and his brother, Chase,
did not get along.

“A dependable lad,” her mother called him. “No worries over that one.” Unlike his
brother Chase, she meant. And unlike Pip. Dear, darling Pip.

Patience was in love with Pip. She meant to marry him one day, she had informed her
mother, if marry she must.

Her mother had nodded, brows arched, and said, “You will tell me when the viscount
asks for your hand?”

“You would not say no to him, would you?” she had asked.

Her mother had barked a laugh. “Say no to the Earl of Royston’s eldest son? I should
think not, my dear.”

Patience was not surprised to be met with such a reply.

Pip’s real name was Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston, for he was firstborn, and would
one day inherit his father, the earl’s, title and fortune, but everyone called him
Pip because he was bright and quick, and small for his age. Philip seemed far too
serious a name for a fellow always laughing and jesting and playing clever pranks.
Pip suited him perfectly.

Everyone loved Pip. He was the golden apple of his father’s eye, a favorite of his
younger brothers, Charles and Geoffrey, the bosom bow of Richard Cavendish, second
son to Lord William Cavendish, the third Marquess of Cavendish.

No one denied Pip anything. Not his father. Not his mother. Certainly none of the
servants dared question his wishes, and so when he ran into the room as she sat grumbling
at the ten of spades she had just unearthed, and raced at once to where she sat, and
dove to the floor, where he skidded on the polished parquet to a position beneath
the table, shaking her neat rows of cards completely out of alignment, she was not
entirely amazed that he should shout up at her, “Need a place to hide!”

She did not question his right to bump against her knees, wrinkling the sumptuous,
ruby red riches of her new, very grown-up Christmas gown, only remarked crossly, “Watch
it. You upset my cards.”

“Sorry.” He peeped up at her from beneath the lip of the table, his eyes the blue
of forget-me-nots, thickly fringed in golden lashes, long and curling like a girl’s.

“Such a pretty boy,” her mother had once said of him.

He was pretty, in the same way her sister’s buffcolored spaniel was pretty, all silky
hair and big eyes.

“Why do you not play with us?” he whispered, the big eyes narrowing. “Do you not like
us anymore? Or have you come to care for cards more than games?”

Patience sighed, and would have responded at length had she not heard footsteps in
the hall. “He’s coming,” she hissed. “Are you sure he cannot see you?”

Pip chortled and lifted the hem of her skirt, then plunged beneath the folds of fabric
with a muffled, “Now he can’t.”

Before she could insist that he had no business beneath her new skirt, breathing hotly
into the thin muslin of her petticoat, his hand hot and sweaty upon her stockinged
ankle, Richard strode into the room, his long legs making short work of the distance
between them. “There you are, Ballard,” he said. “Haven’t seen Pip, have you?”

Pip gave her leg a suggestive nudge.

“I have not set foot outside of this room for the past three-quarters of an hour,”
she said truthfully.

“Playing Patience, are you? How goes the game?”

“Miserably,” she said. “I would much rather be playing hide-and-seek with the two
of you.”

“How did you know we were playing—” He stopped and glanced about the room, his gaze
falling at last on the table where the black and white zigzagged backs of her cards
staggered in uneven rows.

Beneath her skirt, Pip sat very still, his fingers tightening a trifle, caging her
ankle.

Richard’s head tilted. A tight little smile touched his lips. His gaze slid away from
the cards, a quick glance. Had he looked beneath the table?

Patience was certain he had found them out. A flush of heat rose to her cheeks, embarrassment
surfacing. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head:
How does a young lady explain a lad hiding under her dress? It is most unseemly.

She opened her mouth, searching for the right words.

“Pretty dress,” Richard said carefully.

She clapped her mouth shut in surprise. A compliment was not at all what she had expected.

His eyes, a dark moss agate green, framed by blackbird-winged brows, searched hers
most intently. The smile was completely missing from his lips. “Is it new?”

She blushed, not so much because he had noticed, and she was pleased that at last
someone should notice, but because Pip was pinching at her calf.

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“Bright,” he said, and then a little shyly, lashes fanning darkly against the pallor
of his cheek, “Looks soft.”

“Yes.” She stroked the sleeve, and gave Pip a kick. Did he mean to bruise her? “Velvet.
I love the feel of it.”

Richard’s hand lifted, as if he meant to touch the fabric. Halfway there he froze,
face flushing.

“Go on,” she said, holding out her arm. “It’s lovely.”

Beneath her skirt Pip shifted, both hands ringing her ankle, giving her leg a little
cat-clawed shake.

Richard, his face gone almost as scarlet as the dress, leaned close enough that he
might brush the tips of his fingers across the sleeve, fleet as a bird on the wing.
“Nice,” he murmured.

She shrugged. “I begin to dislike it.”

“Oh?” His brows rose.

“Because of the dress I cannot play as I usually do. Mama is afraid I will get it
dirty, or tear the hem.”

“Ah,” he said, using the exact same tone, the same nod his father sometimes used,
as if he understood entirely. He clasped his hands in the small of his back—a blackbird
with wings folded. The color in his cheeks subsided. “Perhaps we could join you in
a hand of cards, and save hide-and-seek for another day, when you are more suitably
attired.”

The idea, even his unusually formal language, pleased her, and yet she was all too
conscious of Pip crouched catlike against her knee, his head making a tent of her
velvet skirt, a breeze wafting up under the heavy fabric, chilling her everywhere
but those places he touched. His hands, the bulk of him leaning into her thigh, were
too hot.

Her cheeks warmed. Her mother would faint at once if she ever found out her daughter
had allowed a lad freedom to tuck himself beneath her nether limbs.

“That would be lovely,” Patience said, and gathered up the deck with a sweep of her
hands. “But perhaps you had best find Pip first.”

Richard nodded, stepping back from the card table. “No telling where he’s gotten off
to,” he said quietly, and with a quick glance, a shy, smiling glance, he strode from
the room as swiftly as he had entered it.

“Gad!” Pip cried out when his footsteps had faded, and he crawled out from under the
table. “I thought he would never leave. Why ever did you engage him in conversation?
Did you not realize I was suffocating down here?” Giving the hem of her skirt a little
kick he said, “Bloody velvet was devilish hot.”

His hair did look a bit disheveled, a trifle damp at the nape of his neck.

“I did not ask you to jump under my dress,” she said sharply. “It was dreadfully improper
of you to do so. I think he knew.”

“Richard? Don’t be daft. He’s not that clever. He would have said something if he
knew.”

Of course. He would have. It would have meant his winning the game, wouldn’t it? And
yet she could not stop playing the moment in her mind, the moment he had looked down
at the table, at the crooked rows of cards. Something in his eyes had been so watchful,
so intently watchful. Deep within her she was filled with the conviction: He knew.

He knew, and had chosen not to embarrass her.

“Pretty dress,” he had said. The compliment meant more to her than those of anyone
else who had noticed the dress. Certainly Pip had not said a word in praise.

She smiled, and wondered if mother was right after all: It was time for her to behave
like a young lady, not a hoyden.

***

Click here for more books by InterMix