Elisabeth Fairchild (9 page)

“You were saying?”

Bolton spoke, something about the butcher, a missing delivery. Copeland heard not
a word of it.

“By the by, who was praying in the middle of the night?”

“No one, my lord.”

“Well, no one was making a bloody great racket tramping around above our heads.”

“None of the staff will admit to it, my lord.”

Copeland glanced again toward the far door. “Perhaps it was my guest.”

As if the very mention of her was a summons, the door to Miss Walcott’s room swung
inward with a faint squeal of the hinge and Miss Walcott emerged, wearing pale gray,
her hair arranged in the same tidy, looping braids he had begun to expect. Beautiful
braids. He longed to take them down, to finger the crisscrossed strands of hair free,
golden waves to bury his face in, to wash over her naked body—to wrap about him like
a blanket.

For a strangely disconcerting instant Copeland suffered a moment of
déjà vu
, as if he had already done just that. So real the impression, he flushed with embarrassment.

Bolton spoke, something about a nasty draft, and oiling door fixtures.

With a guilty start, Copeland pushed away all thought of stray footsteps, midnight
prayers, and waves of unfettered hair.

Bolton thrust a bit of paper at him. “Cook requests a change in menu, my lord, as
so many are delayed by the snow.”

“Yes, of course. I shall have a look after breakfast, shall I?” He spoke absently,
his eyes on Miss Walcott’s approach. She looked up at the sound of his voice, and
smiled. Amazing how much pleasure the sweet curve of her lips gave him. “I trust you
slept well?”

It crossed his mind, the idea that she had not slept at all, the wisp of a thought,
that she had done something else entirely with the midnight hours.

Bolton thought he still addressed him. “Actually, my lord, I had the strangest dream.”

“After our talk of dreams, my good man? I am not surprised. My rest was troubled by
dreams as well.”

“Indeed, my lord.” Bolton gave a little bow, as if surprised at his own initiative
to speak.

“Don’t keep me in suspense. What did you dream?”

“A child, my lord, came and took my hand, and led me to the door of your room.”

“A child?”

Miss Walcott eyed them both with curiosity. Bolton seemed unmindful of her presence.

“Yes. I could clearly feel his hand in mine. Quite chill his little fingers, my lord.”

“A boy?”

“Yes, my lord.” Bolton held his hand low, as though cupping the head of a lad.

“And when you reached the door?”

“I woke, my lord.”

“How singularly odd,” Copeland said with an uneasy laugh. He could not help but think
of James.

“So I thought myself, my lord, until I asked Maddie this morning what it was that
frightened her in your room.”

“When she broke the pitcher?”

“Yes, my lord. She said a child took her hand. A child who was not there.”

Copeland frowned and glanced at Miss Walcott. Maddie and Bolton had been with his
family from the time he was a wee lad in leading strings. Many had been the time he
had held out his hand to theirs. In his mind’s eye he could see his hands raised,
reaching for a golden-haired angel at frozen pond’s edge, an angel who looked, in
the blink of memory’s eye, like Miss Belinda Walcott!

He tilted his head—the better to peer at her. Had Heaven sent the same angel that
had almost taken him as a youth, to take him now, at Christmas?

Belinda Walcott returned his intense regard with a smiling nonchalance, unaffected
by tales of a ghostly child—unafraid. Henrietta would have been frightened. His beloved
Hen was, in so many ways, a timid soul.

“Odd,” he said.

Bolton nodded. “Yes, my lord. Can it be the stories are true, my lord?”

“Stories?” He had not heard stories of a child. But, then, who would have the heart
to tell him?

Bolton had not the heart now. “Ghost stories abound, my lord.”

Copeland thought of the cold, dark waters of the pond. He saw his own hand, outstretched,
reaching. And on the bank of the pond, reaching for him, an angel with sunlit hair.
Not an angel at all, but his uncle’s hands that had grasped his, lifting him from
the icy cold, lifting him, as his teeth chattered, and his body shivered like a leaf
in an autumn gale. He felt a familiar rush of sadness, returned to the present, breath
filling his lungs in a rush. “Yes, ghost stories.”

With characteristic calm, Bolton bowed and left them.

“And you, Miss Walcott?” Copeland forced himself to exude good cheer. He turned to
his guest with forced enthusiasm. “How do you sleep here at Broomhill? Do you dream
odd dreams?”

“I must admit I have.”

Copeland thought of his own strange night, of the lingering scent of Christmas that
clung to his bedclothes.

“At least, I think it was a dream,” she said.

“Tell me.” He pictured her, in a long white nightshift, ginger-gold curls tumbled
about her shoulders. James’s angel.

“I was standing in the window looking at your pond.”

Did everything come back to that dreadful pond?
He ought to have the thing filled, a grove of trees grown in its place, a temple
or a folly erected on the spot.

“A man in a green coat,” she said, “ran across the park, through the snow . . .”

“Into the pond?” he surmised.

“How did you know?”

The image of his uncle running rose unbidden, his breath a white specter, boots leaving
great gouges in the snow. Copeland’s breath raced faster as he remembered the biting
cold, his legs gone numb, icy water dripping from his hair. Wet wool mittens slid
on the ice, scrabbling, skittering. He could hear Marcus wailing “Help!” at the top
of his lungs as he clumped down to pond’s edge, only one skate on, the blade slicing
deep into the snow.

He frowned. “Have you witnessed a drowning?” He had to ask.

“Nothing so dramatic, really.” She sounded calm.

He closed his eyes, lids a veil of darkness, like the breathtaking plunge. He could
hear the crack of the ice, the startled exhalation of his breath as the cold met him
with the force of a blow.

He had shouted, gone under, gasped hysterically for breath as he surfaced. The ice
crackled, shelved off beneath the weight of his arms. Marcus shouted, voice shrill
with desperation.
Thump. Thump.
His uncle came running, breath heaving. His mittens squealed, slipping, sliding.

James, who should have been behind him in the icy water, stood on the bank beside
a beautiful, golden-haired woman. So still they had remained as he held out his hand
to them. His voice calling “Help me!” had shaken with cold, the words breathless,
almost unintelligible. James had stared at him, as if he saw nothing. The woman, moving
slowly, had at last held out her hand, calmly, as if there were no reason for haste.
Copeland had stretched out, reaching for her, no sound, no feeling in his fingers,
just the ragged rasp of his uncle’s breath as he had grabbed his hand and jerked him
up out of the pond with such strength his armpits hurt, and the water had given up
its heavy, achingly cold grip.

Copeland took a deep breath, listening to the rush of air, blinking as he opened his
eyes.

She was looking at him, waiting, the only angel he was likely to encounter today,
and she said she had seen a man in a green coat run into the pond.

“It was frozen, then? The pond?” he asked, deeply interested, dreading her answer.

“Yes. Though the center still looks thin. However, the man in green did not walk over
it. Neither did it appear he fell in.” She shrugged, her fingers spreading, as if
to help explain the inexplicable. “He simply disappeared.”

Chapter Thirteen

Again it struck her—how handsome he was. Dark curling hair begged to be brushed out
of tragic eyes. An impish smile lurked, dimples played, his mask for the pain.

Unattainable, he was. Masculine, human, and unreachable.

The dark eyes focused on her, his attention an unexpected gift. “Was this dream, or
ghost?” he asked in all seriousness.

She wished things might be different—that they might be different people in a different
time, better suited to this heart-teasing infatuation. She could not allow herself
to be foolish. Not a second time.

Why must he prove so likable?

She reminded herself of the dreadful, unforgivable past—a past she could not let go.

“You wanted to find ghosts, did you not?” she asked impatiently, and hearing the emotion
in her voice chided herself inwardly not to be transparent, and finding the analogy
singularly amusing, she laughed.

His eyes searched hers, confused—Copeland eyes—deep brown, unfathomably deep. Laugh
lines radiated from the corners. Not laughing now. Very serious he looked.

“Was it my uncle?”

He walked with quickened step toward the gallery, trim and lithe, agile in every stride,
expecting her to follow, not glancing back, assuming.

She, on the other hand, looked up at each doorway and arch as she trailed after him,
mourning the mistletoe. She had run through the house with it, laughing, wanting to
be kissed, waiting to be kissed, waiting for love to glance her way.

But it was not kisses a Copeland had wanted of her then, not kisses a Copeland wanted
now.

“Is that the man you saw?”

So urgent his manner, so bright his eyes. Longing filled her soul that a man might
one day gaze at her just so, for her sake, for love’s sake.

She studied the man in green, looked into another pair of Copeland eyes—madness in
them, sorrow. She had studied this face the night before, looking for familial resemblance.
It was in the boy, undeniably in the boy, but this man in green?

“I really could not say,” she admitted at last. “His face was indistinct. Too great
a distance, and the sun gone down.”

The light died in the living Copeland’s eyes. Indeed, his expression seemed rather
sheepish in its disappointment. He forced a smile—the perfect host again. “Ah, well.
I suppose it would be too much to suppose a ghost would make himself obvious.”

She turned, laughing.

His expression warmed. “Shall we go in to breakfast?”

“Please,” she said briskly.

And as they walked under the mistletoe once again, she did not so much as glance upward,
for she knew herself in that moment a fool, an incurable dreamer with entirely unrealistic
expectations. Her gnawing hunger was for something other than breakfast.

Chapter Fourteen

Lord Copeland asked his guest if she would like to stretch her legs. Henrietta would
have agreed to accompany him. Hen was always keen for a stroll, but Belinda Walcott
declined.

He felt a pang of regret at her unexpected refusal. He had been sure she enjoyed his
company as much as he enjoyed hers. He had begun to think they were in some way inseparable
in the cocoon of snow-wrapped Broomhill Hall.

Perhaps she did not care for the cold, the chill pinch of frost at her cheek, the
crisp rush of air in her lungs, as he did, as the dog did.

Gabriel stood panting at the end of the avenue, tail wagging uncertainly at the destruction
of the lane beyond—a dreadful sight. Aged oaks had been split right down the middle
by the weight of snow and ice, pale heartwood exposed. Breath labored, Copeland listened
to his heartbeat, gloved hand tucked within the overlap of his coat. He hated to see
life cut short, even the life of a tree.

Peter Dawson, the head gardener, and his son, Paul, crunched up through the snow behind
him, clay pipes perfuming the wind with tobacco. Peter’s hat was pulled down tight
about cauliflowered ears. His wind – and sun-battered beak of a nose had gone crimson
with the cold.

“Now there’s a sight you don’t often see.” Peter pointed his pipe stem at the litter
of ice-coated branches in the road, his mitted fingers gnarled as oak branches, the
nails nubby and dark, marked by years in the soil. His teeth were stained almost as
yellow by the pipe. “A bit of a Jack Frost massacre, that.”

Peter’s son nodded, breath white in the wind, a young man’s light in his eyes, a young
man’s glee at the sight of such destruction. He had the look of an angel about him,
young Paul, fair of face and hair, eyes bluer than the sky. “No getting through with
that in the way,” he said with a young man’s certainty. “Not today.”

“Nor tomorrow either.” Peter’s tone was dour. “Shame to see so many cut down in their
prime.”

Copeland’s mind clung to the words “cut down in their prime,” attaching new meaning
to the phrase. “How long will it take?” How long would it take? For him? Would death
come fast or slow?

“Given a dozen men, handy with their axes, we could make firewood of it by tomorrow
evening, I’m thinking,” Peter said.

Copeland nodded. The world must go on. The world would go on. Shove the dead to the
side of the road. The living must pass. It was only fitting. “If at all possible,
a passage must be clear in time for Christmas Eve,” he said. “In the event my guests
make a push to get here.”

They nodded and tugged at their caps. Peter said, “We’ll do our best, my lord. I’ll
send the lad out to see if we cannot coax the locals to help.”

Paul nodded, an angel giving blessing. “They will be wanting the road cleared as much
as we do.”

“See to it, then, and every man who agrees to do the work shall have a sovereign off
me.” Copeland turned, retracing the hollows of his footsteps back toward Broomhill.
Before he had gone far he turned again to ask, “Do you think all the lanes hereabouts
are as bad?”

Peter nodded glumly. “Like as not, my lord. It is the worst storm I have seen in many
a year.” The old man uncertainly removed his cap, gray locks catching the wind as
he wrung the battered wool between nervous hands. “My lord . . .”

Young Paul ducked his head, as if the news were worse than the state of the roads.

Copeland watched the mauling of the hat with interest. He had never known Peter Dawson
to hesitate in addressing him.

“An oddity, my lord.” The old man’s laugh was forced, uneasy, his breath a bloom of
white. “I thought you might be interested.”

“Tell me.”

“The lad, my lord, found footsteps in the snow this morning.”

Copeland thought at once of Miss Walcott and the green-clad man she had seen. What
he said was, “Someone poaching rabbits for Christmas?”

“No, my lord. Not rabbits.”

“Out with it.” Copeland banged his hands together. They tingled with the cold.

“These footsteps led across the park, my lord, to the pond.”

“Did they?” Again he thought of Miss Walcott, of her dream. He would not think of
his uncle running—forever running—snow spurting beneath his boots—and never fast enough.

“Yes, my lord, and none of the lads to claim them. Led to pond’s edge, and disappeared,
my lord. No sign of them headed away, you see.”

How cold his hands. He thrust them into his coat pockets, hunching shoulders, remembering
how much colder they had once been.

“The pond is frozen about the edges, my lord, but the center has yet to go firm. Can
someone have fallen in, my lord?”

Copeland frowned, chilled, hair prickling at the base of his neck. He felt himself
falling, heard the crack of the ice, all solidity, all security in his young life,
shattered. “You will ask about among the locals? See if anyone is missing?”

He brushed snow from his collar and cupped the heat of his breath in the palms of
his gloves.

“Yes, my lord. And drag a hook, sir?”

Oh God! Not again.
He had watched from the window in the
Fleur-de-Lys
Room, the finding of the body, limp as a rag doll.

“Yes, best do that as well.” Bemused, Copeland began to walk away, and again paused.
“Peter?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“You will be careful? And thank you for telling me. I should like to be notified should
you find strange footsteps again.”

“Yes, my lord.”

***

Copeland returned from his survey of the road-clearing, by way of the pond, which
he had unconsciously avoided since his return, just as he avoided view of it from
the windows of the house. He really must level the thing, put in a grotto, a garden
temple—a wood. James had always liked beeches, or chestnuts. Maybe oak.

Unaware he contemplated its demise, the pond stood in unruffled calm, half locked
in ice, too many sets of footsteps leading in and out at this point to make any sense
of what the gardener or Miss Walcott might have seen. He certainly hoped there was
no body in the dark waters, no troubled soul desperate to end their life at Christmastime.

No one who knew anything of Broomhill would dare.

He glanced upward at a clouded sky, an endless sift of white. Beautiful to have snow
at Christmas.

Gabe brushed against his leg, startling him, shadowing his footsteps when he set off.
The dog was wet and happy, glad of the outing, glad to chase birds away from the suet
pot that Cook had put outside to harden. Copeland listened to the dog’s happy panting,
his own breath coming fast, his chest feeling a bit sharp from the cold, from his
exertions, from the fear of death lurking uncomfortably close. His life seemed poised
like the moment when the ice had given way, the moment before that brisk, frigid plunge.
He had sputtered and coughed as he surfaced frantically, scrabbling for the bank,
ice sliding beneath soggy mittens, skates heavy, clothes heavy, pulling him down again.
It made his heart race, just thinking of it.

He strode into the house, chest aching, pulled the gloves from numb hands, unwound
the scarf at his throat, and strode in to the portrait of Uncle Cope. Coat green.
Breeches green. He had become fixated on all things green, poor man. His furnishings,
his carriage, the food he ate—all green. It was said he had walked into the green
of the sea to have a green ending.

Copeland knew why. He had never told anyone—not even Marcus—why the odd fixation with
green had begun the day James died. Copeland had come down the stairs still toweling
his hair dry, ready to have his cup of hot cider refilled, struck by the expectant
still of the house, by the sound of strident voices.

“Too green,” his mother’s scolding echoed from the conservatory. “You are too green
by far to have been trusted with the responsibility of looking after your nephews,
Cope. I should have known better. Oh God, I should have—”

Her voice had shattered into sobs.

His uncle, still clinging to James’s wet cap, had flung himself from the room, his
progress arrested only a fraction of a second as he caught sight of his nephew on
the stairs.

“My baby. My baby!” His mother’s sobbing had brought tears to Copeland’s eyes. It
brought tears to his eyes now.

His uncle’s face had crumpled into the cap he held. His shoulders had shaken tragically.
But he had made no sound—no sound at all—as he wept.

Copeland could hear his heart thump in the stillness of contemplation. He had lived
because of his Uncle Cope, and his brother had died. He had wanted to comfort his
uncle, had gathered breath to scream so that it echoed in the stairwell, “My fault.
My fault.”

The words would not come. No sound had marred the stillness but that of their weeping,
both frozen—tongues and limbs. He could not admit to such a thing. Too big. Too awful.
It would swallow him up if he spoke, break over his head, like cold water. It would
break his mother’s heart all over again.

And so, guilt unvoiced had broken his heart instead, and his uncle, heartbroken too,
had forever worn his greenness like a badge of shame and contrition.

Copeland ran restless fingers through snow-dampened hair, and pinched the bridge of
his nose, holding back tears. He went to talk to the portrait once more.

“Walking in the garden are you, Uncle? Visiting the pond?”

The painting gave no answer. The green-eyed gentleman stared into a future Copeland
could not begin to contemplate. The church had labeled his death a sin, a crime of
man against himself, against God, against Nature. Copeland thought of the trees in
the lane, the weight of the cold splitting them. “Did life become too cold, Uncle?
Too heavy? Did it split you to the heartwood?”

A sound broke the stillness behind him. Pulse leaping, Copeland turned, not expecting
Miss Walcott with a deck of cards in her hand.

“Do you often speak to the dead?”

“Of late—” He forced a rueful smile. “More than ever.”

“And what do you say to them?”

He replied in the lightest of tones, yet he was entirely serious. “All the usual questions.
Is this all there is? Are my days numbered? Is there a Heaven? Do I deserve to go
there?”

“Oh,” she yawned, her mouth most interesting in that position, her hand rising to
hide the involuntary gesture.

Fingers and wrist delicate, complexion alabaster pale, every inch of her captivated
him.

“Are the answers not obvious?” she said. “Far better to ask how one can make every
moment on this earth count for something.”

Copeland studied his own hands, larger now than when his uncle had clasped them with
determined desperation. “I would ask you, then, Miss Walcott, how can we best capture
the Christmas spirit? How can we make this snowbound season special?”

Her eyes sparkled. Her mouth curved upward in a smile. Hers was an interesting mouth
in almost any position. “Any number of ways.”

He thought of the night—the dream. Heat warmed his cheeks, hands, and groin.
Any number of ways.

“We could dance,” she said.

He remembered their mad cavort about the table, strange echo to the cavort he had
imagined in the bed sheets. “I have enjoyed our dancing,” he said.
All manner of dancing.

Her lips parted. The tip of her tongue ran swift along her lower lip. She turned the
cards in her hands, one by one without looking at them, without looking at him. He
wanted her to look at him.

As if she heard his thoughts, her gaze rose. His heart slowed beneath that contemplative
gaze. “We could sing.” The words were no more than a breath. He thought of the way
she had once said, “Make a beautiful noise,” and knew that was how it would be between
them did they ever pursue it, a song and dance most beautiful and moving, beneath
tangled sheets.

He nodded, smiled, mischief on his mind. “I do love your singing.”

She dropped a card.

He bent to pick it up; their fingers touched as he returned it to her.

“Do you skate?” she asked in a rush.

He frowned and flinched away, wondering for the briefest moment if she knew—if she
meant to torment him.

But how could she know? What reason had she to be cruel?

“Never.” He pushed aside the nonsensical idea. “But we might build a snowman, or make
snow angels.”

She chuckled, and slid him a sly, sideways glance. “Perhaps better snow ghosts, here
at Broomhill.”

He forced a laugh. “Yes. Far better.”

An awkward silence fell between them until he said, “I have it. We must decorate the
chapel for a Christmas service.” Ideas came to him unbidden. “Garlands, and candles.”

“Splendid!”

Perhaps this snowbound interlude was meant to be,
he thought. No one to question his need to celebrate the Season as he had never celebrated
it before. No one to tell him to take it slow. What was Christmas about if not to
stimulate a sense of awe and reverence, wonder and good will? What was it if not a
time of feasting and drinking? Of fellowship?

“I shall invite my neighbors,” he went on. “They will be snowbound, as we are, and
will enjoy hearing verses read, and carols sung. Lord knows I’ve food enough to feed
them. I shall send a footman to the local inn to see if any unfortunate travelers
have been snowbound there.”

“The best Christmas ever?” she whispered, like the voice in his dream. He froze, watching
her. Like a candle in the wind, she was, when she turned her head. It occurred to
him with a pang that she, too, would one day blow out.

He shook his head. Not today. Today she was exactly the vibrant force he needed. She
did not try to curb his enthusiasm, to box him in, to mold him into a more conventional
role. “The best Christmas ever,” he agreed.

She tucked the cards into her pocket, and he thought of the hands that had held his
heart in the night.

“We must play a hand or two this evening,” he insisted, and smiled, indeed, almost
burst out laughing.