Elisabeth Fairchild (23 page)

Henrietta recognized at once the young man in the window.

“Mr. Roberts!” she cried.

David Roberts leapt down before the wheels had stopped spinning, his cloak kicking high in the wind. “Hen! Fancy meeting you here! Can’t bring yourself to call me David any more now that you are a woman grown? Can you believe this wicked weather? Copeland will be in a temper. His pet project delayed again.”

Henrietta fought to hold her bonnet on. “Indeed, I do believe Kirk cares more for widows and orphans than for me.”

Her female companion hunched deeper within a wind-whipped black coat of dubious style. “Like an evil force, this wind,” the frizzle-haired young woman exclaimed. “Pushing the horses to a standstill. Come, we must find the fire and warm ourselves.”

“Poor Kirk.” Henrietta wore a worried look as David shooed them toward the inn’s door. “He’ll be especially disappointed to see his ghost hunt ruined. Obsessed with it, he’s been.”

“Don’t worry. Better luck tomorrow. We’ll be hunting Broomhill’s spirits by Christmas eve, mark my words.”

“And a fascinating collection of ghosts they may prove to be,” Henrietta’s companion looked excited by the idea. “I have thoroughly researched the Copeland estate. It is a house plagued by tragedy.”

Her words were whipped from her mouth by the same energetic wind that shook the ice-frosted windows of Broomhill in their ancient leading where Lord Copeland stood regarding the whirling white downfall--snow feathers shaken from a heavenly wing--muffling the garden, the stable, the drive.

Bolton watched him, worry in his eyes. “Miss Gooding will be gravely disappoint—” His voice trailed off.

Copeland chuckled, amused by the unintentional pun. “Gravely, indeed.”

“Apologies, my lord. A most unfortunate choice of words. But a clever idea, this ghost hunt.”

Copeland traced a heart upon the fogged window. “Seemed the perfect notion for the perfect Christmas.”

He missed the look of pain that pinched Bolton’s lips.

The fireplace hummed and moaned, as if to confirm the rumored haunting of Broomhill Hall. Gabriel’s ears perked.

He leapt to his feet, and raced for the door.

Bolton ignored the skittering toenails. “I have yet to encounter the slightest hint of anything otherworldly at Broomhill Hall despite all rumor.”

A familiar spasm touched his lordship’s chest, the feeling that someone held his heart in their hands, and now and then they squeezed.

“Our ghosts? Yes. Well, I like to think there is another world.” Copeland pressed the flat of his hand to his sternum, and chuckled. “And to prove it to you, I shall haunt the place personally when I am gone, Bolton. Look for me. Listen. I vow, on my honor, I will give you ghostly signs.”

Wind whistled beneath the door, a sudden whiff of ash filled the room.

Bolton allowed his customarily austere façade to offer hint of amusement. “How shall I know you, my lord?”

Copeland tapped his chin, considering his options. “I will whistle down the chimney, and bang the door knocker thrice.”

As if it heard, the lion-faced doorknocker on Broomhill’s ancient oak door trembled in the wind, vibrating to a distant thudding, like a heartbeat, and a great whoosh of cold air howled in the chimney, sending ash shooting into the room.

“It would appear, my lord,” Bolton said dryly as he moved to sweep up the ashes, “that some other spirit has already appropriated that particular mode of communication.”

Copeland burst out laughing as Gabe raced from the house barking at the thunder of hooves.

The coach full of musicians from Andover turned in between massive knob-fingered oaks that reached for the coachman’s hunched form. The sound of cheerful singing traveled on the wind.

“
Fala-Lala-La-Lala-La-La.
”

***

Bolton quietly closed the door behind him as he left the master’s study, but a storm gathered over Copeland’s brow as he broke open the seal on one of the just delivered letters to read with a growing frown.

Dearest brother,

Deepest regrets. Gerald and Anthony have contracted the croup. We shall not come for Christmas.

“Blast!” Copeland cried out, his disappointment sharp contrast to the approaching song.

“Fa-la-la-la-la.”

“‘Tis the Season to be jolly, devil take it.”

The fire flickered. The flue moaned. He read further, Gabriel barking.

***

Snow caught upon the windowsill. Lord Copeland caught his breath, heartbeat uneven. The letter drifted to the floor like a snowflake. Copeland sank to his knees beside his desk. Across the room, the carved marble mantle support, half woman, half lion, stared at him with stony eyes as cold as the day had turned.

With trembling hand Lord Copeland pulled the tincture of foxglove from his inside coat pocket, took a drop on the tongue, then waited through a second spasm, and a third, less severe.

Snow drifted past ancient glass panes in a distorted white flurry, air taking solid form. Daylight faded beneath the ruffled hem of a lowering skirt of clouds.

Beautiful. So beautiful! The snow. His life. It took his breath away. Copeland stood, knees shaky, made it to the window. He pressed his cheek to the cool glass. He would miss this.

“Heaven must wait a little longer,” he whispered, and tucked the bottle into his pocket, gazing hungrily at the view. His Christmas was coming.

Outside, Gabriel had matched his gait to that of four bay horses with belled harness, barking them onward, the coach kicking up a halo of snow. The coachman’s nose was plum-colored, his cheeks scalded by the wind that whipped his muffler. From the coach came singing.
“Deck the Halls with boughs of holly---

Copeland’s vision of the world shrank through a window breath-fogged. His hand rose instinctively to check his pulse. He could feel the heat, the heartbeat within him--ebbing--and nothing he could do. Nothing name, or title, or money could do.

“‘tis the season to be jolly—

Copeland’s view of the coach was distorted by a flaw in the glass, his view of the future distorted by the flaw in his heart.

Too cheerful the musician’s voices, out of tune with his sudden sense of despair. He had vowed not to fall prey to such emotion. He pinched the bridge of his nose, shook away looming melancholy, and forced a laugh. He had laughed when the physicians suggested he put his affairs in order, that he avoid taking ill. A nonsensical suggestion. Did not everyone try to avoid illness?

“Fa-La-La-La-Lah---La-La-La-La—

He rubbed a clear spot on the pane, stared at his fingers. Strong. Unshaken. How precious the strength in his grip.

“Sing we joyous, all together.”
The song burst forth from the carriage along with the hired musicians: three well-bundled fat men, one thin. Out came their instrument cases, a clattering, wheezing set of bagpipes, an infusion of life and song--and barking. Gabriel dashed about, tail waving, his whole body wagging their guests welcome.

The smiles and laughter lifted Copeland’s spirits. His heart must keep beating long enough to have a grand Christmas--a perfect Christmas--a Christmas to remember. Resolutely he stirred the dying fire into a flurry of bright sparks and leaping flame. “Well, merry spirits, time to show yourselves.”

Burning wood snapped and crackled as if in answer.

With the same strength he would hold onto life, Copeland clasped the cold, smooth shoulder of one of the figures bracing the mantle. A noble face, she had, with beautifully delineated curling locks—-a vacant-eyed beauty, trapped since the fifteenth century by a skilled stone carver who had chiseled suspended life into cold marble. The caryatid stared past him, smiling faintly, as if she possessed amusing secrets, as if she saw things the master of Broomhill Hall, did not.

The hair at the base of Copeland’s neck prickled with the feeling he was not alone. He turned.

The room was empty.

He smiled, amused that his orderly mind stood so ready to believe in otherworldly nonsense, and went to meet the musicians.

The stairwell watched him descend the stairs in a sea of faces. Green men, mouths sprouting leafy branches, held the banister rail high. Painted faces lined the walls, Copelands from the past. Griffins leered from the ceiling, gargoyles from polished mahogany corbels.

Copeland looked past them, through them.

Not musicians he found standing in the deeply shadowed entryway, but a cloaked woman, clutching a sprig of mistletoe. Pale berries glowed like pearls in the candlelight. Her face glowed too, dark hood falling away to reveal a wealth of gleaming hair, pale braids wrapped from her temples, crisscrossed at the nape of her neck. Eye-catching hair, like candlelight in shadow. Loose tendrils wisped rose-gold against alabaster cheeks.

Maggie’s school chum? None to share the holidays with--her only living relative a brother, at sea? Copeland had not realized the music teacher meant to arrive with the musicians.

Footsteps muted on the Pompeian red carpet runner, he leaned over the banister. “I know who you are.”

Evergreens. The clean, outdoorsy smell teased him, elusive--familiar--slightly musky. Braids winged back from her brow, even features, a rosebud mouth. Her complexion shimmered, lily white in candlelight. Golden eyebrows arched in perpetual question, chiseled perfection from a master’s hand. The depths of her gray-blue eyes drew him in.

For a moment it seemed she stared past him, or through him, smiling faintly, as if she saw something he did not.

***

Click here for more books by Elisabeth Fairchild

Elisabeth Fairchild’s
passion for history stems from her heritage: her mother a British war bride, her father a descendant of a U.S. Senator, Teutonic knights, and a Cherokee chief. The Fairchild name is ancient Anglo-Saxon, the family seat predated the Norman conquest, the coat of arms includes a knight’s helm and a griffin. As a child who loved books, Elisabeth fell in love with knights, ladies, winged creatures and Jane Austen’s works. At sixteen she was hired as a maid in a haunted 12th century castle. Currently, with one foot firmly fixed in the past, Elisabeth avidly explores castles, cathedrals and country houses from the viewpoint of a historical mentalist with old soul insight, a phenomenal floor-to-ceiling research library and an insatiable desire to understand women’s historical roles.

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