“I jilted a lord.”
Adrian was tempted to quip, And now you’ve found another one. “That’s so bad?”
“Why should I expect a man like you—? Oh, it’s not your fault. My usual rescues aren’t articulate enough to question me. Are you American, by any chance? You seem very . . . different.”
“American, yes.” Good idea. He could use an American accent as readily as speak upper crust Brit, but his fans adored his lower-class Bristol twang. “Why’d you jilt a lord? They wallow in dough . . . er, wealth, and there’s that title thing.”
“Exactly. They wallow in wealth and title. I discovered he’d only offered for me to escape the Society Mamas thrusting their daughters at him, so he could continue his dissolute ways.”
“Which were?”
“Anything reckless. Gambling, drinking, and wenching.”
“A cad,” Adrian said absently, wondering why he’d been deposited here, since he was much the same sort, and proud of it. “Sounds a jolly good thing to dump that kind of guy.”
“You must be an American.” Miss Marianne shook her head. “Of course I did wrong to refuse him. I should have gratefully put up with it all and his Lordship in my bed on top of it.”
Adrian advanced his redemption by refraining from randy comment.
“And now,” she said, “Selina would be besieged by titled suitors, Papa would not fret about failing investments and Mama would not be wailing night and day on the drawing room sofa about the gowns she cannot have. And my Christmas folly should not be the last ever.”
“They all blame their misfortunes on you. Why?”
“You Americans have no idea how strict the rules of Society are here. I envy you.”
“No, you don’t,” he said fervently. “I bet a looker like you could hook another lord with no trouble.”
“Not now that I am ruined.”
“What happened to the rejected duke or earl?”
“Lord Heathford? He vanished from Town a year ago, rumored to be on a long sojourn abroad, as I’ve had to withdraw from polite society here at the family manor. All of us were as good as banished.”
“So you drove the lord and all your . . . family . . . into exile?”
Her second sigh expressed sheer exasperation. “Lord Heathford will surely turn up and follow his wicked ways as usual. I’ve never had to answer for myself to a horse, or a rabbit, or an ostrich, Mr. Nobody. Go to the kitchen and find Huddleston. You must do something besides eat and sleep and be well and safe. Perhaps you’d suit as a footman.”
A footman. Dreary prospect. Hell was more appealing by the minute, he thought as Miss Marianne bustled off. He looked around. The property was walled, but one who nightly pranced all over a five-tiered stage could manage that. Who was to say he must stay here? With his knowledge of the future, who knows what scams he could pull off? Much easier than beating his way out of Bristol.
He turned to leave, almost stomping on the white rabbit, now nibbling at his feet. “Sorry, bunny, but I’m ditching this madhouse.”
He raced for some concealing shrubbery along the wall, planning a leap to a tall hawthorn limb and then up and over the wrought iron fence. Just as he reached bounding speed, he spotted a monstrous face peering around the shrub. Some garden grotesque? His heart almost stopped as he did. The dingy, dark figure of the rag-swathed child was now transparent and ghostly.
Plainly, it was haunting him. Wasn’t his “redemption” supposed to free it from some eternal limbo for the lost? Tough animal crackers. Adrian Lord couldn’t help that some blasted forebear had run the creature down. He summoned his best Bristol snarl. “Out of the way, you little beggar.”
“You hain’t leavin’ me ’ere alone, are you, Artie?” the creature wailed in the same unlovely accent. And then he recognized it. Her. His youngest sister of four. The little pest’d followed him, fawned on him, and caught him skipping out on a drunken dad at age thirteen to make his own way. She was the last thing he’d seen, and heard, as he fled the filth and poverty forever. Forever.
He managed to reverse direction in mid-air with a practiced lunge. “Not a-tall, Lucy. Just ’aving a wee stroll.”
He turned with a shudder and made for the kitchen. Huddleston loathed him, but a hateful glance was easier to face than that mute misery. He’d never looked back. And now it was too late.
***
He ate little of the hearty beef stew set out for him. Luckily, he’d been left alone and a three-legged dog under the table was happy to lick his bowl clean on the sly. Another hunger was gnawing at him like an abscessed tooth. He jumped when the cook shouted “Out w’ ye” behind his back. “You belong in the yard.”
The scruffy dog at his feet obeyed before Adrian could move. “And you,” she said, as he leaped to unsteady feet. “Go with Heggs. You’re to be presented to the family tonight and meet what a mad lot you’ve fallen into up to your pretty yellow hair.”
Adrian nodded, and followed a pimply-faced youth in fancy dress who muttered unintelligibly as he led him up narrow twisting stairs to the top of the house. Apparently his stable bath was still sufficient. He was presented with an ensemble resembling Pitt’s quaint outfit, down to white silk stockings and black ballet slippers.
“I’ll not wear this lot.”
“You will, an’ you don’t want to return to the gutter.”
“Maybe I do,” Adrian muttered back.
He was more concerned about the stocking garters than the gutter as he struggled into the alien clothes. Surely this was a taste of Hell. Satin pedal pushers and silk stockings. The shirt was fine enough, but the coat was a Notting Hill bridegroom’s cutaway that had been frosted with embroidery and gilt like a cake.
Heggs further attempted to frost him by upholding a ghastly powdered barrister’s wig that looked as forlorn as Miss Merriweather’s lost little lamb.
“Away with that.” Adrian’s elbow knocked the thing to the floor and his ill-fitting slipper crushed it dead.
Heggs sighed. “What Miss Marianne’s Christmas doin’s do to the staff. You can’t be a footman without powdered hair.”
“I’ll fix it,” a maid said from the door. Adrian’s pulse raced to see his latest “fairy godmother,” a powder-dusted wand in one hand. He eyed the large jar of white powder she carried, but the cloud it raised around his head when applied was hideously bland, not even sweet like powdered sugar.
“Don’t let this go to your head,” Heggs warned in a low voice. “A footman would only join the guests after dinner as one of Miss Marianne’s Christmas ‘finds.’ They are always cleaned up and brought in to be gawked at. Miss Marianne has said she thinks you are an American. I am not surprised. Although you are two-legged and one would expect some manners, I hope you know enough not to mess the carpet like the other imports.”
***
Adrian was herded through the dark servants’ byways to a broad door, then ushered through. He halted on the threshold, feeling as if he was entering a concert set, except he was used to dark, erratically lit chaos. The dazzling calm and white glitter before him almost blinded him. Chandeliers dripping crystals and wax from dozens of candles lit the white-painted paneled walls and gilt-framed paintings.
Slowly, the people in the room turned to notice him, their faces blank with shock. All the women looked as pregnant as Adele in their high-waisted gowns, and the upright feathers in their headdresses reminded him of a flock of ostriches. And the men. Men? They were dressed in long pants at least, but amazing upper garb.
Adrian strode forward, knowing he had an audience to command. He approached the one person he knew. “Miss Merriweather, I am here at your command.”
She blinked. “My invitation, Mr. Nobody.” She extended a white-kid gloved hand. He knew enough to bow over it and brush his lips across her knuckles, every one.
Her gown was buttercup yellow satin, and the neckline did some forerunner of Victoria’s Secret Miracle Bra proud, which also became her, as did the pink in her c
heeks and the small surprised “oh” of her lips. The demure Miss Merriweather was not immune to his onstage charisma.
“Marianne,” a man’s voice spoke up. “Do not tell me this is your annual Christmas beneficiary.” The older man was portly and fiercely browed.
“Yes, Papa,” she said with a curtsy that allowed Adrian an expanded view of the riches framed by yellow satin.
“But this is a man!”
“Yes, Papa.” Another curtsy.
“A strange man that you found on the streets of London?”
“Yes, Papa.” Again.
Adrian was feeling quite dizzy from Miss Marianne’s serial curtsies. He hadn’t had his after-show woman—or women—of course, but some time-warp virgin was hardly to his taste. He couldn’t help wondering what perverse delights Hell would offer.
“I think he is an American,” Marianne added. Apologetically.
“American! You do not know?” Papa glowered in Adrian’s direction. “Speak for yourself, fellow.”
“I suffer from loss of memory, sir.”
Miss Marianne leaped in to prevent his saying more. “There he was, Papa, unconscious on the streets. Surely during the Season we celebrate, when we do good deeds for the poor—”
“He’s quite conscious now,” Papa grumbled.
By then, Miss Marianne was plying her father with a tilted head, patting his jacket collar as if it was fur. “Surely, Papa, you remember the bargain was for me to adopt ‘any poor creature from the street.’ ”
“But not a man!” The swooning soprano wail came from a sofa, on which reclined a plump older woman with two small spaniels settled on her billowing skirts. “What must our guests think?” Her feathered head nodded at twenty-some strangers scattered through the huge room.
Another woman answered. “They will think, Mama, that our new footman makes a very fine leg in a white silk stocking.” Selina, dressed in pink silks, rustled over to Adrian. She ran her eyes from his powered hair to calf like a groom assessing Buttercup’s ilk.
“He does make a fine figure of a footman,” Mama conceded, unfurling a fan before her face.
Hmm. Adrian must soon decide whether to reign in Hell or serve in Merrie Olde England. Doing something sinful might return him quickly to the Yorick Club and Pitt. And Miss Selina, smoldering from being devalued on the marriage market by her sister’s disgrace, was eager to ruin herself.
“He is almost as tall as Lord Heathford,” Selina pointed out.
Or. . . . Adrian glanced to Marianne, who was watching with an angry flush. Or Selina wanted to make her sister jealous.
Well. Of course all women wanted Adrian Lord, no matter his stage costume. Hadn’t Marianne said her wealthy ex-fiancé had gamed, wenched and drank? If Adrian was descended from such a privileged bloke, shouldn’t he have the same good time, until his sins added up enough to return him to Hell? In the meantime. . . .
“Where shall we put him tonight?” Selina was purring the words.
Papa knew. “He’ll sleep in the butler’s pantry to guard the family silver.”
“I’m not sure,” Selina murmured for his ears only, “that this man could guard anything, especially not virtue.”
She had that right.
“In the meantime,” Papa Merriweather said, “we must all make merry on Christmas, for it’s Boxing Day tomorrow.”
In the meantime, Adrian eyed the men his age and they eyed him. With their hair elaborately curled forward onto their faces and their necks swathed in ascots and scarves up to their chins and down to their breastbones, they reminded him of a flock of vain geese. All seemed to be looking down on him, despite being shorter. Some clutched gaudy handkerchiefs in one beringed hand.
Miss Marianne had quietly neared him with anxious eyes, uncertain of how her “pet” was faring.
“These men dress like the lord you jilted?” he asked her as they strolled away.
“Not so titled, but yes; they wear the latest modes from Paris. One of them would have courted Selina, had I not been so uncooperative.”
Adrian rolled his eyes at his forebear’s associates. “Where’s the Christmas tree?”
“Christmas tree? We have the Yule log that will be lit later.”
“I wondered what that huge rough log was doing by the white marble fireplace.” By then they’d reached it. “It’s high enough to sit on,” he said, and promptly did.
Marianne clapped her hands. “The first to sit on the Yule log tonight will have good luck.”
“Not me,” Adrian predicted, standing. Around the room, younger guests danced or played cards and charades, pastimes that bored the bloody hell out of him.
“A twelve-foot Christmas fir would be just the thing,” he thought aloud.
“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 ber
ry 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.”
Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River Page 19
