A Drakenfall Christmas: A Novel

by Geralyn Corcillo

  “More like ...” and Mark took on a nasal and snooty tone to his voice. “'This bourguignon is not as tender as I'd like it. Girl, take it away and get me a scotch, if you have any in this plebeian hole.'”

  Pippa just looked at him. Then she sat back and laughed to the heavens. “You lot are having me on, aren't you? Are you filming this for a prank show?”

  “No!” Glynis assured her.

  “So, you really want to know if I'd be willing to work my arse off to get to work in a place like this if I have to put up with posh tossers using big words and honking accents? That's all?”

  “Well ...” and Mark began to fidget. “There might be long hours.”

  “Good. The longer the better. Especially in winter.”

  “Why winter?” Glynis ventured.

  “Cold out, isn't it? The longer I get to stay inside and warm, the better. But if I can save some wages by winter, I might be able to get myself a room in the village. Depends how much food costs around here.”

  “How much food costs?” Mark echoed.

  Glynis could see the young baron's head spinning trying to keep up with Pippa and her logic. A logic that Glynis quickly saw made excruciating sense.

  “Well, sure. Most of my wages'll go to food. I have to eat.” And she said this almost defensively. “'Specially if I'm working so hard. When there's enough money, a room.”

  “Pippa,” Mark said slowly. “We'll make sure you eat while you're working. Three meals a day. And all the tea you want or need. And I'm arranging housing for the staff once I get the estate cottages sorted. Until then, staff can bunk in the rooms here as we fix them up.”

  Pippa shook her head and crinkled her brow. She was sure the baron had miscalculated. “You're going to pay me, and feed me? AND give me a place to live? And all I have to do is work work work? If I work, you'll give me all that stuff?” Her voice clearly showed that she didn't believe a word of it.

  At that very moment, Mark had hired Pippa. And together, with the entire staff at Drakenfall, they had worked tirelessly to turn the estate into the thriving community and enterprise it had become.

  Pippa switched her position in the cushy yellow armchair and looked back down at the picture. Years after he'd hired her, she had used Mark's friendship and turned it into something quite different in her mind. She'd used it as a shield against the very real heartbreak that could befall her in the presence of Kafi Diop. Kafi Diop's very existence had rocked her sheltered, protected world. And then Mark had gotten married, making it so much harder for her to fool herself into believing she didn't really care for Kafi.

  Pippa put the picture back on the table.

  And now Maisy had enchanted Kafi, too. Everyone loved Maisy. But no one loved Pippa, not like that.

  Sure, Pippa knew she could wink at Phineas and have a roll in the hay with him. Phineas would roll in the hay with any girl, then he'd chuck her under the chin next time he saw her and all would be friendly and easy and funny. But Pippa didn't want to be snogged for a night then chucked under the chin. Nope. She wanted Kafi.

  But he would never look her way.

  Pippa got up from the sunny chair, closed the picture into a drawer, then set off to ferret out her cats so she could feed them their dinner.

  Chapter 24: Under Cover

  That night, Mark pushed the dogs aside to make room and slipped into bed a few minutes after Maisy. But even as he pulled the covers around him, he could hear her deep, even breathing. She must be exhausted. After she'd returned to the drawing room at the conclusion of whatever adventures had her running all across Drakenfall in the snow, she mustered the energy to lead the guests in a number of boisterous carols. But her unflagging good cheer notwithstanding, Mark knew that something was upsetting her, throwing her off kilter. Something was amiss in Maisy's world. And she wasn't telling him. He was more sickeningly sure of it with every passing moment.

  Mark turned to Maisy, sliding up behind her and tucking her against his body. “Maisy,” he murmured into her hair, kissing her ear. “Maisy. Please know I am always here for you. This is Mark. Mark Potter-Prebys, and I'm here for you. Always. No matter what.”

  Maisy felt him as he held her, and she heard what he said. But she didn't say anything or even turn to him. She felt one hot tear leak out of her eye and into the pillow. She couldn't tell him about Pippa and Kafi or even about the cats. Because if she did, he would see that she was still holding something back from him. And she couldn't tell him about that.

  The envelope. With that card inside. A Christmas card. Right! Like they would send good wishes and cheer.

  Maisy shivered and she felt Mark pull her in more snugly against him.

  How could she do this to Mark? How could she let this happen? When he would never let anything like this befall Drakenfall. He was so wonderful, all the time, with everyone. And fierce when he had to be. Like he'd been with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs back in August. Like he would be with anyone who threatened Drakenfall or its people.

  How could Maisy be so … disappointing? And what if it were so much worse than that and she was actually endangering what they had all worked so hard to build? She was almost the newest addition to the Drakenfall family. She hadn't even been there a year, and already she might be wrecking everything.

  Maisy ran her hands along Mark's arms that were circling her waist and held him close.

  Chapter 25: The Magic Words

  “Ahhh!” Lea bolted out of sleep in the semi-darkness to find herself squinting into a blinding light. “What's happening?” she cried.

  “I'm shining a torch in your eyes.” Jamie's voice answered matter-of-factly.

  “WHAT?”

  “Want me to turn it off?”

  “Yes!”

  “Too bad.” And he sounded downright blasé.

  “Rrrrrrgh!” Lea slammed herself back down to the bed and covered her head with the pillow. But even before the pulsing images of light on her eyelids could stop throbbing into her, a piercing cacophony of sound blared into her ear. “Jamie!” she cried from under the pillow. “What are you doing?”

  But if he said anything, she couldn't hear him through the loud music.

  So she started swiping her arms at the horrible sound. But Jamie must have pulled the radio or boom box or whatever device of torture he was using just out of her reach because the sound abated fractionally and her hands flailed, hitting nothing and no one.

  Finally, the throbbing cacophony stopped just as Jamie ripped the pillow away from her head.

  “Ah!” she screamed, trying to scrabble away from him. “Are you a MANIAC? What are you DOING?”

  “Proving a point,” he said calmly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your townhouse on the beach in Sainte-Rose. It is within the law for someone to purchase a home near you and play their annoying music louder than you might like. And they could set up any manner of lights in their yard, even pulsing strobes, that would shine right into your windows at any hours. And they would be within their legal rights. Such a neighbour would be making your life categorically worse.” Jamie shrugged. “But it would all be legal. So no big deal.”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “What kind of neighbours have strobes?”

  “Shaquille O'Neal's neighbours weren't too happy with him and his blasted Superman lights. They were wrecking the whole neighbourhood—a neighbourhood people paid a lot of money to live in. But then there were those nasty legal lights.”

  “I don't live next to Shaquille O'Neal!”

  “But someone like him might move into your ritzy neighbourhood.”

  “I doubt that. And anyway, no neighbour would be blasting music right into my ear!”

  “I bet the people on Grant street never thought they'd be living next to a tyre factory. But up close and in your face is how invasive the smell is going to get for these people. In their clothes, their hair. They'll never be able to escape it, even when they leave the block.”

  Le
a could see his gaze looking steadily at her, but she knew him well enough by now to know that his gears were whirring away. “Oh, God. You're thinking of ways to make me smelly. To make me permanently stink!”

  “Wouldn't be hard.”

  “Hey!” She slapped at him through her protective covers. “Go away and stop waking me to score points.”

  “Have I? Scored points?”

  She stared at him and didn't say anything.

  “Okay,” he said. And he started bouncing up and down on the bed where he sat.

  “Jamie! What are you doing? You are going to break this old bed!”

  “I'm simulating the pounding bass of your neighbour's music next door. And I'm pretty sure these beds have withstood forces of much greater intensity.”

  He kept bouncing, jogging Lea's very teeth in her head. “Stop.”

  “Say the magic words.”

  “Stop, please.”

  “Those aren't the magic words.” He kept bouncing.

  “I won't sell to the tyre factory!”

  And he stopped bouncing with such immediacy that she bounced up, he bounced sideways, and they ended up landing somewhat on top of one another. His head practically rested on her hip as he looked to her face.

  “Now was that so hard?”

  “Okay, I won't sell to the tyre factory, but Jamie, we could make some serious money with that property.”

  Jamie sat up. “We could do some serious good with that property. Make money with the rest of the assets. You've already liquidated most of them.”

  “The addition of the Grant building puts us on a whole different level of potential business worth. We could split the money.”

  “I don't want the money.”

  “Rrrrgh!” She tried to push him away.

  “What?”

  “You cannot mean that. People just say that to make themselves sound better than those of us who live in the real world and know that money is how you survive.”

  “I agree. We all need money to survive. But you're not talking about survival. You're talking about one portfolio versus another. I'm the one who's talking about survival. Freedom from starvation, poverty, prostitution.”

  This time she did pull back, freeing herself from his pinning weight.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you: survival. Have you ever even seen the building on Grant Street, and not in pictures or online? I mean, have you ever been there? Do you have any idea what life is like for the people who live there?”

  Lea refused to get caught up in his rant. “Your point?”

  “My point is that if we use that building to house a job training centre for the people in Grant Street, we'll be giving them a chance to make an honest wage. So they can use that money to survive.”

  “A job centre? And that's supposed to help? Jamie, nobody HAS to be a prostitute.”

  “Are you KIDDING me? Do you honestly believe it's a career women and girls and boys CHOOSE? You CANNOT be that obtuse. If that's something you tell yourself whenever the subject comes up in your world, fine. If you need to believe that, go ahead. But don't dare spit that garbage back at me.”

  “Because you know everything.”

  “Because,” he said, breathing hard, his nostrils flaring, “I've known teenagers who'd turn tricks just to get enough money to buy chips.”

  Jamie stood up then and paced across the carpet. “I get that some people don't want to help others. It's draining and painful and it is a tough way of life. Some people take care of their own lives and that's enough. But to know that there are people right in front of you, people that you could help save from an abominable life, and you just write them off?”

  “So you want the building for young prostitutes? Runaways?”

  “Don't you get what a job centre could mean? If kids with nowhere to turn could find a warm place that would give them breakfast and lunch and maybe even dinner and train them all day for a job … that place could be their ticket to a life. Not just survival. But a life.”

  Lea got up and headed toward the bathroom. “I can't talk about this right now. I can't. I can't even think about it right now. We can talk about your job centre after the holidays.”

  And with that, Lea shut herself into the bathroom, where she stood with her back against the door.

  What was happening? Jamie Tovell … he'd just been so forthright and determined and … kind of badass. Lea didn't know what to think. Her heart beat fast as she tried not to consider that everything she'd been thinking about him for the past seven years had been off the mark.

  Chapter 26: Splish Splash

  “I almost got it just where I want it.”

  “I mean it, Kafi.” And Cook would have shaken her rolling pin up toward the rafters were it not covered in flour. And also, she was not a drama queen. Cook saw enough histrionics zipping through her kitchen daily that she wasn't about to add any of her own. “I know Lady Shiley gave you permission, but you're sending dust down from the rafters while I'm making these pies!”

  “You're across the kitchen from me!” came Kafi's protest, muffled by the boards of the ceiling.

  “I can see them dust motes drifting closer.”

  And it must be to Kafi's credit that he could charm Cook even enough to get her to argue with him. For few in Drakenfall would challenge Cook on any score, not even Mark himself.

  A few seconds later, Cook saw Kafi's thick shoes and his usual cargo pants as he levered himself down from the ceiling, lowering himself with the careful precision of one who could easily perform many a pull-up on a bar. In a row. When he let go and fell the last few feet to the kitchen floor, he went to the sink to wash his hands directly, scoring no small number of points with Cook.

  “We have to test it out,” Kafi insisted again. “And you're a real sport to let us do it here. Maisy wants to somehow simulate snowflakes for all the kids at the Christmas gala, and paper or food flakes can be so messy and wasteful. So we thought bubbles. But we have to test it out first.”

  “On Pippa?”

  Kafi didn't like to lie. But he wasn't going to confess to Cook that it was just another of his ideas to make Pippa feel the magic of Christmas. She'd walk into the kitchen and she'd be peppered with bubbly snowflakes falling to the chimes of the season. Kafi had rigged it all up in the dark oaken rafters above the entry into the kitchen. He'd hide just off to the right in the pantry, standing up on the shelves to give himself height. As Pippa approached, he'd pull the string attached to the switch of the small fan he'd hooked up that would blow through the bubble wand creating a flurry of bubbles even as it whistled through the wind chimes he'd hung up as well. Voila. It would be a magical flurry of Christmas delight.

  Kafi went into the pantry and got into position. He was in there for a few minutes when he got an alert on his phone, a message from Maisy.

  Pippa was coming.

  On Maisy's signal, when Pippa was a few feet from the doorway, Kafi pulled the string. But what had worked when he'd tried it standing right next to the fan no longer worked as he hid in the pantry. The greater distance took away too much taut leverage from the string. Kafi gave the string another quick jerk, harder this time. Nothing.

  Pippa was getting out of range!

  One more quick tug.

  But this time Kafi dislodged the plastic pan of sudsy water from a back rafter and sent it crashing onto Pippa's head.

  “What!” she screamed, standing there stunned, soaked, and sudsy.

  “Oh my word oh my word oh my word oh my word!” Cook rushed across the kitchen, opened a drawer, and started throwing clean, dry dishtowels at Pippa.

  “Oh, dear!” Glynis hurried into the kitchen just in time to see a drenched Pippa catching dishtowels and clutching them to her sopping chest. Kafi had quickly snuck out of the pantry while Pippa was trying to soak up the suds sluicing down her head. He came into the kitchen as if from the dining room and suddenly burst forward. “Pippa! What happened?”

&n
bsp; And his heart was beating fast. Would Cook out him so that Pippa would hate him forever?

  “WHO!” She bellowed. “Who put a pan of dish suds in the RAFTERS?”

  “I'm so sorry,” Cook cooed. “I hate to say this but … it was Lady Shiley. Oh, she's going to be beside herself.”

  “LADY SHILEY? She's booby-trapping the kitchen?!”

  Maisy, who had been rushing into the kitchen just then, turned and disappeared back down the hall.

  “It's because of the Christmas decorations,” Kafi rushed to say as he saw Maisy scurrying away. “She wanted to hang some tinsel. Very light and stringy. Very light. And super stringy. So nails and tacks wouldn't work. So I said what about tape. But the rafters were too dirty—”

  “Oy!” interjected Cook with some heat.

  “Not dirty from food—”

  “How would FOOD get up into the rafters?” Pippa was not calming down.

  “I mean,” Kafi stuttered, “not from grease or things burning in the oven—”

  “Oy!” interjected Cook again.

  “Just dust, you know, from … being the ceiling, like. So Maisy decided to clean the rafters. She must have left the pan of suds up there.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Let me drive you home, Pippa,” Kafi offered.

  “No,” Glynis countermanded. “It's too cold outside to have her go out soaked. And we hardly want her to drench her coat.” Glynis put her arm around Pippa's shoulders and led her towards the hall beyond the kitchen. “Let's go to my rooms. You can shower and change into my comfiest, warmest pyjamas and we'll wash and dry your clothes. You can have the rest of the day off. I've even got a nice set in my sitting room so you can watch some telly.” Glynis had no idea what exactly was going on, but she knew that Lady Shiley would never have left a pan of suds in the kitchen ceiling.

  Pippa looked at her through wet streaks of hair plastered to her face. “Can I watch White Christmas?”

  “I'll set it up for you while you're in the shower.”