An Enchanted Christmas
Page 1
Table of Contents
Copyright
An Enchanted Christmas: A Regency Collection
The Christmas Curse
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
A Home for Hannah
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
The Lucky Coin
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
The Enchanted Earl
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Wooing the Wolf
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
An Enchanted Christmas: A Regency Collection
By Barbara Metzger
Copyright 2014 by Barbara Metzger
Cover Copyright 2014 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print:
The Christmas Curse, 2001
A Home for Hannah, 2002
The Lucky Coin, 2003
The Enchanted Earl, 2004
Wooing the Wolf, 2005
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Barbara Metzger and Untreed Reads Publishing
A Loyal Companion
A Suspicious Affair
An Angel for the Earl
An Enchanted Affair
Autumn Glory and Other Stories
Cupboard Kisses
Father Christmas
Greetings of the Season and Other Stories
Lady in Green
Lady Whilton’s Wedding
Rake’s Ransom
The Duel
The Hourglass
The House of Cards Trilogy
The Scandalous Life of a True Lady
The Wicked Ways of a True Hero
Truly Yours
Valentines
The Truly Yours Trilogy
www.untreedreads.com
An Enchanted Christmas: A Regency Collection
Barbara Metzger
The Christmas Curse
Chapter One
“’Struth, Christmas just is not what it used to be.” The old knight looked around his Great Hall with its banners and tapestries and suits of armor. He shook his bearded head.
“You aren’t what you used to be, either,” his fond wife replied with a tongue that could cut a haunch of venison.
“Faugh. In my time, we had ribbons and pine boughs, mistletoe and holly. Good honest revelry, with minstrels and mead, after we got down on our knees and prayed, of course.”
“In your time, you old tub of tin, you had knees.” Sad but true, Sir Olnic was a mere shadow of himself. He was, in fact, a shade, a specter, a spirit, a ghost. His beloved Lady Edryth, as beautiful in his eyes as ever, appeared to other, mortal eyes as a wisp of smoke, a dust mote in a moonbeam, a wafting of lilacs.
She drifted now through the Great Hall of Worth Keep, her long red locks flowing behind her, held off her alabaster cheeks by a simple gold fillet. A summer’s day would have burned that fair complexion, but Lady Edryth had not been kissed by the sun in a long time, a very long time. She had not been kissed by her husband in ages, either, and was not like to permit such license in the near future.
With her richly embroidered blue velvet gown making a soft swishing noise—or was that the wind whispering through the cracks of the ancient pile?—Lady Edryth floated past the long rows of antique armor that lined the smoke-darkened walls. Only one suit of metal was currently occupied, the one in which Sir Olnic currently sulked. It had been the knight’s second best chain mail, his finest one having suffered irreparable damages, although not as irreparable as Sir Olnic had suffered, that long-ago, curse-causing Christmas Day.
“Sir Olnic the Worthy,” his lady-wife muttered now. “Hah. You are not even worthy of a good polishing, not after you frightened off all the servants. Again. My home is going to wrack and ruin, no thanks to you.”
“Oh-ho, so now it is my fault? You did not chivvy the maids about their mopping?”
“Lazy creatures, all of them. But I never had a flock of angry geese attack the poor cook.”
“They were looking for the ring, by all the saints. Your blessed ring.”
“And what about the mad squirrels, or the bellowing cows? Was that before or after the wild boars or the whirlwinds? No one will come next or nigh the place, not at Yuletide.”
“Saints above, I was trying to move the ring. ’Sooth, it is getting closer, isn’t it?” Sir Olnic crouched lower in his armor, clanking the cuisse piece at the thigh. He jangled it again for good measure, not that anyone was listening. Servants rarely entered this area of the old castle, and never near Christmas, if they could avoid it. There was, the knight knew to his abiding regret, no avoiding his beloved’s recriminations.
“Closer?” his dulcet-voiced darling shrilled. “Three miles in three centuries? At this rate, the Keep will collapse around our ears, if we had ears, of course, and our heirs will be living on the moon, before we dissolve your wretched curse.”
Sir Olnic rattled the heavy sword at his side. “Your memory plays you false, madam wife, the same way you betrayed your marriage vows.”
“I never did, you maggot-minded old fool!”
“Prithee, ’twas not I who called the curse down around our house.”
“Well, ’twas not I lost my temper on Christmas Day.”
They had been entertaining the neighborhood at a Yuletide feast, with suckling pigs and stuffed partridges, venison and smoked oysters. There were musicians and mimes, ale, mead, and wassail. Spirits rose and, with them, tempers.
“I still say that cur Rostend insulted me and my house,” Sir Olnic declared.
“Sir Rostend paid me a compliment on my dress, by all the heavens.”
“His eyes were prying you out of it, I swear.”
Alas, Sir Olnic lost his head, challenging his long-time foe to a duel. The joust turned into a melee between their armies of followers, a bloody pitched battle. Sir Olnic lost. He lost his head, indeed, but also his arm, a leg, and various and sundry suddenly unnecessary appendages. Worst of all, he lost his wife’s wedding ring.
Jousting on Christmas Day, breaking the king’s truce, would have sent both men to the gallows. Taking a life, even one so unlamented as Sir Rostend’s, on the day of the Nativity would have sent Sir Olnic straight to Hell, except for his beloved’s parting words. As she angrily crammed her gold ring onto his little finger, her favor to wear at the joust, Lady Edryth had declared: “If you lose this ring”—which Sir Olnic would only do, of course, if he lost his life—“then your soul will walk this hall through eternity. You will never find rest, as God is my witness and by the love I bear you, until the ring is back in this castle, on the finger where it belongs.”
Lady Edryth had died shortly after her husband, defending her home and her son’s patrimony from those who saw her lord’s death as an invitation to increase their own holdings. She succeeded in preserving the succession, but was doomed to join Sir Olnic’s eternal limbo by that very curse. Taking the Lord’s name in vain, on Christmas, no less, and usurping His authority, kept her from the Gates of Heaven. Instead, she bided in the Great Hall of Worth Keep, keeping her spouse on his ghostly toes and the housemaids on theirs.
As far as Sir Olnic could figure, with centuries to consider the dilemma, he needed to get that blasted ring onto the finger of the bride of one of his descendants. Lady Edryth could no longer wear it, for certain, and simply placing the gold band in the hand of an heir could not possibly satisfy the terms of the curse. No, that would have been too easy for his lady-wife. She needed true love, besides. Oh, and he soon discovered—after a decade or two—that he could only be truly effective, have the slightest bearing whatsoever—besides a few moans and metallic clanks—on the solid world, during the twelve days of Christmas. His lady love did not do things by half. Nor did she have half the effect on the mortals who shared their castle.
Unfortunately, Sir Olnic’s descendants, who had taken the family name of Nicholson and who had risen, by that same pigheaded valor, to the title of Barons of Worth, seldom wed for love. They made advantageous marriages, increasing land and wealth and power at whichever court held sway at the time. They also took up residence elsewhere for most of the year, for which Sir Olnic could not blame them. Hell, the Keep was haunted, wasn’t it?
Aside from having neither heir nor beloved bride to hand, the ancient knight had not yet retrieved the ring, but he was getting closer. The jousting ground was a torn-up mud pit by the time all the bits and pieces of the combatants had been gathered for burial. Who knew who ended up in which mausoleum? No one cared, except for Sir Olnic, who was, to his—literally—everlasting regret, missing his left hand’s little finger, with his wife’s ring on it.
The tilting field was seeded for grass; he sent in squirrels to dig it up. The grounds keepers replanted; he called forth whirlwinds. They sowed wheat; he sent crows. They let it go fallow, he followed with rooting pigs. Finally, finally, many Christmases later, he managed to loose a herd of goats in the acreage. One of them actually uncovered the ring, but the blasted nanny ate the thing before Sir Olnic could get anyone to retrieve it. He was working on the milkmaid and her beau, but too late. The next effort was certainly beneath a knight’s dignity, surveying the grass beneath a goat. Still, he was rewarded. The ring ended in a pile of manure, that much closer to the Keep. Some years later, nicely rotted, the mound was gathered by the gardeners and placed around the rosebushes.
Sir Olnic tried hens and hedgehogs. He tried killing the rosebushes, but the gardeners merely replanted in the same spot. Geese, snakes, a small boy once— Nothing had brought the ring to the surface. Now the knight was desperate. For the first time in decades, the Nicholson heir was in residence at Christmastime…the bachelor Baron Worth.
Lady Edryth shook her head. “Forsooth, you’d do better trying to marry off one of the goats.”
*
“Christmas is not what it used to be, is it, Salter?”
“No, my lord,” the old butler agreed. “But then Christmas is never quite what one expects, at Worth Keep.”
Nick had to raise his glass to that. This would be the first Yuletide Oliver Nicholson, Baron Worth, had spent at the family seat in over a decade. This was not, however, the first glass he’d lifted since his arrival. The two facts had more than a passing acquaintance, although the dismal old place currently suited his dismal old mood. Still, the lack of decorations, the pervasive chill in the air despite the fires in the hearths, the absence of any reminders of the festive season, were vaguely disturbing to the baron on this Christmas Eve. He stretched his long legs closer to the fire in the book room of the newer wing. “Are there decorations in the servants’ quarters, at least?” he asked.
“There are hardly any servants in the servants’ hall, my lord, not at this time of year. Most take their holidays to visit family. Or accept temporary positions with whichever of the neighbors are entertaining.” He did not say that the few staff members with responsible positions or nowhere else to go were cowering in the gatehouse, the gardener’s cottage, or the estate manager’s house, as far from Worth Keep as they could get. “Mrs. Salter and I do have a red candle in our sitting room. If we had known of your visit, my lord, we would certainly have seen the family rooms decorated for the season, with a pine bough or such in your valet’s chamber, and a sprig of holly for your groom over the stables. Mrs. Salter does have a goose ready to cook for tomorrow’s dinner, however, and her special Christmas pudding.”
Which were undoubtedly meant for the loyal old retainers’ meal. “My apologies, Salter. It was a sudden decision. Still, I am sure you must have prepared a wassail bowl for the carolers who will be arriving any moment.”
The butler straightened a figurine on the mantel. “No carolers will be coming, my lord.”
“Ah. The Worth wraiths, I suppose?”
The butler nodded his gray head. “And the Christmas curse.”
“Do you and your good wife not believe in ghosts, Salter?”
Salter believed that no one but Master Oliver, now Baron Worth, would keep on such an elderly couple to run his residence. The butler’s eyes were bad. His wife’s hearing was worse. “We’ve neither seen nor heard any disturbances, my lord.”
“Well, I’ve ghosts enough of my own without counting the family phantasms. Why don’t you go make us some mulled ale or punch, then, that we might toast the holiday ourselves, and to the devil with curses and craven servants?”
When the butler left, Lord Worth poured himself another drink and relaxed back against the worn leather cushions of his chair, remembering other Christmases. He recalled house parties and balls at other people’s homes, services and children’s Nativity reenactments, at other people’s churches. Gaiety and gifts, mistletoe kisses and sleigh rides, rich foods, familiar carols, friends. The joy of the season echoed in his mind like a distant church bell. Why, he’d even made his first and only proposal of marriage at a Christmas ball, and had been turned down, right under a kissing bough. Nick barely remembered the young lady’s name, only that she’d laughed to think he expected her to follow the drum. With so much champagne and punch, and a promising military career ahead of him, he’d hardly regretted the refusal.
He regretted it now. If the pretty little blonde Julia had accepted, he could have children at his knees tonight, helping to light the Yule log, reading the Gospel. She could be playing the pianoforte while neighbors joined them in song. She could be warming his vast, cold bed upstairs.
Instead Oliver Nicholson was well past thirty, with a cousin as heir and a chill that never went away. He was more alone than he had ever been, with only his memories as companions. Ghosts, indeed.
Was he cursed? Nick wondered, fingering the scars that sliced down hi
s cheek and kept his left hand from wielding anything heavier than a fork. He’d been a good officer, keeping his men alive under horrific conditions, keeping them armed and fed, half at his own expense. No, he was not accursed, unless surviving when others had fallen was a malediction, except…
Except that three years ago, his troops had been decimated when he’d been sent away from them, behind enemy lines, on Boxing Day.
Except that two years ago his best friend Gregory had given his life to save Nick’s, two days after Christmas, as soon as fighting had been resumed after the holiday peace.
Except that last year, the French cannon shot would have killed him, if the saber wound had not leveled him seconds before, on New Year’s Day.
Coincidences or some quirk of the family curse that kept Worth Keep in chaos at Christmastime? Nick did not know, any more than he knew what he was supposed to do with this life he’d been granted. He was useless to the army, although they had offered him a desk position. He could take his seat in Parliament, if he had a mind to be bored beyond endurance. His estates had competent managers, and his investments were in wiser hands than his. He had no taste for the beau monde and its frivolous pursuits, where the crucial decisions involved the color of one’s waistcoat or the height of one’s shirt points. The succession was assured with his cousin’s brood, so Nick did not even have the excuse of needing a bride as a mission for his sorry life. Besides, no female but the most arrant fortune hunter or blatant title seeker would have him, not with his scarred phiz and mangled hand.
Lord Worth did have one goal, though, other than getting as drunk as a dockhand off duty, a goal that had brought him to this benighted building at this season of goodwill: somehow, he was going to make amends to Gregory Rostend’s family. The baron raised his glass now, with his good right hand. “Here’s to you, old friend. May one of us believe that the life you saved is worth the cost.”
He drank the brandy as the hall clock struck midnight, then tossed the empty glass into the fireplace just as the bells of the distant church rang in Christmas Day. The noise was considerable, so loud even Mrs. Salter was sure to hear it. The sound was too loud, Nick considered in his brandy haze, for a mere shattered crystal goblet. The Worth ghosts must be stirring. Happy Christmas.