Mistletoe Magic

by Virginia Brown

  Will thought the princess was made of sterner stuff than that.

  But he had another mission in sight, of greater consequence than the vanity of one man, no matter how deserving. In the days immediately following Tambora’s angry eruption, it appeared another one of his countrymen had taken advantage of the confusion to steal away many of Java’s historical treasures, the legacy of the people who had lived very rich lives before the Dutch and the English started to contest their rights to the island. Lord Nicholas Hawkely was one of Will’s oldest friends, a relationship made even stronger during the time Will sailed to Java on the Renown, Nick’s own ship. Will thought him an excellent companion and an honorable man. And Thomas Raffles trusted Nick with the treasures he himself acquired during his tenure as Lt. Governor. Will saw no reason to dispute that.

  Until the Renown arrived in London without the contents of those carefully packed and catalogued shipped containers.

  Nick had remained elusive while the investigation was in progress, but Will had received word from Geoff Howard, the master of Seabury, and host of the season’s festivities, that the man would attend his Christmas party.

  Will closed his eyes, reflecting on the great journey he had already undertaken, and how complicated were the roads to his destination. In this, he was not just thinking metaphorically, for rarely had he endured such arduous travel, not even in the midst of a typhoon.

  But he did not doubt they would reach Seabury, Geoff’s fine estate near Rye, and in good time. He had little reason to doubt it and even less power to do anything about it.

  As the coach was jostled back and forth by the storm, Will gave up trying to read the essays written in Raffles’s tight hand and stared out the window. He had lived most of his life in the Netherlands and was well accustomed to the sound of snow mixed with ice. As a child, he delighted in the sound, for it meant that the canals in The Hague would freeze over and he could skate his way around the city.

  But this snow was different, a nasty mix of frozen material and the debris of volcanic ash, scratching angrily at the windows. He thought of the horses and his driver, undoubtedly traveling blind on a road no longer distinguished from the fields through which they passed. Will sent up a brief prayer that they would soon arrive at their destination, preferably without crashing right into it.

  As if his Maker had nothing better to do than concern Himself with the concerns of one suppliant, the coach came to a lumbering halt. Surprised but nevertheless pleased, Will glanced out one side of the coach and then the other, hoping to see the welcoming lights of the posting inn. There was nothing visible but the stark branches of nearby trees, rising eerily against the last strains of twilight.

  Perhaps they were lost. Or the wheels could no longer trample through the snow and were stuck in a drift. The horses might have refused to take another step. Perhaps the driver had become blind in the storm and fallen off the seat.

  No indeed, the driver was at the door, banging on the wood as if to wake the dead.

  “The door is frozen, my lord,” Milton shouted. “Push out, if you can.”

  Surely the man did not think him so utterly helpless he could not open a carriage door. On the other hand, Will briefly reflected on his first thoughts when the coach stopped and realized that the past year in Java had made him see disaster at every turn. Perhaps he would be stuck in the carriage all night.

  He dismissed the cowardly thought as unworthy of him, and threw his shoulder against the finely polished wood.

  They would persist, even though he might have just broken his collarbone.

  “Well done, my lord! You’re almost out!”

  With renewed hope, Will shifted to the facing seat and hit the door with his other shoulder. In this, he succeeded, for he fell out on his companion, landing them both into the snow.

  “Did I hurt you, Milton?”

  Surprisingly, the man laughed. “Fear not, my lord. I’m nearly frozen and can’t feel a thing.”

  Will rolled over and squinted up to the sky. It was impossible to fully open his eyes, for fear of being blinded.

  “Come within the coach for a few minutes, then, where you can warm yourself. The heating pan does not have much more to give off, but the space is well fitted and is tolerably warm,” he said.

  “Nothing ever sounded more inviting, but we will be at the inn sooner if we just forge ahead.”

  “I am ready to go whenever you, or the horses, feel ready to proceed,” Will said, thinking ahead to a warm bed and a hot meal. “Why did we stop?”

  Milton sat up and brushed snow off his shoulders.

  “That is where I need your help, my lord,” he said, and shook his head. “Someone else has passed this way and was not as lucky.”

  He rose awkwardly to his feet, slipping in his tracks, and held out his hand to Will. “I will get the lantern.”

  Will looked around, seeing nothing until Milton grabbed the bright metal box, burning all the brighter because of the darkness that surrounded them. Something rose up before them, not yet fully enveloped in the snow. They approached it cautiously.

  “It is a fallen tree,” Will guessed. “Perhaps we can make our way around it if we can dig a makeshift road.”

  “It is not a tree,” Milton said with certainty. “It is a coach, nearly as large as this.”

  Will realized what he thought were branches were the spokes of the wheels, and the trunks were the heavy harnesses, poking up from the snow.

  “The horses?” he asked.

  “They were released,” Milton said quickly. “See, there is the disturbance in the snow, and tracks. Perhaps the driver and occupants rode away, abandoning the coach.”

  “One could only hope so,” Will said quietly, impressed with Milton’s calm assessment of the situation, and happy to accept a solution to the mystery that allowed for a happy ending. God knows, he had witnessed enough misery lately. A wrecked carriage, struck down by harsh weather conditions, could have been more.

  They stood in silence, listening to the rustling of the few leaves left on the trees, and the sound of the heavy snow hitting the still-exposed wood of the fallen vehicle.

  And then, barely discernable, a cry came from the carriage. Will looked at Milton, wondering if he heard it, too. But the man said nothing as he seemed to contemplate their next step.

  In the next moment, Will took his and he heard the sound again. Perhaps it was an animal, seeking shelter. But no animal he knew was capable of speaking English.

  “Help me, Milton,” he cried as he descended on the coach. “There’s someone still inside.”

  Will climbed over a wheel and nearly stabbed himself on a broken spoke. A steady thumping sound guided him to a cracked window, and that gave him bearings of the site. He used his hands to dig until he found what he looked for, and as Milton held the lantern aloft, Will found the outline of a door, and then the handle to open it.

  But only trap doors are made to open to the sky, and this one—like his own, ten minutes before—was frozen shut. Milton lowered the lantern to warm the wood as they hammered against it with their hands until they heard the gentle release of air that told them the door was freed. Standing with his legs secured against the sturdy railing, Will pulled the door open, and fell back onto the window with a broken handle still in his grip.

  He saw her arms rise first from her frozen prison, slim and oddly graceful in their gesture. Will scrambled to his feet and stood above her as he grasped her ungloved hands. Even through the leather of his gloves, he could tell they were dangerously cold. With a sense of urgency, he pulled her up, as her caped head was followed by a small form wrapped in a plaid blanket, by the drapery of a wool gown, by boots too elegant to get far in these rough conditions. He lifted her until her pale face was even to his, and then he gently lowered her onto the side of the coach.

&nb
sp; No sooner did her feet touch the slippery wood than she cried out again, and fell against him. He caught her in her bundle of garments and jumped to the ground, thinking it nothing short of a miracle they did not slide down the embankment.

  But Milton caught them before they were in any danger. “Well done, my lord!” he applauded him. “Is the woman still with us?”

  Will looked down at her still face, catching a glimpse of a reddened cheek and dark hair. She was indeed a woman, and a very beautiful one. She also looked like someone he had once met before, though he could not place her. “She does not appear to be sensible at the moment, but one can hardly fault her for that. She must be near to death.”

  Milton pushed them a little desperately toward their own coach, where the horses patiently watched the whole show. “Get her in the coach. I’ll shovel and cut close to the embankment, and we’ll be on our way. Perhaps her people await her at the inn.”

  Will did not think so, but he was not of a mind to argue the point with Milton, or offer to help with the task of clearing the road. Her people apparently cared so little for her, they did not take her with them, or return to see if she lived or died. She appeared to be a woman who mattered to no one, like the thousands of others who were victims of the catastrophe on Java.

  He had not been able to save those others, or alleviate their misery. But he could save this one. And suddenly that mattered a great deal.

  Stomping away from Milton, each to their own anxious concerns, Will maneuvered his way to the coach, propping the woman’s limp body awkwardly against its side as he struggled to open the door. Bracing it open against the wind and driving snow, he pushed her into the coach with only somewhat more care than he would a rolled-up rug, managing the business with more strength than grace. Once she was within, he scrambled over her, and pulled her onto the seat he recently vacated, hoping it might still be warm.

  It was not.

  She hadn’t moved. He feared they were too late, that she had used her last bit of strength to call them to her, and that was all she had. Feeling defeated, Will sat down heavily on the opposite seat and pulled off his gloves, along with his ring. Then came his coat, now made heavier by the snow. Beneath it, his jacket was dry and surprisingly warm. He could only hope that the woman’s garments had served her as well.

  He contemplated her still form, buried beneath layers of cloth, and realized there was only one way to find out. Therein was the challenge; he knew something about undressing women and removing languid arms and legs from tangled blankets and clothing. But they had all been willing partners, and very much alive. He was not so sure about his Lady Frost.

  The coach rocked from one side to the other as Milton resumed his place. Two knocks of the whip’s handle against the wood was answered by Will’s own signal, and so they were once again on their way through the treacherous snow.

  As he studied his companion, the bundle of blankets shifted and started to slip off the seat, as snow might fall off a gabled roof.

  Will moved quickly to catch her, and then set her down beside him as he reclaimed his own seat. He reached across her still body to pull together a pile of velvet pillows, allowing her to slump against them. He thought she sighed, very softly, and took some hope in that. But that was his only cause for hope as he started to unfold her from her voluminous blankets and heavy cape.

  Her garments were dry but as cold as the cloths he might find in the Wakefield winter lodge before he lit a fire in the hearth. There, he would pile the bedclothes on the warming racks and busy himself about the property until he could breathe in warm air to comfort his chilled body, and bury his hands in the heated blankets.

  He was not quite certain how he might restore his frozen lady, when his own body was the warmest thing in the carriage.

  But of course, that was it. He could not let a lady die because of some misguided sense of modesty. She had already been abandoned once, and a gentleman could not compound the seriousness of her situation.

  Of course, she might not be a lady, but that was of no consequence when it was a matter of life and death. Her station was only of consequence if it was believed that he took advantage of her situation, but he was prepared to deal with the breach of propriety at another time. If, indeed, there was such a time.

  All this ran through his mind in a matter of seconds, for he was already set upon the only real course of action. He started to unbutton the tiny pearls at her breast, a task made more difficult because his hands were stiff and cold. She raised one limp hand in a gesture of protest, but her waving him off made him more determined to manage this business.

  “What is your name?” he asked conversationally, but the only answer was the renewed rigor of ice hitting the window. “I’m called Willem, and I am on my way to Seabury. I have only recently returned from the East Indies, where the climate is a great deal more charitable than it is here this evening. I have not lived in England much, for my father was posted to The Hague. My mother is Dutch and I am more at home along the Konigskade than I am by the Thames. What say you to that, Lady Frost? Have you ever journeyed to Amsterdam? Is that where we met before? Have you purchased fine porcelain at a shop near the Olde Kirk in Delft? Did you ever see the fossils at the university in Leiden?”

  Will laughed at himself, realizing he sounded just like the aimless chatterers at dinner parties, the very people he assiduously avoided. But it proved difficult to concentrate on both conversation and undressing her, and, by speaking, he might somehow awaken her from her frozen stupor. He did not know what else to do or what to say.

  Her garments were as cold and stiff as his own hands, though they seemed of good quality. When he slipped the heavy gown off her shoulders, he considered how pale was her skin, though he could not tell if this was a natural state, or because of the cold. He pulled her closer, rubbing her back and soft upper arms, praying that she would live.

  “Stay.”

  He turned his head, and his cheek pressed against her nose. Had she said something?

  “Stay,” she said again. It was some comfort to him, as he hoped he was to her.

  “You are near frozen, but you are safe with me.” He said this with more confidence than he felt.

  She sighed, and her breath was warm against his chin. He leaned against the cushions so that he might look at her, and finally see the face of the woman for whom he felt a responsibility he had never really experienced before.

  He saw her as he might a creature of a fairytale, delicate and soft, and of a rare beauty capable of inspiring poets. Her complexion was as pale as the rest of her, but even in the dim light, he saw that her cheeks were reddened and her parted lips pink and swollen. Her hair, falling down over the sleeve of his longcoat, was as straight and dark as was the hair of the ladies of the East Indies, though not nearly as long. Some sort of netted cloche, speckled with pearls, hung limply from what remained of her braided coronet and glistened as brightly as the snow in the moonlight.

  And then, perhaps as a consequence of his fear and uncertainty, he did the only thing that made sense. He shifted her body so that her face was only inches from his own, and kissed her.

  This time, she did not say anything, but her mouth opened and closed, as if she sought air to breath, or possibly sought him.

  He kissed her again, pressing her closer, giving her warmth. Her lips parted again and he gently breathed between them, savoring her sweetness, and yet wishing for her to awaken, even though the spell would be broken. But he had given her back her life, so she might open her eyes and heart on a happier day and know what it is to be loved and cherished. And, oddly, in his doing so, she had somehow given him back his life, his heart.

  “Lay,” she said, and sighed.

  She must be in pain, sitting up against him, and needed to lie back down against the cushions. Will reluctantly lowered her, feeling the rush of chill air bet
ween them. He desired her warmth as much as she probably needed his.

  She murmured something.

  “Did you say something, my darling Lady Frost?” He rather liked the sound of the endearment on his lips. He could not imagine any circumstance under which he might say such a thing to a woman at their first meeting, though as to that, he wasn’t quite sure this qualified as a meeting.

  She pulled herself back up and rested her head against his well- padded shoulder.

  “Please don’t leave me. Please.”

  Will understood her perfectly this time, and her words were made even more plaintive by her hands desperately grasping the lapels of his coat. No hero of fairy tales ever had a better invitation.

  He held her, warm and close, until the glittery lights of the Captain and Mermaid posting inn came into sight.

  SHE’D DIED, ALONE and abandoned in the storm. Her friends in Rye would wonder what became of her, and why she had not arrived for their Christmas festivities. They would be shocked and saddened when they heard the news of the tragic accident, and would pause during their merriment to offer reflections on her young life, one punctuated by so much sadness. Perhaps they would console themselves in knowing she was already united with her dear Leighton, that they were together in perpetuity.

  He was with her now, murmuring some nonsense in her ear while she only wished to feel his lips against hers, the warmth of his lean body, the caress of his fingers. She had never known him to be so talkative, though in the last hours of his life, he seemed to have a great and desperate desire to tell her everything she might ever wish to know, perhaps already aware that he must make every minute count for a year.

  And now he seemed to be describing the Dutch countryside to her, though she was not aware he had ever been there. The haze of her confusion lifted for just a moment when she wondered if indeed, he had never been struck by that beech branch at all, had not died, had not been buried in the Kingswood crypt. Was it possible he had simply been in Amsterdam for these several years? Why had he not sent for her?