Christmas Carol (14 page)

Later, after he helped her to dress, Nicholas
called for his carriage and took her back to Marlowe House.

“Do not forget the ball this evening,” he
reminded her as they waited for Lady Augusta’s butler to open the
door.

“I won’t.” she responded.

“Now that we are properly betrothed,” he
added, smiling into her eyes, “I am permitted to issue commands to
you.”

“Are you, indeed, my lord?” She could not
help smiling back at him. “And what are your commands for
tonight?”

“You are to save every waltz for me,” he told
her, “in memory of the waltz you demanded on the night of our
betrothal ball. It was then, Caroline, when I first saw the new
spirit shining in your eyes, that I fell into love with you.”

“Nicholas,” she promised, “I will never dance
the waltz with anyone but you.”

“My lady,” the butler informed Carol as soon
as the heavy front door closed upon Nicholas’s departing figure,
“Lady Augusta is in the drawing room. She gave orders that she
wishes to see you the moment you return from shopping.”

Gowned in high-waisted, long-sleeved dark
green, Lady Augusta stood still as a statue against the background
of holiday decorations, watching Carol enter the drawing room.

“I need not ask what you have been doing
during your absence,” Lady Augusta said in the chilling tone Carol
had heard too many times during her employment as a companion in
twentieth-century London. “One glance at your glowing cheeks and
shining eyes and the dullest imbecile would know you have been
making love with Nicholas.”

“I won’t deny it, no matter what punishment
you are planning for me. I am not ashamed of what I did this
afternoon.” All the same, Carol kept some distance between herself
and Lady Augusta. “The only thing worrying me about what I did is
the possibility that I may have managed to change history just
enough to ruin Lady Caroline’s life.”

“Why should that possibility disturb you?”
Lady Augusta’s eyes seemed to burn into Carol’s very soul. Under
that intensely focused gaze Carol could only respond with truth
directly from her heart.

“Lady Caroline never did anything to me.
After living in her body for these last few days, I have begun to
like her. I respect her determination to make it possible for her
sister to have a happy life. I don’t want to do anything to hurt
her or to leave her life in a mess as a result of my actions.”

“I am pleased to learn that you are now
capable of caring about another person. Your concern for Lady
Caroline signifies an important development in your own
character.”

“Not entirely.” Finding Lady Augusta’s
penetrating eyes no softer in spite of her approving words, Carol
was still compelled to speak the truth. “I have fallen into love
with Nicholas. I will always love him.”

“That is a pity.” Lady Augusta did not sound
the least bit sorry.

“Why?” Carol demanded.

“Because it is time for us to return to the
twentieth century,” said Lady Augusta.

“Go back now?” Carol cried. “No, please, not
yet.”

“You did not want to come into the past in
the first place,” Lady Augusta reminded her. “No sooner did you
arrive than you wanted to return to your shabby little room and
your emotionally arid existence.”

“I know. But that was before I met Nicholas.”
“Whom you claim to love,” said Lady Augusta disdainfully.

“I do love him. You can’t change that.”
“Perhaps I do not want to change it.” Lady Augusta’s penetrating
eyes watched for Carol’s slightest reaction as she asked a cool and
pointed question. “Exactly how much do you love Nicholas?”

Carol wished Lady Augusta would look
somewhere other than into her eyes so she would have at least a
slim chance of lying about her feelings and getting away with it.
She was afraid there could be some unknown danger, to her and
perhaps to Nicholas, too, in Lady Augusta’s knowledge of the extent
and depth of her love for him. She could not lie, nor could she
evade an honest answer by quoting an old verse she knew, to the
effect that if she could say how much, she did not love at all. She
was being forced to tell the truth.

“I love him with my heart and my soul and—
yes—with my body, too,” she said.

“Do you love him enough to give him up so he
can have the life he was meant to have?” asked Lady Augusta.

“What do you mean by that?”

“While you were unable to change the course
of history by your presence in this time, you
were
able to
change the way Nicholas feels about his fiancée.”

“He loves
me
,” Carol said. “He fell in
love because his fiancée is different now. He told me so. And that
difference is
me
.”

“Do not mistake your situation,” Lady Augusta
warned. “Nicholas is meant for Lady Caroline. He will marry her,
not you. She, not you, will bear his children and live with him
into old age.”

“Then why did you bother asking me if I love
him enough to give him up?” Carol demanded. “It is obvious that I
am not going to be given a choice in the matter, so what difference
can it make whether or not I am willing to let him go?”

“You have done what you were meant to do in
this time.”

“That’s no answer. It seems to me that all
I’ve done here is hurt some very nice people. Thanks to me,
Nicholas now believes Lady Caroline gave up her virtue to another
man.” Recollections of the afternoon flooded over Carol—the memory
of Nicholas’s passionate embrace, of his startled comprehension
that the body he was entering was not virgin, and then his
remarkable understanding when Carol revealed her hasty, unhappy,
prior experience with Robert Drummond. But in confessing the
incident, Carol had been speaking of her own past, not Lady
Caroline’s.

“Lady Caroline did not give up her virtue,”
said Lady Augusta in a kinder voice. “It was taken from her by
force and by falsehood, in much the same way in which you lost your
virginity.”

Carol gaped at her, dumbfounded by this
disclosure until she realized that of course Lady Augusta would
know the details of what the twentieth-century Robert Drummond had
done to Carol Simmons. Lady Augusta was in a position to uncover
any facts that might be useful to her.

“Lady Caroline’s brief and violent
acquaintance with the early nineteenth-century version of Robert
Drummond,” Lady Augusta went on, “left her emotions frozen, so she
has been unable to express love toward any man. Today you have
rectified that sad event in her life. In so doing, perhaps you have
begun to heal the wound in your own life, since you, too, love
Nicholas. It is only through love that such healing is
possible.”

“So the same thing happened to Lady Caroline
and to me, and in both our cases, it was done by a man with the
same name and the same kind of character? Is that why I immediately
felt so familiar with her?” Carol wondered, not doubting for a
moment what Lady Augusta was telling her, though she was surprised
by the odd coincidence. “That must be why I was able to sense her
terror whenever Nicholas and I seemed to be getting into a
passionate embrace. That poor, terrified woman! I know exactly how
she felt.”

“As I said, your actions today have resolved
and forever banished the fears Lady Caroline had about lovemaking,”
Lady Augusta told her.

“Then I have helped and not hurt her? I am
glad.” Carol was afraid she would start crying from all the various
emotions warring within her.

“The last and most important thing you can do
for Lady Caroline,” said Lady Augusta, “is relinquish the hold your
love has on Nicholas. There is a subtle difference between you and
Lady Caroline. Nicholas expresses his subconscious uneasiness with
that difference by declaring repeatedly that you have changed,
because he perceives the difference as a change in his fiancee.
Unless you are willing to voluntarily withdraw your love from him,
he will never fully accept or love his wife-to-be, because after
you have gone from this time, he will be aware of a missing element
in her personality. There is only one way to resolve this problem.
You must set him free, Carol.”

“If you are telling me to stop loving him,”
Carol said, “then I can’t do it. I can’t just turn off my
emotions.”

“I did not say ‘stop loving him,’” Lady
Augusta responded. “I said ‘give him up.’
Willingly
. Your
willingness to sacrifice your own selfish desires for the sake of
another’s happiness is one of the most important aspects of your
experience in this time.”

“I suppose you think it will make me a better
person,” Carol grumbled with a touch of her old sarcasm.

“I know it will. The choice is yours, Carol.
You, and you alone, can free Nicholas to love the woman he will
marry.” Lady Augusta waited tensely, her sharp eyes still fixed
upon Carol’s face.

It took Carol less than a second to make her
decision. The ease with which she made it surprised her, but still,
the decision hurt.

“How could I do anything that would make
Nicholas the least bit unhappy?” she asked. “Or cast a shadow on
his future with Lady Caroline? I will give him up. I cannot do it
happily, but I will do it willingly, as you require.”

“Excellent.” With a deep sigh, Lady Augusta
relaxed. “You have learned this first lesson well. We leave
immediately for the twentieth century.” She lifted her arms as if
to embrace Carol as she had done once before, when removing Carol
to this other time.

“No, wait!” Carol made an abrupt motion to
stop what Lady Augusta was going to do next.

“What, a change of heart? So quickly?”
exclaimed Lady Augusta, regarding her with raised eyebrows. “For
shame, Carol. I was beginning to think better of you.”

“I will still go back with you,” Carol said.
“Just not this minute. Look, I did what I was supposed to do in
this time. You said so yourself.”

“Without knowing what your purpose here was,”
Lady Augusta reminded her. Carol chose to disregard that comment
because what she was going to ask was so important to her.

“I want something in return for all I’ve
done,” Carol said.

“So, you are selfish still.” Lady Augusta’s
pale face went cold and hard.

“It’s not much to ask,” Carol said. “Just a
few hours more. Let
me
go to the ball tonight. Let me have a
waltz with Nicholas, just to feel his arms around me one last time.
After tonight, I will never see him again.” Her voice broke and she
stopped, unable to continue for the emotions that were threatening
to choke her.

“I am not sure it would be wise.” However,
Lady Augusta did appear to be thinking seriously about Carol’s
request. “There is always the chance that you will say something
you should not.”

“I won’t,” Carol promised. “I’ll be careful
of every word. I want to give Penelope a last hug, too. It’s
strange the way I have begun to think of her as my real sister, and
in so short a time.

“Please, Lady Augusta, I’m begging you. This
means so much to me. Give me one dance with Nicholas, and the
instant the dance is over, you and I can go. I won’t make a scene.
You can handle our leave-taking however you want. Just grant me
this one wish, so I can say good-bye to him in my own way. He will
never know, but in my heart I will be able to end it and to know my
time with him is over.”

“Swear to me that you will guard your every
word,” demanded Lady Augusta.

“I have already said I will, but yes, I swear
it on my love for him.”

“I am not entirely happy with this request of
yours, but I can see that you do truly love Nicholas. You may not
think so now, when you are in such pain at the thought of parting
from him, but you are fortunate, Carol. In my many years on earth,
I never loved as you do today. Perhaps if I had allowed myself to
care so wholeheartedly, I would not be in my present predicament.
Very well, I will grant you the hours from this moment until the
first waltz of the ball is finished. However, mark me well. When
the last note of music dies at the end of that waltz, we will be
gone.”

Hurrying toward her own room after her
interview with Lady Augusta, Carol found Penelope loitering in the
upper hall.

“I have been waiting for you,” Penelope
called out as soon as she saw Carol. “Did Aunt Augusta tell you my
wonderful news?”

“No,” Carol replied. “We only spoke about
Nicholas. What has happened, my dear?” It seemed perfectly natural
to put her arms around Lady Caroline’s sister as if the girl were
in truth Carol’s own sibling.

“After we drank our chocolate and ate the
most delicious pastries, Alwyn—that is, Lord Simmons,” Penelope
corrected herself with a blush. “Lord Simmons escorted me home and
then he spoke to Aunt Augusta. He insisted that I be present, even
though Aunt Augusta said it would not be proper. Lord Simmons told
us he has obtained his father’s permission to marry me, on the sole
condition that Aunt Augusta must also approve the match.” Penelope
paused for a moment before concluding her announcement.

“Caroline, Alwyn formally asked for my hand,
right there in front of me, and Aunt Augusta agreed. We are to be
married in the spring, shortly after you and Nicholas are wed.”

“Oh, Penelope.” Carol embraced and kissed
her. “Be happy all your life, my dearest sister. You are the sister
of my heart.”

“Caroline, are you actually weeping for my
joy?” With careful tenderness Penelope brushed the tears off
Carol’s cheeks. She could not know that they were not only for her
happy betrothal, but were also tears of parting. This was their
farewell, for though Carol would be with Penelope and Lady Augusta
at a dinner party that evening, after which they would all go on to
the ball, the two of them would not be alone together again. While
she might be ignorant of the true cause of Carol’s tears, Penelope
was not blind.