Christmas Carol (42 page)

“Friend?” he choked. “Far more than that.
This isn’t supposed to happen! I am a sensible, practical
businessman. What I am feeling belongs to fairy tales and medieval
legends. Intelligent men do not fall madly in love at first sight
or imagine that they have known someone else since the beginning of
time. I think I must be going mad,” he concluded.

“Could you entertain the possibility that we
might be meant to be together?” she asked.

“Do you mean fate? I have known people in the
Orient who believed in such things.” He looked even harder at her.
“Is that what you believe? Do you feel the same way that I do?”

“Since the moment when I looked up and saw
you standing at the top of the servants’ steps,”’ she said, “I have
known there was a deep connection between us. I was only afraid
that you would never know it—at least, not in this time.”

“Carol.” He did not remark on her last words.
Perhaps at a later time he would ask her about them. If he did, she
would answer him honestly, for she could never lie to him.

She watched him move to the bottom of the
staircase, still holding her hands in his over the railing, until
he faced her directly, from two steps below her.

He lifted her hands to his lips. It required
only a little tug on Carol’s part to make him release her hands so
she could put them around his neck and entwine her fingers in his
thick, dark hair. She leaned downward, balancing herself against
his shoulders. His arms went around her, holding her above him for
a long moment while he gazed at her as if to assure himself that
this was what she wanted, too.

“Nicholas,” she whispered in response to his
silent question, “hold me. Don’t ever let me go again.”

Slowly, deliberately, he let her body slide
along his until they were face-to-face. Another long moment passed
as they looked into each other’s eyes, learning eternal truths that
would for the present remain unspoken. And then their mouths met in
a bruising kiss that released all the pent-up passion each was
feeling. When it was over they were breathless.

Carol threw back her head, moaning her
pleasure as Nicholas’s mouth skimmed along her throat. Eagerly she
clutched at his shoulders, and cried out a second time when she
felt the touch of his tongue on the sensitive skin just beneath the
slashed neckline of her dress.

“Hush,” he cautioned, “or we’ll waken Joanna
and Will. I don’t want company just now, do you?”

Carol could not answer. She only nestled her
face into his shoulder and let him touch her where he would. It was
a relief when he picked her up and started for his bedroom. She did
not think she could have stood on her own feet for much longer. Her
knees were decidedly weak.

He shut the door with his shoulder and
carried her across the room to the huge old bed. There he laid her
down and bent over her to unfasten the buttons at the front of her
dress. His mouth followed his fingers all the way down to her
waist. Carol stretched luxuriously, kicking off her shoes.

“This room,” she murmured, “is where Lady
Augusta used to sleep.”

“It is the bedchamber of the master of
Marlowe House,” he corrected her. “When I was a boy, this suite was
my grandfather’s. It is mine now.”

“I don’t know about your grandfather,” she
said softly, pulling his head downward as she spoke so she could
kiss him again, “but somehow, I don’t think Lady Augusta would mind
in the least if she could know we are here together.”

There followed a long pause while Nicholas
indulged himself in the taste of her lips and her inner mouth, and
Carol responded eagerly to what he was doing. His hands were
working at the front of her dress, unbuckling her belt, unfastening
the last few buttons, pushing fabric aside. Carol scarcely noticed
what he did. She had spent the last five days and nights in an
agony of longing for this man, and now she was reveling in the
wonder of his lips on hers. She whimpered at the loss when he
removed his mouth from hers to raise his head and gaze down at
her.

“Carol, my sweet, how beautiful you are.” She
was surprised to note that he had removed her clothing down to her
plain white slip and her bra. In a reflexive act she crossed her
hands over her bosom.

“I wish,” she whispered, “that I were wearing
something glamorous made of silk and trimmed in yards of lace.”

“The wrappings don’t matter.” With a slow,
sensuous motion he laced his fingers into hers and gently tugged
her hands away from their protective position, spreading her arms
wide upon the bed. In the same deliberate manner he pulled the
straps of her slip downward and unfastened her bra to reveal her
breasts. “It is the package inside that counts and you, my dear,
are a rare gift. Never before have I met a woman as generous and
tenderhearted as you are. Will you be generous with me
tonight?”

“Tonight and always,” she murmured. So sure
was she of him that she felt no need to be cautious in words or
deeds. “I have waited for you all of my life. And on Christmas
night there you were, looking at me from the top of the stairs, the
most wonderful Christmas gift I have ever received.”

“And here I thought you were my Christmas
present,” he responded with a chuckle. “Carol…” His lips brushed
hers again, their breaths mingling in a sigh of recognition and
joy.

All of their movements were slow, as if they
had all the time in eternity. Carol unbuttoned his shirt and slid
it off along his arms, her every motion as she removed it speaking
of tenderness and desire. Slowly she caressed Nicholas’s shoulders
and his chest. He lay quietly, allowing her to do whatever she
wanted to him.

“You have no scars,” she murmured, touching a
place where once a ridge of reddish tissue had snaked its way
across his torso—
would snake in the future—might not scar him
at all if she did her work well in this lifetime
. Her
fingertips traced smooth skin over hard muscles, and she rejoiced
in the sound of his groan of mounting desire. “I have dreamed of
touching you like this.”

“Touch me here.” He took her hand and put it
on himself, letting Carol feel his strength and his throbbing,
eager heat. In return he touched her, and kissed her until she was
trembling and tossing her head upon the pillow and begging him to
take her.

He was all the men she had loved—the men she
loved still—in past, present, and future. He was the
same
man, for though his body might change slightly, his spirit and his
courage were unalterable by time or changing circumstances. Her own
spirit always recognized him. He was her only love and he would be
through all eternity. And she was his. In this present time they
would not be parted. She knew it with absolute certainty.

She looked into his eyes as he moved into her
with a sure, bold stroke. She returned his passion with her own,
freely giving to him everything he needed, everything he wanted of
her. He gave to her in equal measure, holding back nothing, taking
her with him as his passion soared until at the end they cried out
the triumph of their everlasting love with one voice and one
heart.

It was the night between the fifth and the
sixth of January, the time which is called Twelfth Night and which
is generally acknowledged by traditionally minded folk to be the
end of the Christmas season. It was also the night on which Lady
Augusta had promised to make her last visit to Carol.

Nicholas did not stir when Carol slipped out
of bed shortly before midnight. Nor did he move when she caught up
her robe and slippers in one hand and let herself out of his
bedroom. She paused to scuff her feet into the slippers. It was
chilly in the hall. Carol shivered a little as she pulled on the
robe and fastened the sash at her waist.

She did not expect to meet anyone else
wandering about Marlowe House so late at night. The servants were
all asleep in their own quarters, and Will and Joanna Bascome were
away from London on a week’s visit to Will’s family, who lived in
Cornwall. As for Nicholas, Carol could only hope he would not sense
her absence from his side and begin a search for her.

The upper floor of Marlowe House seemed even
colder than usual to her, but that might well have been because she
had just left Nicholas’s warm embrace. Carol’s old room was
positively frigid. It was also empty. No ghostly apparition awaited
her. The paperwhite narcissus were dead and gone, although a trace
of their fragrance lingered on the still air.

“I guess Lady Augusta is going to be late.”
Carol pulled a blanket off the bed. Wrapping it around her
shoulders, she sat down in the wing chair. Minutes passed. Nothing
happened. Carol shivered, looked about the room, stared into the
empty fireplace. No one joined her. Her feet were freezing. She
pulled them up beneath her, tucked a corner of the blanket around
them, and continued to wait. After a while her eyelids began to
droop.

The light appeared suddenly, flooding the
room with brightness. Carol’s head snapped up, her eyes opened wide
again, and all her senses came alert. She blinked at the brilliant
yet soft pulsations now surrounding her.

“Good evening, Carol.” When Lady Augusta
stepped from the light to stand before her, Carol rose to her feet.
There was no way that she could
not
stand upon encountering
such a resplendent creature.

Gone were the gray and black tatters of Lady
Augusta’s most recent materialization. Gone, too, the lavender
chiffon of her first appearance and the rich red velvet of her
second. This time, Lady Augusta was garbed in a gleaming,
iridescent robe that contained within itself all the colors of the
rainbow along with every conceivable shade of each of those colors.
And yet, the overall effect of that multiplicity of colors was to
create a soft, pearl-like white. The sleeves of the robe were long
and loose, and the ever-drifting folds of the skirt fell to Lady
Augusta’s feet. A cord of mixed gold and silver bound her
waist.

This version of Lady Augusta was tall and
slim and youthful-looking, her face unlined and shining with an
unearthly joy. Her long, loose hair was pure white, and a wreath of
white roses sat upon her brow. The scent of roses surrounded
her.

“Is that really you?” Carol whispered,
awestruck.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lady Augusta’s voice was
different, too, having acquired the rich tones of a finely cast
bell. The sound, though quiet, reverberated in Carol’s mind.

“Well,” Carol said, making one last attempt
to retrieve her former assertive and falsely casual attitude when
dealing with this ghost, “it looks to me as if you have finally
achieved your proper place with my help, just as you wanted. I
guess we can both relax now.”

“Not at all.” Lady Augusta shook her lovely,
shining head and the light in the room pulsated and shimmered in
response to the motion. “There can be no laziness for me in that
place where joyful work in service to others is the most sincere
form of worship. Nor can you ever revert to your former
indifference to other people.

“You have done well thus far, Carol,” Lady
Augusta went on. “You have transformed yourself and you have begun
to change the world around you. You must continue with this work,
for with it you are also changing the future into what you hope it
will become.”

The unexpected compliment destroyed the final
remnants of the cleverness and the too-smart attitude to which
Carol had been clinging. In her heart she knew she did not need
tough defenses when dealing with Lady Augusta. What she needed was
unflinching honesty.

“If my character has improved recently, it is
largely your doing, and I know it.” Carol spoke with more humility
than she had ever felt before. “Left to myself I would have stayed
exactly as I was, a miserable human being. But the awful truth is
that I am still a selfish person. For example, I know that leaving
here to take your proper place is what you want and what we have
both been working for, but I wish you did not have to go. I will
miss you terribly and I would keep you with me if I could. You
never thought you’d hear me say that, did you?” She ended with a
short, broken laugh that came close to degenerating into a sob.

Lady Augusta nodded in regal acknowledgment
of the tribute paid to her. “I, too, have been altered by our time
together, Carol. As you have learned from me, I have been learning
from you. Each of my visits to you has taught me a little more
about the true qualities of love between men and women. I have also
learned how valuable friendship can be. I do have a few lingering
regrets about the lack of both emotions during my own most recent
time on earth, but I believe those particular problems will be
resolved at a future date.”

“I am glad our association hasn’t been
entirely one-sided,” Carol said. “It is a great relief to me to
know that you finally have the place you wanted so badly.” She
would have said more, but was stopped by the wry chuckle that
accompanied Lady Augusta’s next words.

“The proper place which I so eagerly sought
upon first reaching the hereafter is not at all what I expected it
to be. In fact, the full revelation of my exact place came as a
startling, though not altogether a displeasing, surprise to me.”
Lady Augusta appeared to hesitate, considering, before she spoke
again. “Which is why I have a final request to make of you,
Carol.”

“Of course. Anything I can do. Just name
it.”

“Ah, child, you make me ashamed that I did
not value you at your true worth when I was alive.”

“I wasn’t worth much then. I was a different
person. I still have relapses, as you may have noticed a few
minutes ago.”

“The seeds of goodness were within you,
though they were buried deep and required nourishing. Continue to
nourish them, my dear. You now have friends to help you when you
fear you will falter.