Mistletoe and Magic (Novella): A Loveswept Historical Romance (16 page)

A Hint of Mischief

New York, 1872

The flames flickered mysteriously from the crystal chandelier, throwing strange, glistening lights on the women below. The fire roared, but little warmth seemed to penetrate the gloomy house. Shadows hovered in the corners, growing suddenly larger, like monsters leaping across the floor, then contracting, waiting for just the right moment to take over the room. An aching chill settled over the large gothic mansion as the wind howled outside, whispering secrets of lost ships, death, and destruction.

Inside, two women were seated at a table, a solitary taper burning between them. An old lace cloth covered the table, dripping over the corners like the web of a mammoth spider, and dust-encrusted draperies clung to the windows as if afraid to let go. The old lady, with her hair the color of spun sugar and her sweet smile, gazed anxiously into the guttering candle flame, while the younger woman across from her closed her eyes and hummed thoughtfully. Three brilliantly colored tarot cards were faceup on the tablecloth, and before them, a magical crystal ball.

“Is it Jack? Have you made contact?” The older woman leaned closer, excitement shining on her face. She twisted the lace of the expensive gloves in her hands, knotting them between her ringless fingers, and tried to ignore the frightening presence of the house. “I’ve heard of your powers. Martha Cummings told me how you helped her. And the Greyson sisters, why, their tale of contacting their long-lost brother is amazing!”

The other woman did not respond. She appeared to be listening to some hidden voice within herself. Rocking back and forth, she repeated some secret chant, concentrating on the images before her. Outside, the wind moaned, ending in a sorrowful wail that seemed to die in the loft of the trees.

Shivering, the older woman picked up one of the cards as if to distract herself. “What do these mean? Have you selected them for some purpose? This one with the woman holding the bird is pretty, isn’t it? Why, it rather looks like me. Good gracious, this one with the swords is rather frightening!”

Jennifer Appleton opened her clear gray eyes and sighed in mute frustration. The dim candlelight revealed a face, although not beautiful by conventional standards, brimming with character, from her thickly lashed gaze to her short, square chin and burnished gold hair. The freckles she’d hated as a child still dusted her nose, while her Cupid’s-bow mouth had never become more firm with age. Now her nose wrinkled with impatience and her eyes seemed to bore through the dotty society woman before her.

“Mrs. Forester, I must insist that you remain silent! I cannot promise that I can contact your dead husband, but I will certainly try. If I can’t, I still may be able to discern some advice for you, or a message from the other side. But you must let me concentrate!”

“Oh, I am sorry, dear,” the old woman said softly. Her fingers stopped fretting with the gloves. “Please call me Mary. I will try to be quiet.”

Jennifer closed her eyes once more. Rocking back and forth in the chair, she began humming again, the sound strange and haunting in the shadowy gloom. The hair rose on the back of Mary’s neck as the house seemed to take on a life of its own, echoing Jennifer’s quiet tune. Frightened, she leaned closer, the gloves finally still.

“I see someone,” Jennifer whispered. Mary gasped, her fingers tightening on the arms of the chair. Jennifer’s head rolled back and forth, and her eyes focused on the crystal ball. “I see him! Tell me, is he a handsome man, dark of face and hair?”

“That’s him! Jack, oh, dear Lord, Jack!” The older woman gasped. “What does he say? Does he look good? Is he all right where he is?”

“He says he’s fine,” Jennifer moaned softly, closing her eyes once more. “He wants you to know that he loves you and misses you.…”

“Oh, my dear husband!” Mary’s eyes filled with tears. “Tell him that I love him, that I miss him, also!”

Jennifer nodded. Pain seemed to fill her, for she hugged her arms to her torso, her moan trailing off into a wrenching sob. Her brow furrowed, and when she spoke, her voice had deepened, sounding strange and guttural like a man’s. “Mary … my sweet Mary. I know you love me, but the time has come for you to move on. Remarry, my love, and find happiness.”

Stunned, Mary Forester held her handkerchief to her lips as she heard her husband’s voice. “Jack! It is you! How can you say that? Oh, Jack, there was never anyone else for me! How could I love again?”

Jennifer groaned as if the emotions that filled her had become too intense. On cue, a harpsichord wailed somewhere in the old house, and a ghostly sound emanated from the walls. The chandelier trembled overhead, throwing dancing prisms of light about the room.

“Oh! I’m frightened!” Mary trembled, covering her face with her hands. “What is that?”

“You have angered him.” Jennifer sighed. Her own voice was back. “You must listen to counsel from the other side. It is quite an effort for them to cross back over and try to communicate.”

“I’m so sorry!” Mary looked frightened as the eerie music continued.

“Your husband refuses to speak again. He says you will be with him one day, but you must follow his advice. Be happy. Seek another spouse. He knows your heart is true, and he will look for you when it is your time. But he warns, do not do anything rash. If so, he will not be able to find you again.”

“Yes, I will listen. I will do as Jack says.”

The music faded away. Jennifer opened her eyes, looking around the room as if unable to remember where she was. Her disoriented gaze fell on Mary Forester, and she slumped into the chair, as if the effort of moving even her head had cost her dearly. She smiled in gratitude as her sisters, Winifred and Penelope, entered the room, turning up the gaslights and bringing tea.

Mary rose and hugged Jennifer. Her eyes misted with emotion. “It was my Jack. Through you, I spoke to him. How can I ever thank you?”

“It was nothing,” Jennifer whispered humbly. Her voice betrayed a raspy quality, and she gratefully accepted a teacup from her sister.

“Nothing! It was magnificent! Jack spoke to me, and advised me to wed again. Can you imagine that?”

“I think that’s excellent advice.” Jennifer’s younger sister, Penelope, grinned. “After all, one husband is hardly enough for any woman!”

“What she means is, you need to think seriously about what you heard,” Jennifer said, giving her sister a sharp glance. “It has been my experience that ghosts seldom speak unless they truly need to convey a message. You’ve been fortunate enough to hear such a message. Please listen.”

“I will.” The woman nodded.

“Actually, it would be advisable for you to marry, as long as your interests are protected.” Winifred, the older sister, said, a serious look on her face. “I’ve been reading up on women’s rights. Some states have enacted legislation to permit a married woman to own property separately from her husband. Such conditions would be ideal for you, as an officer’s widow, undoubtedly with means.”

“Winifred is studying law,” Jennifer explained as Mary’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “She can help you with some of these issues.”

“I see.” Mary sipped her tea, then looked up at the three sisters gratefully. “I’m so relieved to have come. You see, another man
has asked for my hand, but I didn’t feel right about accepting because of Jack. I was … thinking of taking my own life,” she continued, taking a deep breath and wiping her eyes. “I just couldn’t cope anymore. But now—”

“Now you are free to wed,” Jennifer said gently.

The woman rose, taking Jennifer’s hands in her own. “You don’t know what this means to me. Money couldn’t begin to compensate for the peace you’ve given me.”

Jennifer’s smile froze as she envisioned the woman paying her with some heirloom that meant nothing to anyone but her. She watched in anticipation as the woman fumbled with the jet buttons of her pocket, then withdrew a checkbook. She scrawled something on the ledger, then folded the check in half and handed it to Jennifer.

“Please, take it. You know, I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer! I am a wealthy woman, and all of the ministers and physicians I have consulted together have not provided me with the peace you have. You’ve saved my life, really and truly.”

Jennifer breathed a sigh of relief as she pocketed the offering, and Mary picked up her cape. “Now, I must be going. I will highly recommend you to my friends. You are a saint, my dear, a veritable saint. God bless you all!”

Mary disappeared through the door just before the three sisters burst into laughter.

“You were wonderful, Winifred. I swear I can still hear that music! And the chandelier moving worked out fantastically, Penelope!” Jennifer’s eyes teared from chuckling.

“And you outdid yourself with the messages from her husband.” Penelope grinned, glancing into the mirror and smoothing an invisible lock of hair. “I wanted to marry the old geezer myself!”

“The harpsichord was a nice touch,” Winifred agreed. “And we got lucky that Aunt Eve was out. I don’t know how much longer we can keep fooling her that we are putting on plays for our friends.”

“I don’t know where she thinks the money comes from.”
Jennifer shook her head. “For Aunt Eve, it’s just sort of magically there.”

“It almost wasn’t tonight. For a minute there I didn’t think Mrs. Forester was going to pay you. She seemed like a nice woman, but we’ve been taken advantage of more than once,” Penelope remarked indignantly. “You’d think when you provide an honest service, you’d at least collect honest pay.”

“Penelope,” Winifred remarked dryly, “we are charlatans. You and I make the noises, I play the harpsichord, and Jenny does the rest.”

Penelope seemed taken aback for a moment, but recovered quickly. “But there’s more to it than that! Jennifer does give them a reading! We understand what it’s like to lose someone you love! Why, we provide comfort, amusement, entertainment, and hope, all for the price of a box of bonbons. We are these ladies’ confidantes, friends, alienists …”

“Legal advisors,” Winifred added.

“And marital ministers, all in one! Tell me Mary Forester didn’t feel better when she left here.” Penelope turned a demanding eye on her sister.

“You’re right, Penny, I daresay.” Jennifer drew up a another chair. She sat back down, then planted her feet on the vacant seat before her as if it were a footstool. “Thank God for us all that I read that newspaper account of how popular spiritualism has become. Otherwise, I don’t know how we would have kept body and soul intact after our parents died, we were so poor.” She sipped Winifred’s tea, glancing around at their aunt’s rickety house. “But all that’s changed. Now we can pay our creditors. Penelope, you can afford a new dress, and you, Winnie, all the books you want. I even think there’s a possibility for that college money you so desperately wanted, and maybe, if everything goes as planned, Penny can make her debut!”

The three sisters hugged each other. In the dim light, it was obvious that Penelope was the beauty of the Appleton sisters. Golden blond, with a china doll complexion and huge blue eyes,
she was well aware of her charms and practiced them on every male without qualms.

Winifred was her polar opposite. Tall, slender, and dark blond, her eyes were a perplexing hazel and had a way of staring coolly through a suitor’s ardent words. She was the scholar, always buried in a book, and if the local girls called her a bluestocking, she couldn’t have cared less.

But if Penelope was the beauty and Winifred the brains, Jennifer was the soul of the Appleton sisters. It was she who held them together, who refused to let them get sent to an orphanage. It was Jennifer who convinced their eccentric Aunt Eve to let them stay with her in her rundown mansion, Twin Gables, on the East Side of New York. And it was Jennifer who saw a way to make the current occult fascination into a business, an occupation they managed to keep hidden from their aunt.

The door opened and Aunt Eve stepped inside. An elderly widow with soft white hair peeping from beneath her bonnet and a huge bustle adorning the back of her black dress, Aunt Eve looked like a genuine fairy godmother. She beamed at the girls, removing her bonnet, and if she noticed the eerie trappings and tarot cards that had mysteriously appeared in the room, she didn’t mention them.

“Celia Weathermere sends her regards. She is such a lovely woman, and her son is so nice! He’s always asking for you, Penelope. He wanted me to bring his card, but I refused, as it would have been most improper. Was the play successful this evening?”

Jennifer nodded, rising to help Aunt Eve with her shawl. Penelope rolled her eyes at the mention of Celia’s son and offered a fresh cup of tea, while Winifred sent Eve a genuinely warm smile. They were all grateful to this woman for her kindness, even if Eve did seem a little bewildered at times by her rambunctious charges. It was Aunt Eve’s most fervent wish to see them all happily wed, and she constantly quoted etiquette books in an effort to guide them along the path to marital bliss.

“No, thank you, dear, I think I’ll just go on to bed. Penelope, you look a little peaked. Perhaps a dose of my medicinal tea will help. And Jenny, you look dead tired. Don’t stay up too late. Good night, dears.”