One Snowy Regency Christmas: A Regency Christmas Carol / Snowbound with the Notorious Rake. Christine Merrill
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hospitality. But it would not matter. Even one or two would be plenty—if they were rich enough and could be interested in his plans.
As promised, he let Bob take the lead in introductions and in the planning of activities, doing his best to respond in a way that was not rough or gauche. His casual offer that tomorrow’s skating on the millpond might end with cakes and punch served in the empty warehouse was accepted graciously—once the ladies were assured that it was quite clean and that no actual work was being done. While they were there he would arrange a tour of the tidy rows of machinery. Breton would make mention of the successes they’d shared with the production and sale of such looms to others. The seed would be planted.
Before they returned to London one or two of the men would come to Bob, as they always did after such gatherings, making offhand remarks about risk and reward. A discreet parlay would be arranged in which no money would change hands. There would be merely a vague promise of it, for such people did not carry chequebooks with them. They carried cards and wrote letters of introduction to bankers, who stayed in the background where they belonged. But if they offered, they would deliver. Honour was involved. A true gentleman’s word was as good as a banknote.
He frowned as the last of his guests took themselves off to bed, leaving him free for a few hours of rest. He was tired tonight, after last night’s uneasy rest. Dinner had tired him as well. It was like speaking another language, dealing with the gentry and their need to seem idle even while doing business. So much easier to deal with the likes of mad Lampett. Though he was of a changeable nature, he would at least speak what was left of his mind.
For plain speaking, Lampett’s lovely daughter was better than ten of the milk-and-water misses he was likely to see this week. Even Anne Clairemont, whose family had put in a brief appearance this evening, had looked puzzled by the conversation, and nervous at the prospect of a little skating on a properly frozen pond. He would not have faulted her if she had politely excused herself from it. But she had looked from her father to him, blinked twice and then forced a smile and declared it a wonderful notion.
Miss Lampett, in a similar situation, would have likely announced to the assembly that the whole trip was a thinly disguised attempt at business and refused to take any part in it. For some reason the imagined scene did not bother him. He could just as easily imagine drawing her out in the hall to remonstrate with her, only to have the conversation degenerate into another heated kiss.
When his valet had left him for the night he settled back into the pillows and pulled the blankets up to his chin, closing his eyes and thinking of that kiss. He really shouldn’t have taken it. It had been improper and unfair of him to take advantage of her innocence. But he would do it again if he had the chance. That and more …
He awoke hungry. It made no sense. The clock was only striking one, and dinner had been a feast, stretching late into the evening. He had partaken of it with enthusiasm. But it was gone from him now, leaving his guts empty and gnawing on themselves in the darkness.
He had not known want like this since he’d become master of his own life. This was the kind of nagging hunger he’d felt as a child, going to bed with an empty belly and knowing that there would be nothing to fill it again tomorrow. It was a kind of bleak want that existed in the body like an arm or a leg: something that one carried with one from moment to moment, place to place, always there and impossible to cast off.
But it was easily rectified now. He had but to sit up in bed and ring for a footman. He would explain the need and have it filled. It would mean getting some poor maid out of her bed to do for him. But what was the point of having servants if one could not make unreasonable demands upon them?
When he opened his eyes, the room was strange. Not his own bedroom at all, but a different, emptier room, filled with a strange, directionless golden haze.
From the corner of the room there was a sigh.
Joseph sat bolt upright now, searching for the source of the sound. And with it he found the origin of the glow. A man sat in the corner—a Cavalier, in a long well-curled wig and heavy-skirted coat. The light seemed to rise from the gold braid upon it, diffusing into a corona around him.
This man was a stranger, and yet strangely familiar. He looked around the room and sighed again. He glanced across at Joseph and gave a pitying shake of his head. ‘When I was summoned here, I must admit I expected better. These are not the surroundings to which I am accustomed. But I suppose if there is no problem, then there is no need …’ The Cavalier gave another heavy sigh.
‘Just what do you mean by that?’ snapped Joseph, rubbing his eyes. ‘I grew up in a room not unlike this one, and …’
As a matter of fact he’d grown up in a room exactly like this one. Its appearance was softened somewhat, by the glow of the phantom and by his own fading memories, but it was the same room. It was where he’d felt the hunger that plagued him now, which was still as sharp and real as ever it had been.
‘I belong at the manor and have been sent to fetch you back to it,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Although even that is no treat. For I must tell you the place under your governance is not as nice as it once was.’
‘Now, see here,’ Joseph said, sitting up in his bed only to realise that it was not the thing he’d lain down on but a narrow bunk, with a rush mattress and thin blankets that could not keep the cold from his feet. ‘You need not take me back, for I did not go anywhere. I am still there, fast asleep and dreaming.’ This time he gave himself a hard pinch on the back of the hand, not caring if the spirit before him saw it.
‘I was told that this had been explained to you. Three visitors would come. We would show you your errors. You would learn or not learn, as was your nature …’ He droned in an uninterested way that said he did not care what Joseph learned, so long as he did it quickly and with as little bother as possible.
Joseph glared at the spirit, annoyed that it was still before him. ‘I was told by my father. Who is dead and therefore should not be telling me anything. While he said there would be three, he did not say three of what. If there was any truth in it he might as well have said four, thus counting himself.’
‘Do not think you can reason like a Jesuit to get yourself out of a situation that you yourself have created.’ The Cavalier sighed again, and flicked a lace handkerchief in front of his nose as though offended by the stench of such humble surroundings. ‘Be silent and I will explain. And then we might be done with this vision and go back to the house.’
‘But you are not real,’ Joseph argued. It was most annoying to be lectured at by one’s own imagination. And then he placed the identity of the thing sitting before him. ‘You are Sir Cedric Clairemont, and nothing more than a portrait hanging in the gallery on the second floor. This room is the place where I was born. I am blending memories in a dream.’
Sir Cedric gave a resigned glare in his direction, and sighed again as though facing a difficult child. ‘Let me put this plainly, so that you might understand it. I would say I am as real as you, but that would lack truth. I was real. Now I am a spirit, as is your father. As are the two that will come after. By the end of it you will know where you were, where you are and what you will become.’
‘I know all these things for myself, without your help. I will not be frightened into a change of plans by some notion created out of a second helping of trifle after a roast pork dinner.’
‘Touch me,’ commanded the spirit.
He did look almost real enough to touch, and just the same as he did in his portrait. But from what memory had Joseph created the man’s voice, which was a slightly nasal tenor? Or his mannerisms as he swaggered forwards with his stick and looked down at Joseph with amused superiority? This man was not some ghost from a painting, but so real that he felt he could reach out and …
Joseph drew his hand back quickly, suddenly aware of the gesture he’d been making—which had looked almost like supplication.
The ghost stared at him with impatience. Then he brought the swagger stick down upon Joseph’s head with a thud.
‘Ow!’