One Snowy Regency Christmas: A Regency Christmas Carol / Snowbound with the Notorious Rake. Christine Merrill
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usual fall from grace involving some young man—possibly a suitor of Anne or the departed Mary. If that was the case Miss Lampett had well and truly atoned for it, after years of modest dress and behaviour.
And more was the pity for it. If the kiss they’d shared had been any indication of her capability for passion, he’d have liked her better had she not found her way back to the straight and narrow. He smiled, imagining a more wanton Barbara, and the sort of fun he might have had with her.
The clock in the hall struck two.
‘Leave off having impure thoughts about the poor girl, for your work is far from finished.’
Joseph sat bolt upright in bed at the sound of another unfamiliar voice, booming in the confines of the chamber. He had not even risked wine with supper, and had shocked his valet with a request for warm milk before bed. But now he wondered if perhaps it might have been better to forgo the milk and return to a double brandy in an effort to gain a sound and dreamless sleep. ‘Who might you be, and what makes you think you can read the contents of my mind?’
‘You are young enough, and healthy enough, and smiling at bedtime. If you are not thinking of a young lady then I do not wish to know what it is you do think on.’
This night’s ghost wore a scarlet coat of a modern cut trimmed in gold braid. His buff trousers pulled tight across his ample belly as he laughed at his own joke. The brass of his buttons was gleaming as bright as the gold leaf upon the coach he must drive. But tonight it seemed to be even brighter than was natural, as was the coachguard’s horn he carried in his right hand as further indication of his job.
‘As to who I am, you may call me Old Tom, and know that I departed this life just a year ago, along the Great North Road. You would not have had to ask my name had you lived any great time in this country. All know me here. At least those who are not so high and mighty as to have no need of public conveyance.’
Joseph snorted. ‘Although I have no real memory of you, I’ve heard of you—driving drunk and taking your passengers with you to the next life when you upset the coach. I must be running out of ideas. I am reduced to populating my own dreams with little scraps of facts that do not even concern me.’
The driver laughed again. ‘You give yourself far too much credit, Joseph Stratford. Even if you think yourself clever with machines, you are rather a dull sort for all that, and not given to colourful imaginings.’
‘Dull, indeed.’ Joseph rather hoped the ghost was real. If it was not, it was proof that his own imagination was prone to self-loathing and insult. ‘If I refuse to believe in spirits it is a sign of a rational mind, not a slow one. For ghosts do not exist.’
‘If you do not believe in ghosts, then why are you sleeping in your clothing?’ asked the shade, drawing back the bedclothes to reveal Joseph still in shirt, trousers and boots.
‘Because I woke this morning near naked in a downstairs hallway. Ghost or not, the situation will not be repeated.’
‘Very well, then. You are not dull. More like you are so sharp you’ll cut yourself. You are willing to believe anything, no matter how unlikely, so that you don’t have to accept what is right before your eyes.’ Old Tom glared. ‘For your information, I was not drunk on the night I crashed. I did sometimes partake, when a glass was offered. Who would not, with the night air being chill and damp? But that night I was sober as a judge and hurrying to make up time. A biddy at the Cock and Bull had dawdled over her supper and left us to run late.’ He leaned closer and added in a conspiratorial tone, ‘And she will not leave off nagging and lamenting about the time, even now on the other side. Some people never learn, as you well know.’
The ghost looked him up and down and laid a finger to the side of his nose, as though Joseph should learn something from the comment. Then he went on. ‘I was late, and pushing the horses to their limit, when a rabbit darted out from the hedge and right under ‘em. It spooked the leader and he got away from me. Just for a moment. And that was that.’
Joseph swung his feet out of bed and sat up to face the ghost. ‘An interesting tale, certainly. But there is no way to prove it, and nor am I likely to try.’
‘You would not believe it even if you found the truth,’ Old Tom replied in disgust. ‘You are cold as ice, Joseph Stratford, and just as solidly set. I gave you too much credit when I arrived. It is just as likely I found you warming your thoughts not with some beautiful lady but with fantasies of machinery and ledger books.’
‘So I have been told,’ Joseph said with bitterness. ‘Yet I have spent a portion of this day seeing to the wants of others, with no chance of personal gain likely to come of it.’
‘No gain at all?’
He remembered the way he had phrased his offer to Barbara, as an effort to keep her father safely at home. ‘Very little gain. The majority of the good done will benefit others. After last night’s visitor, I made a change in my plans and invited Miss Barbara Lampett back to the manor house. There is my proof that I have learned something and rendered tonight’s lesson unnecessary. I am making an effort to help the daughter of my enemy.’ He gave a wave of his hand. ‘And so you may depart.’
‘Well, thank you, Yer Lordship,’ the ghost said with a sarcastic bob of his head. ‘But for your information it is I who will set the time of my departure, and not you. Before I can complete my final journey I have been called back for one task alone to make up for the carelessness of my end. I mean to do the job properly. When I leave here you will be well and rightly schooled.’
The ghost shuddered for a moment, as though uncomfortable in his surroundings. ‘I’d have thought that if called to haunt I could have taken to the road, just as I did in life. Instead they sent me to this dreary place, colder than a moor in December.’
Again Joseph was annoyed that his spiritual visitor seemed less than satisfied with surroundings it had taken him half a lifetime to afford. ‘This is the finest house in twenty miles, as you should know. The fire is lit, as are the candles. There is tea on the hob and brandy in the flask. Or perhaps you would like a shawl, like an old woman?’
Tom snorted. ‘As if I could take pleasure in such, here on the other side. I am quite beyond feelings such as that.’ He shuddered again. ‘But I can see things you cannot. There is a cold coming off you like mist from a bog.’
He raised a finger to point at Joseph. In an instant the friendly driver was gone, and before him Joseph saw only a tormented spirit with a dire warning.
Then Tom smiled. ‘But I have been set to warm you up a bit. A hopeless task that is like to be. Now, come on. We haven’t got all night.’ The ghost reached out a hand. ‘Tonight you will walk with me, and if you are lucky you will learn to see the world as others do. At the least you will see what you are missing when you cannot take your nose from the account books and your feet from the factory floor. You will learn what people think of you. It should do you a world of good. Now, take my hand.’
Joseph’s mind warred with itself, but the battle was shorter than it had been on the previous two nights. Whether real or imagined, Tom would not leave until he was ready to. And Joseph did not like being afraid of men—in this world or the next. So he reached out and grabbed the hand that was offered to him.
To touch it was even worse than touching Sir Cedric the previous night. Old Tom’s hand was large and doughy, and thick with calluses from handling the reins. But it was freezing cold—like iron lying on the ground in December. The instant Joseph touched it his own fingers went as numb as if they’d died on his hand. And this, more than anything else, made him believe. His father might have been a memory, and Sir Cedric a walking dream. But in his wildest imaginings, he’d have conjured nothing like the feel of this.
He withdrew quickly, and after a stern look from the ghost adjusted his grip to take the spectre by the coat-sleeve instead. That was cold as well, but not unbearably so.
‘The first stop is not far,’ the ghost assured him, as though aware of his discomfort. ‘Just beneath you, as a matter of fact.’ Then