Page 58 of A Duke's Christmas Carol
“And you,” she replied, as she set down her mostly empty glass and hurried out of the room, like she could not escape fast enough.
Was it something I said?he pondered as he walked to the door that she had left open and waited for a moment, listening to the sound of her retreating footsteps.
Clearly, ithadbeen something he had said. The trouble was, he could not figure out which part would be provoking enough to make her rush out of there like that.
Adrian walked endless hallways draped in festive banners, garlands of ivy and holly, and brightly colored bunting that had been painted with stars and angels and snowmen and some sort of creature that might have been a donkey.
Somewhere, musicians played the rendition of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ that his mother had favored. A few steps later, a deep baritone joined in with the instruments, beginning to sing. A sound so resonant that it seemed to vibrate the decorations that were strung all about, stretched overhead like a colorful web woven by a spider who particularly enjoyed Christmas.
Adrian knew he was dreaming, as he always did, but this was new. He had dreamed of festive parties before, many times, but the decorations had never been so large a character; usually, they blended into the background, not important to the haunting of memory he was about to endure. Indeed, this did not seem like a memory at all, but something entirely forged from his imagination.
“Help!” a familiar voice cried somewhere in the distance.
Struck with sudden panic, Adrian took off at a sprint, running through the labyrinth of his castle hallways until they spat him out in the entrance hall.
There, up ahead, Valerie teetered precariously at the top of a ladder that she had leaned against a wall. In her hand, she gripped one end of a string of bunting, her body wavering back and forth on the top step.
“What are you doing?” he called out to her, as he ran to grab the ladder and hold it steady.
Regaining her balance, Valerie gazed down at him with the most beaming smile, her eyes alight with merriment. “I am decorating, you gooseberry. What does it look like I am doing? And when I am done, I am going to drag you outside to see the snowmen that the boys and I made. I think they are our best yet.” She paused. “You are not dressed, my love. Hurry, darling—everyone will be arriving soon!”
“Everyone? What do you mean?” he asked, his voice faraway as if he were speaking underwater.
My love? Why is she calling me that?
“The party, silly!” She laughed her sweetest laugh, a sound he could not resist. “Honestly, you would forget your head if it were not attached to your neck. Oh… I can hear them now! Listen, my darling!”
Out of the quiet came the ethereal jingle of sleigh bells and the dull percussion of hoofbeats, muted by the snow that blanketed the dream world beyond the windows. And there, just visible through the panes, coming out of the tunnel of trees, were the sleighs themselves, pulled by teams of white horses.
The ring of those bells grew louder and louder until it was a deafening clamor that rattled in his skull, and as he squinted at those white horses, he spied the driver. A shapeless shadow, holding the reins, urging those beasts straight toward him.
He awoke with a start, his ears still ringing, drenched in the hot sweat of anxiety. He had never dreamed of something new before, and though it should have been a pleasant sort of dream, it chilled him like a nightmare. For that was a dream that could never come true; he was not worthy of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Might you at least attempt a smile?” Valerie whispered as she smoothed out the invisible wrinkles of her skirts, her nerves a jittery blend of giddy and apprehensive.
Adrian glanced down at her, looking every bit like a Christmas prince in a dark red velvet tailcoat, a waistcoat of a darker garnet, with a bottle green cravat. “I cannot,” he said simply. “But I can be pleasant.”
“Good… yes, good, be pleasant,” she agreed, drawing in an anxious breath.
The pair stood at the bottom of the steps leading up to the town hall, where noise and music already drifted out into the snowy night.
Enough snow had fallen over the past two days that the carriage had struggled here and there on the road that afternoon, whenValerie and a group of diligent staff had taken the feast and any final decorations into town. Indeed, back then she had wished it would go away, but now she was glad of it; it was theperfectfinal decoration for the party, delivered by the heavens themselves.
Indeed, Valerie could have stayed inside the town hall until the party itself, but she had insisted on leading the children from the orphanage herself as the guests of honor. Prior to that, however, she had been forced to change into her evening gown in the carriage, with the patient assistance of Kate—a feat that neither would have recommended.
“Are we ready?” Valerie called back to the neat line, two-abreast, of children.
“Yes, Miss Wightman!” they chorused back.
The sound of their good cheer brought a grin to Valerie’s face, blowing away the last of her anxieties. Thiswouldbe a wonderful night; she could feel it in the air.
“Onward!” she cried out, as if she were about to charge across a battlefield.
“Onward!” the children shouted in reply, though David and Isaac’s voices were the loudest, warming her heart.
None of this would have been possible if those two boys had not had the youthful faith that they could stop a vicious winter storm if they were just brave enough to chase away some ghosts.
