An Enchanted Christmas Read online

  Chapter Two

  “What have you done now, you gormless gaby? You could have killed those old ladies with your puerile pranks.”

  “Bosh, I merely waved a greeting in passing.”

  Lady Edryth threw up her hands in dismay and disgust. “Merely? Merely? An armored knight suddenly appearing at the side of the road is merely? By all the saints, you sent one coach into the ditch, and the other into a stone pillar. Why, you could rot in Hell for such an evil deed.”

  Back in his suit of armor, where he would not have to look into his wife’s angry green eyes, Sir Olnic muttered, “How bad could Hell be, after an eternity with a nagging woman?”

  “What was that, husband?”

  “I said I bade them good e’en, not boo. Asides, if that other driver hadn’t been cup-shot, he could have avoided the mishap.”

  “Now you are foisting the blame off on others? Fie on you, you rusty old relic. You took ten years off the lives of those old ladies, and neither had ten years to spare. To say nothing of what palpitations or permanent injuries you might have caused them.”

  “Tough old birds, those sisters. They’ll live to dine out on the story for another score of years at least.”

  “Ah, now you’ve taken to soothsaying? What’s next, divination from entrails? Why, if I could wield my dagger, I’d show you entrails, I would.”

  Sir Olnic rocked back and forth, rattling his metal mouthpiece but keeping his own lips shut. After a century or two, even a hardheaded warrior learns a lesson or two.

  “What were you thinking anyway? That you’d fetch the ladies to the Keep for the heir to choose a bride? They’re both old enough to be his mother, by the sword of St. George. Nay, if maidens still married so young, they could be his grandmother! Would you have the dolt take a wife too old to bear children, much less his weight in bed?”

  Not willing to admit that he’d wished to see the women in the carriage for himself, to ascertain their ages and availability, Sir Olnic blustered: “You go too far, madam. I intend to find the heir a fitting bride, when the time is ripe.”

  “The time has rotted on the vine, and those two plums have withered to prunes. Meanwhile, what is your jackaninny namesake supposed to do with two spinsters having heart spasms?”

  “He’ll manage. Competent lad, our boy. A soldier, don’t you know.”

  “Another bloodthirsty barbarian, more like.” She did not say, like father like son, but she was thinking it, Sir Olnic knew. “He’ll be too busy caring for the old maids to go courting this Christmas season, that is certain. If he does not drown himself in the bottle. Heaven alone knows when we’ll get another chance.”

  From the depths of his armor, and the depths of despair, Sir Olnic swore: “I have a plan.”

  Lady Edryth curled her lovely lip. “So did Genghis Khan.”

  “And I’ll wager he’s not roaming his tents, trying to marry off his descendants to satisfy some romantic woman’s foolish curse, getting a lost ring on a Worth bride’s hand.”

  “Give it up, prithee. Your baron will not find a wife.”

  “What, do you think that his scars are so dire no female will look on his suit with favor?”

  Lady Edryth waved her handkerchief at Sir Olnic’s visored helmet. “Those are honorable scars, won in battle. My scion sons have always served their kings and their countries, and no decent woman would turn her back on such a noble paladin. But a gentle lady will look inside.” She tapped on the steel breastplate. “And your gallant’s heart is as hard as your armor. Your heir carries far more wounds than meet the eye.”

  “The boy is your descendant, too, you know. He’s got your green eyes.”

  “But he has your black hair and broad shoulders. And your love of wine.”

  Sir Olnic wished he had a drop of the spirit right now. “He’s brave. None but the stouthearted would take up residence here at Yuletide.”

  “Hes thickheaded, just like you. Hiding away in a moldering castle, the way you hide in your armor. I do wonder where he got that nose, though.” She touched her own smooth, straight nose. “I always suspected that Lady Christina, the one who was married to Sir Buspar, had played her husband false. Perhaps this Oliver Nicholson is not our heir at all, not the one meant to end the curse.”

  Just then they heard voices from the doorway. Lady Edryth stepped behind her husband’s suit of armor. One voice was louder than the other cries and screams and whimpers.

  “Salter, fetch hot water. James, you ride for the doctor. You there, light more candles. And you, madam, had better stop shrieking in my ear or I’ll bloody well toss you in the castle’s dungeon for the rats to eat, if the ghosts and ghoulies don’t get you first.”

  Sir Olnic nodded, which would have caused the woman in Nick’s arms to faint, if the baron’s threats hadn’t already. “That’s my boy, all right.”

  *

  Pandemonium, that’s what it was. For a moment Nick thought he was back at the front, in the thick of battle. Men were shouting, horses were screaming, bodies were strewn about. But there was no cannon fire, no pall of gunpowder hanging over the midnight, moonlit scene, just someone bleating: “God rest ye merry, gentlemen.”

  Was he foxed? Trying to recall how many glasses he’d consumed, Nick shook his head, but the sight still remained. Without another thought, he began to free the frightened horses from their traces. With his one good hand, he managed to shift the light gig enough to make sure no one was trapped underneath, but the sole occupant must be the singer, propped against a tree, bottle still in hand. “Let nothing ye dismay.”

  The other coach was smashed to pieces against one of the pillars that held the bridge leading to the castle. Another foot or so and the carriage would have landed in the water that surrounded Worth Keep. By now Salter was tottering across the bridge with a lantern, and a few servants peered out of the gatehouse door. Lord Worth, recently Major Nicholson, started bellowing orders, over the caterwauling.

  One old lady was passed out cold, her head against a rock. At least she was quiet. Nick quickly ascertained that she still breathed, and no bones appeared broken. The other was screaming fit to wake the dead. If one believed her yammering, the noise was unnecessary, and too late. She was clutching her bony chest, though, which worried the baron worse than her hysteria. The women’s driver was babbling about bogeys, but Nick could smell the spirits on the man’s breath, so he ignored that, too. With luck the fellow was castaway enough that he wouldn’t feel his broken leg being set.

  “There are no such things as ghosts!” Nick shouted over all the noise, for the benefit of the victims as well as his reluctant helpers. The grooms and the gatekeeper kept looking over their shoulders while they led the horses away and pulled the doors off the carriage, to use as stretchers. “The drivers were both drunk, is all.”

  “Returning from the party at Rostend Hall, I’d wager,” the butler offered.

  “Lady Rostend was entertaining?”

  “As she has annually on Christmas Eve, except the years she was in mourning, of course.”

  “Of course.” Nick used his neck cloth to wipe at the blood streaming down the bosky caroler’s forehead, trying to determine how badly the fellow was injured.

  Salter held the lantern closer, although he looked away from the gory sight. “I, ah, am certain your lordship would have received an invitation if Lady Rostend knew you were in residence.”

  Pigs would fly first, Nick knew. Then again, the way events transpired at Worth Keep, flying pigs would be an improvement. “Leave this old sot for last. The gash looks worse than it is; head wounds bleed a lot. A few stitches should be enough to fix him up, though.”

  He lifted the unconscious woman onto the coach door himself, while her companion, her sister, according to Salter, screeched her refusal to set one foot inside Worth Keep. “If you will not walk, madam, I shall have to carry you, for you cannot stay out here, and your sister’s injury appears too serious to undergo another bumpy carriage ride. I hav
e seen enough concussions in the army to recognize the symptoms.” The old lady only screamed louder, so Nick picked her up without a by-your-leave and started striding across the bridge to the Keep. The others followed, bearing their burdens and their qualms.

  Inside, Mrs. Salter had placed sheets over the facing couches in the morning room, since none of the guest rooms had been prepared. The unconscious woman, Miss Henrietta Mundy, was carefully transferred to one, with a blanket hastily thrown over her to protect her modesty. Nick deposited the other lady, Miss Charlotte Mundy, who was now equally as unconscious, onto the other. The driver was laid on a blanket near the fireplace, before his litter bearers left to see to the horses. The other drunk was helping himself to the newly made wassail, serenading them all with his fourth or fifth chorus of “Comfort and Joy.”

  If the man weren’t already bleeding like a stuck pig, Nick would have drawn his cork. Comfort and joy, indeed! The place looked like a field hospital. “The doctor is going to need hot water and bandages,” Nick instructed Salter and his wife, “and the Misses Mundy will feel better for some hot tea when they wake up. I suppose we’ll have to ready chambers for them, too. The driver can bed down in the stables, and this sorry excuse…” He nodded toward the bloody but cheerfully off-key caroler.

  “Mr. Bidlaw, my lord.”

  “Mr. Bidlaw can be sent home as soon as the doctor has stitched his head.” He noticed the footman James standing by the door. “Why the devil are you still here? I sent you for the doctor at least an hour ago.” That was what it felt like, at any rate.

  James coughed and studied his feet.

  Salter cleared his throat. “My lord?”

  Nick had that prickling at the back of his neck, the one that had saved his life more than once, the niggly twinge that warned of danger ahead. “Salter?”

  “Ah, Mr. Bidlaw is our local physician.”

  *

  The dawn of Christmas Day was almost breaking when Nick was finally finished. By the time the coffee had been made, Bidlaw was fast asleep, but the others were moaning or weeping or wailing, as was their wont. Nick would have joined in, but he was too busy giving directions. As the only moderately competent person in the Keep, he knew it was his duty to do the necessary, so he did it. With the grooms’ help, although their nervous hands were none too steady, he set the driver’s leg. With Mrs. Salter’s help, the only female employee on the premises, he loosened the stays of both thankfully unconscious Mundy sisters. With his valet’s help, before the clunch cast up his accounts at the sight of all the blood, he stitched the doctor’s forehead. Never had Nick missed the army more, or at least his knowledgeable batman, who was more skilled than any battlefield surgeon. When he had done what he could, the baron saw the patients carried to bedchambers and sent old Salter and his wife to bed before they collapsed. Then he saw to the horses. And made sure the debris was off the roadway lest the broken carriage cause another accident. Then he checked again on the old ladies, not liking how Miss Henrietta was still unconscious, or how Miss Charlotte’s complexion was grayish, or how upset they would be to find out he was the one who had helped the housekeeper remove their outer layers of clothing. Almost as upset as they’d be to wake up with his pasty-faced gentleman’s gentleman in their bedroom. Nick could almost hear the shrieks now.

  Finally, with the candles guttering and the fires burning out, he dragged his weary body through the cold, silent halls until he faced the rows of armor.

  “Damn you!” he shouted, almost shaking the broadswords and sabers that lined the walls. With his right fist raised, he swore again at the empty-eyed visors. “Damn you, I say! I am your target, not innocent people. If you have laid a curse on this house, I am lord here, I am the heir, I am Worth. On your honor, attack me, you fiends, not old ladies or drunks, or valiant soldiers like Gregory Rostend. Come at me, by God, or else be gone.”

  Chapter Three

  “Now you’ve done it, my lord sovereign of the scrap heap. Now he’s cursing at us! Our own flesh and blood is trying to exorcise us out of our own home. By the heart of St. Hildegarde, the heir is challenging you to a duel of wills.”

  Sir Olnic puffed out his metal chest, no mean feat for a phantasm. “The boy’s got ballocks,” the old knight proudly declared.

  “He’s got your blather for brains, arguing with astrals. In case you have forgotten, husband, you were to see that he fell in love, not into a distempered freak.”

  “I am working on that, jewel of my heart.”

  Lady Edryth turned her back on her spouse’s armor, and on his endearment. If the old fool thought he could turn her up sweet with honeyed phrases, he was a few years too late. A few hundred. “Well, he will not be receptive to Cupid’s darts, not with a houseful of invalids to care for on his own.”

  “I am working on that, too.”

  “How? No maids will enter the castle, not at this time of year. After this day’s work, I doubt any of the footmen will return from holiday. None of the villagers will take employment here; they already cross themselves when they pass the bridge. Or were you thinking he could send for some London doxy to play at nursemaid, then make her his baroness? It will not serve! I tell you now, I will not have a trollop taking my place here!” Lady Edryth stamped her foot, but since she hovered a foot above the marble-tiled floor, no sound disturbed the early morning air.

  “Be patient, my love. I know what I am about.”

  If looks could kill—and if he were not already dead—Sir Olnic was about to be melted down into a decorative tea caddy. What choice did Lady Edryth have, after all, but patience?

  *

  Lord grant him patience, Nick prayed.

  Miss Henrietta Mundy had awoken to find him at her bedside, with his dark, scarred visage made more gaunt and shadowed by lack of sleep. She’d cried out something about the devil. “Not quite, ma’am, merely Oliver Nicholson. You are safe at Worth Keep.” At which she’d gone off in another swoon. Nick did not have to worry about her wits being addled from the accident, he was relieved to note. Any sane person would have fainted, too.

  Miss Charlotte Mundy had half risen to find herself half dressed. Her screams were drowning out the church bells. At least she was not suffering an inflammation of the lungs.

  Mr. Bidlaw had wakened with a pounding headache. “Too much celebration, what?” he’d confided in the baron, who decided not to mention the five ragged stitches the man now sported on his forehead. The drunken dastard of a doctor deserved the disfiguring scar. Bidlaw ordered laudanum for Miss Henrietta’s concussion, and bloodletting for Miss Charlotte’s crise de nerfs. Having seen more than his share of head wounds and shock, Nick knew both prescriptions were the worst possible. Then Bidlaw decided to unsplint the coach driver’s leg, to reset the broken bone. No gentleman could do a competent enough job, he’d sworn, not even a veteran of the Peninsula campaign. Likely the leg would have to come off.

  Nick packed the still half-seas-over sawbones into one of his carriages and sent him home to torture other patients, not those at Worth Keep. Now, however, he was at point-non-plus.

  “We need help, Salter,” he understated. “Send the other coach for the Mundys’ maid. I don’t think they should be moved yet.”

  “The ladies do not have a maid, my lord. They live in rather reduced circumstances, you see. The coach and driver were hired for the night.”

  “Lud, just what we needed, two genteelly impoverished spinsters. Well, call back our own housemaids. They can take turns sitting up with the ladies until I can find a more competent doctor. I could not find a less competent one, by Zeus.”

  Salter stared at something over the baron’s shoulder. “I regret that our two housemaids are off visiting their parents in Yorkshire. The scullery maid is barely twelve years of age.”

  “But Mrs. Salter cannot nurse the ladies and cook invalid food at the same time. I would not even ask her to manage the stairs again this morning, except for the emergency.”

  Salter sniffled a
nd his pale eyes grew suspiciously damp. “I regret, my lord, that we have let you down. My Livvy and I should have retired years ago, with the generous pension your lordship offered. But serving the Nicholson family and taking care of Worth Keep is all we know, nearly the only home we’ve ever had.”

  Nick awkwardly patted the man’s frail shoulder. “And you shall have it as long as you wish. The fault is all mine, for not giving you warning of my arrival. I am certain you could have had the place fully staffed.”

  Salter was not so certain. “It’s hard finding workers, my lord, especially this time of year.”

  “Nonsense. We’ll simply hire some local girls. A bit of coin never comes amiss, especially at Christmas.” The old butler shook his head. “They won’t come, at any price. Superstitions, you know.”

  Nick knew them all too well. Hadn’t he been shouting like a bedlamite at one of them? “Surely there are a few levelheaded women in the village who don’t believe those ancient fairy tales. Older females who understand such things as possets and potions. What do the local folks do for a midwife? There used to be an herbalist, I recall. The neighborhood lads called her a witch.”

  “That would be One-Tooth Mags. She’s been dead these many years.”

  “Well, think, man. Sending to London will take too long. Miss Charlotte will work herself into apoplexy if we don’t find a female to aid her and her sister.”

  “Well, there is Mrs. Merriot.”

  The name meant nothing to the baron. “Another witch?”

  “Oh, no, my lord. Mrs. Merriot is a gently reared young lady, a widow. I understand she keeps a well-stocked stillroom. She made up a tisane for Old Jake’s rheumatics that worked a treat.”

  “Capital! Hire her. Whatever it takes, just get the woman here.”

  “Oh, but Mrs. Merriot is not a servant, my lord. I doubt she needs the money, and her family would not—”

  “Dash it, we need the blasted female! If she won’t come for the money, then she ought to come out of Christian charity. Thunderation, I’ll go ask her myself. If she refuses, I swear I’ll toss her over my saddle and drag her here. Now, where can I find the matchless Mrs. Merriot?”