Christine Merrill - One Snowy Regency Christmas - A Regency Christmas Carol / Snowbound with the Notorious Rake

‘I was too small,’ Joseph retorted, springing from the bed and flexing his muscles with a longing to strike back. ‘My arms were too short to do the job. All the bullying in the world would have made no difference.’

‘He cannot hear you,’ the ghost said calmly. ‘For the moment you live in my world, as much a spectre to him as he is to you.’

‘It was Christmas. And it was not fair,’ Joseph said, trying to keep the childish petulance from his voice.

‘Life seldom is.’

‘I made it fair,’ Joseph argued. ‘My new loom is wider, but so simple that a child can manage it.’ The weavers of Fiddleton and all the other places that employed a Stratford loom would not be beating their children at Christmas over unfinished work.

But the ghost at his side said nothing, as though Joseph had done no kindness with the improvement. He held out his hand again. ‘Do you need further reminders of your past?’

Without thinking, Joseph shook his head. The past was clear enough in his own mind without them. It had been hard and hungry and he was glad to be rid of it. ‘I made my father eat his words before the end,’ Joseph said coldly. ‘He died in warmth and comfort, in a bed I bought for him, and not slaving in someone else’s mill.’

‘Take my hand and come away.’ Sir Cedric sounded almost sympathetic, his voice softer, gently prodding Joseph to action.

Joseph turned his back on the vision and reached for the arm of the spectre, laying his hand beside the ghostly white one on the stick he held. The fingers were unearthly cold, and smooth as marble, but very definitely real to him in a way that the man and boy in the corner were not. ‘Very well, then. Whatever you are, take me back to the manor and my own bed.’

There was a feeling of rushing, and of fog upon his face, the sound of the howling winds upon the moors. Then he was back in his own home, walking down the main corridor towards the receiving rooms in bare feet and a nightshirt.

‘What the devil?’ He yanked upon Sir Cedric’s arm, trying to turn him towards the stairs. ‘I said my bedroom, you lunatic. If my guests see me wandering the house in my nightclothes, they will think I’ve gone mad. All my plans will be undone.’

If this was a ghost that escorted him, the least it could do was to be insubstantial. But Sir Cedric was as cold and immovable as stone. Now that they were joined Joseph could not seem to pull his hand away. He was being forced to follow into the busiest part of the house, which was brightly lit and brimming with activity, though it had been empty when he’d retired.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Stratford. Did I not tell you that I am a spirit of the past, and that you might pass unseen through it?’ The ghost sniffed the air. ‘This is the Christmas of 1800, if I have led us right. It is the same night when we saw you clouted on the ear. Well past my time, but the holiday is much as I remember it from my own days as lord here, and celebrated as it has always been. The doors are open to the people of Fiddleton. Tenants and villagers, noble friends and neighbours mix here to the joy of all.’

The ghost gave a single tap of his stick and the ballroom doors before them opened wide. The same golden glow Joseph had seen before spilled through them and out into the hall, as if to welcome them in.

This is how it should be.

The thought caught him almost off guard, as though the sight of this long-past Christmas was the missing piece in a puzzle. The rooms were the same, the smells of Christmas food very nearly so. But it was the people that made the difference.

Even in mirth, his current guests were polite and guarded. The men considering business looked at him as though calculating gain and loss. Anne’s family treated him with an awkward combination of deference and contempt. A few others avoided him, acting as though the wrong kind of mirth on their part would admit that they did not mind his company and would result in some life-changing social disaster.

But the very air was different in this place. It was not simply the quaint fashion of the clothes or the courtliness of the dancing. There was a look in their eyes: a confidence in the future, a joyful twinkle. As though there was no question that the future would be as happy as the past had been. But they were not bending, more than ten years on, under the weight of a never-ending war, or the feeling that their very livelihood might slip from their fingers because of the decisions made by men of power and wealth. They were dancing, singing and drinking together, unabashed. The spirit was infectious, and Joseph could not help but smile in response to the sight.

There was a pause in the music and he heard the laughter of young girls—saw a pair, still in the schoolroom, winding about the furniture in a game of tag.

‘Do you not wish they would stop?’ the ghost prodded gently. ‘It is most tiresome, is it not? All the noise and the bustle?’

‘No. It is wonderful.’ For all the quiet dignity of the party he was throwing, there was something lost. It lacked the life of this odd gathering so bent on merriment. He could see village folk amongst them—the grocer, the miller and younger versions of the same weavers who had threatened only yesterday to break the frames in his factory. But now they danced with the rest, as though they were a part of the household.

He cast a questioning glance at the ghost.

‘It is the annual Tenants’ Ball,’ Sir Cedric supplied. ‘Held each Christmas night—until the last owner could no longer keep the spirit of the season or afford the house.’

‘Perhaps if he had been a wiser steward of his money and not spent it on frivolities such as this he would still reside here.’ But his own conscience told him that was an unfair charge. The celebration he was throwing was far more elaborate than this, and not a tenth as happy.

‘He seems successful enough there, doesn’t he?’ Sir Cedric raised his stick and pointed towards the corner, where stood Anne’s father, Mr Clairemont, looking happier and less careworn than he had done since Joseph had known him. And there was Mrs Clairemont, who showed a change even more drastic. Eleven years ago she had been a gracefully aging beauty. Now she was grey, pinched and nervous.

‘Whatever the reason, the Clairemonts are gone from here and none of your concern. I hear the house is held by a harsher master now.’ The ghost gave him a look one part disappointment and one part disapproval, followed by another heavy sigh.

‘I am harsh because I did not invite the whole village for Christmas dinner?’ Joseph waved a hand at the assembly. ‘How was I expected to know of this? It is not as if I was born of this area. The cottage we began the night in was miles from here. Clairemont said nothing of this responsibility when he sold me the house.’

‘And you are so tragically robbed of speech that you could not enquire.’ The ghost nodded in mock sympathy.

Now the lord of the manor was offering baskets to the families that had come, shaking hands and slapping backs as though every last man was an old friend. If the Clairemonts were still in the house, it must mean that the woman he now meant to marry was somewhere in the throng—and no older than the girls at play. He searched for the pair he had seen and dismissed earlier, but there were so many children, and they seemed to swarm out of doorways and hiding places, tearing down the halls, heedless of the other guests.

Then he spied Anne. Even now he could not quite manage to think of her as ‘his’ Anne. The unfamiliarity of her youth made it no easier. This little girl was as unlike her in manner as she was like in face. In childhood there had been none of the sombre grace that the woman carried now. She was a mischievous imp who did not care that her hair ribbons had come untied so long as she was not caught by the one who followed.