Christmas Carol Read Free

address of her new employer in
the other, Carol had arrived early one morning on Lady Augusta
Marlowe’s doorstep. At first she’d been greatly relieved to have
found a position with such a prestigious British family. She’d
needed only a week of employment at Marlowe House before she
understood why Lady Augusta had been forced to advertise in the
United States. Her stinginess and ill temper were legendary. But
Lady Augusta’s character had suited Carol’s mood at the time, and
gradually she’d adapted to the difficult old lady’s
eccentricities.
    In fact, the two of them had been remarkably
similar. Like Lady Augusta, Carol knew—she believed it in her
deepest heart—that the only thing that mattered on this earth was
money. She had seen in her own life what money could buy—for proof,
she needed to look no further than her many suitors and her
extravagant mother—and she knew from the defections of her would-be
lovers from her side, and from her mother’s easy desertion of her
father, exactly what happened when the money disappeared.
    Which was why she so respected Lady Augusta,
who harbored no illusions about human affections. Or the value of
charity. Or the need to celebrate holidays with an extravaganza of
feasting and gifts and parties. Especially Christmas, which was
nothing more than commercial nonsense designed to trick ordinary,
hardworking fools out of their money. Carol heartily agreed with
Lady Augusta on all of these points, if not on the matter of
leaving bequests to one’s employees.
    “That was the last of them, Miss Simmons.
I’ll send Nell to clear the tea things away.” Crampton entered the
drawing room, and suddenly Carol realized that she had been so deep
in thought that, without noticing what she was doing, she must have
bid farewell to the Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife, to the
solicitor, and to the five or six other people who had attended the
funeral. “Will you be taking dinner in your room again
tonight?”
    “No, I’m going out on the town.” Her tone was
so sarcastic that Crampton’s eyebrows flew upward at the sound.
    “I beg your pardon, Miss Simmons?”
Disapproval was implicit in the butler’s voice.
    “Of course I’ll eat in my room. Don’t I
always?” When she first arrived at Marlowe House, Carol had been
expected to dine each evening in the formal dining room with her
employer, but after Lady Augusta had taken to her bed during her
final illness, Carol had asked for a tray to be brought to her own
room so she could eat there. It was the easiest way she could think
of to give herself an hour or so of privacy at the end of her busy
and frequently upsetting days with her irascible patient.
    Leaving the drawing room, Carol started up
the wide, curving staircase. As her hand skimmed along the
banister, it seemed to her that the polished wood vibrated beneath
her fingertips. Of course, it was just foolish imagining on her
part. She was overtired and suffering from the inevitable letdown
that came after a funeral. Not to mention the letdown of knowing
that Lady Augusta had not chosen to remember her companion’s five
and a half years of honest service with a bequest.
    “It didn’t have to be a lot of money,” Carol
muttered, reaching the top of the main stairs and walking along the
hall toward the smaller flight of steps that led to the uppermost
levels of Marlowe House. “A hundred pounds, two hundred at the
most. Ye gods, that would only have been five hundred dollars or
so, and everybody knows she was fabulously wealthy. She could have
let me know that she appreciated all I did for her.”
    A low, cynical laugh came from the direction
of Lady Augusta’s suite of rooms. Carol paused for a moment or two,
standing at the closed door. All was silence.
    “Now I’m hearing ghosts,” Carol said aloud.
“There is no one in that room. I know it.” Nonetheless, she opened
the door. Within, the curtains were drawn, so the room was dim and
shadowy. Carol fumbled