Elisabeth Fairchild Read Free Page B

beating long
     enough to have a grand Christmas—a perfect Christmas—a Christmas to remember. Resolutely
     he stirred the dying fire into a flurry of bright sparks and leaping flame. “Well,
     merry spirits, time to show yourselves.”
    Burning wood snapped and crackled as if in answer.
    With the same strength he held onto life, Copeland clasped the cold, smooth shoulder
     of one of the figures bracing the mantel. A noble face she had, with beautifully delineated
     curling locks—a vacant-eyed beauty, trapped since the fifteenth century by a skilled
     stone carver who had chiseled suspended life into cold marble. The caryatid stared
     past him, smiling faintly, as if she possessed amusing secrets, as if she saw things
     the master of Broomhill Hall did not.
    The hair at the base of Copeland’s neck prickled with the feeling he was not alone.
     He turned.
    The room was empty.
    He smiled, amused that his orderly mind stood so ready to believe in otherworldly
     nonsense, and went to meet the musicians.
    The stairwell watched him descend in a sea of faces. Green men, mouths sprouting leafy
     branches, held the banister rail high. Painted faces lined the walls, Copelands from
     the past. Griffins leered from the ceiling, gargoyles from polished mahogany corbels.
    Copeland looked past them, through them.
    Not musicians he found standing in the deeply shadowed entryway, but a cloaked woman,
     clutching a sprig of mistletoe. Pale berries glowed like pearls in the candlelight.
     Her face glowed, too, a dark hood falling away to reveal a wealth of gleaming hair,
     pale braids wrapped from her temples, crisscrossed at the nape of her neck. Eye-catching
     hair, like candlelight in shadow. Loose tendrils wisped rose-gold against alabaster
     cheeks.
    Maggie’s school chum? None to share the holidays with—her only living relative a brother,
     at sea? Copeland had not realized the music teacher meant to arrive with the musicians.
     He leaned over the banister, footsteps muted on the Pompeian red carpet runner, “I
     know who you are.”
    Evergreens. The clean, outdoorsy smell teased him, elusive—familiar—slightly musky.
     Braids winged back from her brow, even features, a rosebud mouth. Her complexion shimmered,
     lily white in candlelight. Golden eyebrows arched in perpetual question, chiseled
     perfection from a master’s hand. The depths of her gray-blue eyes drew him in.
    For a moment it seemed she stared past him, or through him, smiling faintly, as if
     she saw something he did not.

Chapter Two
    She guarded her expression in facing the new master of Broomhill Hall, in gazing up
     the dark, heavily carved walnut stairwell that reminded her of a long-ago Christmas.
     Lord Copeland must not know how thrilled she was to be here. Unseemly, really, to
     experience such a rush of ecstasy.
    Clever, leering fox-like faces peered back at Bee from among the remembered carvings
     on the stair: branches, leaves, and wooden fruit so cleverly wrought as to appear
     almost edible. Behind her host, more faces eyed her blankly from painted canvas showing
     no sign of recognition. Lord Copeland could not—must not—guess her reasons for accepting
     his Christmas invitation. He would not welcome her if he did.
    “You know me?” The ring of her own sarcasm startled her, so long since she had heard
     that strength. He did not know her, not at all. But he would before she left this
     once beloved hall. Of that, she was absolutely certain.
    “Maggie wrote me,” he said, as if that explained everything. It did not, could not.
     She was surprised to find herself here, surprised to come face to face with the Earl
     of Copeland after years of dreaming, and hoping, and knowing it might never happen.
     Knowing only that she yearned for it above all else.
    She watched with growing expectation as he moved lithely down the last of the steps,
     strangely familiar, very like the painting on the wall behind him, as though he had
     stepped down out of