Christmas Carol (27 page)

“Sue!” The woman seized the now-weeping child
from Carol’s arms. “I didn’t see what was happening. I thought she
was still with the elders.”

“Are you all right?” Nik asked Carol. She
nodded, unable to speak for a moment because she was shaking in
reaction to what had just happened.

“How can I thank you?” The woman put out a
hand to Carol. “Sue is everything to me. She’s all I have since my
husband died.”

Leaving it to Nik to answer the woman, Carol
tried to get her emotions back under control. She could not go to
pieces here in public.

“I don’t think she’s hurt.” Nik turned his
attention from Carol to the child. “She is well padded with
clothing and, thanks to Car, the guards didn’t touch her. Car, this
is Lin, who is—a very good friend.”

The emphasis he put on the last phrase of his
introduction told Carol that Lin was a member of one of the other
dissident groups. Lin would probably be involved in the coming
uprising.

“I understand,” Carol said, meeting Lin’s
eyes. “You do not want any harm to come to your child. You want her
to be safe, and happy.”

Lin nodded, hugging little Sue close to her
bosom.

“Take her home and see that she’s warm,” Nik
said. “Do you have a holiday sweet for her?”

“Oh, no.” Lin looked a bit embarrassed. “I
could not afford any sweets. There was barely enough money for
food.”

“Wait here.” Nik sprinted toward Marlowe
House, disappearing behind a mound of broken bricks and stone when
he ran down the servants’ steps. He soon returned, bringing one of
the miniature sugar trees from the selection Pen had bought at the
market.

“Every child should have a sweet at
Solstice,” Nik said, giving the sugar tree to Sue. He had taken off
his heavy gloves, and now he stroked one finger across the little
girl’s soft cheek. The gentle tenderness of the action caught at
Carol’s heart. Sue stuffed the bottom of the tree into her mouth,
and Nik chuckled at her obvious pleasure in the taste of it.

“Thank you, Nik,” Lin began. He cut off her
words.

“Just be certain she’s safe,” he said, and
both women heard the double meaning in his caution. If Lin was
going to be a participant in the uprising, her child would have to
be placed with people who would be willing to hide her identity in
case her mother was killed or captured.

“She goes to a friend tomorrow night,” Lin
said. Watching her walk away, Nik put an arm around Carol’s
shoulders.

“Those terrible civil guards,” Carol said.
“Nik, their commander stared right at me and the look in his eyes
terrified me. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain.
He knew he didn’t recognize me and knew I did not belong here. Is
there a chance that my presence could cause trouble for you?”

“I don’t think it will matter,” Nik said.
“People from outside the city come here for the Solstice
celebrations. There are always strangers in the square during
holidays. One more will make no difference.”

“I yelled at him. I cursed him,” she
persisted. “He will know me if he sees me again.”
And I will
know him. Why does the thought fill me with dread
?

“There is nothing to worry about. You are
cold and tired and upset by seeing a child almost hurt.” Nik headed
toward Marlowe House, taking Carol along with him, an arm still
across her shoulders. “Come inside now. Jo is piling wood on the
fire as if we had a room full of logs to spare, instead of just the
remains of broken furniture. You will soon be warm, and a glass of
wine and a good meal will lift your spirits.”

Carol went with him willingly, giving her
hearty agreement to the prospect of once more being warm. In the
kitchen they discovered the food Bas had put into the oven early in
the morning was nearly ready to eat. While the women prepared a
salad from the greens Pen had selected on the previous day and Luc
and another man set the table, Nik took Carol down to the lower
levels of the house.

“There used to be a locked wine cellar down
here,” Carol told him. “Crampton the butler held the keys to it,
and he guarded the wine as if it were gold. I have never been into
these rooms before.”

“I think they must have been useful as
shelters during the wars. The wine is of more recent vintage than
your time. Most of it is less than one hundred years old.” Nik
paused, holding high the oil lamp he had brought with him. Having
found the section he wanted, he gave the lamp to Carol while he
slid between the dusty racks to retrieve two bottles.

When he came out again he put up his hands,
holding a bottle in each. With a wicked laugh and a comical leer he
backed Carol against the stone retaining wall that formed the
deepest foundation of Marlowe House. There he kissed her.

“You do have a tendency to play with fire,”
she noted, lifting the oil lamp until its flame was a fraction of
an inch away from his chin. “First candles, now this.”

“Hold it to one side,” he suggested, “and
I’ll kiss you again more thoroughly.”

“If the oil spills, the light will go out and
we may be stuck down here for hours.”

“Never so long.” He was laughing at her. “The
others are too hungry to wait for more than a few minutes for the
wine to go with their dinner.”

“Then we ought to go back upstairs at
once.”

“Not yet, Car. I have waited all day for
this.” An instant later his mouth was on hers a second time, and
she lost herself in his lips and his tongue and the passionate heat
of him. Carol’s only regret was that, since he was still holding
the wine bottles, he was not free to put his arms around her.

“Nik,” said Pen’s voice from above. “We are
starving. The celebrations aren’t over yet but we need our food and
some wine if we are to continue.” She was interrupted by Jo, who
shouted down the stairs over Pen’s gentler tones.

“Bas says to tell you he is serving the
chicken and if you want any, you are to come at once. Delay and it
will all be eaten.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Carol said,
laughing now herself. “It is not a very big chicken.”

“You are asking me to make the supreme
sacrifice,” he said, leaning into her, letting her feel his
hardness until she moaned softly. “Do not expect me to wait much
longer to hold you.” He kissed her again quite thoroughly before he
released her and motioned for her to light their way out of the
cellar and up the stairs.

Never before had Carol belonged to a group of
people who, except for two or three of them, were within a few
years of her own age, who joked among themselves and teased each
other, and who showed open affection toward one another. The
friendly, teasing remarks she and Nik received when they finally
reappeared in the kitchen made her blush at first, and then made
her happy to be where she was. She entered wholeheartedly into the
spirit of the holiday meal.

To her surprise there was enough food. Each
of the twelve people at the table received a small piece of
chicken, and with the addition of plenty of vegetables and the
fresh bread Jo had baked before sunrise, no one went hungry. The
wine added to the party atmosphere. No one mentioned what was
planned for the day after the holiday. The talk was mostly about
social arrangements for the evening.

“There will be more celebrating in the
square,” Pen told Carol, “and some of us visit friends from house
to house. You are welcome to come with us. We won’t be home until
very late.”

“Some of us,” said Luc, downing his second
glass of wine, “won’t return until tomorrow. Some of us have ladies
to visit.” Two of the other unattached men laughed with him.

“Before you go,” said Pen, seemingly
unperturbed by this declaration, “we have sweets to finish the
meal.” She produced a tray on which she had arranged a small forest
of the sugar trees, each tree complete with an orange orb entangled
in its branches. Pen placed the tray on the table in front of her
brother and, with a grand flourish, pulled off the cloth covering
it.

“0h,” Pen cried in dismay, “someone has taken
a tree. Who would do such a thing?”

“I did,” Nik said at once. “Lin had no sweet
for Sue. I gave her mine.”

“Nik, you would give away your winter coat if
someone needed it,” Pen declared. “Here, take mine, then. I don’t
really want it.”

“Actually,” said Carol, “I don’t mean to
insult your taste in desserts, Pen, but those candies look
absolutely disgusting to me and have since the first moment I saw
them at the market. There is no way that I am going to eat one of
them. So there will be enough, after all, and you won’t have to do
without.”

“But you are a guest,” Pen protested, openly
upset by this idea. “We owe you the best we can give.”

“You—all of you—have already given me more
than you will ever know,” Carol told her. “Don’t spoil my holiday
now by forcing me to eat something I don’t want and expecting me to
be polite about it.”

“Are you sure?” Pen sounded as if she could
not believe this excuse, but she did cast a longing gaze upon the
little trees left on the tray.

“Pen,” said Nik, repressing a smile, “I have
the strangest feeling that Car does not want a sweet.”

“Really?”

Carol could almost see Pen’s mouth watering.
She pushed the tray across the table

“Eat it,” Carol said, “and stop arguing.”

Watching Pen nibble at the edges of the sugar
tree, tasting it slowly, savoring every bite, Carol was reminded of
an earlier version of the young woman. Pen’s character was similar
to that of Lady Penelope Hyde, and Carol discovered that she felt
the same protective affection toward Pen that she had felt for
Penelope.

Nik and Carol were given kitchen cleanup duty
with Bas that evening, which meant that Jo also remained behind
when the others left the house to rejoin the Winter Solstice
celebrations. Carol found there was something remarkably
pleasant—and oddly romantic— about standing with her hands in a
basin of water, washing dishes, and handing them to Nik to rinse in
another basin and dry them. Meanwhile, Bas consigned the remains of
the chicken to a large pot and began making soup for the next day’s
meal, and Jo moved about, putting dishes and leftover bread away
and sweeping the floor.

“I feel right at home here,” Carol said to
Nik. “As if I belong. I never did have much of a family, except for
a few days once, long ago.”

“They like you, too.” He accepted the soapy
cup she offered, keeping his hand wrapped around hers for a moment
more than was necessary. “It would make all of us, and especially
me, happy if you were to stay here permanently.”

“It won’t be allowed.” She had not confided
to him the actual reason why she was in this future time, saying
only that Aug had brought her there and would remove her when Aug
decided the time was right. Since Nik was as convinced as every
other member of his group that Lady Augusta was a witch with
amazing powers, he did not dispute Carol’s explanation.

“In that case, we ought to make the most of
the time we have.” The way he looked at her sent blood into her
cheeks and made her knees weak. Her hands went still on the plate
she was washing. Nik’s long fingers slid into the basin of warm,
soapy water, curling around her wrist and into her palm.

“Nik, stop,” she breathed, “or you will have
more chipped crockery.”

“Do you think it would matter to me?” With
laughter crinkling the corners of his green eyes, he began to make
little circling motions over her palm and wrist. “Warm and moist
and smooth,” he whispered, bending a little closer to her.

“Nik!” How could he do this to her, make her
ache for him without bestowing a single kiss on her mouth, without
undressing her or touching her body? All of her erotic awareness
was concentrated on her left hand and wrist. She thought she was
going to faint.

He removed the plate from her unresisting
fingers, rinsed and dried it, then turned back to her with an
innocent, boyish grin.

“Have you any ideas on how you would like to
continue our celebrating?” he asked.

Carol could not answer. She stood with both
hands in the basin of cooling water, staring at him until Jo
bustled up to them.

“All finished? I’ll dump the water, then.” Jo
picked up the basin and headed for the pantry, where the only
functional drain in the kitchen area was located. Because water was
available from the taps for only an hour a day on a rotating
schedule, the rinse water would not be thrown out. It would be
saved in a big old kettle, to be heated and used as dishwashing
water after the next meal.

Nik took the dish towel and began to dry
Carol’s hands. Still she could not speak. She thought he saw the
answer to his question in her eyes.

“Well, I don’t know about you two,” Jo said,
bringing back the empty basin, “but I have no intention of going
outside into the cold again when I can stay here in the kitchen and
be warm.”

“I have a surprise for you.” When Nik finally
took his eyes away from Carol’s face to speak to Jo, Carol felt the
loss as an emptiness in her chest, as though an important prop had
been removed from her. Nik spoke to Jo as if he were completely
unaware of the effect he was having on Carol. “The other day I
discovered a bottle of ancient brandy down in the cellar. Since
this is a special Solstice, I think we ought to open it
tonight.”

“If you are going into the cellar again,”
said Jo, “then leave Car here. If she goes with you, we may not see
either of you again until morning. If then.”

“Shame on you, Jo. You are shocking our
guest.” Nik disappeared in the direction of the cellar steps.

“Are you shocked?” Jo asked Carol.

“No, just bewildered. I don’t understand how
he does what he does to me. Sorry,” Carol added at once. “That was
an awfully personal remark.”