Christmas Carol (28 page)

“You are not ashamed of what you’re doing
with him, are you, Car?”

“Not at all,” Carol admitted. “In fact, I’m
proud of it.”

“Then don’t apologize for what you feel.”
After a glance toward the cellar door and another toward Bas, who
was tossing leftover vegetables into the soup pot with fine abandon
and paying no attention at all to the two women, Jo continued. “I
have been with this group for several years, and you are the first
woman Nik has taken a romantic interest in. I have always thought
his heart was locked away somewhere, hidden behind a barricade more
sturdy than the one Bas pulls over the entrance each night. Nik has
spent his life working against the Government in quiet, secret
ways, and reading and studying old books that might give him clues
as to how to invent a better kind of Leadership than the one we
presently endure. In these last two days since you have joined us,
he is openly happy. We have you to thank for the change.

“We all love him, Car,” Jo went on, “but in
the same way we love our brothers or our friends, because that has
been the only kind of love Nik would allow from us. For his sake, I
am glad you are here. Continue to make him happy. Make yourself
happy, too, and don’t regret what you do together.”

“Thank you, Jo.” Carol put out her hand to
the other woman. Jo took it, squeezed it quickly, and then released
her fingers as Nik returned to the kitchen.

“I’ll get the glasses,” Jo said. “Come on,
Bas, you’ve added every leftover you could find to that soup pot. I
thought you were supposed to boil the bones first and put in the
vegetables later.”

“I’m trying something different this time.”
But Bas did leave his cooking to join the others at the kitchen
table. Nik poured out the brandy and Bas sipped judiciously.
“Excellent,” he approved, nodding.

Carol thought the brandy was much too harsh
and strong, and noticed Jo was also only sipping hers, but the men
seemed to enjoy it. The tension between herself and Nik remained
beneath the surface during half an hour of companionable talk.
Nik’s hand brushed hers a few times, and his knee pressed against
her thigh when he leaned across the table to pour more brandy for
Bas and then sat back again. To the casual glance all four of them
were relaxed, but Carol could not help wondering if Jo noticed her
growing breathlessness or the way she’d ceased to contribute to the
conversation. And yet she was oddly content to sit at the table
listening to the others and knowing that before much longer she and
Nik would be alone together. After a while, as she was certain he
would, Nik stood up, drawing Carol with him.

“Take care of the brandy, Bas,” he said,
indicating the bottle.

“I shall hide it in my room,” Bas replied.
“Perhaps tomorrow all of us will drink a toast with it to the
success of our project.”

“Good night.” Jo was standing behind Bas with
her hand on his shoulder, but her gaze was on Carol and Nik as they
left the kitchen.

“This has been the strangest evening,” Carol
murmured, following Nik up the stairs and coming out at the back of
the main hall. She paused, looking around at the cracked black and
white marble floor and the old paneling, both lit by the oil lamps
kept burning there. “It’s as though the dozen or so people who live
in this house are family members, as though I have known them for a
long time. Bas and Jo are like an older aunt and uncle. And you and
I could be—”

“A couple who have lived together for years?”
Nik finished for her when she hesitated. “Yes, I felt it, too. To
me, the most precious component of your presence here is that it
does not seem at all strange.” He caressed her cheek with a light,
quick gesture.

“What I feel for you, Car, is not just sexual
desire, though that particular element can be overpowering at
times. But there is something more than desire between us. You are
the companion of my heart. If we could live into old age together,
even if we should reach a time when we are too feeble for
lovemaking, still, just being with you would be joy enough. To see
you, to hear your voice and know the touch of your hand on mine,
would content me until the end of my life.”

He stood back to let her pass into his room
ahead of him. Carol stopped just inside the door, thinking that he
deserved a better setting than this shabby cubicle of a bedchamber.
There was only one thing she could say in response to the
passionate declaration he had just made.

“I love you, Nik.” It was all she had to give
him.

“Then I am blessed,” he said. His kiss was
light and almost unbearably tender. Carol leaned against him,
satisfied for the moment just to have his arms around her. No more
was needed. Seldom in her life had anyone spoken to her as Nik
spoke. In her past she had heard little praise, so what he said
next was precious to her.

“It was a brave thing you did this day, Car.
Were it not for you, Sue might have been badly injured by those
uncaring brutes of civil guards.”

“Anyone who noticed what was about to happen
would have done the same,” she murmured, her face against his
chest. At his mention of the guards she thought again of the cold
eyes of their commander. She tried to force the image of the
commander’s face out of her mind. By thinking only of Nik and what
he was saying, she almost succeeded.

“But no one else did take action, Car. Most
people are too used to deferring to the guards ever to stand up to
them or to protest the way they expect others to get out of their
path when they are going somewhere. Only you were courageous enough
to defy them.” She felt Nik’s lips on her hair before he continued.
“And then you gave up your sweet so Pen could have one. It was I
who should have gone without, since it was my own sweet I gave to
Sue.”

“I didn’t want that sticky thing and you knew
it,” she said, laughing. “I am not as unselfish as you seem to
think.”

“I believe differently.” He took her by the
shoulders, holding her a little away from him, searching her face
for her reaction to his words. “Car, I want a promise from
you.”

“Anything I can do for you, I will,” she said
at once.

“Promise me that when you return to your own
time, you will do everything you can to keep the spirit of love and
friendship and compassion toward others alive, as it is alive in
you now. You can change this terrible future into something
beautiful, if only you are willing to try.”

“You can’t really believe I have that much
power?” she cried, astonished by what he was saying, and
frightened, too, by the responsibility he was laying on her.

“I
know
you have the power,” he said.
“I believe that is why Aug has brought you to us. She wants you to
see what this future world is like, and then she will advise you on
how to change it.”

“Nik—” she began to protest, but he cut her
off.

“Why else would Aug bring you to this time?”
he asked.

To prove to me what a selfish,
self-centered, uncaring creature I had become. To show me how wrong
I was, and how little I knew about the important things in
life
.

“If I could change the future,” she said
aloud, thinking through the idea as she spoke, “then this time,
where you and your sister and friends live right now, would be
different—so different that you might not even exist.” The
realization terrified her.

“I will be here no matter what you do,” Nik
said. “And we will meet. Perhaps, if you can alter your time and
thus the future, then I will not have to lose you the way I always
have in my dreams. The way I will lose you in this life, when the
time comes for you to go home.” He pulled her closer against him
and spoke with a heartfelt intensity that made Carol accept what he
was saying.

“Of this I am absolutely certain, Car.
Throughout all time, you and I will meet and love again and again.
It was meant to be so. And when time is finished and timeless
Eternity begins, you and I will be together. Then, our souls will
be one, as I believe they were one before ever time began.” The
hand with which he stroked her hair was infinitely tender.

“I could endure anything,” she whispered,
“even a separation of centuries, if I thought there was a chance
that we could some day be together permanently.”

“Believe in that possibility as I do,” he
said. “And when we are temporarily parted, keep the promise I ask
of you.”

“I will.” She looked into his eyes and smiled
through the brimming tears. “Not only because you ask it of me,
Nik, but because I have come to understand how intertwined are
past, present, and future. And how important every act of kindness
is.”

“And acts of love,” he murmured.

“You are my love. You always have been. You
always will be.”

“That is exactly what I have been
saying.”

They undressed each other slowly, oblivious
to the frosty temperature of his room. Carol stood trembling on
tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck and kiss him. He was a good
six inches taller than she and his shoulders were broad and hard
with muscle. Overall, he was not bulky despite his strength. He was
tough and lean and intensely masculine.

There was no ignoring his masculinity. It
pressed hard against her when he drew her upward into his arms. The
more thoroughly he kissed her, the harder and hotter it grew, until
she felt as if there was a flaming poker jammed between their
bodies. She knew how to quench his heat, and knew he would soon
take that way.

With his arms still locked around her Nik
began a series of dancing steps across the bedroom floor, waltzing
Carol backward until her legs touched the side of his bed. When she
giggled at the erotic effect of this motion, he kissed her hard and
long, drinking in her laughter and replacing it with mounting
desire.

Slowly they sank down together upon the bed.
The rough olive blanket scratched Carol’s back, but she did not
care. Nik’s hands were on her, caressing, tormenting, and now she
knew what he had been doing all afternoon and evening long. From
his delicious, teasing kisses in the wine cellar to the heated
looks he sent her way and those secretive touches during dinner, to
his playful handling of her while she was washing dishes, and yes,
even during the apparently calm conversation over brandy with Bas
and Jo—during all of those hours, in the only ways open to him with
other people near, he had been wooing her and making her feel safe
and secure so that when they reached this moment she would want him
as badly as he wanted her. Every cell of her body thrilled to his
knowing touch, until she wondered if the brandy she had consumed
was flowing through her veins undiluted.

He was on her and in her and she was
pulsating to his smallest movement. It was all slow and tender and
yet very
determined
. He never stopped moving, but kept
stroking firmly in and out of her, and it seemed to her that he
could go on forever with the same slow, steady motion. She became
aware of the painful way in which her body was beginning to
tighten, her muscles automatically growing tense and ready. She
smoothed her hands down his spine, arching her back to push herself
against him as he came into her once more.

“Closer,” she muttered, cupping his buttocks
in both hands, pulling him to her. He did as she asked, thrusting
deep, then going rigid, poised and waiting.

This time she did not explode. Her climax was
more devastating than any mere explosion. She melted. The heat and
tenseness that had been congealing so painfully between her thighs
in response to Nik’s continuing motions flowed out of her and she
let it go, a soft moan her only outward indication of the rhythmic
tremors that were shaking her innermost body.

Nik knew at once what was happening. How
could he not know when he was buried so deep inside her that he
could feel her every quiver? He groaned, calling her name over and
over. He thrust hard one more time, and then he lay still above
her. They were both trembling, unable to speak. All they could do
was touch lips to lips, over and over, drinking from an
inexhaustible supply of love and longing, and also tasting in those
kisses the certainty of coming separation.

The next day, which was the last of the
three-day Winter Solstice celebration, was a quiet one at Marlowe
House. Those who had gone out the previous evening slept late. Nor
did Nik and Carol rise early, preferring to spend the morning hours
in each other’s arms in the private world they had created within
his room. However, shortly after noon everyone assembled for the
main meal of the day. Luc and a couple of his friends were still
somewhat bleary-eyed. Pen claimed to be suffering from an upset
stomach, which Nik immediately told her was the result of eating
too many sweets. Pen recovered quickly when she saw the feast
intended for the final meal of the holiday.

Bas first presented a truly remarkable soup.
The highly flavored broth contained all the remaining chunks of
chicken meat he could pick off the bones, along with a wild
assortment of vegetables. The soup alone would have been enough to
satisfy Carol’s appetite, but there was also a rice pilaf made with
spices and herbs and, like the soup, eaten with loaves of Jo’s
fresh-baked bread. Marveling that Bas and Jo between them could
create meal after delicious meal using an inadequate supply of not
always fresh food, Carol discovered that she did have room left for
the pilaf after her bowl of soup was empty.

The sugar trees having all been eaten on the
first day of the holiday, dessert was a baked concoction of apples
and raisins, flavored with a bit of the ancient brandy that Nik had
left in Bas’s care, and topped with cinnamon-spiced crumbs of the
previous day’s bread.

“There is even some cream to pour over it,”
Jo said, setting a pitcher down on the table. “But share it,
because there isn’t any more.”