Enchanted at Christmas (Christmas at Castle Keyvnor Book 2) Page 19

  Pammie’s bright blue eyes bored into the top of his head; he could feel it. He was in his study, sifting through his papers, seeing that all was in order before he left for Cornwall. Pammie, his father’s mother, had been living at Grimston Hall since she had come to the place as a bride. She knew every corner of every room as well as she knew her own name, and he had learned as a child running through the hall, his footsteps echoing against the stone, that there was nowhere to hide from her if she wanted him found.

  “Charles, please attend my words,” she said, tapping her cane again. She claimed to hate the cane yet she used it to great dramatic purpose, and he knew she enjoyed that.

  “Yes, Pammie,” he said, lifting his head to stare into her eyes. “Continue. I only have another two or three hours of arrangements to make before I can depart. If you want me to spend them gazing into your eyes, I am most pleased to do so.”

  “Your wit is wasted on me, Snow,” she said sharply.

  Snow was the name he had picked up in school and it had stuck, with members of his generation. Pammie thought the name juvenile, fit only for members of his generation, a generation, according to her, of wastrels, imbeciles, and drunkards.

  “Your pardon, madam,” he said, bowing from the neck, a smile tugging at his mouth. “Pray, continue your lecture.”

  “Charles,” she said, leaning forward, her hands resting on the embellished gold grip of her cane, “I am well aware that this is considered to be the Age of Reason. I know all about the idol worship that is proffered to the god Science. I understand that you and your well-educated friends are certain that there is nothing beyond that which cannot be seen, touched, and measured. To that I can only say, remember your family history. Remember the significance of that ring you wear.”

  Snow looked down at the ring on his finger. It had been in the family since the dawn of recorded time, to hear Pammie tell it. The gold was of very high quality with only enough base metal added to give it rigidity. The styling was a simple band, smooth and unadorned, a rough cut ruby a carat in size set nearly flush with the band. The ring was the inheritance of each Snowingham heir, gifted to him when he inherited the title, and to be worn on the right index finger until death. The ring had been on his finger since his eighteenth year; it had fitted him perfectly without any adjustment required. At the time that had puzzled him. He no longer thought anything about the ring, nothing at all, not even the fact that wearing a ring on the index finger of his dominant hand was a somewhat odd adornment in this day and age.

  Everyone knew about the Snowingham ring and how it was worn, everyone he had ever met, at least.

  “I remember the tales,” he said.

  “The legend,” she said.

  “Call it whatever you wish,” he said. “It is only a story, a romantic, fanciful story. I’d wager every family has one.”

  Pammie sighed and twirled her cane, the gold gleaming in the morning light. The study was a high-ceilinged, oak-paneled, book-filled room. Her sigh filled it.

  “Tell me what you remember,” she commanded.

  “Can’t we do this at bedtime? It seems more appropriate a setting than the start of my day. I do have much to attend to, Pammie. Iris, the new mare, is not settling in as well as I’d like, not if I want to breed her this season.”

  “Tell me the story,” she said, her blue eyes, hard as shards of glass, holding his.

  Snow sighed, but it was a silent sigh. He gave himself credit for that much self-discipline.

  “If I do, will you leave me to my duties?” He chose that word intentionally.

  “I will always leave you to attend your duties,” she said. “Each and every one of them.”

  She had chosen her words just as intentionally as he had chosen his. Sometimes, he worried that he was too much like his grandmother. The thought was chilling.

  “Long ago,” he began, “in the land of snow and ice and long ships, lived Sigvardr. He was born of the union of Thor and Gundrun, Randulfr’s daughter, and he was a child apart. Randulfr was gone a-viking when Sigvardr was made and he did not believe the tale his daughter gave of the boy’s making. Randulfr asked a mage to make a talisman from gold he had stolen from the boat of a Byzantine trader, to test whether there was anything of the gods in the child. Thor himself, feeling some tenderness for the mother of his child, set a red stone into the golden ring, a stone to attest to his essence in the boy. The mage put the ring on the child and it commenced to glow with unearthly fire. The boy, Sigvardr, wore the ring to his dying day, finding and fighting all that was not of this earthly world. His son and his son’s son and so on until this day wear the ring of Sigvardr, to see what cannot be seen, to banish what is not of earth to that place where no living man may go. This is the destiny of all Sigvardr’s sons. This is the duty of he who wears the ring.”

  Pammie nodded, her eyes bright. “The duty and the promise. You must hold to the duty and the promise, Charles. That is as much your inheritance as is Grimston Hall.”

  Snow did not point out that he could not recall a time when his father, or his grandfather, had battled demons and wraiths using the imagined powers in an ancient ring. Snow wanted to get on with his day.

  “I understand that, Pammie.”

  “Yes, yes, you understand that, but do you accept it, Charles?”

  “I wear the ring, do I not?”

  “You do,” Pammie said, as if that settled all discussion. He certainly hoped so. “Now, you are aware of what’s said of Keyvnor, are you not?”

  “That it stands upon the coast of Cornwall?”

  Pammie frowned and tapped her cane in a short-tempered manner. “Don’t act the fool, if you please. You cannot be unaware that Castle Keyvnor is reported to be awash in ghosts and ghouls and other unnatural creatures.” He did not respond by so much as a snicker of incredulous laughter. Self-discipline, that was his watch word. “I am almost ashamed to tell you that your grandfather, no stranger to the rumors of the place, avoided it with religious devotion.”

  “If the power of the ring is as advertised, why should he have done so?” Snow said, letting his self-discipline slip just a fraction. The temptation had been great, and he was growing weary of fairy tales.

  “Indeed! He should not have,” Pammie said, flaring in disgust at her husband’s cowardice. If a corpse could recoil, he was certain his grandfather, dead for 33 years now, would have. “He should have done his duty. He did not. I credit this shame with his early death.”

  As his grandfather, for whom he was named, had died at the august age of 55, Snow did not believe a fear of ghosts and ghouls had anything to do with it.

  “Now you can right that wrong,” Pammie said. “You can uphold the promise of the ring, do your duty to your family legacy, and find a bride amongst the worthy guests. It is time to beget an heir for the next generation, a son to wear the Grimstone ring. Oh, lest you think I’m not attuned to your wishes, to also find a stallion worthy of your stables and a bitch worthy of your kennel. All in time for the lighting of the Yule log.”

  Pammie sat back against the velvet upholstery, a self-satisfied smile upon her face.

  Charles Grimstone, 10th Earl of Snowingham, sat back against his chair. He was not wearing a self-satisfied smile.

  The issue of senility, of mental defect, had been considered by him before; he considered it again, now. He almost wanted to believe that Pammie was just slightly, a bit charmingly, mad. Hampering that conclusion was the fact that he had heard about the ring all his life. His own father had made a point of passing on the story to him, with his mother’s silent approval.

  When one thought of Devon, one did not think of ghosts and Viking witchcraft; he was reasonably certain about that. He was not a hermit. He had traveled. He had received a stellar education and was, above all, a man of logic, pragmatism, decision. He was an earl; he had sufficient income to see to his needs, yet he enjoyed the mental and physical challenge of breeding fast horses and hunting dogs.

  Ther
e was something so elemental about bloodlines.

  And there was no denying the fact that he enjoyed making money. As the possessor of a title and a nice estate, he should have felt some shame at that admission, and he certainly should have been discreet about his pursuit of any blatantly money-making endeavor. He felt no shame for doing something so logical and so personally satisfying. He supposed he would live to be 100, following Pammie’s logic regarding shame and untimely death.

  Pammie’s logic was a woman’s logic, rooted in emotion, wishes, and drooling babes about the place.

  He responded to the most innocuous of her suggestions and avoided the rest . “I had thought to spend more time considering the future Countess of Snowingham than a few days. It seems highly irresponsible to the title to do otherwise, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would not. I know you are a very decisive man and wouldn’t want to waste time when you find the right girl.”

  It was true that he didn’t enjoy wasting time. As he was doing now.

  “Did you have anyone in mind?” he asked. Perhaps if he promised to fulfill the duty of the ring and pay court to a woman of her choosing, he could get on with his day.

  “I wouldn’t intrude in your affairs, Charles,” she said, without any obvious signs of sarcasm. “You are a grown man. You will know the woman for you when you meet her.”

  “You assume I have not yet met her,” he said. He was a well-traveled man; he had met many women who would have made acceptable countesses.

  Pammie came close to snorting. “My boy, do not jest with me. When you meet the girl, it will be obvious to everyone.”

  “As long as it is obvious to me, I shall be content,” he said.

  “Content?” she said, a slow smile spreading across her delicate face. “‘Tis not the word I would have chosen. But you shall see for yourself, and soon, I think.”

  With that, she got to her feet with slow grace and walked out of the room.

  When she was gone, Charles Grimstone, 10th Earl of Snowingham, pushed the conversation completely from his thoughts and got back to work.

  Chapter 2

  Lady Rose Hambly, third of five daughters of the Earl Banfield, was going to get married. She was going to find a husband by Christmas and she was going to get away from Castle Keyvnor. She was going to leave Bocka Morrow behind. She was going to leave Cornwall and never return, not even to be buried. Especially not to be buried.

  Rose had been living at Castle Keyvnor since October, ever since her father had become the earl. It was now December; two months of residence was more than enough.

  Castle Keyvnor was haunted. It would be too much to say that it was well-documented fact, but it was common knowledge among the locals and it was established rumor among everyone else in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That was more than enough evidence for Rose. Not that she needed outside evidence; her own experience was enough to settle the issue.

  Rose, as much as she loved her sisters, did not discuss such things with them. It seemed indelicate, somehow, and if they did not have similar ghostly experiences, she did not want to spend the best years of her life in Bedlam. She wanted, like any normal girl, to live the best years of her life as a wife. This was a subject she could, and did, discuss with her sisters regularly.

  “I do wish they’d put more coal in the grate,” Rose said, clutching her shawl more tightly around her.

  “This room is always cold. It’s the windows,” Gwyn said. “Very pretty in summer, I’m certain, but dreadful in winter. Do you think it will snow for the wedding?”

  Rose turned from staring at the feeble coal fire, the coals flickering in red-tinged lethargy, to face her sister. Gwyn was her favorite sister. She loved each one of her sisters, but Gwyn, the youngest of them, had always been the sister whose counsel she treasured and whose companionship she sought. Over the weeks since moving to Keyvnor, they had chosen the west parlor as their favorite place to sip tea, sew, share dreams and make plans. The west parlor was small, by castle standards, furnished in the most modern style, and had an uninterrupted view of the distant wood. Beyond the wood, was the sea, and between the castle and the sea was a trail that was barely perceptible. Morgan walked that trail to the sea nearly every day. Rose had walked it twice. Rose could not see the appeal. The view from the west parlor, with a roaring coal fire, was the best way to enjoy a frigid, tangled woodland.

  “I hope so. That would make everything so lovely,” Rose said. “A blanket of snow, white and glistening in the sun, sounds perfect, doesn’t it?”

  “Lovely to look at,” Gwyn said, arranging a small and very decorative woolen blanket over her knees so that her feet were fully covered, “but miserable traveling conditions. I did so hope that everyone, absolutely everyone, who had been invited to the weddings would attend.”

  Gwyn and Rose exchanged a look ripe with meaning, their thoughts in perfect sympathy.

  “It is our best chance,” Rose said softly. One never knew when a maid, as well as other things, might be listening behind a door, hiding out of sight.

  Both of them jolted when the door swung open and their older sister Marjorie strode inside. She rubbed her shoulders and tumbled into a chair in a most unladylike fashion.

  “Goodness, it’s cold in here,” she said. Marjorie eyed Rose and Gwyn. “Now, what are you two plotting?”

  “Marriage,” Rose answered. “And an escape from Keyvnor.”

  “It is our only chance,” Gwyn said. “We are in mourning for a year. Our next opportunity will not be until the 1812 London Season. I, for one, do not want to wait for over a year to meet interesting people.”

  “Available men, don’t you mean?” Rose said, grinning. She sat down on the lushly upholstered sofa next to Gywn.

  “Of course that’s what I mean,” Gwyn said, laughing lightly. “I don’t want to be the only Hambly girl left alone in this castle, waiting for a mythical prince to carry me away.”

  Marjorie rolled her eyes. “You’re both mad. It’s bad enough that Tamsyn and Morgan have found husbands. Now the two of you intend to leave me behind, tormented by the castle ghosts? Why would you ever want to be married to a man you’ve only just met? The idea horrifies me.”

  “It’s romantic,” Rose said, ignoring the mention of ghosts. “But prince or not, it’s of no use at all being carted off without a signed marriage license; that defies the entire point, doesn’t it?”

  “Well said,” Morgan said, entering the room far more quietly than was entirely polite.

  “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Rose said.

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t sound very feminine, or very romantic,” Rose said.

  “It does sound very practical,” Gwyn said.

  “Being practical is a useful trait,” Tamsyn said, coming into the room from another door. For a castle, a large, looming castle, there really was very little privacy. “Especially where men are concerned.”

  “That isn’t quite how I’d expect a blushing bride to talk,” Rose said.

  “Then allow us to educate you,” Morgan said.

  “I do not want to be educated.” Marjorie clapped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes in mock-horror. Marjorie had always been the most dramatic of the sisters, in Rose’s opinion.

  Rose stifled a sigh. Tamsyn was the eldest, Morgan the fourth daughter, younger than Rose, but Morgan had always been a contemplative, private sort of girl and Tamsyn was the eldest and seemed very typical of eldest children everywhere.

  “Father has invited everyone he ever knew or ever heard of to this double wedding of ours,” Morgan said, nodding to include Tamsyn, “and you will never have a better opportunity than now to find a likely husband.”

  “This wedding is a far better setting than London,” Tamsyn said.

  “Fewer rivals,” Rose said.

  “Fewer distractions,” Gwyn said.

  Rose said nothing about distractions, but she did glance into the corners of the room
, almost by habit.

  “You make your matches seem cold, bloodless things,” Rose said. Rose was not a simpleton; she understood that marriage was a contract that, in most situations, had more to do with her parents than herself. Still, she did hope for something beyond a mere contract to take her through the best years of her life.

  Morgan smiled, a slow, sparkling smile that lit up her pale blue eyes from within. “Hardly that. I would never encourage you to agree to a bloodless match, Rose. I simply point out that, if you want to marry, this is the ideal time to . . . look over the crop.”

  Gwyn burst out laughing. “Lovely image.”

  “You do want to marry?” Tamsyn asked, sitting down opposite Rose and Gwyn on a tufted chair.

  “Of course,” Rose said.

  “Naturally,” Gwyn said.

  “I would rather be hung, drawn, and quartered,” Marjorie moaned. She was definitely the dramatic one.

  “Well, then,” Morgan said, lifting her shoulders in an elegant shrug.

  “It doesn’t seem much of a plan,” Rose said, looking down at her hands, playing with the fringe on her shawl. “Whatever men, appropriate men, attend this joyous occasion of your double wedding, we . . . what? Hide behind the draperies and look them over? It’s not much of a plan at all, is it?”

  “I think we should have a plan, an actual plan,” Gwyn said.

  “So do I,” Rose said.

  Morgan, standing by the fire, blocking much of the heat, looked at Tamsyn. Tamsyn sighed.

  “What sort of plan did you have in mind?” Morgan asked.

  “Oh, it won’t involve you, not to worry,” Rose said. “You and Tamsyn will be occupied with getting married.” Gwyn laughed. “Gwyn and I will manage things.”

  “Manage things?” Tamsyn said. “What precisely does that mean?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Rose said. “Nothing, really,” she added when Morgan looked at her speculatively. “Aren’t you content that Gwyn and I have taken your counsel to heart? You were afraid we’d waste this perfect opportunity to find a husband, and we’re not. We’re most assuredly not.”