Christmas Kiss (A Holiday Romance) (Kisses and Carriages)

by L. L. Muir

  The chair was tipped on its side next to the open door. He could easily see beneath the table. His stomach turned. And though he feared there was no use doing so, he called out to her again.

  “Angeline, ‘tis time to come out. Let us go down to the kitchens and make a proper fire.”

  Brianna made a noise as if she were choking.

  “Brianna? Are ye ill?” He hurried to her side and tried to pull her close. Her clothes were cold as stone and still she resisted. “Brianna! Speak to me! Tell me where the child is hiding.”

  “Gone,” was all she said.

  “What do you mean? Angeline? How could she have gone? None but I have a key.” To the room, he bellowed, “Angeline, come forward this instant. We will be playing no more games. Do ye understand?”

  Brianna made a strange groan and nestled against the wall as if she would gladly push herself through it. She could not look at him and when he pulled the torch closer, he realized the filth on her hands and clothing was blood.

  “My love! What’s happened? Show me yer wounds.” It could not be the child’s blood. He would not allow it. “Are yer wounds deep?”

  Brianna shook her head, then lifted an arm and pointed a stained finger away, toward the window. She tried to speak, but only stuttered. She was obviously frightened, and if something could frighten a strong woman like his Brianna, it was enough to put the fear back in his chest.

  “Why did ye break the window, lass? Was there a fire?” The torch was no help at all. He couldn’t see her, but the scratches on her hands looked to have come from the broken glass. There was no puddling of blood on the floor. Perhaps the wind might have roused and broken the glass. But then why would so much of it have fallen to the ground outside?

  “F...f...f...fog.” She hunched down tighter and began chanting. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.”

  There was nothing for it. Brianna was making no sense. She’d obviously frightened the girl into hiding from her. He had no choice but to build a bright fire and make sense of the place.

  He ran down the stairs, gathered a kettle of water, clean cloths for her wounds, and a bit more wood. Then he hurried back. Brianna had moved to the corner. She still crouched against the wall, but she’d stopped chanting. He tried to be patient and give her a chance to compose herself, so while the fire caught, he went about lighting candles in the room and the hallway. If the child had slipped out of the room while he was below stairs, or when he’d first opened the door, she’d need some light too.

  “Angeline,” he called out. “Ye’re safe, lass. Come to me, child.” Dear God, let her come to me! “Everything will be made right.” He plucked the torch from the fire. “I’ll help ye, love, after I’ve found the child.”

  It tore out his heart to have to leave Brianna, badly shaken and bleeding, but he feared the child might be in the same condition, or worse. Surely Brianna could move herself to the fire while he searched.

  Angeline was not his tower room. He took to the roof and even forced himself to look over the battlements. The snow below was blessedly untouched.

  In the castle proper, he searched and called, keeping his voice stern, the words kind. And with each call of her name, he feared she moved farther and farther from his reach. She was not in the barn, though MacBeth had wandered back to his stall. There were no fresh footprints to any of the outbuildings.

  Sweat rolled from Heathcliff’s hair and down his spine. He could only hope the child had found a way to be half so warm.

  When there was nowhere left to look, he returned to the bedchamber where the heat of the fire fought with the night air. He went to the window, pulled up the broken shutter and tied it to its mate. He noticed the doll on the floor between the fire and the window. The little scroll, still beribboned with yellow, lay on the floor, knocked off with all his stirring about.

  He replaced it, then went again to Brianna’s side.

  “Brianna, I canna find the child. Ye must help me, love. Where is Angeline?”

  Finally, she lifted her eyes to his, just before they melted into so many tears.

  “Of course not! She’s not hiding from you. She’s gone. It... He... She was taken.” Her voice broke. “Out the window.”

  He was so shocked at the sight of her face, dripping with blood and barely recognizable, that it took a moment for him to understand what she’d said. There hadn’t been a puddle because it was all soaking into her sweater. The front of it was soaked through.

  “Brianna! Yer head bleeds! Come sit on the bed while I see to yer wounds!” He tried to help her to her feet, but still she resisted. “I dinna understand. There was nary a footprint in the snow, Brianna. No one climbed out that window.”

  “Didn’t climb. Flew.” She repeated that terrible groan, then pushed him aside and ran for the chamber pot. He took a step toward her, but stopped.

  She’d talked of flying before. It was back when he thought she was out of her head.

  Back when she was out of her head...

  Back when she thought she was from the future. Hadn’t her suit case been a bit unusual? The clothing she wore. The way she spoke. He’d had his fair share of conversations with Americans and their speech was not nearly so odd as the way Brianna Colby spoke. And this talk of flying? She was not jesting with him. One look at her and anyone would surmise the lass was frightened out of her mind. It was the least likely time for teasing.

  But of what was she so frightened?

  Cold dread stole over his heart. She was afraid of him.

  She was afraid he would not trust her, wouldn’t believe her. But he did trust her. And wherever Angeline had disappeared to, they would find her together. The child might not be his, yet, but Brianna was. And after finding that she fit up so nicely against him, body and soul, he was not about to let her leave him. She only needed to see how completely he trusted her.

  “Brianna. Tell me what happened. No matter how odd it might sound to me. I vow I will believe ye. No matter.” He handed her a cloth, warm and wet, then lifted her chin and tried to assure her, with his eyes, that he spoke the truth. “Tell me what happened and I promise we will find Angeline together.”

  Her nod was enough. He took advantage of her momentary acquiescence and scooped her up into his arms and sat her upon the bed. The cold night air poked at his back, but the fire was gaining ground since he’d pulled the shutters closed. Carefully, he helped lift the bloody sweater from her body. It was covered in shattered glass. The shirt she wore beneath was of a fine quality but the collar was bespeckled with blood from her poor face. He showed her how to hold the wet cloth to the wee gash on her chin.

  “You can’t believe me,” she said.

  “Aye, I can. I already do.” After he picked a few shards from her hair, he dipped another cloth in the washbasin and began washing the blood from her face. As he’d hoped, the cuts there were not deep. Only one, on her chin and the source of all that blood, would require a stitch or two.

  “Okay, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “I never promised to like what ye tell me, only that I shall believe it. So, go on. What happened after I locked yer door.”

  “I was mad for a while.”

  “You mean angry? Easily believed.” He removed her odd red boots and shook them over the fire, then replaced them on her feet.

  “I put the chair against the door and sat it in,” she continued. “Being angry is exhausting. I kind of dozed off.”

  “You fell asleep? Hardly a crime, lass.”

  “Yes. But not for long. It was just starting to get dark. Angeline was playing by the fire. Then...” She looked at the window.

  “Then?”

  “Then the windows opened. All by themselves.” Bree looked at him, flinching as if she expected him to start yelling at her.

  “My grandmother was able to move things about, untouched. There is little you can say that I will not believe.”

  “Except when I say that it’s 2012.”

  He
closed his eyes and took a slow breath. After a heavy sigh, he looked at her. “Ye digress.”

  She nodded carefully. “This...cloud, or fog, or something, started floating outside the window. Then it started crawling inside. I could swear I saw fingers. I know it had a face, eventually. It kind of reached out toward Angeline...” She dropped the cloth away from her chin and shook her head. “It was like Angeline recognized it or something! She just ran over and let it take her—only she was trying to reach for the scroll. But it took her before she could get to it. And it laughed at me, just before it left. I didn’t hear it, but—”

  He lifted her hand back to her chin. “And ye’re quite certain this was not a dream? I heard ye telling yerself to wake up, lass.”

  “I wish it had been a dream, Heathcliff. Of course I do. But I’m still here. And she’s still gone. And no one unlocked the door until you came back.”

  “And no one has stepped below this window,” he said. “I checked the snow when I saw the window was broken.”

  “When the window opened, I tried to stand up and shut it, but it was like I was being held down in the chair. So I tried to call out to Angeline, but I had no voice. It was like an invisible wind was holding me down and stealing the sound when I screamed.”

  “A wind?” A rather chilly wind was, at the moment, making its way up his spine. And that wind carried with it a familiar tune.

  Brianna shook her head. “I can’t explain it.”

  Heathcliff was loath to speak for he might lose that tune, but he was more afraid of losing the lass.

  “Ye said wind. And ye saw fingers?” He was shocked by the idea forming in his head, but he could not seem to hold it back, to keep it from forming.

  “White fingers, made of...fog.”

  “The wolves,” he mumbled aloud. “I’ve not heard the wolves since the storm began.”

  He finished cleaning the blood from her hands. The scratches there were also shallow and would heal easily. He dropped the stained cloth into the water, then he took up a candle.

  “I need to remember something. Come with me if ye like, or stay here and get warm. I’ll return, I swear it.”

  Her steps followed closely behind him. He would’ve liked to stop and wrap her in a blanket, but he dared not lose the tail of his thought, so he turned toward the East Tower. He entered his private sanctuary and took a familiar stance before the windows, and in spite of the cold, he flung them open, along with the shutters. He looked up to where the full moon had hung in the sky less than a fortnight hence. There was nary a glow coming through the thick clouds that crowded the heavens.

  “I’ve not seen the moon this past week,” he said. “Have ye?”

  Brianna stood at his elbow. “The moon? No. It’s been storming every night since I got here. I’ve seen some blue sky a couple of times.”

  “But no moon.”

  “No moon.”

  “Let me ponder a wee moment. I stood here, pullin’ out me hair, wishin’... Prayin’...” But that wasn’t right. He’d been pleading. To God, Odin, or anybody. “Dear God, what have I done?”

  “What are you talking about? What has the moon got to do with Angeline? She is missing, Heathcliff. She’s gone. And it’s not like we can put out an Amber Alert on her, you know? Last seen in the arms of a cloud, flying out the window. Dark dress. Blond braids. Answers to the name of... Oh, wait. She can’t answer to anything.”

  He noted the hysterical edge to her words and realized she needed distraction lest it get the best of her again.

  “Let’s get back to the fire.” He took her hand and pulled her along, thinking as he went. The familiar stones flew unnoticed beneath his boots. He didn’t remember the journey back to the ladies’ chamber, but once there, he pulled the chair before the flames and warmed up the last female left in his care by pulling her onto his lap.

  Then he started humming.

  She shook her head at him, opened her mouth to say something, but he pressed a finger to her lips. “Just listen for a moment.”

  Again he hummed. It helped him remember the words. He’d been signing it only a few days before, while dancing with Angeline. Now he sang them to Brianna, willing her to realize how eerie the similarities of the song and their own story.

  Let not yer cries...call down the moon.

  Let not yer prayers...be led astray.

  I’ the coachman’s guise, he’ll grant yer boon,

  And ye shall rue...the price ye pay.

  Take back the breath... Take back the sigh.

  Give not yer name... Yer boon deny.

  The Foolish Fire...comes not in twain.

  ‘Tis the coachman’s lanterns

  Come for ye.

  With hands of white...and horses matched.

  He’ll guide thy love...to broken heart.

  Of measured dreams...he’ll grant behalf.

  And take from thee...e’en the beggar’s part.

  He’ll calm the hounds... The wind he’ll wield

  When the Moon he walks...’mong beasts and man.

  So be still yer hopes... Trust not the yield

  ‘Til the hounds behowl...the night again.

  “‘Til the hounds behowl the night again,” he repeated. “I’ve heard the howling of nary a wolf since the storm began. Their cry is near constant here in the Highlands. The moon hangs o’er the glen below. ‘Tis a grand gathering place for lonely hounds, myself included I suppose.”

  He laughed, though a bit hysterically.

  “What in the hell are you talking about? You think my carriage driver is the moon? The actual moon?” She shrugged her shoulders. “No wonder you believe me. You’re freaking nuts! A little girl is missing. My story is insane. And your conclusion is just a little more insane.”

  “Think about it, Brianna. She came to us without a voice, and yet she was able to hum that song. Do ye not think she was sent by him? And if he brought her, and he took her, she might be safe with him for the moment.”

  “Him being the moon.” She lowered her chin and shook her head.

  “The coachman. Perhaps he delivered ye both to me. There has to be something about this tune that can help us find our Angeline!”

  “Well,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should fight crazy with crazy.”

  “Crazy?”

  “You know. Nuts. Insanity.”

  “Madness, then. Madness I can manage. And this song—my grandmother used to sing it to me.”

  “The witch?”

  “Aye,” he said without hesitation this time. “Mayhap she taught it to me a’purpose.

  “Let not yer cries...call down the moon. Let not yer prayers...be led astray. I must take the blame for that. Before ye came to my door that night, I had been in the East Tower, complainin’ to the moon, or anyone else who would listen. I begged for help. I promised to give all I had, if help were sent to me, so that I might be able to speak to Angeline. I so desperately wanted her to be my own.”

  “Well, maybe she can be, still, if we can get her back. What’s the next line?”

  “I’ the coachman’s guise, he’ll grant yer boon, and ye shall rue...the price ye pay. So the moon was called, and he came as The Coachman. And the cost was Angeline. Satan himself couldn’t have exacted a meaner price.”

  “And next?”

  “Take back the breath. Take back the sigh. Give not yer name... Yer boon deny.”

  “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. This is a remedy, right? You just have to take back your wish!”

  He set her aside, then stood and moved to the window. Carefully, he opened the shutters once again, used his cravat to sweep away the traces of glass, then braced his hands on the ledge.

  “God, Odin, whoever ye are! I take it...” He turned away from the window, his face etched with horror. “But I doona take it back! I doona! To do so would wish ye away, Brianna! I cannot wish ye away! May Angeline forgive me, I canna do it! We’ll have to think of another way to get her back.” He sat on
the edge of the bed and dropped his face into his hands. His fingers slipped into his hair and then curled into fists. “Poor Angeline! She deserves better than I. Forgive me.” Then he whispered it. “Forgive me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Brianna felt like someone had reached into her chest and ripped out her heart, only to hold it up in front of her, so she could watch it bleeding out. Nothing in her life had ever felt so horrible as watching Heathcliff tormented.

  She found herself hunched over the laird of the manor, trying to wrap herself around his massive arms, but barely reaching his elbows.

  “Shh. We’ll figure this out. Don’t give up, Heathcliff. He hasn’t beaten us yet. What about the second part? How can you take back your name?” She ignored the part about denying the boon. He obviously wasn’t willing to give her back, if in fact she was the boon the song referred to.

  “I never offered me name to the moon. Not that I can remember.”

  Bree’s stomach sank. She eased away from the bed. It took her a minute to be able to speak. She wanted to cower against the wall again, but she wouldn’t.

  “I did,” she croaked. “When he came for me, on the road, he asked for my full name, to be sure he was picking up the right person. I thought he was from the tour company. I told him my full name.”

  Heathcliff looked more worried than ever. “Did ye call down the moon as well, love?”

  Bree began to pace to the window and back again. “I promise I didn’t talk to the moon. I didn’t. I mean...really.” But even as she said the words, she remembered the sight of a fat full moon sharing the sky with her as she flew from Spokane to Atlanta, for her first leg of the trip to Scotland. She remembered her breath fogging the glass. She wiped it away while she stared at the circle of light.

  Heathcliff rose to his feet, delicately took her scratched hands in his. “What is it?”

  “I’ll go back to the way it was—back to being happy—or die trying.” She looked up into his eyes. “That’s what I said while I was staring at the moon. But I wasn’t outside. I was just looking out the window.”