by Alisa Craig
The room allotted to Rhys was in truth not much smaller than the bedroom Janet had slept in most of her life back at the farm, and far less simply furnished. Some antique dealer would give his eyeteeth for that roped cherrywood bedstead. It must date from Loyalist times, maybe even from the early French settlers. Madoc was amused to see both his and Janet’s bags on the luggage rack.
“Here, Jenny, this is yours.” He carried it back into the larger room for her. “We shall be very comfortable, Babs. Are there really bathrooms?”
“Four, thank goodness, but they’re all clustered in one place, around the main chimney just across the hall here. To keep the pipes from freezing, you see.”
“Of course. An extremely sensible arrangement.”
“Use any one that isn’t occupied. There should be plenty of hot water and towels. And we have just about fifteen minutes before we light the Yule log, so please be as quick as you can. Put on whatever you’re comfortable in. As you see, we don’t dress.”
Janet took the not dressing for what it was worth and decided she’d be most comfortable in her red velvet skirt. She wished she dared stretch out for a few minutes’ rest on that cozy-looking trundle bed, but she did manage a quick hot shower, taking her clothes into the bathroom with her to steam out the travel creases as best she could. When she emerged in the long skirt, a lacy white cable knit pullover Mama Dupree had made for her last Christmas, and her new pearl necklace, she met Madoc, freshly shaven and damp about the ears, coming out of the bathroom next to hers.
“Integrating with the group, I see.”
He smiled and pulled her close. “My darling Jenny, how beautiful you are. I hope you’re going to enjoy this.”
“I expect I’d enjoy anything so long as I had you with me,” she murmured, rubbing her lips along his clean, warm jawbone. “Come on, we mustn’t miss the Yule log, whatever that is. I’ve never seen one. Have you?”
“Oh, yes. At my great-uncle’s place in Wales they always do it. We’ll go there next Christmas, eh?”
“Let’s cross that ocean when we come to it. All sorts of things can happen before then. What have you done with your shaving things?”
“Nagging already, are you?”
Madoc dutifully fetched his gear from the bathroom. Laughing, they ran hand-in-hand down the hall to their bedrooms. When Janet popped in to get rid of the clothes she’d worn in the helicopter and run a comb through her hair, she found yet another tall blond in designer blue jeans and a fabulous Icelandic sweater, doing things to her face at the dressing table mirror.
“Hello,” she said. “You must be Valerie Condrycke. I’m Janet Wadman.”
“Hi. Mum warned me I was getting a roommate.” Valerie didn’t sound altogether thrilled at meeting her. “She said you came up with Dafydd Rhys’s brother. He never told me he had one.”
“Well, Madoc isn’t musical. There’s a sister, too. They’re in London right now with their parents.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Madoc couldn’t get away from his job long enough. Anyway, we only got engaged last night. He’s waiting for me now so I’d better scoot. I’ll see you downstairs, eh?”
Janet was not eager to be pumped about Madoc’s family until she’d had a chance to glean some more information from him. She understood perfectly why he hadn’t cared to make a parade of being Sir Emlyn’s son. No doubt he’d run into any number of people who’d been ready to make up to him on the strength of his connections, as the Condryckes were doing now. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered to her who he was, and it still didn’t. Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys was the man she’d decided it would be awfully nice to be married to when she was frying his breakfast eggs last summer in Pitcherville, and Mrs. Madoc Rhys was who she was going to be and that was title enough for her. Nevertheless, she was not about to be patronized by any willowy snip with a Calvin Klein label plastered across her backside, even if she did take Valerie’s father his tea in the conference room.
At that moment Madoc, bless his heart, rapped on the connecting door and called, “Jenny love, are you ready?”
“Coming.” Janet poked her hair with the hand that wore the diamond so Val could see it flash in the lamplight, settled her pearls about her throat, and sailed out of the room head up and tail a-risin’, as her father used to say. Sir Emlyn or no Sir Emlyn, she had a position of her own to consider.
The room downstairs they called the Great Hall since it was much too vast to be a parlor and too well-furnished for a ballroom, was now even fuller of Condryckes than it had been before. Two tall, skinny boys perhaps fifteen and seventeen years old were over by the door on the far side, with a thick rope slung over their shoulders. Squire was chivying the other male members of the group into line behind them.
“Come along, Madoc. Tail on to the rope with the rest of us. Herbert, Cyril, Donald, take your places. Lawrence, are you ready? Where’s that young chap who came with Val?”
“Where’s Val, for that matter?” drawled May. “Lost her eyelashes?”
“She was putting them on when I left her just now,” Janet answered. “I expect she’ll be right along.”
“Then you don’t know Vallie like I do. Call her, Babs, before Squire has apoplexy.”
“Hark!”
A hand grabbed Janet’s arm and she jumped. “They’re coming now. Can’t you hear them?”
Janet couldn’t see how anybody could distinguish one sound from another in this babble, unless it was a bray like May’s. Moreover, she didn’t like having her arm clutched and her ear hissed into. She was about to pull away when she realized the grabber was an elderly woman who, for a wonder, was not wearing a wool skirt and pullover but an old-fashioned dinner gown of rubbed wine-colored velvet.
Perhaps this was Mrs. Squire. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t. The hand on her arm bore several antique garnet and opal rings, but no plain gold band.
“How do you do?” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Janet Wadman.”
“Ah, but you won’t be for long. You’re going to be married much sooner than you think, and it won’t be the way you planned it, either. It’s all happened faster than you expected, but never you mind. You’re the only one in the world for him and he’s the one for you and there’s nobody going to talk you out of it, though there’s somebody who’s going to try. Look, I told you he was coming. What did you ever see in a thing like that?”
“I’ve often wondered.”
Janet was not really surprised to see who’d got himself invited to Graylings as Valerie Condrycke’s escort. After all, Val was a board member’s daughter and Roy Robbins couldn’t rise far on looks and charm unless he applied them in higher places than the typing pool.
Roy himself went into shock when he caught sight of Janet. His eyes looked glazed as he turned his head away and let himself be hustled across the floor by Squire. It hadn’t been good office politics getting off on the wrong foot with the head of the family first crack off the bat like this. Perhaps she ought to give him a hint for auld lang syne.
It seemed unbelievable to Janet, watching Roy tag on to the rope behind Madoc, that a year ago this time she’d fancied herself in love with that shop-window dummy. She’d been flattered, she supposed, and too green to know better. At least she’d had sense enough to learn from the experience. She wondered whether Val would. No sense in trying to tell her, of course. But how had this odd old woman known about herself and Roy, and about her hurried-up engagement? Who was she, anyway?
There was no time now to ask. The men on the rope were pulling a great log across the floor. It lay on a well-waxed skid and must not be all that difficult to move, though everybody except Madoc was putting on a great show of slaving at the task. Rhys was only looking gently amused and quite remarkably handsome, Janet thought, among this lot of blond beeves. Roy was going to be just like the Condryckes in a few years; still a fine-looking chap, no doubt, but too thick around the beltline and running to jowl at the jaws. He�
�d got over his astonishment now and was grunting and groaning with the best of them while the women cheered them on.
Suddenly Janet wasn’t tired any more. She was laughing and clapping while Squire and his crew with great fanfare rolled the Yule log into the fireplace and set it alight. She was running across the Great Hall to hug her sweetheart, knowing she was his and the odd old lady was right forever and ever, amen. On the whole, she was rather pleased than not that Roy was here, because now she knew she’d never have to give him another thought, but only a pleasant nod and smile as she would any casual acquaintance.
“Hello, Roy. Happy Yuletide. Is that the proper thing to say, Squire?”
“Oh, do you two know each other?”
“Of course. I used to type up his letters.”
“And correct my spelling.” Roy was himself now, all teeth and personality.
“But now she brings me my tea.” Donald laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “Though not for long, I’m afraid. Janet’s about to retire from the business world. Right, Madoc?”
“Couldn’t be righter. She’ll be giving you her notice for a Christmas box. Mother’s ordered us to start house hunting forthwith.”
“And when Lady Rhys commands, you obey, eh?”
“Not always, I’m afraid. But this is one time when we’re quite willing to be dutiful children. Eh, Jenny love?” Madoc slipped an arm around Janet and gently detached her from Donald’s grasp.
“Shall you be living here or going back to Britain?” Squire asked.
“We shall be staying in Fredericton, at least for the time being. My parents keep a place in Winnipeg that we’ll probably use sometimes and I expect we’ll go over to visit my great-uncle as soon as the Canadian government feels it can manage without me for a week or two. Our plans are a bit up in the air at the moment. So are we. Ah, what is this?”
“Here I come awassailing,” caroled May, holding aloft a steaming silver bowl the size of a washbasin. She must be strong as a bull moose. “Squire, come and do the honors. We’re all dying of thirst.”
She set the bowl down on an ebony and ormolu table that already held a vast silver tray, an ornate ladle, and an array of crystal cups. Squire plunged the ladle into the bowl and brought it up full. The old lady in velvet shrieked and fainted. Everybody else broke into whoops of merriment.
“Well, Cyril complained last year that a wassail bowl’s supposed to have roasted crabs in it,” May said with a feigned air of injured innocence. “I couldn’t find any crabs at the market so I used plastic spiders instead. They look much the same now that I’ve roasted them.”
“I meant crab apples, you jackass,” replied her brother affectionately. “Come on, let’s not waste good liquor. Chuck ‘em out and start baling. We’ve got to toast the newlyweds.”
“They’re not wed yet,” Clara contradicted him.
“Good. That means we get to toast them again next time. Do you suppose somebody ought to cut Aunt Adelaide’s corset strings?”
“I’ll tuck a pillow under her head,” said Babs kindly.
“She’ll come round in a minute. Val dear, do be careful where you step in those high heels. You know how Aunt Addie hates being trodden on while she’s in a swoon.”
“But shouldn’t we at least try smelling salts or spirits of ammonia?” Janet was appalled at this cavalier attitude.
“Oh, we wouldn’t think of it,” Val assured her. “Aunt Addie enjoys fainting, she does it so beautifully. It would be a shame to spoil her fun too soon, so we always let her lie. Have to humor the old folks, you know. By the way, where’s Granny?”
“Good Lord yes, where is she?” cried Squire. “This is terrible. Granny’s never missed the bringing in of the Yule log before. Run up and see if she’s in her room. No, wait, you mustn’t miss the toasts. Ludovic! Ludovic, where—oh, there you are. Go find out why Mrs. Condrycke isn’t down here with the rest of us.”
CHAPTER 4
Squire went on ladling wassail and passing around the crystal cups while the old retainer, for Ludovic was surely that, zigzagged up the incredible staircase out in the front hall. No wonder this family was so prone to jokes, Janet thought. Graylings was a joke in itself.
Ludovic was no joke, though. He could have passed for a Presbyterian minister in his sober black suit, black tie, and dazzling white linen. He was tallish, though by no means so big as the Condryckes; thinner and grayer and craggier in the features and infinitely graver of countenance. His shoulders were stooped as if from a lifetime of carrying trays, and he had a habit of looking a hair’s breadth to the left of whomever he happened to be facing, as though it wasn’t the done thing for a servant to look those he served full in the eyes.
Janet supposed Ludovic must be the butler. She’d never seen one in the flesh before. The closest they came to one at the farm was Sam Neddick, who sat down to meals with the rest of them and expected to be waited on by the womenfolk just like Bert. She smiled to herself. Madoc, who had been feasting his eyes on his beloved since nobody had yet given him anything to feed his face with, asked her what was so funny.
“I was just wondering what Ludovic would say if I told him to haul up a chair while I cut him a piece of pie.”
“Jenny love, have I happened to mention lately that I adore you?”
“It’s always nice to be reminded.”
“Er—that chap Roy. Is he...?”
“Madoc, you surely don’t think you’ve caught me on the rebound? Yes, he’s the one, but don’t bother poking him in the jaw on my account. Feel free to do it on your own if you care to, of course. I’ll bet you once fell for a girl like Val.”
“How did you know?”
“Because you looked at her the same way I’ve been feeling about Roy. Relieved and puzzled.”
This time they laughed together. May demanded to know why.
“Come on, you two, no private jokes. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing much,” Janet told her composedly. “We’re simply enjoying ourselves. What’s in this punch? It smells divine.”
“Heavens, child, don’t call it punch or the water kelpies will get you. That’s the wassail and I wish Granny would get a move on because my tongue’s hanging out. We don’t dare take a swallow till Squire fires the starting pistol. Everybody got some? Watch it, Cyril. Only one to a customer.”
“Then why don’t we just hand him the bowl?” quipped Herbert. “Ah, here’s Ludovic. Where is she, Lewd?”
“Mrs. Condrycke regrets that she is unable to join the party,” the butler reported.
“Why? She’s not sick is she?” asked Babs.
“No, madam. Mrs. Condrycke has misplaced her dentures and does not care to appear without them.”
“Oh, poor Granny!”
But Babs couldn’t help laughing and neither could anybody else. At last Squire wiped his eyes on a monogrammed linen handkerchief and said, “Then take one up to her, Ludovic, and we’ll toast her in absentia. Ready, everyone? To Granny, and a speedy recovery.”
“Not too speedy,” said Lawrence. “At least for the moment we can be reasonably sure her bark is worse than her bite.”
But he didn’t say it loudly and hardly anyone heard him except Madoc Rhys, who began to wonder about Granny.
There were any number of other toasts. Either each was funnier than the one before or else the wassail was pretty strong. Janet suspected the latter and drank her toasts in the tiniest possible sips. Madoc nursed his along, too, but nobody else was showing much restraint. Even Aunt Adelaide had risen from her swoon in time to join in the wassail and was swigging away with the best of them. All of a sudden, she grabbed Clara by the arm and cried, “Hark!”
“Is it out there?” cried Cyril in delight.
“It’s coming! I can feel it.”
“Draw the curtains, quick.”
Everybody rushed to pull aside the heavy draperies that had been drawn close to keep out the drafts from the large front windows.
“What’s
happening?” Janet asked Clara. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait. It’s coming. Aunt Addie always knows.”
“Look!” shouted Val. “There it is.”
Janet caught her breath. Not having grown up along the coast, she’d never seen a fire ship, although tales of these seagoing specters were rife in New Brunswick waters. But she’d heard tales enough, and she knew at once what she was seeing now. The Phantom Ship of Bay Chaleur was no fairy tale.
How silently it came; how swiftly; how terrifying its eerie glow. She could see flames licking at the shrouds, yet each mast and spar stood out clearly against the snow-covered rocks that ringed the bay for an instant before it vanished.
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured.
“You’re in luck, Janet,” Squire told her jovially. “Some people live out their whole lives around the Bay Chaleur and never once set eyes on the Phantom Ship. Some say it’s the ghost of a vessel called the John Craig, which was wrecked in a gale sometime during the eighteenth century. Some claim it’s a French ship, burned to keep it from falling into British hands during the Battle of the Restigouche. About seventeen-sixty, that would be. Anyway, I’m glad we were able to give you the treat.”
“Do you see it often, Squire?”
May answered Janet’s question for her father. “No, thank God. The ship is no treat to me, I can tell you. The first time I ever saw it, I fell off my horse the very next morning and broke my leg. The second was the night of the big gale that wrecked my boat and knocked down a big hackmatack that came right through my bedroom window and scared me half to death.”
“And the third time you married Herbert,” said Clara not quite so playfully as she might have. “Remember? I came down with measles and crashed the reception with spots all over me and gave them to Herbert and put a crimp in your honeymoon.”
“Clara always had an original sense of humor,” Squire laughed indulgently. “Come along, everybody, drink up. Ludovic, isn’t it almost time we went into the dining room?”
“Yes, sir. I was about to announce dinner when the fire ship arrived.”