In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance

by Nathan, Sandy

  The trees accompanied him almost to the door, but fell back to reveal the ancient wooden portal with the half-round top. The whole was bound by iron. Hand-wrought hinges reached from one side of the heavy wood, almost to the other. The building had a single-wide entrance; portals were not thrown wide here.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m here to see the …” What did they call her? … “the Anchoress. About a horse.”

  “Come in, Mr. Watches. You may tie your horse to the ring by the entrance,” a middle-aged voice said through a grate in the door.

  Six stout, hand-forged rings were set into the stone of the walls. Once, the abbey had had more visitors. He tied Lightning by his lead rope, glad he’d left the halter over his bridle. “Lightning, you stay here. If I get lucky, we may be able to bring a present home to Cass.”

  When he turned around, a nun was standing by the open door. She wore the oatmeal homespun the others had and her hair was covered with something like a scarf.

  “I’ll take you to Mother.”

  He walked through the entrance and into a wide hall. Bigger than he thought it would be, the walls were stone, but the beamed ceiling was wood. Very old tapestries hung on a few of the walls, but the place wasn’t like one of those royal palaces on TV. It was like a medieval hall, all stone and very plain. Just what he thought an ancient abbey should look like.

  The nun took him to the chapel. Its walls were plastered, the wooden ceiling high and peaked. Little boxes were arranged around the sides.

  “Mother will talk to you in that confessional.” She indicated which one and left.

  Leroy crept toward it. Kathryn Duane was the Anchoress, he knew it.

  The confessional was made for medieval nuns, not late-twentieth century Watches. Leroy jammed himself in. When she saw what trouble he was having, the Anchoress laughed.

  “Oh, Mr. Watches, I didn’t realize what a trial this would be for you. We could meet elsewhere, if there was anywhere else that my vows would permit.”

  “No problem, ma’am. I’ll just pretend I’m getting into my coffin.”

  She laughed again, honest and full of mirth. “You are funny. I’ve gotten reports from the castle that you are funny indeed.”

  “Where we’re practicin’?”

  “Yes. I am in seclusion, but I know what’s happening in my district. Tell me about my daughter.” Melodious voice, cultured, and fine. Seldom used, indicated by a bit of hesitation and huskiness, as though she was learning how to form words again. Kathryn Duane was a lady.

  He told her about Cass’s rescue and current hospitalization, including the brain damage and Will not being able to speak to her or visit her. “No one can.”

  She drew in a breath at that. “I see my former husband hasn’t changed.”

  “He has changed, ma’am, just not all the way.”

  All he could see of the Anchoress was through tiny holes drilled in the wood between the two sides of the confessional. He saw hands with fine, long fingers. Oatmeal-colored cloth draped her form, like the other nuns’ habits. He saw the side of her head where the cloth wrapped her face, revealing none of her hair. A refined profile and sculptured nose. He saw scattered images, moving as she did.

  “You saved her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. An’ I’d do it again in a minute. I aim to marry her, if I can. I’m thinkin’ about bustin’ in to that place when I get back and takin’ her.”

  “I’d think carefully about that, Mr. Watches. Our friend Enzo is in play again. At the hospital, and here.”

  And then she blew his mind, telling him more than Tom had about what was going on at Ballentyne Manor.

  “Should I go get Arabella now?”

  “They would kill her. You must wait until the Holy Spirit gives you a sign. To move prematurely would cause death to both Arabella and Cass. You will know when, and you will know what to do.”

  “Oh, ma’am.”

  “Play the game, Mr. Watches. Play the hand that’s been dealt you. That’s all we can do. Play it perfectly and with intent to win. The Lord’s grace will arise and give you strength when you need it. God bless you, Mr. Watches.

  “You may have the mare. I bought her for Cass, hoping one day we’d be able to reunite. I see that is not possible. Take her, with my blessing and God’s. Tell Cass her mother sends her with love.

  “I’ll take her down to where we’re stayin’ to ship her.”

  “No. I’ll have her shipped. What about that marvelous horse you’re on? Do you want him?”

  “Yeah, I do, but I’m playin’ polo on him.”

  “After the game, someone will come for him.”

  “All right. I gotta ask, Ma’am. Are you safe?

  “Safer than anyone on Earth, Leroy.”

  He told her to call him if she needed him, he’d come from anywhere.

  “I know, my dear.

  “Thank you for what you’ve done for my daughter, Leroy. If she were to marry you, twenty years of my prayers would be answered. You have my blessing on your marriage, and all the love in my heart, my dear sir.”

  The interview was ended.

  He rode back to the castle. Mrs. Duane was everything he thought she’d be. Elegant. Serene. Loving. Holy. Healed. His tears fell on Lightning’s withers.

  33

  Arabella Abides

  At Clary’s debutante Ball, she’d told Leroy that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, marry him. Without words, hardly with gestures. She hurt him, and she’d hurt herself. Why things had to be the way they were? Arabella didn’t understand.

  Leroy had told her to fight her father and Dash, and she was determined to do that. Leroy had told her about Indian women carrying knives for protection. The story moved her deeply. If they could fight, so could she.

  She went to her doctor appointment the next day as she and Will had discussed. It was on the calendar; had been for ages. Her gynaecologist. No problem getting the new driver to take her to that and he certainly wasn’t snoopy about following her in.

  The new doctor helping her old practitioner was Clarence Beckham. He was a real doctor. From what Mr. Duane said, she thought it would all be play acting, but it wasn’t. He examined her and said that she had a growth that needed to be removed and biopsied immediately. His main practice was in London; he’d make the arrangements.

  “In two days, then?” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ve caught it in time. You’ll be able to have children, if we act.”

  Scared her to death. She had no trouble mustering tears when she told her mother. “I’m so afraid, Mama. What if I can’t have children?”

  Mama was running around, balmy, eyes bulging and twitching, jittery because of whatever Dash was giving her, but she got that right away. Arabella had better be able to produce children or Dash wouldn’t want her. “You must be fertile. And we mustn’t let your father or Dash know. Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No, Mummy, I’ve got Compton. That’s what a lady’s maid is for.” She could barely sit still in her mother’s day room, Arabella was so upset. “The doctor is sending the papers for me to sign at home so I can get in quicker. I can have it done while Dash is in Spain.”

  “Good show, dear. No need for Dash to know at all. And Peter is hunting this week. He doesn’t need to know, either.”

  Two nurses wearing uniforms and navy-blue capes came to the door with the hospital admission papers early the next morning. They were accompanied by a chirpy social worker in a poorly-fitting navy blue suit.

  “Just wanted to make sure things were fine at home, Lady Arabella. Doctor noticed the bruises on your arm yesterday. There’s been talk in the village of changes in the household. Might I speak to your mother?”

  Good Lord, did everyone know? Dash was going wild firing staff and changing tenancies on the properties. He had the gardens torn up now, claiming he hated roses.

  She went into her father’s library with the nurses while the social worker cornered her mother and asked about Arabe
lla’s bruises. She heard a bit of the interchange.

  “The girl has always been clumsy, ask anyone on the staff. Come here …” Her mother couldn’t remember the names of the new staff. “Fulton, come in here. Arabella’s always been a danger to herself, hasn’t she?”

  “I am absorbed in my duties, Your Grace. I see nothing.” One nurse closed the door so Arabella couldn’t hear anymore. She would always remember how Fulton’s upright stance and compressed mouth voiced his condemnation without words.

  “Your Ladyship,” the taller nurse spoke to her as she sat at her father’s desk, ready to sign. The other got out a notary’s kit. “Here are the papers. Sign on the pages with the tags. Yes, the entire set.” One nurse witnessed the signatures and then the other nurse notarized them. She had to sign in quite a few places. “We’ll take a set with us, and leave one for you. We’ll leave this set of documents here. No need to worry. We’ve done this sort of thing before. The procedure is tomorrow.”

  “That’s awfully fast, isn’t it?”

  “In this case, it needs to be fast. Don’t worry. Doctor is very experienced.” She gave her the map to the hospital and check-in instructions. “You may be in the hospital more than one night.”

  You would have thought the cancer was real, the ruse was so well done. The papers for the bank, empowering the solicitors to act for her and remove her assets from the depository and stock brokers, giving them free rein, really, were interlaced with a real-seeming medical report, with printouts of ultrasounds, and everything. Lab results. The results said she had cancer. Even knowing it was a sham, her hands shook. The taller nurse took the version that had all the legal permissions, and left a copy of a real-looking medical admission document with all the reports.

  Arabella wobbled back into the sitting room after the three women left. “Mother, are you all right?”

  Her mother was as rattled as a goose chased by hounds.

  “It’s communist,” Mama said. “How can they know everything that goes on? Doesn’t a person have the right to change staff in her own house? The village people are jealous, that’s it. They don’t live like we do. Jealous little bastards.” She gulped at a drink of what looked like straight Scotch.

  “Arabella, you know that your father and I only want the best for you. Papa would never harm you. The other night, when he grasped your arm, he had simply imbibed a bit too much. He’s been worried lately, with the rents declining, and taxes soaring. Your skin is so fair and delicate, it marks easily. He didn’t mean … a thing.”

  “As long as it never happens again, Mama. What might others say, who didn’t know Papa the way we do?” Those words registered with her mother, even through the pills and Scotch.

  Their driver took her to the hospital the next morning. Two nurses took her directly to her room, where she left some things so it would look like she was staying there. They escorted her straight out the back, disguised as an Arab woman in one of those things like a blue shroud that covered all of her. She got into a chauffeured Rolls and went straight to the underground garage of a legal firm in the best professional address in London.

  She was escorted to a very posh office and talked to three barristers who made their family fellow look a fool.

  The barristers posed difficult questions. “Your parents and Lord Dashiell are committing serious crimes in keeping you enclosed in your house. Your confinement is willful on their parts, without your consent, and its intent is to make you do something against your will, marry the Duke of Lancature.

  “Unlawful confinement, Your Ladyship, is a crime and a civil wrong. We can move against all of them in court.”

  Her brows pulled together and she began to have trouble breathing, which she did when terribly upset. But she stammered out, “It will take too long. They’re taking me to Spain after the polo game.”

  “That would be kidnapping, if you didn’t wish to go. The authorities can stop that. We can stop that.” Arabella was horrified. Coppers at the Manor? Accosting them at the airport?

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

  “There’s another tack to take. Deprivation of liberty is a serious offense, applied to those giving care to mentally-impaired individuals. We can act on knowledge that someone might be confined. We can act now.”

  “But I’m not mentally incapacitated.”

  “I’m not talking about you. Your parents are not behaving normally. Dashiell Pondichury is influencing them somehow, restricting their behavior. We could have people look at their mental soundness. Think about it, Your Ladyship. You need help.”

  The second barrister spoke, “The other issue concerns your family’s wealth. Do you know if your parents have accepted money from Dashiell Pondichury?”

  “I think they have, but I don’t know.”

  “Have they sold or mortgaged any of your estates to him or anyone else?”

  “I don’t know.” Her silly eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry to be such a fool, but I don’t know anything about our family’s finances.”

  “That’s all right, Lady Arabella, you’ve done the right thing with your own. You should know that mortgaging properties on the National Heritage List to foreign nationals is regulated. Dashiell Pondichury is a citizen of Spain, having given up his English citizenship several years ago. Has Pondichury registered the mortgages?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice became tiny. She didn’t know Dash wasn’t English anymore. How could she be so ignorant? And how could she charge Mama and Papa with serious crimes? Or with being mentally incompetent? She could have Dash charged, but if she moved against him, her parents would be implicated. And he had so many terrifying men around him. The servants. His polo team. Her cheeks flushed and she began to feel faint.

  “Your Ladyship, you need to know how serious your situation is.”

  She did faint. They brought smelling salts.

  “I think we should inform the authorities on your behalf. Now.”

  Mummy and Daddy kidnappers? “I can’t accuse my parents. They can’t go to prison.”

  “As you wish. If you don’t wish the police to be involved, Mr. Duane suggested a private security force be in place at the polo match.”

  Did she blink? Nod? ‘Bella couldn’t remember. Everything was so awful.

  When she went home two days later, her money was safe. Arabella didn’t know where her money was. The solicitors had created a corporation to hold it and placed it where no one could find it. Her father or Dash could beat her to death, and she couldn’t tell them where it was. She didn’t know. She knew what she was worth. She had enough money to support them in some style, not the way they had lived with the London house and the Manor, but well.

  Except for the disturbing issues the barristers brought up, the trip to London was a huge success. However, Dash sacked Compton when they got home. Dash found out somehow. His agents went to the Gynaecological Hospital and checked that she had been there and that her “procedure” was scheduled and completed. It was; records existed. But they saw through them somehow. Or suspected her of something else. An assignation? Meeting Leroy?

  Esmeralda was her new maid, one of those odd, dark people from Dash’s vineyards in Spain. Esmeralda eyed her with the most peculiar expression as she helped her dress. Frightening and somehow reptilian.

  They had replaced most of the staff. One of the new people stopped her whenever she tried to leave the house. They didn’t say anything, just barred her way. When she picked up a phone, she could hear talking and breathing on the line. Arabella was truly a prisoner. She should have told the barristers to act; they were right. She needed help. But it was too late.

  She wanted to tell Leroy that she didn’t care what her father said or did; she would marry him, if he would have her. If. Nothing had ever felt like dancing in Leroy’s arms. She couldn’t give it up because her father was a … bigot.

  But Leroy had disappeared. Someone said he’d gone to Scotland to get up a polo team. She didn’t know if that was
true. Arabella thought of trying to find him, but everything changed too fast. Dash moved into the estate. Her father seemed positively enamored with him, letting him run the estate and all concerned with it.

  In a home with almost one hundred bedrooms, dodging the attentions of an unwanted suitor wouldn’t have been hard. But Dash was persistent and good at cornering her in odd places. Sniffing her out in wings of the mansion she hadn’t visited in years. At first, he was quite circumspect with her. Tender, even. But that changed.

  “You’ll come to love me, Arabella. You’ll love me and do anything I ask. Things you can’t imagine, darling.” He stroked her hair. “So fine. Your hair and skin. The perfect Englishwoman. As soon as we get some of the chub off of you, you’ll be a heartbreaker.’ He reached out, so fast, and pinched the flesh of her side, hard. He laughed.

  Her side hurt like blazes. She felt dirty and ugly. He thought she was fat. Arabella had always thought she was fat. Only Leroy had made her feel lovely.

  Tears gathering in her eyes, she ran down to the armory in the basement. The Native American women carried foot-long knives. But they knew how to use them. What would she do with a knife? The police said that carrying a pistol did not increase the safety of the person carrying it; a lawbreaker could take it from them.

  What could she do? She knew nothing about self-defense. “Oh, Leroy, I wish you were here. I’m so afraid. How can I protect myself?” She wasn’t safe in her home. Arabella knew that Dash would have no compunctions about assaulting her if she crossed him. Or raping her either, marriage or none.

  They lived like that, Arabella sneaking and hiding and trying to keep her little brother with her. He marched around, eyes fever-bright, swaggering like Dash. When the Spanish horses came, she knew she’d lost. Her brother stayed at the barn, worshipping the animals and the men who brought them. Out of anyone’s control—but Dash’s.