Christmas Carol

by Speer, Flora

  “I feel right at home here,” Carol said to Nik. “As if I belong. I never did have much of a family, except for a few days once, long ago.”

  “They like you, too.” He accepted the soapy cup she offered, keeping his hand wrapped around hers for a moment more than was necessary. “It would make all of us, and especially me, happy if you were to stay here permanently.”

  “It won’t be allowed.” She had not confided to him the actual reason why she was in this future time, saying only that Aug had brought her there and would remove her when Aug decided the time was right. Since Nik was as convinced as every other member of his group that Lady Augusta was a witch with amazing powers, he did not dispute Carol’s explanation.

  “In that case, we ought to make the most of the time we have.” The way he looked at her sent blood into her cheeks and made her knees weak. Her hands went still on the plate she was washing. Nik’s long fingers slid into the basin of warm, soapy water, curling around her wrist and into her palm.

  “Nik, stop,” she breathed, “or you will have more chipped crockery.”

  “Do you think it would matter to me?” With laughter crinkling the corners of his green eyes, he began to make little circling motions over her palm and wrist. “Warm and moist and smooth,” he whispered, bending a little closer to her.

  “Nik!” How could he do this to her, make her ache for him without bestowing a single kiss on her mouth, without undressing her or touching her body? All of her erotic awareness was concentrated on her left hand and wrist. She thought she was going to faint.

  He removed the plate from her unresisting fingers, rinsed and dried it, then turned back to her with an innocent, boyish grin.

  “Have you any ideas on how you would like to continue our celebrating?” he asked.

  Carol could not answer. She stood with both hands in the basin of cooling water, staring at him until Jo bustled up to them.

  “All finished? I’ll dump the water, then.” Jo picked up the basin and headed for the pantry, where the only functional drain in the kitchen area was located. Because water was available from the taps for only an hour a day on a rotating schedule, the rinse water would not be thrown out. It would be saved in a big old kettle, to be heated and used as dishwashing water after the next meal.

  Nik took the dish towel and began to dry Carol’s hands. Still she could not speak. She thought he saw the answer to his question in her eyes.

  “Well, I don’t know about you two,” Jo said, bringing back the empty basin, “but I have no intention of going outside into the cold again when I can stay here in the kitchen and be warm.”

  “I have a surprise for you.” When Nik finally took his eyes away from Carol’s face to speak to Jo, Carol felt the loss as an emptiness in her chest, as though an important prop had been removed from her. Nik spoke to Jo as if he were completely unaware of the effect he was having on Carol. “The other day I discovered a bottle of ancient brandy down in the cellar. Since this is a special Solstice, I think we ought to open it tonight.”

  “If you are going into the cellar again,” said Jo, “then leave Car here. If she goes with you, we may not see either of you again until morning. If then.”

  “Shame on you, Jo. You are shocking our guest.” Nik disappeared in the direction of the cellar steps.

  “Are you shocked?” Jo asked Carol.

  “No, just bewildered. I don’t understand how he does what he does to me. Sorry,” Carol added at once. “That was an awfully personal remark.”

  “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 al
one 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.”

  “I have noticed how freely you use spices,” Carol said to Bas. “Does the Government by any chance hold the spice monopoly?”

  “Who else would hold it?” Bas demanded with cynical humor. “We are encouraged to use all spices freely, but especially cinnamon. The Government must have its profits, though I must say, the spices do improve the flavor of inferior food.”

  “Just as spices did in the Middle Ages,” Carol noted. Bas did not seem to hear her. He went on with his complaints about the available food.

  “This fall we bought a basket of apples and stored them in the cellar, but already they are so bruised and rotting that the only way to use them is to cut them up and cook them in puddings or applesauce. I can remember when good apples would last for most of the winter if they were kept cold.”

  “Obviously, the Government’s food distribution system isn’t what it should be. Do you ever get oranges?” Carol thought of all the fresh fruits and vegetables she had seen heaped into the grocers’ bins at holiday time in the world into which she had been born. She had always taken such lavish displays for granted. She wondered how Bas would react if she could show him the food halls at Harrods. Bas snorted in disgust at her question.