Considering her dislike of any occasion that required the distribution of gifts or money, it was regarded by all who knew her to be perfectly in character for Lady Augusta Marlowe to take her leave of this world on the 18th day of December. By doing so she neatly avoided having to hand out Christmas presents to her servants or to the few tradespeople who were still willing to deliver groceries, or wine or spirits, or the occasional garment, to her door. That is to say, to the door assigned for servants and tradesmen. The front door—original to the house and carved of solid oak—was seldom used anymore. Even Carol Noelle Simmons, who was Lady Augusta’s paid companion, and thus might have passed with impunity through the mansion’s chief portal had she chosen to do so, almost always used the servants’ entrance instead. However, on Tuesday, the twenty-first day of December, Crampton the butler was kept busy opening and closing the heavy front door, for this was the day of Lady Augusta’s funeral.
Carol was forced to admire the old girl’s spunk. Early in the autumn Lady Augusta had declared with all the shrill force of which she was capable that she would not be taken to a nursing home or to a hospital. She absolutely defied her despairing physician on that point. Nor, as it turned out, did she intend to pay for professional nursing care at home. Thus, it had fallen to Carol and the few remaining servants to bathe and feed her, and to turn her when she became incapable of moving on her own.
Lady Augusta’s fury at her ever-increasing helplessness had fallen upon all of her staff, but most especially on Carol. Cantankerous to the end, during the last few months of her life Lady Augusta had even denied Carol the free day each week that she was supposed to have.
While not daring to disobey her employer, Carol had resented the deprivation. She had precious little money to spend—Lady Augusta considered room and board to be a large part of her servants’ wages and Carol was, in Lady Augusta’s opinion, no more than an overpaid servant—but London offered pleasures that cost nothing at all. The only requirements were a comfortable pair of walking shoes, an umbrella, and a weatherproof outer garment. But since Lady Augusta had become permanently bedridden at the end of September, Carol’s solitary walks had been denied to her. Those treasured hours could soon begin again, for Carol stood now, in late afternoon of the day of Lady Augusta’s funeral, in the chilly, pale yellow drawing room of Marlowe House, bidding farewell to the mourners.
There were few of them and they departed ill-fed. When she knew her end was fast approaching, Lady Augusta had stipulated that only tea and biscuits should be served at the funeral “feast.” Even in death her commandments were not to be disobeyed. Carol wondered if the servants feared Lady Augusta would return to haunt them if they opened a bottle of sherry for the guests as she herself had suggested the day before.
“Certainly not, Miss Simmons,” Crampton had responded to Carol’s remark with barely concealed horror. “There will be no wine served. Lady Augusta personally ordered the menu for this occasion and we will, as always, follow her directions to the letter.”
And so they had. A small coal fire burned in the grate, a plate of biscuits and a pot of tea sat upon a tray on one of the delicate Regency-style tables, and Carol felt certain the drawing room was every bit as cold and cheerless as it must have been in the early eighteen hundreds when Marlowe House was first built.
Now the Reverend Mr. Lucius Kincaid, who was the rector of nearby St. Fiacre’s Church and who had performed the funeral service, approached Carol. Assuming that he was about to take his leave, Carol put out her hand to shake his. But the clergyman apparently had no intention of departing from Marlowe House until he had extracted some information from Carol.
“I do hope,” he said, “that Lady Augusta remembered St. Fiacre’s Bountiful Board in her will.” He was a tall, thin man with dark hair going gray and clothes that did not fit him very well. Carol regarded him with distaste for, like her late employer, she was not interested in religion. In fact, Carol could not remember Lady Augusta ever entering a church. It was Crampton who had suggested that the Reverend Mr. Kincaid be asked to conduct the funeral service.
“We have not yet heard anything about Lady Augusta’s charitable bequests,” said the rector’s wife, who joined them. In contrast to her nondescript husband, the blond, blue-eyed Mrs. Kincaid wore a fashionable outfit with a remarkably short skirt and a hat that might have come right out of the American West. “I must confess that we at St. Fiacre’s are feeling a bit desperate right now. There always seems to be such need at Christmastime, so much that ought to be done to help the poor. We stand ready to provide what is required, if only we have the funds. Or at least a pledge.”
“I am not authorized to make donations in Lady Augusta’s name,” Carol said coldly. “If you want money, speak to her solicitor.”
“Then perhaps you yourself would care to contribute to our holiday efforts,” urged the rector, giving Carol a smile she chose not to return.
“I do not,” Carol snapped.
“Surely,” Lucius Kincaid persisted, “having received from Lady Augusta generous recompense for your devoted care of her over these last five years and more, you will be disposed at this holy season to give liberally to help the less fortunate.”
Biting her tongue to keep herself from retorting that there was no one less fortunate than herself, Carol glared at the Reverend Mr. Kincaid. Until meeting him on the day of Lady Augusta’s death she had not known that people stiff talked the way he did. With his cultivated accent the man sounded as if he belonged in the Victorian Age. How dare he hit her up for money at a funeral?
“St. Fiacre’s Church,” Carol murmured, taking a nasty pleasure in what she was about to say. “I know who St. Fiacre was.”
“In this nation of gardeners, most people do,” the rector responded, “since he is the patron saint of gardeners.”
“That’s not all,” said Carol. “St. Fiacre was a typical woman-hating, sixth-century Irish hermit-monk. As I recall, he made a rule forbidding all females from entering his precious enclosure.” She was not sure why she was deliberately being so unpleasant. She usually had better manners than she was displaying on this occasion, but something about the Kincaids grated on her. For a reason she could not understand, they were making her feel guilty. She did not like the feeling.
“Saints are notoriously difficult people, whose very saintliness makes everyone around them uncomfortable,” Mrs. Kincaid said, laughing as if to show she was not offended by Carol’s rudeness. “There is even a legend about a noblewoman who once broke St. Fiacre’s rule. She actually dared to walk into the enclosure surrounding his hut and attempted to speak with him. Of course, she immediately suffered a dreadful death. But that happened, if it happened at all, more than fourteen hundred years ago. It would take a foolish woman indeed to still be angry over attitudes that existed so far in the past. In these modern times, we ought instead to forgive poor old St. Fiacre his sins, if any, against the gentler sex, and perhaps occasionally invoke his horticultural spirit when we are having trouble with our gardens.” She finished her speech with a smile.
“I don’t garden,” Carol said. “I never have.” She watched with pleasure as Mrs. Kincaid’s smile vanished.
“If you would like to learn,” Lucius Kincaid offered in a friendly way, “we can always put volunteers to good use in the little garden in our churchyard when spring arrives.” • “No, thanks. I’m a city girl.” The Kincaids would probably expect her to donate plants to their wretched garden. Carol had no intention of throwing any money away on flowers.
“Look,” Carol said, “it’s none of your business, but just so you won’t waste your time asking me again, Lady Augusta left me nothing.”
“Nothing at all?” gasped the rector’s wife.
“Nothing.” Carol was still reacting with rudeness to what she perceived as prying questions. “Since you appear to be indecently interested in the will, let me tell you what the solicitor told me and the other servants this morning. Lady Augusta did leave small amounts to Crampton and to Mrs. Marks, the cook. But Nell the chambermaid, Hettie the scullery maid, and myself receive nothing but room and board for one month after Lady Augusta’s death, during which time we are to search for new employment.”
“Dear me.” The rector appeared to be in shock. “Not a generous arrangement, I must say.”
“You’re damned right about that. I hope you weren’t expecting Lady Augusta to be generous.” Carol included both the rector and his wife in her mirthless grin. “She was the stingiest, coldest woman I nave ever known.”
“Now, now, Miss Simmons,” Lucius Kincaid said. “Whatever your personal disappointment in this matter, one must always speak well of the dead.”
“That’s what I was doing. I admired Lady Augusta’s stinginess, and the way she never took any nonsense from anyone. She lived and died the way she wanted and I say, good for her.”
“She lived for the most part alone, and died alone, too, save for her employees,” the rector noted, adding in one of his old-fashioned phrases, “One would hope to have at one’s side at the end of life a close relative, or at least a dear friend.”
“Instead she had me, and she didn’t think I was worth much. She proved that by her non-bequest.” Carol did not add what she was thinking, that everyone else she had ever known had also assumed that Carol Noelle Simmons wasn’t worth much. Not unless she had plenty of money to boost her charms into something interesting. She made herself stop thinking about her own past. She had promised herself long ago to put out of her mind the uncaring man who—
“Speaking of close relatives,” said the rector’s wife, intruding into Carol’s unpleasant ruminations, “why isn’t Nicholas Montfort here? I believe he is Lady Augusta’s only living relative?”
“Yes,” her husband put in. “Mr. Montfort is Lady Augusta’s nephew, her only sister’s child.”
With an effort, Carol refrained from asking if her two inquisitors had been researching the Marlowe-Montfort genealogy. Instead, she offered a reasonably polite explanation for the absence of Nicholas Montfort.
“Mr. Montfort was unable to leave Hong Kong immediately. Business interests keep him there. He sent a telegram urging us to go on with the funeral in his absence. He expects to arrive in London sometime next week to meet with the solicitor about the estate.”
“One would think,” said the rector’s wife, “that he would have wanted the funeral delayed until he could be present.”
“No doubt Mr. Montfort was as fond of his late aunt as were most people.” Carol’s eyes narrowed as she addressed the rector. “Come to think of it, I never noticed you visiting Lady Augusta while she was alive. Would you have asked her for a donation?”
“I did, during a pastoral visit several years ago. She refused to give any money to St. Fiacre’s and said she never wanted to see me in her house again. Still, in Christian charity, one would have thought—in her will—and here it is Christmastime.…” Lucius Kincaid paused meaningfully.
“Oh, yes.” Carol could not keep the sneer out of her voice. In truth, she did not try very hard, for her exasperation with this ecclesiastical couple was increasing rapidly. “The holiday. I am afraid I would be the last person to help you in the name of the season. I don’t think much of Christmas.”
“Not think much of Christmas?” Mrs. Kincaid echoed.
“That’s right.” Carol had had enough of being questioned. Noting the glance that passed between husband and wire, she added, “The way Christmas is celebrated these days is just an excuse for rampant commercialism. There’s no real spirit left in the holiday anymore.”
“If you believe that, then you have been spending the holiday with the wrong people,” the Reverend Mr. Kincaid informed her. “I know of places where the true spirit of Christmas dwells all year long.”
“Really?” Carol gave him a scathing look. “Well, then, you just have a happy little Christmas in one of those places. But don’t ask me to celebrate with you, and don’t expect me to donate to your favorite charity.” With that, she turned her back on the pair, not caring if her words or the action had shocked or distressed them yet again. She had her own reasons for hating the Christmas holiday, but she wasn’t about to discuss them with the Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife.
Carol wished that people would not make assumptions about her financial state as the rector had done. People had been doing it all her life. Young men, seeing her parents’ lavish lifestyle at the pinnacle of New York City’s newly rich society during the nineteen-eighties, assumed she would inherit great wealth. Carol had believed it herself. But when, through the machinations of his business associates who had involved themselves in illegal stock transactions, her father had gone bankrupt, the protestations of eternal devotion had ended abruptly and those same young men—including the one special man with whom she had foolishly imagined herself in love—had lost all interest in her. Her girlfriends had also begun to shun her. And not one of those so-called friends who had assumed that her father’s wealth was endless had lifted a hand to help him in his struggles to repay his partners’ debts. Her mother’s response to financial ruin had been divorce and remarriage to a man who was more wealthy than Henry Simmons had ever been. The former Mrs. Simmons had then departed on a long honeymoon cruise. Carol did not know her mother’s present whereabouts, and after their last bitter quarrel, she really did not care.
His fortune gone, deserted by his wife, Henry Alwyn Simmons had taken an antique gun from his collection and blown out his brains. The deed had been done on Christmas Eve, which also happened to be Carol’s 21st birthday.
Left alone and virtually penniless, Carol had begun searching for a job, only to discover that in the recession-bound economy of the late nineteen-eighties, her previously sheltered life had left her unsuited to do any kind of practical work. Computers were a mystery to her. She might have taught French, which she spoke well, or English literature or history, but none of the schools to which she applied displayed interest in hiring a young woman with no teaching experience.
She worked for a few months as a waitress, but hated the job except for the food she was able to hide away in her purse each day to eat later in her rented room. She quit the job when the restaurant manager made it all too clear to her what she would have to do to earn a raise in her meager paycheck. She hadn’t been hungry enough to sell herself for food or for a promise of money.
Being of a thrifty disposition, she had managed to save a little cash, but she knew it wouldn’t last long. It was then, when she was wondering if she would end as her father had done, that she saw the ad for a paid companion. The job was in London and offered room, board, and a small salary. The chance to get out of New York had been an added incentive. After a lengthy phone interview, Carol had been offered the job. She’d possessed just enough money to buy a one-way economy-class ticket from New York to London.
Fresh from an overnight flight, with her single suitcase in one hand and the address of her new employer in the other, Carol had arrived early one morning on Lady Augusta Marlowe’s doorstep. At first she’d been greatly relieved to have found a position with such a prestigious British family. She’d needed only a week of employment at Marlowe House before she understood why Lady Augusta had been forced to advertise in the United States. Her stinginess and ill temper were legendary. But Lady Augusta’s character had suited Carol’s mood at the time, and gradually she’d adapted to the difficult old lady’s eccentricities.
In fact, the two of them had been remarkably similar. Like Lady Augusta, Carol knew—she believed it in her deepest heart—that the only thing that mattered on this earth was money. She had seen in her own life what money could buy—for proof, she needed to look no further than her many suitors and her extravagant mother—and she knew from the defections of her would-be lovers from her side, and from her mother’s easy desertion of her father, exactly what happened when the money disappeared.
Which was why she so respected Lady Augusta, who harbored no illusions about human affections. Or the value of charity. Or the need to celebrate holidays with an extravaganza of feasting and gifts and parties. Especially Christmas, which was nothing more than commercial nonsense designed to trick ordinary, hardworking fools out of their money. Carol heartily agreed with Lady Augusta on all of these points, if not on the matter of leaving bequests to one’s employees.
“That was the last of them, Miss Simmons. I’ll send Nell to clear the tea things away.” Crampton entered the drawing room, and suddenly Carol realized that she had been so deep in thought that, without noticing what she was doing, she must have bid farewell to the Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife, to the solicitor, and to the five or six other people who had attended the funeral. “Will you be taking dinner in your room again tonight?”
“No, I’m going out on the town.” Her tone was so sarcastic that Crampton’s eyebrows flew upward at the sound.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Simmons?” Disapproval was implicit in the butler’s voice.
“Of course I’ll eat in my room. Don’t I always?” When she first arrived at Marlowe House, Carol had been expected to dine each evening in the formal dining room with her employer, but after Lady Augusta had taken to her bed during her final illness, Carol had asked for a tray to be brought to her own room so she could eat there. It was the easiest way she could think of to give herself an hour or so of privacy at the end of her busy and frequently upsetting days with her irascible patient.
Leaving the drawing room, Carol started up the wide, curving staircase. As her hand skimmed along the banister, it seemed to her that the polished wood vibrated beneath her fingertips. Of course, it was just foolish imagining on her part. She was overtired and suffering from the inevitable letdown that came after a funeral. Not to mention the letdown of knowing that Lady Augusta had not chosen to remember her companion’s five and a half years of honest service with a bequest.
“It didn’t have to be a lot of money,” Carol muttered, reaching the top of the main stairs and walking along the hall toward the smaller flight of steps that led to the uppermost levels of Marlowe House. “A hundred pounds, two hundred at the most. Ye gods, that would only have been five hundred dollars or so, and everybody knows she was fabulously wealthy. She could have let me know that she appreciated all I did for her.”
A low, cynical laugh came from the direction of Lady Augusta’s suite of rooms. Carol paused for a moment or two, standing at the closed door. All was silence.
“Now I’m hearing ghosts,” Carol said aloud. “There is no one in that room. I know it.” Nonetheless, she opened the door. Within, the curtains were drawn, so the room was dim and shadowy. Carol fumbled for the light switch and found it, and electric bulbs glowed in the crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the ceiling. “Just as I thought. No one is here. Nor in the bathroom, either. Nor in the dressing room.” Carol moved from bath to mirrored dressing room and back to the bedroom, still talking to herself.
“Lady Augusta was the kind of personality that impresses itself on everything around it and hangs on after death. That’s what I’m reacting to. Tomorrow I’ll tell Nell to open the windows in here and do a thorough cleaning to get rid of the last traces of the old girl, including that awful lavender perfume of hers.”
Carol started for the hall, then paused. Though she knew it was impossible because she had just searched the suite, a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades warned that there was someone else in the bedroom with her. She spun around, but the room was still empty. From somewhere a cold draft blew across her ankles and she caught a whiff of lavender fragrance. Quickly she turned off the light, stepped into the hall, and shut the door firmly behind her. Then she hurried to the end of the hall, where the stairs to the upper floors were. She refused to look back as she went upward toward her own room.
It had once been a governess’s room, and thus fell into an indeterminate status between outright servants’ quarters and a chamber that might have been given to an insignificant guest when Marlowe House was overcrowded. The room was at the front of the house, and a pair of windows allowed Carol a view of the square, which in summer was pleasant enough with trees, grass, and a flower garden, all confined within a wrought-iron fence. At the moment a small fir tree in the center of the square was decorated for Christmas. Its colored lights shone merrily through the early evening fog and drizzle. The weather was more like Halloween than Christmastime. It was a fine night for ghosts, if Carol had believed in them. She did not. There was little Carol did believe in anymore. She closed the curtains against the cheerful holiday display.
Nell, the chambermaid, had already been in to start a fire in the old fireplace to take the chill off the room. The flames threw dancing shadows across the ceiling and the walls. It was a simple room, with an old-fashioned four-poster bed that had once boasted frayed velvet hangings. The dust and the musty odor of the antique fabric had periodically sent her into fits of sneezing, so Carol had personally removed the hangings shortly after her arrival at Marlowe House. Besides the bed, the room also contained a chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and an upholstered wing chair next to the fireplace. A floor lamp, a footstool, and a small table, all of them set next to the wing chair, completed the furnishings. The bathroom was three doors down the hall.
Carol did not care that the room was bare of pretty objects, that the bed looked naked without its hangings, or that the old Turkish carpet and the green bedspread were both threadbare. She could think of no good reason to spend her hard-earned money on frivolous decorations. The Spartan bareness of her room suited her repressed spirit—though she would not have said she was repressed. Carol thought of herself as sensible in the face of adversity.
Having no further obligations for that evening, she changed from her plain, dark dress and low-heeled pumps into a flannel nightgown and a warm bathrobe.
“Here’s your dinner, Miss Simmons.” Nell appeared with a tray. “Oh, are you ready for bed so soon? I wish you would come down to eat with the rest of us. It’s ever so much more pleasant in the kitchen, and warmer, too. You’ll freeze way up here all alone.”
“No, I won’t.” Carol motioned to her to put the tray on the table next to the wing chair. “That will be all, Nell.”
“You oughten to be alone so much.” Nell took no offense at the similarity of Carol’s tone to the way in which Lady Augusta had always spoken to the chambermaid. Nell’s youthful warmth could not be diminished by anyone else’s coldness, and her broad, rosy face showed her concern for Carol. “Especially not tonight, you shouldn’t be up here by yourself. Not after the funeral and all.”
“I’m tired. I want to be left alone.”
“All right, then, if you’re sure. But tomorrow, you ought to come to the kitchen and join our plans. We’re hopin’ to make a nice little Christmas feast while we’re all still together, and you’re invited, of course. Well, good night, miss. Sleep tight now.”
“Good night, Nell.” As Lady Augusta had often remarked, Nell did not know her place in the household hierarchy. According to Lady Augusta, Nell’s most improper friendliness was a sign of the degenerating times. In Lady Augusta’s day, servants had known their places and stayed in them. If she could have heard Nell’s invitation, Lady Augusta probably would have declared that no lady’s companion should have been invited into the kitchen to share a Christmas feast concocted by servants. While not entirely agreeing with Lady Augusta’s undemocratic attitudes, Carol had no interest in holiday celebrations of any kind, whether above or below stairs.
Carol sat down before the fire, put her feet upon the low stool, and took from her dinner tray a bowl of steaming soup. Mrs. Marks was an excellent cook, seeming to find challenge rather than discouragement in the tight budget which Lady Augusta allowed her. Carol spooned up rich chicken broth with thin slices of mushroom in it and wondered if the staff was eating as well as she. Lifting the domed metal cover over her dinner plate, she discovered a healthy portion of the chicken itself, with peas, diced beets, and a small pile of rice. A wedge of apple tart completed the meal, along with a large pot of tea.
“Foolish extravagance.”
Had she spoken aloud? Surely not. But there was no one in the room except herself to make such a remark. Save for the crackling of the fire, all was silent. The kitchen was too far away for any noise from that area to disturb her.
Or for anyone to hear her if she called.
Telling herself that she was indeed overtired as well as overstressed, Carol disregarded the odd little shiver that ran down her spine. She re-covered the plate of chicken to keep it warm, and resumed eating her soup. She certainly had good reason to be nervous, but not about being upstairs alone in a big old house. Her future prospects were enough to scare anyone. Should she look for a new job in London, or should she spend precious money to fly back to New York and try to find employment there? As Lady Augusta’s companion she had taught herself to type, and she had devised a rudimentary version of shorthand so that she could tend to her employer’s scanty correspondence, but she did not think either skill would be much help to her in the world outside Marlowe House.
Why in heaven’s name didn’t all parents insist that their daughters learn early in life how to do some kind of useful work? Carol’s mother had been too busy with social life, and her father too preoccupied with business and with earning vast sums of money, to pay much attention to their child, and so Carol had drifted through her girlhood and teen years with neither goals nor ambition. All that was required of her by her parents was that she look pretty, be polite, and not embarrass them. Being possessed of light brown hair with a natural curl to it, clear gray eyes, a nicely rounded figure, and a rather quiet personality, she had never caused them any trouble.
“And I’m paying for all of that now,” she muttered, staring into the soup bowl. “Until six years ago this week, my life was just one long vacation. Now look at me. Oh, how I wish I had a million dollars! No—ten million. Out of all the money Dad made for himself and others, that wouldn’t be much.”
What would you do with it if you had it?
“What? Who said that?” She nearly spilled her soup when she sat up straight to look around the familiar room. Of course, there was no one to be seen. She hadn’t heard the words. It was just the wind, sighing down the chimney. Carol sat back again, pulling the lapels of her bathrobe closer to her throat. She dipped her spoon into the soup bowl. If she didn’t finish it soon, the soup would be cold, not to mention the chicken and vegetables still awaiting her on the tray.
The wind? Half an hour ago, the night had been still and foggy with a gently drizzling rain. On such a night, how could there be wind whistling down the chimney? Or rattling her bedchamber door as it was doing now? Carol paused, soup spoon suspended halfway between bowl and lips, wondering about the sudden meteorological change. The wind howled again, shaking the windowpanes and making the faded old curtains billow into the room.
And then Lady Augusta stood before the fireplace. At first, the figure Carol saw was semi-transparent. Gradually Lady Augusta became more substantial, though Carol noted that the firelight cast no illumination upon her. Whatever this apparition might be, it was a creature of shadows, not of light. Whether it was real or whether she was only imagining it, Carol could not tell. Fascinated but not yet frightened, she stared at the figure.
Lady Augusta looked much as Carol remembered her from their first days together five and a half years previously, when her employer had been old but not yet ravaged by illness and the approach of death. Her gray hair, which was surprisingly thick for a woman of more than 70 years, was pulled into her customary knot at the back of her head. She was clothed in pale lavender chiffon robes that flowed and drifted around her as if blown by a gentle breeze.
“Good evening, Carol.” Lady Augusta’s voice was the same as Carol remembered, yet there was a slight difference to its timbre, a muting of its usual sharp querulousness.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be dead.” Carol’s hand shook, spilling chicken broth onto her robe. The soup was now entirely too cold to eat, so she put the bowl on the tray, then looked back at the spot where Lady Augusta had appeared. She was still there.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Carol said, keeping her voice hard and steady. “Go away.”
“If you do not believe in me, then I am not here,” Lady Augusta replied with indisputable logic. “If I am not here, then I cannot go away.”
“All right then, you’re a figment of my imagination or a message from my subconscious mind. Tell me what I ought to know and then leave.”
“That is precisely what I intend to do.” To Carol’s further amazement, Lady Augusta now sat down directly across the fireplace from Carol’s own seat, in a spot ‘where there was no chair. Lady Augusta simply bent her ghostly ectoplasm and sat, disposing her lavender robes about her as if she were in her elegant drawing room, taking her place upon one of the silk-upholstered sofas. When she was finished, the hem of her gown still rippled in the non-existent breeze. She leaned against the back of the sofa that was not there. To Carol, the effect was most unsettling.
“What—what do you want?” Carol did not sound as assured as she intended, because her voice cracked. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Are you really a ghost, or am I dreaming?”
“Make up your mind, Carol. Am I a figment of your imagination or a dream? Is your unconscious mind trying to tell you something? Am I a ghost? Or am I real? I cannot be all of those possibilities at once.” Lady Augusta inclined her head, awaiting Carol’s answer.
“You have forgotten another possibility,” Carol said. “Your sudden appearance in my bedroom could be a nasty trick that’s being played on me. Perhaps you are a holographic projection of some kind.”
“Who would do such a thing to you?” asked Lady Augusta. “The servants? They are too unimaginative. Besides, they like you, although why they should I do not know. You are almost as unfriendly to them as I was. No, Carol, in your heart of hearts you know that I am real.”
“But are you really dead?”
“Oh, yes.” Lady Augusta smiled. Carol could not recall ever seeing her smile while she was alive. Before Carol could recover from this new amazement, Lady Augusta continued. “Death is a most remarkable sensation. In some respects it is quite delightful. I no longer feel physical pain and that is a great relief to me.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I know your last few days were awful.”
“There is something far more dreadful than physical pain,” said Lady Augusta.
“I can’t think what that might be,” Carol remarked absently. One part of her mind was still assessing the ghostly appearance of her visitor in an attempt to discover exactly how this remarkable trick was being played on her. For the life of her, she could not think how it was done, but then Carol was not well informed on the subject of electronics technology. Nor, as Lady Augusta pointed out, did she know of anyone who might have reason to do such a thing to her.
“Pay attention, Carol.” Lady Augusta had raised her voice a notch, and Carol jerked her thoughts back to what the ghost was telling her. “As I was saying, worse than any physical pain is the unbearable anguish of knowing that I never fulfilled the true purpose of my life. I let youthful disappointments harden my heart against life and love, as you also have done.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Carol cried, grabbing at the arms of her chair and holding on tight. “You never bothered to ask about my life before I came to work for you. You were too glad to have a companion who was willing to take the job for cheap wages to make any fuss over who I might be.” Carol shut her mouth on the additional complaint she wanted to make, about the way in which she had been treated in Lady Augusta’s will.
“You poor, foolish girl,” said Lady Augusta, shaking her head sadly. “Of course I had your past investigated. Do you think that I, mistrustful character that I was in life, would take the chance of hiring someone who might rob me or murder me in my bed? Really, Carol, you are entirely too naive and, like your father, you are much too weak-spirited to fight back when life deals you a bad blow.”
“Don’t you dare insult my father! He was an honest man!”
“Indeed he was, and he regrets his suicidal weakness now.”
“Now? Have you met my father? In that— that—wherever you are?”
“Where I am,” Lady Augusta responded, “all motives are understood, all excuses pardoned, though earthly mistakes must be exonerated. Yes, I have been in contact with your father, and I know everything there is to know about your youthful life. I do wish you had not allowed that selfish young man to take such terrible advantage of your affection for him. He did not value you properly, you know.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Carol was out of her chair, standing over Lady Augusta as if to threaten her. “I won’t talk about Robert.”
“Of course you won’t. You learned through sad experience what a mistake it was to allow him so much of your heart. Robert Drummond’s affection was not for you as a person but for your father’s money and power. No man has ever loved you for yourself.”
“Stop this!” Carol was shaking with rage. The mere mention of Robert Drummond’s name was enough to chill her blood, as though the shadow of his old betrayal could still cast its blight over her life.
“I see that I have distressed you,” said Lady Augusta. “Perhaps I was wrong to raise the subject at all. Some of my former tactlessness remains with me, I fear. I must work on improving that particular trait. Dear girl, do please sit down and stop looking as if you would like to murder me. What do you think you could possibly do to hurt me now?”
Still angry, and unappeased by what amounted to a rare apology from her late employer, Carol put out her hand to grab at Lady Augusta’s arm. Her hand went right through Lady Augusta’s seated figure. With a frightened gasp Carol snatched back her hand, which felt as if it had been plunged into ice water.
“You can’t be real,” Carol insisted.
“I am real,” her ghostly visitor countered, “but real in ways that you will not be able to comprehend for many years yet. Sit down, Carol, and allow me to explain why I have been sent to you.”
“Sent?” Carol sat without taking her eyes off Lady Augusta.
“As I was saying, I wasted my life on earth in miserliness, and in anger and willful misunderstandings, when I might have known love and spent my wealth in bringing happiness to others.”
“Sure,” Carol replied with considerable cynicism. “I know all about it. If you have money and you are willing to spend it, everybody loves you. I found that much out before I turned twenty-one. But it’s not real love. People just pretend, the way Robert did, because they are hoping to get their hands on your money. I admired you, Lady Augusta, because you never let that kind of parasite take advantage of you.”
“I can see you have a lot to learn.” Lady Augusta regarded her sadly. “Not everyone is interested solely in money. You need to learn that the heart and the spirit are what matter, not earthly possessions. Carol, have you never wondered why you have always been so unhappy?”
“I know why,” Carol told her, “and since you claim to know all about my life, I shouldn’t have to explain it to you. By the way, you are partly to blame.”
“Because I did not leave you any money in my will?” Again Lady Augusta smiled her ghostly smile. “Yes, in that document I was entirely too miserly toward all who were in my employ. I am paying for it now.”
“Good,” said Carol in a nasty tone of voice. “Serves you right. You were grossly unfair to me.”
“Will you be silent and listen to me, or not?” asked Lady Augusta.
“Go ahead.” Carol tried to repress the anger she could still feel simmering inside her, threatening to burst forth once more. “Say what you want to say.”
“Thank you.” Lady Augusta inclined her head with all the graciousness of a grand duchess. “Because of the unloving way in which I misspent my life, I am now doomed to wander the earth for all eternity, observing happiness that I cannot share, witnessing need that I am no longer able to alleviate.”
“Alleviating the needs of others never bothered you much when you were alive,” Carol observed, “so it shouldn’t upset you now.”
“But it does. You see, the passage from your dimension of life to my present state changes one deeply.”
“I should think it would,” Carol said, intrigued by this unique point of view in spite of herself.
“The heart that once was hard and uncaring is now transformed,” Lady Augusta went on, “so that I ache with unfulfilled love. But I have no one upon whom to lavish it. I see poverty and injustice that I want to lighten, but I am no longer in your world and cannot use my wealth for good. The opportunity has passed me by.”
“You should have left your money to charity—and to your employees,” Carol said. “That might make you feel better. But it’s too late now for you to change your will.”
“Precisely.” Lady Augusta nodded approvingly. “I am glad you understand. It is too late for me, but not for you. I do not want you ever to suffer as I am suffering now. Furthermore, you, dear Carol, are my means to everlasting bliss.”
“What are you talking about?” Carol demanded.
“I have been assigned to you,” Lady Augusta said. “If I can convince you to change your hardhearted ways, to open yourself to love and charity and beauty—if I can, in short, change you as I was never able to change, into a kind and generous and loving person—then I will be permitted to give up this eternal wandering and take my proper place in the other life.”
“Whoa,” Carol said, putting up a hand to stop the eager flow of Lady Augusta’s words. “I’ve seen this plot before in an old movie. And I read something similar once in a Christmas story. This is some kind of a put-up job, isn’t it? Who planned this, anyway? That’s what I can’t figure out.”
“From whom do you think the creators of those old movies or books received the plot lines, if not from the Greatest Planner of all?” asked Lady Augusta. “Such stories linger in the hearts of ordinary folk because those good souls recognize the eternal truth in them. This is no game, Carol, nor is it a trick. What I tell you is but a truth too simple and obvious for your closed and earthbound mind to grasp. In time, left to yourself, you will understand as I have come to understand, that love and charity and goodwill toward all whom you know are the most important qualities required of any soul. But by then it will be too late for you to alter your earthly life. In any case, you cannot stop what will happen next.”
“Happen?” Carol repeated weakly. “What do you mean, happen? What are you going to do to me?”
“Now then,” Lady Augusta went on as if Carol had not spoken. “I have been given this special season, from the winter solstice until Twelfth Night, in which to convert you to a better life.”
“I don’t like that word convert,” Carol said.
“No matter. Another word will do as well. Say change, alter, transform, or transmute if you prefer. It is all the same to me. According to your earthly time, we have the three nights until Christmas Eve in which to begin our work. Afterward, the final changes will be up to you.”
“You mean, your work,” Carol said. “I hope you don’t actually expect me to contribute anything to this project. I am not in favor of donations. And I am definitely not in the Christmas spirit.”
“You will be, by the time I have finished with you.” Lady Augusta’s pale face took on a serious expression. “You must be, Carol, for the future of my very soul depends upon your transformation. Fight the events to come as hard as you wish. The alteration in your heart will mean more to you if it happens as the result of struggle. In my place, as in your world, what comes easily is not appreciated.” Lady Augusta rose, her robes billowing about her, though Carol still could feel no wind. When Lady Augusta held out her hand, Carol shrank back into the shelter of the wing chair.
“I am not going anywhere with you,” Carol declared.
“I cannot give you a choice in this, lest you reject an opportunity that will never arise again for you or for me. You will come with me, Carol, and you will give your all—heart, soul and mind—to what transpires. Let us begin.”
Lady Augusta spread her arms wide. The folds of her flowing gown whipped toward Carol, who sat clutching at the arms of the wing chair, determined not to participate in what she still perceived as a farce or a trick. The lavender folds blew and drifted ever nearer, wrapping themselves around the chair until Carol and chair were both totally encompassed in fog-like, wispy fabric.
“Don’t!” Carol clawed at the sheer cloth, fighting desperately, afraid she would be smothered in what was now a pale, lavender-colored, lavender-scented mist. “Stop it! Let me go!”
“Fight all you want,” Lady Augusta said, embracing her. “What will happen, will happen. But I will not desert you. I will remain at your side.”
“I don’t want this! Go back where you came from!” Carol shrieked, still trying to push the cloth away from her nose. She could not breathe, the lavender scent was so strong it was choking her, and Lady Augusta’s cold embrace almost stopped her heart with fear. Carol had never been so cold. It was like the coldness of the grave. She screamed….