Christmas Belles

Christmas Belles

By Susan Carroll

Text copyright @ Susan
Carroll

All rights reserved

To my four greatest fans,
Dorothy, Pat, Jean and Janet who also happen to be my sisters.

P
rologue

Christmas Eve, 1805

Never had sprigs of mistletoe been nailed into place with
such fierce determination Miss Chloe Waverly balanced atop the ladder, smacking
her hammer against the nail, her blue eyes squinting at the clang of every
blow. Her slender frame swayed precariously, her shimmering lengths of honey
brown hair tumbling across the delicate contours of her face. Pursing her lips,
she dealt the stubborn nail another mighty wham.

"Chloe!" Her older sister's voice rang out
sharply. "Do finish with that before you break your neck or my ears. The
infernal racket you are making! It goes quite through my head."

Using the handle of the hammer, Chloe brushed the hair back
from her eyes and glanced down to where Lucy stood on the other side of the
arched doorway that led into the parlor. The neat arrangement of Lucy's blond
ringlets made Chloe more conscious of her own disheveled state. But then, she
had never seen Lucy look anything less than what she aspired to be: a young
lady of high fashion and elegance, from her soft leather pattens to her
immaculately manicured fingertips.

Lucy took great care that the folds of her soft kerseymere
gown did not snag against the ladder. Even her frown in nowise diminished her
beauty.

"When you said you intended to hang the
mistletoe," Lucy complained, "I did not know you meant to kill it.
Surely you can find some more merciful means of execution."

"I've nearly finished. You want me to make a proper job
of it, don't you?" Chloe asked, making a sweeping gesture with the hammer.
She always talked with her hands She could not seem to help it. "It
wouldn't do to have the kissing bough come tumbling down in the midst of our
celebrations."

Lucy took a step back, warily eyeing the movements of the
hammer. "I do not see what difference it makes. Who do you fancy there
will be to kiss? Only Papa or old Squire Daniels, whose breath always smells
like tobacco and onions."

"You can never tell." Chloe dreamily regarded the
bough of dark green leaves with its pallid berries. "Perchance we might
have some unexpected visitor."

"And perchance we won't."

"But we could—someone young and handsome."

"But we won't." Lucy smiled sweetly and stalked
away.

"But we might," Chloe muttered under her breath.
She tightened her grip upon the hammer, but she paused to watch as Lucy rustled
gracefully past the settee, where their youngest sister, Agnes, reclined,
deeply engrossed in a book.

Chloe had a deep and abiding appreciation of all that was
beautiful, and Lucy was certainly that. If her own eyes were blue, Lucy's were
bluer. Her hair had tints of sunlight, but Lucy's was spun gold. She was short,
but Lucy was tall and statuesque.  And although she was only a year older
than Chloe, Lucy had a bosom.

Ruefully, Chloe stole a furtive glance down the front of her
high-waisted frock. She had just turned sixteen last month and was still as
flat-chested as Dan, the stable boy.

Ah, well. Someday, she thought with a tiny sigh. Chloe was a
great believer in all good things coming to those who waited long enough.
Cheerfully, she resumed her hammering until she was certain that the bough of
mistletoe was there to stay. Then she carefully descended the ladder to survey
her handiwork.

Besides the mistletoe in the arch, she had decorated the
parlor as well with swags of holly draped about the mantel, evergreen festooned
in loops over the windows. The mullioned panes sparkled with a  crystal
sheen of frost. A roaring fire had been banked upon the hearth, and although
the night wind sang past the shutters, the parlor seemed snug and cozy.

Chloe could already feel it, a kind of magic that quickened
her blood, that special magic that came only on Christmas Eve, as hushed as a
new-fallen blanket of snow, as warm and glowing as a candle's flame. The magic
seemed to have transformed the parlor until one quite forgot the shabbiness of
the carpet, the settee pillows turned over to disguise the fact that the velvet
had faded. Not that Chloe noticed those things anyway, except when Lucy pointed
them out to her.

Her decorating finished, Chloe found herself with nothing to
do but take a restless turn about the parlor. Tingles of excitement and happy
anticipation coursed through her, and she wished she had someone to share the
feeling with. But Lucy sat at the parlor table, absorbed in examining the
largess of her presents, and Agnes never looked up from her book. The girl was
reading Homer, not the Chapman translation, but in the original Greek. Agnes
was so clever, it was almost alarming.

After regarding her sisters' preoccupation in wistful
silence, Chloe clapped her hands together in hearty fashion and rubbed them
briskly "Oh, do let us go for a walk or something. We could go down by the
old oak and see if the Christmas rose has begun to bloom."

"In the cold and dark?" Lucy's brow arched with
incredulity.

Agnes raised her sharp little nose up from her book long
enough to comment. "It isn't properly a rose plant at all, only a species
of hellebore."

"But it's called a Christmas rose because it blooms at
Christmas," Chloe said.

"That's only a legend. There is no reason it should
bloom on Christmas rather than any other day of winter. Plants cannot read the
almanac." Agnes's look was as severe as that of the sternest old
governess. Sometimes, Chloe thought, her younger sister seemed more like
fourteen going on forty.

"It would do you no harm to go for a walk anyway,
Agnes," Lucy chimed in. "You spend too much time at your studies. You
are going to end up with great bumps over your eyes."

"It is far better than what you do, constantly primping
in front of a mirror. You have wasted your entire evening gloating over that
pile of fripperies."

Lucy flushed and circled one arm rather protectively around
her newly acquired collection of fans, gloves, and jars of scent. "You need
not be so spiteful merely because I received more presents than you. If you had
been invited to visit Cousin Harriet in London, you would never have made as
many kind friends as I did, for you never take the pains to be agreeable to
anyone."

"I would not want such friends or such a heap of
rubbish." Grumpily, Agnes nestled deeper against the settee cushions,
subsiding once more into her book.

Lucy turned her eyes to Chloe, looking half-defiant,
half-ashamed. "I feel quite badly that the rest of you have not received
so much." She hesitated and took a deep swallow. "Of course, I intend
to share."

"Why, Lucy, that is very generous of you." Chloe
schooled her jaw not to drop open. It was generous of Lucy and decidedly
unusual. Sharing had never come easily to her lovely sister. But, unlike Agnes,
Chloe did not grudge Lucy her store of treasures or her visits to London. In
fact, Chloe feared the sojourns had done Lucy little good, merely providing her
with tantalizing glimpses of a glittering, fashionable world in which she, as
the daughter of an impoverished knight, could not hope to take part. It left
Lucy more discontented than ever with the simple life they led at Windhaven
Manor, isolated along a sweep of coast in Norfolk.

Chloe made haste to assure Lucy that she did not feel any of
the fans would suit her, nor did she really care for that brand of scent.

"Well, if you are really sure," Lucy said with a
regretful smile, but her sigh was tinged with relief. She was just beginning to
scoop her treasured hoard from the table when Emma entered the room. At the age
of twenty, Emma was the eldest of the Waverly girls.

Chloe pounced upon her sister at once, eager for someone to
share her enthusiasm. She dragged Emma about the parlor, calling upon her to
admire the decorations. Emma wiped her hands on the folds of her apron, a few
wisps of soft brown hair escaping her chignon to frame her plump, pretty face.
She summoned up a placid smile.

"It is all very pleasant, dear," Emma said.

"Pleasant," Chloe echoed drearily. She was fond of
all her sisters in different ways. But sometimes she felt like giving them each
a sharp poke with a pin. At least that might produce some small shriek of
excitement from them. She supposed she might as well resign herself. She could
expect no real enthusiasm until Papa came home from calling at the vicarage.
Papa was the only one who ever threw himself into the festivities with the same
unbridled delight as she did.

Emma gave Chloe a motherly pat on the shoulder. "I am
sure we shall have a very nice Christmas. I have just been checking on the plum
pudding. Even though it is my first effort at such a thing, I believe it may be
the best dinner we've ever had."

Lucy groaned. "There is no need for you to go
announcing that to anyone else, Em."

"Oh, Lord, no," Agnes piped up scornfully.
"The world mustn't know we are so unrefined that we eat."

"Not that we eat," Lucy snapped. "That we
cook."

"We, dearest?" Emma laughed with one of her rare
flashes of humor.

Lucy pulled a face but could not refrain from smiling a
little at herself. It was a well-known fact that Lucy never went near the
kitchens except to demand more hot water for her bath. But they did not have as
many indoor servants these days at Windhaven, only Polly, the maid, and Old
Meg, the cook. Emma, being of a domestic turn, had taken to helping out with
the preparation of meals. Chloe had also tried to do her share, but being a
little too inclined to daydream, she was something of a disaster in the
kitchens. Ever since the day she burned the bread so hard and black it could
have been used to repair the crumbling stone at the north end of the house, Old
Meg had threatened Chloe with the soup ladle if she "durst cross the
threshold of my kitchen again."

Chloe had felt both guilty and relieved at the ban. It
seemed unfair that the burden of maintaining the household should fall on
Emma's shoulders. Yet she never complained, not even at times like this
evening, when she was looking a little tired.

Forcing Agnes to draw in her feet, Chloe gave Emma a gentle
nudge until she plunked down beside the younger girl on the settee. Emma
flashed her a grateful smile, then mopped her forehead with the heel of her
hand.

"I declare, it seems hotter in here than it was in the
kitchen. How much wood you girls have stacked upon that fire! We won't even
need the Yule log brought in."

"That's Chloe's doing," Lucy said. "She's
been brewing some sort of concoction in that little black pot."

Agnes turned another page of her book and sniffed.
"Probably some other beastly Christmas custom she has discovered and means
to inflict upon all of us."

"It has nothing to do with Christmas," Chloe said.
"Or at least only a little bit." She had nearly forgotten about the
little iron pot she had suspended over the hottest part of the flames. But now
she hastened over to check its contents.

"Actually, what I have been doing," she told her
sisters, "is melting some of Papa's lead shot."

This announcement at least produced a reaction from them. The
parlor chorused with their exclamations.

"What!"

"Melting lead?"

"Whatever for?"

"Another of Chloe's half-mad schemes," Agnes said.
"You may depend upon it."

Chloe smiled sheepishly. "Perhaps it is a little mad.
But I was talking to the squire's house-keeper, Mrs. Brindle. She told me of
the most interesting old legend—"

Her sisters united in a heartfelt groan.

"No, do but listen," Chloe insisted. "Mrs.
Brindle told me that if an unmarried girl drops molten lead into cold water on
Christmas Eve, the lead will assume a shape, give her some sign of what her
future husband will be."

"What next!" Lucy exclaimed. "Now the girl is
passing the time of day with housekeepers. Have you no sense of decorum,
Chloe?"

"It is all utter nonsense anyway," Agnes added.
"Wait until Papa hears how you have been wasting his lead shot."

"Papa won't care," Chloe said. "I do not
believe he has ever shot anything in his life, not even a rabbit. Oh,
please," she added coaxingly. "Let us just try dropping the lead in
water. What harm can it do? It is only a bit of fun."

Agnes snorted with disgust, and Lucy rolled her eyes. But
Emma, as ever willing to indulge Chloe, joined her at the fireside, though
Chloe suspected her sister came as much to insure that Chloe did not burn
herself as for any other reason.

Whatever Emma's motives, both she and Chloe crowded round a
bucket of cold water Chloe carefully dipped up a ladle full of lead and tipped
it into the bucket. The molten lead hit the water with an awful hiss and a
cloud of steam. Chloe waved her hand, trying to disperse the haze before her
eyes.

When the shape in the water became visible, Emma said,
"I fear it doesn't look like much of anything to me "

That didn't surprise Chloe. When she pointed to clouds
overhead, indicating the shapes of horses, daffodils, dancing cats, Emma never
saw those either.

Chloe narrowed her eyes, applying her own powers of
perception to the lead solidifying in the water. "It looks like a cross of
some sort. That must mean that your husband will be a religious man, a man of
the cloth, perhaps."

"Oh!" was all that Emma said, but a peculiar look
crossed her face. Her cheeks turned bright pink with a most self-conscious
expression.

For all her feigned sophistication and amusement at the
proceedings, Lucy also crowded close to peer into the bucket.

"Do mine next," she demanded.

Chloe obeyed. After another hiss from the bucket, she
studied the forming shape.

"It looks like a lump of something," she said.

"A lump of lead. Only a lump of lead," Agnes was
heard to mutter from her post on the settee.