Chapter 2 #2
A delightful shimmy seemed to travel through her. “But I will not allow you to prevaricate. How did you convert Oliver?”
He shook his head. “The truth is it is not all my tale to tell,” he returned honestly. “It is my sister Phoebe’s.”
She cocked her head to the side. “That’s not at all what she told me. She said you were solely responsible.”
He threw his head back and laughed. How could he not? How like Phoebe. “No,” he said honestly, “I merely set all your brother’s world ablaze. But she stole his heart. And love was what did it in the end.”
“I can see how much he loves her,” she breathed. “That in itself is a wonder. I thought my father had crushed that for Oliver. But tell me how you lit the fire.”
“I tricked him,” he said brightly and without apology, though when he had done it, he had been riddled with guilt. But the gamble had paid off. More than paid off. Because not only had Oliver found himself and Christmas, his sister had also found the love of her life.
She began to laugh softly. “Oh dear, a trick. Well, then if you have any tricks for me, please do use them.”
“Would you like me to,” he mused, rather shocked she’d say such a thing, “use my tricks?”
Her brows floated upward, and she drew in a long breath as if her beautiful shoulders carried a shockingly heavy load. “To make me love Christmas?” she queried. “Oh, yes, please do.”
He frowned, surprised. “Don’t you love Christmas?”
She gave a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t hate it like my brother did, but I don’t think it’s that pleasant.”
Good God. Was his whole Christmas this year to be shepherding people back to the joy of the season? It wasn’t a bad fate. It was a great one, but given her playfulness, he had never expected that she would suffer from Oliver’s problems.
“Why ever not?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “Probably for the exact same reasons that he did, which I’m sure you know about.”
His brow furrowed. “I’m sorry for it then. We shall have to do everything that we can to correct that course.”
“Will you?” she said softly. “Do everything? How delightful of you. I adore a good correction of a course that has gone amiss.”
Was she making fun of him?
He thought not, but she was so bloody mischievous that it was rather hard to tell. But he had a feeling that a great deal of her turn of phrase was carefully practiced, because if she was like Oliver in any way, there was a sadness that she hid form the world.
And he knew all about hidden sadness. The idea that it might plague her caused his gut to tighten, and he longed to punish anyone who might have tried to dim her light.
Even so, he stared at her, still not quite certain what to make of her. The way she moved, how her body danced when she played, did not quite match her words.
Her words seemed more calculated, as if she was playing him the way she had played the instrument, and yet he felt certain that she felt deeply. And that she had loved playing with him.
There was no argument with that.
He leaned forward and murmured, “I don’t know, my lady. I do not think you should invite tricks. Tell me your name first before I decide if I should use such tactics upon you. I don’t think tricks are necessary. I think you can just spend Christmas here and then you shall love it again.”
She tsked. “Such a bold declaration to assume that your family can change years and years of my apprehension about Christmas Day. And how shocking that you do not recall my name! For surely, my brother has mentioned it. It’s Lady Seraphine.”
It was the perfect name for her. For it denoted fiery angels and the most beloved of all.
Yes, she could ignite the world with her fierce beauty.
“Lady Seraphine, I beg you to forgive me for not knowing your name. It was badly done of me. But as to the rest?” He tilted his head to the side. “A few days with my family worked on your brother. He once again loves Christmas, and he seems much sterner than you.”
There was something in her eyes then, something that flittered across her features, and in that moment, his breath froze in his throat.
Oliver might seem stern, but in his heart, he was soft, and Laertes was afraid for a moment that his ridiculous Briarwood heart might have picked someone who was even more stern.
For although her name denoted fire, he feared that Lady Seraphine’s heart had been made cold through and through.
She had a look of utter beauty and utter perfection, but he wondered if perhaps her heart was harder than Oliver’s. Surely, such a thing was not possible. Surely, he was not supposed to change both brother and sister and trick them each in turn.
But if it was what he had been called to do, he would surely fulfill his purpose.
For in his opinion, everyone should love Christmas, if possible. But more so, everyone should love themselves. He had learned that at the knee of his grandmother and his mother, and he wished with all his heart that everyone else did too.
But to his great sorrow, most did not.
“Come then,” he said. “Let me show you how it’s done. The tricking. You won’t even know it’s happening to you…”
“You think me so easily played?”
He shook his head. “I think the Briarwoods so capable of magic.”
And then he began to play something soft, something beautiful, something aching, something that he knew called to his heart the way ancient things did. And with her ability to play, he knew it would call to some part of her too.
She swallowed and gasped, but then he was shocked because her fingers did not go to the keys as he thought they would.
No, instead her lips parted, and she began to sing.
Her voice as it slipped over the haunting melody was like being caught up in a net. A net of pain and beauty and an ache so intense he couldn’t breathe, but he kept playing because he knew that ache. He knew that pain. It was always in his heart.
She was the answer to his call. She was the answer to the unknown on the other side of a suddenly appearing door that his grandmother had once promised him on a Christmas Eve so very long ago. Now, many Christmases later, here it was. It had come for him just as his grandmother promised it would.
He gazed over at Lady Seraphine and her perfect, beautiful face, and her face was transformed.
It was alive with music. It was alive with her song.
The aching weeping notes of the ancient Christmas lullaby filled the room, and again the buzzing conversations dimmed, but this time the attention that turned to her was rapt, reverent, hallowed.
Yes, they were held, just as he was, in absolute thrall by her.
And perhaps they were enthralled by him too, the way he played the deep notes, the summoning of the spirit that was music and Christmas.
She might say that she disliked Christmas like Oliver had, but she did not really, just like Oliver.
No, there was something deep within her that was beautiful and pure, and he would have to find a way to free it. Perhaps he was being ridiculous.
She was no captive. Because surely someone who sang like that was already as free as the angels, as free as the heavens, as free as any bird, any wild creature. Perhaps it was he who was locked away.