Free A Regency Christmas Carol by Christine Merrill

need to seem idle even while doing business. So much easier to deal with the likes of mad Lampett. Though he was of a changeable nature, he would at least speak what was left of his mind.
    For plain speaking, Lampett’s lovely daughter was better than ten of the milk-and-water misses he was likely to see this week. Even Anne Clairemont, whose family had put in a brief appearance this evening, had looked puzzled by the conversation, and nervous at the prospect of a little skating on a properly frozen pond. He would not have faulted her if she had politely excused herself from it. But she had looked from her father to him, blinked twice and then forced a smile and declared it a wonderful notion.
    Miss Lampett, in a similar situation, would have likely announced to the assembly that the whole tripwas a thinly disguised attempt at business and refused to take any part in it. For some reason the imagined scene did not bother him. He could just as easily imagine drawing her out in the hall to remonstrate with her, only to have the conversation degenerate into another heated kiss.
    When his valet had left him for the night he settled back into the pillows and pulled the blankets up to his chin, closing his eyes and thinking of that kiss. He really shouldn’t have taken it. It had been improper and unfair of him to take advantage of her innocence. But he would do it again if he had the chance. That and more…
     
    He awoke hungry. It made no sense. The clock was only striking one, and dinner had been a feast, stretching late into the evening. He had partaken of it with enthusiasm. But it was gone from him now, leaving his guts empty and gnawing on themselves in the darkness.
    He had not known want like this since he’d become master of his own life. This was the kind of nagging hunger he’d felt as a child, going to bed with an empty belly and knowing that there would be nothing to fill it again tomorrow. It was a kind of bleak want that existed in the body like an arm or a leg: something that one carried with one from moment to moment, place to place, always there and impossible to cast off.
    But it was easily rectified now. He had but to sit up in bed and ring for a footman. He would explain the need and have it filled. It would mean getting some poor maid out of her bed to do for him. But what was the pointof having servants if one could not make unreasonable demands upon them?
    When he opened his eyes, the room was strange. Not his own bedroom at all, but a different, emptier room, filled with a strange, directionless golden haze.
    From the corner of the room there was a sigh.
    Joseph sat bolt upright now, searching for the source of the sound. And with it he found the origin of the glow. A man sat in the corner—a Cavalier, in a long well-curled wig and heavy-skirted coat. The light seemed to rise from the gold braid upon it, diffusing into a corona around him.
    This man was a stranger, and yet strangely familiar. He looked around the room and sighed again. He glanced across at Joseph and gave a pitying shake of his head. ‘When I was summoned here, I must admit I expected better. These are not the surroundings to which I am accustomed. But I suppose if there is no problem, then there is no need…’ The Cavalier gave another heavy sigh.
    ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ snapped Joseph, rubbing his eyes. ‘I grew up in a room not unlike this one, and…’
    As a matter of fact he’d grown up in a room exactly like this one. Its appearance was softened somewhat, by the glow of the phantom and by his own fading memories, but it was the same room. It was where he’d felt the hunger that plagued him now, which was still as sharp and real as ever it had been.
    ‘I belong at the manor and have been sent to fetch you back to it,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Although even that is no treat. For I must tell you the place under your governance is not as nice as it once was.’
    ‘Now, see here,’ Joseph said, sitting up in