O Night Divine A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,26

and stickers are the real weirdos, she does adore rodents, and never met a wine she didn’t like. Caroline was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2006 (along with the rest of you) and is really quite funny in person. Promise.

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Making Spirits Bright

Chasity Bowlin

Chapter One

Elizabeth Burkhart started at the scene before her with a tight smile fixed on her face. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy to be there. She was thrilled to be there, watching her daughter navigating society in a way that should have been her birthright if William Satterly had been anything other than a brute. Happy as she was for Lillian, for herself, she was simply, well, uncomfortable. She could feel the weight of judgment on her, the stares and whispers. Satterly’s discarded mistress. The mother of his illegitimate child. The charity case for the Somers Clan. They were calling her all those things and more and it was exhausting.

“Put your chin up, girl. Do not give them the satisfaction of seeing you break.”

Elizabeth turned her head to see that the Dowager Duchess of Templeton had eased up beside her. How the woman moved so silently when she was in her dotage was a mystery.

“Is that what I’m doing? It’ll take better than the lot of them to break me, your grace,” Elizabeth replied haughtily. “I simply dislike that my unfortunate past is making things harder for Lillian.”

The dowager duchess guffawed. “Hardly that! Look at her, for heaven’s sake! She’s young, beautiful and hopelessly in love… and it’s Christmas. What on earth could possibly be difficult for her? Well, marriage. Naturally. But that’s difficult for all of us.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Elizabeth replied. “I’ve never been married.”

“Count yourself lucky. Husbands can only be depended upon for one thing… disappointment,” the dowager duchess said. “Now, go get us a sherry, my dear. I find these events so tedious that a bit of sherry is the only way to salvage any sort of goodwill toward my fellow man.”

Elizabeth’s lips twitched on what would surely have been a scandalous giggle if she’d dared let it emerge. There were servants who could easily have done the old woman’s bidding, a fact they were both well aware of. But the dowager duchess was no one’s fool. The woman was forcing her to pry herself away from the wall and integrate herself into the evening’s festivities. Cagey. Manipulative. Practically Machiavellian if the truth were told. All were perfectly apt descriptions of the Dowager Duchess of Templeton and yet, in the months she had been there, Elizabeth had grown terribly fond of the woman, though she could run the whole house ragged.

She moved toward the refreshment table that had been set up for Lillian’s first ball, a festive Christmas soiree. It was her daughter’s first attempt at hosting a society gathering and there she was in queue with several of the very same people who’d been whispering about her. A glance over her shoulder showed the dowager duchess smirking with satisfaction at their slightly scandalized expressions.

“Wicked old bird,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath.

“I beg your pardon?”

Elizabeth glanced to her right and saw a man standing next to her. Where had he come from? “I’m sorry, sir. I was woolgathering, I did not intend to engage you in conversation.”

“Ah,” he said. “So I’ve put my foot in it then by speaking openly to a woman I have not yet been introduced to.”

“I’m hardly a stickler for such matters, but as my daughter is the hostess of this event, I should certainly be circumspect in my behavior,” Elizabeth admitted.

“Oh, so you’re the scarlet woman,” he said.

Elizabeth’s head came up and she glowered at him. “I’ll thank you, sir, whomever you may be, to mind your tongue and your business.”

“Don’t call attention to yourself, Elizabeth,” he admonished softly. “No one else can see me here. I’m not really a guest… well, I am. But only in the spiritual sense.”

She blinked. “No one else can see you? You’re invisible?” He was a bedlamite. Somehow, some way, a lunatic had entered her daughter’s first society event and it was all going to hell in a veritable handbasket. She had to get him out of there… and quickly.

“To everyone but you,” he offered with a smile.

“That’s impossible,” she denied immediately, but then an idea struck. “But perhaps, just in case anyone is looking, we should not discuss it here. I’ll get the dowager duchess her sherry and meet you in the library. Will that be convenient for you?”

“Quite,”