O Night Divine A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,31

fell in step beside him once more.

“I suppose it would depend on the woman, wouldn’t it? If she were remarkable enough to be a suitable inducement to make those rather extreme adjustments?” Burney observed.

“Yes. I suppose it would,” Oliver agreed.

“And do you feel that your Elizabeth would be such a woman?”

Yes. Yes, she would.

He turned to say as much, but Burney was no longer beside him. The man had simply vanished into the darkness. Perplexed, Oliver turned around, looking for him high and low. It was only then that he realized one terrifying fact. There was only a single set of footprints in the snow. His were still visible, though certainly filling up quickly. But there were not footsteps for Burney.

“That’s it,” he said. “The bitter loneliness of England has finally driven me mad.”

Ignoring his uneasiness, Oliver made his way to his home on Park Lane, the gauche and ostentatious monstrosity that he was growing to hate more and more on a daily basis, and let himself in. He detested having a houseful of servants. There was only himself, his cook, and a valet that refused to be fired. The remainder of the staff arrived in the mornings and departed after supper.

“Good evening, my lord,” the butler intoned, stepping forward from some unseen shadowed corner to take his coat.

Oliver’s hand flew up, landing with a thump over his heart. “God above, man! I’m going to tie a bell around your neck! Do not sneak about in the darkness like that. If I die of heart seizure, it will be on your head!”

“My apologies, my lord. Do you require anything from me besides a greater degree of noise in carrying out my duties?”

Oliver ignored the sarcasm. “No, good night, Fisher.”

“Good night, my lord.”

Alone in the grand entryway, once more, Oliver let out a sigh. “Elizabeth what?” The question escaped him as a whispered oath. But no answer came from the heavens. So he marched from the entry hall to his study. It was the only room in the garish display of wealth that passed for a house that he could abide. Once there, he poured himself a liberal glass of brandy and settled in before the fire to contemplate the strangeness of his evening.

Burney stood outside the palatial home of the Duke of Averston. He hadn’t planned that particular detour. Really, his only intent had been to prove to the powers that be that he was perfectly capable of being a Christmas Spirit as opposed to being just a regular sort of spirit. Honestly, the idea of having his death mean something when he’d allowed his life, through his own pride and myopic focus on things that should never have been priorities, to mean so very little, was something that appealed to him greatly. It was an added benefit for him that he could check in, as it were, on those he’d treasured so much in life.

It was a funny thing, death. He missed them. He missed Amelia and his mother. He missed Winn and even Winn’s new bride who really was alarmingly pretty. And he missed Averston, but perhaps a more appropriate statement would be that he missed what might have been. It was impossible to say whether or not he would have found any lasting happiness with the very stoic and reserved, some would even say cold, duke. But he liked to think otherwise. He liked to think that he might have taught his brooding duke to have more fun, to be more carefree. And perhaps, in time, Averston might have taught him how to be more responsible, more focused on the things that did matter in life.

Alas, it was not to be. He’d made a fatal error in judgment which turned out to be… well, fatal. Despite everything, he really had no one to blame but himself. If one dabbles in blackmail, one must pay the consequences for it.

“It wouldn’t hurt to take a peek inside, would it?” Burney voiced the question aloud. It wasn’t to anyone, per se, as there was no one about who could see him or hear him. Only Elizabeth Burkhart and Oliver Weston, Marquess of Whittendon, could interact with him currently. They were his assignment, after all, his trial to see if he could actually execute the duties that would be assigned to him as a Christmas Spirit. “Surely checking in on the welfare of someone I once knew isn’t such a terrible breech of etiquette!”

Bolstered by his own encouragements, Burney simply willed