The Wager

"I didn't hear anything," you say.

He turns on the bench then. In the snow-light his face is all planes and shadows, and his eyes are very dark. "Good."

"Only a very pretty carol. Played rather slowly."

"I don't play."

"No, of course not. It must have been the cat."

"We don't have a cat."

"Then you've got a very musical ghost, Your Grace, and you should charge admission."

For a long moment he just looks at you. Then he closes the lid over the keys with a soft click. "Go to bed, Miss Ashdown."

You go. But on the stairs you look back, and he's still sitting there in the dark with his hand flat on the closed lid, as if keeping something from getting out.

Christmas morning dawns white and silent.

No bells from the village; the snow has buried the road to the church. Breakfast is toast and tea and the duke's empty chair. "He rides out on Christmas morning," Trix says. "Every year. Alone. Don't ask me where." She leans across the table, eyes shining. "Ava. I've been thinking all night."

"So have I."

"We are going to have Christmas."

"In secret?"

"Of course in secret. He'd have an apoplexy." She lowers her voice. "Cook has a pudding."

"I thought puddings were forbidden."

"They are. She's made one every year anyway and hidden it behind the pickled walnuts. Five puddings, Ava. There are five puddings in that larder."

It turns out there are. Mrs. Haverleigh, the cook, is a round, floury woman with forearms like hams, and she shows you the puddings with the defiant pride of a smuggler showing off her brandy. Wrapped in cloths, dark and fragrant, lined up on a high shelf.

"Every year," she says. "Every year I think, this'll be the year he comes round. And every year he doesn't, and I wrap it up and make another."

"Five years of puddings," you say.

"They keep." She sniffs. "Better than some people's tempers."

By noon the servants' hall has filled up the way a room fills when word gets around. The kitchen maids. Joss Hedley, the freckled footman. Two grooms with snow on their boots. Even Tobias, hobbling in on a crutch Pruett found him. Mrs. Dunstan stands in the doorway with her keys and her arms folded, saying nothing, not leaving.

Somebody puts the oldest pudding on to steam. The kitchen smells like raisins and spice and every Christmas you've ever had.

And then one of the little kitchen maids, Polly, says shyly, "Miss? Do you know any carols?"

You laugh. "Do I know any carols. My father was a vicar. I know all of them, in three keys, with the descants."

"Would you sing one? Quiet, like?"

You look at Mrs. Dunstan. Mrs. Dunstan looks at the ceiling, which is as good as a yes.

So you sing. God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Quiet at first, then less quiet, because Tobias joins in on the second verse in a big rumbling bass, and Cook comes in with a surprisingly sweet soprano, and by the chorus half the kitchen is singing and Joss is beating time on a pot.

O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.

You're laughing on the last line. Everyone's laughing. You turn, flushed, triumphant.

The duke is standing in the kitchen doorway.

Snow on his coat. Riding boots. His face perfectly still. Behind him, Mrs. Dunstan has gone the color of the pudding cloth.

Nobody breathes.

"Miss Ashdown," says the Duke of Wintermere. "The library. Now, if you please."

The library is the only warm room in the house. A fire roars in the grate. Books climb to the ceiling. He stands with his back to the flames and his hands clasped behind him, and you stand on the rug in front of him like a schoolgirl.

"I gave you three rules."

"You did."

"I believe singing was the second."

"It was a carol, Your Grace. In a kitchen. On Christmas Day. Your servants haven't had a Christmas in five years, your cook has been hiding puddings like contraband, and your sister has spent her whole youth in a house that pretends December doesn't exist."

His jaw tightens. "You've been here less than a day."

"It doesn't take a day. It took an hour."

"And you think you know what this house needs."

"I think," you say carefully, "that whatever happened here, Christmas didn't do it."

The fire pops. For a moment you think you've gone too far. His eyes are like the sky over the bridge, cold and gray and full of storm.

Then he says, very quietly, "You have no idea what happened here."

"No," you admit. "But I know what a house sounds like when it's holding its breath."

He turns away to the window. Snow beats against the glass. When he speaks again his voice is dry as paper.

"Very well. You're stuck here until Twelfth Night. Twelve nights. Do your worst."

You blink. "I'm sorry?"

"A wager." He turns back. "You seem certain Christmas is the cure for my household. Prove it. One tradition a night, whatever you like, for twelve nights. If I can sit through every one of them without once wishing it were Christmas, you'll leave on Twelfth Night without another word on the subject."

"And if you do wish it?"

"Then I'll light every window in this house on Twelfth Night, and you may sing in any kitchen you like."

Your heart is beating very fast. "And if I lose? What do you want?"

He studies you. You have the uncomfortable sense of being read, cover to cover. "A clergyman's daughter. Clearly educated. Clearly used to better than a hired coach and a post as some old woman's companion. Going north in December, alone, in a hurry." He tilts his head. "If you lose, Miss Ashdown, you'll tell me what you're running from."

The room goes very quiet.

You think about Durham. About a schoolroom door closing. About a woman's voice saying, Get out of my house.

"Done," you say, and hold out your hand.

He looks at it. Then he takes it, and his hand is warm and hard and closes over yours completely, and neither of you lets go quite as soon as you should.

That night, the first of the twelve, you do the only thing you can think of.

You beg a candle from Mrs. Dunstan, who gives it to you without a word and then, after a pause, gives you a second one "in case." You set it in a brass holder on your windowsill, facing the long white avenue and the bridge you can't see, and you light it.

One small flame against the dark. For lost travelers. For whoever needs it.

You climb into bed and watch it burn.

You're almost asleep when you hear it: a soft scrape at the door. You sit up.

A folded card lies on the floorboards, cream and heavy, pushed under from the corridor. You hear footsteps retreating, light and quick. A footman's.

You pick it up and unfold it by candlelight. A crest is pressed into the top, a stag and a star. Beneath it, in a hand that is black and slanting and impatient:

Your candle is still burning, Miss Ashdown. I can see it from the library.

Explain yourself.

W.