A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [15]
“I hope you were not hurt, Mr. Ballin?” Eliza inquired with concern.
“Not at all,” Ballin answered gravely, and yet a certain amusement flickered in his eyes. “Except my dignity, perhaps. To be riding in comfort, if also in anxiety, at one moment, and then scrambling to arise out of a drift of snow the next, makes one appear more than a little ridiculous. However, there was no one to observe me, except my coachman, and he was in no better circumstances than I.”
“Where is he?” Lydia asked, her soup spoon arrested halfway to her mouth.
“In the servants’ quarters, I imagine,” Mercy answered her. “Did you expect to see him in the dining room?”
Ballin looked at Mercy with interest, his eyes searching her delicate, pretty face as if trying to observe something deeper. “Actually, he is staying at the wheelwright’s cottage, Mrs. Hobbs,” he answered softly. “He bruised his legs rather badly, and I fear this walk would have been distressing for him.”
“Where were you hoping to go?” James asked. However, there was no interest in his face; it was clear that he inquired only to be polite.
“To stay with friends on the farther side of Whitby,” Ballin replied. “I regret that it will be some time before that is possible, judging from the weather. No doubt they will have deduced that I was obliged to seek hospitality elsewhere, and they will not be overly anxious.”
“Sorry.” Netheridge shook his head. “Can’t get a message to anyone through this storm. The snow is several feet deep in some places on the road. And if this wind gets worse, we could have trees down.”
Even as he spoke the howling outside increased. Mercy shivered, glancing toward the rich red curtains drawn across the windows.
“ ‘Listen to them, the children of the night’,” Vincent quoted from the book, a line Alice had kept in the play.
Mercy gave another, even more convulsive shiver.
“You’re not onstage now!” Lydia said sharply. “There are no bats or wolves out there. This is Yorkshire.”
“Dracula came to Yorkshire,” Mercy retorted instantly. “This is exactly where it all happened! Didn’t you read the book, for heaven’s sake?”
“I read it,” Lydia said with a sigh. “I don’t believe it. It’s my job to believe it onstage, not at the dinner table.”
“It’s only the wind,” James said to no one in particular. “The whole thing is an excellent horror story, but there’s nothing real to be frightened of.”
“Bravo,” Vincent observed sarcastically. “That’s perfectly in character. Harker didn’t believe in vampires until Dracula had already taken Lucy and turned her into one.”
Alice looked from one to the other of them. Her eyes were bright, and there was a slight flush on her cheeks, although it was impossible to tell if it was embarrassment or excitement. Perhaps a little of each.
Douglas Paterson regarded Alice’s face with a distress that was close to exasperation. “Really—,” he began.
Alice cut him off, looking toward Ballin. “Can we make you believe in vampires, just for a season?” she asked him.
“Alice!” Netheridge protested.
Ballin held up his long-fingered, powerful hand, moving with uncommon grace. “Please! It is a game we must all play, the suspension of disbelief, just for a while. Surely Christmas is the season in which to believe in miracles? The Son of God came to earth as a little child, helpless and dependent, just as we all are, even when we least think so. Does it not follow that the creatures of evil must also be knocking at the door, waiting for someone to allow them in?”
Mercy gave a little gasp.
Lydia rolled her eyes and glanced momentarily to Douglas before turning away again.
Alice was looking at Ballin intently, her expression keen with interest. “I’ve never heard anyone say something like that before,” she said.
“Of course you haven’t,” Douglas responded. “It’s nonsense.”
“No, it isn’t!” Caroline said quickly. “Haven’t you seen Holman Hunt’s painting of Christ, The Light of the World? He is standing at the door, but the handle is on the inside. If we do not open it ourselves, then he cannot come in, either. So maybe the final choice is always