Jenna's Eternal Lover Read online

  You would say Mary wants as much time with you as she can while Verity expects to have more years with you?

  “Yes. We needn’t spoil her Christmas by explaining, need we?”

  He chuckled. You, my love, are the most thoughtful of all. No of course we needn’t spoil this Christmas with the family, although I believe, in their hearts, they all know it is your last here with them.

  Jenna sighed. “I’m so tired, Mel. I will be so glad when my time comes and we may be together.”

  Tired. And a busy few days ahead of you. Sleep, my Jenna. I’ll watch over you.

  * * * * *

  “Aunt Jenna, Aunt Jenna,” called a piping almost four-years-old voice. A little girl dressed in pink velvet, her satin sash already coming undone, broke away from her mother and raced across the room. Struggling mightily, she managed to climb onto the high bed.

  Too late to stop her Verity reached her wayward offspring. “Maria!”

  “Let her be,” said Jenna softly, holding out her hand to the child. “Do you think I’d want anyone to forbid me my first grandniece?”

  Verity groaned. “You don’t know the lectures we gave the children before bringing them down. Maria, you…”

  “Hush,” scolded Jenna and then turned her scowl to a smile aimed at the little girl.

  “Aunt Jenna,” asked the irrepressible child after casting her disapproving mother a mischievously triumphant look, “why are you in bed? It isn’t night and it isn’t naptime. You shouldn’t be in bed.”

  “At my age, Maria, almost any time can be naptime,” said Jenna, smiling.

  Maria bounced and then crawled nearer. “But you’ll come up to the nursery and tell us stories? Tomorrow?”

  “No. I can’t do that, my dear.” Jenna pushed aside her disappointment that that was so. She’d always loved going up to the nursery when the children visited.

  “But who will tell us stories?”

  “You’ll have to ask Uncle Rube to tell stories.”

  Maria pouted.

  “You know he tells good ones,” Jenna finished in a coaxing tone.

  Maria shook her head. “Not as good as you do. Please?” she begged, her eyes not-so-innocently wide.

  Jenna suppressed a grin at the childish attempt at manipulation and produced a bit of her own. “You join your cousins at the table. If you eat a really good tea I’ll tell you a story after.”

  Maria bounced up and scrambled to the edge, then nearly fell off the bed in her haste. She ran to the little table that had been brought in for the three youngsters who were old enough to feed themselves. Three others were being fed by nannies and still another, just a baby, was held in her mother’s arms, having just been fed privately.

  “You mustn’t tire yourself, Aunt Jenna. Maria shouldn’t have asked.”

  “I’m sorry if it distresses you, Verity, but it may be the last story I ever tell the children.”

  Verity blanched. “No…”

  “Shush.” Jenna caught and held her niece’s gaze. “You are not,” she said softly but firmly, “to distress the children.” Then she recalled that she and Mel had agreed they weren’t to distress Verity. She sent a rueful glance toward her lover who winked at her. Jenna turned back when Jacob approached the bed, lifting her so that Verity could place more pillows at her back.

  Jenna, propped against the pillows watched the tots of all ages, her hungry gaze traveling from one child to another, the offspring of the marriages she and her ghostly lover had arranged despite a wide variety of difficulties, which ranged from Sarah’s kidnapping to overcoming Patrick’s fear of horses and included an evil foreigner determined Lady Mary be tortured and killed. She looked from one married couple to another as they stood watching their children, one pair with their arms around each other’s waists, another with a hand on the shoulder of his seated wife and the last, Jenna’s niece Verity, leaning against her husband Jacob’s chest, holding his arms tight around her, needing his comfort as the implication of Jenna’s words sank in. She wondered where Serena and Rome were but since they had no children yet, it wasn’t odd they’d not come with the others.

  “We did good, didn’t we, Mel?” Jenna whispered. The ghost, as usual, was at her side, a position from which he rarely moved and certainly never for long.

  So we did, he responded.

  “They’ll be happy.”

  As happy as they should be, he corrected.

  Jenna thought about that. “You mean they must suffer somewhat in order to know how good most of their life is? That no one appreciates what comes too easily having nothing with which to compare it?”

  The spectral figure nodded. Exactly.

  Maria finished with her food, picked up her glass and gulped down her milky tea. She pushed away from the table. Once again she dodged those watching her and climbed up beside Jenna. “All done. All gone. Now?”

  “When the others are ready, Maria,” said Jenna. The child’s lower lip jutted out. Jenna touched the small rosy lips. She smiled. “Aren’t you afraid your mouth will freeze in that ugly way and you’ll look like that all your life?”

  Maria’s eyes widened and she put her hands up over her mouth. She giggled. “Wouldn’t.”

  “Might,” teased Jenna.

  Maria glanced toward the table where small mouths and hands were being wiped. “Now,” she insisted and settled herself more firmly at Jenna’s side. The other two, a mere three years and a bit old, their birthdays within days of each other, were brought to the bed where they too crawled near to Jenna. “Now,” repeated Maria happily.

  “Once upon a time,” said Jenna slowly, “there was a little old lady who had lived a very long time and done many things.”

  “Lots and lots of things?” asked Maria.

  “Lots and lots. So many things she grew tired,” continued Jenna. “So very tired.” She looked at the adults and smiled as the shock of understanding of what she’d do registered on one face after another. She turned back to the children. “But even so, tired as she was, she wanted to say goodbye to all her friends and relatives.”

  One last adult, realizing what Jenna meant to do, gasped. Jenna didn’t attempt to discover which one it was.

  “Goodbye?” asked Maria, puzzled.

  “It was time for the little old lady to leave this world. Time for her to travel on to the next.”

  “For a visit,” said Maria, nodding. “Like we are visiting Aunt Mary and then have to go home.”

  “No child.” For a moment Jenna’s mouth tightened and then relaxed into a smile. “Not a visit. This time the little old lady must go away forever.”

  Maria’s puzzlement grew. “But Aunt Jenna, why would she do that? Why would she go away and leave the people she loved? The ones who loved her?”

  “A time comes in every life, Maria, when one must leave it, leave behind those she loves and join those loved ones who have gone on before. It is not a bad thing, Maria.”

  “But…” Confusion filled Maria’s little screwed up face as she tried to find the words to say what she was feeling.

  Once again Jenna smiled. Her brows arched. “But, you would say, those left behind won’t like it?”

  The child nodded, once again pouting and this time on the verge of tears.

  Jenna touched Maria’s cheek with one finger. “They, those still here, will have many others to love them. Mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles. And brothers and sisters and cousins.”

  “I don’t always love my brother,” admitted Maria. Her brother was one of the older toddlers and had been quietly removed from the room by his nanny with others of that age. The little lad was very likely fast asleep up in the nursery, tucked into a cozy cot, a maid nearby in case a child woke and, finding him- or herself in a strange place, was frightened. Maria frowned ferociously. “Sometimes he…he…” Once again the lip jutted.

  Jenna smiled but shook her head slightly. “Sometimes you find him a great nuisance and, at such a time, it is hard to know you love
him, Maria, but the love is there inside you even when hidden.”

  Maria’s frown was slow to fade as she thought about still another new idea and then she sighed. She looked up. “But the old lady…what happens to her?”

  “Her spirit joins those spirits who have waited for her,” said Jenna.

  Maria’s forehead creased. “Aunt Jenna, are you an old lady?”

  Jenna smiled and nodded.

  “Are you tired?”

  “Very.”

  Maria’s eyes filled with tears. “Are…are you going…going away?”

  “I’m going to join those spirits who have been waiting for me, Maria. Be glad for me. I’ve missed them very much.”

  “Them?”

  “Your great-grandfather. My sister. My mother and father…” Her gaze flicked to meet Mel’s. “Oh, so many who have gone before.”

  Maria’s eyes grew round, caught by still another new notion. “You had a mummy and a daddy?”

  Jenna chuckled. “As hard as it is to imagine, Maria, I was once, oh a very long time ago, a little girl just like you. I had a nanny and when I got older a governess. I had a wonderful sister. I had your grandfather and grandmother who you never knew and your mother and later all your new aunts and uncles and your cousins—” Jenna ignored the fact that those called aunt or uncle weren’t really that close. “And,” she continued, “gradually I grew older and older and now I’m a little old lady who is tired all the time.”

  Maria’s eyes widened. “All the time?”

  “All the time.”

  “You said you wanted to say goodbye,” said Maria after digesting that problem.

  “I do. Goodbye to you and to everyone else visiting this Christmas. But not just this minute. Will you give me a kiss?” Jenna held out her hands to the other children who had listened quietly, not really comprehending Jenna’s words. “All of you?” The two younger ones obediently kissed Jenna’s cheek. Maria hung back. “What’s the matter, child?” asked Jenna as the other two were picked up and handed to waiting nannies.

  “I don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want you to go.”

  “Because you’ll miss me?”

  “I don’t want you to go,” cried Maria, throwing herself across Jenna and hugging her.

  Jenna shook her head when someone would have taken the child. She hugged Maria back.

  When the tears stopped and the child lifted up enough to look Jenna in the face, Jenna smiled at her. “I love you, child, but I must go. Just remember that long years from now when you are a little old lady yourself and it is time for you to leave this life for the next, that I’ll be waiting and that I’ll love you just as much then as I do now.”

  “Promise?” asked Maria, her eyes glistening.

  “I promise. You promise to remember me, but that you’ll not to be unhappy that I’ve gone.”

  The tears welled and Maria wailed, “But I can’t promise. I will be unhappy.”

  “Very well.” Jenna touched her nose to the child’s. “You can be a little unhappy if you must, but remember that, even though I have gone, I still love you.”

  “I love you too, Aunt Jenna.” The child hid her face in Jenna’s shoulder. “I’ll remember,” she mumbled.

  “Good.”

  The child lifted her head. “But who will tell us stories?”

  There was just a touch of reproof in her tone when Jenna responded, “There will be others to tell stories, Maria.”

  Maria heaved a tremendous sigh. “But not like your stories.”

  “Perhaps when you are a little older, you can tell my stories to your younger cousins who will not have heard them.”

  Maria’s eyes grew huge. “Me? I could tell stories?” She thought about that and then, grinning, her volatile spirits restored by the notion, she turned to her mother. “Did you hear? I could tell stories.”

  “Of course you’ll tell stories.” Verity reached for her daughter, her eyes moist when she raised them to meet Jenna’s gaze. “You’ll tell good stories, Maria.”

  “But not as good as Aunt Jenna’s. No one could,” said Maria, snuggling into her mother’s shoulder. She turned her head. “Goodbye, Aunt Jenna,” she said a little sadly.

  “Goodbye for now, my Maria. I’ll see you again before I go,” Jenna promised. She watched the mother and child leave the room and then closed her eyes. No one spoke as those who remained silently departed, leaving her alone with her spectral lover. “I’m so tired Mel…”

  Sleep, my love. Sleep…

  “Isn’t it yet time?”

  You promised Maria you’d see her again. Mel grinned at the hopeful tone. How can it possibly be time, my love?

  Jenna chuckled. “Hoist on my own petard, you’d say?”

  His late lordship just grinned.

  Jenna grinned back, yawned…and slept.

  Later that evening, Jacob and Verity entered the room hand in hand. They stared at the bed, the room lit only by the fire kept burning in the fireplace and a few candles placed so they would not bother the woman lying in the bed.

  Jenna turned her head. She smiled a welcome.

  “You’re awake,” said Verity softly.

  “I’m awake.”

  Jacob tugged Verity nearer the bed. “We wanted to tell you how much we love you. How much we care. And how thankful we are you were there when we needed you. I’ll never forget how near I came to losing Verity to that evil plot against Aunt Mary, how much you helped…”

  “Not I. Your granduncle.”

  Not even I but the conscience of the man who’d been ordered to get rid of Verity. He couldn’t do it.

  Jenna started to repeat her spectral lover’s comment.

  Jacob sighed. “I heard that. I rarely do hear him anymore. Although I know he exists it is impossible to act as if he were here, with us, helping us, a real entity. Not when we cannot see him.” He sighed again and then grinned. “But since you can see he is with us, you tell him we will always believe it is due to the two of you that we found each other and then wed each other.” He glanced down at Verity who looked up at him and smiled. He turned back to Jenna. “That’s all we wanted to say, Jenna, except that we love you very much.”

  Jenna smiled. “We love you as well, don’t we, Mel?”

  Yes. Very much indeed.

  Verity’s head rose with a snap and, warily, she searched the area on the far side of the bed. Verity leaned into her husband, her wide eyes peering sideways toward where she too heard her grandfather’s voice.

  Jenna laughed. “He can make himself heard when he wants to, can he not? But he speaks the truth. We love you very much indeed.”

  Verity swallowed, not certain she was pleased to hear him since, when he was alive, she’d been angry with her grandfather. But then she remembered she’d forgiven him and now she straightened. “Jenna…”

  “No, Verity,” said Jenna. “We’ve said enough. We’ve said we love each other. Anything else is irrelevant.”

  The couple looked at each other and then at Jenna. They smiled. “Well,” said Jacob, “I guess that’s all then. You rest, now.”

  Yes, echoed the late Lord Everston, you must rest.

  This time no one but Jenna heard him as, smiling, she closed her eyes.

  Chapter Two

  The next afternoon voices raised in song floated up to Jenna’s room, came nearer as the singers climbed the stairs and then closer still until they were in the hallway outside her room. “Wassailers!” She glanced around, discovered Mel’s diaphanous figure standing near the window. “Do you hear them singing?” she asked.

  He nodded but didn’t otherwise respond.

  The door opened and, carrying a smallish wassail bowl filled with Christmas cheer, a footman entered. He set the bowl on an oval table that had been placed in front of the fire while Jenna slept. The table also held a number of cups and a well-polished silver ladle. The footman turned, saw that Jenna watched him, colored, nodded, wished her a soft Merry Christmas and hastily left t
he room.

  The four neighborhood men and women standing outside the door finished a carol. Lady Mary looked in, saw that Jenna was awake and nodded. The quartet entered, looking a trifle sheepish—except for one little woman who stepped lightly to the side of the bed, her cloak open and a long scarf hanging down either side. She wished Jenna a very happy Christmas. “We’ll just sing you a few songs before we go back to the others,” she said smiling. “You can join in if you want. We miss having you with us this year.”

  The past few years Jenna had gone a-wassailing and enjoyed it very much. She smiled at the apple-cheeked woman and then at the others.

  The quartet began We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

  Mel chuckled. ’Twill be an exceedingly happy new year for us, will it not, Jenna?

  The quartet continued with Adeste Fideles and ended with Jenna’s favorite, Joy to the World. She felt tears roll down her cheeks, felt the chill that meant Mel had come as near to her as he dared. She smiled and shook her head ever so slightly and the chill receded. He’d understood they were happy tears rather than sad ones.

  As the carol ended, Lady Mary and Serena handed around wassail cups and the quartet toasted Jenna. Serena was the last of the women Jenna and Mel had helped find happiness married to the love of her life.

  “Thank you,” Jenna mouthed as the wassailers bowed toward the bed and then, singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, they left the room in single file.

  Serena approached the bed. “You’re tired,” she said. There was an accusing note to her tone and she herself heard it. The sound of the scold embarrassed her and she sent a rueful glance toward Lady Mary.

  “I am tired,” said Jenna and once again smiled. “But I’m happy, Serena. Be happy for me?”

  Serena bit her lip, glanced at Lady Mary. “It is so hard.” There was almost a wail in that. “It seems as if I’ve barely gotten to know you and now you are ill. You must get better…”

  Jenna shook her head. “I’ll not get better this time,” said Jenna, her tone firm. Then, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, she added, “We’ll meet again, you know. We will all meet again. Eventually.” She grinned. “I hope not too soon, of course.”