The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

The next day, the house was in a pleasant little uproar. Felix unveiled his plans to build, with Reuben’s approval of course, “a great enclosed swimming pool” off the north side of the conservatory, stretching along the western wall of the house. The architectural plans had already been drawn up. Jamie obviously thought it was the most exciting thing ever, and he stood gazing down over the intricate drawings with wonder, asking if people had done these on a computer or by hand. Of course the enclosure would be a dramatic and harmonious extension of the existing conservatory with lots of white iron, gingerbread, and beautifully shaped windows. And more tropical plants. And Felix was looking into the matter of geothermal heat. Jamie knew about geothermal heat. He’d been reading about it online.

Margon was watching all this with amusement, and Sergei came in with Frank for breakfast and expressed his usual friendly but cynical dismissal of Felix, who was “always building something, always making plans, making plans.”

“And Sergei will be the first one,” said Berenice to Laura in a polite voice, “to swim the length of that swimming pool fifty times each morning, once it’s built.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t swim in the pool?” asked Sergei. “But what about a heliport out back or a jet runway? Or better yet a harbor down there where we can dock a hundred-foot yacht.”

“I never thought of that,” said Felix with genuine exuberance. “Reuben. What do you think? Imagine it, a harbor. We could dredge a small harbor, a slip for a yacht.”

“I think these are marvelous ideas,” said Reuben. “The luxury of an indoor pool, totally connected to the house, is something unimaginably wonderful. Yes, go ahead. Let me get my checkbook.”

“Nonsense, dear boy,” said Felix. “I’ll take care of it, of course. But this is the question. Do we make the northern end of this new enclosure connect with the old household office off the kitchen? Does that room go, so to speak, and do we replace it with a bright dining area at the northern end of the pool?”

A sword pierced Reuben. Marchent had been in that office, working, when her brothers, her murderers, had broken into the house. From there she’d run into the kitchen, where they had viciously and brutally stabbed her to death.

“Yes, let’s take that room away,” said Reuben. “I mean, let’s open that space up into the new enclosure.”

Hockan drifted in, distant, but smiling agreeably enough, and deeply polite to Lorraine and the children as he had been all along. He gazed at the blueprints with respectful awe, murmuring something under his breath like “Felix and his dreams.”

“We all need dreams,” Frank muttered. He had been on the fringes, drinking his coffee in silence.

Hockan and Sergei pulled Reuben aside at the first chance. “When do you want us to start looking for your brother?” Hockan asked with obvious sincerity. “Sergei, Frank, the rest of us. We have ways of finding people that others don’t have.”

“I know, but where do we look?” asked Reuben. “We could go back down to Carmel and start there.” But he had his doubts.

“Say the word,” said Sergei.

“If we haven’t heard anything by tomorrow, I’m going back down there, with anyone who’s willing to help.”

That night was Saturday night, and the house was filled with a celebratory atmosphere, with a huge dinner in the main dining room and plenty of extraordinary wines. Everyone was present, and the little Maitland family seemed dazzled by the candlelight, the display of china and silver, the rapid-fire conversation flying back and forth, and the soft piano music floating from the living room where Frank and Berenice traded off playing Mozart.

For the first time since his spectacular arrival, Hockan was genuinely talkative, chatting about beauties of the British Isles with Lorraine and Thibault. He was so attentive and so unfailingly polite that Reuben worried about it a little, that there was a note of sadness and humiliation in it. He couldn’t be sure.

Stuart was in awe of Hockan but he didn’t trust him. That Reuben could tell.

Hockan is trying very hard, Reuben thought, to be part of all this. For others it’s natural. Felix makes it all natural. And Hockan is truly trying to fit in. But he couldn’t help notice the suspicion in Berenice’s eyes when she studied Hockan. Lisa watched him rather coldly also. Who knew what stories these two had to tell?

Each and every one of the Distinguished Gentlemen and the Distinguished Ladies made it a point to engage the newcomers in conversation, to ask polite yet slightly unusual questions, and to invite them into enduring threads of discussion. Phil and Jamie had called a truce as to certain irreconcilable differences over politics, art, music, literature, and the fate of Western civilization. Christine rolled her eyes when Jamie held forth and Jamie rolled his whenever she shrieked with laughter at one of Sergei’s jokes or Felix’s playful teasing. But Reuben detected a deep anxiety behind Lorraine’s unfailingly pleasant speech and expression. And he himself was both happy and miserable, happier perhaps than ever in his life, as if his life now was a staircase of ever-escalating happinesses, while at the same time he was so frightened for Jim, he could scarcely bear it.

Felix rose to make a final toast.

“Tonight, dear ladies and gentlemen, and beloved children,” he said, his glass raised. “This is the very end of the Christmas season. Tomorrow, Sunday, will be the official end with the Church of Rome celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus Christ. Then the church calendar will begin on Monday what has always been called so solemnly and beautifully ‘Ordinary Time.’ And we must reflect tonight on what Christmas has meant to us.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sergei, “and we shall all reflect on this as deeply and briefly and concisely as possible.”

“Oh, let Felix go on,” said Hockan. “If Felix finishes by tomorrow night at midnight when ‘Ordinary Time’ begins, we should count ourselves lucky.”

“Or are we going to get another toast tomorrow night,” asked Thibault, “as the last few hours of the Christmas season slip through our fingers!”

“Maybe what this house needs is a public address system,” Sergei suggested. “And Felix could broadcast at regular intervals.”

“And anyone turning off his PA system would be arrested,” said Stuart, “and confined to the dungeons beneath us.”

“And we should print out the entire liturgical calendar,” said Sergei, “and post it on the kitchen wall.”