The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

That might have looked absurd in a small house, so much greenery, but it was perfect here in these vast rooms, Reuben thought. Masses of thick red candles were being added to the mantelpieces, and Frank Vandover brought in a cardboard box of old Victorian wooden toys to be placed under the tree when they were finished.

Reuben loved all this. It was not only distracting; it was restorative. He tried not to study Heddy and Jean Pierre as they passed, for clues of whatever nature they shared with the redoubtable Lisa.

And everywhere from outside came the noise of hammers and saws.

As for Felix, he left before noon to fly to Los Angeles to make “final arrangements” with the mummers and other costumed people who’d be working the Christmas fair in Nideck or the party up here after the Christmas fair ended. He would stop in San Francisco before coming home to see to the adult choir and the orchestra he was assembling.

And Margon had gone to meet the arrival of the boys’ choir from Austria, which would also be singing at the party. They’d been promised a week in America as part of their compensation. After he’d seen to all their arrangements at the hotels on the coast, he was headed on to make some other necessary purchases of additional oil heaters for the outdoors—or so Reuben and Stuart were being told.

Frank and Sergei, both very big men, came and went continuously with boxes of china and more silver flatware and other decorations from the lower storerooms. Frank was snappily dressed as always, in a polo shirt and clean, pressed jeans, and there was as ever that Hollywood sheen to him even as he toted and reached and lifted. Sergei, the giant of the household, his blond hair an unruly mop, sweated in his rumpled denim shirt and looked faintly bored but eternally agreeable.

A team of professional maids was inspecting all the extra bathrooms on the second floor, those on the inside of the corridors, to make sure each and every one was properly stocked for the banquet guests. The maids would stand outside these bathrooms to direct guests on Sunday.

Deliverymen rang the bell about every twenty minutes; and some reporters were outside braving the light rain to photograph the crèche statues and the ceaseless activity.

It was rather dazzling and comforting, actually—especially since neither Felix nor Margon could be reached with any questions about anything.

“You can expect the entire week to be this way,” said Thibault casually as he handed the ornaments out of the box to Reuben. “It’s been this way since yesterday.”

At last they broke for a late lunch in the conservatory, the only place where decorating was not going on, its tropical blooms seeming woefully incongruous with the Christmas spirit.

Lisa brought plates for them piled high with freshly carved prime rib and huge potatoes already dressed with butter and sour cream, and bowls of steaming carrots and zucchini. The bread had been freshly baked. She opened Stuart’s napkin for him and put it in his lap, and would have done the same for Reuben if she’d had the chance. She poured Reuben’s coffee, put in the two sweeteners for him, and poured Thibault’s wine and Sergei’s beer.

Reuben sensed a gentleness in her he hadn’t seen before but her gestures and movement were still odd, and a little while ago he’d seen her mount a five-step ladder before the front windows without holding on to anything, to wipe some blemishes from the glass.

Now she banked the little fire in the white Franklin stove, and stood about topping up drinks without a word as Sergei fell on his food like a dog, only using his knife now and then, shoving rolls of beef into his mouth with his fingers, and even breaking up the potato the same way. Thibault ate like a headmaster setting an example for schoolchildren.

“And that’s how they ate in the day and age when you were born, right?” said Stuart to Sergei. He loved to tease Sergei at any opportunity. Only next to the giant Sergei did the muscular and tall Stuart look small, and Stuart more than seldom let his big blue eyes move slowly over Sergei’s body as though he enjoyed the sight of it.

“Oh, you are dying to know precisely when I came into this world, aren’t you, little puppy wolf?” said Sergei. His voice was deep and at times like this his Russian or Slavic accent thickened. He poked Stuart in the chest, and Stuart held firm deliberately, his eyes narrow and full of gleeful mock condescension.

“I bet it was on a farm in Appalachia in 1952,” said Stuart. “You tended the pigs till you ran away and joined the army.”

Sergei gave a deep sarcastic laugh. “Oh, you are such a clever little beast. What if I told you I was the great St. Boniface himself who brought the first Christmas tree to the pagans of Germany?”

“Like hell,” said Stuart. “That’s a ridiculous story and you know it. Next you’ll tell me you’re George Washington and you actually chopped down the cherry tree.”

Sergei laughed again. “And what if I’m St. Patrick himself,” asked Sergei, “who drove the snakes out of Ireland?”

“If you lived in those times at all, you were a thick-skulled oarsman in a longboat,” said Stuart, “and you spent your time raiding coastal villages.”

“Not far off the mark,” said Sergei, still laughing. “Quite seriously, I was the first Romanov to rule Russia.” He rolled his rs theatrically. “That’s when I learned to read and write, and cultivated my taste for high literature. I’d been around for centuries before that. I was also Peter the Great, too, which was terrific fun, especially the building of St. Petersburg. And before that I was St. George who slew the dragon.”

Stuart was tantalized by Sergei’s mocking tone.

“No, I’m still betting on West Virginia,” said Stuart, “at least for one incarnation, and before that you were shipped over here as a bond servant. What about you, Thibault, where do you think Sergei was born?”

Thibault shook his head, and blotted his mouth with his napkin. With his deeply creased face and gray hair, he looked decades older than Sergei but this meant nothing.

“That was long before my time, young man,” Thibault said in his easy baritone. “I’m the neophyte of the pack, if I must confess it. Even Frank’s seen worlds of which I know nothing. But it’s useless asking these gentlemen for the truth. Only Margon talks of origins, and everyone ridicules him when he does it, including me, I must confess.”

“I didn’t ridicule him,” said Reuben. “I hung on every word he said. I wish every one of you would bless us one day with your stories.”