Jean woke with a gasp, her heart pounding madly in her chest. She could feel the tears still frozen on her cheeks, but when she wrenched her eyes open she found herself lying in her own bed, in her own bedroom. Her room, the one she remembered, the one that sat at the top of the stairs, with its wide bay window overlooking the garden, its pale pink walls, her stockings hung over the mirror, her coverlet on the bed. This was her room, no dream of the past or nightmare of the future, but hers, everything just as she had left it.
You know very well you never left at all, she told herself, giving her head a little shake as if to banish the remnants of her dream. It had been beautiful, and terrible, but it was, she was certain, no more than a dream. It could not have been anything other than a dream; ghosts did not exist, and even if they did, they could hardly go walking living people through their own memories, their own futures, and they certainly could not visit the lives of others, as she had done at Lucien's graveside. No, she told herself, it was only a dream. She had crawled beneath the blankets thinking of Christmases past and Christmases yet to come, and it was plain to see that those thoughts and her fondness for Dickens had simply run away with her.
It would have been nice, of course, to think that Lucien loved her, and nicer still to think that all her problems could be solved so easily, with nothing more than a dream. But life was not a dream, or a novella, or one of those films she loved so well; she still did not know how Lucien felt - for the words she'd heard him speak had been no more than a dream, she told herself, her own consciousness searching for reassurance, and creating it where there was none - and the vision of the future she'd seen, while terrible, had been no more than a manifestation of her own fears. Satisfied, then, that all was well, that she was simply tired, and overwrought, and above all was safe in her own bed, Jean checked the time, and upon finding it just after midnight she resolved herself to sleep.
She had no sooner laid her head down on the pillow, however, than she heard the sharp sound of snapping fingers, and jerked upright, her heart once more pounding double time. Genevieve Blake had snapped her fingers at Jean just like that in her dream; the sound was the very same. But though Jean warily cast her gaze around the room no phantom appeared, Lucien's mother or otherwise.
There were no ghosts lingering in her room, but there was something...out of place. Slowly, very slowly, Jean slipped her feet out from the covers, but as she made to stand, to go and investigate the strange item she'd spotted on her dressing table, she was waylaid by the sight of her own feet. Her own feet, dirty and grass-stained, and the legs of her pajama trousers, too, as if she had...as if she had gone tromping through the graveyard barefoot.
Jean had not ever, in her life, gone sleepwalking, but she supposed she must have done. Perhaps she'd gone all the way out of the house, down into the garden-
That snapping sound again, more insistent this time, and for a second Jean could have sworn she saw Genevieve Blake's scowling face reflected back from her mirror. That was silly, of course it was, Jean told herself as she rose unsteadily to her feet. It had only been a troublesome dream, and a bit of sleepwalking. She'd go and look at the dressing table, and she'd see that all was well, and then she could sleep, and put this strange, never-ending night behind her. On silent feet she approached her dressing table, and came to a stop in front of it, staring down on it in wonder, for there, laid neatly between her jars of cosmetics and her jewelry box, was a bright, merry sprig of mistletoe.
Jean was absolutely, positively certain it had not been there when she'd gone to bed. They'd decorated the whole house weeks before, and she'd not bothered taking any greenery to her bedroom. Earlier in the night she'd sat on her low bench and stared into that mirror while she plucked the pins from her hair, while she carefully washed the makeup from her face, and there had been no mistletoe. Perhaps Lucien had brought it to her, she thought doubtfully, but she knew he was hardly likely to come sneaking into her room while she was sleeping, and even if he did attempt it she was too light a sleeper for him to come and go unnoticed.
Carefully she reached for the mistletoe, and as she lifted it up she discovered that the little bundle was tied together with a length of white silk ribbon, and on that ribbon was fasented a single pearl. White, and silk, and a pearl, same as Genevieve had worn when Jean saw her in her dream. The dream that had left dirt on her feet and mistletoe on her dressing table.
"Oh, God," Jean breathed.
It was no dream at all! It was real, it had been real, Genevieve, the visions - oh, God, Jean realized with horror, if it was real, if she had seen those things, walked beside Genevieve Blake through the timeline of her own life, if it was real, that meant that the vision she'd seen of her future without Lucien was real, too. That meant he'd gone to bed thinking she wanted no part of him, and never would. That meant she was racing towards a terrible, terrible end. Something must be done, she told herself; something must be done, to put a stop to it, to change course before it was too late, to save Lucien's life and her own in the process.
Something must be done, and Genevieve Blake had, it seemed to Jean, left behind the perfect solution. A sprig of mistletoe on a warm Christmas Eve, and the house empty save for Lucien and Jean. One last chance, Jean realized, to make her choice, and change her fate.
Without a second thought she turned and raced out of her bedroom, rushing down the stairs with no robe to cover her thin pajamas, breathless and clutching her sprig of mistletoe. Her very being was suffused with a holy sort of purpose; she had been granted this chance, this one last chance, to take charge of her life, and make everything right, and she would not squander it. The moment she'd shared with Lucien in the parlor, standing beneath the mistletoe, his heart in his eyes, had been no accident, but had instead been his last attempt at wooing her. She had not known, then, what he was about, and she had lost that chance, but it was not too late. She was certain of that; it had only been a few hours since they'd parted ways at the foot of the stairs, and Jean carried mistletoe of her own in her hands, and surely, if he'd wanted to kiss her then he'd want to kiss her now, would understand when she came to him in the dead of the night, offering him that which she had so long denied him. He must understand; she would make him understand.
If she paused long enough to consider her actions she knew she'd stop, and so as she reached Lucien's door she banged on it loudly before she had a chance to think better of it. From inside the room she heard a muffled curse, and the shuffling sound of feet, and oh, her heart was racing so madly she feared it might well burst from her chest. Was she really going to do this? It was after midnight, for goodness sake, and they were all alone, and proper ladies did not behave this way, but oh, she'd not been kissed for such a very long time - what if she mucked it all up? What if she was wrong about everything? What if she had, in fact, simply gone mad?
In the midst of her welter of confusing, terrible thoughts Lucien flung open the door, and for a moment Jean was left dumbfounded at the sight of him. He had been sleeping; he'd rinsed the cream from his hair and it was curling softly around his ears, and his heavy feet were bare on the floor. It was a warm night, and he wore only a pair of pajama trousers, slung low on his hips, his broad chest, his strong shoulders, his thick arms on full display, and seeing him like that, the little whorls of hair around his flat brown nipples, the angry red scar on his shoulder, the definition of each of his heavy muscles, every piece of him that had for so long been a mystery to Jean now suddenly revealed to her in all its glory, left her a bit light-headed.
"Jean?" he said, his brow furrowed, his voice gravelly from sleep and full of worry, "is everything all right?"
God help me, she thought, but he is a beautiful man.
"I'm afraid I've made a terrible mistake, Lucien," she said. "And I want to make it right. Can we...could we perhaps...could I have a second chance, please?"
Her voice trembled as she spoke, but she forced each word out, pushing aside her doubts and her anxiety and the shame that licked up her spine at the thought of her turning up at his bedroom door in the dead of night, asking for a kiss. The moment she asked her question she lifted up the sprig of mistletoe for him to see, and a wide, warm smile spread across his face, and relief came washing over her in waves so strong and so fierce and her knees very nearly gave way beneath her. What a picture they made, half dressed and wrinkled, standing in his bedroom door in the dark of the night, Jean holding out the mistletoe to him with trembling hands, Lucien looking at her as if she were the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen. It was madness, but of the best kind; it was, she thought, the madness of love.
"I think," Lucien said very slowly, "that you can have as many chances as you need."
Carefully he reached for her and took the sprig of mistletoe from her hands. She thought he meant to toss it away, but he did no such thing; he simply lifted it up, held it over their heads, and Jean was smiling herself, now, thinking how she loved him, his gentle spirit, his eager heart. That was how it was meant to be, with mistletoe, hung above a doorway, the lovers caught beneath it, and while this was not the moment Lucien had planned, she rather felt that this was better, somehow. They had both made their choices, and found joy in the choosing.
"Good, then," she started to say, but her voice left her as he bowed his head, leaned slowly down towards her, and she found she didn't want to speak at all, not really. Instead she reached for his face, cradled his cheek in her hand, felt the scratch of his beard against her palm, and smiled all the wider as she lifted herself up onto her tiptoes, and felt his lips, at last, brush against her own. A short kiss, a sweet kiss, his hand holding the mistletoe above their heads, and when they parted from one another they were both grinning fit to burst.
"Merry Christmas, Jean," Lucien whispered.
Jean did not answer him with words; instead she flung her arms around his neck and once more pressed her lips hard to hers, hungry, now, hopeful, now, as she had not been for such a very long time. Lucien gasped into her kiss, caught off guard perhaps by her fervor, but when her tongue brushed against his lips he threw the mistletoe away and hauled her hard against him, and kissed her as if the world was ending. And in a way, perhaps it was, ending and beginning all at the same time.
Unseen by Jean and Lucien, who by this time were grasping at one another, hands learning the topography of bodies they had only previously dreamed about while still they kissed, laughing and relieved, a shadow lingered further down the corridor. A shadow dressed in white, and silk, and pearls, with a gentle smile upon her face.
"Joyeux Noël, mon cher," Genevieve Blake whispered, and then she vanished, never to be seen again. Her work was done; all was well, and all would be well.