Note: the edition of this book being published in 2013 is a repeat of the book that appeared in 2003. It has a spruced up cover but looks very similar to the original, so I hope none of you will buy again what you already have. I thought I had better warn you, though. I know there is little more annoying than purchasing a “new” book only to discover that you already own it.
This is an anthology of five of my Christmas novellas:
A Family Christmas was published for the first time in this anthology, in 2003
The Star of Bethlehem first appeared in 1989 in the Signet anthology A REGENCY CHRISTMAS
The Best Gift first appeared in 1994 in the Signet anthology A REGENCY CHRISTMAS VI
Playing House first appeared in the Signet anthology A REGENCY CHRISTMAS II
No Room at the Inn first appeared in the Signet anthology A REGENCY CHRISTMAS V
This Christmas anthology is made up of four of my older novellas and one new one. I have always loved writing stories and whole novels set at Christmas time since Christmas has always been very special to me and my family. I have always believed that I can take a man and a woman, a child or two or more, and Christmas, and make magic of them. It is at Christmas that the human heart yearns most earnestly for peace and joy and unconditional love. There is no time more perfect for romance and a lasting love commitment. All five stories in this anthology have the three necessary ingredients.
In The Star of Bethlehem a betrothal ring is first broken and then lost. It symbolizes a broken marriage, about to be ended. But along comes a child in the form of a little chimney sweep, and along comes Christmas, the time for gift-giving, and soon there is hope for both the ring and the marriage.
In The Best Gift, three ill-assorted, lonely adults–an aristocrat, his niece, and a teacher hired as her chaperone–are brought together for a Christmas two of them are determined not to enjoy. But then a child is foisted upon them, and somehow the magic of the Season begins to wrap itself about all of them.
In Playing House an aristocrat and his daughter, who seem to have everything, become unwillingly involved with a young woman and her young siblings, who seem to have nothing. But as Christmas draws near, it becomes less clear which family is rich and which is impoverished.
In No Room at the Inn an assortment of unhappy travelers are stranded by rain and mud at an inferior inn on Christmas Eve. But love finds them there after a young couple arrives just as their baby is about to be born–and are put in the stable because there are no rooms left.
And in the new story, A Family Christmas, a young couple who have been married for a year and estranged for more than eleven months meet again at a family Christmas and are given the chance to start over.
SIGNET, ISBN 0451209788
Under the Mistletoe
A Family Christmas
A year before the start of the story Elizabeth, daughter of the extravagant and impoverished Viscount Templar, made an arranged marriage with Edwin Chambers, the son of a wealthy businessman. But she has been living almost ever since at Wyldwood Hall, Edwin’s country home, with her parents while Edwin has lived in London. Now, soon after her mother has invited all their large family to Wyldwood for Christmas, Elizabeth has learned that Edwin is coming too. Read about his arrival and his first meeting with his wife in a long while.
He swung down from the saddle outside the great double front doors and handed the reins to a groom, who had materialized from the stables without having to be summoned. He wondered if his approach had been noted from the house too, if it had been watched for with as much reluctance as he felt. Even as he wondered, the front doors swung open from within, and the butler was bowing regally to him and welcoming him home.
Edwin nodded affably and bade the butler a good afternoon.
“Is Mrs. Chambers at home?” he asked.
But she was coming through the stairway arch even as he spoke, and he was struck again, as he had been thirteen months or so ago, when he had set eyes on her for the first time, by her breath-taking beauty. She was on the tall side, slender and yet shapely. She bore herself with an aristocratic grace that was bred into her very bones. She had dark golden hair, large blue eyes, and perfect features.
She was like an icicle, he had thought from the start–and nothing had happened since to cause him to change that initial impression–ethereally lovely, but icy cold, frigid to the heart. Everything about her bearing and manner proclaimed her contempt for the man who had allowed his father to purchase her as a trophy for his son.
She curtsied. “Mr. Chambers,” she said. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?”
He inclined his head to her as he handed a footman his hat and greatcoat and gloves. She had never called him by his given name, though he had invited her to do so when he had called upon her to go through the farce of proposing marriage to her. He had deliberately called her by hers after their nuptials though she had never invited him to do so. Her greeting chilled and irritated him. The married couples from his world did not address each another with such impersonal formality.
“Yes, thank you, Elizabeth,” he said. “You are well? You have recovered your health?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said.
“And my son?”
The tightening of her lips was almost imperceptible, but it suggested unexpressed annoyance. He wished he could recall his words and speak them again to refer to Jeremy as their son. But he was accustomed to boasting to his friends about his golden-haired boy–my son–whom he had last seen when the child was ten days old.
“He is well, thank you,” she said.
If, he thought ruefully, he had married a woman from his own world, she would perhaps have greeted him each evening of the past year on his return home from work with a smile and a kiss and warm, open arms and an eagerness to share her day with him and to hear about his. He would naturally have thought of their child as ours. He would have seen their son every day of the child’s life.
But he had only himself to blame that things were not so. His father had not forced him into this marriage. Indeed, he would have been horrified if he had realized that Edwin did not really want it.
“Would you like to go to your room to freshen up?” she asked, her eyes moving over him and making him intensely aware of the less than pristine state of the clothes in which he had been riding for the better part of the day. “I have guests in the drawing room.”
“Lord and Lady Templar?” he said. “I trust they are well?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said. Her chin rose a notch, and she suddenly looked arrogant as well as cold. “We decided to have a family Christmas here. All the members of my family arrived yesterday.”
What? Good Lord! Without any consultation with him? Was he to have been even informed? How disastrous his own decision to come home at such short notice must have seemed to his wife and her family. How disastrous it seemed to him! If he could, he would have turned and left the house without further ado and ridden away back to London. All her family? He had never even met most of them. Their wedding had been a fair-sized affair, but apart from Lord and Lady Templar and their son and daughter-in-law, all the guests had been his family and his friends and his father’s. He could not leave now, though.
He would not leave. This was, after all, his home.
“I will meet and welcome them to Wyldwood later,” he said. “But first I would like to go to the nursery. Will you come there with me?”
“Of course.” She turned to accompany him through the arch to the staircase. She clasped her hands gracefully in front of her, discouraging him from offering his arm.
“How many guests?” he asked as they ascended the stairs. He could hear the chill in his own voice. He had never been able to inject warmth into it when speaking with his wife. How could one hold a warm conversation with an icicle?
“Thirty-two adults altogether,” she said. “Thirty-three now.”
He winced inwardly. Under different circumstances he might have felt some amusement over the realization that he had made the numbers odd. Doubtless his wife and his mother-in-law had planned meticulously in order to ensure even numbers. He would even be willing to wager that of the other thirty-two adults sixteen were gentlemen and sixteen ladies even though normally one would not expect a family to fall into such a neat pattern.
He was surprised when he opened the nursery door and stood to one side to allow his wife to precede him inside. He had expected a hush appropriate for a sleeping baby. Instead there was a noisy, cheerful hubbub. But of course–there must be children as well as adults in her family. There was a vast number of the former, it seemed, all rushing about at play, all talking–or, rather, yelling–at once. A few nurses were supervising, but by no means subduing, them.
© Mary Balogh