Christmas Forevermore, page 1
“In Christmas Forevermore: A Christmas Romance Collection, these four stories set during the holiday season are an excellent short read to get into the Christmas spirit. They each draw you into the Regency era with descriptions of a snowy England, festive balls, and massive estates lavishly decorated in mistletoe, garlands, and Yuletide logs, and we are swept into a more innocent, traditional period. The collection by Sally Britton, Sarah M. Eden, Ashtyn Newbold, and Karen Thornell left me charmed and mindful of the true meaning of Christmas, where love always finds the lonely hearted.”
—Readers’ Favorite four-star review
“I enjoyed these festive Christmas stories. Very clean historical fiction that were heartwarming!!!”
—Elaine Herbst, five-star Netgalley review
“What a great grouping of Christmas stories. There is not a bad or slow one in the group. What a fun collection!”
—Susan Ringo, five-star Netgalley review
Cover image © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images
Cover design by Emily Remington
Cover design copyright © 2023 by Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.
American Fork, Utah
Copyright © 2023 by Sally Britton, Sarah M. Eden, Ashtyn Newbold, Karen Thornell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., PO Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the authors’ imaginations, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Sally Britton, Sarah M. Eden, Ashtyn Newbold, Karen Thornell
Title: Christmas forevermore / Sarah M. Eden, Sally Britton, Ashtyn Newbold, Karen Thornell
Description: American Fork, UT : Covenant Communications, Inc. [2023]
Identifiers: Library of Congress Control Number 2023931182 | ISBN 9781524424459
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023931182
First Printing: October 2023
ISBN: 978-1-52442-446-6
Christmas Forevermore
A Family Christmas” by Sally Britton .................................... 1
“Christmas Forevermore” by Sarah M. Eden ........................ 81
“Christmas at Cranfield” by Ashtyn Newbold .................. 187
“A Thrill of Hope” by Karen Thornell ................................ 283
A Family Christmas
Sally Britton
Chapter 1
December 20, 1816
The tinkling of bells woke Jane a moment before her bedroom door opened on silent hinges. She opened one eye enough to see between the bed-curtains and spied two little girls hushing one another as they slipped into her room. Each step they took, creeping closer to her, was accompanied by the muffled jingles that had interrupted Jane’s dreams.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
“Ready?” the taller of the two girls asked. That would be Kitty, the more daring of the two cousins who fell under Jane’s charge on occasion.
“Yes. But—are you sure she won’t be angry?” Nancy whispered back, uncertainty making her voice squeak.
Kitty huffed. “Jane isn’t ever cross.” There was an impatient jingle, and she gasped. “Not yet. One moment. Let me get to the curtains.” The patter of slippered feet danced away from the bed. “All right. One. Two. Three!”
On three, the light-blue curtains at the window and around Jane’s bed flew open, accompanied by the wild sound of a dozen bells meant to adorn horse harnesses. The girls giggled with glee as Jane sat up with an exaggerated gasp.
“Are the horses in the house?” she shouted, pulling the quilts up to her chin. “Quick, alert the stablemaster!”
More laughter, and then both girls launched from their places on the carpet into her bed. They bounced on their knees, and Nancy threw herself directly into Jane’s arms. “It’s only us, Jane.” She held up her arm to show a leather strap with bells wrapped around it.
Kitty grinned and shook her bells too. “We found them on a chair in the corridor. Don’t they make the loveliest sound?” She dropped onto her elbows and put her chin in her hands. “Why are you still asleep? It’s nine o’clock.”
“I was at dinner last evening.” Jane put her arm around Nancy and gave the girl an affectionate squeeze. “The conversation was quite stimulating, and I quite enjoyed the company.”
Nancy lifted her head. “Oh, I know what that means.” She giggled. “You were up very late.”
“Not very, but late enough that your grandmama told me not to be seen until noon.” She twitched Nancy’s nose, then wiggled out of the top of her blankets since the girls had her pinned down on either side. They giggled as she pulled her legs beneath her and then stood, taking a stumbling step forward and then jumping off her bed. She landed with a flourish, then turned and curtsied to her employer’s granddaughters while they applauded her.
Perhaps a paid companion ought to have acted with more decorum or reserve, but Jane Allen had ever and always been herself. That, Lady Mardale had assured her, was why she had chosen Jane to fill the position. “You make me feel young again,” she had said. “I couldn’t abide a somber companion. I want your good cheer in my household.”
Jane went toward the window, arms stretched out on either side. The vision that met her eyes took her breath away, and she practically skipped the last two steps to get to the glass. “It snowed,” she whispered. Indeed, it was still snowing. Large flakes fell lazily from the sky, blanketing the rolling hills in white.
“I knew you’d be excited,” Kitty said, still on the bed, as Jane turned back to Lady Mardale’s grandchildren. “That’s why we wanted to wake you.”
“Kitty said you’d take us out to play. Nurse Derwent won’t. She says we’ll catch our death.” Nancy’s eyebrows drew sharply together. “How does one catch death?”
“It’s an expression,” Kitty answered, rolling free of the bed. “She thinks we will catch cold.”
“Oh.” Nancy climbed off the mattress. “So will you, Jane?”
Jane looked over her shoulder at the glorious sight of the snow. “Absolutely. Anyone in the nursery who wants to come with us may, so long as they bundle up to keep warm.”
The girls squealed and ran from the room, taking their sleigh bells with them, jingling all the way down the corridor to the stairs. The nursery occupied half the upmost floor, while the other half comprised rooms for the staff. As companion to the countess, Jane had a modest bedroom on the second floor adjacent to Her Ladyship’s suite of private rooms. This meant she was in the family wing, which was full to bursting at this time of year.
The Christmas season had brought all the earl’s children to his country estate, and with them had come their families and personal servants. Almost all of them, Jane reminded herself. Their second son and his wife had passed away years before, and their son and daughter—the Grants—had yet to arrive at Mardale House.
The house, part of a large estate in Wiltshire, boasted over a thousand acres sculpted to perfection by Capability Brown himself. Parts of the home were Elizabethan, but the house had been added to and refined, polished until it shone like a jewel, by centuries of Mardale earls and their countesses.
Even Jane’s humble room, decorated in blue-and-silver French wallpaper, held a distinct charm that never failed to make her happy to wake and behold it.
She dressed quickly in the warmest of her gowns and her fur-lined pelisse, along with woolen stockings and boots—all gifts from her employer to keep her in style as the seasons changed. She pulled on a pair of fleece-lined gloves and hurried out of her room, bonnet and scarf still in hand. She turned from closing her door and stumbled when her boot caught the end of her scarf trailing along the floor.
A yelp escaped her at the same moment a strong hand gripped her arm, deftly swinging her from her forward fall to the side, her other hand flailing until it landed upon a shoulder. Her head came up, her mouth popped open to apologize, and then Jane’s ability to speak vanished.
Deep brown eyes met hers, narrowed with concern from beneath a furrowed brow and wavy black hair. The man stood half a head taller than she did, with shoulders twice as broad as her own. And he looked as though he’d arrived from a land of summer, tanned and smelling of bergamot and fresh cotton.
He frowned at her, the expression so severe on his handsome face that it startled her back to her senses. “Are you all right?” he asked, his fingers relaxing their hold.
“Yes, quite. Thank you. You saved me from a nasty spill.” She stepped backward and looped her long scarf over her arm, catching her breath.
“You ought to be more careful.” He lowered his hands to his side, and as he spoke she caught the hint of an accent she couldn’t immediately place. “What is it that has you rushing about?”
She tilted her chin up, not bothering to hide her surprise at being addressed with so much disapproval. “Why, the snow, of course.”
“The snow?” Yes, that was certainly distaste in his tone.
The familiar sound of bells echoed down the corridor, and Jane turned at the same time as the strange man to see Kitty and Nancy had returned, dressed in coats and boots, leading a line of five other children, all bundled against the elements. They were all laughing and chattering, their voices raised in excitement.
The man beside her grunted. “They’re going to wake Lord and Lady Mardale.”
She laughed. “Oh, they always wake early. Lady Mardale says it is the curse of old age, having all the time to rest and being unable to help rising with the sun.” When she turned her smile in his direction, he met it with a frown.
“Who are you, to speak so freely of their business?” he demanded, looking over her shoulder at her door. “And in the family wing? How many cousins are there?” He muttered the last.
“Cousins?” she repeated, and then the pieces came together. “Oh, you must be—”
“Cousin Cyril!” Kitty shouted. “Look, everyone. It’s Cyril!” She skipped forward, but the other children stayed back, their stares curious and their voices hushed. As the oldest of the nursery-aged children at ten, Kitty was most likely to know her older cousins.
Cyril Grant, the eldest grandson at eight and twenty, had arrived sometime between the hours of midnight and nine o’clock that morning, it would seem. He and his younger sister were the only two members of the countess’s large family that Jane hadn’t met in her two years of employment. They had a residence in St. Kitt’s, an island under British governorship in the Caribbean. Mr. Grant ran his late stepfather’s shipping business from the port, which would certainly explain the tan of his face and hands.
The frown he wore eased away to a tight, controlled expression that appeared equal parts smile and grimace as he lowered himself to receive Kitty’s enthusiastic, jangling embrace. He hugged her back. “Cousin Katherine. Good to see you again.”
She giggled. “No one calls me that, you know.”
“Why not? It’s a perfect name for a little lady.”
“I’m not a lady yet. I’m too busy having a jolly time to be a lady.” She stuck her hand on her hip and grinned at him. “Are you going to play in the snow with us?”
Uncertainty replaced the grimace. “Are all of you going out? But where are your nurses and governesses?”
“Oh, they aren’t any use when it comes to the snow.” Kitty grabbed Jane’s free hand. “That’s why Jane is taking us out. We’re going to build snowmen.”
“An entire village of them,” Jane promised with a squeeze of the child’s mittened hand.
Mr. Grant looked up at her and slowly straightened to his full height. “Jane? But who is Jane?”
“Silly.” Kitty shook her head. “She’s the only fun grown-up, besides Grandmama and Grandpapa.” Then she tugged Jane’s hand, leading her away.
Jane didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt at leaving herself unintroduced to the solemn-faced Cyril. He seemed too high-handed and prone to glower. So she cast one smile over her shoulder at him, quite pleased with Kitty’s description of her, then swept up the other children to begin their march down the stairs and out of doors to the gardens.
***
Cyril watched the line of children follow the cheerful woman—Jane, apparently—down the stairs, their happy chatter floating along behind them until one of the outer doors shut heavily as they took their merriment outdoors.
He couldn’t recall ever meeting the woman in his life. He’d remember seeing blue eyes like that—the exact color of the Caribbean Sea on a hot summer’s day. Her hair was an odd shade, somewhere between gold and auburn. And she’d carried herself with grace, which hinted that she came from gentility.
“Who the dickens is Jane?” he muttered to himself. He’d worked hard to memorize the wives of his younger cousins by name, so she hadn’t married into the family. Was she some far-flung poor relation come to spend Christmas at Mardale House?
He shrugged away the question and took himself down to breakfast. The entire household, excepting the children and the mysterious Jane, were still abed. They had been up late the previous evening, celebrating the coming holiday, while he and his sister, Elizabeth, had spent the night at an inn an hour’s ride away. The roads hadn’t been in a fit state for travel during part of their journey from London, and they’d hired a private carriage early that morning to see them to the end of their journey.
A good thing they had too. If the snow continued to fall, it wouldn’t be long before the roads were impassible.
He entered the breakfast room as the servants laid out covered trays and toast racks on the long buffet. Pots of chocolate and coffee waited with warming candles beneath them, and soon other men came to join him at the table. Uncles by blood and marriage both, unmarried female cousins, and a few of the married men near him in age. The earl’s eldest son, the viscount and heir, arrived at the table with his own three sons. A dozen men and four misses out in Society lined both sides of the table. Only the earl himself and the married women in the family hadn’t arrived to break their nightly fast.
Had Cyril’s father lived, as the second of the earl’s line of offspring, would he have joined them at the table with the same merriment? Would Cyril have felt less unsure of his own place among them?
Cyril hadn’t been near his father’s family in three long years. His stepfather had never been keen on them visiting, though Cyril’s mother had tried to keep a connection with her first husband’s family.
After his mother passed, Cyril had poured himself into working with his stepfather, who’d never had children of his own. Then they had lost him too.
Cyril had put off the sale of his stepfather’s Caribbean offices, keeping his sister on that tiny island, trying to stay near what he knew. But he couldn’t stay there forever. Not when the family had asked them to return. Not when Elizabeth wanted to find a suitable husband and have children of her own.
Here at last, surrounded by strangers who all claimed a blood relation to him, he wondered why he had come at all. The house, full of people and noise, couldn’t have been any less comfortable for him.
“Cyril.” His eldest uncle, the viscount, slapped him on the shoulder. “Look at you, lad. Why, you look like a pirate. Doesn’t he look like a pirate, Eloise?”
Eloise, his uncle’s youngest daughter, buttered a slice of bread and didn’t bother looking up. “I am sure Cousin Cyril is quite respectable, Papa. He looks no more a pirate than you do.”
“The girl has no imagination,” her father said. “Tell us about the ocean crossing, Cyril. I must hear how it was. I have yet to cross more than our Channel, you know.”
Cyril obliged them for a quarter of an hour, amid interruptions as cousins asked questions and uncles chortled to themselves when they said something amusing. At some point in his storytelling, Elizabeth arrived at the table. The young ladies asked about island fashions and teatime aboard a merchant vessel, hardly giving her a moment to eat her breakfast.
Taking pity on his sister, Cyril went to the sideboard to make her a cup of chocolate with rich butter and cream, as she most liked it, but he paused when he saw movement out the windows. The dining-room windows stretched from floor to ceiling, with long green-velvet curtains held back by gold braided rope. Beneath the windows, the gardens stretched out in every direction, with hills and trees beyond all covered in white, and a gaggle of children dashed between the hedges. They bent to gather things, then ran back to a fountain—the water had frozen over, and several pillars of snow filled the once open courtyard between the fountain and shrubbery. Jane stood among the pillars, none of which were taller than her shoulders.
She accepted whatever the children brought her—stones, perhaps—and put them in the pillars, creating eyes and noses for her village of snowmen. The window muffled the sounds, but the high-pitched voices of the children were full of excitement. And then Jane laughed, and Cyril leaned closer to the glass.
