Christmas Gifts by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Class Ebook Editions Ltd.
Published: 2015-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Surprise Party

Mary Balogh

It was snowing halfheartedly. Not enough to make a picturesque scene of the garden below the nursery window. Not even enough to whiten the ground. Only enough to dust the edges of the lawns with white powder and to blow in thin white streaks across the path. Only enough to make the sky heavy and leaden so that it seemed more like early evening than midafternoon.

It was not exactly the type of Christmas scene one dreamed of. But then Christmas was still three days away. Perhaps it would snow properly before then.

“Enough to build a snowman with,” Rupert Parr said, frowning speculatively up at the sky through the window.

“Enough to make snow angels with,” Patricia Parr, his sister, added, contemplating rather glumly the few thin flakes that were drifting slowly downward.

Caroline Parr was kneeling on the floor, her elbows on the window ledge, her chin in her hands, gazing outward. “Will Christmas come soon, Rupert?” she asked wistfully. “Will it snow?”

She remembered Christmas last year, when there had been goose and plum pudding to eat. But it had not been quite the happy day she had been led to expect. Nurse had been cross and Rupert and Patricia had been peevish. It had not snowed—Caroline could not really remember what snow was like. And Mama and Papa had not come home. They had had to go to an unexpected but very important meeting, Nurse had explained to Rupert, and would come home as soon as they could. They sent presents which arrived a week late.

“Tell me about Christmas,” Caroline said now, addressing herself to her eight-year-old brother, whom she considered omniscient, though she did not turn her gaze from the outside world. “Tell me about snow.”

But it was their nurse who answered. Caroline loved Nurse dearly, but she had been cross and sharp-tongued lately—even worse than she had been last Christmas.

“There will be no talk of Christmas this year,” she said firmly. “And no talk of snowmen and snow angels either, Master Rupert and Miss Patricia. The two of you are old enough to know better. For shame, filling Miss Caroline’s head with ideas that are not proper. There will be other years and other Christmases to enjoy.”

“I beg your pardon, Nurse,” Rupert said in the voice that always made Caroline want to hold his hand and rub her cheek against his arm for reassurance. It was his grown-up voice, not his real voice.

“You must understand, Master Rupert . . . ,” Nurse said.

But Caroline stopped listening and watched the snow snakes slithering diagonally across the path, all going the same way. She watched for one going the other way, but there were none. They were all fleeing from a fierce dragon, she decided. The dragon was holding a beautiful princess captive. It was a bad dragon. Soon one of the snow snakes would turn back to fight the dragon and rescue the maiden and become a great hero. He would marry her and they would live happily ever after.

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