Regency Christmas Gifts by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: baseball
Publisher: Camel Press

Lucy’s Bang-Up Christmas

Chapter One

December 5, 1815

Dear Cousin Miles,

Thank you for writing. By all means, dear boy, join us when the Michaelmas Term is done, and after your parents have seen you. Believe me, you are not inviting yourself in vain. I am drowning in paperwork and testy females. I am tempted to bury your cousin Clotilde up to her neck and retrieve her only an hour before the wedding, no matter how illustrious the groom. My sister Aurelia Burbage means well, but she is a wretchedly poor substitute for my dear late wife. She flutters about, making my cook’s life miserable with her demands. If Honoré tenders his resignation, I swear I will open my veins.

And Lucy! Lucy mopes about wishing for Christmas in this house, instead of Clotilde’s wedding. I tell her that our thoughts must be on her sister’s Christmas Eve nuptials this year. I know that Lucy misses her mother and all of my dear wife’s holiday traditions. I have promised her a Yule log, Christmas pudding, wassail, and caroling and all the rest next year. “Can’t we have both now, Papa?” she asks, pleading with those big blue eyes. When was the last time you saw Lucy? Contrary miss. Aurelia is preparing her for a come out and Lucy could not care less.

Your father tells me you are returning to Oxford for more study. I break out in hives just thinking about that much time devoted to books, but to each his own. It is a fact that you Bledsoes come from the brainier side of our mutual family tree!

Join us, cousin. I can’t offer you anything but tumult this season, but if you can keep me above water by dealing with correspondence, receipts and milliner’s bills, I’ll—heaven knows what I’ll do. I can’t think!

Abandon the hallowed halls of Christ Church College and come soon to the wilds of Kent at your own peril. See if you can jolly Lucy into a better mood. Let us make that your primary task.

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