The Christmas Carriage by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lizzie swept out of the room before she said anything she’d regret—anything more she’d regret—and when she got to her sitting room, she did not build up the fire.

She instead went to bed, and for the first time in months, had a reason to be grateful. Yes, Papa had appropriated two pieces of Lizzie’s private correspondence, lifted them right out of the tray in the front hallway where all the family’s letters sat in anticipation of the footman’s trip to the nearest posting inn.

Two heartfelt, sincere, pleading letters had never reached Frederick.

But Lizzie had written three. And seeing those letters had reminded her of something else: She knew where Frederick was employed.

The sorting room went from chilly, quiet and dim, to frigid, dark, and silent, the only sound the soft rustle of the occasional epistle finding its way to a proper pile of similar letters.

Frederick was down to the dead letters, and only a few dozen of those, though the hour was late. He sat on his stool, two sorting sacks wadded up into a makeshift pillow beneath his chilly, aching bum.

“I should just go home.” He flipped the letter over, and read the last lines scrawled on the exterior. The marmalade mouser curled among the sorted letters twitched an ear.

“Some people don’t put enough effort into their penmanship,” Frederick observed. This lady, for example, did not cross her t’s, and that meant… He reexamined the address, mentally revising the street name from Bellers Road to Betters Road, which happened to be located in Soho.

“I’m falling asleep on my already asleep arse, and Bickerman will just find some other pile of straw for me to spin into gold, and eventually, he’ll have a pretext for sacking me.”

The cat yawned, stretched, and resumed its slumbers.

“I should go home, not to my freezing little room, but to Aberdeen. My family misses me.” And he missed them. “Bickerman will drive me to Bedlam, and for every fellow who gets a promotion, there are twenty who don’t.”

He picked up the next letter and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was reading the address correctly.

“I have a dead letter, Cat.”

Another ear twitch.

A queer feeling came over him as he studied the address, because he knew that penmanship. He turned up the lamp at his elbow, and with shaking hands, broke the seal.

“My dearest Frederick…”

Lizzie had written to him—written to her dearest Frederick—months ago. She’d defied all convention to tell him she missed him, she hoped to hear from him shortly, and hoped her previous letters hadn’t gone astray.

Previous letters. To her dearest Frederick.

Frederick read the letter again, and again, until he had it memorized, and still he sat on his stool and stared at it. The cat rose, and used its furry head to nudge at his hand.

“Back to work, eh?” He folded Lizzie’s letter and tucked it into an inside pocket of his waist coat. “Only a few dozen more letters, right, Cat? I should be able to get through them by morning.”

Tomorrow

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.