Elizabeth Mansfield

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Regency Christmas Wishes Anthology

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Special Excerpt

About the Author

“I think Mama is going to faint again,” remarked Augusta from her position at the keyhole.

“Oh, Gussie, not again!” responded her older sister Prudence in tones of deep disgust. “Get away from the door and let me see.”

“It’s
my
turn,” whined Clara, the youngest by several years. “I haven’t had
one chance
to peek. You both have been positively piggish about that keyhole ever since Letty and Aunt Millicent came home and locked themselves up in there with Mama!”

The accusation, though totally ignored by the two older girls, was quite true. Gussie and Prue had taken alternate turns at the keyhole for the past half hour, pushing aside the fourteen-year-old Clara heartlessly and ignoring her persistent questions as if she did not exist. Indeed, the entire morning had not been a good one for Clara. The day had begun with a message from their governess, Miss Dorrimore, to the effect that she intended to remain in bed to nurse her cold and that the girls were to spend the morning working on their French declensions. The older girls, ignoring these instructions, had spent most of the morning poring over the fashion plates in a treasured copy of
La Belle Assemblée.
Clara, not yet old enough to be concerned with modish gowns and the art of hairdressing, had threatened to report her sisters’ transgressions to the indisposed Miss Dorrimore. Her sisters had responded with threats and jibes of such malignity that Clara had been reduced to tears. In the midst of this contretemps, they’d heard the sound of a carriage pulling up at their front door. They’d rushed to the window in time to see the door of their aunt Millicent’s impressively ancient equipage open to discharge their eldest sister, Letitia. Letty looked woebegone and red-eyed, and Gussie and Prue had exchanged looks of surprise. The surprise soon turned to consternation, for Letty had been followed out of the carriage by their aunt Millicent whose customary cold, forbidding features were so distorted with suppressed anger as to make her ordinarily stern expression seem positively beneficent in comparison.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Prue had remarked, in sepulchral tones. “She must have botched it somehow.”

“Oh, no!” Gussie had moaned. “It can’t be! Prue, didn’t you tell me that Lord Denham was
certain
to make an offer?”

“Yes, it
was
certain. I overheard Aunt Millicent telling Mama all about it. Lady Denham assured her that her son Roger was ready to take a wife, and Letty was the girl they wanted.”

“You
overheard
all that? Ha!” sneered the put-upon Clara. “
Eavesdropped,
more likely.”

“And who’s eavesdropping now, may I ask?” Gussie had asked quellingly. “This conversation is not meant for the ears of
children,
if you please. So take yourself off to your bedroom or the nursery or somewhere out-of-the-way.”

“Listen to you, Miss Augusta High-and-mighty Glendenning! Just because you’re sixteen, don’t think you can queen it over me!” Clara had declared bravely, sticking out her chin in defiance.

“Stop squabbling,” Prue had demanded with all the authority of her seventeen years in her voice. “Letty is in some sort of fix, and we ought to find a way to help her, not stand here brangling.” With a
toss of her red-gold curls, she’d turned quickly to the door and run to the landing. The two younger girls had followed hastily behind, and the three had peered over the banister to the floor below. They were barely in time to see Mama, the epitome of confused alarm, following Letty and Aunt Millicent into the small sitting room and shutting the door behind her.

Prue had lost no time in getting to the door and kneeling down with her eye at the keyhole. Gussie had cupped her hand to her ear and pressed it against the door. And thus it had been ever since, the two of them changing places periodically and pushing poor Clara aside whenever she attempted to come close to the door.

Gussie now surrendered her place at the keyhole to Prue, who reported promptly that Aunt Millicent was holding a bottle of vinaigrette to Mama’s nose. “Can you hear anything?” Gussie asked impatiently.

“No,” Prue muttered, “but they’ve not permitted Letty even to take off her bonnet and pelisse. She’s just sitting there, staring at the floor. Aunt Millicent appears to be furious with her. But I don’t see
why!
Is it
her
fault that Lord Denham didn’t come up to scratch?”

Gussie looked down at her sister questioningly. “Do you think that’s what happened? That Denham didn’t offer after all?”

Prue, without taking her eye from the keyhole, shrugged. “What else could it be?”

Further speculation was interrupted by the opening of the front door. Their brother, Edward, strode in, his riding boots clattering loudly on the worn marble of the entryway as he hurried to the stairs. But he stopped short at the sight of the three girls grouped before the sitting room door.

“What on earth are you doing?” he demanded suspiciously.

Two pairs of eyes looked at him guiltily. “Oh, Ned, it’s Letty!” Gussie said breathlessly. “Aunt Millicent is furious with her, and Mama has fainted twice, and—”

“They’re eavesdropping; that’s what they’re doing, Neddie,” Clara declared self-righteously. “You ought to make them stop.”

“That’s just what I intend to do, infant,” Ned said, looking down at his youngest sister with distaste, “though you needn’t think I’m doing it as a result of your tattling.”

Prue had returned to the keyhole and now made her report. “Aunt Millicent is pacing again. And Letty is biting her lip. That means she’s about to cry, the poor thing.”

Ned pretended a disinterest he was far from feeling. “Get up, Prue, before someone catches you! Hang it, it ain’t the thing for a girl your age to behave like a parlormaid!” he scolded.

Prue rose calmly and brushed off her skirt. “And what do
you
know of parlormaids? Was
that
why you were sent down from Oxford? For shame, Ned!”

Ned took a threatening step toward her. “Mind your tongue, goosecap! Get back to the schoolroom at once, and take your sisters with you, or you’ll have to deal with me!”

Prue regarded him speculatively. He was only one year her senior and barely an inch taller than she, but although he had not yet reached his full height, his shoulders were broad and the muscles in his arms fully developed. Previous experience had taught her that he was not easily bested in a fight. Besides, now that she was seventeen, it was no longer seemly to engage in a tussle with her brother. She shrugged and marched in brave retreat to the stairs. Gussie, meeting his glare, took Clara’s hand and ran quickly after Prue. Ned waited until they had disappeared around the bend in the stairs. Then he listened for the closing of the schoolroom door; after which he promptly knelt down and peered into the keyhole to see for himself what was going on.

Inside the room the tension was palpable. Letty, seated in the far corner of the room, seemed
immobile, her back straight, the hands in her lap hidden inside her fur-trimmed muff, her head lowered, her face shaded by the brim of her plumed bonnet, her eyes fixed on a worn patch of carpet at her feet. Only the sharpest of observers could have detected the movement of her fingers inside the muff as they clenched and unclenched in distress and the frequent flicker of her eyelids as she battled valiantly to keep the tears from flowing over.