Read Online Home for Christmas by Lizzie Lane - Free Book Online Page A

aside as though it were a bad-tempered cat.
    ‘You will come, won’t you? You do celebrate Christmas?’ Agnes asked brightly, her reddish-blonde hair glowing like autumn beneath her dark green hat.
    Lydia was wearing pale grey kid gloves, but still she shoved her hands deep into her pockets, clenching her fists tightly. If she hadn’t been wearing gloves, her fingernails would have dug into her flesh.
    ‘Well?’ demanded Agnes when she didn’t answer.
    ‘We usually have a Christmas dinner – just the two of us though sometimes Aunt Iris, my mother’s sister, comes up from Dorset.’
    ‘Well,’ said Agnes, full of exuberance. ‘It couldn’t possibly compete with a Christmas at Heathlands. Everyone comes: staff, guests and even a few relatives whom Sir Avis is still speaking to.’
    She laughed then, but halted on seeing the awkward tension on Lydia’s face.
    ‘Is there something else?’
    ‘My birthday’s on Christmas Eve,’ Lydia said hesitantly.
    ‘Well, that’s wonderful. We can celebrate that too.’
    Lydia stopped and turned to face her new friend. ‘You don’t understand. We never celebrate my birthday. My mother died when I was born. My father still grieves, or at least I think he does. My father doesn’t really like my birthday to be mentioned.’
    Agnes looked horrified. ‘It was hardly your fault. You didn’t ask to be born.’
    Lydia shrugged. ‘What you’ve never had, you never miss, though there have been times when I’ve wanted to alter things.’
    Agnes cocked her head. ‘Would your father turn down the invitation?’
    Lydia sighed. ‘My father is very ambitious. Since my mother’s departure, he’s thrown himself heart and soul into furthering his career. German men of science – and that includes doctors – are very well respected all over the world.’
    ‘So you’re half German? Do you speak the language?’
    ‘I was brought up to speak it. My father thinks it will stand me in good stead.’
    It was true. Her father had big ambitions; he wanted to become a truly middle-class Englishman with lofty connections. He’d wanted that the moment he’d come to England from Germany, a gifted doctor who had fallen in love with Emily Wilson, a girl from Dorset.
    Agnes turned thoughtful. ‘I have a grand idea. You
will
come to Heathlands for Christmas and seeing as it’s your birthday on Christmas Eve, we’ll have a birthday party – just us young folk – you, Robert and me. I suppose we’ll also have to invite Siggy, Robert’s cousin. There has to be one cloud to spoil our day.’ On seeing Lydia’s puzzled face she added, ‘Siggy’s full name is Sylvester Travis Dartmouth. Sir Avis’s sister married an older man who happened to have a son by an earlier marriage. For some strange reason she dotes on him. Nobody else does!’
    ‘Sylvester Travis Dartmouth! That’s a mouthful. And this Robert, who might he be?’
    Agnes hid her blushing face as they walked on into the wind.
    ‘He’s Sir Avis’s nephew and the most wonderful young man in the world.’
    On noticing Agnes blushing, Lydia surmised that Agnes was in love.
    Printed in black on sparkling white card with gilded edges, the invitations duly arrived courtesy of a special messenger.
    Lydia’s father was over the moon.
    ‘We are indeed privileged,’ he said to her, sliding each card from hand to hand and back again, his face beaming with delight. ‘This will certainly be a change from just the two of us dining here, or three if your Aunt Iris deigns to impose on us for another year,’ he added with a frown.
    ‘You need to write to Aunt Iris and tell her we are indisposed. Quickly,’ Lydia advised.
    It wasn’t so much that she didn’t welcome her aunt’s company over the festive season; it was just that she would much prefer to be with Agnes at Heathlands.
    ‘This Agnes. She’s the cook’s daughter?’
    ‘She is.’ Lydia thought of Agnes’s manner in that warm kitchen; her haughtiness, her unreserved