Read Online Regency Christmas Gifts by Carla Kelly - Free Book Online Page A

great houses, where the doors
remained shut. The proverbial butcher, baker, and candlestick
makers were more receptive audiences, along with the constable, who
shook his cudgel at the bigger boys and made the older girls
shriek.
    The choir had just finished “A Spotless Rose,”
when Mary felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked around in
surprise, her fist raised, to see Thomas Jenkins.
    He gave her fist a shake. “You’re
ferocious.”
    “ You frightened me,” she said
honestly, and relaxed when he crooked out his arm and pulled her
arm through. She looked at Beth, pleased to see Susan Davis walking
alongside her daughter.
    She stopped and turned to face him. “You are
supposed to be at a boring, crowded party.”
    “ I couldn’t even get Suzie to go
with me. Whatever charm I ever had must have been shot off in the
war.”
    “ Really, Mr. Jenkins,” she murmured,
happy to be towed along, even happier not to feel alone as she
usually did on Christmas Eve, and discouraged and frightened at
what the new year would bring.
    “ In fact, Suzie and I are here to
kidnap the two of you and take you back to Plymouth for Christmas
Day. We decided to start tonight, didn’t we, Suzie?”
    “ We did,” his sister said, “so there
will be no disagreement. We have a pretty room for you and Beth,
and my ’tween-stairs girl will have a fire lit.”
    “ I daren’t protest,” Mary Ann
said.
    “ I wouldn’t,” Suzie told
her.
    Two more houses and they were back at St.
Luke’s. While Beth drank her hot chocolate and the grownups enjoyed
wassail, Mary Ann smiled to see Thomas clink enough coins in the
collection box to make the vicar gasp.
    “ A naughty lad is Thomas, flaunting
his alms before men.” Suzie stood beside her. “I must scold him. Do
you know, my dear, he bullied me to leave Cardiff and certain ruin
and housekeep for him in Plymouth?”
    “ I’m not surprised,” Mary Ann said.
“Ruin?”
    “ I had the merest pittance from my
husband and a house in need of repairs I could not afford,” she
whispered back, her eyes on her brother, who was talking to the
vicar now. “He made the repairs, sold my house for a profit, tucked
the money into some sort of fund for me, and spirited me away. He’s
that sort of brother.”
    He’s that sort of friend, she
thought.
    She was too shy to walk beside Thomas Jenkins
on the way home, busying herself with Beth, who didn’t need any
attention. At the house, it was pointless to argue with either
brother or sister. She bundled up their nightgowns into a bandbox
the former inhabitant of her three little rooms had left behind and
tucked the watercolors under her arm, along with their gifts for
each other, wrapped in brown paper.
    The cake and beef came along, too.
    She sat next to Thomas in the post chaise, too
shy to speak, while Suzie and Beth carried on a more animated
conversation across the narrow space dividing them.
    “ Cat got your tongue?” Thomas
whispered in her ear as they began the descent into
Plymouth.
    His face was close to hers and she didn’t mind.
“Every year I think something might happen,” she whispered back.
“It finally did. I intend to enjoy tomorrow.”
    It was his turn to look away, and she wondered
if she had offended him. His arm went around her shoulder next, so
she didn’t think he was too upset. Since the chaise was such a
tight fit for four people, she naturally leaned into him,
remembering that nice place under a man’s arm where a smallish
woman fit well. She closed her eyes, determined to remember every
single minute of this evening and the next day.
    The bedchamber was just as Suzie predicted, the
walls painted a crisp white, with lace curtains, a fire in the
grate, and a woolen comforter on the bed. Beth stared at Mary Ann
and her eyes filled with tears. Mary Ann folded her child in her
arms. “Let’s just remember everything. It will keep us warm a long
time.”
    Uncertain what to do after Beth slept, she went
downstairs and