A Gerrard Family Christmas

  A Gerrard

  Family

  Christmas

  by

  Rebecca Connolly

  Also by

  Rebecca Connolly

  An Arrangement of Sorts

  Married to the Marquess

  Secrets of a Spinster

  The Dangers of Doing Good

  The Burdens of a Bachelor

  A Bride Worth Taking

  A Wager Worth Making

  Coming Soon

  The Lady and the Gent

  More romance from

  Phase Publishing

  by

  Emily Daniels

  A Song for a Soldier

  by

  Grace Donovan

  Saint’s Ride

  by

  Laura Beers

  Saving Shadow

  Text copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Connolly

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Connolly

  Cover art by Tugboat Design

  http://www.tugboatdesign.net

  All rights reserved. Published by Phase Publishing, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  Phase Publishing, LLC first ebook edition

  November 2017

  ISBN 978-1-943048-42-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957084

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  Acknowledgements

  For Papa, who loved Christmas as much as I do and taught me the proper way to hang a crazy amount of stockings, the proper reaction to an excellent present, and the importance of family at Christmas.

  And to Santa, because I need all the help I can get. I believe!

  Thanks to Phase, to Deborah, and to Whitney, thanks to Hannah and Alicia, and thanks to my very special brand of crazy, the Connolly clan. Christmas isn’t Christmas without you lot!

  Merry Christmas!

  Index

  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

  Epilogue

  Colin

  Chapter One

  Yorkshire, 1825

  Colin had lost his mind.

  This would surprise no one who knew him, and really did not even surprise himself, as he knew full well he was going beyond the scope of all things sane, but as he hauled in what seemed to be several dozen feet of evergreen and holly boughs, he thought it bore repeating.

  Not because he was one of the masters of the house doing such a laborious task, for he also had several servants that were equally weighed down, but because he was encouraging such a massive quantity of greenery that would only be decorating his home for two weeks.

  If it lasted that long.

  By traditional accounts, it ought to.

  But this was a house of Gerrards.

  Nothing was certain.

  Colin huffed with exertion as he brought his load into the kitchen with the rest, grateful the Yorkshire house had an expanded lower floor that rendered the kitchen almost completely unobstructed by the mountain of green they were making.

  “Mr. Colin!”

  He groaned and set his bunch down. “Yes, Mrs. Fraser?”

  The plump Scottish woman approached him with a rather determined step, her cap bobbing precariously on her white curls. “What do you mean by dragging all manner of plant life into my precious kitchen?”

  Colin sighed and took the good cook by the shoulders. “My dear Mrs. Fraser, might I wish you the compliments of the season?” He paired this warm plea with a charming smile, in the hopes that his usual affectations might save him from having to adjust his plans.

  She glowered at him even as her cheeks colored slightly, as he had expected. “Your charm will not save you this time, Mr. Colin, though I return your compliments with all my good nature.”

  “And how much is that good nature today?” he wondered aloud.

  “That will depend on your answer for the shrubbery in my kitchen,” she retorted hotly, propping her hands on her hip.

  “Mrs. Fraser,” he soothed, employing all the patience he had ever hoped to have, “today is Christmas Eve.”

  She huffed. “I am aware of that, Mr. Colin. I do have a rather extensive feast to prepare both this evening and tomorrow, at your instruction, if you recall.”

  “And you shall be blessed and rewarded for it,” he reminded her, “but what sort of a Christmas would I be giving my family if we did not have the proper decorations to accompany such a fine spread of your culinary brilliance? Think of my sisters, Mrs. Fraser. Think of Freddie. They have never had a true Christmas.”

  Mrs. Fraser’s stance softened as she considered that.

  “And what of the children?” Colin went on, knowing he was not being entirely fair. “Livvy and Rafe and Matthew are just starting to discover the magic of the season, and soon so will Cat and Amelia. What sort of Christmas will we give them if we cannot bring the festive nature of this glorious time to our loveliest estate?”

  “I am all for giving the children something wonderful to help them celebrate Christmas, Mr. Colin,” Mrs. Fraser replied, her tone markedly warmer. “My question remains: why is this excessive greenery in my kitchen?”

  “Oh.” Colin released her and stepped back with a shrug. “The snow is falling hard and the kitchen door was the closest entrance to the house. It’s only going to be here as long as it takes us to clean it and take it to the drawing room for the girls to arrange.”

  For a moment, he thought Mrs. Fraser was going to refuse him in spite of the favorable evidence that ought to have swayed her to his way of thinking.

  But one never knew with Mrs. Fraser.

  If not for her most excellent cooking and secret fondness for Colin’s charm, he would probably be quite terrified of her.

  As it was, he was beginning to grow nervous.

  Just when it occurred to him that all might be lost, Mrs. Fraser softened completely and sighed, somehow tossing a brogue into the sound. “Och, fine, Mr. Colin. For the children, and for Christmas, I will allow it.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fraser,” Colin half-crowed, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

  She blushed at once. “But you tell Mrs. Donovan that we will need some proper ribbons for that garland. Something in red, nothing too fancy or fine, just enough to stand out.”

  Colin stared at the cook with newfound appreciation. “Why, Mrs. Fraser… Are you feeling particularly festive?”

  She tried to scowl at him. “Not at all, sir. I simply see no reason to do a job if you’re not going to do it properly.”

  “Then may we hang some garland down here for you to enjoy?” he pressed.

  The look on her face nearly sent him into hysterics. “If you hang one hint of that infested greenery in my kitchen, Colin Gerrard, I will see to it that the only feast you see for the Christmas holidays will be the greenery itself.”

  He raised his hands in surrender and backed away. “Yes, Mrs. Fraser, I quite understand. Let me just go and gather some of the footmen to remove it from your kitchen the moment the children are ready.”

  Mrs
. Fraser reached for a nearby spoon and pointed at him as she might have done a weapon. “You had better, Mr. Colin. I have much to do down here, at your bidding, I might add, and no time for this nonsense.”

  “You are an angel among women, Mrs. Fraser.”

  “And you be grateful for it, sir!”

  Colin grinned to himself as he headed up to the main of the house. Mrs. Fraser was one of the chief redeeming qualities of their Yorkshire estate, and every time he sampled her cooking, he wondered why they didn’t come more. For all their many estates, Kit still chose Glendare in Somerset and Colin opted for Amberley in Oxfordshire for their respective country residences.

  In London, things were far simpler. Kit and Marianne had given up their enviable Berkeley Square residence, to the surprise of Society, in favor of a neighboring house to Colin and Susannah, and the girls stayed with whichever brother they were not currently angry with.

  There were frequent fluctuations in their place of residence in that regard.

  But somehow they had all settled into a fairly regular routine, and with the growing number of young children adding to the mix, there was always something going on.

  Some might have thought that the entire clan of Gerrards coming together in one estate for a holiday might have been beyond the scope of anything, but Colin and Kit had both agreed that a country Christmas in the north might just be the perfect thing for their family.

  Their wives were rather of the general opinion that they were out of their minds, but wives tended to think that about husbands, and Marianne and Susannah certainly had visited it with some frequency with them.

  If Colin and Kit could agree on something involving this many people that they were related to, it was destined to be a glorious thing.

  There was also the possibility that it could fail spectacularly, but they were choosing optimism until there was proof otherwise.

  How exactly they were going to create this amazing holiday for their families they had not quite settled on, but Colin was sure he was on the right track.

  The plan was simple: bring every wonderful and admirable tradition about Christmas, or anything surrounding Christmas, into their time here, and all would be exceptionally magical.

  He’d struggled with the idea of incorporating so much when their time was somewhat limited. Christmas in and of itself wasn’t much of anything except for church and parties and feasting. While the latter two had always been favorites of his, he’d never really been much for the first, the exceptions being marriages and christenings.

  Holidays, being by definition holy days, were a necessity that he endured.

  It wasn’t entirely his fault. Given the so-called example of his father, and the loss of his mother at such a young age, setting foot in a church was not something he tended to do by choice. Oh, he attended as much as any good Christian ought, and he could recite the more common verses of scripture, and he could have told you the names of his clergymen at every estate and the like. But if anyone had asked Colin Gerrard about the state of his immortal soul, he would have given a very bland smile and replied that his soul was just as it ought to have been, safe and sound in a very mortal form and subjected to all the bumps and bruises that might entail.

  More, perhaps, given that he was a Gerrard.

  He was quite sure that the Almighty would understand his situation.

  He crossed himself as he walked the corridor, just in case he was mistaken.

  The trouble with this particular holiday was that there was more in the days leading up to it and following it than there was to the thing itself. He couldn’t possibly have managed to drag everybody to church to celebrate Advent on every Sunday, given that Rosie and Freddie were at school and the children so young, so he had instead been celebrating Advent the last four nights with them all, pretending it somehow was the same thing.

  His sisters were bored out of their minds, and he had overheard Rosie telling the coachman to have horses ready on the off chance that she decided to return to Kent early.

  Colin had spoken with the man later and made him promise not to take her anywhere.

  He’d also stationed a footman in the hall at all hours of the night to watch her door.

  And locked the windows.

  Rosie was a tyrant, and being fourteen years old had done nothing to change that.

  Now, St. Nicholas Day had been celebrated the night after Rosie and Freddie had returned from school before they had left London, and Colin was quite proud of how that had been managed.

  He’d never enjoyed the idea that St. Nicholas would leave treats in the shoes of any good children, as his Bavarian-born mother had insisted, but for some reason he felt some comfort if they were a brand new pair of footwear that had never been worn. So he’d visited a cobbler some weeks before the night in question and had slippers made for the girls and shoes for the boys.

  Once they had all been situated in their respective rooms and nurseries, he’d pulled the footwear from their hiding places and set them carefully outside of the doors. Then he and a pair of footmen had come along with nuts pilfered from the kitchens, coins from Kit’s study, and paper-wrapped chocolates he’d taken from his wife’s secret stash.

  He’d replaced the chocolates with a new batch to save his own skin once Susannah discovered the discrepancy. He was no fool.

  As neither his sisters nor the children knew anything about the Bavarian custom of St. Nicholas, he also fulfilled the proud English tradition of small presents being brought. Those had been tucked into the shoes as well by some giggling maids, whom Colin had been tempted to shush for fear of ruining the whole venture entirely. But giggles aside, the whole thing went off without any sort of hiccup.

  The children had woken with surprise and delight at the gifts outside of their doors, and he was the favorite brother, uncle, and father for a whole twelve hours, which was something of a new record for him.

  They’d left for Yorkshire shortly after that, and having four children between the ages of fourteen and eight, and six children under the age of four, had proven to completely eviscerate any shred of holiday cheer any of the four adults and two nannies had possessed. It was a miracle that any of the children were still alive, or that the adults were coherent in any way.

  Advent was not helping matters, despite Colin’s best efforts. He’d completely skipped over St. Thomas’ Day. He could hardly arrange for old and needy women to come to his estate so they could distribute goods to them, that sort of thing was supposed to be spontaneous.

  That had been a rather unfortunate revelation when he’d tried to hire several old women to come and do just that.

  Apparently some people were still in possession of scruples and morality, if not tradition.

  According to his calculations, those were the major events before Christmas itself that were supposed to be honored in some way.

  Which left today.

  Christmas Eve.

  His wife and his sister-in-law had been arranging baskets for the poorer tenants, and he knew Kit, as the master of the estate, would have something set for St. Stephen’s Day. He would leave them all to those devices, and thank them for taking additional efforts from his list. He had enough to be getting on with, particularly since an entire household of guests should be arriving in a few hours.

  The children had no idea that their best friends and honorary cousins would be descending upon them for the holidays, and it would be the best sort of present they could have wished for. There were a massive amount of them now, given the incomprehensive reproductive abilities of Colin’s best friends and their wives. It would be utter madness, as his brother reminded him repeatedly, but he was determined.

  He’d left instructions for the rooms to be readied and for all to be prepared, given that they would be staying through Twelfth Night, and he was giddy in anticipation.

  Colin rubbed his hands together now as he entered the drawing room where his wife and youngest daughter were seated. Well, his wife was,
at any rate. Amelia was currently rolling from her back to her front on the rug by her mother’s feet, making the sort of sounds that turned adults into cooing idiots.

  “She’s going to roll into the fire if we don’t mind her,” he commented, striding into the room.

  Susannah turned to him with a wry grin. “She’s too smart for that. If any of our children were to do anything so reckless, you know it would have been Matthew.”

  Colin grinned at the mention of his son, now a husky toddler bent on wreaking havoc everywhere he went. “This is true, but Rafe would have done it first, and then Matthew would have felt compelled to follow suit.”

  Their nephew was only a few months older than their son, and was the leader of their duo, for good or for ill. Despite being Kit’s son, Rafe had inherited almost none of his reserve or sense as far as anyone could see thus far.

  But he had Marianne for a mother, so it was entirely possible, if not probable, that she was to blame for his nature.

  Kit would never say so, but Colin was sure he thought so on regular occasions.

  “Livvy would never,” Susannah stated as she picked up Amelia and put her into a better position, more in their sight.

  Colin shook his head, watching his chubby daughter play with her fingers as she sputtered in delight. “No, indeed. Livvy would be mesmerized by the fire, and meander around the thing the entire time.”

  Susannah laughed and held out a hand to him.

  He came and took it immediately, squeezing tightly before leaning down for a soft, lingering kiss. “Good morning.”