by L G Rollins
Contents
Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Afterword
Discussion Questions
Your Free Story
Also by L. G. Rollins
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by L. G. Rollins
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Note from the Author
Some time ago, the thought came to me to create a trilogy based on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. However, in making one book become three stories, a single fact became immediately clear. This would not be a retelling in the truest sense of the word.
This is not a book about a grumpy old man who is visited by spirits in the middle of the night and awakes the next day a better individual.
Instead, I decided to take the essence of the three spirits and write one story around each of them. I wanted to take the messages told by the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and explore the lessons and ideas they present.
That being said, many of the characters first imagined by Charles Dickens make cameo appearances here and there, though I have taken some liberties to aid in telling these stories.
I believe it is worth mentioning that some of the holiday terms we now use to reference the Christmas season were either not used in Regency times, used in slightly different ways, or used to mean slightly different things. Unfortunately, many resources were contradictory on this point—in those cases, I deferred to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the complete works of Jane Austen.
After much research, here is a list of terms and how they are used in this series:
“Christmas”—refers to the entire season, not simply one day.
“Christmas time”—Dickens uses this term, but always as two words (not the “Christmastime” we are used to seeing).
“Holyday”—a formal term used to reference specific religious days, including, but not limited to Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Whitsunday, and Christmas Day.
“Merry Christmas”—used by Dickens. The term “Happy Christmas” only became popular later.
“Christmas holidays,” and “jolly holidays”—though often in England the term “holiday” refers to a break from school and work during the summer, both Dickens and Austen use the term “Christmas holidays” and Dickens even once says “jolly holidays,” so I chose to include both terms in this story as well.
“Greetings of the season,” “festive season,” “the season,” and “winter season”—all also show up in Dickens’s and Austen’s stories.
I hope you find this story memorable and that it brings a bit more light to your jolly holidays!
Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.
To Kelli,
Who chooses Joy,
regardless of what the days bring.
“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!”
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!”
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
Chapter One
Late April, 1813
Lord Fredrick Chapman opened the study door but didn’t enter. The whole room—the musky smell that lingered, the heavy desk along one wall, the forest green rug and walnut furniture—it all reminded him far too much of Father.
Father, who’d died not five weeks ago.
Fredrick placed a hand on the door frame and rested his head against it. Blast, but tears still felt embarrassingly close to the surface. At least, for the moment, he was alone—a circumstance that came but rarely now. Sighing loudly, he pushed off the door frame and strode into the study.
He got no further than the middle of the rug. Father used to sit in here for hours each day, seeing to matters of Parliament, engaging in heated debates with the other lords he invited over, or simply hiding from Fredrick’s twin sisters, Christina and Eleanor, when they were most bent on discussing lace, fashion, and eligible bachelors. Fredrick ran a hand down the back of his neck, pulling on the tension there. He’d hidden in here with Father any number of times.
Fredrick’s hand dropped back to his side. The room was his now. The whole house, in the best part of London, no less, was his. So was the country estate, the hunting lodge up North, and several smaller estates scattered across England. It felt like it all—houses, land, everything—had settled onto his shoulders, crushing him into the ground. He reached out and placed a hand against the wingback closest to him. How was he ever to manage?
See to the various estates and tenant problems? Lead in Parliament as his father had done? And, above all else, care for a grieving mother and two sisters who were supposed to be enjoying their first ever London Season? Instead, they were wearing black and turning down invitations to balls and musicales. It wasn’t right; yet, he couldn’t fix it.
He couldn’t fix any of it.
Steps sounded just outside the door. A footman ducked in.
“Mr. Baker and Miss Baker to see you, sir.”
His uncle and cousin had come? Again? Fredrick pulled himself up straight. “Show them in.” Father had always made sure his younger brother—Mr. Baker—and his family wanted for nothing. That, too, would be his responsibility now.
“Fredrick,” Baker said, walking quickly over to him, “Good to see you. Good to see you.”
“Same to you, sir.” Fredrick clasped the older man’s hand in his own and gave it a solid shake.
Miss Alice Baker trailed directly behind her father. “How are my aunt and dear cousins today?” She spoke on before Fredrick could answer. “I must speak with them—I have such the greatest on-dit to share.” Her eyes sparked in the way they only did when Alice was sharing gossip, which happened more often than not.
“Hold on there,” Baker said to his daughter. “I had rather thought you’d want to be present when I give Fredrick the good news.”
News? Fredrick’s stomach grew hard. He was sick to death of “news.” News was how it had all started.
His father was feeling ill. His mother insisted the situation was not so grave as all that. The doctor had been called.
There was nothing anyone could do.
Alice’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you have not discussed this with him?” Her gaze moved to Fredrick and she laughed. �
�I had rather thought it a done deal.”
“What is a done deal?” Fredrick asked, confident he truly didn’t want to know.
“My boy.” Baker clapped Fredrick on the shoulder. “Your father, may he rest in peace, always looked out for me and mine. He was a true brother and a true friend.”
Fredrick felt the familiar sting of tears against the back of his eyes. Why was it that society only believed tears belonged to the fairer sex? When a beloved father passed, shouldn’t all be allowed to grieve? But, no. If a gentleman cried, it meant he was weak and incapable—two things Fredrick could not afford to be.
Baker continued. “So, in honor of your dear father, I have decided to help you in kind.”
“That is not—”
Baker held up a hand. “It is the least I can do, believe me.”
All right then. Fredrick probably should have been pleased to know Uncle was willing to help him out in some way; he was feeling quite drowned by all his responsibilities at the moment.
Fredrick found he couldn’t feel easy with Alice grinning like a hungry cat, but he had been raised to be polite. “Thank you,” he said. “In what way are you insisting you help me?”
He sounded a bit ungrateful. He wasn’t—he was just overwhelmed and not at all in the mood for games.
Baker’s smile grew. “Fred, my boy”—two ‘my boys’ in one conversation could not purport anything good—“I have found you a wife.”
“A what?” Fredrick all but shouted. Taking a half step back, his elbow bumped against the wingback chair.
Alice giggled. “Isn’t it perfect! She’s not whom I would have considered the right woman for you—after all, she is a bit on the shelf—but I am sure once you see her, you will think nothing at all the matter since she is rather pretty in her own right, and though she doesn’t care for the pianoforte, I hear she is quite adept at the harp, though I don’t think society will every truly accept a woman who wants to play the harp instead of the pianoforte—”
“Oh, hush, Alice,” Baker said.
Fredrick simply stared. A wife? Was his uncle mad? Perhaps deranged from grief? Fredrick had felt himself slipping toward Bedlam more than once these past weeks. There was always a chance Uncle had beat him there.
“She is a fine lady,” Baker said, either ignorant or uncaring that Fredrick could hardly make sense of the words falling from his mouth. “Comes from an upstanding family, a long line of titles and the like.” He gave Alice a small nudge with his shoulder.
“Oh, yes,” she jumped in eagerly. “Miss Helena Spencer is a beautiful woman. Very . . . good on the harp. And blonde. She has blonde hair. And she smiles. A lot. So you should like that. And she also lost her father not too long ago, so you have something in common. Or was it her mother who just died?”
“Her mother died in childbirth.” Baker corrected in a hushed voice. “Her father passed last year.”
“Oh, that’s right. Silly me,” Alice said with what felt to Fredrick like a stark lack of concern for Miss Spencer’s plight.
He could not even begin to delineate all the things he saw wrong with Alice’s “compliments” toward this lady who was supposedly perfect for him.
“Baker,” Fredrick started, “thank you”—was it a sin to thank a person when one had never been less thankful?—“but I cannot, in good conscience, agree to marry any lady whom I have never before laid eyes on.”
“Well, if you need to see her is all,” Baker shrugged, “that can easily be arranged.”
Seeing the lady was not the issue. Not by far.
But, if Uncle didn’t get that on his own, then Fredrick did not have the energy to elaborate until he did.
“I am still in mourning,” Fredrick tried. “I cannot court or wed. Not for eleven months still.”
“Oh, poo.” Baker chuckled. “Many a man weds before the full year is up. The important thing is that Miss Spencer will be out of mourning in a couple of months, and then you two can wed before removing to the country this autumn.”
He was serious. The deuced man was actually serious.
“No,” Fredrick said. Hang his tutor’s lessons on politeness. This needed to end now. “I am not interested.”
“But you need a wife, and so I have found you one.” Baker looked genuinely confused at Fredrick’s refusal.
“Last year,” Alice started, her creased brow a comical replica of her father’s, “you said my friend Elizabeth was blessed to have such things arranged for her. Father and I were led to believe you might think such a thing a blessing for you as well.”
“This is nothing like Mr. and Mrs. Weston’s match.” In that situation, both parties had kept company many times and were quite agreeable to the arrangement—they hadn’t had it foisted upon them without warning. Besides, he’d only said as much to Alice because he knew Mr. Weston to be the best sort of man, in hopes that it would calm his cousin’s dramatics.
Baker sighed. “Her guardian will be most disappointed.”
Her guardian? “You haven’t spoken with the man, have you?”
“Of course I have. With her father gone, Lord Shakerley has taken her in. He is the nearest thing she has to a male relation and the one seeing to her well-being. Who else would I have spoken to? Her?”
Fredrick groaned. “No, Uncle, but you could have spoken to me. You had no right to speak on my behalf.”
Baker’s tone turned petulant. “I was only trying to help my brother’s son. My own nephew.”
“I know,” Fredrick said. As much as he could not like what Uncle had done, he knew he had acted out of love. Gads, what would father have done in such a situation?
“You have quite a load on your shoulders,” Baker said softly. “Of that I have no doubt.”
“Father was the best man I have ever known,” Fredrick said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I’m not sure I’ll ever carry it as well as he did.” His gaze dropped momentarily to the rug beneath their feet. Could someone like himself ever measure up? Was such a feat even possible?
“Do my aunt and cousins have plans for this hunting season?” Alice asked. “If you are wanting to remove yourself to the hunting lodge, they can come stay with us.”
The corner of Fredrick’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. “They will be pleased to know you have thought of them. But no, my plans are to have the whole family removed to the country estate. I will stay with Mother until she no longer needs me.”
Alice smiled. “You’re a good son.”
No, he was simply the only son his mother had. The only brother his sisters could claim. The only one who could step in where his father had left off. He only prayed he didn’t disappoint them too greatly.
Baker pulled out a thick, folded bit of paper. “Lord Shakerley will be sad to know I cannot return this with your signature.”
“Excuse me?” Fredrick’s pulse quickened, beating hard against his throat. “You’d gotten so far as to write up a contract?” Lud, this was far worse than he thought.
“Well, yes, we both thought the two of you would make an excellent match. What else were we to do?”
“Not this.” A contract, even one not signed, implied there was a connection between them. It meant people expected a wedding. It meant rumors and gossip.
Fredrick’s gaze jumped between Baker and Alice. “Who all knows of this?” He could only pray there weren’t many.
“Lord Shakerley, us . . .” Baker’s voice trailed off.
Alice didn’t say anything at all.
“Does she know? Miss Spencer, I mean?”
Baker’s brow creased. “I am not certain. His lordship didn’t give me the details on what she has been informed of and what she hasn’t.”
Fredrick certainly hoped she hadn’t been apprised of any of it. Either way, it wasn’t as though Miss Spencer had her heart riding on Fredrick. How could she? They’d never met.
“You need to speak with Lord Shakerley immediately. Let him know that this is not going to happen.”
“Are you sure?” Baker pressed. “Securing a wife for one’s self can be time consuming. Why not let me do this bit for you? As earl now, it is your responsibility to produce an heir.”
Fredrick clamped his mouth shut to keep from saying something he’d regret later. “I am sure, Uncle. I thank you for your consideration, but I ask that you allow me to handle my own romances from here on out.”
“If that’s what you wish.”
“Yes, that is exactly what I wish.” Fredrick was losing the battle to remain calm and collected. He could feel it. “And I think it best if you go right away.”
“Well, perhaps the man could see me tomorrow. If not, surely the next—”
“Now, Uncle. This very minute.”
Baker slipped the contract back inside his jacket. “Very well. Come, Alice.” The two moved quickly toward the door, daughter trailing, wordless, after her father.
Fredrick’s cousin was acting rather silent—a very strange occurrence for her. He found it unsettling.
“Alice,” Fredrick called, “no one knows about this, correct?”
She pursed her lips tightly together and nodded, only a small “Mm-hmm” coming from her. Then the two were gone, their footsteps echoing down the corridor as they left.
Fredrick circled the wingback and sat heavily in it. Of all the nodcock notions. He hid his eyes behind a hand. Uncle choosing him a wife? How could a grown man—one with a wife and family of his own—not see how undesirable such an act would be?