Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,129
all around did not permit a man to hold on to decrepit, unentailed estates for long.
She should be grateful she’d had five years to settle in, to grieve, and to heal. She had a few friends in nearby Little Weldon, some nice memories, and some satisfaction with what she’d been able to accomplish on this lovely little property.
And now all that accomplishment was to be taken from her.
She poured herself a cup of tea and took it to her back porch, where the vista was one of endless, riotous flower beds. They were her livelihood and her solace, her greatest joy and her most treasured necessity. Sachets and soaps, herbs for cooking, and bouquets for market, they all brought a fair penny, and the pennies added up. Fruits and vegetables created still more income, as did the preserves and pies made from them.
“And if we have to move”—Ellen addressed the fat-headed orange tom cat who strolled up the porch steps—“we have a bit put by now, don’t we, Marmalade?”
Himself squeezed up his eyes in feline inscrutability, which Ellen took for supportive agreement. The cat had been abandoned at the manor house through the wood and had gladly given up a diet of mice for the occasional dish of cream on Ellen’s porch.
His company, though, combined with Frederick’s visit and the threat to her livelihood, put Ellen in a wistful, even lonely mood. She sipped her tea in the waning afternoon light and brought forth the memories that pleased her most. She didn’t visit them often but saved them for low moments when she’d hug them around her like a favorite shawl, the one that always made a girl feel pretty and special.
She thought about her first pony, about the day she’d found Marmalade sitting king-of-all-he-surveyed in a tree near the cottage, like a welcoming committee from the fairy folk. She thought about the flowers she’d put together for all the village weddings, and the flowers on her own wedding day. And she thought about a chance visit from that handsome Mr. Windham, though it had been just a few moments stolen in the evening sunshine, and more than a year had passed since those moments.
Ellen set her chair to rocking, hugged the memory closer still, and banished all thoughts of Frederick, homelessness, and poverty from her mind.
Acknowledgments
A number of elves and angels are responsible for getting this book into your hands, primary among them is the team at Sourcebooks who had the insight to see how a Christmas story could fit into the Windham family’s plans. I wish (Sophie’s word is so useful) I could say I thought this one up on my own, but I did not. Deb Werksman, my editor, called one Thursday late in October and asked if I could add a Christmas book to my Works In Progress.
What author wouldn’t be thrilled to receive such a call?
And what author wouldn’t panic immediately and repeatedly thereafter?
Many things about writing come to me easily—the solitude, the trips to the fridge, the imaginary friends—but plotting is a challenge. Deb took time from her busy Sunday to sit with me over pancakes along the Long Island Sound and brainstorm story lines. She called to check in on me at two precise moments when I was ready to turn the writing over to my cats because what, after all, hasn’t been said, written, and rewritten about Christmas, one of the oldest love stories on the planet?
That sense of not being alone with a heap of straw to spin into gold pervades all the books I’ve written with Deb and the elves in the Sourcebooks shop: Cat, Susie, Danielle, Heather, Skye, Madame Copy Editor, and our publisher, Dominique, among others I haven’t even met.
This turned out to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve written, a holiday present from Sourcebooks to me. I hope it’s a present to you, as well.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Grace Burrowes’s debut novel, The Heir, was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Five Romances for 2010, and the sequel, The Soldier, was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Romances for Spring 2011. Both are New York Times and USA Today bestsellers. As the final book in The Duke’s Obsession trilogy, The Virtuoso, hits the shelves, Grace will be hard at work on the remaining stories of the five Windham sisters, of which Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish is the first.
Grace is a practicing attorney specializing in child welfare law. She lives and works in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com, her email at [email protected], or through her fan page on Facebook.