A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) by Cecilia Grant Page B

of her nose. She looked somber and alone and untouchable as an angel statue in a graveyard.
    I’m sorry, Miss Sharp. I didn’t mean…
    That wasn’t true. He’d meant it.
    Forgive me. I don’t know how to speak to high-spirited people, and I sometimes say the wrong thing.
    That was true. Why couldn’t he get the words out?
    He rubbed his thumb in the opposite palm, the kid of his gloves squeaking in counterpoint to the ceaseless clopping of horse-hooves and the rumble of wheels on the road. And before he could manage to speak, or even decide if he really ought to, Miss Sharp’s shoulders rose with an inhalation. “I suppose we must be nearing Downham Market by now.” She leaned nearer the window to look up the road. “Does any of this scenery look familiar, Perkins?”
    That quickly, her elegiac air was gone. She gave every appearance of having crumpled his incivility in one hand and tossed it over her shoulder, along with whatever cordiality might have grown up between them. Her mind was entirely on the horizon and all the novel enjoyments ahead.
    That was for the best. He needn’t worry over making an apology now. And the changeability of her mood only confirmed everything he’d already known about how little suited they were to be friends, even for the length of a drive.
    “Will half an hour be sufficient for your business here?” he said, once the maid had confirmed they were approaching her town. “That will give me time to change the horses and stretch my legs a bit.” His spirits, too, lifted at the prospect of this stop. They’d made good time on the first leg of the journey. If the road to Welney was equally smooth, and the weather stayed clear as it had been, he could deliver his passengers to Hatfield Hall by early afternoon. Then he’d bid Miss Sharp goodbye, sincerely wishing her well, and he’d hurry home, equipped with a tale to tell Kitty and the rest about the unexpected adventures into which one could fall when attempting the simple purchase of a falcon.
    * * *
    She’d never met the entire Perkins family before. Mr. Perkins had come to fetch his daughter home for a holiday on occasion, and she was almost sure one of these elder brothers had done so, too. But there proved to be a good many Perkinses beyond those ones, and now, in a dining room of the inn that Mr. and Mrs. Perkins ran, with siblings great and small showing such joy at the presence of their lady’s-maid sister, she felt herself turning melancholy.
    She oughtn’t to be. She was on her way to a party and it was going to be perfectly splendid. There would be Twelfth Cake, and wassail, and engaging young men, easy to talk to, not requiring a lady to weigh all her words before speaking for fear of giving some obscure offense. It would be the jolliest Christmastide she’d ever known.
    Though not, perhaps, the jolliest Perkins had ever known. Whatever festivities they provided for servants at Hatfield Hall could hardly compare to the joy and easy warmth before her here. She’d always supposed the holidays must be sweeter in the company of brothers and sisters, but she’d supposed it in vague terms. It was different now that she could picture a roomful of young men and women, all tall and handsome and dark-eyed, laughing together over the time they’d almost set fire to the house through careless handling of raisins. Now that she could think of boisterous small children throwing their arms about her and demanding to be given their presents, as a rosy-cheeked girl was doing to Perkins at this moment.
    The maid’s glance crossed with Lucy’s. Laughter shone in her eyes. She looked different among her own family, in the way all servants probably did. A bit more assured, a bit less deferential. Quite pretty, really, with an auburn curl tumbling loose at her temple as she fished presents one by one from the valise in which she’d packed all her things. On the other side of the room a young man, friend to one of the elder brothers