A Secret Christmas Read online

  A SECRET CHRISTMAS

  Lauren Royal

  3rd Edition, January 2018

  Novelty Books

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Book Description

  More Chase Family Books

  A Message from Lauren...

  Chase Family Tree

  Cover Image

  Dedication

  1: Lady Chrystabel Trevor...

  2: Joseph Ashcroft...

  3: Three days into...

  4: When Lord Tremayne...

  5: When they'd scraped...

  6: Chrystabel watched Creath...

  7: The moment the heavy...

  8: When Chrystabel woke...

  9: There was no time to waste.

  10: "Where's Creath?"

  11: While hanging a wreath...

  12: "Wait."

  13: Joseph was planting...

  14: Seated three hours later...

  15: Having no idea why...

  16: "I'm so glad you talked...

  17: The yule log burned...

  18: "Lady Chrystabel, you...

  19: "Me?"

  20: Chrystabel passed...

  21: In the pitch-black...

  22: She'd said yes.

  23: Chrystabel couldn't...

  24: Chrystabel and Joseph...

  25: The Church of St. Mary...

  Thank You!

  BONUS MATERIALAuthor's Note

  Explore the Chase Family World

  Excerpt from VIOLET

  Excerpt from LOST IN TEMPTATION

  Books by Lauren Royal

  Free Historical Recipe Book

  Contest

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Jewels of Historical Romance

  Contact Information

  Copyright Page

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  England, 1651

  Christmas has been outlawed by the new Commonwealth government—but that won’t stop Lady Chrystabel Trevor from embracing the holiday spirit. When she finds herself snowed in with handsome and intriguing Joseph Ashcroft, the Viscount Tremayne, merrymaking leads to mayhem. In a time of fear and oppression, can the magic of Christmas bring two hearts together?

  MORE CHASE FAMILY BOOKS

  For more information, click on a cover.

  Chase Family Series: The Jewels

  Chase Family Series: The Flowers

  Chase Family Series: The Regency

  Chase Family Series: The Renaissance

  Boxed Sets

  A MESSAGE FROM LAUREN…

  For years and years, my readers have been asking for a book about my unconventional Ashcroft parents, Chrystabel and Joseph. And finally, here it is! I’m so excited! It’s a Christmas romance and stands alone as a complete story—so it’s a perfect book of mine to start with if you enjoy holiday stories. It’s set in 1651, before all of my other Chase Family Series titles.

  As for how it is that an Ashcroft story is part of my Chase Family Series…

  It’s unusual for an author to center all her novels around a single family, and it wasn't something I planned to do when I started writing. And as it turned out, the Chase Family Series should more rightly be called the Chase/Ashcroft Family Series…except I fear it’s far too late for that!

  The Chase family came to me all at once. I knew I wanted to set my first books in the late 17th century, and I wanted to write about people affected by their times. An English family with Royalist sympathies would have lived through a lot in those years—the English Civil War, the Protectorate, exile on the Continent, the Restoration—and those experiences would have forever shaped their personalities. So the Chases came to me: Jason, the oldest, who had responsibility thrust on him too soon by the untimely deaths of their parents; Colin, a middle child filled with resentment for his parents’ choices and what those had ultimately cost him and his siblings; Kendra, the only girl, raised by imperfect but well-meaning older brothers; and her twin Ford, the baby of the family, the happy-go-lucky one who was too young to feel the burden of their circumstances.

  Ford later marries Violet Ashcroft, bringing her eccentric relations into the Chase family circle. The Chase Family Series currently includes four books featuring Ashcrofts—Violet, Lily, Rose, and this one, A Secret Christmas—with more planned for the future.

  Following this series, I decided to write books set in the Regency period. By then the Chases and Ashcrofts felt as real to me as my own family, so it was natural to write about their descendants. Though over a hundred years have passed, evidence of the original families still remain, hidden in old portraits, hereditary traits, and family legend (the truth of which astute readers will know better than the Regency families do!). I had a lot of fun tying these characters together across the centuries.

  My daughter and I are now writing Chase books set in the Renaissance era, so the tradition continues. Will I ever write about different families? I can’t say for sure, but I'm not ready to walk away from the Chases and Ashcrofts yet!

  I love to keep in touch with my readers! Join my e-newsletter to receive free and 99¢ book suggestions each week as well as new release bulletins. And I'd be thrilled to see you in my Readers Group on Facebook, where I share sneak peeks and gather suggestions from my favorite readers!

  There are so many great romance novels out there—thank you for choosing mine. I so hope you’ll enjoy Joseph and Chrystabel’s story.

  Happy reading!

  CHASE FAMILY TREE

  To see a larger version of the Chase Family Tree, click here!

  For my dear nieces

  Stacy and Lindsay Gordon

  Wisconsin and London are one thing,

  but please don’t move to Wales.

  I don’t cope well in the wilderness.

  ONE

  Grosmont Grange, England

  December 20, 1651

  LADY CHRYSTABEL Trevor adored Christmas.

  Or at least she had until this year.

  She frowned as her sap-sticky hands wove yet another wreath from the greenery she and her younger sister had collected. “Just five more days,” she said, thinking of all the decorating they still had to do.

  Arabel meticulously measured two loops of red ribbon. “But just four days until Christmas Eve.”

  “Yes, and we have to be ready by Christmas Eve.” Chrystabel sighed as she eyed the enormous pile of boughs they’d cut and trimmed. “I cannot believe how long it took to make the garlands. This isn’t easy alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Chrystabel.” Arabel sounded sweetly sympathetic. “I’m still here. Matthew’s still here.”

  “Martha and Cecily aren’t here.” Martha and Cecily were their older sisters. “And neither is Mother.” Not that Mother had helped her girls prepare for Christmas, anyway. She’d always been a rather uninvolved parent, leaving her children to be raised by nursemaids. But this was their first Christmas without her, and having her home and not participating had been better than not having her with them at all. “It makes me sad that we never see her.”

  “Just pretend she’s dead,” Arabel suggested airily.

  Arabel said everything airily. Pretty, seventeen-year-old Arabel was dark-haired and dark-eyed and statuesque—like Chrystabel and the rest of the Trevors—and she was the happiest person Chrystabel knew. Nothing ruffled her. She could find the good side of anything.

  Unabated cheerfulness like that set Chrystabel’s teeth on edge.

  “Mother is not dead,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “I could forgive her if she were dead.” Their father had died, after all—fighting for the king in the Civil War—and Chrystabel had never blamed him for leaving them. Death was sad but normal.

&n
bsp; But there was nothing normal about being alive and not even an hour’s ride away—and ignoring your own children.

  Especially at Christmas.

  Chrystabel set her jaw. “I will never forgive her for marrying that…that man.”

  That man was the Marquess of Bath, and he had no interest in the grown children of his second wife. The sorry and shocking thing was that Mother seemed similarly disinclined to spend time with her first family. She was too busy with her new husband and his children that she was raising. Raising. Even though she’d barely deigned to notice Chrystabel and her brother and three sisters—the five children she’d given birth to—all the years they were growing up.

  “You cannot let Mother’s selfishness ruin our Christmas,” Arabel chided. “We’re not children anymore. Let it go. I have. Martha and Cecily have.”

  “Martha and Cecily are married with children of their own. They don’t need a mother anymore.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Chrys, you’re nineteen years old—you don’t need a mother anymore, either.” Arabel handed her a perfect red bow. “Here. Attach it, and that’s one more wreath finished.”

  “Still twelve more to make,” Chrystabel said with a sigh.

  Arabel’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a snort. “You’re the one who insists upon decorating this entire, huge house.”

  Arabel was right about that—and more. Chrystabel knew she needed to dispense with the anger she felt toward their mother. It served no purpose. She would take a lesson from her less-than-ideal childhood: When she had her own family, she would do better.

  Right then and there, she determined to do better.

  “Look.” For once, Arabel wore a frown. She motioned out the window. “Soldiers. Parliamentarian soldiers.”

  Hearing hoofbeats approach down Grosmont Grange’s long, icy, hard-packed drive, Chrystabel dragged her thoughts from her mother to follow her sister’s gaze. Sure enough, the horsemen wore breastplates over buff leather coats, with lobster-tailed pot helmets on their heads. Oliver Cromwell’s Dragoons.

  They couldn’t be bringing good news to a Royalist family.

  Since the war had ended in September, the formerly fighting Dragoons were now roaming the countryside, enforcing Cromwell’s strict Puritanical laws: no music, no dancing, no theater, no sports, no swearing, no drinking, no gaming…no Christmas.

  No Christmas!

  “They mean to catch us preparing for Christmas!” Chrystabel ran from the chamber and down the corridor to her brother’s study. “Matthew, open up!” Without waiting, she pushed open the door and burst inside. “Dragoons! Here to catch us celebrating Christmas!”

  Arabel had already scooped up as much greenery as she could carry and was racing past the open door. “Where should we put it?” she called.

  “Under your bed, then go back for more—we’ll put it under mine!” Chrystabel turned back to Matthew. “We’ll hide everything. You answer the door when they arrive.”

  It took three trips to and from the drawing room to hide all the Christmas evidence beneath their two beds. Once the sisters were finished, they shut the door to Chrystabel’s room and plopped onto the mattress side by side, pretending to be reading books.

  “Surely they won’t look under our beds,” Arabel whispered in her usual cheerful manner.

  “We can hope not,” Chrystabel muttered back.

  Time passed while she listened to her own heartbeat and reread the same paragraph thirteen times.

  “I don’t hear anyone searching the house,” Arabel said. “And they were wearing heavy boots.”

  Chrystabel shrugged. “As you recently pointed out, it’s a big house. They’ll get here.”

  They both jumped when a sharp knock came at the door.

  Chrystabel steeled herself. “Enter if you must.”

  “I must,” their brother said as the door swung open.

  “Matthew! Are they gone?”

  “They are.” He suddenly looked older than his twenty-five years. His handsome face appeared ashen. For the first time, he looked like the Earl of Grosmont to her, not just her big brother who unfortunately had inherited early.

  “Why did they not search my chamber?”

  “They didn’t search anything.” He held up a letter with a big, broken red seal hanging from it. A very official-looking letter. “They brought this.”

  “What does it say?” Arabel breathed.

  Leaning against the doorpost as though he couldn’t quite hold himself up, Matthew cleared his throat and read. “‘I thought fit to send this trumpet to you, to let you know that, if you please to walk away with your family and staff, and deliver your estate to such as I shall send to receive it, you shall have liberty to take one day to gather and carry off your goods, and such other necessaries as you have. You have failed to pay the fine assessed by the Committee for Compounding; if you necessitate me to bend my cannon against you, you may expect what I doubt you will not be pleased with. I await your present answer, and rest your servant, O. Cromwell.’”

  “Oh, my God.” Arabel’s big brown eyes had never looked wider. “Did you give the soldiers your answer?”

  “I had to. They wouldn’t leave without it.”

  “And what was your answer?” Chrystabel asked impatiently. “What did you say?”

  “That we’ll leave, of course. Tomorrow, as he ordered. What else could I say?” Matthew straightened up. Some color had returned to his face. “The fine is a third of the value of this estate. I don’t have that much money—Father spent all our savings on the war.”

  “The heartless bastards!” Chrystabel would be fined herself if the Dragoons heard her using that kind of language, but right now she didn’t care. “How dare they!”

  Matthew shrugged. “Our family dared to fight against them. Now they’ll confiscate our estate for their own gain. They need funds to run the new government—if the king had won, he’d have robbed the other side just the same. We are but the spoils of war.”

  Matthew was a very levelheaded fellow, always good in a crisis. Unlike Chrystabel, who couldn’t seem to think straight. “But what will we do? Where will we go?”

  “Grosmont Castle.” On his walk from the front door to her room, he’d obviously thought this through. “My seat. It’s supported us ever since Father died. And it’s the only place we can go, isn’t it?” he added reasonably.

  “We’re to live in Wales?” Chrystabel shrieked, her volume not reasonable at all.

  “My, that is far away,” Arabel murmured.

  “Yes, and what about all our friends?” Being a sociable sort, Chrystabel had many friends. “We won’t make new ones—Wales is nothing but wilderness! And we don’t even know their language! Their words have all those L’s!”

  “I’d wager there are no Dragoons there,” Arabel pointed out, looking on the bright side as always. “We won’t need to worry about Cromwell coming after that drafty old castle.”

  “We can be thankful for that,” Matthew agreed. “I imagine we should instruct the servants to begin packing our things.”

  Chrystabel shook her head, amazed that her brother could be so calm and practical. She remained silent a moment, struggling to resign herself to this dire fate.

  Wales.

  Wales!

  She slipped a hand into her pocket and played with the silver pendant she kept there, which always made her feel better. Father had given it to her right before he left to go fight in the war, when she’d been inconsolable. It was a family heirloom, a rendering of the Grosmont crest with its lion, passed down the generations from father to son…and now to Chrystabel. Tradition said the lion pendant ought to be Matthew’s, but Chrystabel only paid heed to traditions that suited her. And losing her dearest keepsake of the man she’d loved most in all the world would not suit her one bit.

  Her heart constricted at the thought of everything else she was about to lose. Her ancient tester bed, where she’d spent most every night of her nineteen years. The harpsic
hord her mother used to play when they had company to supper. The little rose garden her father had planted for her…

  “I’m taking my roses,” she said suddenly, surprising even herself.

  Matthew’s dark brows knitted together. “What?”

  “I’m taking my roses. I need them for essential oils to make perfume, and I haven’t any idea whether there will be roses in Wales at all, let alone my roses.”

  Arabel shook her head. “They’re planted, Chrystabel. You cannot take roses.”

  “What did Cromwell say?” Chrystabel marched over to snatch the letter from Matthew’s hand and quote from it. “‘You shall have liberty to take one day to gather and carry off your goods, and such other necessaries as you have.’” She looked up. “I’m a perfumer. I consider my roses necessary.”

  “You cannot take them,” Arabel repeated. “There’s no point. They’ll die.”

  “It’s winter. They’re dormant.” Chrystabel hoped that meant they wouldn’t die.

  “You cannot take them,” Arabel insisted.

  “You think not?” The look Chrystabel sent her sister was a challenge. “Watch me.”

  TWO

  Tremayne Castle

  December 22

  JOSEPH ASHCROFT, the Viscount Tremayne, was puttering around in his—well, he liked to call it his conservatory, even though it really wasn’t one—when he heard the old wooden door rattling, making quite a racket.

  A shout forced its way through the cracks. “Please, let me in!”

  “You cannot go in there, Mistress,” one of Tremayne’s groundsmen hollered as the door rattled some more—to no avail, since it was barred from the inside. “This wing is unfinished and uninhabited. You must go around the castle and through the gatehouse.”

  “I cannot—it’s urgent!”