Page 72 of Christmas Is All Around
“Check!” Kit echoed from the guest room.
“Waaaaa!” said Alice.
“Quirky, borderline-contrived Christmas rituals and activities? Let us not forget the roving caroling troupe. Check.”
Charlotte was too worn down to even protest at this point.
“Third-act fight that casts our protagonists’ happy holiday intodoubt? Check. Ending with a Grand Gesture, and a kiss in front of the Christmas tree!” Ava finished happily, then straightened. “Charlotte, it’s very important that you kiss him in front of the Christmas tree—it’s the only thing you’re missing!” She paused, frowning. “Except for some improbable, unexpected snowfall, I guess. Can’t do much about that, though—thisisEngland.”
“Flurries forecast for tonight!” Kit called from the guest room, and Ava looked as delighted as anyone in human history has ever looked upon hearing a weather forecast.
“Charlotte Lane,” she said, leaning forward and taking both of Charlotte’s hands in hers. “Welcome to your holiday romance. Now go get your true love!”
“Can I take a shower first, at least?” Charlotte asked dryly.
“If you must,” Ava said, sighing dejectedly.
Charlotte laughed, and continued tidying, and then eventually showered, dressed, did her makeup, prepared for an evening out—and not once did she tell Ava one key fact:
Charlotte had alreadymadea Grand Gesture. And tonight, she was going to tell Graham about it.
Her first mistake, Charlotte thought, a bit grumpily, several hours later, was allowing Ava and Kit to accompany her on this outing.
“A New Year’s Eve out!” Ava said brightly, standing before her closet and surveying the many, many dresses she had to choose from. She held up a slinky green silk dress with a very high slit, pouting at herself in the mirror. “Do you think green makes me look sallow?”
“You wear green all the time,” Charlotte said from Ava and Kit’s en suite, where she was carefully pinning her hair up, an endeavor that required enough bobby pins to supply a small country.
“But what if I’ve been wrong all along? Alice has aged me, you know—”
“She’s agedallof us,” Charlotte muttered around a mouthful of bobby pins.
“—and what if my face can no longer tolerate green?”
“Ava?” Charlotte called, carefully extracting another bobby pin from between her teeth.
“Yes?”
“Please shut up.”
Ava, miraculously, had complied—though shehadended up donning an off-the-shoulder red dress with an extremely low neckline, on the off chance that her fears about green were accurate—and by six they were on the road, slowly inching their way out of London holiday traffic, John and Simone having been left with a disgruntled Alice, who had appeared unamused to discover that both of her parents were leaving at once.
“We’ve not gone out together since she was born,” Kit explained weepily to Charlotte as he eased the car away from the curb, his eyes red-rimmed. He frowned in the rearview mirror. “Perhaps I should stay—”
“No.” Ava reached over and clamped a firm hand on her husband’s forearm. “She’s with your parents; she’ll be fine. This is good. This is healthy. Charlotte, do you know of any secluded, unused bedrooms at Eden Priory?”
Kit brightened. “I do like the way you think, love.”
“Oh my god,” Charlotte said, and spent much of the rest of the car ride trying to ignore the waves of almost obscene anticipation emanating from her sister and brother-in-law.
They were at Eden Priory just after seven thirty, only half an hour late, but the car park was already nearly full, Charlotte noted. Hopefully they’d sold an absolute shit ton of tickets—anything thatwould alleviate Graham’s stress she’d consider a positive, even if it did increase the odds that aChristmas, Trulymegafan would be in attendance. She was pretty sure this was going to be an occupational hazard of dating Graham, going forward—and she was terrified by how unbothered by that fact she’d become.
The path leading up to the house was lit by a series of lanterns, and the house itself was ablaze with a warm light—candlelight, Charlotte realized, once they walked through the front doors and had their tickets scanned on their phones. Lizzie was on ticket duty and had immediately recognized Charlotte despite the half mask blocking much of Charlotte’s face; Lizzie’s jaw had dropped, an expression of dawning glee creeping across her face, and Charlotte had simply held a finger to her lips and smiled at Graham’s sister.
The entrance hall was lit by candlesticks in sconces mounted on the walls, and the electric light of the Christmas tree and the white lights in the rafters above, but there were no other lamps in use, giving everything a cozy, romantic glow.
“Straight through to the ballroom!” Lizzie called behind them, sounding as cheerful as Charlotte had ever heard her, and they trailed behind a couple of men in sharp-looking suits, following the sound of music as they passed through a corridor and emerged into the ballroom. The last time Charlotte had seen this room had been on the day of the ornament workshop, and it had been transformed since then—lit with hundreds of candles and strings of lights, the tables that had occupied the room gone, the floor now cleared for dancing. A full bar appeared to be operating along one wall, staffed by a couple of bartenders in sequins and masks of their own, and a live band played at one end of the room. Potted plants—palms and ferns and even potted citrus trees, mixed in with the obligatory poinsettias and rosemary bushes that the season demanded—filled the corners of the room. Along the wall above the bar, several originalChristian Calloway pieces had been hung—sketches for patterns that would eventually be made into wallpaper; original versions of some of the illustrations he created for books; intimate portraits of his family, ones Charlotte had never seen before. The dance floor was crowded with couples and groups, everyone in suits and dresses of varying degrees of sparkle, and every single one of them was masked.
“This is avibe,” Ava said, impressed. She turned to Kit. “A dance, handsome masked stranger?”
