Page 9 of Christmas Is All Around
“You caught me,” she said, deadpan. “I took one of those implicit bias tests, and my reindeer prejudice was off the charts.” She sighed. “Sorry. I was avoiding the crowds, and you crashed my hiding spot.”
“Yourhiding spot,” he repeated, his mouth doing that maybe-amused curving at the corners again, though she didn’t understandwhyat the moment.
“I was here first. I think that makes it mine.”
“Does it?” He was glancing back over his shoulder, distracted, as he spoke; the brass band, which had struck up another rousing round of Christmas carols upon the lighting of the tree, seemed to at last be winding down, and she wondered vaguely how much time had passed since she’d secreted herself into this nook—she tended to lose track of time when she was working. “I was looking for somewhere to catch my breath for a few minutes, but since you’re already here, I suppose I’ll go elsewhere.”
“Don’t bother,” she said with a sigh, standing up and sliding her sketchbook into her bag. The clamor of voices beyond the room began to be the sort that signaled the end of an event. “I need to go find my family—somehow,” she added wryly, watching a large crowd cluster at the door, trying to exit. She pulled her phone from her dress pocket, thinking it might be easier to text Ava to find out where she was at the moment, but her hideout-crasher waved a dismissive hand.
“Don’t bother. Mobile signal is abysmal in the house. Old buildings, you know?”
“I’m from America, where our idea of ‘old’ is about thirty years ago, so no, I don’t know. Doesn’t the family still live here? How do they get by without cell signal?”
“A landline, and very good Wi-Fi.”
“Have you met them?” she asked curiously, wondering what itwould be like to live in a historic house that had been passed through the same family for generations.
He nodded. “I grew up around here.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said, pressing her finger to her chin in thought. “You were the alleged son of the vicar, but in actuality the natural son of the gentleman of the house—he paid for you to go to Oxford so that you might make something of yourself, even though he couldn’t acknowledge you as his own.”
“I didn’t go to Oxford.”
“But the rest is true?”
“Er. No. Do you read a lot of novels?”
“No,” Charlotte said frankly; she listened to a lot of nonfiction audiobooks when she was working, but read novels far more sparingly. “But my best friend does. She has raised my expectations for what sort of characters I might run into in an English stately home.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured, extracting his own phone from his pocket. Before Charlotte could ask precisely how well he knew the family—well enough to have been entrusted with the Wi-Fi password, clearly, as he was tapping away with a furrowed brow—he glanced up at her, his brown eyes clearing at the sight of her. “Sorry, that was rude,” he said, “but I unfortunately need to go find someone.”
“I’m leaving anyway,” she repeated, rather than think about any of this too hard. She gave a shallow, extremely wobbly curtsey. “Good evening, my lord.”
And then, feeling quite pleased with herself, she swept past him.
Once she emerged from her nook, however, a quick scan of the room didn’t reveal her family anywhere in sight. She weaved through the gradually dispersing crowd, searching for them, but they were nowhere to be found, and after a few minutes she found herself standing in the same spot again, puzzled, as the last trickle of visitors made their way out the front door. Maybe they were waiting for herat the car? She glanced down at her phone but saw that the handsome reindeer man had been correct: she had no signal. She slipped on her coat and made for the enormous oak front door, neatly sidestepping Cindy-Lou Who, who was carrying an enormous bucket full of dirty dishes.
Surely they’d be waiting for her at the car. Because it wasn’t like her entire family would abandon her at a manor house in the English countryside… right?
CHAPTER THREE
This was, Charlotte decided fifteen minutes later, the most absurd thing that had happened in a day that had already involved being accosted by aChristmas, Trulyfanandwitnessing a man stripping out of a reindeer suit in front of her.
“… certain they didn’treallyleave you,” the erstwhile Mrs. Cratchit was saying, after having rattled off the Wi-Fi password to Charlotte, who had returned to the house after confirming that both Ava and Kit’s carandthe one belonging to the Adeoyes were nowhere in sight; she’d gone on one last desperate loop around the ground floor of the house before conceding that she’d been abandoned. Now able to communicate with the outside world again, she pulled up WhatsApp and called her sister.
Ava answered on the second ring. “Hi, Charlotte. What’s up?”
Charlotte inhaled slowly. “Is that all you have to say to me right now?”
“Um,” Ava said slowly, sounding wary. “Yes? Is there something else I should be saying?”
“Did you forget something before leaving?” Charlotte asked, barely keeping a leash on her temper.
A lengthy pause. “I have Alice’s diaper bag—”
“Ava!” Charlotte snapped. “Why am I still standing at Eden Priory while the rest of you are nowhere in sight?”
There was a muffled curse, then a slight pause. Ava’s voice came back now, a bit tinny, and Charlotte was fairly certain she’d been put on speaker. “Oh no, my text never went through. Simone and I were going to change Alice’s diaper and find you and head out, but Alice had a complete meltdown, so I texted Kit asking if he could find you instead and you could ride home with him—”
