Amanda McCabe - A Very Tudor Christmas

England, 1571

A brief but passionate flirtation with the dashing Sir Robert Erroll had Margaret Clifford dreaming they would be wed—until Robert left for the continent without a word, breaking her heart.

Robert never forgot Meg, or gave up hope that she would wait for him to make his fortune. But after three years abroad, he has returned to court to discover a cold, distant woman in place of the innocent maiden he left behind.

Yet Robert can sense the desire that still burns within her. And when a snowstorm forces them to take refuge for the night, he is determined, come Christmas morn, to have melted the ice that has built up around Meg’s heart....

A Very Tudor Christmas

Amanda McCabe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

When I was trying to come up with an idea for a “Tudor Christmas” story, it was ninety degrees outside! I was having a hard time thinking about snow and carols, sleighs and Christmas puddings. Then one night I was watching the wonderfully funny and sweet ShakespeaRe-Told version of Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice and Benedick translated into rival TV morning show anchors), and Robert and Meg appeared to me! A once-hopeful couple now torn apart, brought back together by their younger counterparts (and a little holiday magic).

The Tudors, especially Elizabeth I, loved the Christmas season, and it was filled with elaborate banquets, dances, masques, gifts and hunts. The holiday season of 1571 was kicked off by a lavish event indeed, the marriage of Anne, the oldest daughter of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to the highly eligible young Earl of Oxford on December 19. The queen herself attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey, and the nuptial banquet was held at Cecil House in Covent Garden.

A Christmas wedding seemed like the perfect setting for the romance of Robert and Meg! Sadly for poor Anne Cecil, her own glittering wedding didn’t lead to much happiness. In 1574, the earl left his pregnant wife to live abroad and didn’t return for three years. When he did come back, it was to a marriage filled with bitter estrangements, possible insanity and flagrant affairs (on Oxford’s part), and eventual reconciliation and five children. Anne died at age 31 in 1588, interred at Westminster Abbey with the due honors of the Countess of Oxford. David Loades, in his book The Cecils, says, “She seems to have been a gentle, submissive creature, battered by the storms of an unhappy marriage that she had done nothing to provoke.”

But Meg and Robert will surely have a much, much brighter future than the Oxfords, whose wedding helped bring them together! I enjoyed their winter romance so much, and I hope you do, too....

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter One

England, 1569

“Hush, Bea! They will hear you. We’ll never be able to hear what’s happening if they find us here,” Margaret Clifford whispered fiercely as she and her cousin squeezed into the tiny closet right above her parents’ great hall at Clifford Manor. Beatrice was her best friend, but she was three years younger than Meg’s eighteen, and inclined to be giggly. It had been that way ever since Bea’s parents, Meg’s mother’s sister and her husband, died and Bea came to live with them as a toddler.

Beatrice clapped her hand over her mouth and huddled closer to Meg as they knelt on the floor. “I won’t say a word, Meg, I vow it.”

“I never should have let you come with me,” Meg murmured. She had tried to slip out of their shared chamber without Bea seeing her, but she hadn’t been quick enough. Beatrice had begged and cried so very much that Meg knew she had to drag her along. Time was short, and she had to discover what her parents were talking about with Lord and Lady Erroll.

Meg drew her velvet skirts close under her and she lowered her knees to the rough plank floor and tried to peer through the tiny knothole to the hall below. Bea clutched at her sleeve, fairly vibrating with excitement, and Meg had to shush her again. She could barely hear as it was. And it was vital that she hear.

God’s truth, but it was so maddening that her parents refused to talk to her! They treated her as if she was the veriest child, younger even than Beatrice. She was not a child at all now. She was more than old enough for...

For marrying.

Was that why the Errolls had come to Clifford Manor now? Meg curled her fists against the wood floor, feeling her heart pounding. Please, let it be true!

Yet it all seemed too, too glorious to ever be true. Ever since she had seen Robert Erroll at the Christmas festivities a few months ago, ever since they’d danced, touched, looked into each other’s eyes, she had not been able to think about anything else at all. Even when she walked in the garden with Bea, or when her mother shouted at her for snarling the embroidery silks, she could only see Robert Erroll’s sky-blue eyes. Could only remember how it had felt when their fingers twined together.

Remember—and wonder when she might see him again.

Until today. Today when she’d been walking along the lane, and glimpsed a horse galloping toward her....

* * *

“‘Or call it winter, which, being full of care, makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare...’” Meg hummed the Christmas song as she swung her basket. Go fetch some eggs from Mistress Brown, Margaret, her mother had snapped, shooing Meg’s little twin brothers out from underfoot. You are of no use to me with your daydreaming today. Beatrice can finish the mending.

The Cliffords were an old family, at Clifford Manor for centuries, but not rich enough to hire people do all their mending for them. Or fetch their eggs.

It was a chilly day, a cold wind snapping at her cloak as smoke curled from Clifford Manor’s old chimneys behind her, but Meg didn’t care. She had a few moments to be alone away from the chaos of her home. Not even Beatrice was with her today to interrupt her thoughts. The farther she walked, the quieter the countryside grew, until she could imagine she was dancing again.

Until she spun around the corner of the lane, humming louder, and saw the great black horse swooping down on her.

Meg screamed and ducked toward the hedgerows, snagging her cloak. She almost fell into the mud, and the panic fell over her like a cold cloud as her hood drooped down in front of her eye.

The horse thundered by, mere inches from her foot. As she struggled to push herself right, she heard the great beast whirl around and a man’s shout.

Meg shoved her hood back and glanced back over her shoulder to see a man leaping down from his saddle. His clothes were fine velvet and leather, cut close to a handsome body and far too fine for the local gentry.

“Are you hurt?” he shouted, and reached up to sweep off his plumed hat as he ran toward her.

The panic was brushed away in a warm rush of joy as she saw it was him. Robert Erroll. Back again at last.

“I—I am quite fine, Master Erroll,” she called, hurrying toward him. “You do seem in a great hurry.”

“Mistress Clifford!” he said, a wide, bright grin breaking across his face. He was so very handsome, with his dark hair ruffled by the wind around his face. “I’m on my way to your own house. My parents are to call on your family, but their new coach is too slow for me. I’m most happy I came on ahead now, if it means I can see you.”

Meg laughed as she tilted her head to look up at him—he was so wondrously tall. And he laughed with her, too, his face even more beautiful in mirth, if that was possible.

“Pretty Mistress Margaret,” he said. “I have thought of you often since our New Year’s dance.”

Meg felt a burst of raw, pure joy that he remembered, as she did. “Have you indeed, Master Erroll?” she answered pertly. A country miss she might be, but surely she knew better than to seem too eager. Especially with a man like this, a handsome, strong court gentleman. “Most extraordinary of you.”