The Twelve Clues of Christmas Read Free Page B

them in France earlier this year.”
    Oh, God. Not Ducky, her lecherous husband, Foggy, and their dreadful daughter, Maude!
    “Maybe you can help Maude with her French lessons again while she’s here,” Fig said. “You two became great chums, I remember.”
    In fact, it had been a case of mutual loathing. I cleared my throat. “Ah, well, I don’t think I’m going to be here after all. I’ve decided to go down to the London house, if it’s all right with you. There are parties and things going on, and I know you all want me to meet a suitable chap, don’t you?”
    There was a silence you could cut with a knife, punctuated only by the clink of silver spoon against tureen as the footman ladled out soup.
    “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, isn’t it, Binky?” Fig said.
    “Is it?” Binky looked up from his soup, clueless as usual. “If that’s what Georgie wants to do I think it’s a splendid idea. Young thing like her needs her Christmas parties, what?”
    “Binky!” Fig’s voice developed a knife edge to it. “We discussed this before, remember? We decided it was far too expensive to open up the London house in winter, even with the small amount of coal and electricity that Georgiana would use. So I’m afraid you’re stuck here with us, Georgiana, and you can make yourself useful for once keeping Maude amused.”
    With that she turned her attention to her cock-a-leekie soup.
    I sat fuming, but could find nothing to say. I wanted to remind her that I had only come here in the first place because she had begged me to keep her company. I had only stayed on so long because Binky had begged me to do so. Surely they owed me something for my months of enduring Fig. But she didn’t seem to think so. Rannoch House was the property of the current duke and I no longer had any claim to it. In fact, nothing belonged to me. I began to feel like a Jane Austen heroine. I was stuck in Scotland with relatives who didn’t like me and didn’t want me there. Frankly, I couldn’t think of a worse Christmas ahead, but I also couldn’t think of a way to escape from it.
    Then a lovely idea popped into my head. I’d stay with my grandfather! That would shake them up. You see, my mother’s father is a retired Cockney policeman who lives in a little semidetached house in Essex with gnomes in the front garden. All the years I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to meet him. I had since made up for those years and I adored him.
    I took a deep breath. “Then I think I may go and stay with my grandfather if the London house isn’t available to me.”
    Spoons clattered. Someone choked.
    “Your grandfather?” Lady Wormwood said in the same tones Lady Bracknell used regarding a handbag in the Oscar Wilde play. “I thought your grandfather had been dead for years.”
    “Her mother’s father,” Fig said coldly.
    “Oh, her mother’s father. I don’t believe I ever met him.”
    “You wouldn’t have met him,” Fig said. “He’s not . . . you know.” Then she lowered her voice and muttered, “N.O.C.D.” (which is upper-class shorthand, in case you don’t know, for “not our class, dear”).
    Binky was looking rather red around the gills. “I say, Georgie. Your grandfather’s a decent old stick and all that, but it’s simply not on. We’ve been into this before. You can’t stay in a cottage in Essex. Think of the embarrassment to Their Majesties if the press found out about it.”
    “Anyone would think it was the Casbah or a den of ill repute,” I said hotly. “Anyway, how are they going to find out? It’s not as if the society reporters follow me around the way they do my mother. I’m nobody. Nobody cares if I stay in Belgrave Square or in Essex.”
    Suddenly I felt tears welling at the back of my eyes, but I was not going to allow myself to cry in public. “I’m over twenty-one so you can’t stop me from doing what I want to,” I said. “And if Their Majesties are embarrassed by my behavior,