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“Aunt Eilidh! I’m so glad you came.”
“And I’m so glad you came,” Eilidh answered with a twinkle in her eye. “A year ago.”
Archie laughed as he put his arm around Laurel’s shoulders. “Not as glad as I am.”
“No, definitely not.”
“We’re here,” Abby announced, as she came in with Zac, Tom West following behind. He was spending the week at Abby’s house, insisting the newlyweds needed their space, although Laurel suspected it was more that her father wanted to spend time with his oldest daughter.
Archie went to bring his dad, who had been dozing by the fire, into the kitchen, and a few chaotic minutes later, they all sat down to eat, the table wonderfully crowded.
Sitting at one end, with Archie at the other, Laurel met his eyes and smiled. She was so happy, and so very thankful.
Miracles really did happen, she knew now. She just had to believe… and then see.
And she knew both she and Archie saw the miracle, the magic, as everyone linked hands and her husband began to say grace.
The End
If you enjoyed Christmas at the Edge of the World, why not try one of Kate’s other books, such as the Willoughby Close or Holley Sisters series?
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review at your favorite online retailer! Even if it’s just a sentence or two it makes all the difference.
Thanks for reading Christmas at the Edge of the World by Kate Hewitt!
Discover your next romance at TulePublishing.com.
Enjoy an excerpt from
A Vicarage Christmas
Kate Hewitt
Book 1 in The Holley Sisters of Thornthwaite series
Keep reading below or buy now!
No one was waiting for her at the train station. Anna Holley knew she shouldn’t feel disappointed; she hadn’t said what train she’d be able to get from Manchester, only that it would be in the early evening. And the vicarage was a five-minute walk from the station, so it wasn’t as if she needed a lift.
Still, she felt it, the self-pitying flicker of disappointment that was so annoying because it was silly. With a sigh, she hitched her backpack higher on her shoulder and started down the platform. An icy wind funnelling through the fells cut straight through her parka and scarf, stinging her cheeks and making her eyes water. Welcome to Cumbria. At least it wasn’t raining.
Four days before Christmas, and in the starless darkness of an early evening, the village of Thornthwaite was nothing more than shadowy buildings huddled against the darker humps of the fells that cut a jagged line out of the horizon. Anna hadn’t been back to Cumbria for three years, and she was amazed at how she’d forgotten how the fells made her feel, the way they rose up and surrounded her. Trapped, that was how she felt. The only way out of Thornthwaite was a single-track road that was often clogged with sheep. One had to drive on it for six painstaking, winding miles before they hit the A66, and then it was another twenty minutes to Keswick, and they were still pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
Still, it was beautiful, if you liked hills and isolation. No one else had got off at Thornthwaite—surprise, surprise—and so Anna walked down the platform alone, turning left over the little stone bridge that spanned St. John’s Beck, little more than an ambitious trickle as it wound its way through the village. She then started walking towards St. Andrew’s Church, the squat, square Norman tower lit up with Christmas lights at this time of year.
For a second, as she paused at the top of the lane that led to the church and the vicarage beyond, homesickness swamped her—a longing not just for the place, but also a time, when life had seemed simple and easy, and happiness was a foregone conclusion instead of something that always seemed to slip out of her grasp. Feeling that way seemed like a very long time ago now, not that anyone else in her family would share her sentiment. As far as Anna could see, everyone else was busy bustling around, seeming very happy indeed.
Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and started up the lane. The stained-glass windows of the church were lit from within and, as she walked by, the strains of a choir-led Christmas carol drifted out. It took Anna a moment to recognize it—“In the Bleak Midwinter.” Yes, that summed her mood up quite well. Not that the weather was much nicer back in Manchester, but at least in Manchester there were lights and people and noise, and it was so wonderfully easy to be anonymous.
Here, in a village of two thousand, when your father had been the vicar of the only church for over twenty years, it was a little less so.
The vicarage loomed up ahead of her, an imposing square house with gabled windows on both storeys, the top decorated with sandstone crenulations. It had been built two hundred years ago, had eight bedrooms and eleven fireplaces, and it was freezing in both summer and winter. It was the only home Anna had known besides the boxy flat she shared with Helen, a woman she hardly ever saw or spoke to, and, looking it at now, she felt a rush of emotions she couldn’t begin to untangle—hope and fear, love and dread.
She stood by the wide, worn steps leading up to the front door with its shiny black paint and ornate gold knob and knocker and wondered what she was waiting for. A welcoming committee? The courage to step into the happy chaos that had always been her home, while she drifted around its edges?
A shiver went through her as the wind continued to blow. She’d forgotten her gloves and her hands were icy, numb at the tip. Taking another deep breath, Anna marched up the steps and opened the door.
The Victorian-tiled porch looked as it always did, vast and lovably shabby, with a clutter of shoes in a basket by the door, another, bigger clutter of mud-spattered wellies on the other side, as well as an old church pew piled with post and church bulletins, plus the latest packet of parish magazines, wrapped in twine. Everything looked achingly familiar, as if she’d only been gone for a few days instead of years.
