A Christmas Cinderella snippet

I promised you a snippet of my new novella, Christmas Cinderella. Here’s the opening chapter:

Chapter One

Bath, England 1816

Friday was mail day at Miss Mallard’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen. Of course, the mail didn’t all arrive on Friday, but Miss Mallard, the owner and headmistress of the exclusive Bath boarding school, liked to collect all the letters that came for her students through the week and peruse each one carefully. No young lady in her care would be allowed to enter into a clandestine correspondence, so she set aside those letters whose seal or franking or handwriting she recognized, and opened any that she thought suspicious.

Then, duly read and approved—or confiscated—the letters were given out on a Friday evening after dinner. All the girls at Miss Mallard’s were required to write home weekly, under the supervision of a teacher.

Tonight Miss Emmaline Westwood was the teacher on duty. Unlike her colleagues, who regarded this rostered session as a dreary chore, irrelevant to their own special talents, Emm loved it. She knew how important mail day really was.

She’d been a Mallard girl herself once. She was the only teacher there who understood how it felt to be sent away from all she knew and loved, to live with strangers and be corrected and educated and turned into a polished young lady.

A desperate surge of homesickness could arise from the most innocuous of letters from home—the passing mention of a beloved pet, a report that Cook had made a favorite pudding—small and seemingly insignificant events that only underlined how everyday life at home went on happily without them.

Emm also knew the desolate feeling of abandonment felt by so many of the girls who, week after week, didn’t receive any letter at all. They were still required to write cheerful letters home.

So she was only too pleased to be there for the girls on mail day, not to correct their grammar or spelling or approve their penmanship—though of course she did that too—but to hear their tales of woe or joy and to try to soothe wounded feelings, or calm anxieties.

Sometimes she was unable to do anything except listen. And quietly ache for the girl concerned.

She watched the girls now, the flurry of excitement as the letters were given out, the sighs of resignation or disappointment for those for whom there was nothing. And then the rustle of paper as seals were broken and letters unfolded, the silence as they read, broken by occasional soft unconscious exclamations over the contents. Youthful faces were so revealing.

The two Rutherford sisters sat up the back whispering. They never received letters, not from their father, or either of their older brothers, not in all the time they’d been at the school. They wrote short, dutiful letters to their father and older brother, and long letters to the brother who was a soldier aboard—not that Lily, with her unfortunate affliction, could manage a letter—but her sister Rose wrote them for her and everyone pretended not to notice. But their aunt lived in Bath, and they saw her from time to time, so they were not entirely without family support.

As for the others, Susie Morton scanned her letter with a bored expression, then set it aside and picked up her pen to dash off a dutiful response. All as usual there.

Julia Hampton’s eyes were shining as she read, and when she’d finished, she passed it to her best friend with a nudge and a smile. No problem there tonight.

But Sally Destry . . . Emm could not see the girl’s face as Sally read and reread her letter in seeming disbelief, but she could see the growing tension in her posture. In a jerky movement, Sally crushed the letter in her fist and held it against her chest a moment, then put the letter on her desk and smoothed it with shaking hands. She looked up, and Emm could finally read her expression. Flat despair.

 * * *

When the letters were all finished and collected—Miss Mallard would check the addresses to make sure none was clandestine correspondence, and then give them to her assistant to post—the girls drifted upstairs for free time in their dormitories. Sally Destry hung back.

“Sally, would you care to join me for a cup of cocoa?” Emm said.

Sally nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind, Miss Westwood.”

They made cocoa and took it to the private sitting room usually reserved for important visitors, like parents. The only other private place for Emm was her tiny attic bedroom, and she couldn’t possibly take any girls up there and let them see how she actually lived.

They sipped their hot cocoa for a few minutes, Sally hugging her mug to herself and rocking slightly. Emm decided to break the ice. “You received distressing news from home today, I think.” If the girl didn’t want to talk about it, Emm would leave it at that, but if she did, she’d given her an opening.

Sally nodded. “Yes—well, no. Well, I suppose it was good news—Mama and Julia think so anyway. They’re thrilled,” she added bitterly.

“But you’re not?” Emm knew Sally’s older sister, Julia. She’d been a Mallard girl, too. She’d made her come-out in the spring.

The two Destry girls were chalk and cheese. Julia, golden blonde and beautiful, was the image of her mother; confident, not particularly bright, and occasionally spectacularly insensitive.

Sally was what her mother called—even in her daughter’s hearing—’the plain one,’ or sometimes ‘my little Jenny wren.’ Thin, brown-haired, sensitive and clever, Sally took after her father, a fact her mother seemed to resent, as if the girl had chosen who to resemble. No surprise to Emm that Sally was, as a result, a little shy and socially unconfident.

“Want to tell me about it?” Emm invited gently.

In answer, Sally passed her the letter. Emm scanned it quickly. The main news was that her parents were holding a ball at Destry Manor shortly before Christmas, and that as well as some neighbors, the new Earl of Maldon and some of his friends would be attending—she listed various names and titles, but they meant nothing to Emm.

The letter finished saying not only that Sally must come home, but also that she wouldn’t be returning to school at all. Finally—and Sally was to keep this to herself—the Earl of Maldon was Mama’s new favorite person, and Mama and Julia had every expectation of Papa making an Exciting Announcement at the ball.

In other words, Julia was about to become betrothed, presumably to the Earl of Maldon.

Emm wasn’t surprised. The whole time she’d taught Julia, all the girl had ever talked about was marrying well — meaning to someone rich and titled, preferably a duke. It was the whole point of her recent Season. And as a well-born, respectably dowered beauty, there was a strong chance she might achieve her ambition.

“I can’t go—I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, at school. In Bath.”

“You don’t want to go home for Christmas?” Emm was surprised. Most of the girls loved going home for Christmas. Spending Christmas at the school was the loneliest thing, as Emm knew from her own experience.

Sally shook her head. “Not this year.”

“Are you nervous about attending the party and the ball?” Emm asked. Sally was almost eighteen and would be making her own come-out next spring.

“No, it’s not that . . .”

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“In general, of course I do. Just not to this party. Or the ball.”

“Why?”

“It’s just that . . . The new Earl of Maldon—it’s Peter!” She burst into tears.

Emm had come well supplied with handkerchiefs. She handed Sally one and let the girl cry out the worst of her distress onto Emm’s shoulder.

When the sobs had turned to hiccups, Emm rose and went to the kitchen to wet another handkerchief in cold water. Girls usually found their composure more quickly when left alone for a few minutes.

On returning she handed Sally the damp handkerchief. “Wipe your face with this, finish your cocoa, and then tell me about this Peter.”

* * * * *

More to come next week. To read the second snippet, click here
The manuscript is currently being proof-read. I’m still working on the back cover blurb and need to commission a cover.

But I have a question — I’m dithering about the title. Which do you prefer? The Christmas Cinderella or simply Christmas Cinderella. 
I was going to call it A Cinderella Christmas, but a new Christmas anthology of that name is already coming out this Christmas, so I need mine to be a little different.