A Christmas Promise - Anne Perry [42]
Next came the three Wise Men, each dressed more gorgeously than the one before. They had robes of reds and blues and purples. One had a turban wound around his head, another a gold crown. They all knelt before the baby and laid gifts on the ground.
Minnie Maude poked Gracie in the side. “Yer gotter give ours!” she urged. “Quick, or it’ll be too late.”
“Ye’re comin’ too!” Gracie dragged her forward, unwrapping the gold casket as she went and holding it out in front of her. Even here, among all this wealth and splendor, it shone with a beauty unsurpassed.
Gracie stopped in front of the young woman. “Please, miss, we’d like ter give this to the Baby Jesus. It oughter be ’is.” Without waiting for permission, she put it down on the straw in front of her, then looked up. “It in’t got nuffink in it,” she explained. “We in’t got nothing good enough.”
“It is perfect as it is,” the young woman replied. She looked Gracie up and down, then looked at Minnie Maude, and her eyes filled with tears. “Nothing could be more precious.” She was about to add something more when the donkey came forward through the straw and pushed his nose against Minnie Maude, almost knocking her off balance.
She turned and stared at him, then flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck.
“Charlie!” she sobbed. “Where yer bin, yer stupid thing? I ’unted all over fer yer! Don’t yer never do that again!”
“I’m sorry,” Gracie said to the young woman. “She thought ’e were lorst.”
“Well, he’s found again,” the young woman replied gently. “Tonight we are all found again.” She turned to the man. “Thomas, I think we should see that these two girls have something hot to eat, and to drink.” Then she looked at the donkey and smiled. “Happy Christmas, Charlie.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNE PERRY is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including Execution Dock and Dark Assassin, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as seven holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Promise. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at www.anneperry.net.
A Christmas Promise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Anne Perry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Perry, Anne.
A Christmas promise : a novel / Anne Perry.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51667-1
1. Poor children—England—London—Fiction. 2. City and
town life—England—London—Fiction. 3. East End (London,
England)—Fiction. 4. Christmas stories. I. Title.
PR6066.E693C473 2009b
823′.914—dc22 2009035431
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About the Author
Copyright