Christmas Child: an absolutely heartbreaking and emotional Victorian romance by Carol Rivers (classic english novels txt) 📕

Christmas ChildVictorian Saga Romance

Carol Rivers

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For Sister Patricia and the Handmaids

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Epilogue

Reviews

Newsletter

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Excerpt of Christmas to Come

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Also by Carol Rivers

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Prologue

Poplar, East London

Christmas Day, 1880

Snow fell in silent showers, settling peacefully on the cobbles of the lane as Colleen O’Reilly dragged herself over the carpet of white. Behind her, drops of blood, as red as summer cherries, melted into the snow.

Colleen didn’t care that she was bleeding. Nor that her boots barely had soles, or that the ragged shawl around her thin shoulders provided little warmth. She was beyond caring. All that mattered was her baby. Miraculously the infant had survived her premature birth. Cutting her own cord with the rusting shears Colleen had found in the brewery’s backyard, had left her weak. Colleen knew her life’s blood was seeping away.

Once again, she gazed lovingly at her child. The baby’s lips were blue with cold. ‘Live my darlin’ girl,’ she pleaded. ‘Live for your mother’s sake.’

The tiny eyes flickered. Her baby was still breathing. But Colleen knew her own time was short in the world. To preserve this new life, she had torn up her petticoats and wrapped them around the tiny body. But what use were rags in such weather? The distance between the brewery where she had sheltered to give birth, and the convent walls, was but a stone’s throw. Yet, with little milk in her breasts, her baby would surely die if not from the cold, then from hunger.

Pain clawed at Colleen’s stomach. An internal agony raked her insides. ‘Don’t take me yet, sweet Jesus. Give me strength to deliver this innocent into the safety of the nuns’ hands.’

Colleen plodded on as the ice-cold snow froze her feet. Now there was only one place she could go, for Colleen O’Reilly knew she was clinging to life for the sake of her child.

If only she had been a regular churchgoer! But in the months of her belly swelling she had been ashamed. The nuns would surely ask about her condition. And how could she tell them the truth? About her long journey as a girl from Ireland to the shores of England. From the famine of her own country to a richer one – or so she had thought.

‘London’s streets are paved with gold,’ she had heard promised.

Now she knew better. She dared not think of, much less voice, the degradation she had fallen into. The first man said he loved her but sold her into slavery. She had been used for men’s gratification, until a new life had formed in her belly. It was then she had found the courage to escape. She would never let her child suffer in the same way.

‘Not long now, my sweet,’ she coaxed, her rheumy eyes fixed on the way ahead. With every last ounce of her strength, she trudged on through the snow.

The grey walls surrounding the Sisters of Clemency Convent were tall and forbidding. But this morning, as the congestive fluid filled Colleen’s lungs, she remembered the secret entrance beyond the closed gates. And it was here she would enter her little girl into God’s house. Before it was too late, she would throw herself on the mercy of her faith.

Colleen stumbled to the place that she had discovered a week ago. Hidden behind holly bushes, the brick was crumbling. Late at night she had gone to loosen more of the stones and artfully replace them. Instinct told her to hurry.

Though she’d heard that the orphanage was already full, the nuns could not ignore the cries of a baby. They would not guess that such a shining treasure was the offspring of a whore, a destitute. So, it was through the hole in the wall she would go.

Please God love her just one more time. Until she had found safety for her darlin’ child.

Chapter 1

Part One

Exiled

Thirteen-year-old Henrietta O’Reilly pushed aside a lock of curling copper-coloured hair from her eyes and shivered. The icy water in the big china basin where she toiled was freezing; her fingers were numb to the bone. Yet, after a hard morning’s laundering, there was still so much to do.

‘A labour of love,’ so Sister Patrick regularly assured her. ‘You’ll be fitting those curling tresses of yours into a halo before long.’

The thought of a halo appealed to Ettie, as she was known by the nuns. All the saints looked radiant in the pictures hanging on the convent walls. Their holy images with auras of gold inspired her. But it was hard to conjure a smile in the ancient orphanage laundry. Draughts as strong as storms rushed in from the broken windows. The mucky steam dampened her clothes. The air smelled strongly of soap and starch, and made her eyes sting.

Not that she minded, for having spent all her life in the care of the Sisters of Clemency, Ettie considered the orphanage her home. Hidden away in the hamlet of Poplar, East London, it was rare that she ever ventured beyond the high stone walls of the convent.

Sister Patrick was her favourite nun and though she had lived many years in England, she still spoke with her native Irish accent. It was Sister Patrick who, on her way to chapel on Christmas Day fourteen years ago had discovered the dying Colleen O’Reilly.

‘Sure, t’was a heartbreaking sight,’