A Christmas Engagement

By Ellie Thomas

In 1805, Charles Denham’s comfortable life in Regency London with his long-term partner Avery Mallory is disrupted by the sudden death of his father. As the heir to a modest country estate in Gloucestershire, Charles returns home to care for his bereaved family and take up his new responsibilities.

Overwhelmed with grief, rather than leaning on Avery, Charles becomes fixed on the idea of taking a wife for reasons of family duty alone. With this plan in mind, he travels the short distance to Bath only to find that Avery and his family have already arrived at the resort.

Will Charles follow through with his ill-conceived plan for a hasty betrothal by Christmas? Or will he come to his senses and resume his relationship with the nicest man in England?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685503444

Book preview

A Christmas Engagement

By Ellie Thomas

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 Ellie Thomas

ISBN 9781685503444

* * * *

Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

* * * *

A Christmas Engagement

By Ellie Thomas

Chapter 1

Near Stroud, Gloucestershire, October 1805

Charles Denham sat at the solid desk in the study that he continued to regard as his father’s, steadily working through the backlog of estate correspondence. It was only four months since his father’s passing and Charles half-expected his parent to burst through the door, as large as life, to teasingly berate his eldest son for stealing his place before establishing himself in his rightful setting.

Charles’ pen stilled mid-sentence on the sheet of paper. I wish to God that was possible, he thought, his heart contracting with a pang of raw grief. It was hard to believe that the elder Mr. Denham, a country squire in the prime of life, hale and hearty and full of good cheer, was suddenly no more. Charles felt that aching gap in his life all too keenly, as well as a sense of inadequacy, of being unready and unable to fill his father’s shoes.

The elder Mr. Denham had suffered a mild apoplexy in late spring, alarming Charles sufficiently to return from London a month or so earlier than anticipated, despite the gentleman’s protestations that his family was fussing about nothing. He scolded his eldest son for making an unnecessary journey and teased him he had arrived too late to be of any help with the shearing season.

Thank God I took the trouble. Only a few weeks later, when Mr. Denham had almost returned to full health, he was struck down by another much more serious attack from which he did not recover, lying between life and death for a month. Charles’ only comfort was that, together with his mother and siblings, he had been present at his father’s bedside when he took his last painful breath.

Then the waking nightmare started. Despite his blunted senses in the fog of such a loss, Charles was expected to bear the weight of estate matters, which proved hugely convoluted. It wasn’t that his father was improvident, simply that he, together with all those around him, expected