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The Christmas Angel (Library Edition)

 
9781609818906: The Christmas Angel (Library Edition)
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A charming, heartwarming Christmas tale about the power of family, tradition, and love ― sure to delight fans of Debbie Macomber and Richard Paul Evans.

In 1875, Owen Thomas, a poor Welsh coal miner, falls in love with a beautiful London actress, Jessica Lavery. He builds her a cottage in his village and enchants her with the promise of the holidays they’ll share after they marry. According to his special Thomas family tradition, the Christmas tree must always be outside, where it can look up to God. Owen carves her an angel to go on top of their tree, with lavender eyes like hers, a token more meaningful to her than any engagement ring. When Jessica breaks off their romance, Owen, brokenhearted, wraps the angel in his mother’s shawl and brings her to America. There, she looks down over five generations, witnessing peace and war, triumphs and tragedies, reminding all who see her that Christmas is the time when families and sweethearts can come together, laughter and goodwill can lighten even the heaviest burden, and magic fills the earth. This is a story of faith and love. And of the miracle that brought the angel home again.

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About the Author:
Jane Maas began her advertising career at Ogilvy and Mather as a copywriter in 1964 and eventually became a creative director and agency president. A Matrix Award winner and an Advertising Woman of the Year, she is best known for her direction of the “I Love New York” campaign. She is the author of Mad Women, Adventures of an Advertising Woman and Christmas in Wales, and co-author of the classic How to Advertise. She lives in New York City. Visit her online at www.JaneMaas.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
PART I
Christmas in Wales, 1875
 
 
He had scrubbed himself hard, but he worried that there might still be traces of coal dust under his fingernails. Owen scowled as he inspected them. Homesick for the coal mine, is it? he asked himself. Well, you’ll be home again in Wales and back in the deep dark before you know it.
He peered down at the stage from his seat in the balcony. The place seemed magical to him, the city seemed magical; he had never even dreamed of coming to London. And when, just a month ago, the men’s choir of St. David’s learned they had won a trip to London to sing in an eisteddfod, he thought it miraculous. They had come in third in the contest, in a field of forty-three groups from all over the kingdom. They didn’t call it an eisteddfod here in London, though; they called it a singing contest. Eisteddfod is better, he thought. The word sounds more like music.
All London was talking about the beautiful young actress making her London debut in this play. Jessica Lavery. The girl with the lavender eyes. Not the starring role, but the kind of riveting cameo that makes an impression. Owen had heard about her, read about her in the press. He accepted, as part of the magic, the theater ticket to the matinee urged on him by the wealthy sponsor who underwrote their travel to London.
The curtain rose. Jessica Lavery made her entrance. Made her speech. Made her exit. Owen did not breathe. When the curtain fell, he and the other men from his choir stood and clapped furiously. As Jessica stepped forward to take her solo curtain call, Owen took a deep breath and shouted: “Brava! Brava!” He had read that “brava” was the proper term of praise for a female singer. He hoped it worked for an actress as well. He called it out again, and Jessica Lavery smiled up at the balcony.
Owen pulled on his coat. “Shall we have some tea?” his best friend, Dai, was asking the group. “Not for me,” Owen told them all. “I am not for tea. Today I am for adventure. I am on a quest.”
The doorman barred the stage entrance. “Your card?”
“I don’t have a card,” Owen stammered, introducing himself. “I just want a few minutes with Miss Lavery.”
“You and the rest of London.” He looked Owen up and down. “Ah, why not, come on in. It’s almost Christmas. Just write down your name and address for the record.” Owen complied, and the doorman led the way to a door marked simply No. 3. He knocked, opened it, and announced: “A Mr. Owen Thomas from Llanelli, Wales.” He pronounced it with an “L” sound, as in “love.”
“Flanelli,” Owen corrected automatically, and entered the small room.
Jessica turned to the door, transfixing him with a look. Her eyes really were lavender.
“Yes?” she asked.
Every word of English left him, and he spoke in the first language he had ever heard.
“Oh, you must be speaking Welsh, and I’m afraid I don’t understand it. Could you translate, please, for a poor, uneducated Englishwoman?”
“I said, ‘There is beautiful you are.’” He found his voice, remembered why he had come backstage, and grinned at her. “So we will be having Welsh lessons around our fireside.”
“Whose fireside is that?”
Our fireside. You are the most beautiful woman in the world, and I have fallen in love with you. It is like an enchantment woven by Merlin, that you and I will spend the rest of our lives together.”
Jessica had experienced ardent stage door admirers before. Usually, with the help of the doorman, she would quickly usher them out. This time, in spite of herself, she wanted to hear more. There was something about this dashing young Welshman that intrigued her. “But Mr. Thomas…”
He ignored the interruption. “As an actress, you surely cannot ruin the plot of an Arthurian romance,” he teased.
Her tone began to match his. “Surely you are precipitate, sir.”
“Surely there is precedent, madam. Dante fell in love with Beatrice the first moment he saw her, and loved her for the rest of his life. When Romeo first sees Juliet he asks himself, ‘Did my heart love, till now?’”
Jessica’s eyes widened. Perhaps he is an actor, she thought. Actors are vulnerable to impulses like this. He looks untamed, somehow. Maybe he is a poet. That’s it. He looks like the portrait of the young Byron in the National Portrait Gallery. “Thank you, Mr. Thomas, you pay me a great compliment. But it’s the theater you have fallen in love with, not really with me. You are in love with the role I’m playing, the sweet young innocent. And you will surely meet and marry someone just like her.”
“Not someone like her. Someone who is her.”
“But I am an actress. I have already made my vows to belong to the holy order of the theater.” She decided to try a different subject, something that might bring him back to reality. “What do you do in Wales, Mr. Thomas? Dare I guess that you are a teacher?”
“After I finished at the National School, I thought of continuing my studies and becoming a teacher. For the moment, until I decide, I am in the coal mine in Llanelli.”
“Have you only those two choices then? You seem to me a man who could do much.”
“Ah, sometimes I think so too. Hubris, Miss Lavery, hubris, a trait I do not detect in you. Yes, I do have a third choice, another humble one. Ever since I was a little lad, I wanted to own a farm; to be part of nature, to make things grow. There is nothing fresh and green about a mine. Do you know Wordsworth?”
“Only a little.”
“We will read him together by that fireside of ours. But first I will take you to Llanelli and show you the magic of Wales. To Saint David’s to see the enchanted well of Saint Non, which sprang from the earth the day she gave birth to David. The place in the Preseli Hills where Merlin quarried the bluestones and flew them through the air to form Stonehenge. The only places in all of Britain where those stones are found are the Welsh hills and the circles of Stonehenge. The geologists say that the Ice Age moved them. But we Welsh know better.”
“I am sure you do.” Jessica smiled.
“And we will visit the tomb in the hills where King Arthur lies, although he is not dead but only sleeping until the day when Britain needs him and he will rise from his sleep to lead us once again.”
“Is Wales always full of magic?” Jessica was falling under his spell.
“Always. And in exactly one week it will be Christmas, the most magical time of all. The streets are full of music, the mines ring with it. The carolers are out every night, even when it’s bitter, and people fling open their doors to listen and invite us in to have a drop and warm ourselves at the fire.”
“Does your family have a Christmas tree?” Jessica asked. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had imported the tradition from Albert’s Germany, and decorated trees were the rage. “A Christmas tree in front of the fireplace?”
Owen shook his head. “My father believes that a Christmas tree must always be outside, where it can look up to God. But here in London you have your own Christmas traditions. Tell me, Miss Lavery, do you have a tree? Do you have carolers?”
“A small tree, on a small table. And the carolers have begun to sing in the street where I live, in Kensington Square, near Hyde Park. But they have not yet sung my favorite carol, ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.’”
“I do not know it. Why is it your favorite?”
“Because it calls for us to rejoice. And that is what Christmas is all about.”
The stage doorman knocked, and two men entered, crowding the little room with cigar smoke and laughter. They laid hats and walking sticks on a side table and tugged at the snowy cuffs of their shirts peeping from their expensive tweed jackets. Owen put his hands in his pockets, ashamed of the coal dust he imagined might still cling.
Introductions were made. The Londoners gave Owen a glance, assumed him harmless. “You were even more splendid than usual today, my dear,” one said.
The second visitor chimed in. “We must do supper after the theater again tonight. We will be waiting with a carriage as soon as the curtain comes down. The oysters at Claridge’s are splendid.” His gaze flicked to Owen. “But you are from Wales, Thomas. You be the arbiter. Which are better: the oysters of Swansea Bay or the oysters of Brittany?”
Jessica, irritated by the dismissive tone, intervened. “Mr. Thomas is from Llanelli.” She was careful to pronounce it correctly. “It is famous for its music, but not for its oysters.” Owen listened in wonder as she continued, “But now you must excuse us. Mr. Thomas has invited me to tea before the next performance, and to a place I enjoy so much that I could not refuse.”
When they were alone again, he felt bolder. “Oysters, is it? I will spread oysters before you, with pearls in them, every one. But where am I taking you to tea?”
Jessica laughed and opened a picnic hamper. “This is the tea we will share, if you are willing. It is simply cold jellied chicken with bread and butter, something light to eat between the matinee and the evening show.” She poured tea and set out the food.
Owen lifted his teacup in a toast to her. “Welsh tradition has it that every good Welshman pays his debts before the new year begins. So I must try to repay your hospitality very quickly.”
The lavender eyes shone at him. “I do believe, Mr. Thomas, that somehow you will find a way.”
The next afternoon, a Sunday, Jessica was in her sunny bedroom at her writing desk, grateful for an entire day without performances. “I woke up this morning thinking of Wordsworth,” she wrote a school friend who lived in the Lake District. “And of course my thoughts turned to you.” It was a quiet time in Kensington Square, as were all Sundays, so she was surprised to hear a bustling in the street. There, just beneath her window, was Owen, standing in front of a group of some dozen men. He was the tallest, she thought, and the most handsome. She threw open the window and heard Owen announce: “‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.’” The men began to sing, in nearly perfect four-part harmony. As the carol ended, with its great final burst of “Rejoice! Rejoice!” Jessica opened the front door. She stood there, not minding the cold, while they sang “Good King Wenceslas” as an encore.
“Will you all come in and warm yourselves?” she asked Owen.
We are not coming in, but you are coming out. I am taking you to tea at Claridge’s.”
“But I cannot—”
“Please do not delay. I have used the prize money from the singing contest to rent a hansom cab. But I can afford only three hours.” Owen grinned at her.
He has won again, she thought, as she grinned back. “I will fetch my cloak.”
They drove along Kensington Road, skirting Hyde Park, where a few gentlemen were out riding in Rotten Row. “How did you all happen to know my favorite carol?” Jessica asked. “I believe you told me yesterday that you were not familiar with it.”
“Last night, just before I fell asleep, it came to me that we could serenade you with that carol. So this morning I turned my friends out of bed early for rehearsal. And there we were.”
“Do you always act so swiftly on impulse, Mr. Thomas? Is it a Welsh trait?”
“I believe it is a Thomas trait. We do everything quickly. Like rising to occasions. Falling in love.”
“It is a trait known as speed at grasping nettles.”
“My dear Miss Lavery, you can hardly be classified as a nettle.”
The streets were thronged with people, all preparing for the coming holiday. Costermongers were out with their barrows, one selling fruit, another vegetables, yet another sweetmeats. They saw a man selling roast chestnuts, a woman selling hot eels; a knife grinder, a muffin man. And everywhere there were buskers, playing fiddles or banjos or simply singing. Their hansom trotted up Park Lane, past Grosvenor Square, into Brook Street, and drew up before Claridge’s.
The doorman, resplendent in a great fur hat, approached the carriage. “But perhaps you are tired of Claridge’s?” Owen suggested. “You were here just last evening with your friends.”
“They are not friends,” Jessica corrected him quickly. “No, I did not join them. It seems that our little picnic gave me all the nourishment I needed.” And, she added to herself, perhaps more than I expected.
The doorman handed her down from the carriage, and Owen escorted her through the lobby, decorated with festoons of pine and garlands of ivy. When they entered the lounge where tea was served, there was a hum of surprise; some of the patrons recognized Jessica and speculated about the young man at her side.
As they drank their tea, Jessica noticed how Owen cradled the fragile cup. His are strong hands, she concluded, but gentle, too. Tender enough to hold a child. Or a woman. Stop imagining things, Jessica Lavery, she scolded herself, and bit into a scone. “You have more than repaid my hospitality for cold chicken, Mr. Thomas.”
“Ah, more is to come. There is another Welsh tradition that is centuries old. When a young man declares his intentions to a young woman, he carves her a spoon. It is called a lovespoon. And by accepting it, she says, with no words needed, that she accepts him.”
“A spoon?” Jessica smiled.
“But you deserve something more dramatic, more theatrical. When we are at home in Llanelli I will carve a great ‘J’ for Jessica. And put it over the door.”
“Just like royalty. Like a Tudor.”
“Oh, Tudors were plain Welshmen. No, for you we need a grander dynasty. Nothing but Plantagenets for you, it is.”
They talked intently for an hour. He told her more of Wales at Christmas. Of how they believed that at midnight on Christmas Eve, the animals could talk together, and anyone who was born on a Christmas Day could understand them. Of how, on that day, his entire village rejoiced and was glad, just as the hymn directed.
“I should like to be in Wales for Christmas one day,” she murmured, half to herself.
“I will come back to London in one year’s time, and gather you up and take you home.”
“An entire year, Mr. Thomas?” Jessica tried the teasing tone again, hoping they might be able to laugh together about his infatuation. “What will you be doing all that time?”
“Falling even more in love with you. And building a cottage for us. A white cottage in a glen. With a Christmas tree outside the door.” Again, he grinned at her. “And a nursery inside.”
The lavender eyes shone at him. “Mr. Thomas, there is something about you that is quite irresistible.”
 
 
Llanelli
Christmas Day, 1875
My dear Miss Lavery,
You told me I might write to you. I hope that you will write to me.
I sang in our chapel choir at the Christmas Eve service last night. And sang again this morning. The entrance hymn is one of my favorites, set to an old Welsh tune known as “Bunessan.”
 
Child in the manger, infant of Mary,
Outcast and stranger, Lord of all,
Child who inherits
All our trespasses,
All our demerits on Him fall.
 
The Irish and the Scots claim this tune, as well, but it is Welsh to the core.
The whole Thomas family was at the table to eat the Christmas dinner my good mother prepared. Mutton—there is nothing better than Welsh mutton—three vegetables (winter vegetables from our root cellar: carrots, sprouts, and celery) and potatoes boiled with leeks. Two puddings to finish—a plum pudding and a lemon syllabub.
There are five of us, my three big brothers—Davey, Huw, and Thomas—and my little sister, Branwen. Not ...

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  • PublisherOasis Audio
  • Publication date2013
  • ISBN 10 1609818903
  • ISBN 13 9781609818906
  • BindingAudio CD
  • Number of pages3
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