Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

So, let me get this straight,” Ava said on Wednesday morning, wearing a bathrobe and a sheet mask, sipping a cup of herbal tea. “You’re going to Berkshire to draw people in corsets?”

“No,” Charlotte said patiently from her spot at the kitchen table, nursing an enormous mug of coffee and responding to Instagram DMs on her laptop. There were an annoying number of message requests from people tagging her in memes from the movie; if she never again had to see her nine-year-old self in a red beret, eyes filled with tears, clutching a rabbit, it would be too soon. “I’m going to Berkshire to draw a house that was once used for a movie featuring people in corsets.”

“And you’re doing this for Sexy Reasons?” Ava pressed.

Charlotte frowned at a message request from someone offering a poorly spelled accusation that she was part of an evil plot to destroy Christianity by ruining Christmas culture, and hit the delete button with some satisfaction. “No,” she said, glancing up at her sister. “I’m doing this for business reasons—Graham is going to stock my art in his gift shop year-round if I do this print series he’s commissioned, so I can build a customer base in the UK.”

“But,” Ava pressed, scrutinizing a bowl of oranges before carefully selecting one, “your business relationship will just happen to involve an extremely handsome Englishman who wears glasses ?”

Charlotte took a sip of coffee to hide her grimace. “I regret ever telling you about my glasses weakness.”

“I would have known anyway,” Ava said, reaching for a knife. “There’s no other reason you would have dated that douchey start-up bro for so long otherwise.”

Charlotte blinked, lowering her mug. “Craig?” she asked, naming the ex-boyfriend of her early to midtwenties—and, not at all coincidentally, her last long-term relationship. “He didn’t wear glasses.”

Ava lowered her knife. “Yes, he did.”

Charlotte bit back an impatient reply, and instead said simply, “I promise you, he didn’t. I dated him for three years—I think I would have noticed.”

Ava began slicing her orange into quarters. “Maybe I was thinking of my ex-boyfriend,” she said thoughtfully.

Charlotte rolled her eyes. This was not the first time Ava had made such a mistake. “You are right that he was a douche, though.”

Ava frowned. “But if he didn’t wear glasses, what was your excuse for dating him?”

That was territory that Charlotte didn’t feel like getting into this morning, or possibly ever. “No comment.”

“At least this one has a nice accent and a nice house in addition to the glasses,” Ava noted as she placed her oranges on a plate and waltzed out of the room.

Informing Ava that she had no lascivious intentions where Graham Calloway was concerned would be pointless, so Charlotte saved her energy; her sister was an extremely bizarre combination of self-absorbed and nosy, which meant that she tried to sniff out any potential intrigue while also getting only about half the details right. Plus, the fact was that Graham did look like he’d been designed in a lab, specifically to appeal to Charlotte: tall, dark-haired, interesting accent. But she wasn’t enough of an idiot to mess up a promising business relationship just because of a handsome man in glasses, so she’d limit herself to an occasional appreciative glance.

An hour later, she was in the passenger seat of said handsome man’s Mini Cooper, en route to a small village some distance outside Windsor. Charlotte spent the last few minutes of the drive googling their destination: the house they were visiting had once belonged to a Regency-era aristocrat—a second son who had bought a country house for his young family that was close enough to London to allow him to return frequently to the theater he owned in town—but had been donated to the National Trust a few decades earlier by one of his descendants, and was now open to public tours.

“Okay,” she said as they climbed out of the car in the car park. “What is this movie, exactly?”

“ A Very Byron Christmas ,” he said, for at least the third time since they’d left Chiswick, because the mere title sent Charlotte off into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “It’s a loose retelling of A Christmas Carol in which our hero—a selfish young Victorian duke—is visited by the ghosts of famous figures in English history to help him see the error of his ways and woo his lady love on Christmas Eve.”

“And Lord Byron is one of those ghosts?”

Graham nodded solemnly as they approached a hut where a smiling woman emerged to accept the twenty-pound note Graham handed her for their entrance fee. “Henry VIII too. Shakespeare. Jane Austen. You know, the usual suspects.”

“Ah yes. I’ve always thought that Henry VIII seems like a calm, reasonable sort of man who would give good advice.”

“The only thing I can say in this film’s favor is that Lizzie claims the various period costumes are accurate.”

“Yes, I appreciate it when my unhinged Dickens retellings strive for historical accuracy,” Charlotte quipped. Truthfully, she was astonished she hadn’t seen this movie before—this 100 percent sounded like something Padma would have made her watch.

“I think what the average viewer appreciated about it is the scene in which the duke realizes the error of his ways and runs around the manor in the middle of the night, shirtless, with glistening abs.”

Charlotte nearly tripped over her own two feet at this revelation, and Graham reached out easily to steady her with a hand on her elbow, which he removed a moment later. “Why were his abs glistening?”

“Because he awoke from his ghostly visitations in a cold sweat,” Graham said, with the pained tone of a man who had been forced to sit through this movie multiple times. “A cold sweat that seemed to concentrate on one specific, extremely toned part of his body.”

“Historical dukes really hit the gym, huh?” Charlotte said, before adding, “That was rhetorical, obviously: I know they did. My best friend reads a lot of romance novels. I know all about the heroes’ abs.”

“Glad to hear it,” Graham said dryly, but there was a hint of a smile curving at his mouth, even as he kept his eyes on the path before them.

After another moment, they rounded a corner to find the Gothic Revival house, featuring some fanciful architectural details including casement windows and a porte cochere, and an extensive garden that must have been gorgeous in the summer. There were, conveniently, several wooden benches scattered around, and Charlotte claimed one of these now, opening her bag to retrieve her pouch of pencils and her sketchbook. She had decided to do a couple of detailed sketches on-site and take extensive photographs she could reference later as she worked on the final piece.

Graham watched in silence as she flipped to a blank page in her sketchbook and carefully selected a pencil, then glanced back at the house before her.

“Is this angle all right?” she asked, and he stepped closer to her, close enough that she could smell the pine scent of his soap as the edge of his coat brushed against her arm. She sketched a quick thumbnail, just to nail the placement of the house, and he glanced down at her work, then looked ahead, squinting slightly in the weak November sunlight.

“I think that’s fine—the house will be clearly identifiable to anyone who’s seen the film.” He stepped back, and there was a whisper of cold air where the warmth of his body had been a moment before. “I’m going to take a look around indoors while you work,” he said, reaching into the messenger bag he had slung over one shoulder and extracting a leather-bound notebook and an honest-to-god fountain pen. “My sisters want to incorporate Christmas, Truly more into the programming and tours at Eden Priory, and I want to see how they’ve capitalized on the fame of A Very Byron Christmas here.”

“Okay, I’ll be here,” Charlotte said, turning her attention to the blank page before her. A faint niggle of guilt was starting to work at her, owing to the fact that she hadn’t told him yet who she was—or, rather, who she once had been. While she didn’t tend to announce her brief childhood fame to people upon meeting them, the connection between the movie and Graham’s family home was starting to make this omission feel a bit… dishonest.

He set off, and she returned her attention to her work; soon enough, her focus narrowed to the page before her, the sketch taking shape, and the thoughts, the guilt, the worry slipped away—as they always did when she was working, when she wondered how she could ever do anything but this. She had never once, for the entire duration of filming Christmas, Truly , felt that way in front of a camera, or when rehearsing lines, but for as long as she could remember, the moment a pencil or paintbrush was set in her hand, all her other worries had fled.

Her parents hadn’t understood this, of course; even Ava, much as Charlotte loved her, had gotten the acting bug, and couldn’t understand how a role in a successful film hadn’t led her to want to do more, more, more. But Charlotte had known, deep down, even as a kid, that it wasn’t right for her—and had spent the twenty years since proving to herself, and to her family, that this was.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she felt someone next to her on the bench, and she glanced up to see that Graham had returned.

“Hello,” he said, glancing down at her sketchbook and then quickly away again, as if he’d caught sight of her in her underwear. She didn’t know why she found this small bit of understanding that she might want to keep her art private so touching, but she did—especially considering that he was the one who was commissioning her to make it, and therefore had every right to look at it. “Almost done?”

“Yes, actually,” she said, finishing up some shading of one of the gables on the roof and setting down her pencil. She reached for her phone. “I’ll take some photos of the house to make sure I have enough to work with later, and then we can go.” He nodded, and she rose from the bench to begin taking photos; at one point, she glanced over her shoulder to see that he was studying the house before him with a faint frown. She took one last photo, then turned back to him. “Did you find what you needed inside?”

He hesitated ever-so-slightly, fiddling with the cap of his pen; there was a small smudge of black ink on his middle finger, the hallmark of any fountain pen user. “It wasn’t that helpful—since it’s the National Trust that owns it now, they’re more focused on the actual history of the house and its owners than on the film. There’s a single sign in one of the bedrooms about it, but that’s about it.” He sighed, frustration writ in the faint lines at the corners of his eyes.

Charlotte walked back to the bench and slipped her phone into her bag, then began packing her pencils and sketchbook away. “Will lunch make you feel better?” she asked. “Because I’m hungry.”

He glanced up at her, his expression clearing. “Always.”

Ten minutes later, they were settled into the small café that had been built in the former stables on the property, bowls of soup before them.

“So,” Charlotte said, breaking off the end of the slice of thick, brown bread that had come with her soup, “you’re trying to convert your family home into some sort of shrine to a Christmas movie?” She avoided mentioning Christmas, Truly by name, for reasons that were probably weird and illogical, telling herself that if she didn’t name it directly, it wouldn’t seem strange if (when) he eventually found out her personal connection to the movie.

Across the table from her, Graham sighed, then ate a spoonful of soup before setting his spoon down with a clatter and saying, very bluntly, “No.” Seeing Charlotte’s confused look, he added, “My mum and sisters want to, though.”

“But you don’t?”

He rubbed at his nose, dislodging his glasses slightly. “The house survived for decades before that goddamn film came out, so I don’t think we need to go all in on Christmas, Truly now.”

“But you want to see how other houses are dealing with their connection to Christmas movies…” she prompted, still a bit confused.

“To see if there’s a way to work it in without turning the whole house into some sort of nightmarish tourist trap,” he said, lifting his spoon to his mouth again. “The print series for the gift shop is fine—it’s a nice way to capitalize on the film, I think, but not over-the-top—but this screening of Christmas, Truly that Eloise has planned is the least of her ideas for the house, and I don’t want us to get too far away from focusing on my great-great-grandfather’s legacy.”

Charlotte ate her soup in silence for a moment, contemplating. “Is it only recently that there have been money issues?” she asked, realizing that this was probably a rude question only after the words had already slipped out.

His mouth was set in a grim line. “Owning an old house is expensive, and always has been—my dad worked in corporate law, nearly killed himself with long hours for as long as I can remember, in part so that we could afford the upkeep on the house, since we’ve never made enough from tours and events to entirely pay for the maintenance. Turns out, even that wasn’t enough—but I didn’t realize it until recently.” There was a closed-off note to his voice as he relayed this information that told her that this was a sensitive subject for him; considering this was the third time they’d ever met, she didn’t feel comfortable prying, but the way he spoke of his dad made her wonder, so…

“Your dad,” she said carefully. “Is he—”

“Dead.” His tone was short. Final. “Two years ago.”

She swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”

He nodded, and returned his attention to his soup, leaving Charlotte to slowly tear a piece of bread into smaller and smaller pieces while trying to figure out how to make this a bit less uncomfortable a conversation. Her usual bluntness didn’t seem like quite the right fit for a delicate moment like this, and she definitely didn’t think that any further questions on this topic would be welcomed.

“You said you live in New York?” he asked, glancing up at her after another couple of moments, and she latched onto this question gratefully. She had a higher tolerance than most for an awkward silence, but something about Graham made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

“Yes,” she said. “Born and raised. I moved away for school, and then moved back as soon as I graduated.”

“Seems like an expensive place to live, as an artist.”

“It is,” she confirmed with a grimace. “But my best friend moved there after college, and my parents were there for a long time—not anymore, though—and it’s just… home. There’s nowhere else that I like as much, so I never really considered leaving.” Even if some of the things—the people—who had made it feel like home were no longer there. She didn’t voice this thought, instead asking, “Do you like living in London?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t think too much about it—it was always a given, you know? I wasn’t going to stay in Hampshire—there was no way I could find a job in the village, not the sort I’d need, if I was going to support Eden Priory someday. So I moved to London for uni and studied accounting, and I’ve been there ever since.”

His phone buzzed on the table and he glanced down at the screen, a frown creasing his forehead. He set down his spoon and quickly began to type. Charlotte ate her soup in a thoughtful silence, casting surreptitious glances at him between spoonfuls. “Sorry,” he said, glancing back up at her after a couple of minutes, “but I need to get back into town—I’ve a call I need to take.”

“Sure thing,” she said, scraping her spoon along the bottom of her bowl. She crumbled up her paper napkin and tossed it into her empty bowl, then rose to her feet. And then—maybe because of the frown that had left deep lines in his forehead, or the tense note in his voice when he spoke of his dad, or maybe just because something ineffable about him made her want to talk to him, made her care what he had to say in return—she said, “I’ll probably go to the next filming location later this week—it’s in Primrose Hill, right?” He nodded; she paused, and then added, “You could join me, if you wanted.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then raised that goddamn eyebrow and said, “All right.”

And she tried not to be too happy about his answer.