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      When I was trying to come up with an idea for a “Tudor Christmas” story, it was ninety degrees outside! I was having a hard time thinking about snow and carols, sleighs and Christmas puddings. Then one night I was watching the wonderfully funny and sweet ShakespeaRe-Told version of Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice and Benedick translated into rival TV morning show anchors), and Robert and Meg appeared to me! A once-hopeful couple now torn apart, brought back together by their younger counterparts (and a little holiday magic).

      The Tudors, especially Elizabeth I, loved the Christmas season, and it was filled with elaborate banquets, dances, masques, gifts and hunts. The holiday season of 1571 was kicked off by a lavish event indeed, the marriage of Anne, the oldest daughter of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to the highly eligible young Earl of Oxford on December 19. The queen herself attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey, and the nuptial banquet was held at Cecil House in Covent Garden.

      A Christmas wedding seemed like the perfect setting for the romance of Robert and Meg! Sadly for poor Anne Cecil, her own glittering wedding didn’t lead to much happiness. In 1574, the earl left his pregnant wife to live abroad and didn’t return for three years. When he did come back, it was to a marriage filled with bitter estrangements, possible insanity and flagrant affairs (on Oxford’s part), and eventual reconciliation and five children. Anne died at age 31 in 1588, interred at Westminster Abbey with the due honors of the Countess of Oxford. David Loades, in his book The Cecils, says, “She seems to have been a gentle, submissive creature, battered by the storms of an unhappy marriage that she had done nothing to provoke.”

      But Meg and Robert will surely have a much, much brighter future than the Oxfords, whose wedding helped bring them together! I enjoyed their winter romance so much, and I hope you do, too....

      Contents

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six