The gifts of Christmas /Mary Balogh, Merline Lovelace, Suzanne Barclay [Paperback]

This is a compendium of three very different short stories all with a Christmas theme. The stories are all related to the gifts that the Wise Men brought in the Christmas story - gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The Mary Balogh story is called "A Handful of Gold" and it was definitely the best story of the three. It features Viscount Folingsby, a twenty eight year old man still keen on sowing his wild oats but knowing his family want him to settle down and marry the woman they have picked out for him. Rather than join his family - and his potential bride's family - at Christmas he decides to go and stay in a hunting box with his friend, his friend's mistress, and of course his own mistress. Except he doesn't currently have one. He decides to persuade the well-known opera dancer Blanche Heyward to come with him and offers her £500 to spend the Christmas week with him. She accepts, but things aren't always as they seem - Blanche is really Verity Ewing who is trying to earn some money to pay for her sister's medical bills. Verity understands the enormity of whoring herself out to a rake but it's the only way that she can take care of her sister. However, the visit to the hunting box doesn't go quite as expected and Viscount Folingsby soon realises his mistress for the Christmas week is rather more than he had imagined. It's a fun story making the most of Christmas traditions (Yule logs, wassail, snow etc) but touching two.

"A drop of frankincense" is the story by Merline Lovelace. It's set in the time of Sir Frances Drake where one of his sea captains, Sir Kit Walsh, is on the verge of his marriage being dissolved. This is because he married a young woman seven years ago but has never slept with her - she was an ill, sickly thing and he only married her to please her dying father. He's happy that the marriage will be over, especially as Queen Elizabeth has taken rather a shine to him and doesn't want him to be married. However, when he returns home on leave and finds an unknown woman in his bed smelling of a special perfume including frankincense, things get rather more complicated. The history of Drake and the Spanish Armada occurs in this story and it's an interesting read.

"A touch of myrrh" is the story by Suzanne Barclay, set in the 14th Century. Rosemary is an apothecary whose important special ingredients, including myrrh, have been held up in a warehouse following the death of the merchant. She is frantic to receive her supplies else she will go out of business but the owner of the warehouse, Lord William Sommerville, thinks she is a thief when she tries to break in. He is investigating the death of the trader and knows there is more to the problem of murdered merchants than meets the eye. William is heartbroken following the death of his fiancée, can Rosemary help to mend his heart? This was the weakest of the three stories - although an interesting read I couldn't really fully believe in my characters and their problems.

All in all it's a reasonable collection but it's not particularly festive (apart from the Mary Balogh story) and there are other better Christmas collections.

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