Page 1 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
CHAPTER ONE – SYLVIE
There was a pig in the middle of the road.
I was more surprised than I probably should have been, but in my defense, the pig was wearing reindeer antlers.
Howthey were in place, I didn’t know. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how such a momentous feat was occurring, but it was a stark reminder of where I was.
Castleton. The Yorkshire Dales. Where pink and black pigs mooching about in the middle of the road wearing a reindeer antler headband wasn’t all that weird.
All right.
The reindeer headband was weird.
The pig, however, was totally normal.
Farm animals weren’t exactly known for staying inside their fields, and it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of those here.
Everywhere.
Fields were everywhere.
So were farm animals, to be fair, although they did tend to retreat to barns in the winter. The frosts up here were sharp—sharper than I was used to after ten years living in the south of England where it was decidedly warmer. Unless Jack Frost wanted to terrorise most of the population, of course, then all bets were off.
Especially when he got together with a pissed off Elsa.
Never mind. I was going off on a tangent.
The point remained that there was a tiny pig in the middle of the road, and the pig possessed a remarkably lacking sense of danger. Lone animals usually hightailed it into the nearest field when a car came, but this one was just standing there, staring at me.
All right. Not all animals. Like sheep.
Sheep didn’t count.
Sheep were absolute bastards.
And so were bloody pheasants on account of the fact they flewintoyour car instead of away from it.
Maybe a pheasant was where this miniature pig learnt its road safety.
I turned the key to stop the engine running, grabbed my phone, and got out, taking the key with me. The last thing I needed was to get locked out of my car on what I knew was an unnamed road with no serious civilisation for at least a twenty-minute drive.
Apparently, you could take the girl out of the countryside, but you couldn’t take the countryside out of the girl.
I turned on the torch on my phone, sighed, and looked at the pig. “What are you doing out here?”
The little black and pink porker that was either a piglet or one of those mini pigs looked at me.
Naturally, it didn’t talk back.
It was a shame. If it did, then I’d know where to return him. On the other hand, allowing animals the ability to speak sounded like a headache that should only be unleashed on Halloween.
Or, you know.
Never.
In hindsight, parrots were bad enough.
Gracious, could you imagine if cats were given the gift of speaking the English language? We’d never hear the end of their complaints.
