It’s here: Unwrapping Christmas, a Sweet Pride & Prejudice Christmas rom-com Excerpt!

Are you ready for the holiday season???

I’m excited to share that my new Pride and Prejudice variation Christmas novella, Unwrapping Christmas, is now available!

This is a low-angst, low-steam romantic comedy with all the emotional feels! It brings Elizabeth Bennet and William Darcy into a modern London Christmas—complete with a Bennet sister’s chat group, chaotic family dinners, badly behaved dogs, and all the uncertainty of reaching month three of dating someone new.

If you enjoy:

• Cozy Christmas vibes (lights, mince pies, family overload)

• Rom-com banter

• Closed-door romance

• Loyal dogs who absolutely steal scenes  . . .

Then I hope Unwrapping Christmas will be your next cozy holiday read.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for loving Darcy and Elizabeth in all their incarnations. I hope this little Christmas story brings joy, laughter, and just the right amount of swoon.

Warmest holiday wishes,

Melanie

***

Chapter One

Elizabeth Bennet was a rational woman. She read contracts before signing them, checked reviews before trying a new restaurant, and always carried an umbrella in her bag just in case. Rational. Sensible. Balanced.

At least, she had been—until she fell for William Darcy.

Now she was sitting cross-legged on her sofa, three weeks before Christmas, hunched over a half-finished scarf that looked less like a romantic gesture and more like something an elderly cat might cough up.

Her phone buzzed. Darcy’s name lit the screen.

She tucked away the knitting and hit video. There he was, tall, dark, and impossible not to ogle in his suit and tie.

“I’ve got one minute before a meeting,” he said, a little breathless. “But I was just thinking. If the killer knows the dog loves rain, he wouldn’t pick the park. He’d want to avoid the dog.”

Her mind clicked into gear. “So, he stages it indoors. Bedroom or study.”

“Motivation?” he asked.

“Insurance.”

“Perfect.”

They shared a quick smile, and then he ended the call to meet his client. Elizabeth jotted notes, not for the book limping toward the finish line, but for the next one that was nipping at its heels. The current draft had stalled at the very end. Nothing she wrote was right, and she was still trying to work out why.

She picked up the scarf. The yarn was a beautiful, moody blue-grey, chosen because it reminded her of his beautiful eyes. She’d spent an hour in John Lewis, running different skeins through her fingers like a textile sommelier, holding up colour after colour to the light, muttering about whether midnight blue was too dramatic or if charcoal grey suggested she thought he was boring.

Unfortunately, her execution was proving to be a bit of a disaster. The whole thing leaned left, as though it were trying to sneak off the needles. What should have been a neat rectangle was beginning to resemble a wonky trapezoid.

Ah, well. Too late to change course now.

Across the room, Waffles sprawled belly-up on his dog bed, snoring so loudly it rattled the picture frames. Every now and then his legs jerked in dream-chasing triumph, likely pursuing the postman through some magnificent canine fantasy. Elizabeth held the scarf up.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

One golden retriever eye cracked open. Then he gave a whine, a gusty sigh, and rolled over with his back to her.

“Right, brilliant. Even the dog’s a critic,” Elizabeth muttered, bringing the knitting needles together with a vicious clack.

Three months, or rather a little more. That’s how long she and Darcy had been officially dating. Just long enough for everything to feel thrilling and terrifying all at once. Just short enough that every little milestone like meeting friends, holding hands in public, and kissing goodnight on her doorstep still had her heart tripping over itself like a drunk in heels.

And now Christmas. Their first Christmas together. The one that would either cement them as a proper couple or reveal them as two people who’d been caught up in a brief autumn romance.

She could still remember the exact moment she’d fallen for him. It had been at Jane and Charles’s party back in early September. Elizabeth had been standing in their pristine kitchen, nursing a glass of prosecco and listening to some tedious bloke from Charles’s work drone on about cryptocurrency, when Darcy had appeared at her elbow.

“Rescue mission?” he’d murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear.

She’d turned, expecting to find Charles or maybe one of Jane’s university friends, but instead found herself looking up into the most gorgeous eyes she’d ever seen. The man attached to them was tall, dressed in a fitted navy jumper that probably cost more than her monthly rent.

“I’m sorry?” she’d managed, her brain still catching up.

“You look like you’re plotting either an escape route or a murder,” he’d said, the corner of his mouth quirking up in what might generously be called a smile. “I’m happy to provide either alibi or accomplice services, depending on your preference.”

He could not have issued an invitation more appealing to her, and that had been it. Game over. Elizabeth Bennet, a mystery author who’d spent the first half of her twenties swearing off posh boys with trust funds and good jawlines, had been completely and utterly gone.

And he was posh. He still went by his last name, some weird relic of public school.

Her phone buzzed beside her, flashing a text from Jane.

He’ll love it. Stop stressing.

Elizabeth smiled faintly despite herself. She’d called her sister earlier to vent all her worries. Jane was the type who made gluten-free Christmas cookies and had her shopping done by October, each present wrapped with mathematical precision and adorned with ribbons that never dared to wrinkle. Elizabeth typically treated Christmas like one of her writing deadlines, with panic, caffeine, and the hope of last-minute miracles. Just with more tinsel.

Jane had been with Charles for over ten months now, which in relationship terms made her practically married. They’d moved in together recently, and from what Elizabeth could tell, it suited them. Charles would come home from his job at the marketing company to find Jane had somehow transformed their IKEA furniture into something that belonged in an interior design magazine. Jane would return after seeing patients in the office in their back garden to find Charles had cooked dinner and only set off the smoke alarm twice.

They made it look easy. Natural. Like their lives had been designed to slot together, two pieces of the same puzzle.

Elizabeth picked up the scarf again, squinting at the uneven rows in the lamplight. The problem wasn’t just that her knitting was rubbish. It was that this felt like some sort of test. Three months was a proper milestone, long enough to have moved past casual dating but not quite long enough to call for expensive presents or grand gestures. It was the relationship equivalent of that awkward stage where you’re no longer a teenager but not quite an adult either.

And to add to that, what was she to buy for someone who had everything? Because Darcy quite literally did. The man owned a flat in Belgravia bigger than most people’s houses. He drove a classic Aston Martin that was older than Elizabeth. His watch cost more than she made in three months, and he wore a different one every few days with the casual indifference of someone who’d never had to check their bank balance before making a purchase.

Who even still wore a watch, unless it counted your steps and alerted you to incoming texts?

Darcy. Darcy did.

But more than that, he was . . . careful. Measured. Everything about Darcy was considered, from his name to the way he spoke and the way he dressed. Even the way he’d courted her, with an old-fashioned deliberateness that belonged in a different century.

He’d kissed her for the first time three weeks after they’d met, on a crisp October evening as they walked along the South Bank after dinner. Not because the mood struck him or in some moment of passion, but because he’d stopped walking, turned to face her, and said, “Elizabeth, I’d very much like to kiss you now, if that’s all right.”

Who asked permission to kiss someone these days? Who used phrases like “if that’s all right” without a trace of irony?

William Darcy, that’s who.

But William Darcy was also the man who remembered that she took her coffee black with one sugar, who switched sides of the pavement so he was always walking closest to the road, who once spent twenty minutes at dinner listening to her rant about her landlord’s refusal to fix the boiler and then somehow arranged for a repair man to turn up the next day without telling her and wouldn’t let her pay.

The same William Darcy who definitely didn’t need a homemade scarf knitted by someone who didn’t know the difference between a cast-on and a cast-off.

Elizabeth groaned and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Why couldn’t I just buy him cologne like a normal girlfriend?”

From the dog bed came a half-hearted thump of Waffles’s tail.

“That was a rhetorical question,” she informed him, but reached over to scratch behind his ears anyway. His fur was warm and soft, grounding her in the way that only her crazy dog could manage.

The truth was, she’d tried the normal girlfriend approach first. She’d spent a Saturday afternoon trudging through Bond Street, staring at window displays full of watches and cufflinks and leather goods. She’d even ventured into Harrods, where a shop assistant had looked her up and down with a disdain usually reserved for people who put pineapple on pizza.

She happened to like pineapple on pizza.

“Are you looking for anything particular?” the woman had asked in a tone that suggested Elizabeth’s presence was quite particular enough.

“Something for my boyfriend,” Elizabeth had managed. “For Christmas.”

“Certainly. What’s your budget?”

Elizabeth had mumbled something about “reasonable” and “not too extravagant,” which had been met with a smile that told her reasonable wasn’t a word that existed in this postcode.

She’d fled before she could embarrass herself further, but not before glimpsing a price tag that had made her laugh out loud. Four hundred pounds for a scarf. A scarf that was beautiful, admittedly, but still just a long bit of fabric designed to keep someone’s neck warm.

That’s when the knitting idea had struck her. Personal. Thoughtful. Practical. How hard could it be?

Elizabeth had never been crafty. Her idea of handmade might involve assembling IKEA furniture with Jane or, on ambitious days, trying to follow a YouTube tutorial for braiding her hair. But surely knitting was just repetitive movements, right? Like learning to type, but with yarn instead of letters.

She’d bought supplies, watched seventeen YouTube videos, and started with what the cheerful woman on the screen had promised was “a simple project perfect for beginners.” That had been three weeks ago. The scarf was now roughly two-thirds finished. It was less a scarf and more a three-week argument with yarn, though at least it was a personal argument.

But the thought that Elizabeth kept coming back to, that made her pick up the needles every evening despite the mounting evidence that she had no business attempting handicrafts: Darcy didn’t need perfect. In fact, perfect seemed to be something he had enough of already.

What he didn’t have was someone who cared enough to spend three weeks swearing at knitting needles for him. Someone who’d noted the colour of his eyes. Someone who’d rather give him something terrible but heartfelt than something expensive but careful.

She blew out a breath and hoped she hadn’t got that wrong.

Her phone rang, Jane’s photo flashing on the screen looking radiant. She was still in her little studio office, sitting in front of the garden window.

“Please tell me you’re not still knitting,” Jane said without preamble. “It’s been hours.”

“I’m not still knitting,” Elizabeth lied.

“Elizabeth.”

“Alright, fine. But I’m nearly finished!”

“It’s not about the knitting,” Jane interrupted. “It’s about you tying yourself in knots—no pun intended—over a Christmas present. He’s mad about you. Anyone with eyes can see that. I worry that you’re putting too much pressure on this present.”

“It’s been three months, Jane. Three months. I don’t want to come on too strong, but I also don’t want it to seem as though I don’t care. It’s like some horrible mathematical equation where every variable leads to catastrophe.”

“Charles told me that Darcy spent twenty minutes at dinner last week explaining the difference between various coffee bean origins because he wanted to understand why you prefer Ethiopian to Colombian. The man researched coffee beans for you.”

Elizabeth paused mid-stitch. “Did he?”

“He also asked Charles to ask me what your favourite flowers were. He’s been walking past the florist on his way to work just in case inspiration strikes.”

Something warm and fizzy bubbled up in Elizabeth’s chest, like champagne mixed with sunlight. “He has?”

“That’s what Charles said. So stop torturing yourself and just give him something that comes from you. Even if it looks like it was knitted in the dark.”

The laugh burst from her, uncontrolled, no doubt her sister’s intention. “Jane!”

“I’m kidding! It’ll be wonderful because it’s from you. Now put the needles down and have a glass of wine.”

After Jane hung up, Elizabeth sat in her living room, the scarf warm in her lap. Outside, London hummed with its usual evening symphony: buses sighing to stops, the distant rumble of the Underground, someone’s music booming from a passing car, the upstairs neighbours stamping heavily on the floor as though they were playing football.

She thought about Darcy asking Charles about her favourite flowers. She thought about him remembering the type of coffee she liked and holding open her car door, and all the tiny, careful ways he’d been showing her he cared.

Maybe Jane was right. Maybe it wasn’t about the present being perfect. Maybe it was about the giving itself, the act of saying: I’ve been thinking about you. I care enough to try, even if I’m rubbish at it. You matter to me.

Elizabeth took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and picked up the needles again. This was happening. She was going to finish the wonky, lopsided, absolutely appalling scarf. She was going to fold tissue paper around it, put it in a box, and wrap it with Christmas paper. She was going to tie a ribbon around it and give it to Darcy with her heart in her throat.

And ready or not, come Christmas, he was going to know exactly how much she cared.

Ready to read the rest of the book? The link is here–and Unwrapping Christmas is AVAILABLE IN KU!https://readerlinks.com/l/5028869