Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances Read online

  Spirits of the Season

  Eight Haunting Holiday Romances

  Contributors:

  Amanda DeWees

  Raine English

  Angeline Fortin

  Athena Grayson

  Aileen Harkwood

  Lynda Haviland

  Afton Moss

  Diane J. Reed

  Copyright © 2015 by:

  Amanda DeWees

  Raine English

  Angeline Fortin

  Athena Grayson

  Aileen Harkwood

  Lynda Haviland

  Afton Moss

  Diane J. Reed

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book was built at IndieWrites.com. Visit us on Facebook.

  151016.210805

  Design Credits and Acknowledgments

  Spirits of the Season box set cover design by Aileen Harkwood. Components: “Young couple outdoor sensual portrait in cold windy weather,” ©solominviktor; “Winter Landscape,” ©lindavostrovska; “Blue Christmas Frame,” ©Gigello; “Christmas Decoration - Gold Pinecone,” ©Windujedi; “Red Ribbon On White Background,” ©5secondstudio; “Isolated Spruce Twigs,” ©Kmitu; “Christmas Silver Ball With Red Ribbon,” ©Aivolie; and “Gold Snowflake clipart,” ©DigitalCloud.

  Upon a Ghostly Yule cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design.

  Acknowledgments for Upon a Ghostly Yule: Amanda's thanks go to Lisa Blackwell, Maurice Cobbs, Martha Crockett, James T. Egan, Afton Moss, Diana Plattner, and Charles R. Rutledge, all of whom helped this ghost materialize.

  Her Ghost of Christmas Past cover design by The Killion Group.

  Sapphire Ridge cover design by Aileen Harkwood. Components: “Portrait of a beautiful girl wearing white fur,” ©conrado; “Northern lights (Aurora Borealis) in Iceland,” ©Jamen Percy; and “Beautiful winter landscape with snow covered trees,” ©Creative Travel Projects.

  Acknowledgments for Sapphire Ridge: Profuse thanks go to Sarah Wynde for her editing prowess and laser precision with a virtual red pencil.

  Bandits Hollow cover design by Najla Qamber at Najla Qamber Designs.

  Foreword

  Ask the average North American to name the best holiday for ghost stories and the likely response will be Halloween. It may be called by different names in different countries, but many who celebrate All Hallows Eve in Ireland, England and Scotland, would concur. Yet Halloween hasn’t always had the lock on ghost stories. During the Victorian Era, Christmas Eve was considered the day for gathering ‘round a blazing hearth to share spooky tales and generally scare the breeches and bloomers off your kin and friends with things that went bump in the night.

  Though Christmas ghosts are inextricably connected in literature with Charles Dickens and his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, Dickens was capitalizing on an already popular trend. What Dickens achieved with A Christmas Carol, however, was to romanticize the notion of Christmas ghosts as specters capable of influencing and transforming the living. Sour miser Ebenezer Scrooge is changed forever for the better by the Christmas Eve visitations from his dead business partner, Marley, and a trio of ghosts representing the holiday’s past, present, and future.

  If Dickens could adapt the yuletide ghost story to his own purposes, it only makes sense for romance fiction to do likewise with a box set of imaginative novellas and short stories in which the Spirits of the Season bring lovers together for a Christmas like no other.

  Wishing a romantic holiday to all!

  —Aileen Harkwood

  Introduction

  Let the ghosts of Christmas romance past, present and happily-ever-after gift your holiday season with haunting passion, poignancy, chills, laughter and a touch of spice.

  These eight novellas and shorts stories by USA Today, national bestselling, and award-winning authors, are filled with lively and sexy spirits, sweet kisses and naughty trysts under the mistletoe, feisty heroines, dream heroes and devastatingly handsome alphas.

  UPON A GHOSTLY YULE: A VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS SHORT STORY by Amanda DeWees

  Spirited Felicity Reginald courts danger when she impersonates the ghost of an 18th-century beauty at a Victorian Christmas house party. The real specter is hungry for life—and when she steps into Felicity’s skin, nobody, least of all dashing Sir James Darrington, is prepared for what happens next.

  SAVING LAUREL by Raine English

  When actress Laurel Todd decides to spend Christmas in Vermont, it’s with the intention of selling her family’s estate, resolving once and for all the issues that have been haunting her for years. She never expects to encounter the ghost of her first love, or develop feelings for his best friend.

  IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT by Angeline Fortin

  Fate and a hauntingly helpful hand combine to bring Alice a Christmas gift she never dreamed of. Let award-winning author Angeline Fortin bring you the spirits of the season in this tale of what happens when coincidence isn’t enough to explain running into the man of your dreams… again and again.

  KAIDAN: SNOW BRIDE (A WINTERJACKED FROST BITE) by Athena Grayson

  A mountain snowstorm forces a wounded soldier to find shelter in Yukiko’s remote ryokan. The snow witch can only have him for a single night, but the foreigner thaws her icy heart so completely that she will defy a thousand years of tradition to become not only his bride, but his wife.

  SAPPHIRE RIDGE by Aileen Harkwood

  Ghosts wait for Niki Lusk at Sapphire Ridge ski resort on the anniversary of her fiancé’s Christmas Eve death. It’s time to lay his spirit and that of her best friend, who betrayed Niki with him, to rest. If only the sexy Scotsman demanding help with an avalanche victim would respect her grief.

  MISTLETOE & MAGIC: A HIDDEN COAST HOLIDAY ROMANCE by Lynda Haviland

  It’s a holiday miracle! Hannah has an empty inn—except for the ghosts—and a chance to take her first Christmas vacation in years. But she can’t turn away the handsome guest who arrives on her doorstep hoping for the perfect private getaway to heal his broken heart.

  HER GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST by Afton Moss

  History professor Emma Williams plans a romantic holiday retreat at a Savannah inn for herself and her long-time boyfriend. She’s certain this is the year she’ll get an engagement ring for Christmas. But the ghost of a Civil War captain searching for his lost love has other plans.

  BANDITS HOLLOW: A HOLIDAY ROMANCE NOVELLA (ROBBIN' HEARTS SERIES) by Diane J. Reed

  Renowned fortune teller Evangeline Tinker mends hearts, but her own love life rips apart when a notorious outlaw comes back to find her—from a past life. As the Christmas Eve snow falls, she must decide whether to escape through time travel or to trust Virgil Hollow enough to open her heart again.

  Upon a Ghostly Yule

  Amanda DeWees

  Copyright © 2015 by:

  Amanda DeWees

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book was built at IndieWrites.com. Visit us on Facebook.

  151016.210756

  Chapter 1

  The first portent was the unlighted window.

  Mind you, my older sister is always telling me that believing in portents is absurd, especially for someone my age. Afte
r all, I am now eighteen years old and truly grown up. I wear my hair up, I came out last Season, and I was presented to Her Majesty in a gown with a train so long that it could have wrapped twice around Buckingham Palace, so I ought to be past such childish things.

  Childish or not, however, I could not help but feel a foreboding chill in my breast when the carriage neared Tatham House, the Tregonne family seat, on the evening of December 23, 1856. The snow-covered grounds and topiaries glowed eerily purple in the twilight, and the warmth of the lighted windows of the house did little to check the gathering shadows—especially because one large window on the second floor was dark. It stood out as starkly as a dead spider in a bouquet of fresh roses.

  Probably this deficiency was due to no more than a draft, or a need to refill a lamp, and a servant would soon remedy it. Nevertheless, I could not conquer a foolish dread that it meant I was less than welcome.

  To misquote Shakespeare, however, there needed no portent from beyond to tell me this. Despite Amelia’s assurances and those of her mother, the perpetually anxious Mrs. Tregonne, I feared I might be in for another round of what my brother would have called the fish-eye.

  That was a kinder way of saying that I was a pariah.

  This had been clear from the very first ball of the Season, during which I had been eyed with interest but scarcely ever asked to dance. Our hostess was forced to bring her male relations to take me for a turn on the floor. And I looked quite as fetching as the other girls, if not more so, in my beautiful new primrose satin ball gown with four flounces on the skirt and a bodice that showed a bit of décolletage. Occasionally a young man would approach me where I sat demurely with Amelia, pretending not to care that my new dancing slippers were getting no use at all. But one by one their courage visibly failed them; their smiles faltered, and they backed away to seize upon girls not “tainted with the scandals of Ellsmere.”

  Those were Amelia’s words. “Of course it isn’t entirely your fault,” she had added in an effort to console me.

  “My fault! I should say not.” I had had nothing to do with the strange events that had taken place at the Reginald family estate, or with the whispers about my father’s remarriage. “And Papa and Aunt Gwendolyn aren’t to blame for the law forbidding a widow to marry her husband’s brother. If the clergy in Scotland saw fit to marry them, why should English society refuse to countenance it?”

  “I don’t think it was that alone,” Amelia said. “There was the matter of that man dying at Ellsmere—and under such peculiar circumstances—”

  “It was merely an unfortunate accident.”

  “That isn’t what they are saying, Felicity. And I’ve also heard them say that the reason your father and stepmother have settled in Italy is because he might have been put on trial for attempted murder had he remained within reach of the law.”

  I stared at her. “What utter nonsense! They left because…because…”

  The truth was that her words struck uncomfortably close to home. My father and stepmother had indeed retreated to Italy to be free from the scandal that surrounded them, and although they had not told me in so many words, I suspected that they were also evading a real possibility of legal action.

  Even so, I had not quite been able to reconcile myself to having to make my debut in society without Aunt Gwendolyn’s supervision. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever known, like a princess out of a fairy story, and no one could meet her without being enchanted by her. Under her wing I would have had a charmed Season. My older sister would have been almost as delightful a chaperone, but she was expecting another child, so that was out of the question.

  Instead I had been foisted upon Mrs. Tregonne, and she made it clear that she was none too pleased with the arrangement. First of all, I am more attractive than her daughter. This is not immodesty in me to say; all of the Reginalds are handsome. Amelia has a pleasant face, glossy nut-brown hair, and a fetchingly plump figure, but my blonde hair and green eyes have always drawn attention, whether I wish it or no. Amelia and her mother might reasonably have wished for a plainer companion for her, particularly since this was not her first Season. She had made her debut the previous year, so there was greater urgency for her to find a husband than there was for me. Yet my presence seemed not to draw her potential suitors to me but to drive them away from us both.

  With an effort I forced my mind back to the present as the coach crossed the bridge over the thin, frozen brook and drew up before the great front staircase of Tatham. I took a deep breath to calm my fluttering stomach and reminded myself that this house party might be a new beginning for me in society. As I peered out at the elaborate stone facade with its multitudes of windows and gables, a footman opened the coach door and handed me out.

  At least, that was my assumption until I glanced up at his face. The cold breeze against my cheek was nothing compared to the chill in the blue eyes of the man now facing me.

  “Sir James,” I exclaimed, caught off balance by his unexpected presence. What was Sir James Darrington, of all people, doing at Tatham? Unthinkingly I added, “I thought you were a footman.”

  His posture stiffened, and he released my hand. He was hatless, and the chilly breeze tousled his wavy dark brown hair. “Evidently baronets rank even lower in your estimation than I was led to believe,” he said, his voice as glacial as his expression.

  Heat rose to my cheeks. Of course word had reached him back in June of what I had said. Had that not been my intention—to sting his pride as he had stung mine? Nevertheless, the memory shamed me, making me all the more anxious to regain my dignity.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” I told him. “I was simply surprised.”

  One eyebrow rose in a formidable arch, lending his gaze the intensity of a gimlet. “Surprised that so low a creature has civilized manners?”

  “Why, no, of course not.”

  “I happened to be out for a breath of air as you drew up and thought to make you welcome. I shan’t make that mistake again.”

  He seemed determined to take everything I said amiss, and irritation at this obtuse behavior began to overcome my embarrassment. “It’s merely that one doesn’t expect one’s acquaintances to hand one out of a carriage,” I said.

  “Please don’t trouble to explain yourself,” he said loftily. “Your opinions on the subject of rank are well known to me—and, indeed, everyone else.”

  He had grown a beard since I had last seen him, in June. I had to admit it suited him—and not because his face needed hiding. Rather, it gave him an air both dignified and dashing, making clear that this was a man, not a boy, despite his having only recently reached his majority. The moustache and beard also lent strength and decision to his mouth, which I had remembered as being tender and quick to smile… at least, when he was with me. But that time was long past.

  “If you will excuse me,” I said shortly, “I am growing chilled and would like to go inside—and I am keeping my hostess waiting.” My irritating companion blocked much of my view with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, but I had been able to observe Amelia and her mother emerge from the house onto the stairs.

  He pretended to smite his forehead in self-reproach. “Of course! What a boor of me to keep you standing about in the cold. No wonder you think so little of baronets. Why, it must take all your tolerance and self-control not to strike me with your fan!”

  How could he act as if the fault had been all on my side? His own sneering remarks about me were what had provoked me to speak so bluntly back in June, and that lent all the more asperity to my tone when I responded. “Considering the strictness of your own views, I am astonished you can bring yourself to speak to me at all. When you learned that you were going to come into property one certainly heard a great deal about the particular new standards you set for your friends. I trust you have had no regrets about those you left behind with your former life.”

  Either the words did not cut as I had intended them to, or else he was adept a
t veiling his emotions. “None,” he said evenly. “None at all, Miss Reginald.”

  Finally, to my relief, he stepped aside to let me pass—albeit with a mocking bow and a last scornful glance from his vivid blue eyes.

  “Felicity, do make haste,” Amelia called. “I shall freeze to death!” Never known for her patience, she waved me toward her and retreated into the house. I picked up the skirt of my blue cashmere traveling dress and followed quickly after, pausing to make my curtsey to Mrs. Tregonne when I reached her.

  “High time you arrived, Felicity,” was her greeting. “It is nearly time to dress for dinner!”

  Although it was not my fault that my train had been late, Mrs. Tregonne had a peculiar talent for making me feel as though I was inconveniencing her. I tried not to let my spirits sink further under this depressing influence.

  Amelia led me to my room, which was up several flights of stairs. The house must be quite full of guests for such a small and out-of-the-way bedroom to be pressed into service. Somewhat to my surprise, Amelia plumped down on the old-fashioned tester bed to talk while a maid began unpacking my trunk. She had not been overfond of my company last summer, so I had not expected her to desire it now. Perhaps the months I had spent with relatives in the meantime had softened her feelings toward me, which was encouraging.

  I had spent the intervening time staying first with my sister’s family, then with my brother and his wife. But their quiet life in Edinburgh, where my brother was pursuing his medical studies, was too isolated for my taste. I lacked for company of my own age, apart from the earnest-eyed young medical students who sometimes joined us for dinner and discussed surgical technique at table. Also, my brother and his bride were still practically newlyweds, and although they did their best to make me welcome, I felt that my presence was more of a distraction than a pleasure.