Chapter 1
You can never ever show this to Emily," I said as I tried, in vain, to glue the gingerbread roof back onto our ramshackle house. It was our third batch of royal icing, my sister Emily's personal recipe using fresh egg whites from her chickens, but it just wasn't gluey enough to hold the cookie cottage together. The right side of the roof slid down… in slow-motion, to add to our humiliation.
Raine laughed as the roof panel reached its final destination, the three ice cream cone trees we'd worked so hard on. They were also not anything like actual trees, but at least they'd been standing up. Not so much anymore. "I think we should show Emily just to remind her how absolutely perfect she is in every way. Remember that elaborate gingerbread castle she made the year before last? And she did it all by herself. We could hire a whole construction crew, and this would still be a failure."
"Construction crew?" Edward had been hovering and floating and fading in and out through our entire gingerbread process. It was always nice when my best friend, Raine, was my only visitor. She was one of a very exclusive group of people who knew about my resident ghost. It allowed Edward to be included in the conversation. "Don't tell me those ninnies Henry and Ursula are coming over to help with—with whatever this is. Is this supposed to resemble something?"
I licked a dab of royal icing off my fingertip. It was far better for gluing together gingerbread than for eating, but that hadn't stopped me from tasting it every chance I got. At this point, it didn't matter. I'd already eaten every color of gumdrop at least once (except the white—no one eats the white ones) and downed an entire palmful of tiny cinnamon candies. I figured my blood was already the consistency of corn syrup.
"Even Ursula and Henry couldn't salvage this catastrophe." Ursula and Henry Rice were an energetic, talented brother and sister team who'd brought my derelict, old house, the Cider Ridge Inn, back to its original glory. Since Edward was stuck at the inn for eternity, he was also stuck with my contractors. It took well over a year to restore the house, so they became a big part of our lives. Edward liked to complain about them, but I knew for a fact that he missed them once they'd packed up their tools and left. "And to answer your question—it was supposed to be a sweet little candy-coated cottage in the middle of a charming winter scene." I stared at the gingerbread and icing disaster on the table. "There, now you know the full extent of our failure."
"I'm not ready to throw in the sticky towel." As she said it, Raine wiped her hand on a dish towel that was covered with icing. She gently picked up the fallen roof panel. This project had been her idea. She'd called two nights earlier, moaning and groaning about not ever getting to make a gingerbread house when she was a kid. Then, she went on a long rant about how the holiday season had become so commercial and that all the joy had been taken out of it by consumerism. I stopped short what was certain to be a long diatribe by telling her we could make a gingerbread house together. Emily lent us her recipes and gave us some pointers, but we soon discovered that building a gingerbread house took skills and patience. In this endeavor, Raine and I had neither.
I got up to make some hot tea. "Maybe we can have a cottage without a roof," I suggested as I filled the teapot.
"The best candies go on top of the roof." Raine scraped the first layer of icing off the roof panel and then smeared more on. "I know what we're missing!" she said.
"Talent?" Edward drawled.
Raine smiled up at him. She adored Edward. Admittedly, even being transparent, he was quite the picture in his nineteenth-century, fawn-colored
breeches, Hessian boots, fitted waistcoat and untied cravat. It was the outfit he was wearing the day he was mortally wounded in a duel. My resident ghost had not lived the prim and proper life of an English gentleman, and yet, he was exactly that, an English gentleman, through and through. Even with his acerbic wit and constant sarcasm, Raine still gazed at him with starry eyes. Today was no different. She stared up at him with utter admiration. In this particular instance, there was also a large smear of royal icing on her cheek.
"No, Edward," she said with a flirty bat of her eyelashes. (In her defense, she didn't realize there was a streak of icing on her face.) "We need Christmas carols."
"Nope, I don't think that's going to keep that roof panel on." The tea kettle whistled. I poured two cups of tea and carried them to the table.
"It'll help with the spirit"—she looked pointedly at Edward—"the holiday spirit. Now, what should we sing?" She looked at me for the playlist.
"I confess I'm one of those people who can belt out the chorus parts of songs like 'Jingle Bells' but I just mumble the rest because I don't know the words."
"That's fine. Just join in for the chorus. I know all the words of all the caroling songs. I used to be in chorus in high school, and we always performed winter programs for the parents." Raine started off with "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
I joined in happily. It wasn't helping the gingerbread construction, but it did bring back a moment of childhood nostalgia, my sisters and I singing in front of the Christmas tree in our ruffly dresses. Unfortunately, my half of the sing-along faded when Raine reached the next verse about some kind of pudding. Raine, however, went right on singing. She sounded better without my accompaniment. Singing was never part of my skillset. My sister, Lana, could keep a tune, and of course, Emily sang like an angel, but my tunes were better left for the shower or alone in my Jeep.
Edward mumbled something about having enough of the caterwauling and disappeared. After a few more tries on the roof construction, we gave up our gingerbread cottage dreams and each took a side wall to nibble. I was two bites in when I realized I'd had enough sweets to last a lifetime, or at least until the end of the day.
"That's it. I've officially reached a sugar threshold, and that's saying a lot because I didn't
even realize I had a threshold until that last bite." I placed the remainder of the wall on the rest of the cookie-icing heap. My phone beeped on the kitchen counter. I walked to the sink to wash my hands before picking it up. Turned out, it was already sticky. "I think I'm going to have to hose down the entire kitchen after this powdered sugar hurricane." I lifted my foot off the floor to discover even more stickiness. I glanced at the phone. It was a text from Emily asking for a photo.
I glanced up from the phone. Raine saw the look of horror on my face. It didn't take her sixth sense to know what was on the screen. "Oh my gosh, she wants to see a picture, doesn't she?"
"Yes." I opened the web browser and found a picture of an elaborate Victorian gingerbread house. I showed it to Raine. "Too good?"
Raine laughed and waved her arm over our catastrophe. "Have you seen our creation? You can't even tell it's gingerbread." She picked up a piece and nibbled it. "But it's tasty, so we can at least take credit for making it semi-edible. Besides, can you really lie to your sister Emily? I could see trying it with Lana, but lying to Emily would be like telling a little kid there's no Santa."
"You're right," I grunted as I lifted my phone. "I'm going to be brutally honest and let her know you accidentally slipped and fell while carrying our masterpiece to the table."
Raine cleared her throat in annoyance.
"All right. I'm letting her know that it had nothing to do with her recipes or pointers, and it had everything to do with the fact that Raine and I are talentless hacks when it comes to gingerbread." I finished typing the message and sent off the humiliating picture. "There's no taking it back now. Soon, the world will know that we can't make a gingerbread house to save our lives."
"Not unless you sent that to Lana," Raine reminded me. "Emily will have a good laugh to herself, and that will be the end of it."
"You're right." I stared at the mess in the kitchen. "I don't know about you, but I don't feel like cleaning up yet. Let's fix some more tea and retire to the drawing room," I added in my posh accent. After living with a posh accent literally flowing through my walls, I'd adopted one of my own. I used it mostly to tease Edward when he
was being especially snooty, which was most of the time. Thinking of Edward gave me another idea. "You know what this day needs?" I asked.
"More carols?" Raine asked with enthusiasm.
"Please lord, no," Edward said from somewhere in the room.
"Oh, there you are, Edward. Raine and I are in need of one of your autobiographical stories. And one that is appropriate for ladies to hear," I added, knowing he had plenty that weren't.
Raine clapped quickly. "Brilliant idea. Maybe one that goes with the season. Something Christmasy."
Edward appeared. His gaze was a bold blue, and he didn't look amused about the idea. "I have no fond Christmas memories. Although, one holiday the Christmas tree caught fire, and my mother's expensive damask curtains went up like a bonfire. It was amusing."
I tilted my head at him. "A story from Firefly Junction. Maybe one that includes—you know who."
Raine looked at me. "Who? Bonnie Ross, Jackson's great ancestor?"
"I meant a different person of interest," I added.
Raine sighed loudly. "What's with all the intrigue? Who is it? Wait, are you talking about the woman that Edward loved? The one that left him brokenhearted for eternity?"
"And that concludes the storytelling portion of the evening." Edward faded out.
"I'm kidding," Raine called into the empty room. "You know me—I get jealous whenever I hear about your one true love interest." Raine was never shy about her crush on Edward.
"Please, Edward," I said. "Otherwise, I guess we'll have to sing—"
His image snapped together clear and concise. "No more singing. However, the carol with figgy pudding does remind me of a particular Christmas. And yes, it does include Kat. In fact, she had to solve a murder."
It was my turn to clap. "Now I'm especially excited. I'll get the tea and meet you both in the drawing room. See, something good came out of this day after all."
"It certainly had nothing to do with gingerbread," Raine quipped as she left the kitchen.
It only took a horse race to remind me I was no longer in London. There were no top hats and black tailored frock coats on the sidelines, gentlemen waiting to see if their chosen horse came in first. There were no women standing in overly feathered turbans and bonnets, frantically waving the heat away from their cheeks and making sure to keep far enough away from the track to avoid any mud on their hems. A horse race in Firefly Junction, the town I'd been banished to by my imperious father and cold-hearted mother, was an entirely different spectacle altogether. Tailored frock coats and top hats were replaced with ill-fitting, overly patched moleskin jackets and floppy felt hats. The women had eschewed fans for wide-brimmed straw hats, and mud on a hem was considered a badge of honor.
My horse, Arrow, snorted anxiously as we waited for the others to mount up. He was the first well-bred animal I came across in this primitive place I now called home. Not that it would ever really be home. I was without a country or town, an anchorless ship floating on an endless sea. There was one person in this world who could help me find myself moored again. I scanned the faces, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. There were so many people, but if Kat was standing amongst them, I would see her. If she were a star in the vast universe, I'd be able to pick her out of the night sky with barely a glance.
A hand slapped Arrow's rear. I pulled on the reins before the horse could take off. "Bloody—McRooney, my horse is ready to blow like a shaken barrel of ale. You nearly made him bolt."
McRooney was short a few of his prominent teeth. The gaping holes were always more noticeable when he laughed. He finished his chortle, apparently thinking I'd been joking about Arrow taking off. "We wouldn't want Arrow usin' his energy afore the race, now, would we? I've got a nice chunk on 'im. And you, of course, Sir Beckett." He pulled down on the floppy brim of his hat. Either he'd managed to get some of his breakfast up on his hat or a bird decided the hat needed a special embellishment. Soiled hat or not, it was hard not to like a man who always referred to me as sir. I'd left my titles behind in England when my father sent me off to live with his tedious, vapid cousin, Cleveland Ross.
Thomas McRooney was a local farmer who spent most of his earnings at the card table. I'd won more than my share from the man. To say he was always down on his luck would be like saying gunpowder was unstable. I had yet to see him win a hand, but his endless streak of losses never kept him away from the table. More often than not, I made excuses for not taking his money after a bad loss. They were usually ridiculous grounds like the coins would be too heavy for my ride home, or I worried I'd drink too much with the winnings. (The last excuse wasn't necessarily a lie because I'd been known to drink too much.) Still, I couldn't stomach taking hard-earned money from a man whose threadbare coat was a pitiful shield from the winter chill. I'd advised him to spend less money at the table and more on clothing and shoes but then I was hardly one to talk. My only source of income was from my parents, and it was a paltry sum compared to what I'd grown up with in England. It turned out that living a gentleman's life of riding, shooting and occasional debauchery left me with little in the way of practical skills. I did, however, know how to ride a horse like a buccaneer racing away from the constable. And today, that gentleman's skill was going to earn me a fat purse.
McRooney leaned closer to Arrow's shoulder. The horse swung his head around and nuzzled him. It was one of the gelding's few faults—being too social. That and his embarrassing and inexplicable fear of cows. I could only assume that he had a frightening run-in with an ornery cow when he was a foal. They were easy enough faults to overlook considering his speed and elegant gaits. ...
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