A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance. Trisha Ashley

home, after all, where I was brought up…I love it. And I’m a property developer, a very successful one, so I know what needs to be done and I can afford to do it.’

      ‘I understand. I was just starting to feel the same way about my cottage, even though it didn’t belong to me.’

      He looked seriously at me, his eyes frank and earnest: ‘Please let me buy it back, Sophy! I’ll even pay well over the market value—how about that? It can’t mean anything to you, can it, since you left it when you were a small child? And I don’t suppose you could afford the upkeep, anyway.’

      I said slowly, ‘No, I—no, how can it mean anything to me? I was eight when I last saw it.’

      ‘Liar!’ said a voice in my head—Alys’s voice, tenuous and far away, as if speaking down a very bad telephone line, but instantly familiar to me even after all these years.

       Alys, are you back again?

      But if she was, she was now silent. Maybe my subconscious had simply ascribed her voice to my innermost thoughts? For of course I did long for Winter’s End—but the Winter’s End of my childhood, before Jack took my place and everything changed—and there was no way back to that.

      ‘You could come and visit whenever you liked anyway,’ he offered, with another one of those glorious smiles. ‘We’re family, aren’t we? And now I’ve found you, I’ve no intention of letting you get away again!’

      I sighed and shook my head. ‘You know, it’s so ironic! I was waiting for an angel to come to the rescue—but now it’s too late. Only a week ago I’d have jumped at the chance without a second thought, because I could have bought my cottage and not had to move out.’

      He looked puzzled, so I explained what had happened, and then he suggested I could still make the new owners of the cottage an offer they couldn’t refuse.

      ‘I could, but they are rich City types who’ve bought it for a holiday home and I don’t think they would be likely to sell it even at more than its value. They’re busy ripping out every original feature and tossing the cottage’s entrails into a skip, so all the things I loved about it have already gone. If there is one thing my early life has taught me, it’s that when everything changes, you move on—and you can never go back and expect things to be the same.’

      Not even at Winter’s End, except in my dreams…

      ‘But you could buy somewhere new?’ he suggested. ‘I expect you’ve got friends here?’

      ‘Not really. I know a lot of people but I’ve only got one real friend, from way back, and she tends to move around a lot.’

      In fact, she moved around permanently; but Anya, with her dreadlocked red hair and her home made from an old ambulance, was probably a world away from the sort of people my cousin Jack knew.

      ‘Well, now you’ve got me,’ he said, giving my hand another squeeze and then letting it go. ‘Whatever you decide, we’ll always be friends as well as distant cousins, I hope. But I know, when you have thought it over, you’ll realise that the right thing to do is to sell Winter’s End to me, to keep it in the family.’

      ‘I expect so, but—well, none of this seems real at all yet. I need time to think—and hear the news officially from a solicitor, too, before it sinks in properly and I start to believe it!’

      ‘You will. Hobbs is the family solicitor, though he is semi-retired, and he said he was going to call in and see you personally on his way up to Scotland. I expect he’s hard on my heels. Oh, by the way,’ he added casually, ‘I promised Aunt Hebe that I’d ask you if you had the book, and if you have, take it back with me.’

      ‘The…book?’ I stared at him blankly while the clanging of alarm bells sounded in my head. ‘Do you mean that Victorian children’s book of gruesome stories from the Bible that Aunt Hebe used to read to me? I did take that away with me—still got it, in fact, though I didn’t inflict it on Lucy. It used to give me nightmares, but I was horribly fascinated by it!’

      ‘No, she meant Alys Blezzard’s household book, a little, really ancient notebook of recipes. It’s a priceless bit of family history, and it’s been missing since your mother ran off. They just sort of assumed she took it with her.’

      I shook my head. ‘No, sorry. Mum told me all about Alys—she liked the idea that she was descended from a family notorious for witchcraft—but she never mentioned any book.’

      ‘Are you sure it wasn’t among her things?’ he pressed me. ‘It’s quite an heirloom, so Hebe’s always been upset that it’s missing.’

      ‘She didn’t leave a lot of possessions behind when she went to America, so I’d have noticed something like that.’

      ‘And she wouldn’t have taken it with her?’

      ‘No, I’m sure she didn’t. I helped her decide what to take and did the packing. We had to buy a suitcase especially, because we didn’t think her old carpetbag would stand up to aeroplane baggage handlers.’

      ‘Then Aunt Hebe will be disappointed!’ He stood and pulled out a slim gold case from his pocket. ‘Look, I’ll have to be off now, but here’s my card—ring me when you’ve seen Hobbs and had a think about my offer. Selling Winter’s End is the only sensible option, you know…and remember, whatever anyone says, I love the place and only want the best for it.’

      ‘OK,’ I said, slightly puzzled, and he put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. He seemed a very hands-on kind of person, when he wasn’t miffed. But I understood how he felt about Winter’s End because I, too, had loved my little cottage.

      ‘And at least you have inherited something I, a mere female, can’t—the title,’ I pointed out. ‘Sir Jack!’

      ‘Very true. And of course there is a long family tradition of intermarriage in the family, especially when a girl is the heiress…much like now, I suppose,’ he said, with a teasing smile. ‘Keeps the title and the property together.’

      ‘I—yes, I suppose it does,’ I agreed, slightly taken aback.

      ‘Oh, Sir Jack, this is so sudden!’ he said in a mock-modest falsetto, and I laughed.

      ‘But seriously, Sophy, I don’t intend letting you go out of my life five minutes after I’ve found you, whatever you decide,’ he said, and kissed me again before he left, this time in a less than cousinly way. But that’s OK—he is something less than a cousin, after all.

      After he’d gone everything seemed a bit leached of colour and lifeless, including me. I drank about a gallon of Rescue Remedy, then went out to the VW and fetched a wooden box from the ingenious special hiding place that one of my mother’s friends had made for it (and her stash) long ago.

      It was rectangular, quite deep and surprisingly heavy, and when I opened the lid the delicious aroma of ancient books wafted out. I should know that smell, I’ve dusted libraries full of them in my time. Anyway, I adore books. That’s where I acquired most of my education. The scent of old leather bindings promised escape into another, comforting world, much as the scent of roses once reassured me that Winter’s End still existed just as I left it.

      Carefully I lifted out A Little Child’s Warning: A Treasury of Bible Stories with its faded gilt edges and the cover depiction of a small child praying, eyes cast up to heaven, but my icy hands fumbled and almost dropped the book.

      A positive cascade of pressed roses fell out, with the papery whispering of old ghosts.

Chapter Three: Diamond Cut

       They have given mee a chamber in the solar to be near Thomas. I spend much time there—or in the stillroom, which is sadly neglected, Lady Wynter having no interest in those