Christmas at Carriage Hill

Alexandra sighed and picked up her knife.

Lots of extra butter might help.

* * *

“Are you sure you want to make this trip, Alexandra?”

It was early evening in London, and Philippa Rankin Hunt was skeptical if not worried. Alexandra smiled at her elegant, silver-haired grandmother. “It’ll be wonderful.”

Philippa looked unconvinced. She’d had Alexandra join her in the living room of her Mayfair apartment and, over tea, tell her about her trip to New England. More than seventy years ago, her father, Philip Rankin, had gone to Boston in pursuit of the Ashworth jewels, appropriated by his brother-in-law but intended for Philippa, the only child of his deceased sister and her fighter-pilot husband. The jewels were stolen from Charles Ashworth’s Boston hotel and presumed lost until a few months ago, when Dylan and Olivia had returned them to Philippa, now an elderly woman. She was still digesting the fact that her uncle—whom she’d never liked—had been even more of a bastard than she’d realized, the Ashworth jewels had been rediscovered and Dylan, a wealthy former professional hockey player, was, in fact, her nephew, her father’s grandson by the young woman he’d left behind in America at the start of World War II.

It was a lot for Philippa, whose idea of an adventure was seeing the first rose of the season blossom at her country home. She’d been invited to Olivia and Dylan’s wedding but decided the trip was a bit much for her.

“I checked the forecast,” she said. “It’s cold in Boston. There’s a winter storm brewing. A nor’easter, they call it.”

Alexandra waved a hand. “It’s December in New England, Gran. Of course it’s cold with a chance of snow. I would love for Dylan and Olivia to have snow on the ground for their wedding. Wouldn’t that be picturesque?”

“A white Christmas is one thing. A blizzard is another.” Her grandmother set her teacup—Wedgwood she’d inherited from the Ashworths—on its saucer. “Olivia and Dylan can afford to have their wedding anywhere. Destination weddings are popular these days. Why not Nassau? Why Knights Bridge, Massachusetts?”

“It’s Olivia’s hometown. It’s what she wants.”

“Then it’s as it should be.”

“I’ll have a fabulous time, Gran. I’ve been working hard. I’m due for a bit of a break.”

Her grandmother eyed her with open suspicion. “You have that jilted-by-a-man look, Alexandra.”

“What if I did the jilting? Would it be the same look?”

“Did you do the jilting?”

“I’ve been so busy with work and Olivia and Dylan’s wedding, how would I find time for jilting or being jilted?” Alexandra sprang to her feet. She didn’t want to outright lie to her grandmother, so best to change the subject. “Come, Gran. Let’s go see some Christmas lights and have a nice, quiet dinner together. You can tell me again about your father—my great-grandfather, the jewel thief.”

“He wasn’t a jewel thief,” Philippa said, rising, steady on her feet. “He was merely seeing to my mother’s wishes after her untimely death.”

“Philip was a rake of a man, don’t you think?”

“I think nothing of the kind.”

Alexandra suppressed a smile as she hooked her arm into her grandmother’s. “Your mother wasn’t supposed to fall for him, but she did. The lovely Lady Helena. You can tell me about her, too. Have you ever fallen for a rake, Gran?”

She sniffed. “Your great-grandfather was a war hero. He wasn’t a ‘rake.’ And if you keep this up, Alexandra, I’ll drive you to Heathrow right now and you can sleep on the floor there.”

“Oh, so you have fallen for the wrong man,” Alexandra said with a delighted laugh. “I want to hear all over a bottle of good wine.”

Her grandmother reached for her wool coat, scarf and gloves. The feigned outrage was gone and she had a twinkle in her eyes. “Who said he was the wrong man?”

Two (#ulink_7115ecc5-4a2b-5894-9d3d-de63ff497dfc)

Boston was cold, and snowy...and perfect. Alexandra was pleased with her decision to make the trip. She spent two days on her own in the city seeing the sights, wandering in and out of shops of all kinds and organizing her work on Olivia’s wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses. On her third day in Boston—December 22, two days before the wedding—she was reasonably recovered from jet lag and keen to get to Knights Bridge.

Dylan sent a car for her. The driver was a man who looked to be in his late twenties. His casual attire of jeans and a worn canvas jacket was a bit different from the black suits of Alexandra’s usual drivers in London and various European cities, but she didn’t object. She climbed into the backseat with murmured thanks.

“No problem,” he said.

And that was that. He was pleasant but obviously not one to engage in conversation. That was fine with her since it left her to enjoy the blissful drive west. The day was clear and bright and the scenery as beautiful as she imagined a New England winter would be. The nor’easter had fizzled, or blown out to sea. Something. She knew her grandmother would be watching the forecast. Philippa had managed to wriggle out of providing details about her rake of a man, but Alexandra hadn’t pressed her, fearing her grandmother would want details about her rake of a man. Alexandra had enjoyed their evening together in London before her departure the next day. Her grandmother was unconvinced that her only granddaughter’s move to the country was in the best interests of her career. Philippa had been out to the Cotswolds with Alexandra’s parents, but they hadn’t met Ian. He’d been off flying fighter jets or drinking with his pilot buddies. Alexandra didn’t know, didn’t ask, didn’t care.

Well, at least she didn’t know and didn’t ask.

Not caring would take time.

Lost in thought, she wasn’t aware the car had turned off the main road until it hit a bump and she noticed an open field blanketed with snow glistening under the cloudless blue sky. She breathed in deeply, transfixed as the road wound into the small village of Knights Bridge. She took in the oval-shaped village green, surrounded by mostly nineteenth-century homes, a library, town offices, a handful of shops. Children and a few adults were ice-skating on a seasonal rink on one end of the green, a picturesque sight that conjured up simple pleasures and pushed her worries and doubts to the back of her mind.

This will be a wonderful week.Iwon’t think about Ian at all.

Alexandra settled into her seat as the car turned onto a back road. In a few minutes, they passed what had to be the house and “barn” Dylan and Olivia were building on the site of Grace Webster’s former house, a structure too far gone to save from demolition. The new buildings seemed to spring naturally from the rural surroundings. The house wasn’t too close to the barn, which, Alexandra knew, would serve as the headquarters for Dylan’s new ventures—adventure travel and the occasional entrepreneurial boot camp. Dylan might have ended up in Knights Bridge because of his grandparents—and his treasure-hunter father—but he was wealthy because of his own hard work and his friendship with Noah Kendrick, a high-tech genius. They had forged an incredibly successful business partnership, transforming Noah’s fledgling NAK, Inc., into a profitable enterprise. Noah, whom Alexandra had yet to meet, was serving as Dylan’s best man.

This, Alexandra thought, was where Grace Webster—Philip Rankin’s last love—had moved as a young woman, pregnant with their child, not knowing if her RAF pilot would ever return to her. Decades later, Duncan McCaffrey had traced his birth mother to Knights Bridge and bought her crumbling house when she moved into an assisted-living facility. Duncan had died suddenly, leaving his only son, Dylan, in the dark about Grace and Knights Bridge. Two years later, Dylan had arrived in Knights Bridge himself to sort out what was behind his father’s mysterious purchase of a property in the out-of-the-way little Massachusetts town. In the process, he fell in love with his Knights Bridge neighbor, Olivia Frost.

Funny how life turns out, Alexandra thought as her driver continued down the narrow road to a classic center-chimney house with creamy clapboards and a cheerful blue front door. A hand-painted sign decorated with a cluster of blossoming chives announced they had arrived at The Farm at Carriage Hill. She knew from Olivia and Dylan it was the last house on the road, which had once led into the Swift River Valley towns but now dead-ended at a gate leading into the reservoir watershed and ultimately to the reservoir itself. The house was situated among established gardens and mature shade trees, their branches bare and gray with winter, and tall evergreens drooping with snow. Across snow-covered fields a hill—Carriage Hill, presumably—rose against the blue sky.