A Little Bit of Christmas Magic

by Kirsty Ferry

  ‘You know I’ll always come back to you,’ said Ned. He caught her hand in his and kissed it, pulling her closer to him. ‘I’ll always be back for Christmas – for the rest of our lives.’

  It was a warming thought. Ailsa snuggled into him, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of winter and frost and pine that clung to his overcoat. She imagined a Christmas with Carrick Park blanketed in a carpet of white, and she and Ned kissing beneath a sprig of mistletoe, her china angel glimmering in the candlelight of a huge, ill-fitting tree.

  And somewhere, perhaps in a waking dream, or perhaps in reality, the last few notes of O Holy Night drifted across the hallway and died away with the sound of the breeze.

  We'd love to hear how you enjoyed A Little Bit of Christmas Magic, please leave a review on the eBook site where you purchased this novel. Reviews on retail sites really do help the author. Thank you!

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  Thank You

  Thank you so much for reading, and hopefully enjoying, this little story. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and revisiting some of my favourite characters from the ‘Rossetti Mysteries’ books, slipping into a magical Christmas that clearly meant so much to Ella and Adam. Hearing that readers like you love the characters and even view some of them as old friends make this writing lark worthwhile and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing so.

  Authors need to know they are doing the right thing and keeping their readers happy; because without people like yourselves, these little books are just words on a page that perhaps don’t mean very much to anyone. So it would be wonderful if you could find a moment just to write a quick review on Amazon or one of the other websites to let me know that you enjoyed the book. Thank you once again, and do feel free to contact me at any time on Facebook, Twitter, through my website or through my lovely publishers Choc Lit.

  Thanks again, and much love to you all,

  Kirsty

  xx

  About the Author

  Kirsty Ferry is from the North East of England and lives there with her husband and son. She won the English Heritage/Belsay Hall National Creative Writing competition in 2009 and has had articles and short stories published in Peoples Friend, The Weekly News, It’s Fate, Vintage Script, Ghost Voices and First Edition. Her work also appears in several anthologies, incorporating such diverse themes as vampires, crime, angels and more.

  Kirsty loves writing ghostly mysteries and interweaving fact and fiction. The research is almost as much fun as writing the book itself, and if she can add a wonderful setting and a dollop of history, that’s even better.

  Her day job involves sharing a building with an eclectic collection of ghosts, which can often prove rather interesting.

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  What if you recalled memories from a life that wasn’t yours, from a life before …?

  When Becky steps into Jonathon Nelson’s atmospheric photography studio in Whitby, she is simply a freelance journalist in search of a story. But as soon as she puts on the beautiful Victorian dress and poses for a photograph, she becomes somebody quite different …

  From that moment on, Becky is overcome with visions and flashbacks from a life that isn’t her own – some disturbing and filled with fear.

  As she and Jon begin to unravel the tragic mystery behind her strange experiences, the natural affinity they have for each other continues to grow and leads them to question … have they met somewhere before? Perhaps not just in this life but in another?

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  The Girl in the Painting

  Book 2 in Rossetti Mysteries

  What if you thought you knew a secret that could change history?

  Whilst standing engrossed in her favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting – Millais’s Ophelia – Cori catches the eye of Tate gallery worker, Simon, who is immediately struck by her resemblance to the red-haired beauty in the famous artwork.

  The attraction is mutual, but Cori has other things on her mind. She has recently acquired the diary of Daisy, a Victorian woman with a shocking secret. As Cori reads, it soon becomes apparent that Daisy will stop at nothing to be heard, even outside of the pages of her diary …

  Will Simon stick around when life becomes increasingly spooky for Cori, as she moves ever closer to uncovering the truth about Daisy’s connection to the girl in her favourite painting?

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  The Girl in the Photograph

  Book 3 in Rossetti Mysteries

  What if the past was trying to teach you a lesson?

  Staying alone in the shadow of an abandoned manor house in Yorkshire would be madness to some, but art enthusiast Lissy de Luca can’t wait. Lissy has her reasons for seeking isolation, and she wants to study the Staithes Group – an artists’ commune active at the turn of the twentieth century.

  Lissy is fascinated by the imposing Sea Scarr Hall – but the deeper she delves, the stranger things get. A lonely figure patrols the cove at night, whilst a hidden painting leads to a chilling realisation. And then there’s the photograph of the girl; so beautiful she could be a mermaid … and so familiar.

  As Lissy further immerses herself, she comes to an eerie conclusion: The occupants of Sea Scarr Hall are long gone, but they have a message for her – and they’re going to make sure she gets it.

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  Wathc For Me By Moonlight

  Book 1 in Hartsford Mysteries

  “It was the first full moon since that night. She waited and watched by moonlight, as she had promised …”

  When her life in London falls apart, Elodie Bright returns to Suffolk and to Hartsford Hall, the home of her childhood friend Alexander Aldrich, now the Earl of Hartsford. There, she throws herself into helping Alex bring a new lease of life to the old house and its grounds.

  After a freak storm damages the Hall chapel and destroys the tomb of Georgiana Kerridge, one of Alex’s eighteenth-century relatives, Elodie and Alex find a connection in the shocking discovery brought to light by the damaged tomb.

  Through a series of strange flashbacks and uncanny incidents, they begin to piece together Georgiana’s secret past involving a highwayman, a sister’s betrayal and a forbidden love so strong that it echoes through the ages …

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  Watch for Me by Moonlight

  Kirsty Ferry

  Book 1 – Hartsford Mysteries

  Chapter One

  None of it would have happened without the storm.

  It had begun as a perfectly normal day and Elodie Bright was helping out in the Hartsford Hall gift shop. They’d just finished serving a large group of German people who’d rocked up on a bus-trip, when her colleague Margaret, a tall, bespectacled lady with a heart of gold, frowned and commented, ‘Is it just me, or is it getting dark?’

  Elodie looked outside. The honey-coloured Hall seemed to be standing out more brightly than usual against the sky, which was, quite dramatically, turning black. The solar lights she had stuck, porcupine-like, in the plant pots outside came on one by one, and there was a deep, ominous silence that seemed to bury everything beneath it. The first drops of rain began to fall, and, suddenly, it was as if someone up in the heavens released the floodgates and there was a complete and utter deluge.

  Margaret dashed over to the window and peered out as droplets slammed against the glass. ‘Have you seen that rain, Elodie?’ she asked, clearly shocked.

  Elodie hid a smile. ‘It’s hard to miss it!’

  The bell on the door of the shop was going mad as the German contingent did a swift about-turn and other tourists ran inside to shelter. Most of them were shouting out the same obvious statement as Margaret.

  ‘Look at that rain!’

  ‘My word! That’s coming down!’

  ‘Mein Gott! Es regnet!’

  Elodie didn’t speak much German, but she understood that. She agreed with everyone and, giving up her space behind the counter, pushed forward and joined the throng of bodies at the window.

  That was when she saw the lightning strike the church.

  The sky split open and a dazzling, jagged fork appeared out of the seething mass of darkness. It was as if it knew exactly where to aim for. You would have thought it would have gone for the spire and the metal weather vane at the top, but it didn’t. At the last moment, the fork veered and hit the roof of the Lady Chapel, illuminating the whole church like some awful Gothic nightmare. Pieces of the roof exploded outwards and upwards and rained down on the ancient building.

  For a moment, there was a stunned silence in the gift shop. Elodie had never seen lightning strike anything, ever; and she didn’t think anyone in the shop had either, judging by the shocked faces and the comprehensive intake of breath. Then everyone suddenly began to point and chatter, but for a moment none of the words registered. Mouths were moving and customers were pushing forwards for a better view, but she didn’t notice any of it.

  She couldn’t think of anything except Georgiana’s tomb.

  Hartsford Hall belonged to the current Earl of Hartsford, Alexander Aldrich – or, as Elodie knew him, Alex. Georgiana had been one of Alex’s ancestors and she’d died in 1796, at the age of nineteen.

  She had the most delightful tomb – if you could ever call a tomb delightful. It was made of marble and so elegantly carved that the effigy of her took your breath away. Elodie could stare at it for hours. How could anyone ever have been that perfect? It was sometimes hard to believe, for there was surely just dust and bones in there now – that the gorgeous young woman depicted on the top, with her eyelashes brushing her smooth cheeks and her long, wavy hair spilling out over the marble pillow, was no more. Alex hadn’t understood the fascination when they were children, but for Elodie, Georgiana was like the big sister she’d never had.

  Elodie and Alex had known each other forever, or so it seemed. In primary school, they’d been inseparable. But because the other children thought he was special – being a viscount and heir to an earl – they had turned their noses up at Elodie and decided, jealously, to ignore her. In their minds, she was privileged and undeserving of their friendship. All because her father was the Hartsford Estate Manager and her mother had helped look after Alex when his mother had abandoned him and his sister. As a result, Elodie was sometimes desperately lonely. Alex couldn’t take the place of a giggly female friend – he was utterly useless at that kind of thing. So Lady Georgiana had to do until Elodie grew up and made proper, living friends. Elodie used to creep into the church and sit cross-legged in front of the marble effigy, talking to her. She made a great confidante.

  Alex just didn’t get it.

  And then Elodie moved to London, and stayed there, as she had sworn to do; but she was convinced that Georgiana witnessed her wedding to Piers Bingham-Scott beforehand. She had felt her nearby. It wasn’t something she usually talked about – not to the bullying, hurtful children at school, anyway – but Elodie had seen ghosts and shadows all her life, unclear figures who never meant that much to her, but she knew they were there.

  It annoyed her that she’d never seen Georgiana properly. Having said that, at the wedding, Georgiana’s presence had left her uncomfortable and out of kilter – it was not at all like how it had been when she was younger. With hindsight, the ghost had probably been trying to tell her she was making a huge mistake marrying Piers – who turned out, sadly, to be a very wealthy playboy investment banker type, and not at all the husband she deserved. Still, the hefty divorce settlement had been welcome, and left her with a big Range Rover and a substantial nest-egg as she moved back to Hartsford.

  But right now, in the midst of the torrential rain and the rolls of thunder and the forked lightning that had blown the roof clean off the church, Piers Bingham-Scott and the ghosts of her old life in London were the last things on Elodie’s mind.

  All that mattered was Georgiana.

  Elodie had no idea how she made it to the church so quickly when she could barely see anything for the rain bucketing down in front of her eyes.

  Pushing her way out of the gift shop, she ran, ploughing through mud and churned up grass, splashing through ankle deep puddles. Water was fountaining out of the drain covers like so many geysers, but Elodie didn’t look down, didn’t look to see where her feet were going. Her trainers would need to be binned and her clothes would probably never dry out again, but who cared? She just kept her sights on the church.

  Against the shadows, she saw a tall figure running towards the place and knew instinctively who it was.

  ‘Alex!’ The wind tore the words out of her mouth and blew them somewhere towards Norfolk.

  He reached the church moments before she did and stopped short at the door.

  ‘Alex!’

  This time he heard her and spun around, rain dripping off his messy dark hair and into his midnight-blue eyes. ‘The roof, Elodie, it’s been hit. I was in the greenhouse. I saw it happening.’

  ‘I know!’ She drew up next to him, quite breathless. ‘I saw it too, from the gift shop.’ She hurried past him and put one hand on the ancient bronze door handle, but Alex’s hand came down on her wrist and held it in place.

  ‘Let me go first. I don’t know if it’s safe.’

  Elodie relinquished the handle and hovered near him as he pulled the door open.

  They both coughed as a cloud of dust and plaster came out, but thankfully there was no smell of burning.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Alex, clearly expecting the worst. ‘I’m still going in first though. You stay here until I call you.’

  ‘Okay. But come right back out if it’s looking bad!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t hang around if it is.’ He disappeared into the building and Elodie peered anxiously in after him. After what seemed like an age, he called out to her. ‘It’s pretty grotty, but safe enough I think. The Lady Ch
apel got the worst of it. You can come in if you’re careful. But if it’s too much for your asthma, go straight back out.’

  ‘I will. But the poor Lady Chapel!’ Her heart pounding, she hurried into the church. As she stood there in the dark with the modern-day emergency lighting glowing in the rafters, and tiles smashed beneath her feet, and one of the beams hanging at a crazy angle from the ceiling to the floor, and one candle still miraculously lit and flickering wildly in an alcove near the altar, Elodie fought back the worst feeling of dread she’d ever experienced in her life.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  The Lady Chapel, which housed Georgiana’s tomb, was behind the fallen beam and rain was streaming down as if someone had aimed a garden hose through the roof. If anywhere in the place had suffered the worst from the lightning strike, it was, as Alex had said, that area. It had been built on to the church especially for Georgiana’s monument and never seemed to be quite fully part of the old building. The storm had obviously decided that the time had come to sever the connection completely – and it just felt all wrong, somehow. Damn.

  ‘I have to check Georgiana!’ Elodie scrambled over the rubble and crunched her way towards the Lady Chapel.

  ‘You’re not going over there on your own! God knows what it might be like. I’m coming with you.’ Alex tossed some bits of wood out of the way and followed her. With difficulty, they climbed over the beam and choked their way through the plaster cloud, the rain still hammering down and bouncing off the stone floor, but doing little to dampen the dust. Elodie felt the tell-tale tightening in her chest that warned of lungs that weren’t particularly happy in that sort of environment, but she had other things to think about and tried to ignore it.