by Marie Laval
Sitting down on the sofa, she patted the seat next to her and gestured to Cassie. ‘Come here, my darling, we need a good catch up. Rachel said she had everything under control in the kitchen. Your granddad is setting up the boys’ new train track upstairs, and Tim is seeing to the animals. Farming doesn’t stop because it’s Christmas Day.’
‘I’ll ask him if he needs a hand,’ Stefan said, probably eager to escape any further enquiries from her mother.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Keith said, and the two men walked out into the yard. Cassie couldn’t help but pull a face. Keith always took his step-dad’s duties very seriously. No doubt he now intended to quiz Stefan about his plans for the future…
Her mother wrapped her arm around her shoulder. ‘So, my darling, tell me everything that’s been happening around here, and, more importantly, tell me all about Stefan. I don’t see any trace of the miserable Grinch in him at all, especially when he looks at you.’
It was a bright and clear winter’s day. A bright and wonderful Christmas Day, filled with love and surprises, with family and fun, singing and laughter, and magnificent food. Cassie had feared that it might be too much for Stefan – for the man who had come to Belthorn to forget all about Christmas, the man who didn’t even want a Christmas tree. The man who had opened her silly presents that morning with a stunned expression on his face, followed by a naughty grin. He had put on the silly hat, and brandished his feather duster and given chase to her throughout the bedroom, before catching her, throwing her on the bed and making love to her. Again, and again. He hadn’t given her a Christmas present, but then she hadn’t expected one. The only present she wanted was him – to paraphrase a well-known Christmas song – for however long he was planning to stay.
‘Since it is Stefan’s first English Christmas Day,’ Rachel announced as she came out of the kitchen with an enormous glass bowl filled with layers of sponge biscuits, jelly and custard, topped with whipped cream, ‘I made a very special pudding. I figured it was time he tried some trifle.’
All eyes were on Stefan as he sampled the dessert and declared it delicious. Cassie’s granddad regaled them with several dessert related jokes, and produced a bottle of sherry he said he was saving for a special occasion, and pudding was followed by a game of Monopoly that had everybody arguing and laughing. All the time, Stefan looked at her across the table, his tawny eyes in turns warm or serious, making her cheeks grow hot and her heart beat harder. After the game, they said their goodbyes, promised to call again the following day to help finish the leftovers, and Stefan drove back to Belthorn.
‘Do you fancy a walk?’ Stefan asked when he stopped in front of the manor house. She said she did and he took her hand and led her to Wolf Tarn as daylight faded into the blue grey dusk and the fells slowly disappeared in shadows.
How strange that her fears had vanished, that she was able to walk on the lakeshore without the pangs of anxiety and the terror she used to experience every time Belthorn was mentioned. She had no idea what she had really seen ten years before, no idea if it had been a memory, a hallucination, or a trick of the moonlight, but thanks to Stefan she wasn’t afraid any longer.
She turned to face him, looked up. ‘Thank you…’
‘I want to thank you…’ he said at the same time.
He smiled, traced the outline of her lips with his finger then cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. ‘We’re doing this again… Go on, you first.’
She cocked her head to one side, enjoying the warmth of his hand against her cold skin. ‘Thank you for coming with me to Patterdale Farm today. It meant a lot to me. I know you’re not keen on Christmas, so I am very grateful that you agreed to spend the day with my family. All together, they can be quite overwhelming.’ She held his hand. ‘And thank you for talking to Gabrielle about my ideas, and giving me the chance and the confidence to prove myself as a designer.’
He stroked her cheek slowly, bent down and kissed her lips.
‘You have already proved yourself as a designer… and more importantly as someone who touches and changes people’s lives… You have a gift, Cassie. You have your smile, and your kindness, and your courage.’ He punctuated almost every word with a kiss. ‘God knows I was a miserable, self-centred, grouchy man when I arrived here, wallowing in self-pity and despair.’
‘You had good reason to be!’ she protested. ‘You’d been through war, the death of your friend and of the people you cared for. You were injured and in pain, lonely and…’
He interrupted her with another kiss. ‘And you changed all that. With your kindness, your cushions, your smiles and that lemon scent your granddad says you spray around to improve people’s mood… You gave me the greatest gift I could ever have wished for. The greatest gift a man can ever want. Your love.’
His voice became rough, and in the dim light of dusk, his eyes were a soft and mellow gold. Her heart was close to bursting with love, and she wasn’t even trying to stop the tears from falling.
He cleared his throat, and pulled something out of his pocket. A small pink box she recognised as being a gift box from The Studio.
‘I should have given you this earlier,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for the right moment. The right place. The right words. And this is it.’ He gestured to Wolf Tarn, to the stars that had started to twinkle in the darkening skies, and the shiny moon peeping over the line of the mountains.
He gave her the box. Her fingers were clumsy as she opened it and pulled the beautiful necklace out. It was a tiny, beautiful, delicately carved swan, hanging from a fine gold chain. A work of art.
‘You changed me, Cassie. You are that beautiful white swan from the story, the one that saves the ugly hunchback by giving him her love. You rescued me from myself, showed me that I could have a present, and a future. I love you more than I ever, ever thought I could love anyone, and I hope you’ll want me by your side forever.’
He pointed to the necklace nestling in the palm of her hand. ‘It’s not much, I know,’ he said quickly. ‘But I promise I’ll do better next Christmas, and the Christmas after that… and every Christmas for the rest of our lives.’
And as he enfolded her in his arms, and touched his lips to hers, her heart felt as big as the moon rising above the snowy peaks, as big as the sky filling with stars.
* The End *
We would love to hear how you enjoyed Bluebell's Christmas Magic. Please leave a review on Kindle. Reviews on Amazon really do help the author. Thank you!
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Thank You
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading Bluebell’s Christmas Magic. I loved writing Cassie and Stefan’s story, and I hope you enjoyed spending some time with them and their friends in the little Cumbrian village of Red Moss. The story was inspired by a family holiday in Coniston, which is one of my all times favourite places, and I hope my writing did this wonderful place justice.
If you did enjoy the story, then I would be very grateful if you could take a few minutes to leave a review. It is a wonderful feeling for an author when readers let you know that they loved your story and your characters. Reviews are invaluable, not only to raise a book’s profile, but also to encourage the author to keep writing, especially when self-doubt creeps in.
Please feel free to contact me using the information at the bottom of my ‘About the Author’ page.
Marie
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About the Author
Originally from Lyon in France, Marie now lives in Lancashire with her family. She works full-time as a modern languages teacher, and in her spare time loves writing romance and dreaming about romantic heroes. She writes both historical and contemporary romance, and her historical romance The Lion’s Embrace won the Gold Medal at the Global Ebook Awards 2015 (category Historical Romance). She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and the Society of Authors. Her native France, as well as her p
assion for history and research, very much influences her writing, and all her novels have what she likes to call ‘a French twist’!
For more on Marie visit:
www.twitter.com/MarieLaval1
www.facebook.com/marielavalauthor/
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/laval0232/
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A Paris Fairy Tale
Is Paris the city of happily ever afters?
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Introducing Choc Lit
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READ A PREVIEW OF A PARIS FAIRY TALE BY MARIE LAVAL HERE ...
Acknowledgements
; I would like to thank my son Nicolas and daughter Clémence for providing me with a steady supply of very silly Christmas jokes, and all the friends who responded to my call for Christmas cracker jokes: Alison Creig, Jackie Ladbury, Helena Fairfax, Karen Aminadra, Sue McDonagh, Melody Winter, Kirsty Ferry, Tanja Celia and Marcia Woolf. I may not have used all your jokes but I am very grateful for your suggestions and the inspiration you gave me. Several of the jokes in the story are actually some I made up all by myself … but if I am very proud of them, I can reassure my children that I will not embarrass them any further by taking up stand up comedy!
I would also like to thank my Authors on the Edge friends, and especially Helena Fairfax for her encouragements.
Finally, I would like to thank the Choc Lit Panel for believing in Bluebell’s Christmas Magic: Dimi E, Emily S, Bee M, Gillian C, Haley E, Jo O, Janice B, Carol D, Gill L, Joy S, Ruth N, Alma H, Joy B, Sharon W, Selina D and Naomi Mc. Thanks also to Choc Lit for publishing the story and my brilliant editor for her great advice and suggestions, and to the Choc Lit graphic designers for giving me yet another beautiful and very festive cover.
Merci beaucoup!
Copyright © 2019 Marie Laval
Published 2019 by Choc Lit Limited
Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB, UK
www.choc-lit.com
The right of Marie Laval to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Barnards Inn, 86 Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1EN.
