The Christmas Collection Read online

  The Christmas Collection

  Victoria Connelly

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Cover design by J D Smith.

  The Christmas Collection is a compilation of the following titles:

  Christmas at the Cove 2014

  Christmas at the Castle 2015

  Christmas at the Cottage 2016

  Published by Cuthland Press

  in association with Notting Hill Press.

  Copyright © 2016 Victoria Connelly

  All rights reserved.

  Christmas at the Cove

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  EPILOGUE – ONE WEEK EARLIER

  Christmas at the Castle

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  Christmas at the Cottage

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  ONE YEAR LATER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY VICTORIA CONNELLY

  Christmas at the Cove

  To Caroline Fardell with love.

  CHAPTER 1

  Millie Venning hadn’t been looking forward to Christmas until she’d got a phone call from her Great Aunt Louise.

  ‘Now, didn’t you say you wanted to stay at the cottage sometime?’ her aunt asked without any sort of preamble. ‘Well, it’s standing empty over Christmas.’

  Millie had smiled as childhood memories of holidays at the cottage overlooking the little cove on the exposed north Devon coast flooded back to her – the big black rocks she’d scrambled over with her brothers, the acres of cool, damp sand and the wonderful wildness of it all. It was just what she needed to blow away the end of year office blues.

  It would also be a blessing to get away from her flat in Bath. Although in a beautiful Georgian terrace overlooking a pretty garden filled with roses in the summer and holly berries in the winter, the flat itself had been converted with sound-proofing very low on the builder’s list of priorities, and two of her neighbours had entered into the Christmas spirit already with parties lasting into the early hours.

  So, the day before Christmas Eve, she packed her largest suitcase full of all her warmest jumpers, chucked a few essentials from her kitchen cupboards into a couple of carrier bags and prepared herself for the drive south, hoping that her old Citroen would make the journey. It had been making some decidedly odd noises and it was due for a service but she hadn’t had the funds to take care of it – not on her salary and certainly not after the washing machine explosion which had flooded her kitchen and emptied her bank account as she’d sorted out the whole sorry mess.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to think of all that now nor was she going to think of her ex-boyfriend, James, whom she should have been spending the holidays with. They were meant to be jetting off to Morocco to spend Christmas in the sun – just the two of them. But …

  Millie blinked away the tears that threatened to spill. She was not going to waste any more tears on him and yet, no matter how often she told herself that she was over him, her emotions would betray her. It wasn’t surprising really. After all, they’d been together for six years. She’d met him on the night of her thirtieth birthday party in a restaurant where her best friend, Trisha, had arranged a surprise party for her.

  ‘This is the hottest spot in town for meeting people,’ Trisha had told her and, sure enough, sometime between the main course and dessert, her eyes had met James’s across the room.

  She’d thought they’d be together forever but forever was a lot shorter these days, she couldn’t help thinking. Forever was an outdated concept when it came to the men Millie had had the misfortune of meeting but she wouldn’t want to be with someone like James forever, would she? Not when she’d discovered he’d been seeing a whole string of women behind her back. One would have been bad enough but four – or was it five – really was the limit.

  If only she wasn’t such a dreamer, she thought. But weren’t most women? Didn’t most women plan ahead once they thought they’d found the right man? Millie certainly had. She’d thought it was only a matter of time before she and James would get married and have children in that old-fashioned but rather wonderful order. She’d so longed for that and was beginning to get worried that it was too late for her. After all, she was thirty-six. Her daughter should have been learning to read by now and her son should have taken his first unsteady steps.

  She shook her head, dispelling her fictionalised family from her mind.

  ‘Perhaps fate has something else in store for you,’ her Great Aunt Louise had said to her when Millie told her about her split with James.

  ‘I’d like to know what,’ Millie had said.

  Good old Aunt Louise. Since her parents had moved to Canada over ten years ago, seventy-two year old Louise had taken it upon herself to become a surrogate mother to Millie, checking up on her with lengthy phone calls and popping round to her flat with fresh flowers and home-made pies and pastries. She lived in a little cottage on the outskirts of Bath, drove a car that was even older and more dilapidated than Millie’s and was becoming more eccentric by the day but Millie adored her. Only her aunt hadn’t been in the best of health lately. Millie had been worried, wondering if a care home was on the cards in the near future.

  Aunt Louise had been so supportive since Millie’s breakup with James too.

  ‘Well, I can’t say that I ever liked him much, anyway!’ she’d said.

  Millie had tried not to laugh, knowing that her aunt had fallen for his charms as much as she had.

  ‘Someone much better is waiting just around the corner for you,’ she’d told her great niece and she’d sounded so sure too. But how could she be?

  Leaving the motorway at Taunton, Millie began the arduous drive through the twisting country roads towards the north Devon coast. The weather had deteriorated since she’d left Bath and crossing Exmoor in the dark during a December gale wasn’t for the fainthearted.

  It wasn’t until the first snowflakes began to fall that Millie started to panic.

  My car is not going to break down, she kept telling herself. I am not going to get stuck in a snow drift. That tree is not going to fall down and crush me and I am not going to meet the beast of Bodmin which might just happen to have strayed across the border from Cornwall in order to gobble me up.

  Suddenly, a pony crossed the road ahead of her, its thick winter coat a bright chestnut in the headlights from the car. Millie watched as it disappeared through the stunted, windswept trees at the side of the road. Even in the height of summer, this was an eerie landscape, she reflected.

  Just get to the cottage, she told herself. You’re almost there.

  She’d stayed at the cottage on many family holidays but she’d ne
ver driven there herself and she was unfamiliar with the roads which crossed the moor. It was also impossible to glimpse that first magical sighting of the sea at this time of day. Still, even with the snow falling, she couldn’t resist winding her window down a few inches and inhaling the fresh, salt-laden air which told her that it wasn’t far now.

  Cove Cottage wasn’t the sort of place one found without either a map or a set of foolproof directions. Off the main road and down a little lane which ran through a dark wood, only the most observant would notice the gap in the trees and the pothole-ridden track which declined steeply towards the sea. Lined with thick gorse which blazed the richest yellow whatever time of year it was, the track twisted and turned as it descended, with steep cliffs rising to the right and acres of thick bracken to the left. It was a wild, windswept place which blew away the cobwebs and entered the soul of all who visited.

  Slowing down as she reached the wood, Millie looked out for the gap in the trees, turning slowly into it. The track was wet and muddy and she could see more snowflakes in the headlights. At least she was nearly there, she thought. As long as the car kept going until she reached the cottage. It was at least half a mile from the road, she remembered, and she wouldn’t like to have to trudge down the track with her suitcase in the dark.

  Turning the last corner, she caught her first glimpse of Cove Cottage which was strange because she shouldn’t have been able to see it at all.

  ‘The lights are on,’ she said aloud, turning the car to park it on the grass beside an old outbuilding used to store wood for the stove in the living room. Perhaps Aunt Louise had asked the cleaner to leave the lights on for her.

  She switched the car engine off and, for a moment, sat in the dark. If the lights hadn’t been on in the cottage, it would have been pitch black. Luckily, she’d remembered to bring a torch with her and she fumbled for it now in the depths of her handbag.

  As soon as she opened the car door, she heard the roar of the wind and relished the freshness of the air that whipped around her. The snow had just stopped and Millie craned her neck back and smiled as she took in the immensity of the night sky above her sewn with a thousand stars. That was one of the things she missed when living in the city. As beautiful as Bath was, the light pollution didn’t allow one to admire the glorious star-spangled heavens. But the intense cold soon got the better of her and, grabbing her suitcase, she followed the thin beam of the torch towards the front door.

  Fishing in her pocket for the key which she’d collected from her aunt, Millie slotted it into the lock, only it didn’t turn. She tried again. And again. She was quite sure she’d got the right key because it was on the funny little key ring with the picture of an Exmoor pony on it and her aunt wouldn’t have given her the wrong key, would she?

  Then something occurred to Millie. There must be a key in the lock on the inside. Was the cleaner still there waiting to greet her? Millie supposed it was possible and so knocked on the door loudly so as to be heard over the wind and the roar of the sea.

  But it wasn’t Mrs Jemison who opened the door a moment later. It was a tall, dark-haired man.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, stooping in the doorframe.

  Millie stood staring at him in wide-eyed horror, her long fair hair blowing around her face. ‘Who on earth are you?’ she cried.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘I think you’d better come in,’ he said. ‘We can’t have you freezing to death on the doorstep.’

  Millie’s eyes were still wide with surprise but what else could she do but follow him into the cottage? A fire was blazing in the wood burner in the living room and Millie parked her suitcase and took off her coat and gloves.

  ‘Can I make you a cup of tea whilst we try and work out what’s going on?’ the man said.

  Millie nodded and watched as he moved into the open-plan kitchen. What was going on? She looked around the room and noticed that this strange man – whoever he was – had certainly made himself at home. There was a tumbler of whisky on a little table and a novel had been left open on the chair by the wood burner. Millie took a step towards it and saw that it was some kind of thriller. But what was this man doing here with his whisky and his thriller? Didn’t he have a home of his own? Perhaps he was some kind of tramp but he’d looked too well-dressed for that with his checked shirt and Shetland wool jumper. Or perhaps he was just an opportunist who sought out empty properties at Christmas time to avoid paying the exorbitant fees which holiday homes usually cost at this time of year.

  She sighed. This was the very last thing she’d expected to face after her arduous journey.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said as he left the kitchen. ‘I’ve brought in the milk and sugar so you can make it how you like.’

  She watched as he laid her aunt’s flower-festooned tray on the coffee table and something inside her almost snapped at the cheek of the man to think that he could touch such things.

  ‘Listen!’ she began.

  ‘I’m Niall,’ he interrupted, as if he knew she was about to blow. ‘Niall Eastwood.’

  ‘I’m Millie Venning,’ she said in return and they shook hands awkwardly.

  ‘Louise Chambers said that I could use this cottage over Christmas,’ he explained.

  ‘Aunt Louise? You know my aunt?’ Millie said, deflated.

  ‘I’m her GP,’ he said.

  Millie cocked her head to one side in confusion.

  ‘Look, there’s obviously been some sort of misunderstanding. Your aunt told me the cottage was free.’

  ‘But that’s what she told me,’ Millie said, ‘otherwise I should never have driven down here.’ She shook her head. ‘She’s getting horribly forgetful in her old age.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you aunt’s memory,’ Niall said.

  ‘Well, there must be otherwise this would never have happened.’

  Niall sat down in the chair where his thriller was resting on the arm, leaving Millie standing in the middle of the room like a lost thing.

  ‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ she said, sitting down on one of the sofas.

  ‘Have some tea,’ Niall said, making Millie frown. He sounded like a bossy parent.

  Millie poured herself a cup and took a sip. He was being extremely optimistic if he thought a cup of tea was going to sort out this problem.

  ‘How long were you planning on staying?’ she asked him.

  ‘Until New Year,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of time off work and thought some sea air would do me good. Your aunt’s been talking about the cottage for ages and I was delighted to take her up on her kind offer.’

  Millie shifted uneasily on the sofa. ‘I was planning on staying until the twenty-seventh. I’m due back at work on the twenty-eighth.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In Bath. Near Sydney Gardens,’ she said.

  ‘Really? I’m just up the road in Bathwick.’

  Millie nodded. She really wasn’t in the mood for an exchange of pleasantries. She wanted to kick her boots off and call it a night.

  ‘Do you always go away at Christmas?’ she asked nevertheless.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘This is the first year.’ He cleared his throat and turned to look at the fire and Millie instinctively felt that particular avenue of conversation had come to an end.

  ‘Right,’ she said, catching his eye for a brief moment and wishing that he’d picked somebody else’s aunt to charm into lending him their cottage for Christmas.

  ‘And what do you do in Bath?’ he asked. ‘Is your work there?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m a secretary at Charnwood and Hudson’s – the solicitors in Queen Square.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said, nodding. An awkward silence fell between them and then Niall suddenly stood up. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this is your family’s place. I’ll pack my stuff and get going. It’s only fair.’

  Millie sighed, suddenly feeling awful at having such uncharitable thoughts. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘It’s blowin
g a gale out there and you’ll never find any accommodation this close to Christmas. There are two bedrooms here. We’ll just have to make the best of the situation until the morning.’

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right,’ he continued. ‘Look, we should get going, okay?’

  ‘We?’ Millie said.

  It was then that a young dark-haired boy appeared in the living room door.

  ‘Dad?’ he said, rubbing sleepy eyes. ‘What’s happening?’

  Millie looked at the boy and the boy looked at Millie.

  ‘Robbie – this is Millie,’ Niall explained. ‘Her aunt owns the cottage.’

  ‘Is she staying with us?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘No. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘But we’ve only just got here,’ Robbie complained.

  ‘I know but this isn’t our cottage,’ Niall said.

  Robbie who was, Millie guessed, about nine years old, looked confused.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody’s going anywhere,’ Millie said, rising to her feet. ‘Why don’t we all just go to bed and talk things through in the morning? None of us could possibly think of going anywhere tonight.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. It’s after nine, it’s dark and it’s snowing. It would be foolish for any of us to leave.’

  Niall nodded. ‘Well, let me move Robbie into my room.’

  Millie shook her head. ‘The sofa up against that wall pulls out into a bed,’ she said. ‘That’ll be fine for me. I’m used to sleeping on that.’

  ‘I won’t hear of it,’ Niall said. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you take the sofa, Robbie so Millie can have the second bedroom?’

  Robbie gave a big grin, obviously thinking that the idea of sleeping on a sofa was the most exciting thing he’d ever heard of and Millie felt herself grinning back at him.

  ‘I’ll change the bedding over so you don’t have to sleep on Robbie’s nibbled biscuit crumbs.’