Once
Upon a Highland Christmas Once
Upon a Highland Season # 3
By:
Lecia Cornwall
Releasing
December 9th,
2014
Avon
Impulse
Blurb
Lady
Alanna McNabb is bound by duty to her family, who insist she must
marry a gentleman of wealth and title. When she meets the man of her
dreams, she knows it’s much too late, but her heart is no longer
hers.
Laird
Iain MacGillivray is on his way to propose to another woman when he
discovers Alanna half-frozen in the snow and barely alive. She isn’t
his to love, yet she’s everything he’s ever wanted.
As
Christmas comes closer, the snow thickens, and the magic grows
stronger. Alanna and Iain must choose between desire and duty, love
and obligation.
But
it’s Christmas in the Highlands, and there are bound to be a few
surprises.
Fiona closed
her hand tight, and the scent of lavender rose to rival the peat
smoke from the fire. There was nothing threatening about a wee bit of
lavender. Still, she hesitated. “You go first,” she said.
Elizabeth
tossed her bundle into the fire. “Show me my true love, and send
him to me by Christmastide,” she said fervently. The flames pounced
on her offering, flared with a hungry whoosh, and devoured the
tidbit.
The girls
leaned in, looking for a sign in the flames. “D’you see
anything?” Fiona whispered.
Elizabeth
screwed up her face and squinted. “Nothing that could be mistaken
for anyone’s true love. Throw yours.”
Fiona wrapped
her hair around the bundle. She took a breath and flung it into the
heart of the fire. “Show me my true love, and bring him to me—”
She hesitated. “Does it have to be by Christmas? Why can’t it be
by spring, or even next summer, perhaps?”
Elizabeth
sighed in exasperation as the fire finished its second treat. “It’s
burned up now, so you’ll have to wait for spring.”
There was a
sudden roar from the wind outside, and the windows rattled. The gust
slipped under the door and swept down the flue, making the room
suddenly cold. The chimney gasped and sucked hard on the fire, making
the flame hiss and leap, drawing it upward, and breaking off sharp
red sparks that clung to the soot for a moment and twinkled before
being carried away on the icy breath of the wind. The fire sighed and
sank back, subdued, and the flames fluttered nervously.
The girls
looked at each other, their eyes wide. “What was that?” Elizabeth
said. “What did it mean?”
Outside, the
wind howled again, high and wild. Fiona pulled her shawl around her
shoulders and rose to light the candles, driving the shadows back
into the corners, where they hid behind the settee and the chairs.
Elizabeth went to the window. “My, but the weather changes suddenly
here in the Highlands. It wasn’t snowing a minute ago, was it?”
Fiona looked.
The snow had
started suddenly, and frenzied white flakes were rushing across the
brown landscape, driving toward the castle to dash themselves against
the windows and stones with icy fury, clattering like the claws of an
angry creature that desperately wanted in. Fiona’s gut clenched.
There hadn’t been a single cloud in the sky an hour ago. She
glanced at the fire again, but it burned sedately in the hearth,
oblivious to the sudden storm raging outside. She swallowed. The
herbs, and the spell … surely it was impossible.
Elizabeth
stared out the window, hypnotized by the thickening flakes. “The
snow—it’s Christmas magic! Look, the garden is almost covered
already!”
Fiona went to
sit beside her cousin. The first snowfall was always beautiful, and
magical—as if folk had forgotten what snow looked like over the
seasons. Surely that’s all it was.
She stared,
mesmerized as the snowflakes danced intricate patterns in the air.
Show me my
true love, and send him to me by Christmastide.
Outside the
ancient walls of Craigleith, the sparks joined the snowflakes in a
frenzied waltz around the castle’s pointed tower in the thickening
twilight, once, twice, and again.
Then they
flew away across the moor, chasing the wind.
Author
Info
Lecia
Cornwall lives and writes in Calgary, Canada, amid the beautiful
foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with four cats, two teenagers, a
crazy chocolate Lab, and one very patient husband. She is hard at
work on her next book.
Lecia
would like to also giveaway an Ebook Copy of ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND
AUTUMN to a Commenter. (US and Int) Don’t forget to leave an e-mail to reach you at if you are commenting to enter the contest.
Ready to Wed by Cindi Madsen 
.jpg){kind=link}
