Once Upon a Christmas Read online

  Once Upon a Christmas

  Once Upon a Time Series Book 4

  Kathryn Kelly

  Copyright © 2017 by Kathryn Kelly

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Love Always Excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Also by Kathryn Kelly

  Chapter 1

  December 1969

  Vaughn Dupre woke disoriented. It was nothing unusual. She woke disoriented every day.

  She’d fallen asleep after an evening spent listening to Nathaniel read to his five-year-old son, Beau. His three-year-old daughter, Abigail, had already fallen asleep snuggled in her mother’s lap. While the parents tucked their two children into bed, Vaughn had gone to her bedroom and crawled beneath the warm blankets.

  Now, as she lay here with her eyes closed, she tried to sort out what was different. The sheet pulled over her head smelled… masculine.

  Her eyes flew open. Her bed had smelled clean and feminine when she’d fallen asleep last night. Had she somehow ended up in Nathaniel and Martha’s bed? She was certain she had not. Yet… the masculine scent was unmistakable. She only knew this because she had spent the last two months as the nanny for Nathaniel and Martha, which sometimes included doing household chores like making beds.

  She slowly lowered the sheet and cautiously opened one eye. She gasped.

  This was not the room she had fallen asleep in. Gone was the little dresser with the flowers she and Abigail had picked yesterday. Gone was the nightstand with the candles.

  Instead, the bed was turned so that she faced the window. The curtains were mere strips of white cloth hanging from the ceiling. Gone were the thick velvet drapes that had been drawn closed when she had fallen asleep.

  Suddenly, a loud buzzing filled the air. She threw a hand over her ears and ducked back below the sheets. It sounded like a giant bee.

  When the noise stopped, she realized it wasn’t an insect in her ear or even in her room.

  Quiet as a mouse, she got up and slid off the bed onto the floor. As her toes touched the cool wood, she glanced down. At least her night gown had not changed.

  She walked to the window and peeked out.

  The buzzing started again.

  She gasped and jumped back, her heart nearly jumping out of her chest.

  The buzzing stopped and was followed by a loud clatter.

  She waited. This time, steeling herself, she went back to the window and peeked out again.

  A man, his back to the window, stood below. He was wearing blue trousers and a white shirt. His dark hair was short. He stacked some boards across two wooden platforms, then picked up one long board and turned toward the house.

  She moved closer to the tall window, so she could see him better.

  As though he sensed her, he looked up and saw her standing there watching him, a scowl on his face.

  She froze. Her hands fisted into the cotton of her nightgown.

  His scowl changed into a grin. He hoisted the board onto his shoulder, then disappeared inside the house.

  Vaughn inhaled quickly and lifted her gaze to the grounds. She was facing the back of the house. The clothesline was gone, as were the clothes she had hung out last night to dry. To her right sat an odd-looking buggy in bright red.

  There were no fields of cotton. Just trees where the cotton fields had been yesterday.

  She moved closer, grasping the curtain in her right hand.

  She jumped back when the grandfather clock began to toll the hour. And faced the room.

  Seven o’clock.

  Everything was the same, yet different.

  It made no sense that she was would be in Nathaniel and Martha’s chambers.

  She listened closely, but didn’t hear the children. Usually by now, they would be up, running down the hallway, getting ready for breakfast.

  Then she heard hammering from somewhere inside the house. She needed to get to her room and get dressed so that she could figure out what was going on.

  She made her way to the door, then dashed down the hallway, the sound of her footsteps disguised by the hammering. She went into her room and closed the door.

  Her heart raced.

  The bed was made, but she didn’t recognize the green blanket tucked neatly across the top. She’d left her dress draped across the back of a chair next to the bed. Not only was her dress missing, but the chair was gone as well.

  She went to the bureau and threw open the doors. Other than a blanket folded neatly and sitting on the top shelf, the bureau was empty.

  A wave of panic shot through her, and she ran her hands along her nightgown.

  She had nothing to wear.

  She turned, and her gaze fell on her reflection in the mirror. She saw a panic-stricken girl dressed in a white shift, her brunette hair cascading around her shoulders. She hurried to the dresser and searched through the drawers, but there was no brush.

  She sat on the stool and put her face in her hands.

  Then she took a deep breath. After everything she’d been through, she could surely figure this out. She sat up and squared her shoulders. The noise downstairs had grown quiet.

  Perhaps that man could help her.

  Chapter 2

  Jonathan tapped the board into place where he had ripped out water-damaged wood and measured for the next. He hammered in another nail for good measure. The old house had been neglected for too long after his father passed away five years ago.

  It had taken awhile for Jonathan to make his way back, but now that he had, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. It was a little unsettling to be the last of the Becquerel line. He would have to think about what to do with the house when he was gone.

  But in the meantime, he had to get her back into shape.

  He’d learned to think of the house as a ‘she’ from his father. His father said the house was a grand lady and should always be treated as such. Built in the early 1800s by Nathaniel and Martha Becquerel, it had been handed down from generation to generation for over two hundred years.

  As far as Jonathan knew, the five years since his father had died was the only time it had been uninhabited. Unfortunately, Henry had been in ill health and hadn’t been able to care for her for a number of years even before his death.

  Going back outside to cut another board, Jonathan glanced toward his bedroom window.

  She was gone.

  Seeing her in his bedroom window was a little unexpected, but not a total shock. After spending a year in Vietnam, he was no longer surprised by anything he saw.

 
Most nights, he woke in a cold sweat, sometimes with his mind blank and sometimes with images of horrors too severe to speak of, but always with his heart racing so fast, it was a wonder it didn’t take flight.

  As a pilot, he had been shielded from many of the horrors experienced by the infantry. But he had seen his share of carnage. Carnage he had caused, as he flew overhead, releasing the bombs and bullets that downed dozens of men at a time. Sometimes, it hadn’t seemed fair. Most days, he was thankful to protect his fellow soldiers, and to keep his country safe by making sure the war stayed on the other side of the world.

  That, added to the fact that his grandmother had raised him with tales of ghosts in the Becquerel house, led him to avoid questioning things that could not be explained.

  He’d never seen a ghost until he saw her, but he’d heard things. Mostly drums coming from the direction of the slave quarters on a clear still night with the windows open to catch the breeze from the river. Then there was the attic. There were no chains or anything like they showed in the movies, but sometimes, in the dark of night, he would hear boxes, or maybe furniture, sliding across the floor above his room.

  As a child, he’d slept with a nightlight on, but his mother had convinced him it was just his ancestors looking through their belongings; nothing to be afraid of.

  Jonathan had developed a healthy respect for his ancestors. After smoothing off the edges of the board, he lifted it over his shoulder and took it with him back into the house.

  Stepping inside the back door, he bobbled the board.

  She stood there in the doorway staring at him.

  Her green eyes locked onto his.

  He’d never expected to see one this close up.

  “Good morning,” she said, her mouth curved into a tentative smile.

  He slowly let the board slide down through his gloves until it rested on the floor.

  Ghosts were not supposed to speak.

  Never. Not once had a ghost spoken in any of the tales passed down by his grandmother, his grandfather, his father, or even his mother, who was sometimes taken to flights of fancy with her tales of ancestors in the attic.

  And never had a ghost been described as being so lovely that she took a man’s breath away. Her dark brunette hair swirled around her face and fell loosely past her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, with a French accent. “But I don’t have anything to wear.”

  She swept her hands down her white gown, fisting in the white material. He swallowed thickly as he realized the gown left little to the imagination.

  “How are you here?” he asked, forcing his eyes back to her face.

  “I awoke in the bedroom,” she said.

  Not a ghost.

  He set the board against the wall and, taking off his gloves, took a step toward her.

  She took a step back, alarm on her face.

  “Are you a ghost?” He asked.

  Her eyes widened. She glanced down, running her hands along her arms.

  Chapter 3

  Vaughn blinked at the man who thought she was a ghost. The thought had not occurred to her. Perhaps she had died during the Indian attack along with Mary and the others in her traveling party.

  It was as good an explanation as any. The old Indian had claimed he would save her life by sending her to another time. You must travel through time. I must send you to a different time. Vaughn wasn’t even sure what that meant. A different time?

  But one minute, she’d been in a storm with her traveling companions, dead all around her, and the next she’d been in an isolated field with the sun shining down on her head.

  Then Nathaniel had been there and taken her to his home with his wife and two children. Perhaps that had been Heaven.

  But if that was Heaven, then what was this? It was the same house, but Nathaniel and his family weren’t here. Instead she was here with a strange man who thought she was a ghost.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He tilted his head and took another step forward. She held her ground.

  “You look real,” he muttered. “How did you get in the house?”

  “As I said, I awoke in the bed,” she said, unable to keep the frustration from her tone.

  “But you had to come in somehow.”

  She took a deep breath. He was merely trying to figure this out, as was she. “Yes,” she said with a surge of optimism that perhaps he could help her after all. “Nathaniel brought me here.”

  “Nathaniel?”

  “Yes. He lives here, no? And his children, Beau and Abigail?”

  The man crossed his arms. “No one lives here other than me.”

  “But… they were here when I went to bed.”

  “May I touch you?” He asked.

  She felt her eyes widen. What he suggested was improper and scandalous. She took another step back.

  “To see if you’re real,” he explained.

  He was back to the idea of her being a ghost then.

  “Perhaps you’re a ghost,” she said.

  He stared at her as though she’d suddenly grown horns. Then he laughed.

  And she saw how handsome he was behind the week-old beard that covered his face. He had straight white teeth, and she could tell now that he wasn’t nearly as old as she had thought.

  “Perhaps I am,” he said. “And in some ways, I certainly feel like it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unsure how to respond to this man.

  “Maybe if I take your hand, we can both see if the other is real.”

  Empiricism. It fit with Vaughn’s practical way of thinking. Empirical and adventurous. That was how she got here, in America, in the first place.

  She’d made the decision to go to Fort Rosalie to marry an American. An American she had never met. She knew nothing more than his name: Henry Dickenson. There was nothing there for her in France. She had no dowry and nothing to offer a man looking for a suitable wife. But here it was different. Here, men didn’t expect a wife to come with a pedigree. At least that’s what the nuns had told her. Unfortunately, she had yet to find out.

  “Very well,” she said. “You may touch my hand.” She held out a hand to him and waited.

  Now that he had permission, he hesitated. Perhaps he was afraid of ghosts. Having spent the last ten years of her life being raised by nuns, Vaughn was fairly certain that if ghosts did indeed exist, they were not to be feared. She’d never heard of a ghost who harmed anyone.

  With that thought in mind, she took a step forward with her hand still held out.

  The man stepped back. What was this? “You’re afraid of ghosts,” she said, a smile playing about her lips.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never touched one.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because I’m not a ghost.” She studied his face a moment. A handsome face behind the whiskers. “Perhaps you’re afraid of girls.” She dropped her hand back to her side.

  His chuckle had no humor. But as she stepped forward again, he held his ground.

  She stopped within arm’s reach and extended her hand. His eyes locked onto hers, he reached out, and their fingers touched.

  This man was flesh and blood.

  He leaned forward and grasped her hand, palm to palm, his fingers entwining with hers, pulling her a step closer. She gasped.

  No man had ever held her hand. Her father had, but she’d been a child. Then she’d lived in the orphanage and touch was something that rarely happened. Besides, there were no men.

  He smiled. “I think you’re real.”

  “I think you’re real, too,” she said.

  “My name is Jonathan.”

  “My name is Vaughn.”

  “Well, Vaughn, if you’re not a ghost, you must have gotten here somehow.”

  He butchered her name terribly with his southern accent, but hearing him say her name, however terrible his accent, sent a little tingle through her.

  “As I said, Nathaniel b
rought me here,” she said.

  “So someone dropped you off. Can you call him and have him pick you up?”

  “Call him? I’m fairly certain he isn’t here.” Perhaps Nathaniel was in the field. But even so, Martha should have been in the house.

  “But he could come get you.”

  She stared at him in confusion. Why would she call out for someone who obviously isn’t here?

  “Do you have somewhere you can go?” He asked.

  A surge of panic shot through her. Since her traveling party had been killed, this house was the only place she had known. She had no idea where she was. She had been on her way to Fort Rosalie, but without a guide, she wouldn’t know where that was. It then occurred to her that this man could take her there.

  “I need to get to Fort Rosalie,” she said. “Can you take me there?”

  Chapter 4

  Jonathan released the girl’s hand. He was certain now that she was not a ghost, but a real live girl. Here in his home.

  What was he supposed to do with her?

  Someone had dropped her off. Someone name Nathaniel. And it seemed she didn’t know how to contact him.

  She wanted him to take her to Fort Rosalie.

  Fort Rosalie was a National Park in Natchez, Mississippi, not far from here. Nonetheless, what would she do there? “Why do you want to go to Fort Rosalie?” He asked.

  Her chin came up. “I’m to be married.”

  It all began to make sense now. Fort Rosalie was known as a popular wedding venue. She must have been going to marry this Nathaniel she spoke of.