The clever Camellia Swift can’t stand living at home with her new stepfamily, who mock her incessantly. To find some peace, Lia flees to a cousin’s home in a snowy, picturesque valley near Wales, hoping for a Christmas miracle. Amid the sleigh rides and snowy nights, this reluctant wallflower meets a man who makes her believe love might be real. But Phineas Ryder isn’t exactly a gentleman. He’s got a shadowed past and a mysterious secret, and no lady should even dream of marrying him. Naturally, Lia is completely intrigued. And also naturally, she consults with her dear friends from Wildwood Hall for advice.
But even as Lia and Finn are drawn together, the legendary ghosts of Wyemont Castle interrupt the holiday festivities. They have their own plans for the guests…ones that could lead to tragedy. Camellia and Finn have just one moment to unlock the secret...the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, when the past and present will become one. Filled with old ghosts and new love, this is a charming and haunting story for the holidays!
This novella is part of the Wallflowers of Wildwood series, but can be read on its own.
The Wallflowers of Wildwood series follows five young women as they leave their beloved boarding school and venture out into the cutthroat world of the marriage mart. Get ready, London. These wallflowers are wilder than you think!
Elizabeth Cole is an author of historical romance. She can be found hanging around museums, coffeeshops, and graveyards…but not after dark.
She studied English literature and medieval European history in school, but found that not many jobs required knowledge of the quadrivium or the Crusades (shocking, right?). She went back to school for a Masters in Library Science, but later decided she liked writing books even more than cataloguing them.
As a writer, Elizabeth finds inspiration in lots of places, whether it’s art or movies, or TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Jeremy Brett-era Sherlock Holmes. She grew up reading lots of fairy tales and fantasy, as well as the detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, PD James, Mickey Spillane, and Ellis Peters. And of course, she reads romance! Johanna Lindsay, Mary Jo Putney, Mary Balogh, and Sarah MacLean all get snapped up whenever a new title comes out.
When not writing, she watches extremely bad movies—the kind with more explosions than acting. (Sometimes those bad movies feature the silhouettes of a human and two ’bots in the corner…) Just a bit of a nerd, she also loves board games and tabletop RPGs. She can not divulge how many dice might be in her house at this moment. However, she does know where her towel is.