A Rivenloch Christmas: A Wee Holiday Tale

By Glynnis Campbell

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A holiday reunion at Rivenloch turns into a desperate search for three missing seven-year-old cousins, lasses who are as impetuous and daring as their warrior mothers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glynnis Campbell
• Release date: Jan 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781634800440

Glynnis Campbell

To keep in touch—and to receive a free book!—sign up for Glynnis's newsletter at glynnis.net.Glynnis Campbell is a USA Today bestselling author of over two dozen swashbuckling action-adventure historical romances, mostly set in Scotland, and a charter member of The Jewels of Historical Romance—12 internationally beloved authors. She’s the wife of a rock star, and the mother of two young adults, but she’s also been a ballerina, a typographer, a film composer, a piano player, a singer in an all-girl rock band, and a voice in those violent video games you won’t let your kids play. Doing her best writing on cruise ships, in Scottish castles, on her husband’s tour bus, and at home in her sunny southern California garden, she loves to play medieval matchmaker, transporting readers to a place where the bold heroes have endearing flaws, the women are stronger than they look, the land is lush and untamed, and chivalry is alive and well!

Book preview

A RIVENLOCH CHRISTMAS

The Scottish Borders, 1144

scene

DEIRDRE

Deirdre blamed the mistletoe. If her incorrigible husband hadn’t scattered the wicked plant all over Rivenloch in the spirit of his Norman Noël, none of what happened would have happened.

It wasn’t as if they’d never had Christmas at the castle before. Deirdre’s Viking father had built a chapel in the courtyard for her Christian mother so she could celebrate her holy days. When Deirdre’s mother passed away, the clan continued to mark Christmas in her memory—with a few sprigs of holly, a sizable feast, and a word or two of thanksgiving. But that was all.

This year, however, Deirdre’s husband Pagan had decided that wasn’t enough. When Deirdre’s two sisters, Helena and Miriel, announced they were bringing their families to Rivenloch to spend the holiday season together for the first time in three years, Pagan had insisted on decking the castle halls in full Christmas splendor.

Deirdre couldn’t tell him nay. She’d never been able to resist her husband. Especially when he gazed at her with such childlike enthusiasm. So she indulged him, even though she knew her practical sisters would never appreciate his efforts.

True to form, warlike Helena muttered that the festive boughs of holly were hiding all the glorious shields of defeated enemies hung on the walls.

Thrifty Miriel confided that the beeswax candles lighting every inch of the great hall seemed a great waste of coin.

The sisters’ father, Laird Gellir, grumbled into his white beard, irked by anything at odds with his Viking Jul.

Her sisters’ husbands, however, were quite impressed. Like Pagan, they had Norman blood in their veins. The décor likely reminded Colin and Rand of home.

But it was their collective children’s wide-eyed wonder at the colorful mummers Pagan had hired to reenact the birth of Jesus that convinced Deirdre she’d been right to let him bring Christmas to Rivenloch.

An enormous log, large enough to burn for twelve days, was hauled in from the forest and placed on the fire.

The entire clan crowded into the hall for a giant feast—the first of twelve, featuring roast boar with all the trimmings.

Wassail flowed freely.

Carolers and a consort filled the hall with song.

That was when the cursed mistletoe began to wreak havoc in the household.

Pagan had hung it in every corner.

Above every doorway.

And from every beam of Rivenloch’s great hall.

The irksome sprigs were everywhere.

And when Deirdre innocently asked what the mistletoe was for, Pagan had been only too glad to show her.

Of course, when they arrived, Colin and Rand had to demonstrate its use to their wives as well.

Thus began the trouble…

Currently, Deirdre watched the mummers from the foot of the corner stairs of the great hall. She had to smile at the way her four children were gazing at the spectacle in slack-jawed amazement.

She absently rubbed a hand across her belly. Nothing showed yet. But soon there would be a fifth to add to their brood. She planned to tell Pagan tonight, after the performance.

Of course, the announcement of one’s fifth child wasn’t terribly surprising or newsworthy. Still, she knew Pagan would be pleased. He was a doting father who took great pride in their growing army of warrior lads and lasses.

Her gaze again slipped sideways to observe her children—Hallie, Gellir, Brand, and Julian. There was her devoted husband now, crouched between the two lasses. He was pointing out the bright star painted on a screen behind the players.

Sometime after the mummers’ Mary and Joseph had secured lodging at a stable, and before the three kings arrived with gifts, Pagan left the children. He sidled up to Deirdre, wrapping an arm around her waist.

She sighed in pleasure and snuggled closer. Even after all this time, she never tired of his affection.

Then he cleared his throat.

She glanced at him.

He was giving her that look. The smoky, sparkling, gray-green gaze that always made her heart beat faster.

The knave. He knew very well what that look did to her. And when his eyes lifted to indicate the branch of mistletoe dangling from the archway, it didn’t matter that they’d been wed for seven years. Her heart fluttered like a windblown pennon.

Thankfully, he