Once Upon a Winter's Spell

By Kathryn Kaleigh

Was it a glitch in time or was it fate?

 

As a quiet, studious young lady loved by her students, being a college professor suited Brielle Riley perfectly. She prefers to live her adventures through the pages of a book. With a strict mother and a distant father, she bonded mostly with her grandparents and her younger brother. Goi

• Language: English
• Publisher: KST Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088219546

Kathryn Kaleigh

Kathryn Kaleigh is a bestselling romance novel and short story writer. Her writing spans from the past to the present from historical time travel fantasy novels to sweet contemporary romances. From her imaginative meet-cutes to her happily-ever-afters, her writing keeps readers coming back for more.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Brielle Riley

Vicksburg

September

It was a nor’easter.

Except that it was in the south, so it was simply called a bad storm.

It felt like a nor’easter.

Stay home. Hunker down. Everyone advised it. Weather forecasters. Local law enforcement. Politicians.

Pushing against the wind, I closed the door behind me, dripping water forming a puddle of water on the polished hardwood floor. I was soaked. The wind turned my umbrella inside out two feet after I left my car and started running to the door, splashing through puddles of water.

Even my socks were wet and I had on rain boots.

The wind howled outside the house, slamming tree branches into the glass.

The glass was sturdy, even though some of it was hundreds of years old. The best way to tell the old glass from the new was to look for the wavy lines that distorted the view. No doubt the best available in the early 1800s.

At least half the windows in the old house had original glass. The others had been replaced by modern windows for one reason or another. A boy’s baseball crashing through an upstairs bedroom window. A fallen icicle from the ice storm in 2018. Wear and tear of age.

My grandparents and their grandparents before them had put up a valiant fight to keep the house in its original state. A constant battle by all accounts.

Unfortunately, my parents had no interest in the old house. Moldy, my mother pointed out. Not energy efficient, my father insisted.

But I loved it.

Meeeooow. Meow. Meow.

Hi Jules, I said to the solid white cat that bounded down the stairs. Normally she came right up to me, but she stopped two feet away and sat down, looking at me in that curious way that only cats had.

I know, I said, sweeping a hand down my raincoat, splattering even more water droplets.

Jules twitched her ears.

Where’s Grandma?

Meow.

I slipped out of the soaked raincoat and, with nowhere to put it, decided to take it back to the kitchen with me.

There was no hope for the mess. I would come back and clean it up.

As I walked down the hallway, past the tall, stately grandfather clock, Jules bounced along beside me. She never just walked. She hopped.

The steady ticking of the grandfather clock reminded me of my childhood when my brother and I had played here, running around the house that had enough open doorways that we could run in a circle, through four of the rooms including the ballroom.

The house, built sometime in the 1850s, was in what my father, an architect, called a colonial style house. Two stairways, one at the center at the entryway. What was now a kitchen had originally been a large dining room. It was now a kitchen and dining room combined.

What had originally been the kitchen was now a garage.

I draped my raincoat over one of the dining chairs to dry, took off my boots, and found a towel to clean up the trail of water I had left from the front door.

I jumped at a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder.

Grandma, I called out.

Where is she? I asked Jules again.

Still no answer.

The lights flickered, but stayed on.

Walking in my bare feet, I started up the stairs toward my grandmother’s room. I paused on the landing to look outside. Wind whipped the trees this way and that, but they flexed and held their ground.

I continued up the stairs and down the hallway until I reached my grandmother’s bedroom. The door was open, but I stopped anyway.

Jules, unaccustomed to niceties, ran ahead and leaped onto Grandma’s bed.

Grandma sat in the middle of her bed, like a teenager, with photographs spread all around her.

Grandma? I asked, feeling a bit alarmed. What are you doing?

She always met me downstairs at the door, but instead, I’d had to use my key.

She scooped up the photographs and dropped them back into their shoebox.

I was just looking for a picture, she said, with a little smile.

What kind of picture? I asked, walking to the bed.

She managed to unfold herself to sit on the edge of the bed. Maybe I should take up yoga.

She pulled me to her and gave me a hug.

You got caught in the rain, she said.

I laughed a little with a glance toward the window.

It’s one of the bad ones, she said, following my gaze to the window, but not seeing the storm, not this one anyway.

What kind of picture? I asked again, in case she hadn’t heard me.

Oh, just one of your grandfather. I was just thinking and… She looked away.

Her eyes were full of tears.

Are you okay? I asked. You’re crying.

No, she said. It’s just the storm. Storms make me weepy. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

I couldn’t remember Grandma being weepy during storms, but I couldn’t remember being around her during a storm either.

Is that why you called me? You said it was important, I asked, nudging her a bit with my shoulder, hoping to distract her from whatever was making her sad.

Oh, she said, seeming to focus on me now. I wanted to give you something.

What? I asked, feeling that sense of alarm in my stomach again.

Grandpa had been gone for five years now, but Grandma had never been the same.

She reached into her nightstand and opened the top drawer.

Are you feeling okay? I asked. Other than being weepy from the storm?

Oh, I’m okay, she said. You have too much psychology running around in your head.

Probably, I said. As a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, I definitely thought a lot about the subject. Looking for red flags in other humans was a professional hazard.

Grandma pulled out a little square box. An old box. And wiggled the lid off of it.

What is that? I asked.

It’s a gift your grandfather gave me on our first anniversary.

She gently pulled out a cameo and placed it on her palm. It wasn’t one of the typical white cameos that old ladies wore. This one had a silver background.

She held it up for me to see. I looked from the carved image on the cameo to my grandmother.

It looks like you, I said.

It is me. He had it specially made.

She took my chin in her hand and studied my face.

And now it looks like you, she said.

I shook my head. I don’t think—

Releasing my chin, she took my hand and placed the cameo on my palm.

I want you to have it.

There was that alarm again. But… I had never seen her wear the cameo.

What do you do with it? I looked into her watery green eyes that admittedly did look a lot like mine.

You can wear it, she said.

I’ve never seen you wear it.

She nodded slowly. No. I don’t suppose you have.

Why not? I asked, looking back at the cameo. The image of a girl was holding a little bird in her hand. What does the bird represent? I asked, not waiting for an answer to my first question.

I don’t know, she said. Maybe he just liked it.

Hmm.

Jules crawled into Grandma’s lap and purred, nudging her hand with his head until she petted him.

You must have been very young when this was made, I said.

I was seventeen.

Grandma, I said, doing some quick simple math. You got married at… sixteen?

Yes, I did, she said with a wide grin. It’s the perfect age to get married.

Not sure how to respond to that, I looked back down at the cameo. My mother wouldn’t even let me date until I was sixteen. If I’d wanted to get married at sixteen… or seventeen… or eighteen… she would have surely freaked out and locked me in my room until I turned thirty.

Did you ever wear it? I asked, circling back around to the cameo.

She hesitated before she answered. Yes. She had a funny expression on her face. Like she was thinking back.

But not lately?

No. Not lately. She put the box, empty now, back into her nightstand.

Grandma, why are you giving this to me?

She put a hand over mine. It’s time, Dear. It’s time.

CHAPTER 2

Brielle — Before

Drake Riley, my younger brother, sucked at hide and seek. It looked like this was going to be one of those times when I took pity on him and gave myself up.

I had the perfect hiding place. It helped that I was small for my age and I could fit just about anywhere. But Drake, three years younger than me at six, was still smaller than I was.

I never let him forget it either.

Momma said it would come back to haunt me some day. I didn’t know what that meant, but since I was too young to worry about some day that was so far off I could not even grasp the concept, I continued to taunt my brother any chance I got.

I peeked out from behind the curtains. I had climbed up on the window ledge about two feet off the floor and crouched behind the soft velvet green curtains.

He’d already walked right past me twice, but he had no clue where I was and when I did give myself up, I wasn’t going to show him my hiding place.

If he went outside and looked up, he would see me crouching in the window. But he wouldn’t go outside. He wasn’t allowed. Besides, it was too cold.

I was starting to get a little bored crouching here waiting for Drake to find me so we could go downstairs for some of Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies already in the oven.

B’elle, Drake called. Where are you?

I stayed very still while he padded down the hallway. Again.

Something outside caught my attention and I turned to look outside.

It was cold and snow covered the ground. I shivered.

Then I saw a boy, about my age, walking toward the house. When he stopped and looked up at me, I could