A Knights Bridge Christmas

New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers celebrates the joy and romance of Christmas in New England

Clare Morgan is ready for a fresh start when she moves to the small Massachusetts town of Knights Bridge with her young son, Owen. Widowed for six years, Clare settles into her job as the town’s new librarian. She appreciates the warm welcome she and Owen receive and truly enjoys getting the library ready for its role in the annual holiday open house.

Clare expects to take it slow with her new life. Then she meets Logan Farrell, a Boston ER doctor in town to help his elderly grandmother settle into assisted living. Slow isn’t a word Logan seems to understand. Accustomed to his fast-paced city life, he doesn’t plan to stay in Knights Bridge for long. But Daisy Farrell has other ideas and enlists her grandson to decorate her house on the village green one last time. Logan looks to Clare for help. She can go through Daisy’s book collection and help him decorate while she’s at it.

As Clare and Logan get his grandmother’s house ready for the holidays, what neither of them expects to find is an attraction to each other. Better than most, they know all the crazy things that can happen in life, but everything about Knights Bridge and this magical season invites them to open themselves to new possibilities…and new love.

A Knights Bridge Christmas

Carla Neggers

For Leo and Oona

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

A Recipe for Applesauce Spice Cake with Maple Frosting or Cream Cheese Frosting

Five

Six

A Recipe for Oat Waffles

Seven

Eight

Nine

A Recipe for Molasses Cookies

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

A Recipe for Hot Chocolate

Fourteen

Fifteen

A Recipe for Baked Sweet Potatoes and Apples

A Recipe for Chive-and-Parsley Butter

Epilogue

Author Note

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“I cannot change! I cannot! It’s not that I’m impenitent, it’s just... Wouldn’t it be better if I just went home to bed?”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

December 1945

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD DAISY BLANCHARD paused on South Main Street and sighed at the once-stately house across from the Knights Bridge common, just past the town library. Built in 1892, the house had a curving front porch, tall windows and Victorian details that must have looked grand in their day. Now, a week before Christmas, the house looked shabby and forlorn against the gray winter sky. It wasn’t decorated. There wasn’t so much as a wreath on the front door.

It was, by far, the worst-looking house in the village.

My house, Daisy thought with dismay.

Even through the war, she and her mother had managed to decorate for Christmas. They would scour the house for bits of ribbon and yarn and they would cut evergreen boughs and gather pinecones in the yard. They’d learned to be resourceful. Everyone in their small town west of Boston had done the same—using, reusing, mending, sharing what they had. Other homes, businesses, churches, the library and town offices were decorated for the season. The First Congregational Church had a crèche, and a family of carrot-nosed, top-hatted snowmen greeted shoppers at the country store.

The only reason her house wasn’t decorated, Daisy knew, was because her father believed decorating was a waste of time and effort.

He was another Ebenezer Scrooge.

She felt bad for such thinking. Give him time, her mother had told her. Daisy was trying but it wasn’t easy when she so desperately wanted to have fun this Christmas. For more than three years, her father had been away at war, serving in the navy in the Atlantic. She’d missed him so much. When he’d come home in September, she’d been so excited. But he’d changed during the war, and so had she. She’d grown up. She wasn’t a child anymore. She couldn’t explain the changes in him, except that fighting the war and being away had taken a toll. He didn’t talk about his experience, but she knew he must have seen terrible things.

With the end of the war, the people of Knights Bridge were in the mood to throw off their worries and sadness and celebrate, if with a deep sense of appreciation for the sacrifices especially of those who had given their lives. When her father frustrated her—which was often these days—Daisy tried to remember how grateful she was he’d come home safe and sound. That wasn’t the case for so many.

She heard someone behind her and turned, surprised to see Tom Farrell running down the library steps. He would never consider the steps might be icy. He had a stack of books in one arm. He was a senior, and he would be the first in his family to graduate from high school. He wanted to be a firefighter. He was already a volunteer firefighter. Given the books in his arms, Daisy knew he would have at least one report due for school, and he would be late. It was always the same. Somehow, though, he would turn in his work in the nick of time.

He grinned as he caught up with her. “Hi, Daisy.” He spoke in that easygoing, confident way that was uniquely Tom Farrell. “I saw you in the library but I was too far away to say hello. I didn’t want to shout and risk getting thrown out.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I’m doing a report on Charles Dickens for English class. I decided to read A Christmas Carol because it’s short.” He spoke cheerfully, moving his arm slightly so Daisy could see that, indeed, he had a copy of the Charles Dickens story with him. “That’s the one about Scrooge, isn’t it?”

“It is. Ebenezer Scrooge. He’s visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve.”

Tom shrugged, obviously not concerned about his report. “At least it won’t be boring. Are you heading home?”

Daisy nodded. “I have verbs to conjugate for Latin class.”

“Latin.” He shuddered. “Miss Webster’s too tough for me.”

“I have English with her, too.”

“Lucky you. I’m on my way to the firehouse. Why don’t I walk with you?”

Tom Farrell was walking with her? Daisy warned herself not to read anything into it, but she felt her heart jump. She knew her cheeks had to be flushed, but she could blame the cold weather. She wore a secondhand tweed wool coat from a cousin over a dress she’d sewn herself, with kneesocks and lace-up shoes. She’d knitted her hat herself but hadn’t worn mittens. Tom had on old clothes, hand-me-downs, no doubt, from his older brother. Angus Farrell had been killed in Holland last year. That was all Daisy knew. It was something no one talked about. She remembered him, always laughing, always with a good word for everyone. He’d been a medic in the army, and it was hard to believe he wouldn’t be coming home to Knights Bridge.

Her father was out front when she and Tom arrived at the house. For a moment, Daisy thought her father might have relented about decorating, but then she saw he was sweeping the porch steps, grumbling about the postman’s muddy feet. Unexpected guests were worse, even, than postmen with muddy boots. She was afraid he was about to lash out at both her and Tom, but Tom quickly stepped forward with a disarming smile. “Good to see you, Mr. Blanchard.”

“Tom.”

“I think we’re due for a big snowstorm, don’t you?”

“Could be. We’ll know when it happens.”

For a moment, Daisy thought her father might smile, but he didn’t, just resumed his sweeping. Embarrassed, she turned to Tom. “Good luck with your book report.”

“Good luck with your Latin verbs.”

“Maybe I’ll check out A Christmas Carol when you’re finished with it. It’s an inspiring story. A cheap, grouchy man learns not to give in to despair and bitterness.”

Tom eyed her, then her father, who didn’t look up from his sweeping. More heat poured into her cheeks, this time because she’d been caught. She could see in Tom’s expression he knew why she’d made her comment.

“I’ll see you around, Daisy,” he said amiably.

She watched him as he ambled across South Main to the common and made his way to the fire station. When she turned around again, her father had gone inside, shutting the front door behind him. He hadn’t said a word or made a sound.

How much time were they supposed to give him? He simply wasn’t the same man who’d left Knights Bridge in 1942. He and her mother had moved to town just before Daisy was born, scraping enough money together to buy the old house on the common. Married as teenagers, they’d been forced to leave their home in the Swift River Valley town of Greenwich, wiped off the map to make way for Quabbin Reservoir.

When her father left for the war after Pearl Harbor, the dams blocking the Swift River and Beaver Brook were doing their work, allowing the valley—stripped bare of everything from houses and businesses to trees and graves—to fill with drinking water for Boston to the east. When he returned in September, the seven-year process of filling the reservoir was almost complete. The town his family had called home for generations was gone, underwater. Hills he’d once sledded down were now islands.

Sometimes Daisy wondered if her father must feel as if he was back home in the valley, drowning under all that water.

She mounted the steps to the porch, neatly swept and barren of Christmas decorations. What would he do if she made a wreath and hung it on the front door? What would her mother do? But Daisy knew she wouldn’t find out. She would respect her mother’s wishes and give her father time.

As she opened the bare front door, she looked back at the common, Tom now out of sight. She was a more dedicated student than he was, but it wasn’t just that. Homework gave her an excuse to stay in her room, away from her Scrooge of a father.

* * *

Two days later, Tom arrived at the Blanchard house with ice skates, the laces tied together, slung over one shoulder and a small metal box in his hands. Daisy had answered the doorbell, but her father was right behind her. She was caught off guard and didn’t know what to say. “Did you finish your report?” she finally asked.

Tom grinned. “With minutes to spare. How did you do with your Latin verbs?”

“They’re not due until tomorrow.”

“But you’re done, right? Good for you. I’m meeting friends on Echo Lake to go skating.” His expression changed as he made eye contact with her father. Confident Tom Farrell suddenly looked uncertain and awkward. “Sir... Mr. Blanchard...” Tom cleared his throat. “I’d like to ask you a favor.”

Daisy felt her father stiffen as he eased in next to her in the doorway. “A favor?” He grunted, clearly skeptical. “What kind of favor?”

Tom hesitated, then opened the box. Inside was a white candle, or what was left of it. Its wick was blackened, and melted wax had congealed on the sides, reducing it to a misshapen mass. Daisy saw that her father was frowning at it, too.

Either Tom didn’t notice their expressions or was simply undeterred. He held the box toward her father. “I wonder if you would place this candle in your front window and light it on Christmas Eve.”

“Why?” her father asked.

“For my brother.”

Daisy gasped but her father remained still and silent.

“My mother made the candle when Angus joined the army. She promised to burn it every Christmas until he came home. Well...” Tom took in an audible breath. “He’s not coming home, even to bury. Mom can’t bear to burn the candle herself, but she said it would be all right if someone in the village did.”

“Tom,” Daisy’s father said, his voice strangled. “Son...”

“I’ll understand if it’s too much to ask—”

“It’s not too much.” He put out a calloused hand and took the box. “We’d be honored, wouldn’t we, Daisy?”

She nodded and managed to mumble a yes.

Tom smiled, tears shining in his hazel eyes. “Thank you.”

With tears in her own eyes, Daisy watched the rugged, easygoing teenager cross South Main to the common, picking up his pace as he waved and called cheerfully to his friends.

It was at that moment she fell in love with Tom Farrell.

One

“He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember on Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

CLARE MORGAN HADN’T felt this happy in a long time. A very long time, she thought as she gathered up books to take to Rivendell, the local assisted-living facility. She prided herself on her self-sufficiency and independence—her professionalism as a librarian—and she was happy in countless ways, but this was different. This was happiness born of contentment. The uncertainties of the past few months were lifting and confidence settling in that she’d made the right decision to leave Boston and come to out-of-the-way Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.

New to the town and its small, charming library, Clare was getting a feel for the reading preferences of the seniors at Rivendell. Audrey Frost liked cozy mysteries, particularly ones set in England. Grace Webster would read anything but was partial to literary fiction and classic adventure novels. Arthur Potter had asked Clare to bring him all the Harry Potter books, since he and Harry shared the same last name and he’d always wanted to be a wizard. Daisy Farrell, Rivendell’s newest resident, had requested A Christmas Carol, the classic Dickens story apparently a favorite with her and her late husband.

Almost everyone at the facility was widowed, but Clare gathered that many had enjoyed long marriages.

Except one feisty woman in her late eighties whose name Clare had forgotten. “I’ve never lived alone until four years, three months and eighteen days ago,” she’d said when Clare had delivered her a stack of biographies. “It’s heaven on earth.”

Clare was a widow herself, but she wasn’t sure how many people in her new town were aware that she’d been married. She had enjoyed the entire one year, two months and three days of her marriage to Stephen Morgan. Every single second had been bliss—including the inevitable arguments. That he’d been gone for six years seemed inconceivable. But every day she saw him in Owen, their six-year-old son, born seven weeks after his father’s untimely death in a car accident.

She put the books in a box, careful not to overfill it and make it impossible to carry. The seniors also had several book clubs that met both at Rivendell and at the library. Vera Galeski, a part-time worker at the library, had taken Clare through the various book clubs. Her predecessor as library director, Phoebe O’Dunn, born and raised in Knights Bridge, had run a tight ship. She’d left Clare with a balanced budget and a well-trained group of volunteers, among them several mobile residents of the assisted-living facility.

She checked her watch. Three o’clock. Owen, a first-grader, would be walking from school soon to play with Aidan and Tyler Sloan at their house. So far, Owen was adjusting well to his new school. It had only been six weeks since his and Clare’s arrival in Knights Bridge, and she expected bumps in the road—but small ones, especially compared to the huge one of losing Stephen. Owen, of course, didn’t remember his father. He was a photo in an album, part of funny stories Clare told about life before he was born.

Stephen had been the love of her life. It wasn’t something she told her young son, but she didn’t hide it, either.

She got on with her work. She went out the heavy front door and took the ramp instead of the stairs. In anticipation of the run out to Rivendell, she’d parked on South Main in front of the library, a sturdy mostly brick building donated to the town in 1872 by George Sanderson, whose stern portrait hung above the fireplace in the main sitting room. As far as Clare knew, there were no Sandersons left in Knights Bridge.

She hit the button on her key fob to unlock the car doors. She popped the trunk, setting the box inside next to ice skates she’d found at a secondhand sports store in Amherst, a nearby college town. Owen desperately wanted to learn to ice skate. He insisted six was old enough. Every winter for the past fifty-plus years, the town had created an outdoor rink on the common. It was an “at your own risk” operation, with no supervision, no walls to grab hold of—not even a proper place to warm up. Hypothermia and frostbite were real concerns in a New England winter.

Clare put the brakes on her litany of concerns. Questions, she told herself. Not worries. She wasn’t a panicky, overprotective mother and didn’t want to become one. She was asking appropriate questions and taking appropriate precautions without turning either Owen or herself into chronic fretters.

But she’d been on South Main last week when two teenage boys had collided, requiring Band-Aids and a lot of cursing if not a trip to the ER and stitches.

Still...

Clare got in her car. Bringing books to the seniors at Rivendell was one of the easy, low-tech, low-stress parts of her job, and she loved it.

She glanced back at the library. It was decked out with twin wreaths on the front door, swags of greenery around the windows and a trio of grapevine reindeer next to the steps. Tasteful and festive. Decorating for the holidays was a long-standing tradition in Knights Bridge. According to the trustees of the Knights Bridge Free Public Library, most of the decorations, accumulated over decades, had succumbed to a roof leak last winter, but many had been in need of discarding or replacing. Few were missed. The library had its secrets, but not many treasures. By the time Clare started work, volunteers had already dived in to create new decorations, particularly with natural materials. Except for one anemic-looking grapevine reindeer, the results were impressive, and she and Owen had plans to rehabilitate the reindeer.

She turned off South Main at the end of the oblong-shaped common onto the main road out to the highway. Freshly fallen snow added to the festive atmosphere. What could be more perfect than Christmas in her small New England town?

This would be her and Owen’s best Christmas ever, Clare thought, smiling as she drove on the winding road.

* * *

Knights Bridge’s only assisted-living facility was located in a beautiful spot with views of snow-covered meadows that gave way to woods. In the distance, Clare could see a sliver of water, not yet frozen over, that she knew to be part of Quabbin, a vast reservoir built in the 1930s by the damming of the Swift River. Many of the elderly residents of Rivendell knew people who’d lived in the valley, or had lived there themselves, before its four small towns had been taken over by the state and disincorporated, their entire populations forced to relocate.

The “accidental wilderness,” Quabbin was called now, with its protected waters and watershed. On a previous visit to Rivendell, Grace Webster, a retired teacher and avid bird-watcher, had told Clare about the return of bald eagles to the valley.

She grabbed the box of books and headed inside, setting the box on a chest-high wall unit in the corridor. She waved to the receptionist, who was expecting the delivery, but the young woman was dealing with a man in expensive-looking dark brown cords and a canvas shirt, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, as he visibly tried to control his impatience. “Her name is Daisy Farrell,” he said. “She’s your newest resident. She’s in good health for a woman in her eighties, but I want to review her care with your medical staff.”

“Of course,” the flustered receptionist said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize today’s moving day for Mrs. Farrell. I only just got in.”

He calmed down. “Thank you.”

One of those imperious, successful men who likes to get his way, Clare thought as she worked a sore muscle in her arm from carrying the heavy box. She would bet the man wasn’t from Knights Bridge. Why was he interested in Daisy Farrell? Clare pushed her questions aside. It didn’t matter. Whatever his reasons for being here, she doubted he’d ever show up again.

The man left the receptionist to fulfill his request and seemed to notice Clare for the first time. He glanced at the books in the box. “That’s quite a range of titles.”

“It’s quite a range of people who live here.” She didn’t manage to keep the starch out of her voice.

If he noticed, he didn’t pay any attention. “No doubt. Are you from the library?”

“Clare Morgan. I’m the new library director.”

“Nice to meet you, Clare. I’m Logan Farrell. Daisy Farrell—the woman I was biting off the poor receptionist’s head over—is my grandmother.” He breathed deeply. “It’s harder than I thought to move her in here.”

Clare noticed a nick on his hand and bits of cardboard on his shirt. She also noticed the muscles in his forearms. He had short-cropped dark hair, hazel eyes and a strong jaw—strong features in general, perhaps part of the reason she’d misread him. She knew better than to judge people, given her work and her natural disposition. Logan Farrell might be impatient and even arrogant, but he was here with his aging grandmother.

“She could use a cheerful book to read,” he added.

Clare smiled. “I’m sure that can be arranged. She requested A Christmas Carol.”

“I don’t know how cheerful the ghost of Jacob Marley is. Scared the hell out of me as a kid. Have you met my grandmother?”

“Not yet.”

“She has a house on Knights Bridge common and used to walk to the library, but she hasn’t been out much since she took a fall in November.” Logan glanced at the nick on his hand, as if noticing it for the first time. “I can introduce you if you’d like.”

Even if the offer was to assuage his guilt at getting caught being impatient with the receptionist, Clare accepted. “I’d love to meet Mrs. Farrell,” she said.

Daisy Farrell’s grandson was clearly out of his element in a small-town assisted-living facility, talking to the local librarian. As Clare followed him down the hall, she wondered what kind of work he did and where he lived. Boston? Hartford? Somewhere farther afield—had he flown in to visit his widowed grandmother?

The door was open to a small apartment, where an elderly white-haired woman was standing on a chair, hammer in hand. She had on baggy yoga pants, a pink hoodie and silver sneakers.

Logan sucked in an audible breath. “Gran,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Hanging my sampler.”

Clare noticed a cross-stitched sampler on a chest of drawers. Neatly stitched flowers and farm animals created a frame for the simple inscription:

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Daisy Farrell in a nutshell, Clare suspected.

“I can hang the sampler for you, Gran.” Logan put a hand out. “Come on.”

She grinned at him. “Getting up here was easy. I figured I’d need help getting down.”

“Had a plan, did you?”

“Enough of one. Let me finish and—”

“We have company,” he said. “We can finish in a few minutes.”

She sighed. “All right, all right.”

He took her hammer and helped her down from the chair. “Gran, this is Clare Morgan, the new librarian in town. Clare, my grandmother, Daisy Farrell.”