Feathers in the Snow: Near and Far Christmas, #1

Feathers in the Snow

Also by Leigh Macfarlane

Novels:

Smoke

Honey on My Lips

The Heart of Things

Novels Coming Soon:

The Way of Things

Santa’s Surf School

Rock Bottom Ranch

Non-Fiction:

Tailgate Church

Quite Me

Song Poetry

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is strictly coincidental.

FEATHERS IN THE SNOW

Copyright © 2019 Leigh Macfarlane

All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

First Edition July 2019

ISBN:

Published by LMCreative

British Columbia, Canada

www.leighmacfarlanecreates.com

Table of Contents

Also by Leigh Macfarlane

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Turn the Page for an Excerpt

About the Author

Feathers IN THE SNOW

LEIGH MACFARLANE

LMCREATIVE

Merry Christmas with thanks to all the readers out there!

Chapter One

The wipers on Isla Samms’ Porsche Cayenne were beating over-time. Despite the gloom, she had the headlights on low-beam. It made travelling a bit of a never-ending nightmare, but the truth was, it was just snowing too hard for her to see the road with the brighter lights turned on. Inside the vehicle, the heater was cranked, and the radio was off. Every station was playing the same thing -- Christmas carols.

It was enough to make Isla want to hurl.

For the past hour of this journey, she’d been having second thoughts about the wisdom of the plan. If the dark country road wasn’t so narrow and the snowbanks so steep on either side of the rutted track, she might even have turned back by now. The thing was, there was simply nowhere safe to turn a vehicle around.

Isla knew. She’d looked.

You’re a long way from jolly ol’ England now, girl, Isla thought to herself, then tapped her brakes in quick succession as she felt the tail-end of the SUV start to skid.

Leaning forward over the steering wheel, Isla pressed her nose closer to the windshield and tried that much harder to see through the blizzard she’d apparently blundered into. Not only was this road through the white-capped evergreens narrow and slicker than her mother’s freshly waxed floors back in Kent, it was winding, and slowly heading uphill. Second thoughts or no, Isla didn’t want to ponder the return trip. It was hard to fathom the concept of driving this road -- barely more than a logging access track, really -- on her way back down the hill.

She took her eyes off the track in front of her long enough to peep at her odometer. If the road sign she’d read earlier was correct, she should be approaching the driveway entrance anytime now.

You can’t miss it. In her head, Isla heard the voice of the young woman she’d spoken with on the phone. The sign is huge.

The sign in question was meant to proclaim the entrance to Juniper Hills Equestrian Training and Conference Centre. After all this time driving through the snowstorm, though, Isla was starting to wonder if said sign was truly as immense as advertised. The possibility that she’d driven past, blinded by all the white falling stuff, had started to seem more and more probable the farther up the road she drove.

When the lane took a pronounced turn to the left then immediately serpentined back to the right, Isla slowed her Cayenne all the way to a crawl. And there it was.

The sign was indeed as large as advertised and was suspended across the driveway by a sturdy -- but open, thank heavens -- ranch gate. A solid foot of snow domed the timber log posts at the entrance to the place. Even with the gate invitingly propped open, Isla looked beyond the entrance carefully before proceeding. When she felt the rumbling underneath her tires, she understood the lack of an enclosed entrance.

Cattle gaurd.

Her SUV lumbered over, the vehicle shocks doing a fine job of minimizing the jarring inside as the Porsche started across. As if the outside world wanted to make it plain that it had absorbed every single last trembling jolt of her passing, the snow that rested on top of the welcome sign gave way and landed with a giant splat directly in the middle of Isla’s windshield.

She stopped the car. Had no choice, really, considering she’d been temporarily blinded, and her wipers had taken a few whining seconds to catch up with the new workload. She didn’t blame the car. Withstanding snow dumps were hardly what the designers of Porsche had made their vehicles famous for, after all.

When she tried to start forward again, though, Isla found she had a problem. Underneath her seat, the wheels of the SUV spun. Ahead of her, the driveway looked like it hadn’t been ploughed in a week. A single set of tire tracks lay in front of her, marking the way she needed to go, but even those tracks were filling with snow. And there was next to no traction out here.

With the tires skidding, Isla slipped the transmission into reverse. She lay on the gas, and the car swayed backwards, then she quickly slipped back into drive and repeated her efforts, attempting to rock the car back into a forward motion.

She didn’t think it was going to work. Instead of moving forward, the Porsche seemed to be slipping off the track slightly sideways. Then, much to her relief, one of the wheels found some sort of leverage in the frozen ground, and with a lurch, she was moving forward again.

Visibility was already bad, and the gloom of dusk was rapidly cropping off Isla’s field of vision. As the trees to her right thinned, Isla thought she saw a plume of smoke rising far off in the distance downhill to the left, and since the tracks in front of her seemed to lead that way, anyway, Isla followed. As the excuse for a road dipped downward, Isla’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. She kept her attention firmly on the narrow drive as it wove through the trees.

She was pumping her brakes furiously in an attempt at slowing her momentum when from behind her she heard a sound midway between a crash and a thump. From her place in the driver’s seat, Isla felt the concussion of something big and heavy jolting the air. Looking in the rear-view mirror, she was horrified to realize she’d narrowly missed being crushed by a falling tree.

Said tree had kicked up a blizzard cloud of snow. It had also fallen directly across Isla’s only means of retreat. Apparently, there would be no turning back now.

Right, she said, hoping to calm her thundering heartbeat and racing pulse by speaking aloud, Onward, then.

Somehow, she and the Cayenne made it through the forested track and into a clearing. From there, the valley bottom spread out below her. To her right lay sloped fields, covered in blankets of unblemished white. Summertime pastures, Isla imagined. Considering there was a long A-framed barn with a sloped aluminum roof at the bottom of the fields, Isla was fairly confident in her guess. She felt the pull of the stables like a deep long-lost friend, and for the first time, she was glad she’d let her sister talk her into taking this trip.

Below her and to the left, a stand of naked deciduous trees curved along the side of the road, their branches bent under the weight of their snowy burdens. Peeking out from behind the trees, Isla could just make out the shape of the lodge tucked away in the hollow of the hills.

She had to admit, it was a picturesque spot. From this distance, she could easily imagine turning a photo of the log cabin with its snow-covered roof and spiral of smoke rising from the stone chimney into a pretty postcard. Or a magazine cover, she thought, her mind already planning.

The nearer Isla drove, the more the appeal. She realized she was looking at a large country lodge made of thick pine logs rather than a cabin. There was a huge wraparound verandah at the building’s front entrance, although currently large drifts of snow had partially covered its steps. Twinkling white Christmas lights had been strung around the building’s eaves and around the front door, and a large festive wreath had been hung to greet visitors.

There were two other vehicles parked to the side of the building, although the lot was rapidly becoming obscured by the falling snow. Isla maneuvered her car next to a blue Ford truck that made her SUV look small. With the motor off, she sat a moment, watching the snow splatter then melt on the Porsche’s still-warm windshield.

Outside, the world felt muted and thick as the snow fell. There was no noise other than the sound of her car door slamming. The welcoming aroma of wood smoke drifted her way. For just a moment, Isla tilted her head up to the sky and stuck her tongue out to catch the snowflakes. When the icy drops coated her eyelashes, she smiled. The snow was beautiful now that she’d made it here safely. Pulling her coat tighter around her body, Isla shouldered her overnight bag, grabbed her laptop case, then stomped her way through the silent snowscape and up the slippery flight of stairs.

A wave of heat greeted her when Isla pushed her way into the lodge. There was a coat rack and boot jack immediately beside the door, and Isla took advantage of both. Setting her boots on a rubber matt, Isla left them melting off the snow, and in sock feet she wandered her way over to the huge stone fireplace that made up the centre of the room.

Standing in front of the fire, Isla held out her hands to the warmth and listened to the logs crackling. As the heat spread through her clothing, all the tension of her terrible drive slowly drained away and Isla peered around the space.

There was a large check-in counter directly opposite the front door. Since no one appeared to be manning it, Isla dismissed it. Instead, she admired the combination of drywall and broad beams, rustic leather furnishings with plaid throw blankets and matching pillows scattered about, and the large bearskin rug covering the wood floor.

One wall of the room was entirely comprised of a ceiling to floor bookcase, and Isla promised herself she’d check out the titles there. Later. For now, she really needed to find a human being who could direct her to the room she’d reserved.

Hullo? Anyone?

There was no answer to her call. Other than the sound of logs crackling in the fireplace, the place was as silent inside as it was out. Frowning slightly, Isla walked behind the registration counter, then bent and set her garment bag down on top of her laptop case. When she straightened, she caught the hint of a faint but savoury scent. Her stomach gave a complaining rumble, and Isla rested a hand on her belly, then headed down a corridor in the direction of the smell.

Pushing her way through a swinging door, Isla found herself in an industrial kitchen. A large stainless-steel pot sat on a burner, steam making the lid tremble. That, apparently, was the source of the smell which she had followed and which, up close, was positively wonderful -- and was making Isla’s mouth water.

A quick glance around the room showed that this room was also void of people -- a fact which might have concerned Isla if it weren’t for the crackling fire in the main room’s hearth and the fragrantly steaming pot of… whatever this was on the stove. Clearly, someone was around somewhere. Meals did not create themselves, nor did fires lay themselves.

Walking to the stove, Isla slipped her hand into the oven mitt she found hanging on a peg and lifted the lid from the pot. A cloud of steam billowed out at her, moist against her face. The scent which rose along with the steam could only be described as heavenly, and without even thinking, Isla dipped the stirring spoon that rested on the surface of the stove into the pot. When the spoon came out covered in bite-sized pieces of some sort of meat plus chunks of potato -- all coated in a thick, dark gravy -- she carefully blew on the food, then popped the spoon into her mouth.

She closed her eyes and moaned with ecstasy.

Dog’s bollocks that’s brilliant.

Looking around briefly to ensure no one had magically materialized to witness what she was about to do, Isla plunged the spoon back into the pot. The heat inside the simmering