A Magical Christmas

With over twenty million copies of her books in print,
Heather Graham
is one of the world’s most widely read and best-loved novelists. In
A Magical Christmas
, she tells her most heartwarming story yet, an unforgettable re-creation of a love that neither time nor war could destroy … and a family renewed by a special kind of miracle. Nobody ever said love was easy—but oh, what a special kind of wonderful it is.

A TOPAZ BOOK

To Cynthia Bethe,
for her real estate prowess

To Father Dennison (St. Augustine’s)
& Father Moras (St. Theresa’s), for
understanding Christmas
all year

&

To Jason, Shayne, Derek,
Bryee-Annon & Chynna Pozzessere,
for being the magic
of my Christmases,
always!

Christmastide
Northern Virginia
1862

D
arcy Gannon leaned against the library door of the Oak River farmhouse, a small plantation now held by the Federals and housing a number of Confederate prisoners. Cavalrymen, soldiers known as “Mosby’s Men.”

They were men who had infuriated a very young Union brigadier general, a certain George Armstrong Custer, with their ability to raid supply wagons, sabotage Union lines, steal Union horses, medicines, ammunition, and more.

Custer had sent out a stern warning: Those caught would be hanged. The sheer outrage of it had rung clearly throughout the mountains, throughout the Shenandoah Valley, to Front Royal, and all the way to Richmond. But there wasn’t much to be done about such an affront—this was war.

Sergeant Darcy Gannon, his ear pressed to the glass in his hand, which was hard pressed to
the wood of the door, listened to the verbal dispatches being relayed in the foyer beyond the library.

Darcy winced, eased the glass from the door, and turned to his companions. “Captain,” he said, looking to their leader, a slim, handsome man in worn butternut and gray, “that damned Custer, he does intend to do it. Five of our number. Five of us are to hang. Only five ’cause of the holiday, but those five will be hanged—right on Christmas Eve.”

The captain acknowledged that information with a nod. Not a shudder, not the slightest paling of color betrayed his emotion at the news. “Well, now, five of our number. We knew this was war, gentlemen, and we knew we risked all when we rode with Mosby. Not that I’m anxious to die, but there’s no finer man in the Confederacy to die for than our Mosby, and no finer state to fight for than Virginia.”

“Here, here!” came a murmur from the men, but the sound of it was somewhat weak. And as he looked around the room, the captain saw as well that the faces surveying him were ashen. Sickly. Around their campfires, they had sung sad but hopeful ballads, wishful lyrics about soldiers going home for Christmas. Now, once they accepted the dire truth of their situation, they’d be singing with grim humor about soldiers being hanged for the holiday instead.

“Five of us, eh, Sergeant Gannon?” the captain inquired. He looked over what was left of his company. Twenty-four men. He himself made twenty-five. One-fifth of their number. Hanging only five of them probably was what Custer would consider a generous concession to Christ’s birth, considering how bitter Custer was because of Mosby’s abilities to ride circles around him and rob him blind. Custer was an ambitious man, and Mosby’s boys sure made him look bad to his superiors. “Five,” the captain murmured again. “Naturally …” he began, then found himself at a loss for words, a major obstruction seeming to have lodged in his throat. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home. To her. Even if they had parted in anger. Especially because they had parted in anger. She had warned him, pleaded with him, begged him to leave the service. He had served far longer than he had ever intended, but she simply hadn’t understood that a man, a captain, didn’t just walk away in the middle of a war.

She had been weary of the war, raising their crops alone, raising their children alone—even if only their daughter remained now. His son’s determination to lead his own life was another blade of steel that seemed wedged within his heart now—they’d had such terrible differences between them! How awful now to wonder if he’d ever have the
chance to say,
I love you, and I respect the way that you have stood up for what you have believed in
.

Yet,
she
lived with all the fear, daily, on her own, worrying alone, ever mindful for the time when Union troops just might come marching through…

Well, the Union troops had come marching through. But thank God in heaven above for small mercies; his family wasn’t here. They had gone down to spend the holiday with her sister at Front Royal.

Thank God, thank God…

If he could only see her.

Oh, God, no, that would be worse. She might cry, and he might not be given a single instant to touch her, and it would be so hard then to be the captain, the leader of his men.

But to think that he might die without touching her face again …

After the way they had parted
…

The irony, of course, was that he was a prisoner in his own home. And that he would be hanged from one of the huge oaks he had climbed as a boy. Because naturally, as he was trying to tell his men, no matter how desperately he wanted to live, how terrified he was of the hangman’s rope and the hanged man’s death, he would be one of the five. He was their captain.

Oh, God. Oh, God. He was afraid. He didn’t want to die. He had faced death frequently enough, but always with the belief that he could survive. He’d refused to believe that he might be among the fallen, and yet …

If he would have been killed in battle, it might have been mercifully quick. No time to ponder the things he had left undone, unsaid. While to hang …

Hanging was the worst death for a man. Ignoble. Pathetic. God be with him.

God give him courage.

“Naturally,” he said briskly then, “I will be one of the five. My friends, I’ve never ridden with finer men. I’d die for all of you if I could.”

“Captain—that ain’t right,” old Billy Larson said. God alone knew just how old Billy was. He’d hailed from a small town just down the creek from Oak River Plantation, and he’d been an old man when the captain himself had still been climbing trees.