Old Christmas came but once a year, the country carolers sang. Caledonia McAlden Bowmont was sorry the holiday did not come much more often than that. Because the festive season filled London with the most delicious sort of excitement—parties, musicales and balls that made the world merry and bright.

But come Christmas Eve, those amusements would come to an abrupt end, and like the princess in the French fairy tales, Caledonia would turn back into a country pumpkin. Or perhaps a Scottish turnip—rather more bland and entirely unexciting on the palate.

Such was the life of a widow. People—even well-meaning people like her own family—expected her to retire to the quiet gloom of her late husband’s house at the foot of the Cheviot Hills, where nothing ever happened—nothing was allowed to happen.

Nothing was supposed to happen to a widow.

Other people lived exciting lives—her brother Hugh, a Senior Post Captain in the Royal Navy, and his wife Meggs wrote Cally the most exciting letters from all over the world. Cally’s older sister Catriona accompanied her diplomat husband to exotic and interesting foreign lands. And even Cally’s widowed mother had somehow managed to fall in love—in her fiftieth year, no less—and re-marry a viscount.

But at four and twenty, nothing so exciting ever happened to Caledonia. Her widowhood stretched the calendar round with little respite. For nine and forty weeks a year she was a dutiful, competent daughter-in-law, managing her late husband’s farming estate to her mama-in-law’s exacting satisfaction. But without her much-loved—and much-missed—late husband, who had loved to tease and make merry, there was neither comfort nor joy to lighten the relentless load.

Which was why, when Cally’s own mother invited her to London for a little Christmas cheer, she spent those three weeks ever on the lookout for amusement, or some small adventure. She longed for some unplanned excitement—she pined for a diverting mis-chance. As a girl she was never so happy as when she was neck deep in some ridiculous scheme—like the time she sneaked into the New Club in Edinburgh disguised as a gentleman, complete with fake whiskers, or when she had impersonated Princess Charlotte of Wales at a garden party at Holyrood Palace.

“Punching over her weight class,” her father had chuckled.

Her mother had been aghast, and taken on a stricter governess.

Caledonia had of course grown up since those days. She had married and been widowed—which was, she reckoned, singularly aging—but she still had a soft spot for the excitement of the hurly-burly, and took pleasure in the topsy-turvy.

And so she would enjoy all that London had on offer whilst she could—she would dance and laugh and enjoy every last bit of excitement until she was packed back off to Scotland. She would marvel at each new sight, relish each new experience, and listen to each tidbit of juicy gossip—like the lurid tale of thievery one of her acquaintances was telling now.

“Did you hear, Cally?” Claire Jellicoe asked. “They took everything—very last pin and pearl.”

“I had not heard.” Caledonia had not yet caught up on all the London newspapers—in Scotland, her mama-in-law depreciated the newspapers as being fast and loose with the truth, and un-fit for a lady’s eyes. “Tell me all.”

“All the Peverston diamonds,” her young friend related with relish. “At least two full parures.”

“They?” Caledonia tried to moderate her unladylike curiosity at such larcenous daring. “Who are they?”

“I’ve heard it’s a criminal ring—a gang of Romany,” another young lady whispered in scandalized tones.

“Who break in at night,” Claire went on, “while the victims sleep soundly in their beds. Imagine that—sleeping while thieves prowled your home. My papa would sack all our servants if a sneak thief got by even one of the footmen.”

“Surely not,” Cally demurred. But she felt an intoxicating rush of excitement—as if she’d bolted a glass of sherry on the sly.

It all sounded so wonderfully daring and intrepid. And decidedly familiar. “There was something very similar—a string of dazzling jewel thefts—some years ago. Do you not remember?”

But it seemed the young ladies were all too young to remember a scandal that had waxed and waned before they were entirely conversant with the world. Caledonia herself had been a young girl when the so-called Scottish Wraith had ghosted his way through the Beau Monde’s baubles, but she had a long memory. “It was all London, and even Edinburgh, could talk about!”

“Well, my father thinks it’s the Society thief the broadsheets call the Vauxhall Vixen.” Claire’s whispered tone was full of respect for father, the Earl Sanderson’s, information.

“Oh, no!” Caledonia couldn’t keep her disappointment from her voice, but the fact was, she didn’t want the thief to be this Vixen. She wanted the thief to be a different person altogether—for no other reason than it was too quiet in the Cheviot Hills. Too bloody quiet by half. “I rather think it smacks of the McTavish touch.”

“The what?” The young people stared at her, mouths agape.

Caledonia warmed to her subject—she hadn’t thought about McTavish in years, but those girlish fantasies had etched themselves indelibly in her imagination. “It has all the hallmarks of the Scottish Wraith—the Cutty Purse—don’t you think?”

At their blank looks, she continued. “I suppose it was years ago, but the broadsheets and newspapers called him the Scottish Wraith—gone like a wraith at midnight, into the Prince Street Gardens, or down the Whitehall Stairs, or over the Mayfair rooftops, the papers used to report. But his real name was proved to be Tobias McTavish, a Scotsman of some great skill in the gentry lay—that is, stealing from well-to-do houses.”

“Gentry lay! Was he ever caught?” Claire Jellicoe asked.

“Indeed. The case was infamous—the popular support for his derring-do was so enormous, the beak at the Old Bailey feared the mob would rise up if McTavish were sentenced to be hanged. The broadsheets made him into a folk hero, the same as they are doing to the Vixen now. So the judge gave McTavish the choice of transportation or the navy, instead of being hanged. And of course McTavish chose the navy—but be-damned if he didn’t go on to become a great naval hero in his own right.”

Caledonia was so caught up in her tale, she only just realized she had cursed in a ballroom. But she was weary of censuring her true self—she was the product of a large, rambunctious and linguistically colorful family, and not even three years under the rule of her censorious, straight-laced mama-in-law had entirely rid Cally of her colorfully-spoken ways. She couldn’t always be watching every word like a hen harrier, never letting herself have any real fun.

So now was her chance. “He served at Trafalgar, where he was mentioned in dispatches—singled out for praise. I know because my brother, Captain Sir Hugh McAlden, was his commanding officer at one point. McTavish became even more famous as a hero after the navy than he had ever been before.”

“Now I remember.” Claire clapped her hands. “He redeemed himself with his bravery. But was he not killed whilst in the navy, in one battle or another, and buried as a proper hero?”

“Oh, no!” Caledonia could not let such disinformation pass. “Not killed—invalided out, as they say. He lived to retire from his rating—for he had risen to the rank of warrant officer, which was quite a feat—after he was wounded during the bombardment of Copenhagen. He came home with his reputation reformed, if not entirely redeemed, and settled to farm a tract of land up river, swearing to never thieve again.”

“Until now?” asked Claire.

“It could be.” Caledonia forced herself to hedge, because she really didn’t want the Scottish Wraith to be behind such thefts. She wanted him to remain the gritty, reformed hero of her imaginative memories. But she had to admit, the jewels that had been stolen sounded exactly to his taste.

Yet the tricky question was, why? Why would he come back now? McTavish was said to have been out of the game for years. And, to be fair, no one mentioned that any of these sensational burglaries involved his particular signature. “The Scottish Wraith used to leave a sprig of white heather in the empty jewel boxes. The unsuspecting victims would unlock their cases in the morning, and there would be nothing inside but a sprig of sweet and innocent white heather proclaiming they’d been cleaned out.”

“Oh, yes,” Claire breathed. “That’s exactly what the broadsheets say is happening now!”

The rush of emotion through Caledonia’s veins was a dizzying combination of vindication and disappointment—to leave a sprig of heather now was nothing short of grossly inept. The McTavish she had admired had been far cannier than to proclaim himself in such a fashion.

“If you suspect him, surely the Bow Street Magistrates will have done,” Claire sagely opined. “They’ll have Runners after him now.”

Caledonia let out a ridiculously wistful sigh. “They’d be fools if they don’t.”