The Christmas Knot (5 page)

She made her way to the kitchen, where Mrs. Cropper was rolling out pastry amid more delicious aromas, while a scrawny maid scrubbed pots and pans. “Sausages? And fresh bread?”

“Aye, Mrs. White. Soon they’ll be coming in to their breakfasts, and who doesn’t like sausage and fresh-baked bread?”

“I know I do,” Edwina said. She smiled at the scullery maid, who had turned to stare.

“That’s Nell from the village,” Mrs. Cropper said, and the maid bobbed a curtsey. “She comes in days to give me a hand, but she doesn’t stay after dark.”

Edwina seated herself at the deal table. It seemed ages since she’d had enough good, wholesome food. Her relatives had fed her grudgingly, and dining alone in her room at the homes of her employers meant she only got what the kitchen deigned to serve her, and no more. “I saw Sir Richard and John outdoors. They were measuring something on the house.”

“Aye, it’s to do with finding the treasure, ma’am,” the cook said. “Will you have some coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, she poured a cup and set it in front of Edwina with a loaf of sugar and a pitcher of cream.

Edwina thanked her and nipped off a few lumps of sugar—another much missed luxury—and dropped them into the steaming, aromatic brew. “Sir Richard hopes to find the ruby necklace?”

“How else is he to get rid of them treasure seekers? It’s a miracle not more of the house has tumbled down, what with them digging in the cellars, and without so much as a by your leave, too! I tell you, ma’am, while the house was empty between one Sir Richard and the next, I was overrun with them. And not only foreigners like the Yorkshire men what got what was coming to them, but local boys as well, all mad to find the treasure.”

Edwina poured cream in the coffee and stirred. “Yes, Joseph told me about his brother when he drove me here yesterday.”

Mrs. Cropper snorted. “That Jemmy and his friends. But it wasn’t them what tried to poison Felix.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the dog, who thumped his tail in acknowledgement. “Dunno who did that.”

Edwina stared. “Oh, how horrid! Poor Felix.”

“Aye, but I nursed him back to health. And me alone in the house, unable to stop them, and even fearing for my life,” Mrs. Cropper said. “I was that happy, ma’am, when Sir Richard and the children got here. The lady ghost did a fine job of taking over for Felix and scared most of the fools away, but a ghost does not make good company, ma’am, make no mistake.”

“I suppose not,” Edwina said weakly, although she would have preferred to chastise Mrs. Cropper for being superstitious. “How long were you here alone?”

“All of six months, ma’am, for Sir Richard was away in foreign parts. He wasn’t meant to inherit, you see, for old Sir Richard had three fine sons. The death of the eldest was sad but no surprise, but—” She clamped her lips shut as Richard and John came through the door.

All three sons of old Sir Richard had died? How tragic, but it was the only way for Richard—a cousin, Edwina assumed—to inherit. But why would the death of the eldest be no surprise? He might have had a chronic ailment, she supposed, but why shouldn’t Mrs. Cropper discuss the tragedy? Her eyes were round and wide, as if she feared Sir Richard’s wrath.

Edwina did her best to deflect it. “What were you measuring out there?”

“We’re looking for hiding places, Mrs. White,” John said, his cheeks red with the cold. “For the treasure.” He rolled up the ball of string.

“Ah, such as priest’s holes, you mean? Places where the internal rooms don’t quite match the exterior walls?”

“Precisely.” Richard set his chalk and slate at the end of the deal table. John put the ball of string beside it. “We’re going through the house bit by bit. We’ve already checked in all the obvious places.”

“The treasure seekers thought the lady must have hidden it in the keep,” John said, “but since that fell down, we know it wasn’t there. Which makes sense, when you think about it.”

“Fortunately for us, none of the treasure hunters seem to have thought much at all,” Richard said, “or an entire wing of the house might have tumbled down by now, too.”

Edwina tsked. “What a waste of time. It’s far more likely that—”

“That the lover absconded with it,” Richard completed, and that sardonic look descended again. “As you said last night, but kindly keep that opinion to yourself. Lizzie may as well enjoy being a romantic while she’s young and doesn’t know any better. Besides that, I think she’s right. Why would the ghost be so keen to guard the treasure if it isn’t here?”

With difficulty, Edwina stifled a retort, but she had her own counter-question: Why was Richard so ridiculously adamant about the existence of the ghost? It seemed less and less like a game, but he was far too educated and intelligent to actually believe in such a phenomenon.

“Logically, she would have hidden it in her bedchamber or dressing room, or more likely, her husband took it from the dead lover and hid it elsewhere in the house,” Richard said.

“Why would he do that?” Edwina demanded. “She couldn’t get to it from her prison. In fact, why keep her chained in a tower if he already knew where it was and had it safely hidden away?

“Revenge,” John said, his eyes fierce for such a child. “He was an evil man.”

Edwina glanced at Richard, whose expression was so like his son’s that she shivered. He wiped the dark look from his face, replacing it with a bland one—as far as he was capable of blandness. There was something powerful about Richard Ballister which simply couldn’t be concealed.

“Perhaps, but I don’t think that was his primary motive,” he said. “If he’d taken the necklace off the lover’s body, he had good reason to hide it, and also to keep his wife from blabbing to the outside world. The lover must have had relatives, don’t you think? Someone must have inquired after him, wondering where he’d disappeared to, so it was to Sir Joshua’s benefit to pretend the necklace was long gone.”

“Especially if he’d buried the lover nearby,” Edwina said, as Lizzie walked into the room, yawning and brandishing a hairbrush. “No murderer worth his salt would leave a body for the crows, however well that may work in romance.”

“That’s why the treasure hunters dug in the cellars,” Lizzie said, attacking her unkempt hair. “Some days, Papa digs there, too.”

“In the hope of finding some old bones?” Edwina suppressed a shudder. She stood and took the brush from Lizzie. “Let me do that.”

“Yes, because Sir Joshua may have hidden the necklace with the lover’s body,” Lizzie said.

“More to the point,” Edwina said, “why would the ghost let you find it? She has guarded it for two hundred years.”

“She
will
let Papa find it,” John said with dogged certainty.

“Because Papa is pure of heart,” Lizzie said. “He doesn’t want the necklace for material reasons.”

“No?” Immediately, she regretted her tone. Even if she doubted Richard’s motives, she shouldn’t show it in front of his children. “Then why?”

Coldly, Richard said, “Because according to the legend, there is only one way to get rid of the ghost, and that is to give the necklace to its rightful owner.”

“The mistress of Ballister Grange,” Lizzie said.

“But there is no mistress of Ballister Grange,” Edwina said.

“Not at the moment,” Richard said. “And I don’t think many women would want the position under the current circumstances, so I plan to strike a bargain with the lady ghost. If she releases the necklace to me and ceases to haunt the Grange, I promise to marry again and bestow the necklace upon my wife.”

CHAPTER FOUR

R
ichard knew his pact with the ghost was one-sided and scarcely to be counted on, but what choice was there? As long as John believed it would work, Richard would move heaven and earth to find the necklace and then a wife. If he didn’t find the necklace, he would purchase one and pretend to find it. Whatever it took to save his son’s sanity and hopefully his life as well, he would do.

“I see,” Edwina said, surprising him; he’d feared she would scoff at the absurdity of the pact. She couldn’t be expected to understand the futility of trying to convince a Ballister not to believe in ghosts. Instead she said, “A present-day Lady Ballister is the closest you can get to a rightful owner.”

“She
will
be the rightful owner by tradition, if not in law,” Richard said. “The necklace, if it hadn’t disappeared, would have passed from one Lady Ballister to another until the present day.”

Edwina opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it firmly and returned to coaxing the snarls out of Lizzie’s hair—patiently, in a motherly sort of way. Not as his wife had done, although that had also been motherly…

“What a happy day that will be,” Mrs. Cropper said. “And soon.”

He turned to her, startled out of his reverie. “I beg your pardon?”

“When you marry again, Sir Richard.”

He didn’t suppose it would be happy. He didn’t want to remarry, nor did he wish to discuss it in front of Edwina. “I surely hope so, Mrs. Cropper. Do I smell coffee?”

“Aye, that you do, sir.” She poured coffee for him, but that didn’t stop her from talking. “There’s that pretty Miss Wicket, the vicar’s daughter in the next parish—she’s a northerner born and bred, so she’d do fine here. Or there’s Lord Tankhurst’s eldest—a little past her prime, but a handsome lady all the same. Or there’s—”

“Enough, Mrs. Cropper,” he said.

“Lord knows you’ll have to be quick about it,” Mrs. Cropper went on. “There’ll be no time to waste once you find that necklace.” Her gaze flicked questioningly to Edwina and back. Fortunately, Edwina’s eyes were on her coffee cup. He didn’t blame the old woman for seeing Edwina as a viable option—pretty, well-bred, and more to the point, already here. A pity, but it was impossible.

“Thank you, but I’ll find my own wife,” he said.

“Once you get rid of the ghost, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Edwina said tartly. What was that tone of voice supposed to mean? Did it even matter? He’d found a tolerable wife last time in spite of the stinging blow of Edwina’s marriage. He’d calmed himself enough to make a practical choice.

Damn it, he should pay more attention to Mrs. Cropper’s suggestions. He should even make a point of getting to know the young ladies in question, because if he found the necklace before Christmas, he would be wise to marry in a hurry.

He didn’t want to think about what might happen if he didn’t find it before Christmas.

“Pass me that ribbon, Lizzie,” Edwina said. Already, his daughter’s hair was much tidier. With a few deft movements, Edwina tied the girl’s hair becomingly back from her face. Lizzie wouldn’t let Mrs. Cropper touch her because her hands smelled of onions, and with no maids and no governess, she’d had to resort to Richard—who was all thumbs when it came to arranging hair—or do her own hair, which, however well-brushed in the morning, was always a mass of tangles by evening.

Edwina, he supposed, was expert at doing hair; she’d managed to tame her own curls. A shame, because their natural unruliness suited her passionate nature…

He shouldn’t allow such memories to surface. Her hair was tightly bound at the moment, not a stray wisp escaping. Longing tugged at him—longing to take her cheek in his hand, to caress and lick her ear, then sneak to the ribbon that held her curls in check, and…

She colored up, and he tore his eyes from her. He poured cream in his coffee and set the memories and desires firmly aside. “Did you sleep well last night, Mrs. White?”

“Excellently, thank you,” she said.

“No nightmarish awakenings? No ghostly voices?”

~ * ~

That sarcastic voice again. “Of course not,” Edwina retorted, and then remembered waking to that strange voice and a tug on her wrist. But that was no ghost, merely a dream. She must have twisted her wrist in her sleep.

Still, she might have thought before speaking if she hadn’t seen the heat in Richard’s eyes, evoking an answering heat within her, resurrecting a memory she should suppress forever. Oh, no—surely that wasn’t why he had paid her so much in advance?

“All the other governesses did,” Lizzie said. “They woke all of a sudden, hearing frightening voices, and it got worse every day.”

“Fraidy-cats,” John said. “That’s why they left.”

“It will take a lot more than ghostly voices to frighten me,” Edwina said. Such as Richard’s entirely unacceptable desires and her equally appalling response.

No, his lips were pressed tight together—not the lips of a man contemplating kisses. She sighed with what should be relief but wasn’t entirely. Richard kissed with enthralling heat and passion, unlike Harold, whom she could only describe as dry, and in any event he had stopped kissing her after a year or so of marriage. She was rather kiss-starved by now, not that she’d thought much about it lately…

She redirected her mind to more important matters. “Surely not all of them had such experiences.”

“Every single one,” Richard said.

“How odd,” Edwina said. “Not everyone responds to suggestions of hauntings the same way.”

“The haunting is not a suggestion.” John narrowed his eyes at her, not quite as charming as before, reminding her of his father. “It’s a fact.”

Edwina pondered reprimanding him and decided against it. Something strange was going on here, and until she knew what it was, she must hold her tongue. “What did the voices say?”