The Christmas Knot Read Online Free

wealth.
    She mustn’t think about that. She declined Lizzie’s help, disrobed behind the screen, and stepped gratefully into the warm bath. Oh, such heaven! She seldom got to bathe all over nowadays. But she couldn’t soak comfortably in a kitchen, so she made quick work of washing all over, including her hair, and dressed in the only other gown she possessed. She was standing by the kitchen fire, combing out the tangles in her hair, when Richard and John reappeared.
    “All done?” he asked, obviously a rhetorical question, and set about emptying the tub as if he was the lowest of the footmen. She tied her damp hair severely back to keep her natural curls from going wild. She would dry it later by the fire. Soon they sat down to supper, eaten at the deal table in the kitchen of all places. There truly were no footmen to empty the bath or carry dishes to the dining room.
    “You really have no servants,” she said, “as the innkeeper told me.”
    “The scullery maid comes in during the day, but only to the kitchen, and she always leaves before dark,” Lizzie said.
    “How can people be so afraid of the supposed ghost?”
    “She’s a real ghost,” Lizzie said. “Don’t upset her by saying you don’t believe.”
    “Definitely an unwise move,” John said. “It is no fun being at her mercy.”
    “Very well,” Edwina said, not giving a hoot for the ghost but disinclined to contradict the children when their father, too, had spoken of the ghost as if it were real. If this was some sort of foolish game, she could play along. “But whose ghost is she?”
    “The lady in white,” Lizzie said.
    “Who walks the night,” John said in a sepulchral voice, “doomed to wait forever.”
    “For her murdered lover,” Lizzie said with a shiver.
    “That sounds suspiciously like a Gothic novel to me,” Edwina said.
    “Yes, just like some of Mama’s novels by Mrs. Radcliffe,” Lizzie said. “It would be a delicious story, except that unfortunately it’s true.”
    Edwina ignored this last comment. “You read Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels?” Surely Lizzie was a little young for such books.
    “Oh, yes, and Mrs. Edgeworth’s tales, too,” Lizzie said. “I brought them with me all the way from America. Books matter more to me than clothing, so Papa allowed it.”
    “America?”
    “My late wife was American,” Richard said, “and we were visiting her family when she died.” He returned to silently—perhaps morosely was a more accurate description—eating his mutton stew. He was still a handsome man, but the lines around his mouth had deepened over the past twelve years, and his eyes were weary.
    “We would have stayed there if it weren’t for the baronetcy,” Lizzie said. “Papa was obliged to return to England and take over, or the treasure hunters would have ruined the entire house.”
    “Or died in the process,” John said. “Some already did, and it serves them right. At least they were guilty of something.”
    As opposed to someone who wasn’t? Edwina wondered, but instead asked, “What treasure were they looking for?”
    “The Ballister necklace,” Lizzie said. “People thought it was in the keep, because that’s where her husband imprisoned her until she died of a broken heart.”
    “That’s why we hear the sound of dragging chains,” John added.
    “Oh, go on, you,” Mrs. Cropper said suddenly from across the room, where she was scrubbing a pot. “I never heard no chains.”
    “That’s because you sleep by the kitchen,” John said. “If you slept upstairs, you would hear them from time to time. Mostly, though, she just walks.”
    “That she does,” Mrs. Cropper said, “poor lady.”
    Involuntarily, Edwina glanced at Richard, who raised a sardonic brow. “I suppose I shall have to explain.”
    “I would much appreciate that,” Edwina said as politely as if she’d never met him before today. As if they were the merest acquaintances with no past bitterness between them.
    Richard