The Christmas Knot Read Online Free PDF Page A

still drying out in the kitchen. She put on her only nightdress—she’d sold almost all her clothing, bit by bit—and tried counting her blessings: she was clean, dry, well fed, in a warm bedchamber, and had a reasonable prospect of breakfast in the morning. On that hopeful note, she fell asleep…

CHAPTER THREE

    Y ou’re finally here, thank the Lord. Come, we must save him! A hand gripped Edwina’s wrist. Come now!
    She started awake to the sound of a drawn-out wail. Save him? Save whom? She sat up, heart thumping, and threw back the bed curtains, but the dim light of the banked coals showed no one lurking in the room. She must have been dreaming—of someone grabbing her and tugging her out of bed. She massaged her wrist, which hurt as if someone had truly gripped her there.
    The wind soughed outside her window. Ah, was that what she’d heard, not someone wailing? How stupid—she had allowed herself to be affected by that ridiculous ghost story. She closed the curtains, lay back in bed, and shut her eyes. She was just dropping off when the creak of a floorboard jerked her wide awake.
    She sat up and parted the bed curtains again. No one was in her room, so the sound must have come from the passageway. Whoever would be wandering about at this time of night? She listened hard. Soft footsteps, barely audible, reached her ears. Stocking feet, not shoes or boots.
    It was none of her business. She should go back to sleep.
    On the other hand, perhaps one of the children was ill, and she really had been wakened by a moan. She should at least make certain all was well. She got out of bed, tied her hair away from her face, tiptoed to the door, and cautiously opened it. To her surprise, the corridor wasn’t dark, as when Richard had first brought her upstairs. Someone had lit candles in the wall sconces. She glanced left and right…
    A slender figure in a white nightdress, carrying a lantern, was just crossing into the opposite wing—the unused one. Unused because it took too much upkeep, Edwina supposed, for the ghost tale was just that—a tale. And that white figure was no ghost, but Lizzie, judging by her long, fair hair. Why would she venture there in the middle of the night?
    Edwina hastened down the passageway after her, reaching the unused wing just in time to see the girl disappear through a doorway to the left. She followed, but what she saw in the doorway gave her pause. The dim light from the passageway showed that the room before her was a picture gallery with tall, intricately glazed windows its entire length. Lizzie walked—no, almost glided, so graceful was she—to the end of the gallery, sailed around a pianoforte that stood there, and flowed back, facing straight ahead, the lantern held aloft, and turned again, giving no sign that she had seen her governess.
    Edwina put her hands on her hips, about to speak, when a hand clapped over her mouth. Another clamped her by the waist and dragged her into the passageway. She struggled, jabbing her captor with an elbow, but he squeezed tighter, her derriere pressed against his groin, and spoke in her ear. “I shall remove my hand from your mouth if you promise not to say a word.”
    She nodded, and Richard uncovered her mouth. Slowly, he set her on her feet, but not before she realized that he was aroused. She shivered, suddenly and disconcertingly aware of the heat of his hand, of his large body close behind hers, of her nakedness under the nightdress.
    He hustled her down the passage, away from the picture gallery. “I’ll take care of her. Go back to bed.”
    Must he always be so peremptory? She fumed, controlling her temper, and then realized what was going on. “She’s sleepwalking?”
    “Yes. She does so almost nightly.”
    “Is that why you have the candles burning in the sconces?” He was fully dressed, she realized. He must have stayed awake to keep watch over his daughter, for it was dangerous to waken sleepwalkers.
    “Yes, for I fear she will