The Christmas Knot Read Online Free PDF

tumble down the stairs. I cannot tell what she sees and doesn’t see. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t notice me or others—as she didn’t notice you.” His voice was impatient. Aroused or not, clearly he wanted to be rid of Edwina.
    “But—but perhaps that’s why the myth of the ghost persists! Any villager may see her walking and assume she’s the ghost.”
    “Nothing will stop them from believing in the ghost,” Richard said. “Go back to bed.”
    “But why encourage them?” she persisted. “Surely if you explain, you will be able to hire more servants, and—”
    “I shall explain nothing to the villagers, and nor shall you,” Richard said, “or you may be sure that I shall dismiss you.”
    Her annoyance at his repeated threats was ousted by a more distressing emotion. “Is it perhaps that you cannot afford to hire any servants?”
    “No, certainly not,” he said, sounding goaded. “If you are worried about your own pay, you need not be. For the last time, Mrs. White, go back to bed.”
    “Very well,” she said, turning away, but she had gone only two steps when he said, “If I should decide to dismiss you in the morning, where will you go?”
    “With one day’s pay?” she asked. “Or not even that?”
    He shrugged, frowning. “One day’s pay.” In other words, a few measly pennies.
    “Unless the vicar needs a housekeeper—” Her desperate heart battered her chest.
    “He doesn’t,” said Richard. Oh, God, he was going to turn her into the street.
    It was so unfair that she didn’t care anymore. “Then I shall have to offer my services at the inn,” she hissed, “in whatever capacity the landlord wishes. He finds me pretty, so I have no doubt about how he will choose to use me.” She turned and hurried away before the tears came, but then whirled again. “You used to be a gentleman, Richard. I even believed I loved you at one time. But now…oh, now you will burn in hell for forcing a decent woman to become a whore.”
    “Wait, Edwina,’ he said, but she kept on going—she had to, or she would break down and sob before this monster. He followed and took her by one arm. “I shan’t dismiss you,” he said curtly. “It was a hypothetical question. I merely wished to know…”
    “How desperate I am?” She tugged her arm from his grasp. “Well, now that you realize the extent of my abasement, you can gloat all you like.” She shook her head, wondering once again why he should do so. Once, long ago, she’d thought him a kind and loving man.
    “I’m not gloating, damn it,” he said. “Come with me.” He stalked past her down the passageway, further away from his sleepwalking daughter.
    “What about Lizzie?”
    “She’ll be fine.” He stopped at the door to his bedchamber. “Wait here.”
    She did, shivering and watching the dimly-lit passage for signs of Lizzie. As long as the girl stayed away from the staircase, she would be safe.
    “Here.” Edwina started as Richard came out of the bedchamber and pressed something into her hand. “An advance on your wages, yours to keep whether you leave now or later. Good night.”
    ~ * ~
    Richard watched as she stumbled down the passageway, the money clutched in her hand as if her life depended on it—which perhaps it did.
    She had loved him once? A strange notion of love that was. They’d been set to elope. He wasn’t a rich man like Harold White, but he’d had enough to support a wife in comfort, if not the first style of elegance. But just as he’d been leaving for their rendezvous, he’d been arrested by the bailiffs for debt. By the time he’d managed to prove that the debt in question wasn’t his, she was married to Harold White. At first he’d wondered if he’d got her with child and she’d married White out of desperation, but when no baby was born in due course, he knew that wasn’t the case. Harold White’s fortune—far larger than what she would inherit from her father—had weighed more with her