The Christmas Knot Read Online Free PDF Page B

than love.
    Oh, what did it matter? She needed his help now, and he’d given it. He couldn’t help but see the irony in the current situation, but he wasn’t the sort to gloat over another’s misfortune. Nevertheless, something about her stripped him of his customary civility, leaving a man as wounded now as when he had lost her years ago.
    What happened next was in her hands. He didn’t want her here, but nor could he quite bring himself to dismiss her. Hopefully, she would decide to leave in the morning. He returned to the portrait gallery, where Lizzie still glided gracefully back and forth.
    “That’s enough, love,” he whispered from the doorway. “But you’ll have to keep it up all the way to your bedchamber, in case Mrs. White is peeking from her doorway.”
    Lizzie grinned. “I did well, didn’t I, Papa? I didn’t give myself away by even a blink of an eye.”
    “You did marvelously, sweetheart, and if those new treasure hunters are on the watch, you may have convinced them as well. Off to bed with you now.”
    He saw her to her bedchamber, the consummate little actress, and finally went to his own cold bed. It was no surprise, he supposed, that holding Edwina so closely against him had awakened his libido. He’d had to force himself to let go. Apart from the fact that Edwina detested him, one didn’t tup the governess.
    She had lost weight since he’d seen her last, and that scraped-back hair, although it accentuated her erect carriage, also made her look the slightest bit gaunt. Undernourished. Evidently, she’d had a difficult time as a widow.
    With that wildly curly hair and those slender curves, those wide blue eyes and rosy lips, she belonged in a man’s bed. He’d only had her once—up against a garden wall—but she’d shown a passion to equal his in their brief, hot coupling.
    He sighed. He hadn’t had a woman since the death of his wife, Mary, which probably explained his reaction to Edwina now. He hadn’t been in love with Mary and she’d known it, which made their marriage difficult, but she’d been a good mother, utterly devoted to her children. He was damned glad she hadn’t lived to see him become Ballister of Ballister Grange.
    ~ * ~
    When Edwina woke the next morning, her first thought was to dig under her pillow and make sure she hadn’t dreamed it. Richard Ballister had given her fifty pounds—a fortune to her now, although far less than her pin money as Harold White’s wife.
    What in heaven’s name had come over him?
    Another thought: he wasn’t impoverished, if he could hand her fifty pounds as if it meant nothing. So why didn’t he want to dispel the myth of the ghost and hire some servants? And why, again, wasn’t she to discuss the story with his children? If he didn’t want them to believe it, wouldn’t he use any means possible to prove that it was sheer nonsense?
    He hadn’t forbidden her to discuss anything with Mrs. Cropper. It seemed the expense of working candles was not a concern, so she would ask for some mending to occupy her in the evenings—and if she happened to enjoy a comfortable gossip with the woman at the same time, who was to know?
    She got out of bed, washed her face and hands in the frigid water in the pitcher on the washstand, and dressed quickly. She opened her curtains to look out on the damp dawn. The rain had finally stopped, and pockets of pale blue pierced the clouds. Her window faced the front of the house, with a view of walkways and an extensive garden. Mostly it was a sorry, overgrown sight, much of it wintry brown and decaying, but the green of the holly hedge and its bright berries struck a cheerful note, and there was rosemary as well… Oh! She hadn’t noticed yesterday, but from above one saw the patterns. If she wasn’t mistaken, what she saw before her was an old-fashioned knot garden—a rare delight nowadays. The garden was made up of four squares, in which boxwood, rosemary, hyssop and yew wove around and over one