The Christmas Knot by Barbara Monajem Read Free Book Online

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?”
    Richard’s voice was wry. “By what they told me—and they were each and every one verging on hysterical—they were startled out of deep sleep, their hearts pounding in their chaste bosoms, to pitiful cries for help.”
    All of which applied to Edwina, except that the cry she’d heard wasn’t pitiful—demanding, rather—and her bosom wasn’t chaste, as he well knew. “To help the ghost?”
    Richard nodded. “One assumes so.”
    “With what?”
    “That we don’t know, since none of them had the courage to stay and find out. One of them, who remained a little longer than the others, said the ghost told her she was no longer welcome and almost pushed her out of the bed.”
    “How disconcerting,” Edwina said, once again stifling the urge to