Katie Oliver - Christmas At Pemberley

‘Then all we need to do is find Archie and get that key back,’ Gemma said.

Tarquin sighed. ‘There’s just one problem.’

Dominic eyed him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, a problem?’ he demanded. ‘What problem? Just go upstairs and get Archie.’

‘That’s just it,’ Tark said. ‘He’s not here. He’s gone to London on a matter of urgent business and he isn’t expected to return until late tonight.’

‘Oh, that’s just fucking wonderful, that is,’ Dominic groaned. ‘So I’m locked in here until God knows when! I need a nice, greasy fry-up. I need a big glass of OJ and vodka. I need some bloody aspirin!’

‘We’ll just have to find the key, then,’ Gemma said firmly. ‘It’s bound to be in Archie’s room somewhere.’

But although she and Tarquin abandoned Dominic to look in Archie’s study and bedroom, then the library and the drawing room and even the kitchen, the key was nowhere to be found.

‘What’ll we do?’ Gemma wailed as she turned to Tarquin. ‘Poor Dominic! There’s no way to slide a food tray under the dungeon door; there’s not even space enough between the bars in that bloody window to hand him a bottle of beer!’

‘Alcohol’s what got him into this mess in the first place,’ Tarquin pointed out sharply. He sighed. ‘I’ll just have to go into the village and get a locksmith to come out and have a look. There’s a chap who specializes in antique locks.’

‘Well, go on and get him, then, and hurry!’ Gemma urged him. ‘There’s no time to lose. The wedding’s just two days away. And without Dominic, there won’t be a wedding!’

As he turned to go back downstairs, Tarquin suddenly remembered something.

‘I think I might know where the key is.’

‘You do?’ Gemma clutched his arm. ‘Where is it? Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I only just remembered. There’s an old key ring with dozens of antique keys hanging on a hook in the buttery. It’s been there ever since anyone can remember.’

‘Do you think the key to the dungeon is there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tark said, and made his way downstairs with Gemma close behind him. ‘But it’s worth a look.’

Chapter 41

As she came downstairs later that morning, Caitlin Campbell paused on the last step. Draemar Castle was looking very festive.

The mantels, mirrors, banisters and doorways of the drawing room, library, entrance hall, and dining room were draped with fresh greenery and filled the castle with the scent of pine and spruce. A fire blazed a welcome in the drawing room fireplace.

A twelve-foot tree stood in the corner, glittering with icicles and woven with strands of white fairy lights. Christmas music played at a low volume on the old Roberts radio, and a tray with shortbread and mugs of hot cocoa sat on the coffee table.

‘There’s sherry, too, if you’ve a mind,’ Mrs Neeson announced as she brushed past Caitlin with a cut-glass decanter of Amontillado in hand and set it down next to the shortbread and cocoa. ‘Now I’d best get back to the kitchen, seein’ as I have waitstaff to supervise, and a wedding dinner to put on the table tomorrow, as well as the family’s Christmas supper afterwards.’

‘Everything looks lovely, very Christmassy,’ Caitlin approved as she entered the drawing room and surveyed her surroundings. ‘What can I do to help?’

Pen handed her several boxes of fragile German Christmas ornaments. ‘You can start by hanging these on the tree, if you like. Do you remember them? They were always your favourites.’

Caitlin took the boxes and set them carefully down. ‘Of course I do.’ They’d had these ornaments for as long as she could remember – a pink-cheeked skier, a snowflake, an angel, a Swiss chalet with tiny wreaths on the windows – each of them made of blown glass and meticulously hand-painted.

She remembered when one of the ornaments, a Scottie dog with a plaid scarf wound around his neck, had slipped through her fingers and shattered on the flagstones in the entrance hall. Six-year-old Caitlin had been inconsolable.

Now, as she took the decorations from the boxes and began to hang them from the branches, her throat thickened.

Would she trim a tree like this with Niall’s son or daughter one day? Would the two of them find a way to build a life together, or would her father – and Niall’s son Jeremy – make a future between them impossible?

At least none of the houseguests knew she was pregnant, thank God. Only Gemma.

But as she glanced down at the slight swell of her stomach, Caitlin bit her lip. It would only be a matter of time before everyone else noticed.

‘How are you feeling?’ Wren enquired in a low voice as she came to stand beside her.

‘Fine,’ Caitlin said shortly.

‘I’m glad. If there’s anything I can do...’

‘There isn’t.’ She hung one of the Swiss chalet ornaments and turned away from Wren’s hurt expression. She knew she was being beastly, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Knowing that she wouldn’t be giving her baby up for adoption to Wren and Tarquin after all made her feel horribly guilty.

Caitlin took a deep breath and set the empty box aside as she turned back to Wren. There was no time like the present...

‘We need to talk, Wren. It’s important.’

‘Of course,’ her sister-in-law agreed, her face at once eager and hopeful. ‘What is it? Is it about—’

‘Not here,’ Caitlin cut in. ‘Somewhere private.’

‘All right. I don’t think anyone’s in the library…’

The sound of raised voices outside the drawing room windows could be heard above the low crooning of Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ on the radio.

Pen laid aside a strand of lights and frowned. ‘It sounds like an argument. What in the world?’

She hurried over to join Wren and Caitlin in front of one of the tall drawing room windows.

Caitlin peered outside. ‘It’s Colm and Helen,’ she said in a low but avid voice, and pushed the drapes back to get a better view. ‘They’re having a regular donnybrook out there, right in the middle of the drive!’

‘I cannae believe you’d do this to me!’

As Helen extricated herself from the rental car, distracted by thoughts of how much she owed the mechanic’s shop and wondering how on earth she’d ever pay it back, she froze as Colm MacKenzie strode up to her.

‘Do...what, exactly?’ she asked, mystified as much by his words as by his obvious and incendiary anger. ‘What is it I’m supposed to have done?’

‘As if ye didn’t know,’ he spat, his jaw tight. ‘And it’s not what you’re “supposed to have done” – it’s what you did . I went in your room this morning,’ he forged on, ‘looking for that twit of a rock star, Dominic Heath.’

Helen bristled. ‘Why on earth would Dominic be in my room?’

‘I didn’t know whose bloody room it was,’ Colm flung back. ‘But he’s gone missing, and I was searching the rooms upstairs, when I came to yours.’

‘So you just – what? Went into my room and had a wander round?’ Helen demanded. ‘How dare you?’

‘How dare I ?’ He got in her face and stared at her, his fists clenched at his sides and his hazel eyes dark with fury. ‘You’re the one who’s been looking into my past, searching for dirt about me on your computer. Or will you deny it?’

She stared back at him, and any words she’d had – to protest, to explain, to excuse her actions – dried up in her throat.

There really was no excuse for what she’d done.

‘So you know about the accident,’ he went on, his chest rising and falling with the tempo of his fury, ‘the accident I caused, and you know I’m to blame for my wife and baby’s death. You know that not a day has passed that I don’t wish it’d been me who died, not them. Instead I have to live with my guilt for the rest of my life.’