Katie Oliver - Christmas At Pemberley - And the Bride Wore Prada

Although Colm McRoberts suffered serious injuries, he is expected to live. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

There was a knock on the door, and Helen looked up, startled out of her troubled thoughts.

‘Miss Thomas?’ Mrs Neeson inquired from the hallway outside. ‘Are you there? You’ve a phone call downstairs.’

Helen got up and opened the door. ‘Thank you. Why wouldn’t I be here?’ she added, curious.

‘Well,’ Mrs Neeson said with a lift of her brow, ‘I’m not one to tell tales, so you’ve no need to worry, Miss Thomas. Your secret’s safe with me.’

‘My secret?’ she echoed as her heart accelerated. ‘What secret?’

The housekeeper’s smile widened. ‘Let’s just say I noticed there was one less person at the breakfast table yesterday morning. And,’ she added with a smile, ‘I saw you sneak in the front door later on.’

‘Oh.’ Helen blushed and found she didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t think of a single reasonable excuse to explain away her absence.

‘I’m that happy for you,’ Mrs Neeson went on, ‘and for Mr MacKenzie. He’s a good man, for all that he’s as prickly as a thorn bush—’

‘You said that I have a phone call?’ Helen interjected, beyond anxious to change the subject. ‘I don’t suppose you know who it is?’

‘I do. It’s the mechanic’s shop, about your car.’

‘My car!’ Helen’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, shit – I was supposed to pick it up yesterday, and I completely forgot.’

‘Well,’ the housekeeper said as she preceded Helen out the door, ‘if you need a ride to the shop, let me know. One of the girls can take you into the village.’

‘I will. And thanks.’ Helen grabbed up her handbag and coat and followed Mrs Neeson down to the kitchen.

‘Can you help us, Mr MacKenzie?’

Colm, who’d just come inside the castle in search of Archie, looked up to see Tarquin and Gemma Astley coming down the stairs.

‘Of course I will, if I can,’ he replied. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Gemma’s fiancé’s gone missing,’ Tarquin told him. ‘We’ve looked everywhere, but it’s nearly lunch time, and we still haven’t found him. Miss Astley is understandably upset.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Colm said, although personally, he shared Rhys Gordon’s opinion that Dominic Heath was a bolshie, over-pampered rock star. ‘Are you sure he didn’t leave the premises?’

‘Positive,’ Gemma said firmly. ‘Unless...’ Her face crumpled. ‘Unless he’s done a runner before the wedding!’

Tarquin patted her ineffectually on the shoulder and met Colm’s eyes. ‘There’s nothing else to do but continue searching downstairs.’

‘Downstairs?’ Colm’s expression plainly showed that he thought Tarquin had taken leave of his senses. ‘But there’s nothing down there but the dungeons.’

‘We’ve exhausted every other possibility. Could you have another look upstairs, please? You might check the guest wing again.’

Colm nodded doubtfully. ‘Aye. I’ll go and have a look now.’

Chapter 39

As he began searching the guest bedrooms, knocking on each door before he entered to have a look around, Colm found no sign of Dominic. He arrived at the last room on the left and lifted his hand to knock. The door was open.

‘Hello?’

He thrust his head cautiously around the doorjamb and glanced inside. ‘Hello...is anyone here?’

There was no answer.

Judging from the silk nightgown thrown across a chair, and the clutter of cosmetics and perfume bottles on the dresser, this was a woman’s room. He had a cursory glance round, then turned to go.

He had his own bloody work to be doing, after all.

Colm turned, impatient to be gone, and bumped into an antique desk by the window. He muttered a curse as a pencil rolled off onto the floor.

As he knelt to retrieve it, he noticed a laptop open in the middle of the desk. It was Helen’s laptop.

When he’d bumped into the desk, the movement must have jarred the screen to life.

Colm laid the pencil down, and as he did he saw a search engine on the laptop screen. He smiled. That was his Helen, always working, probably researching a new story for that editor chap, Tom...

Then he saw the links, and his smile froze.

‘Accident on the A96, Serious Injuries.’ ‘Pregnant Woman Airlifted to Hospital Following Deadly Wreck.’ ‘McRoberts to be Charged in Accident Fatality?’

A black rage gripped him as he realized she’d been up here, investigating him, delving into his background as if he were a bloody job applicant, or worse still – as if he were some kind of a common criminal.

Evidently not content with his own version of the past, she’d gone looking online to search on his adoptive name, McRoberts, to find...what? Something a bit more titillating than what he’d told her? Something more damning?

Something more... newsworthy ?

He slammed his fist down hard on the desk, sending papers fluttering into the air, and the pencil skittered and rolled once again to the floor.

But this time, he didn’t bother to pick it up.

And he didn’t bother to shut the door when he strode out of the room.

A weak shaft of sunlight slanted in through the tiny slit of a window.

Dominic, shivering from a night spent passed out on the floor in whisky-fuelled oblivion, sat up and groggily surveyed his surroundings. He was sitting on dirt. The wall against his back was rough stone, darkened here and there with moss.

Where the fuck was he?

The last thing he remembered – after downing a bottle of Draemar whisky with Archie – was stumbling down the back stairs in search of car keys – any car keys – so he could get away from the castle, away from Scotland, and most importantly, away from Gemma and her incessant demands.

Try this jacket on, Dom. What do you think of this dress for the honeymoon, Dom? Will you wear a boutonnière, Dom? Shall we go with Royal Doulton or Wedgwood china, Dom?

As if it made any fucking difference what he liked! Dom thought darkly. Gemma always did whatever the bloody hell she wanted anyway, regardless of his opinion.

He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet and staggered to the door. Gripping the ancient-looking metal handle, he yanked on it with all his might, but the heavy oaken door didn’t budge.

It was locked. What the!?

There were bars inset in a small window at the top of the door, like the kind you saw in that Man in the Iron Mask film. But wait a minute – the man in the iron mask spent most of that film in a bloody prison .

What in hell was he doing in prison ?

Panic overtook him as the whisky fumes fogging his brain began to lift. This was no prison. This, he remembered from the tour Tarquin had given them when they’d arrived at Draemar, was the dungeon.

He was locked in a dungeon in the bowels of the castle. And no one – no one! ‒ knew he was down here.

‘Help!’ Dominic bellowed, as real panic set in. ‘Let me out of here!’ He cast his eyes wildly over the dirt floor, hoping to find a key, or a crowbar, or maybe one of those tin cups that prisoners dragged across the bars in prison films.

But there was nothing. No key, no crowbar. Not even a tin cup. Just...dirt.

Right, then, he told himself as he began to hyperventilate. This was it. He’d always wondered how he’d die...and now he knew. No massive cocaine overdose for him, no heart attack whilst romping in bed with a couple of curvaceous groupies.

No, instead he’d die of starvation, wasting away little by little, until one day they found his bones in a pathetic heap on the floor of this bloody Scottish dungeon.