A Christmas Wedding Wager (32 page)

But what if he wanted the girl from the past? Had thought he was marrying that girl? A person she could never be? She wanted to know. She needed to know.

Emma folded the yellowing pages up small, stuffed them into her reticule. 'I have to go back.

I have to go to the feast. There is little point in living the past, Father.'

The hall that had been empty before now teemed with people. Emma filled her lungs with air.

She would go in now and brave them, brave Jack. It would have been easy to stay where she was, but she was determined to fight. Emma felt her father's hand on her shoulder. 'You will be fine, daughter.'

'I have every expectation of being so.' Emma kept her head up. She was pleased that she had decided to wear the rose silk. Her beaded reticule went well with it.

'Emma, I see you have returned.' Jack came up, perfection in his evening clothes. His eyes glittered dangerously.

'As I said before, I planned this feast. I could hardly let the people down.' She tightened her grip on the reticule's handle.

He raked his hand through his hair. 'Emma, we need to speak. But not here, not now. There are too many people.'

'I agree.' Her voice was tight. Emma concentrated on a point over his left shoulder. 'My father and I will be having Christmas lunch. Perhaps you will consider joining us? Unless your business takes you elsewhere.'

There was no change to Jack's face. If anything it became colder. A wall of ice. Emma knew in that instant she had lost him--if she had ever had him.

'I regret that I will be leaving tomorrow. The train leaves for London quite early.'

Emma smiled, but inside her she knew a large piece of her was bleeding. He was leaving.

Without her. 'How good of you to inform me of your movements. I shall look forward to your return.'

'Emma, I have said this badly.' He held out his hands. 'There has been no time to talk. I didn't think about your Christmas dinner.'

'It is fine.' Emma ignored the tightness in her throat. Her father was wrong. Jack didn't care for her. He was going to leave. 'If you will excuse me, there are people I need to greet. It would not do to let the company down.'

'We need to speak, Emma, but here is not the time or place.'

'Later, Jack. When you can fit me into your schedule. I understand completely about the demands of business.' Emma turned her shoulder and concentrated on greeting the employees and accepting their good wishes, keeping her head high and her smile bright, drawing on all her social skills. When she glanced back, Jack's eyes had become stone. He moved away from her, leaving a wide, cold chasm between them.

She scanned the crowd and stopped.

'Why is Dr Milburn here?' she asked her father, who had come to stand beside her.

'Dr Milburn?' Her father looked towards where she was pointing. 'He is the company doctor.

He always gets an invitation.'

'But I thought...'

'You thought what?'

Emma shook her head. 'It is not important.'

Her father obviously did not know about Dr Milburn's treachery. As Jack still had the piece of paper, there was little she could do. She had to concentrate on what was happening.

'If you say so, Emma.' Her father gave a bemused smile. 'I have lost months with being sick.

There are people I need to see--get everything set up for when work begins again in the New Year.'

'The New Year? But I thought Jack ran the company now.'

'He has other things he wants to do. Places he needs to be.'

Emma gave an unhappy nod. He was leaving. He simply had not found a way to tell her yet. It was what she had feared. They had married, and now she was going to be abandoned. Hadn't he said that he moved around too much for a wife?

'Be happy, daughter. Tonight is Christmas Eve.' Her father laid a hand on her shoulder.

'Come, your quarrel will be soon forgotten. Join in with the carolling and the feasting.'

Emma tried to smile. The carols all sounded hollow to her ears. There was no merriment here for her. She could see Jack up by the tree, surrounded by people.

'You had better get ready. The children are expecting Old Christmas to give them their presents.'

'I had forgotten that. Where are the robes?'

'They are out in the back room, I believe. Shall I fetch them for you?' Anything to get away from Jack. She couldn't bear another scene. Not now.

'Very well daughter, if you insist.' Her father held out his cup. 'Wassail, daughter, wassail.'

'Ah, Miss Emma.' Mrs Mudge came up, blocking her path. 'I wanted to say how pleased Mudge is with his bonus. Your father has been generous--very generous indeed this Christmastime.'

'It will be my husband who has been,' Emma said with a polite smile as her insides twisted.

'He owns the company now.'

'That's right.' A frown appeared in Mrs Mudge's face. 'He bought it from your father--cash.

That is why your father has given all the employees a bonus. A pretty penny he paid for it too, I heard. Your father stays on to oversee the project along with Mudge, as Mr Stanton is required elsewhere, and once it is done there are many more projects for Mudge to work on--

branch lines to be built, stations. All the jobs are safe. Better than anyone could hope for.

Mudge tells me everything, he does.'

'But I thought...I thought...' Emma looked up at where Jack stood, surrounded by men. He had done far more for the employees' security than she could ever have hoped for. And he had allowed her father his dignity. She swallowed. Hard. But he was going away...without her. Where to this time? Back to Brazil? Or somewhere else exotic? She didn't know. All she knew was that he had no desire to take her with him.

'If you will forgive me, I see Mrs Newcomb,' said Mrs Mudge. 'Yoo-hoo, Mary! You will never guess what has just happened.'

Cash. Money. Jack had purchased the company. Harrison and Lowe was not her dowry. All the things she had said, all her accusations. All false. A thousand questions sprang to her mind. Jack's broad back was towards her and he appeared in deep conversation with some of the men. She would not give in to impulse and demand an answer. She would have to wait.

Patience.

Later she would find out the truth. She'd use the time it took to get the Old Christmas green robes and crown to regain control of her emotions.

All the way to the small room her heart pounded. She had been wrong, but she could do something about it. She could apologise, work to put things right. Ask to begin again.

The corridor was empty, and Emma's shoes sounded loudly against the tiled floor. She opened the door to the small room and her heart sank. The robes and the holly crown had obviously been moved from the wardrobe. A single holly leaf remained in the bottom. Her journey had been in vain. She needed to get back to the others. It was too quiet here, too remote. She wanted to find Jack and apologise. She had to do that.

'Well, well, well, who do I find here? Mrs Stanton, you should not be on your own. You never know what sort of folk might be about, particularly on Christmas Eve.'

Dr Milburn's cold voice made shivers run down her spine.

'I was looking for the Old Christmas robes for my father.' Emma resisted the urge to barge past the doctor and run. She was safe now. She had married Jack. She forced herself to gaze at the pale eyes and smile brightly. 'Do you know where they have gone?'

'Me? Why should I know where such things are?' The doctor gave an elaborate shrug.

'Well, then, I had best be going. I dare say someone has moved them.' Her laugh sounded brittle to her ears, and she tried to ignore the growing pit of nerves in her stomach. She willed the doctor to move.

'I dare say.' Dr Milburn remained where he stood, blocking her path.

Emma clung onto her temper. She had no desire to fight with Dr Milburn, no desire for a scene. 'Please let me pass. I am expected.'

'I am sorry, I can't let you do that.' Dr Milburn advanced towards her and put a cloth over her face. 'One way and another, Miss Harrison, you have been a terrible burden to me.'

Emma struggled against the sickly sweet smell that invaded her senses, but the doctor's grip was too strong and she found the world going black. She tore at his jacket and her fingers closed around a button, ripping it off. She dropped it and her reticule, sent them flying under the wardrobe.

The last sound she heard was a great cheer as Old Christmas appeared.

'Where is Emma?' Jack asked Edward Harrison.

Harrison took another sip of punch. 'She was around here a few moments ago. I saw her before I started to give out the gifts. She was supposed to find my robes, but in the end, Mrs Newcomb found them for me. I have no idea what she is up to. Emma used to be so reliable.'

A cold fist closed around Jack's insides. Something had happened to her, despite all his precautions. He turned to his young employee. 'Davy, have you seen Mrs Stanton lately?

Have you noticed anything amiss?'

'Not since before you sent me to check the experiments, sir,' came the answer. Davy fingered his pile of books. 'The thaw's progressing right fine. There was a light bobbing about in the keep, but that was all.'

'Did you investigate?'

'No, I was too busy thinking about the monster German Christmas tree.' Davy hung his head.

'But that was earlier,' Harrison said. 'The light will have nothing to do with Emma.'

'I am sure you are right.' Jack felt the small box in his breast pocket. He had wanted to give it to Emma when the others were around, so there could be no refusal. And now Emma had disappeared.

The crowd merged and parted, laughing and happy, showing off the various geese, twelfth cakes and presents they had received. A merry, pleasant scene--but something was wrong.

His instinct told him just as surely as he had known the design for the bridge was off. Emma would never have left on her own.

'Where is Milburn?' Jack asked, looking around at the thinning crowd. 'I saw his oily face before.'

'Dr Milburn was called out on an urgent call ages ago. He gave his regrets to me,' Harrison said. 'He always enjoys the Goose Feast, you know.'

'Before or after Emma went for the robes?'

'Before, I think. That's right. He left just before, because Emma remarked on how strange it was for him to be here. Is it important?'

'It might be.'

'I trust Dr Milburn implicitly.' Harrison rose up on the balls of his feet. 'He has never done anything to harm me.'

Jack pressed his lips together. He should have denounced Milburn when he'd had the chance, but he had wanted to give the doctor an opportunity to reveal himself. He had wanted the doctor to explain why.

'Where were those robes kept?' he asked, focusing on the details. If he got the details right, where Emma was would become clear. He should have done things differently. He should never have let this quarrel go on.

'Mrs Newcomb can show you,' Harrison said, gesturing to the overly plump woman. 'She was the one who found them for me. She knows where they were stored.'

'Take me there now.'

Emma's eyelids were like lead. She forced them open. The ground against her cheek was hard, cold stone. Her mouth tasted as if it had been stuffed with cotton rags. She moaned slightly and moved her head, trying to get a better idea of where she was.

'Ah, good, you are awake,' Dr Milburn said, holding up a single lantern. 'I had worried that I might have given you too much.'

'Too much?' Emma struggled to sit up. Her hands were securely fastened behind her back.

'Too much chloroform. I doubted if you would come with me willingly. But sometimes, if the patient has had too much, the patient does not recover, and I rather thought that would be regrettable with you.'

Emma squinted in the light. Dr Milburn's features swam in front of her, barely discernible in the faint light. She wondered that she had ever thought him a kindly man. He looked pinched, and his face bore the certain sign of madness.

'Where am I?' she asked.

'That would be telling. But you are in no danger, Miss Emma.' The doctor rocked back and forth.

'Are you planning on killing me?' She forced the words from her mouth.

'Killing you? You mistake me, my dear.' The doctor leant in, so close that she could see the beads of sweat forming on his brow. 'You are still useful to my plans. You have a while to live yet.'

Emma turned her face away, unable to suppress a shudder. A while longer to live. There were so many things she needed to do, things she needed to explain.

'Where am I?'

'That is for me to know and for those searching for you to discover.' Dr Milburn put his fingertips together. 'And there is no use struggling, my dear. I made sure the knots were good and tight. You'd need a knife to cut them. And, alas for you, this room is bare.'

'You are insane!' Emma stared at him in astonishment. His lips were drawn back, baring his teeth.

'No. Determined. I am going to get what is rightfully mine.'

The distant pealing of bells sounded. St Nicholas's. It was at least eleven o'clock at night. She cocked her head. If she concentrated, she could hear the river. The walls of her prison were grey stone. She had to be in the keep, near the building site, but she doubted anyone would look for her here.

'There's no sign of her,' Mudge reported back, shaking his head. 'We have searched and searched, but Miss Harrison...Mrs Stanton...has vanished completely.'

Jack paced the small room. She had to be somewhere. People did not just go. And Emma would not have left without a word. She was far too responsible.

'Search again.'

'Begging your pardon, but where? It is getting late, like.'

'I've found something.' Mrs Mudge knelt down and pulled out a beaded reticule and a brass button. 'The button looks like one from the doctor's jacket. I remarked on them brass buttons to Mudge, I did.'

'Emma was definitely here, in this room. That's my daughter's reticule.' Harrison put his face in his hands and wept. 'She would never voluntarily leave it anywhere.'