Christmas At Pemberley: And the Bride Wore Prada. Katie Oliver

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.’

      ‘Colm—’

      ‘Are you pleased with yourself, Miss Thomas? Will you write a nice, lurid story about me to give to your editor back in London? Or did you give it to him when you met him at the pub on Friday night?’

      ‘No, of course I didn’t!’

      ‘Why didn’t you mention it, then? You didn’t go into Northton Grange for groceries – you were here the entire time, giving Tom all the dirt you dug up on me.’

      ‘My meeting with Tom had nothing to do with you.’ She looked at him beseechingly. ‘I only looked your name up because I wanted to understand.’ She felt her throat tighten and tried to clear it. ‘You wouldn’t tell me anything, Colm, and I had so many questions—’

      ‘Then why not ask me? Why go behind my back?’

      She opened her mouth to argue, to say that she’d only done it to protect herself, to protect her heart from being broken, that she was sorry she’d unearthed the sad tragedy of his wife and child’s death...

      ...but Colm, his face etched in contempt, had already turned on his heel, and left.

       Chapter 42

      ‘Well,’ Pen observed as she turned away from the window, ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Colm MacKenzie so angry.’

      Caitlin, standing next to her, raised her brow as the groundskeeper stormed off down the drive. ‘I wonder what Helen did? Whatever it was, it must’ve been pretty bad.’

      ‘I think,’ Wren ventured, ‘that the two of them are seeing each other.’

      ‘Colm and Helen?’ Lady Campbell enquired as she breezed into the drawing room and joined them at the window. ‘Oh, unquestionably! I don’t normally like to gossip,’ she went on, ‘but I was looking out my window the other morning when I saw Miss Thomas doing the walk of shame up the drive from the gatehouse.’

      ‘Really? And how do you know that’s what it was?’ Caitlin scoffed. ‘She often goes out walking.’

      ‘She had on the same clothes she wore the day before – jeans, and that hideous Christmas jumper.’ She sniffed. ‘I know, because she didn’t do up her coat. It was flapping behind her like a great quilted bird.’

      ‘Helen’s not the sort of woman who’s bothered about her clothes,’ Pen pointed out, and moved towards the door. ‘I admire her for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some correspondence to catch up with. I’m woefully behind.’

      ‘Does anyone still write letters?’ Caitlin wondered, mystified.

      ‘I do,’ her