Lorna Gray - In the Shadow of Winter - A gripping historical novel with murder, secrets and forbidden love

Then his expression clouded as if he knew he was wandering and, with an obvious effort, he bit off whatever else might have followed.

Freddy must have moved behind my shoulder because Matthew’s eyes suddenly snapped past me. He stared up at the boy for a moment, the heavily shadowed eyes widening in alarm before travelling jerkily back to my face. Then, with a blur of movement that was startlingly reminiscent of the precision I had seen out in the snow, he reached out and took a tight hold of my hand.

“Don’t tell them.” His voice rose anxiously as the draw on my arm forced me to bend awkwardly down towards him. “You won’t tell them about me, will you? Please?”

I shook my head, trying to discreetly prise my wrist free only to feel a cold stab of apprehension as he begged again, “ Please! ”

“I won’t, Matthew,” I said, not really knowing to what I was promising.

He gave me one long hard look and seemed to believe me. Releasing my hand, he blinked from me to Freddy and back to me again. Then, letting out his breath in a long gentle sigh, he slowly and with about as much grace as a bad actor playing a part, crumpled backwards onto the soft panels of the settee.

I stared down at his prone form for a moment before my brain clicked into gear.

“Right Freddy,” I said crisply. “Fetch my scissors, the medical kit – the horse one I mean, we’re going to need more than plasters – and some blankets. I’ll get some water on the boil.”

Freddy looked at me with big scared eyes. “Is he dead?” he whispered.

“No Freddy, he’s not,” I said firmly. “Now off you go, quickly please!”

When the boy had finished that little task, I would strategically send him on another lengthier errand, this time to the hay barn.

If I had been determined to protect Freddy from further shock and the subsequent bad dreams, I only wish I could have extended the same courtesy to myself. Patching up the various wounds that the horses have presented over the years may have trained me in all the practical skills, but nothing could have prepared me for the emotional horror of having to cut away his shirt and examine the twelve or so shotgun pellet wounds that had splattered across his upper arm and chest. None of them had gone deep, he must have been hit at the very edge of the gun’s range, but blood still oozed sickeningly from the wounds as I carefully eased the pellets free.

Blessedly, he was still unconscious as I dressed the wounds with iodine solution and gauze; it seemed to take forever to strap it all firmly into place with the thick rolls of bandage when I had to deal with the leaden weight of his body on my own. But then at long last it was finished and I could place bandages, wounds and everything safely out of sight under the great stack of blankets which would slowly but surely bring him back to vital warmth, and pause a while to gather my thoughts.

Many hours later though, and after all that bustle and urgency it was suddenly feeling very much like I was being given rather too much time in which to think. Freddy had been fed and dispatched off to bed long ago and with the wind outside picking up little gusts of ice and sending them in a distant rattle against the glass, I was actually for the first time in my life finding the house slightly eerie. The rhythmic hiss and creak of the door beneath the stairs made it sound like I was catching the stealthy betrayal of someone’s passing footsteps and with very little else to do now but sit and wait, I found myself wishing very fervently that the back room was not so draughty and my imagination not quite so alive.

Like our water supply, this little corner of the Cotswolds had never been connected to mains electricity either, so the room was merely lit by the inky amber of an oil lamp and the formerly companionable glow of the hearth. This scene was not unique to my household; on the assumption that others were keeping the same late hours, and hopefully for considerably more ordinary reasons than mine, their homes too must be chasing away the shadows with mild lamp light. Across the country, main roads and railways were closed by impossibly deep drifts and after a month when only a few coal trains had managed to reach the power stations, urban homes and even the factories that had managed to labour for years under the most fearsome bombardment had no choice now but to at long last fall silent. Here was another reminder that the weather had the power to do what the war had not.

Admittedly, I could not exactly claim this particular shortage for myself or my little rural farmstead, having never had any electric heaters, refrigerators or lighting to worry about. But at this precise moment the background hum from a little domestic machinery might well have made all the difference to the windblown whispers which were presently stalking me across the room.

Matthew’s head moved on the arm of the settee and I tensed, thinking that he was awake, but his eyes remained closed. His sleep must have been punctuated by nightmares because every once in a while his breathing would jerk and catch in his throat, and occasionally I caught the low murmur of words uttered in an agitated undertone, but he said nothing I could make any sense of. I put the back of my hand lightly to his forehead; it was warm but not alarmingly hot.

I sat back in my chair and settled to watch as he slept. It was strange to find myself so unexpectedly maintaining this late night vigil over a man I had not seen for years, and who now lay restlessly sleeping on my settee. Earlier, my confusion had fixed itself upon flimsy theories of wandering too far in deteriorating weather, but it was impossible to continue this pretence, especially when I remembered that even in a whiteout Matthew would have known these fields and byways as well as I did, if not better.

He stirred again, uneasily. The features of his face were being drawn into sharp relief by the sooty smear of light from the lamp behind me and beneath the tangle of sandy hair which had been thick with dirt and burrs, I could see scratches on his cheek that were days old. His chest was marked by a darkening smudge of fresh bruises and earlier, while I had been dressing his shoulder, I had noted that there were scars too, a jagged series of lines running lightly across his ribs, whitened with age, which must have been from the war.

I shivered suddenly in spite of the fierce heat from the nearby fire and, tucking my legs up under myself, I turned my head aside to fix instead upon the shredded remains of clothing which were laid out on the hearth beside me. Most would be burnt as soon as they were dry enough and only his boots and trousers had been cleaned and hung out with more care. Torn and battered though they were, I suspected he would be too tall for my father’s old clothes and with no hope of getting more from elsewhere, I could not possibly discard them.

His breathing changed and I did not need to see the eyelashes flutter on his cheek to know that he was awake. Silently, I slipped across to the fireside hotplate where I had set some broth to warm and, tipping some into a bowl, I slowly turned back to face him once more. His eyes were glinting in the firelight, following me as I carefully drifted closer. Although they ought to have been a dark hazel with flecks of deeper brown, under the light fever of exhaustion they were paler, almost amber.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. He didn’t answer and just lay there, staring at me.

“Come on, let’s get some of this into you,” I said brightly and, firmly ignoring the foolishness that tried to make me clumsy, knelt by the settee before helping him to spoon some of the warming liquid into his mouth.

For a little while he gulped it down hungrily but then, unexpectedly and with surprising force, he pushed my hand away as if the thin meal suddenly disgusted him. He must have noticed my flinch because he quickly apologised.