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

Freddy was up and making a pot of tea when I reappeared in the kitchen, kicking the snow off my boots and trying to breathe some warmth back into my hands. He looked sleepy but nothing compared to how shattered I felt.

“Eggs for breakfast?” I asked only to smile as he nodded enthusiastically. Clearly there was no need to worry that the upset of the previous day’s events would have affected his appetite. “All right then, what sort? Fried, poached, scrambled or boiled? We’ve got a bit of bread left from yesterday for toast.”

Freddy thought for a moment. “Scrambled, I think.”

“Right, scrambled it is.” I cheerfully returned his grin and it almost seemed for a moment that we could forget the other silent presence in my home. My memories of the past day seemed so unlikely now that it felt as if I had simply experienced an exceptionally bad night with an exceptionally bad dream, and had it not been for the long absent figure from my past currently deeply asleep on my settee, I would not have been able to convince myself that any of it had really happened at all.

Freddy set the table and poured the tea while I juggled eggs and toast, which respectively tried to weld themselves to the pan or spontaneously combust. Finally, however, we were able to sit down and eat and, despite a certain hint of carbon, it was delicious. It was a relief to feel little warming tendrils of energy begin at long last to make their return to my weary limbs.

“Do you think I could have some of that?”

A faint voice from the fireside made us both jump. Feeling strangely guilty again, I looked over to see that Matthew had managed to shuffle himself up to be sitting propped against the arm of the settee. His face was deathly pale and with his dishevelled hair and the scruffs and scrapes on his skin he could still have convincingly passed as a vagrant, and not, as he actually was, a reasonably well-to-do local man. But although his cheeks were sunken and he looked very fragile under the scruffy fuzz of growth on his jaw, the eyes that were cautiously smiling at me from beneath the mask of pain and weariness were calm and disconcertingly familiar, and it was hard to believe now that he was the same person that had been found stumbling about in that blind manner across my land.

He gave me a warmer smile as I abandoned my breakfast to pour him a cup of tea, putting several spoonfuls of sugar in it to help him regain his strength. I was feeling an odd sensation that could best be described as cheerful uncertainty as I approached to hand him the cup and I was relieved to find that I was able to greet him quite easily after all; only to ruin the effect by flinching stupidly as his fingers accidentally pressed over mine. He blinked in surprise, but said nothing.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked, more sharply than I intended.

“Toast?” he said hopefully.

His quick grin was so easy and relaxed that the momentary tension evaporated abruptly, and I couldn’t help breaking into a smile myself as I dragged a table over to him and set a plate down by his side. It was a relief to have him so swiftly establish the tenor of our renewed acquaintance, and still more of a relief to see him reach eagerly for the toast. I had feared that his wounds allied with the extreme exhaustion would have brought on a fever but he seemed well enough, or at least not in any great danger.

He managed to eat most of the plain breakfast before grimacing suddenly and thrusting the plate rather quickly back onto the table. In an attempt to suppress the urge to fuss, I had been trying to concentrate on the remains of my own meal but I heard his pained sigh as he settled back against the arm once more, and I could not help watching as he tucked the blankets up under his chin to cover his bandaged chest in what was a very telling mark of vulnerability.

He unexpectedly looked up to catch me staring and I felt myself jump again, flushing as I quickly looked away. It was impossible to know what to say, particularly when I had to wrestle with an overwhelming impulse to gabble idiotic nothings at him, but he must have misunderstood my meaning because I heard him draw a little breath before saying rather hurriedly, “I’m sorry to put upon you like this. It’s very good of you to have taken me in.”

I did look up at him then, shyness instantly being replaced by a sort of offended irritation as I wondered exactly what else he would have expected me to do. My mouth curled into a brief impression of a smile.

“What actually has happened to you?”

It came out like an accusation and even I was appalled by my own lack of grace. My thoughts might well have been occupied by very little else for the past day but even so, I had still intended to start by asking him how he was feeling or by making one of the many other commonplace social niceties that might have done in the present situation. I certainly had never meant to fling his experience at him quite like this.

Equally certainly, he hadn’t been expecting it either. He glanced quickly from me to Freddy and the gentle grin that had appeared in response to mine darkened abruptly to that same unspeakable tension that was so unlike him.

“I … er …” he began and then stopped. I waited but he didn’t continue.

“Look, you don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” I said hastily as my embarrassment increased. “It doesn’t matter, but it might help if I understand a little of what’s been happening. Just a very little…?”

“Eleanor … I … I don’t think that I should…You…” He faltered.

My intense shame clouded to puzzlement then. The contractions of his mouth had already betrayed the pattern of his emotions from surprise through to discomfort and onwards, not entirely unreasonably, to impatience. But in this last awkward hesitation, I thought I saw another expression flicker briefly across his face. It was so swiftly suppressed that it barely registered, but just for a moment, only a brief fleeting instant, I thought I saw guilt.

I watched him run a hand over his face and it shook a little. He tried again, “It’s difficult. You’re…”

Then his eyes flicked up to catch mine, crucially, before dropping quickly away again.

“Oh,” I said with that odd note of sharpness back in my voice. It could not have been made plainer if he had tried. “Of course. You can’t tell me .”

He didn’t contradict me.

“Right,” I said in a strangled croak and ignored the pathetically appeasing smile he attempted.

It was a shock to be so emphatically rebuffed. I know that I had been half expecting something like this but somehow the wise thoughts of three o’clock in the morning were no consolation now that it was daylight and he very clearly had not lost his mind.

I turned abruptly away to crash the breakfast things into the sink, setting about scrubbing the dishes as if the boiling water from the pan on the stove could cleanse me of the strain of his unwelcome presence. After all the worry I had expended in the night on his behalf, I had thought that, at the very least, he would owe me a little basic honesty. But instead it appeared that I was to be roughly abandoned to the thin logic of my imagination, understanding nothing except the very bitter sting of his rejection. And knowing all the while that it ought to have been for me to shun him .

Apparently, however, this last little truth was not allowed to matter. Instead, infuriatingly trapped within a straitjacket of compassion, I could do little else but maintain an icy silence while the day passed into a blur of keeping him fed, keeping him warm, making him tea; providing, in fact, any one of the many little things that were essential to his ongoing comfort and recovery. He didn’t even seem to register the insult contained within his unthinking acceptance of my continued care.