Anne Perry - A Christmas Grace

“Be careful, ma’am,” a man’s voice said, so close she spun around, startled, as if he had threatened her.

He was almost ten feet away, a large man with blunt features and dark, troubled eyes. He smiled at her tentatively, no lightness in his expression.

“I’m sorry,” Emily apologized for her overreaction. “I hadn’t expected the wind to be so hard.”

“Sure, it’s going to get worse,” the man said gently, raising his voice only just enough to be heard. He looked up at the sky, narrowing his eyes.

“Are you looking for Mrs. Ross?” Emily asked him.

He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. “An’ I have no manners at all. I’m thinking because I know you’re Mrs. Ross’s niece, that you must know me too. I’m Fergal O’Bannion. I’ve come to walk Maggie home.” Again he looked at the sky, but this time westwards, towards the sea.

“Do you live far away?” She was disappointed. She liked Maggie and had hoped she lived close by and would be able to come to Susannah even in the worst of the winter. Otherwise Susannah would be very much alone, especially as her illness became worse.

“Over there.” Fergal pointed to what appeared to be little more than half a mile away.

“Oh.” Emily could think of no answer that made sense, so she merely smiled. “I’m just going to cut a few twigs. Please go in. I’m sure Mrs. O’Bannion is just about ready.”

He thanked her and went inside, and Emily went to look for bright, unblemished stems. She was puzzled. What could Fergal possibly be afraid of that he came to walk Maggie home for less than a mile? There was no imaginable danger. It must be something else—a village feud, perhaps?

She found the twigs and returned to the house five minutes later. Maggie was in the hallway putting her shawl on and Fergal was waiting by the door.

“Thank you,” Susannah said with a quick smile at Maggie.

Emily laid the twigs on the hall table.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” Maggie told them. “I’ll bring bread, and a few eggs.”

“If the weather holds,” Fergal qualified.

She shot him a sharp glance, and then bit her lip and turned to face Susannah. “Of course it’ll hold, at least enough for that. I won’t let you down,” she promised Susannah.

“Maggie—” Fergal began.

“’Course I won’t,” Maggie repeated, then smiled warningly at her husband. “Come on. Let’s be going, then. What are you waiting for?” She opened the front door and strode out into the wind. It caught her skirts, billowing them out and making her lose her balance very slightly. Fergal went after her, catching up in a couple of strides and putting his arm around her to steady her a moment before Maggie leaned into him.

Emily closed the front door. “Shall I get us a cup of tea?” she offered. She had missed her chance to take her letters to the post today. They would have to go tomorrow.

Fifteen minutes later they were sitting by the fire, tea tray on the low table between them.

Emily swallowed a mouthful of shortbread. “Why is Fergal so worried about the weather? It’s a bit blustery, but that’s all. I’ll walk with Maggie, if it’ll make her feel better.”

“It isn’t—” Susannah began, then stopped, looking down at her plate. “Storms can be bad here.”

“Enough to blow a sturdy woman off her feet in half a mile of roadway?” Emily said incredulously.

Susannah drew in her breath, then let it out without answering. Emily considered what it was she had been going to say, and why she had changed her mind. But Susannah evaded the subject all evening, and went to bed early.

“Good night,” she said to Emily, standing in the doorway with a faint smile. Her face was lined and bleak, the hollows around her eyes almost blue in the shadows, as if she were at the end of a very long road and had little strength left. There was no real reason why, but Emily had the impression that she was afraid.

“If you need me for anything, please call,” Emily offered quietly. “Even if it’s just to fetch something for you. I’m not a guest, I’m family.”

There were sudden tears in Susannah’s eyes. “Thank you,” she replied, turning away.

E mily slept well again, tired by the newness of her surroundings and the distress of realizing how very ill Susannah was. Father Tyndale had said that she was not going to live much longer, but that conveyed little of the real pain of dying. At only fifty she was far too young to waste away like this. She must have so much more yet to do, and to enjoy.

Emily got up too early to make breakfast for Susannah. She had no idea how long to wait. She made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen, listening to the wind buffeting the house, occasionally rising to a shrill whine around the edges of the roof.

She decided to explore. There did not seem to be any part of the house that was specifically private; no doors were locked. She wandered from the dining room to the library, where there were several hundred books. She looked at titles and picked randomly off the shelves. It did not take her long to realize that at least half of them had been Hugo Ross’s. His name was written on the flyleaves. They were on subjects Emily suspected Susannah might never have read without his influence: archaeology, exploration, animals of the sea, tides and currents, several histories of Ireland. There were also volumes on philosophy, and many of the great novels not only of England but also of Russia and France.

She began to regret that she would never meet the man who had collected these, and so clearly enjoyed them.

She looked on the mantelshelf, and the small semicircular table against the wall. There were cut-crystal candlesticks that might have been Susannah’s, and a meerschaum pipe that could only have been Hugo’s. It was left as if he had just put it down, not gone years ago.

There were other things, including a silver-framed photograph of a family group outside a low cottage, the Connemara hills behind them.

Emily went next into Hugo’s study. There were haunting seascapes on the walls and there was still pipe tobacco in the humidor, an incomplete list of colors on a slip of paper, as if a reminder for buying paints. Had Susannah deliberately left these things because she wanted to pretend that he would come back? Perhaps she had loved him enough that it was not death she was afraid of, but something quite different, something against which there was also no protection.

If Jack had died, would Emily have done the same—left memories of him in the house, as if his life were so woven into hers that it could not be torn out? She did not want to answer that. If it were, how could she bear losing him? If it were not, then what fullness of love had she missed?

She went back to the kitchen, made breakfast of boiled eggs and fingers of toast, and took Susannah’s upstairs for her. It was a fine day and the wind seemed to be easing. She decided to take her letters to the post office now. “I won’t be more than an hour,” she promised. “Can I bring you anything?”

Susannah thanked her but declined, and Emily set out along the road by the shore, which led a mile and a half or so to the village shop. The sky was almost clear and there was a strange, invigorating smell that she had not experienced before, a mixture of salt and aromatic plants of some kind. It was both bitter and pleasing. To her left the land seemed desolate all the way to the hills on the skyline, and yet there were always wind patterns in the grass and layers of color beneath the surface.

To her right the sea had a deep swell, the smooth backs of the waves heavy and hard, sending white-spumed tongues up the sand. There were headlands to either side, but directly out from the shore for as far as she could see there was only the restless water.