Anne Perry - A Christmas Secret

They walked in silence for several yards. Crows wheeled up in the sky, cawing harshly, then circled back into the lower branches again.

“I was going to speak to the Reverend Wynter,” she said at last. “I wanted to make a confession, but…”

“I think he knew that,” Dominic said for her, still holding her arm. “Let’s turn back, or we will have too far to go. All the earth is God’s house. You do not have to speak in a church for it to be a sacred trust.”

“No, no, I suppose not. I kept doing little things wrong, you see, to find out if he would forgive them, before I…before I told him the real thing.”

He walked a few moments, perhaps thirty or forty yards along the path, and then he prompted her again. “Was it you who took the pennies from the collection for the poor?”

She drew in her breath with a little cry. “It was only pennies! I made it up, always! I gave extra…”

He put his other hand over her arm, holding her more tightly. “That doesn’t matter. The books were never short. I know that. But you wanted to speak to him, and never quite found the resolve.” He did not use the word courage. “Perhaps now would be a good time?”

She gulped again. “I…I committed a…a terrible sin when I was young. I’m so ashamed, and it can never be undone. I wanted to confess, but…but I…he was such a good man, I was afraid he would despise me…”

“Then tell me, Mrs. Towers. I am not so very good. I understand very well what it feels like to sin, and to repent.”

“I do repent, I do!”

“Then cast it on the Lord, and be free of it.”

“But I must pay!”

“I think that is not for you to decide. What is it you did that is so heavy for you to bear?”

“I had a love affair,” she whispered. “Oh, I did love him. You see, I am not Mrs. Towers. I never married. And…and…” Again she could not find the words.

He guessed. “You had a child?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She took a few more steps. “I only saw her for a few moments, then they took her away from me. She was so beautiful.” The tears were flowing down her face now. In moments the wind would freeze them on her cold skin. She must have been nearly seventy, and yet the memory was as sharp as yesterday.

He ached to do anything that would take away the pain. Could the compassion in his own heart speak for God? Surely God had to be better, greater than he was?

“Is that all?” he asked her.

“Is that not enough?” she said incredulously.

“Yes. And the penance you have already paid is enough also. More than enough. God forgave you long ago. And the Reverend Wynter would tell you that, were he here.”

“I wish I’d had the courage to tell him,” she said, swallowing hard.

“Did he not guess?” he asked.

“Oh, no. He knew I wished to say something, but he did not know what it was.” She sounded certain.

“He knew many people’s secrets,” he went on. They were now almost back to the far side of the village green. “Do you not think perhaps the father could have told him?”

“Oh, no, indeed not. The father…never knew. It would have been quite impossible for him to marry me. There was no purpose in my telling him about it. I simply went away. It is what girls do, you know.”

“Yes, yes. I do know.” He did not say any more. It was an age-old story of love and pain and sometimes betrayal, sometimes simple tragedy. It had happened untold times, and would happen again. Had it been here in this village?

Whoever the father was, she had protected him all these years. She would not betray him now, and it was not part of her penance that she should.

Dominic was still holding her arm, and he gripped it a little more tightly as they stepped into the rutted road, icy where wheels had pressed it down, deep between ridges.

“Thank you for speaking to me,” he said sincerely. “Please don’t think of it any further, except with love, or grief, but never again with guilt.”

She nodded, unable even to attempt words.

He left her at her door and turned to walk back toward the vicarage. He was quite certain that he had said to her exactly what the Reverend Wynter would have, and his admiration for the old man’s wisdom and compassion grew even greater.

How would Dominic follow in his footsteps and guide and comfort the people of this village—be strong for them, judge wisely, know the hearts and not merely the words?

He would be here for Christmas—that much he was certain of. What could he say that was passionate and honest and caught the glory of what Christmas was truly about? It was God’s greatest gift to the world, but how could he make them see that? There would be Yule logs and carols and bells, mulled wine, gifts, decorated trees, lights across the snow. They were the outer marks of joy. How could he make just as visible the inward ones?

He wanted Clarice to be proud of him; he wanted it with a hunger close to starvation. He must give her the gift she most wanted, too—finding the best in himself for both of them.

O f course he said nothing to her of what Sybil Towers had told him, and he found that a hardship. He would have liked her advice, but he never considered breaking the trust.

Instead, over luncheon, Clarice told him that Mrs. Wellbeloved had been in that morning, bringing yet more onions and another rock-hard cabbage, which with a strong wrist and a sharp knife she would be able to slice. Mrs. Wellbeloved was full of gossip about the poor vicar’s death, and the fact that John Boscombe had had a terrible quarrel with him shortly before. The village was buzzing with the news, but no one had the faintest idea what the argument had been about.

“His marriage, or lack of it, I should think,” Dominic replied. Since it was Clarice who had discovered it, that was not a confidence between the two of them. “Poor man.”

“You sympathize with him?” Clarice said in surprise.

“Don’t you?”

“I do with Genevieve, if she didn’t know. Very little if she did,” Clarice responded.

He smiled. “If I had been married unhappily, and met you, I might have done the same.”

“Oh.” She did not know whether to smile or disapprove. She tried both, with singular lack of success.

He saw the conflict in her face and laughed.

“And you think I would have lived with you anyway,” she said hotly. She took a deep breath and speared a carrot with her fork. “You’re probably right.”

He smiled more widely, with a little flutter of warmth inside him, but he was wise enough not to answer.

At almost two o’clock he set out to go up to the manor. There were one or two favors he wished to ask Peter Connaught with regard to villagers he knew were in need, but more than that he wondered if perhaps Peter’s father could have been Sybil Towers’s lover. If the Reverend Wynter had known that, was it a secret worth killing him for? Did it even matter now, so many years afterward? It would be a scandal, and Peter was inordinately proud of his family and its heritage of honor and care in the village. It was not his fault, of course, but the stain would touch him. Was he protective enough of his father’s name to have killed to keep it safe?

What if Sybil’s daughter were known to him? She was illegitimate and had no possible claim in law, even if her heritage could be proved—which it probably could not. But in a small community like Cottisham, proof was irrelevant; reputation was all.

The weather had deteriorated. The wind was rising. Clouds piled high in the west, darkening the sky and promising heavy falls of snow that night.