A Christmas Grace Read online

  She wanted to laugh, and be furious, and she was embarrassed because she had taken a wild risk in marrying Jack Radley. He had had no money at all, and she had had a great deal, but even more than that, he flirted outrageously, and made his way by being such an entertaining guest at other people’s house parties that he hardly ever had to pay towards the roof over his head. But he was fun, he was kind, and when things were hard and dangerous, he was brave. The best qualities within himself he had discovered after they were married.

  But she had accepted him without having to dare her father’s wrath, or lose a penny of her own money inherited as a widow. Would she have had the courage to marry Jack even if it had not been so easy? She hoped so, but she had not had to prove it. Compared with Susannah she was shallow, and yet she had passed judgment so easily.

  “It’s very good of you to be here, over Christmas especially,” Daniel interrupted her thoughts. “Your husband will miss you.”

  “I hope so,” she said with an intensity of feeling that surprised her. Would Jack be missing her? He had been very quick to insist that she go. She tried to recall the last few weeks before that letter from Thomas had arrived. How close had she and Jack been, beyond the courtesy of habit? He was always agreeable. But then he was to everyone. And as she had just reminded herself, it was she who had the money. Or more correctly, it was her son Edward—George’s son, not Jack’s. Ashworth Hall, and all that went with it, was her inheritance only through him.

  Was Jack missing her? Or might he perhaps be enjoying himself accepting the sympathy, and the hospitality, of half the women in London who found him nearly as attractive as Emily did?

  She became unpleasantly aware that Daniel was watching her, studying her face as if he could read her emotions in it. She had given herself away with “I hope so.”

  “He will be looking after my children,” she said a little abruptly. Then she wished she had said “our children.” “Mine” sounded proprietorial, defensive. But to go back and correct it would make her sound even more vulnerable.

  “Very good of you,” he repeated. “Has Susannah children? She does not speak of them, and there are no pictures.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “So there is only you?”

  “Not at all!” That sounded awful, as if she had abandoned Susannah all those years. “My mother is traveling in Europe and my sister is unwell.”

  “She is an invalid?”

  “Not at all. She is very healthy indeed, she simply has a touch of bronchitis.”

  “So she will miss the Christmas parties too.”

  “She does not go to parties very much. She is married to a policeman—of high rank.” She did not know why she added that last bit. Pitt had been quite lowly when Charlotte had married him. She too had married for love, not caring much what anyone else thought. And looking back, Emily missed the days when she and Charlotte had played a part in some of Pitt’s most difficult cases. Since he had been in Special Branch, such help had been rarely possible. Balls, theater, dinners were all fun, but lacking in depth after a while, a superficial world, full of wit and glamour, but no passion.

  “I’ve hurt you,” Daniel said with contrition. “I’m sorry. You have been so kind to me I wished to know you better. I think I asked insensitive questions. Please forgive me.”

  “Not at all,” Emily lied, needing immediately to deny that he had struck any truths. She had no unhappiness, and he mustn’t think she had. She looked at him to make sure he understood. He was smiling, but she could not read what lay behind his eyes. She was left thinking that he had understood her far better than she wished.

  With a sudden and very painful clarity she remembered what Father Tyndale had said about Connor Riordan asking questions, exposing the vulnerable so it could no longer be lied about or ignored. Whose dreams had he stripped so unbearably? Had he even known he was doing it? Was it now happening again, beginning with her?

  Should she pursue it? Dare she? The alternative might be worse: cowardice that would allow the village to die. She would have to bend her mind very seriously to detecting, not merely skirt around the edges, beginning fears and doubts, and completing nothing. She could awaken even uglier things than were stirring. Once begun, it would be morally impossible to stop before all the truth was laid bare. Was she ready for that? Was she even competent to do such a thing, let alone deal with the results?

  She would very much rather not tell Susannah—she had more than enough distress to deal with—and yet Emily could not succeed without her help. She realized as she said that to herself that she had already made up her mind. Failure might be a tragedy, but not to attempt it was defeat.

  Emily did not get the opportunity to speak to Susannah alone until afternoon teatime when Daniel had gone back to sleep, still aching from his deep bruises and finding himself overcome by tiredness, and perhaps as much by grief. She had given little thought to the loneliness he must be feeling, the loss to which he could put no names or faces, only a consuming void.

  Emily and Susannah sat by the fire with tea and scones, butter, jam, and cream. Emily missed the bright flames of a coal or log fire, but she was growing used to the earthy smell of peat.

  She told Susannah of the morning at church, and then of her walk back with Daniel, the questions he had asked and how his probing had disturbed her thoughts, making her realize what Father Tyndale had meant of Connor Riordan.

  Susannah sat still for a long time without replying, her face bleak and troubled.

  “Is that not what you wanted me here for really?” Emily asked gently, leaning forward a little. She disliked being quite so blunt, but she had no idea how long they had in which to pursue this.

  “Actually I wrote to Charlotte,” Susannah said apologetically. “But that was before Thomas told me that you actually helped him quite a lot as well, in the beginning. I’m sorry. That’s ungracious, but we have no time left for polite evasions.”

  “No,” Emily agreed. “I need your help. Are you wishing to give it? If not, let us agree that we do nothing.”

  Susannah winced. “Do nothing. That sounds so…weak, so dishonest.”

  “Or discreet?” Emily suggested.

  “In this case that is a euphemism for cowardly,” Susannah told her.

  “What are you afraid of? That it will have been someone you like?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isn’t knowing it’s one person better than suspecting everybody?”

  Susannah was very pale, even in the glow of the candlelight. “Unless it is someone I care for especially.”

  “Like Father Tyndale?”

  “It couldn’t be him,” Susannah said instantly.

  “Or someone Hugo cared for?” Emily added. “Or protected?”

  Susannah smiled. “You think I am afraid it was him, to protect the village from Connor’s probing eyes.”

  “Aren’t you?” Emily hated saying it, but once the question was asked, evasion was as powerful as an answer.

  “You didn’t know Hugo,” Susannah said softly, and her voice was filled with tenderness. It was as if the years since his death vanished away and he had only just gone out of the door for a walk, not forever. “It’s not my fear you are speaking about, my dear, it is your own.”

  Emily was incredulous. “My own? It doesn’t matter to me who killed Connor Riordan, except as it affects you.”

  “Not your fear of that,” Susannah corrected. “Your doubts about Jack, wondering if he loves you, if he’s missing you as much as you hope. Perhaps a little realization that you don’t know him as well as he knows you.”

  Emily was stunned. Those thoughts had barely even risen to a conscious level of her mind, and yet here was Susannah speaking them aloud, and the denial that rose to her lips would be pointless. “What makes you think that?” she said huskily.

  Susannah’s expression was very gentle. “The way you speak of him. You love him, but there is so much of which you know nothing. He is a young
man, barely forty, and yet you have not met his parents, and if he has brothers and sisters, you say nothing of them, and it seems, neither does he. You share what he does now, in Parliament and in society, but what do you know or share of who he was before you met, and what has made him who he is?”

  Suddenly Emily had the feeling that she was on the edge of a precipice, and losing her balance. This was the night of the Duchess’s dinner. Was Jack there? Who was he sitting beside? Did he miss her?

  Susannah touched her softly, just with the tips of her fingers. “It is probably of little importance. It does not mean it is anything ugly, but the fact that you do not know suggests that it frightens you. I don’t believe it is that you don’t care. If you love him, all that he is matters to you.”

  “He never speaks of it,” Emily said quietly. “So I do not ask. I made my family serve for both of us.” She looked up at Susannah. “You love Hugo’s people, don’t you? This village, this wild country, the shore, even the sea.”

  “Yes,” Susannah answered. “At first I found it hard, and strange, but I became used to it, and then as its beauty wove itself into my life, I began to love it. Now I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else. And not just because Hugo lived and died here, but for itself. The people have been good to me. They have allowed me to become one of them and belong. I don’t want to leave them with this unresolved, whatever the answer is. I don’t want to go with it unfinished.”

  “Then help me, and I will do anything I can to find the answer,” Emily promised.

  Emily started to think about it seriously that evening, but she was too tired after so much missed sleep with the storm, and it was the following morning before she felt her mind was clear enough to be sensible.

  She went for a brisk walk, this time not towards the village but in the opposite direction, along the shore and around where the rock pools were, and the wind rustling in the grass.

  After seven years the questions of means and opportunity to kill Connor Riordan would be difficult, or even impossible to answer. The only clues would lie in motive. Whose secrets could Connor Riordan have known that were dangerous enough, and painful enough for him to be killed? Had he known anyone in the village before he was washed up that night?

  When Maggie O’Bannion came to clear out the fires, and do some of the other heavy jobs, such as the bed linen, Emily decided to help her, partly because she felt uncomfortable doing nothing, but actually more to give her the chance to speak naturally with Maggie as they worked together.

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Radley, I can do it myself for sure,” Maggie protested at first, but when Emily insisted she was happy enough. Emily did not tell her how long it was since she had done any housework of her own, although Maggie might have guessed from her clumsiness to begin with.

  “Daniel seems to be recovering,” Emily remarked as they put the towels into the big copper boiler in the laundry room, and added the soap. “Although it’s taking time.”

  “’Course it is, poor boy,” Maggie agreed, smiling when she saw Emily’s surprise that it was bought soap, not homemade.

  Emily blushed. “I can remember making it,” she said, although Maggie had made no remark.

  “Mr. Ross always did things very nicely,” Maggie replied. “Went to Galway once a fortnight at least, and got the best things for her, right up until he died.”

  “He wasn’t ill?” Emily asked.

  “No. All of a sudden, it was. Heart attack, out there on the hillside. Died where he’d have wanted to. And a better man you’ll never meet.”

  “His family is from around here?” Now Emily was sweeping the floor with the broom, a job she could hardly mishandle. Maggie was busy mixing ingredients to make more furniture polish. It smelled of lavender, and something else, sharper and extremely pleasant.

  “Oh, yes,” Maggie said enthusiastically. “A cousin of Humanity Dick Martin, he was.”

  “Humanity Dick?” Emily was amused, but had no idea who she was talking about. A local hero, presumably.

  “King of Connemara, they called him,” Maggie said with a smile, her shoulders a little straighter. “Spent his whole life saving animals from cruelty. Over in London, most of the time.”

  “Are they worse to animals in London than here?” Emily tried to keep the offense out of her voice.

  “Not at all. He was a Member of Parliament, and that’s where they change the laws.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” She made a mental note to ask Jack if he had heard of Humanity Dick. But now she must bring the conversation back to the thing she needed to know. “Daniel still hasn’t any memory yet.” She felt as if she were being ungraciously obvious, but she could think of no subtler way of approaching it. “Do you suppose the ship was making for Galway? Where would it have come from?”

  “You’re thinking we should see what we can do to help him,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “Thing is, it could have been anywhere: Sligo, Donegal, or even farther than that.”

  “Does his accent tell you nothing?” Emily asked. “I don’t know in Ireland, but at home I might have an idea. I would at least know Lancashire from Northumberland.”

  “And would that help you, then?” Maggie said with interest. “I heard England was a very big place, with millions of people.”

  Emily sighed. “Yes, of course you’re right. It wouldn’t help much. But Ireland has far fewer, hasn’t it?” That was only a polite question. She knew the answer.

  “Yes, but it’s different being a seaman. They pick up expressions from all over the place, and accents too, sometimes. I’m not good at it. I can hear he’s not from this bit of coast, but it doesn’t even have to be north that he’s from, does it? It could be anywhere. Cork, or Killarny, or even Dublin.”

  Emily bent and brushed up the dirt into a dustpan, not that there was much. It was a gesture rather than a real task. “No, you are right. He could be from anywhere. Were most of the people in the village born here?”

  “Just about all. Mr. Yorke comes from Galway, I think, but I daresay his family are from one of the villages closer. His roots are deep. If you want to know the history, he’s the man to ask. It’s not just the tales he can tell you, but the meanings behind them.” She smiled a little ruefully. “All the old feuds between the Flahertys and the Conneeleys, the good works of the Rosses and the Martins—and the bad too—and the love stories and the fights going back to the days of the Kings of Ireland in the time before history.”

  “Really? Then I must see if he will tell me.” Emily accepted the idea, although it was not the ancient past she was seeking. Again she tried to bring the conversation back to the present. “The Flahertys seem interesting. What was Seamus Flaherty like? I gather Brendan takes after him a lot?”

  Maggie avoided her eyes and started to watch what she was doing with great care. “Oh, I suppose so,” she said casually, but there was a tension in her voice. “In a superficial sort of way. He certainly looks like him. Same eyes, same way of walking, as if he owned the world, but was happy for you to have a share in it.”

  Emily smiled. “Did you like him?” she asked.

  Maggie was silent, her back stiff, her hands moving more slowly.

  “Seamus, I mean,” Emily clarified.

  “Oh, well enough, I suppose.” Maggie started to move briskly again. “As long as you didn’t take him too seriously, he was fine enough.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, you couldn’t trust him,” Maggie elaborated. “Charm the birds out of the sky, he could, and make you laugh till you couldn’t get your breath. But half of what he said was nonsense. Got the moon in his eyes, that one. And drank most men under the table.”

  “An eye for the women?” Emily asked bluntly.

  Maggie blushed. “Oh, for sure. That was one thing you could rely on. That, and a fistfight.”

  Emily did not need to ask if Mrs. Flaherty had loved him; she had seen it in her face. Behind the overprotection of her son, the slight distance she placed between herself a
nd others, there was a deep vulnerability. Now its explanation was easy to see.

  But Emily also heard in Maggie’s voice a tenderness, a self-consciousness that betrayed her too, not for the father, but for the son. Was that also a defense of one of their own, a man too easily misunderstood by an English stranger? Or was it more than that?

  She bent her attention to helping complete the household tasks. Maggie did the ironing, quite a skilled work when the two flatirons had to be heated alternately on the stove, and used at a narrow range of temperatures, not so hot so it scorched the linen, nor too cool to press out the creases.

  Emily peeled and sliced vegetables and set them in cold water until Maggie was ready to make the stew.

  In the afternoon Emily walked along the shore to the shop. They needed more tea, sugar, and a few other things. The air was fresh and crisp, but with no sting of ice in it, as there would have been in London. It was still westerly off the ocean, and the salt and kelp were in every breath. The sky was clouded far out to sea, but overhead it was clear blue with only a few thunderclouds towering in bright drifts, moving slowly, dazzling white.

  The shore itself was uneven, sand obliterating some of the old grass and flower-strewn stretches, dunes moved from one place to another as if she had mistaken where they had been. Here and there were tangles of weed, some kelp torn up from the deep beds and left dark and untidy on the sand. She could not help seeing the jagged ends of wood poking out of them, splinters of the ship that had gone down, as if the sea could not digest it but had cast it back. It was a kind of monument to human daring, and grief.

  It was when she stopped to stare at one of the larger pieces, pale, raw ends of wood jutting up through the black tangle of weed, that she became aware of Padraic Yorke standing a little behind her. She turned and looked into his eyes, and saw a reflection of the same overwhelming sadness that she felt, and of the fear that the power and beauty of the sea gives rise to when one lives through all its moods.