In the Shadow of Winter: A gripping historical novel with murder, secrets and forbidden love. Lorna Gray
Читать онлайн книгу.
other day I might have rejoiced at the sudden shift in the weather which had abruptly given us back some warmth but the budding pleasure of a clean frost and the hope of a brighter day to follow felt presently as far removed as the stars themselves. There might as well have been a forecast of more snow.
Suddenly Beechnut stiffened and threw up her head to look out onto the yard. My mind really could not take any more dramas and, apprehension increasing by the moment, I went with her to peer over the stable door into the silent shadows. I could see nothing. But then she uttered a strange throaty noise and stamped about her box with an agitation that could only mean one thing. A man.
Wary of calling out in case it was some other person I slipped soundlessly out of the stable and, keeping out of the blue light of the waning moon, I tiptoed closer to where I thought he might be. I could see no one but I had not heard anything bar the familiar tramp of heavy feet and subsequent bang of the kitchen door as Freddy finished shutting in the chickens so whoever it was must be still out here. I wondered whether I dared risk calling his name.
“Who is he?”
The low whisper came right behind my ear. I gave a squeak and whipped round, colliding with him in the process.
“Matthew!” I cried in exasperated relief, cuffing his arm, adding; “Ooh, sorry,” as he winced in pain at my blow. His rough unshaven jaw was making him look very much the outlaw as amusement glinted down at me out of the darkness.
“Did I scare you?”
“At least I no longer need to worry whether you’re still alive. Whether my heart is still beating is another matter.”
He very gently took my wrist between finger and thumb in a mock test for a pulse. “Well, it’s still going, but you might want to get it looked at. It’s running a touch fast.”
I glowered at him although I suspect my look was lost on him. “Do that again and I’ll shoot you myself,” I hissed, not entirely jokingly.
“Sorry.” He tried to sound contrite. “I couldn’t resist. So go on then, who is he?” A longer pause. “Your son?”
I had to laugh, in spite of myself. “Have a heart. He’s not my son, he’s fourteen!”
Slipping back into the shadows of my stables and taking an armful of hay from the barrow, I moved slowly along the row, nodding in acknowledgement as Matthew stepped aside to let me past. “I know he doesn't seem it but he really is almost grown up. His aunt lives in the village; he was sent there from the city in the usual rush to get the children out, you know how it was. He used to drift up from the village to watch the horses and I let him help with the mucking out occasionally. But then Dad died and he started coming up to help me properly; he just seemed to spend more and more time here. Goodness, sorry.” This as a mistimed thrust over a stable door dusted him liberally in blades of fractured hay. “Eventually it simply seemed easier to ask him to stay and I needed the help, so it worked out well for me.”
Matthew was listening silently, his head turned away into shadow. The only sign of life he gave was the brief movement of a hand when it brushed the dried grass from his sleeve.
Laying a hand on the soft velvet of the nose belonging to the occupant of the last stable, I went on to describe how the quiet and underfed boy had grown up to be the cheery Freddy that had just gone inside, although admittedly he still looked half-starved however much I fed him. It hardly needed to be said that Freddy was just not the sort to flourish at school; he was of an age to leave and the work with the horses suited him, for now at least; and my quiet little farm must have been a sort of haven for him after what must have been a turbulent upbringing. I had never known for sure but I was reasonably confident that he had been beaten regularly at home and, at any rate, no one cared enough to come and claim him, so here he stayed. And, I admitted, I cared very much that he did.
Matthew didn’t say anything in response to that so after a few moments of awkwardness that left me wondering what he must be thinking, I finished meekly; “I’d better just go and say goodnight to Beechnut.”
He waited for me to reappear before walking back with me towards the house. “Why does she do that?”
Beechnut was stamping around her box once more. I let him open the gate. “Oh, that’s quite restrained. She normally tries to break the door down when there is a man on the yard. You should feel honoured.” I felt his curious glance; “She was bred to be a hunter, one of John’s young projects but she took a bad fall and it knocked her confidence.”
“And that caused the behaviour I saw just now?”
“Oh no, it was the rather less than sensitive training methods employed by John’s head groom in an effort to get her jumping again. I believe she very nearly killed him. Some horses have a flight instinct, some have a fight instinct; hers proved to be very strongly on the side of fight. At that point they were going to have her shot, but I inherited a little bit of money from Dad and so I bought her. She’s a very talented girl and I thought I might as well give her a chance to come good. She doesn’t jump any more, but that suits me perfectly.”
There was another silence but then, as he followed the path to the door, I heard him say in a tone of private thoughtfulness, “I’ve been getting you all wrong, haven’t I? In fact, I think I’m finally beginning to understand you better – it’s been very odd feeling like I ought to know you and yet finding that I don’t actually know you at all…You’re a kind of earthly St Jude really, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“You just seem to go about collecting all these tragic little lost souls and nursing them back to health again, myself included.”
“You count yourself as a lost cause, do you?” I said with an uncertain smile.
“Why yes, without a doubt. Freddy, Beechnut … me. But what about you? You collect all these wounded people and animals, and focus all your energy on their needs without seeming to spend much time thinking about yourself.” He stopped in the shadow of the kitchen door. “What exactly do you get out of this?”
I looked up at him, feeling extraordinarily unsettled. I found myself on the defensive feeling oddly like I had done something wrong, but without quite knowing what it was.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said stiffly.
“Do you not?” he asked. “You do a very convincing act of being all hard and detached, and I almost believed it. But it’s not true, not true at all. You expend all this energy helping everyone else and it really is very commendable … but do you ever stop to think of the consequences for you?”
“So who exactly should I turf out first? Freddy or the horse? And by whose criteria? Yours? Because you can’t even bring yourself to admit a few basic truths.”
I still couldn’t see his face and I shook my head in disdain and pushed past him into the welcoming light of the kitchen. It seemed incredible to believe that yet again he had made a rare effort at communication only for me to find that this time we had strayed into a painful critique of my character. I was beginning to suspect he was doing it deliberately, and I did not like it.
“Eleanor,” he called helplessly after me. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
I ignored him.
I did after all have enough ingredients left to make a meal in the form of a vegetable stew that had spent the past two hours bubbling gently on the hotplate by the fire and a much overlooked can of whale meat now thrown in, literally. I could not help angrily crashing about with the pots; it was easier than talking.
We ate our dinner in silence. Freddy kept looking from one to the other in anxious bewilderment and I wished that I could lighten the oppressive mood, but I was too tired and too wary of starting yet another conversation that would only end in disagreement. Casting little furtive glances at Matthew now that he couldn’t hide away in the shadows, I realised that he looked absolutely shattered. Clearly his afternoon adventures had taken it out of him. He