An Anne Perry Christmas_ Two Holiday Novels - Anne Perry [73]
Why had she chosen the quieter, far less dynamic Nathaniel? That was something Henry felt he would never understand. But then what man ever really understands the choices of women?
He walked rapidly westward along the way Judah had gone on the night of his death. Apparently it was the easiest way from the house to the site of the Viking hoard, and he had not yet seen it. The air was crisp and sweet, and he saw wild birds wheeling in the sky and only a little higher on the slopes of the hills, the dark forms of deer grazing. A winter-coated hare loped across the snow only twenty yards away. He thought how infinitely more beautiful this was than the dripping, smoke-darkened streets of London, or of any other city.
He crossed the stream over the narrow stone bridge, balancing with great care, although there was not actually ice on it, as he was much relieved to find.
Then instead of going toward the church, he turned upstream and followed the path where it had led along the bank, and then climbed away. There was a small wooden notice indicating that he was almost there.
He saw it as soon as he breasted the rise, its remaining walls etched dark against the snow. Behind it a lone man stood staring across the wind-rippled water, which was blue and silver and gray. He knew who it was before his footsteps crunching on the snow made him turn: Ashton Gower, bare-headed, his black hair and fierce eyes making him look as if he belonged to the landscape, even to the period when this shrine had been built. It gave Henry an odd feeling of intrusion, as if he were trying to alter history to make his own people belong in someone else's heritage.
He dismissed it with irritation. It was a trick of the light and his imagination. “Good morning, Mr. Gower,” he said politely. He considered saying something agreeable about the view, or even the possibility of more snow blowing up from beyond Helvellyn, and changed his mind. It would make him sound as if he were nervous. He did not mean it, and they both knew that.
Gower swept his arm wide. “Like it?” he asked. “I'd welcome you to my land, but the law has taken it from me. You can come here any time you want, if the Dreghorns say you can. I can come here only to the point open to the public. But I refuse to pay!”
“Has anyone asked you to?” Henry inquired, standing beside him and looking at the water, the mountains, and the sky, wild, wind-ragged, ever-shifting patterns of light and shadow.
“Not yet,” Gower replied. “Even Dreghorn hadn't the nerve to do that. He knew he was wrong, you know? He couldn't look me in the eye. More grace than his brothers.” His mouth twisted. “Or more guilt!”
“I've known Judah Dreghorn for twenty years,” Henry told him levelly, controlling his temper with difficulty. “Apart from what I know, there's no one else who has an ill word to say of him. I also know what they say of you, Mr. Gower, and it is far less flattering. I assume you are claiming that the expert in forgery was lying as well? Why? Are you so hated here that men will perjure their souls to see you punished for something you did not do? Why? What have you done to earn that?”
Gower shivered, hunching his shoulders as if the wind were suddenly blowing off ice. “The deeds I got from my father's safe were genuine,” he said, facing Henry directly. “I can't prove that, but they were. The land was his. Wilbur Colgrave might have been in love with my mother, but no Colgrave yielded his land for anyone. The reason he didn't claim it was that he had no right to. That whole story of an affair was a slander. But who can prove that now?” There was pain in his voice, deep and angry, but so real Henry could feel it tear inside him also. Perhaps it was for his mother's reputation as much as for himself. Henry would find it unbearable were such a thing suggested of his mother.
How much can pain justify? Did Colgrave have to have revealed that very private detail? Could he