Anne Perry's Silent Nights_ Two Victorian Christmas Mysteries - Anne Perry [59]
“Yes?” she urged.
He was delighted to go on. “Flaherty’s daughter nearly drowned in the lake and young Conneeley rescued her. They fell in love. He jumped the water to the island and stabbed Flaherty’s eyes out.”
Emily winced.
He grinned. “And when the blind man then offered to shake his hand, the girl gave her lover a horse’s leg bone to offer instead of his hand, which shows she knew her father very well. Flaherty crushed it to powder with his grip. Conneeley killed him on the spot, and he and Flaherty’s daughter lived happily ever after—starting the whole new clan, which now peoples the neighborhood.”
“Really?” She had no idea if he was even remotely serious; then she saw the fire of emotion in his face and knew that, for all his lightness of telling, he was speaking of passions that were woven into the very meaning of his life. “I see,” she added, so that he would know she understood its validity.
“Padraic Yorke,” he said, holding out his thin, strong hand.
“Emily Radley,” she replied, taking it warmly.
“Oh, I know,” he nodded. “Indirectly you are part of our history here, because you are Susannah’s niece, and Susannah was Hugo Ross’s wife.” His voice dropped. “It hasn’t been the same since he died.”
She should have felt this was slightly imprisoning, but actually she was happy to be part of this enormous, wind-torn land, just for a season, and of its people who knew each other with such fierce intimacy.
Padraic Yorke started walking again, and she kept pace with him. He pointed out the various plants and grasses, naming them all, and telling her what would flower here in the spring, and what in the summer. He told her where the birds would nest, when their chicks would hatch and when they would fly. She listened not so much to the information, which she would never remember, but to the love of it in his voice.
It was a different world from London, but she began to see that it had a unique beauty, and perhaps if you loved a man deeply enough, and he loved you, then it could be a good land. Perhaps in Susannah’s place she would have come here too. Jack had asked nothing of her, no sacrifice at all, except the forfeit of a little of the social position gained from her first husband. She still had the money she had inherited from him in trust for their son.
Jack had asked for no change in her, no sacrifice, not even an accommodation of awkward relatives. She realized with a chill of dismay that she did not even know his parents, or any of the friends he had had before they met. It was always her family they turned to. The belonging was all hers.
For the first time in their years together, she recognized a loss, and she was not certain how deep it was. With her acknowledgement of it entered a fear she had not known before. There were things she needed to learn, bitter or sweet. The ignorance was no longer acceptable.
When Emily arrived back at the house and went into the drawing room, she found to her surprise that Susannah had visitors. A rather portly older woman, with a handsome face and hair as rich as polished mahogany, was sitting in one of the armchairs, and standing beside her was a man at least twenty years younger, but with a very similar cast of features, only in him they were even more becoming, and his eyes were a finer hazel brown.
Susannah was sitting opposite them, dressed in blue and with her hair coiled up elegantly. She looked very pale, but she appeared attentive and cheerful. Emily could only imagine what the effort must cost her. She introduced the visitors as Mrs. Flaherty and her son Brendan, explaining to them that Emily was her niece.
“Did you have a pleasant walk?” she asked. “Yes, thank you,” Emily replied, sitting in one of