No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [7]
Now she was bleached of all color and her eyelids were puffy. She blinked several times to hold back the tears. She looked at Matthew and tried to smile, then took the few steps across the porch onto the gravel to Joseph, and he held her motionless for a moment, then felt her body shake as she let the sobs wrench through her.
He did not try to stop her or find any comforting words. There was no reason that made any sense, and no answer to the pain. He tightened his arms around her, clinging as much to her as she was to him. She was nothing like Alys, not really, yet the softness of her hair, the way it curled, slightly choked the tears in his throat.
Matthew went in ahead of them. His footsteps faded along the wooden floor of the hall, and then they heard his voice murmuring something and Mrs. Appleton replying.
Judith sniffed hard and pulled back a little. She felt in Joseph’s pocket for his handkerchief. She took it out and blew her nose, then wiped her eyes, screwing up the linen and clenching it in her hand. She turned away and went inside also, talking to him without looking back.
“I don’t know what to do with myself. Isn’t it stupid?” She gulped. “I keep walking around from room to room, and going out again, then coming back—as if that would make it any different! I suppose we’ll have to tell people?”
Joseph went up the steps behind her.
“I sent Hannah a telegram, but that’s all,” she went on. “I don’t even remember what I said.” Inside she swiveled around to face him, ignoring Henry, the cream-haired retriever who came out of the sitting room at the sound of Joseph’s voice. “How do you tell people something like this? I can’t believe it’s real!”
“Not yet,” he agreed, bending to touch the dog as it pushed against his hand. He stood in the familiar hallway with its oak staircase curving upward, the light from the landing window catching the watercolors on the wall. “It’ll come. Tomorrow morning it will begin.” He could remember with sickening clarity the first time he had woken up after Eleanor’s death. There was an instant when everything was as it had always been, the whole year of their marriage. Then the truth had washed over him like ice, and something inside him had never been warm again.
There was a fleeting pity in Judith’s face, and he knew she was remembering also. He made an effort to force it away. She was twenty-three, almost an afterthought in the family. He should be protecting her, not thinking of himself.
“Don’t worry about telling people,” he said gently. “I’ll do that.” He knew how hard it was, almost like making the death itself happen over again each time. “There’ll be other things to do. Just ordinary housekeeping, for a start. Practical things.”
“Oh, yes.” She jerked her attention into focus. “Mrs. Appleton will deal with the cooking and the laundry, but I’ll tell Lettie to make up Hannah’s room. She’ll be here tomorrow. And I suppose there’s food to order. I’ve never done that! Mother always did.”
Judith was quite unlike either her mother or Hannah, both of whom loved their kitchens and the smells of cooking, clean linen, beeswax polish, lemon soap. For them, to run a house was an art. To Judith it was a distraction from the real business of living, although to be honest, she was not yet certain for herself what that would prove to be. But Joseph knew it was not domesticity. To their mother’s exasperation, she had turned down at least two perfectly good offers of marriage.
But this was not the time for such thoughts.
“Ask Mrs. Appleton,” Joseph told her. He steadied his voice with an effort. “We’ll have to go through the diaries and cancel any appointments.”
“Mother was going to judge the