In the Shadow of Winter

by Lorna Gray

  The chair creaked as he stood up and then quiet footfalls recorded his progress around the table until they came to a stop somewhere behind. There was a pause while I fiddled about with a glass but then, in the silence that followed, I heard him give a little sigh.

  He spoke with concentrated patience. “Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?”

  Defeated, I set the glass down somewhere quite without thought and turned to face him. Nothing could have made me brave enough to meet his eyes so instead I fixed my gaze feebly on a spot on the floor. Putting my hands behind me on the counter for its meagre support, I steeled myself to meet the final stage of a terrible evening.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said weakly.

  “Oh, come on.” His voice was rough and exasperated and I looked at him then. I think my heart broke, he looked so remote. I looked down to the floor again.

  “I thought you were protecting Freddy just now but you weren’t, were you? Don’t shut me out. Not this time, please. You keep doing this – and I think it is high time you started being honest with me.”

  I still couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I heard another suppressed intake of breath and then, “Right. Let me help you get started. Did Langton do that?”

  Instinctively, my hand flashed across to cover the bruise. I had removed my bracelet earlier and the marks were clear against my icy skin. I said stupidly, unthinkingly, “No, of course not. You did. Out in the snow. When I found you.”

  No reply. Then, abruptly, in the wake of an even more formidable silence, the words burst out in a helpless rush. “I didn’t want to it to happen like that. You have to believe me. It’s not what it looked like, it really isn’t! Please don’t be angry. He was being strange so I got him to dance with Sophie Green – I used to catch the bus to school with her, and…oh, that doesn’t matter – only John upset her and then I spoke to the Inspector and then we came home only he was drunk, and he was angry and ranting about his father and … and other things. Then when we got back he kissed me. He kissed me, I didn’t kiss him, I really didn’t. I didn’t want to. So I told him about the horse to make him stop and then I … No, please don’t say you don’t believe me! If you’ll just listen, I …”

  He made an impatient gesture that silenced me and jerked my attention up to his face. His eyes were black. “You’re not listening to me. I know what I saw.”

  I waited for the words that would finish me.

  They came in a voice that was held low and steady in spite of the wearied undertone of long suppressed impatience, “My dear, I very nearly marched out there and hit him. In fact I should have done, and if you had stayed in that car with him for a second longer, I most certainly would have, hunted-man be damned.” A grimace. “Believe me, I was halfway through the door as it was, and only the knowledge of what it would cost you if I exposed what you’ve done for me held my temper in check even that much.”

  His words had fixed my eyes upon his face only I couldn’t quite grasp his meaning. His eyes were still dark and he was frowning a little in that controlled unreadable way of his and I bit my lip, feeling every kind of misery as he gazed at me steadily, seemingly waiting for me to make a reply.

  Then, suddenly, his expression transformed and he gave a very exasperated reproof of “Eleanor!” and took a sharp step towards me.

  Looking back, I think he had intended to enfold me in his arms. But there must have been some caution still lurking at the back of his mind of the uncertainty of his right and so instead he froze, his hand hovering in mid-air somewhere near my cheek and his eyes watchful in softly delivered enquiry.

  There was a brief numbing moment of stupidity as I stared at him blankly. But then, gradually, my tired mind stumbled back into life and I began to make some sense of the words he had spoken.

  Oh.

  He gave a gentle smile then and very slowly as if he was afraid the moment might break and I might flinch away from him, he lifted his hand. His touch lightly grazed my cheek.

  “You thought I wouldn’t believe you?” I couldn’t have moved even if I had wanted to and I stared up at him, breath and heartbeat stilled to silence as his fingers caught at a strand of hair to delicately lift it aside. Seemingly concentrated on this little act of tidiness, he lightly said, “My darling girl … really?”

  I think I managed a faint shake of my head and my heart rushed to piece itself back together again as he stepped a little closer. Then his gaze touched upon my lips and if my pulse had stopped before now it raced with terrifying urgency as he tentatively and very gently leaned a little nearer.

  After a very long time he pulled away. His hand was warm against my cheek and his eyes were smiling down at me. Feeling suddenly very giddy indeed, I found a wobbly little smile of my own, and with a brief close of his eyes he stepped in again, gathered me into his arms and kissed me.

  Chapter 25

  I woke to the soft gloom of a night heading towards dawn, wrapped tightly in my blankets and with the memory of his arms holding me close still lingering on my skin. The interval between then and now seemed to have passed in a brief dreamless blur and yet I was sure that I hadn’t imagined that last teasing smile as he deposited me at the foot of the stairs. Or, only a short time later, that I had found myself being sweetly but cryptically reminded that there were things that needed to be said, and that now was not the time, and then dispatched firmly up the stairs to my bed, alone. And that being so, I was a little surprised when I opened my eyes to find him there.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in a hazy glow of warm confusion. He was fully dressed and standing beyond my little bedside table, and the sudden unexpected change of the lamp being lit must have been what had woken me.

  At my words he turned to me and he looked almost unearthly with the thin inky amber of the oil lamp touching his hair and the side of his face to healthy colour, and casting a pale shadow beneath his jaw.

  “Good morning sleepy,” he said, and the brief appearance of a smile brought a rush of warmth to my cheeks that had its origins somewhere down near my toes. “I hate to talk business so early in the day but can you explain how you came by this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said dreamily, showing that I really hadn’t yet registered the decidedly formal air of this invasion into my room. But then I saw that he held a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, angled so that he could see it better by the sooty ball of light on the table and, giving myself a shake, I tried to assume a more workmanlike air. “Where did you find it?”

  He smiled at my tone, undoing all my hard work in an instant. “I took the liberty of coming in with a cup of tea for you and tripped over a little pile of clothes – we really are going to have to talk about tidiness, you know – then this fell out. Where did you get it?”

  Reluctantly I sat up, tucking the blankets carefully around me for modesty and for warmth, and blinked at him blearily before finally my brain decided to come to life. Cursing my carelessness, I saw that the pile of clothes by his feet were the same ones I had been wearing that night when we had fled from Simon’s gun, and which I had left in a soggy heap ever since.

  “I guess that must be the paper from Jamie’s barn. A design for a door or something, isn’t it? I still had it in my hand when we were hiding so I stuffed it into my waistband. What of it?”

  He stepped around the little table then and, handing me the paper, sat down quietly beside me on the edge of the bed. His arm was resting behind me in easy comfort as he shared my examination of the document and unlike me, he was clearly far too preoccupied to notice the sudden intensity that this previously unexplored level of closeness inspired. I took a calming breath and, with a very great effort and a certain amount of suppressed disappointment, finally managed to force my mind to focus.

  The paper was still rather damp and what looked like faded watercolour had run badly to blur the lines that sketched lazily across its surface into barely intelligible disorder.

  “How odd,”
I said, trying to make it out. “Is it some kind of artist’s impression?” I made to hand it to him but he pushed it back.

  “If I say ‘tiger, tiger, burning bright’; what does that mean to you?”

  “A poem,” I said vaguely, still attempting to match the sweep and curve of the lines to any kind of doorframe I had seen. “Byron, no that’s not it. Blake?”

  “Got it in two, my dear … In what distant deeps or skies; Burnt the fire of thine eyes?”

  “Is that what this is? A poem?”

  I peered doubtfully at the stained paper in my hand. I was being very slow on the uptake, but in my defence I had just woken from what had turned into the strangest night of my life so far to find myself suddenly being expected to rise to intelligent thought.

  “Not quite, no.” He was smiling at me, I knew, but then his thumb moved against my back and for a moment my brain switched off again. Eventually however, light dawned;

  “Is this one of Blake’s illustrations?” I could see it now, a bizarre drawing of a sweeping frame of open curtains – the doorway of my imagination – and a faded figure striding away between them like some kind of monstrous character from a disturbed dream complete with protruding tongue and a murderer’s eye. There may once have even been a shower of yellow stars rushing to greet the ugly form but the ford had ruined its detail. The style of the creator’s hand was unmistakable however, and it was very clearly not just a replica.

  “The Ghost of a Flea.” His tone was very dry. “No, not the original. That’s a painting and housed in the Tate, or at least it was when I last saw it. This must be a preparatory sketch of some sort.”

  “But that’s impossible! How could Jamie afford a William Blake drawing, even a minor one? They’ve got to be worth a fortune!”

  Matthew smiled and, proving he was not as unaware as I had thought, lightly touched his lips to my shoulder before saying, “Definitely worth a penny or two, I should say.”

  I gaped at him, finally understanding what he had been hinting at all this time. “Freddy’s treasure! Oh my!” I covered my mouth to smother a giddy laugh. Managing to sound calmer, I added, “Good Lord. And there’s a whole box of them too.”

  “Was,” he corrected. “They’ve moved it now.” Then he quoted very softly, “The flea. Inhabited by the condemned souls of bloodthirsty men …”

  Something flicked through my mind and I touched my hand to his in sudden eagerness. “Hang on a minute; this reminds me of something …”

  I quickly told him of the newspaper article I had seen. “I don’t remember any mention of a looted Blake drawing though…But it did say something about the collection including etchings. I suppose this could be described as a print …? I don’t know anything about them; you don’t think—?”

  Matthew nodded slowly. “It is all too much of a coincidence wouldn’t you say? Though whether Lord and Lady Anonymous of Lansdown Place, Cheltenham will be pleased to have this one back is another thing. Not exactly in mint condition any more is it, thanks to its brief encounter with the ford.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, with feeling. “Do you think our Boss character was trying to sell the painting that got found in the auction house? John said …”

  I stopped. I really didn’t want to talk about him, I realised.

  “Go on, what did John say?” He caught my glance. “I don’t know why, but I feel so at peace with the world today that I can even bear to talk about him. I couldn’t possibly explain how that could be. Can you?”

  I returned his grin shyly and indulged in a little happy lean into his side as his arm tightened. Finally however, he released me and allowed me to collect my thoughts.

  “Well…” I began dazedly, drawing a fresh grin, “All he said was that you would have to be stupid to sell something like that locally to where you stole it from.”

  “Though it pains me to admit it, he’s actually right on that one.”

  A thoughtful silence followed this admission. And all the while, the ghoulish figure leered back over its shoulder from the page, mocking us.

  Beside me, I saw Matthew give a faint grimace, his mouth tightening at one corner in sudden seriousness; “This is all very interesting isn’t it, though I’m not entirely convinced that it gives us much more information about our villains.”

  He frowned again only to follow it with a deliberately brighter tone as he added, “But at least it gives me plenty to tell the Inspector; and hopefully swings the evidence a little more firmly in my favour …”

  “So you really are going then?” I asked, trying to hide the quick quiver of fear at the risk he was taking.

  He nodded and gently took the valuable ruins of the paper from my hands to place it on the cabinet. “Got to face the music some time.”

  He settled back against the pillows with a sigh. There was a brief moment of awkwardness while I smiled shyly down at him but then, in a deliciously natural assumption of right, he simply reached out a hand and dragged me down beside him.

  I found my cheek being happily crushed against his warm shoulder as he wrapped his arms around me and the heavy folds of my blankets. His comfortable ease with our newfound closeness felt wonderful, I could have stayed there for hours but then, with a bit of a shuffle, he twisted onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow to gaze down at me. His hand sent little shivers running up and down my spine where it touched the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “I will go soon. But first of all …”

  He took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine as they lay across my stomach. A corner of his mouth gave a little twitch; “First of all, when you—” The words faded. He was toying a little with my fingers where they rested under his and oddly, I seemed to suddenly lose him to his thoughts. His eyes were downcast and he appeared to be turning something over in his mind, adjusting his thoughts just as his fingers rearranged mine. Then his hand stilled.

  When he continued, it seemed to me that he had taken a slightly different tack. “Last night, when you told me how you got these marks, I thought that was it; I had just handed you one last insurmountable bit of proof that I shouldn’t be trusted. Only somehow, for some unfathomable reason, it seems that you decided to talk to me after all and seeing as you have, I must tell you that I absolutely refuse to let you go again. For better or for worse you can rely on me this time…” The impossibly dark eyes lifted abruptly to mine. “Presuming, that is, that you still want to?”

  I didn’t entirely understand his meaning and he seemed suddenly so uncharacte‌ristically unsure of himself that for a moment I was robbed of speech. Finally however, I found my voice. “I do, I do want you,” I said, giving him a silly smile.

  There. It was done. I had admitted it. And the ludicrous thing was, after all that fear and wretched distance, it had barely been terrifying at all.

  Chapter 26

  On days like these I was profoundly happy for the necessary routine of the horses. Beechnut was willing and I was determined and, oblivious to the gusting breeze that was bringing in more heavy cloud, we ambled along the streaming road trailing our steady company of ponies. A raven gave its usual greeting of a croaking bark and I watched as it flew away hopefully searching along a tree-line.

  The morning’s chores had whistled by in a haze of warm recollection and ignored foreboding until, having finally exhausted these tasks and still desperate for any distraction, I had been forced to resort to heartlessly chivvying Freddy into coming out on a ride with me. I couldn’t bear to sit at home simply meekly waiting until my car reappeared … or not, and even milking the goat had been unfortunately brief. The poor thing’s routine had been so extraordinarily disrupted in the past week that judging by the drastically reduced yield delivered into my pail, there was every likelihood that she was drying up.

  “Will he come back to live with us after he’s finished with the police?” Freddy’s voice suddenly broke in from somewhere behind.

  I smiled to myself. I had necessarily explained th
e reason for Matthew’s dawn departure but the depth of our late-night rediscovery of intimacy was a secret I had yet to share. “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “After all this is over he might prefer to spend some time on his own.”

  “I don’t think he will,” Freddy said rather firmly. “He likes it with us, he told me so.”

  His words made me smile once more in spite of the persistent shadow of tension and when the raven called again as I flung open the uppermost gate on the road up the hill from Washbrook, it appeared to almost be trying to confirm his view that everything was going to be all right.

  “He can always have my room, you know.” Freddy’s voice drifted up the hill once more as we climbed towards the village.

  I twisted in the saddle and grinned back at him. “But where would you sleep, eh? And what about all your things? I doubt very much that he’ll be quite so keen when he sees what squalor you call a bedroom.”

  “I could tidy up; we could share,” he repeated stoically. “Or we could build a new room or something – he is an archee … um, a designer after all.” I laughed and he persevered doggedly, “If he wants to stay, will you let him? Please? I’m sure he’ll be quiet and not cause any trouble.”

  “He’s not a pet, Freddy,” I said, laughing. “You sound like you’re asking for a new kitten … But yes,” I added, quickly pre-empting his protest, “If he wants to live with us, of course he can. I couldn’t think of anything better. And no, I don’t think you’ll have to share. I suspect I can find a more suitable arrangement.”

  “Really?” Freddy’s tone brightened enormously, but then, clearly thinking deeply about the practicalities, he added, “But where? He can’t live on the settee and he won’t want to share your room, yours is worse than mine.”

  “It isn’t!”

  Freddy sniggered from the safety of his distance behind me. “If you say so.”

  “Good morning.”

  The voice most likely to wipe the smile from my face interrupted our happy little bantering and I twisted jerkily in the saddle towards it. I hadn’t noticed that we had entered the village but as I gave a startled turn, I recognised the wide expanse of the driveway to the Manor as it swept away from the road to our left; and beyond, through the dense scrub of dormant shrubs on the level ground before the front door, I could just make out the red and green livery of the horsebox, with John standing nearby.