A Christmas Escape (4 page)

“We can do it bit by bit…”

“For what? We don't need an apple house. Be reasonable. The orchard is gone! At least you agreed we had to sell that!”

She seemed to choke on her words. “I know that! But why tear down a perfectly good storehouse just because we don't have the apples?”

“We're not going to tear it down.” Now his patience was clearly exhausted and it was as if he were speaking to someone mentally simple. “We are going to sell it, Isla. Whoever buys it can do as they wish. It is not our concern.”

She was close to weeping. The unshed tears were thick in her voice.

“It's my house, Walker. My parents and grandparents are buried in the local chapel. I was born there. My…my only baby is buried there. You can't sell it!” The sob broke through all the barriers of her attempt at restraint.

Charles felt a deep, painful ache of pity for her. There was nothing whatever he could do to help. If she had inherited the property of which they were speaking, then at her marriage it automatically would have become her husband's. The law would say Bailey could do with it what he pleased. No act of law since then could change it back retroactively.

He stood frozen to the spot. There was gravel under his feet. If he moved, it would rattle and he would be heard.

“Isla,” Bailey said more calmly, “pull yourself together. We have already agreed on it. We must move to a smaller place, preferably one nearer London…”

“It would cost more,” she protested.

“It's not to save money!” The exasperation was audible in his tone, and in the little sigh as he drew in his breath. “We have plenty of money. It's just too big, too old, and too far out of the way.”

“My friends are there!” she pleaded.

“You have friends all over the place. You'll make more. You always do. God knows why, with some of them. What on earth makes you defend a pompous, self-important fraud like Quinn?”

“You don't know he's a fraud!” she said angrily. “You just hate him because he wrote a brilliant book and everyone admires him for it.”

“Of course he's a fraud.” Now the deep derision was unmistakable and ugly. “He no more understands the passions and the laughter, the hunger for life in that character of his than…than bloody Bretherton does!”

Isla was silent.

Charles strained his ears unabashedly eavesdropping, but he could hear nothing.

Then there was a sharp slam of a door and the sound of Isla weeping quietly.

Charles wished there were something—anything—he could do to comfort her. But what was there to say? That he had overheard the whole conversation, and her husband was a brute? No one could stop the man from selling her home, even if she didn't want to. He wondered why Bailey didn't seem affected by the fact that their child was buried there. Presumably it had been his child also, but he had not carried it, given birth to it, or nursed it as she had. Perhaps the loss meant little to him. Or was that why he wanted to leave, no matter what it did to her?

Charles doubted that. Had Bailey felt any kind of grief, surely he would have been gentler with her.

And what was at the root of his loathing of Quinn? Just jealousy of a man who had spectacularly succeeded?

Charles could not help. The only service he could offer would be to keep secret that he had heard anything.

When could he move without rattling stones and letting her know there had been someone there? Not knowing who it was might be even worse for her.

He heard footsteps approaching from the other way: a heavy tread. The next moment there was a voice: certainly not Bailey returning. It was a moment before he recognized it was Bretherton's.

“I'm so sorry,” Isla said clearly. “Dust in my eyes.” She made a mighty effort to compose herself and sound normal.

“I suppose it's partly ash,” Bretherton replied. “There must be centuries' worth of it around here.”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed. “I keep thinking that one day I'll walk up there and look. It's quite a long way.”

“You mustn't go alone,” he warned her gently. “If you slipped and hurt yourself, it could be ages before anyone found you. Please promise that you won't do that!”

She gave a rough little laugh, as if it hurt. “I promise you, Colonel, I won't. Maybe I'll go up one day when Mr. Finbar does.”

“That would be a good idea.” He did not offer to take her himself.

Charles wondered how long they had known each other. Was it before this trip to Stromboli? She called him “colonel” even in what they assumed to be complete privacy. There was a shyness in her voice but a warmth also. She liked Bretherton. Or perhaps she simply liked anyone who spoke to her kindly.

There were a few moments of silence; then Bretherton spoke again.

“Are you sure there is nothing I can do to help?”

She took a deep breath. “There's nothing anyone can do,” she said softly. “But thank you for asking. It…it's kind of you.”

As Bretherton started to move, Charles left as quietly as he could, hoping his footsteps were masked by the sound of the other man's.

Back in his room, he collected a light jacket and put on his stronger boots, suitable for climbing on the harsh ash and boulder-strewn paths up toward the summit of the mountain.

He enjoyed stretching his legs and walking in the open. For the first half mile or so the path climbed only very slightly; then he felt it in the back of his legs as it became steeper. He was surrounded by tall, dry grasses of many sorts, grown from seeds long ripened and blown away by the wind. There were no flowers—it was far too late in the year—but he could see the husks of old seed heads, shells of where there had been flowers. There were also, in places, low scrub bushes that might well be green in the spring but were now dry and only faintly aromatic.

He stopped for a few moments, giving himself a rest, and time to turn slowly and look at the view. To one side of him the cone of Stromboli rose into the unbroken blue of the sky, almost symmetrical, at least from this point. It would be a stiff climb, but perhaps another day he would do it. It would be good for him to pit himself against it.

But what if he failed? What if a miserable creature like Bailey could do it, and he couldn't?

Why should that bother him? Wasn't he used enough to failure to take it in his stride? He ought to be. What had he ever succeeded at? His elder brother had died a hero in the Crimea. His sister was possibly even braver; she had gone out there as a nurse, voluntarily. No one had made her go. In fact, several people had tried to stop her. Not that trying to stop Hester had ever gained anyone a victory.

She had fulfilled her dreams, even magnified them. And no one had arranged a suitable marriage for her! The idea made him smile, perhaps a little ruefully. She had married the man she loved—a highly unsuitable man he had seemed at the time—but she was truly happy.

Charles had stayed at home and done what he could to help his parents, without any success at all. That was almost too painful even to think of, and yet he did, even knowing how it would hurt.

It had been one of those wretched tricks guileless men believe, a plea by a returned soldier asking for help for his business. He had invoked Charles's elder brother's name and told some story of being with him the day before the battle in which he died. Charles should have paid more attention. And if he had been the sort of man his father had confidence in, his father would have asked Charles's opinion; he would have seen the lie for what it was—or at least not believed it so readily—and the whole terrible business might not have happened. There would have been no loss, no suicide, no shame and grief for his mother. She would still be alive.

Why had he never found the right words to give her heart to live? Hester would have. James would have, were he not dead and buried a thousand miles away. Charles had said and done everything he could think of—but it was not enough. To be fair, Hester had never blamed him—she blamed herself for being too far away to help. But that did not alter the facts, nor his deep ache of failure.

He had married suitably. It had gone as well as most marriages, except that there had been no children. They had been loyal to each other, adequate companions. They seldom quarreled.

And yet he could never remember laughing.

Perhaps that summed it all up—no remembered laughter.

Now she was gone, and he was halfway up a volcano in the Tyrrhenian, wondering how to find some hunger for life, some passion, some belief in himself that would drive him with the kind of inner fire that Candace Finbar had read about in Quinn's book.

He started to walk upward again. It didn't truly matter if he reached the top or not, whether he could stand up there on what would seem like the roof of the world and stare downward into the crater of a live volcano where the molten rock of the earth was red-hot, like a beating heart of all life. But it would be a kind of victory, all the same.

There seemed to be some kind of path, at least a track where the grasses were flattened by human footsteps. He followed it automatically, perhaps because it was easier or maybe because it suggested that there might be someone else up there ahead of him.

It was another hard fifteen minutes before he saw them: two figures on the slope a hundred yards away, silhouettes against the vivid blue of the sky. He knew who they were instantly. One was a man, tall and a little bent as if he were weary. The other was as slender as a wand, head high, a coltish grace to her movement. They could only be Roger Finbar and Candace.

For a moment Charles was not sure if he wanted to catch up with them or not. His legs were tired and he was a little short of breath. Nevertheless, he started forward and increased his pace. He did not want it to seem as if the climb was too much for him.

He was panting a little, and fifty yards behind them, when Candace turned and saw him.

She called out to him, but the increasingly strong wind carried her words away. Then realizing that he had not heard her, she touched Finbar on the arm; he turned to look back, saw Charles, and waved. They stood still. Charles made an effort that tore at the back of his calves and set his lungs aching, but he caught up with them in moments. Then he had to give in and stop to catch his breath. They were very high up. The view was marvelous, as far and wide as the sea on all sides except where the volcano towered into the sky, a huge and brooding presence, almost naked of trees or growth at this altitude.

Candace was beaming.

“I thought you'd have to come. It's different, isn't it? I mean, it's not like anywhere else at all. Except I suppose other really big volcanoes. Have you ever been up Vesuvius? That's huge. It wiped out whole towns when it blew up in the time of Pliny the Younger, you know?”

Charles struggled to get his breath and speak in a voice something like normal.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It's far bigger than this, and quiet nearly all the time. When it does blow, it's stupendous. Here there are spits and crackles a lot of the time.”

She grinned at him. “I told you that this morning.”

Finbar touched her arm. “Candace, why don't you go on ahead of us a little way?”

She understood the hint at once. Nodding cheerfully, she walked off ahead of them.

Finbar sighed. “I'm afraid it is a little too far for me,” he said as if it were an apology. “She has so much energy.”

Charles sympathized with him. He watched as she went in an easy stride up the steeper incline, looking eagerly at the path on toward the caldera.

“We all did at that age,” he replied.

“She shouldn't go up much farther alone.” Finbar shook his head.

Charles looked at Finbar's face, pale beneath the sunburn, and said the only thing he could.

“I'll go with her, sir. Are you all right to return alone? It's quite a long way…”

Finbar smiled. “I'll take it slowly. Please tell her not to worry. I know she's young, and a trifle outspoken at times, but she has a gentle heart.”

“I won't worry her unnecessarily, I promise,” he answered.

“Thank you, sir,” Finbar said seriously, his blue eyes very clear, his gaze direct. Then he turned and began the long walk back down to the level, and the white house now long out of sight.

Charles had to lengthen his stride considerably to catch up with Candace. They were far up the mountainside now. The air was thinner, and there was a faint sharpness to it with an odor that might have been disagreeable to some, but Charles found it rather interesting.

When he caught up with her, she was staring into the distance and the blue glimmer of the sea far away and below them. There was no sound but the faintest breeze, and—this far up—very little vegetation and no apparent animal or even insect life. The ground beneath them was mostly ash.

Anxiety flickered across her face. “Where's Uncle Roger?”

“His legs were a little tired,” Charles replied, trying not to sound breathless. “He hoped you wouldn't mind if he went back. I promised I would see that you got down again safely.”

“But he's all right?” she pressed.

“Yes. It's just a long way.” Perhaps he shouldn't have concealed his lack of breath. “And getting steeper as we go up. I daresay the air's a little thinner, too.”

She regarded him more closely. “Are you all right?”

Good heavens! Did she put him in the same bracket of age and corresponding frailty as Roger Finbar?

“Or are you trying to make me feel all right about Uncle Roger?” she went on.

To say she was frank would be an understatement.

“The latter,” Charles replied a little tartly. “He would be very unhappy with me if I allowed you to be worried.”

She looked taken aback, for once uncertain how to accept the remark. He noticed it with some satisfaction. In fact, he smiled back at her, meeting her eyes with something of a challenge.