A Finer End

Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

v3.1

For my mother, who has always believed in me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my writer’s group once again for their unstinting support and patience: Steve Copling, Dale Denton, Jim Evans, John Hardie, Viqui Litman, Diane Sullivan, and Rickey Thornton. Added thanks to Diane Sullivan, RN, BSN, for advice on medical matters, and to Dr. Davis Wortman, director of music, St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, Texas, for his advice on the complexity of Gregorian chant.

I am also indebted to Marcia Talley and Carol Chase for their suggestions and additional readings of the manuscript; to my editor, Kate Miciak, for making this a better book; and to my agent, Nancy Yost, for her encouragement.

And last but certainly not least, thanks to Rick and Katie, for providing me a firm foundation.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Map

Part I Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter Seven

Part II Chapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty- one

About the Author

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Imagination is a great gift, a Divine power of the mind, and may be trained and educated to create and to receive only that which is true.

—FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM THE GATE OF REMEMBRANCE

THE SHADOWS CREPT into Jack Montfort’s small office, filling the corners with a comfortable dimness. He’d come to look forward to his time alone at the day’s end—he told himself he got more done without phones ringing and the occasional client calling in, but perhaps, he thought wryly, it was merely that he had little enough reason to go home.

Standing at his window, he gazed down at the pedestrians hurrying along either side of Magdalene Street, and wondered idly where they were all scurrying off to so urgently on a Wednesday evening. Across the street the Abbey gates had shut at five, and as he watched, the guard let the last few stragglers out from the grounds. The March day had been bright with a biting wind, and Jack imagined that anyone who’d been enticed by the sun into wandering around the Abbey’s fishpond would be chilled to the bone. Now the remaining buttresses of the great church would be silhouetted against the clear rose of the eastern sky, a fitting reward for those who had braved the cold.

He’d counted himself lucky to get the two-room office suite with its first-floor view over the Market Square and the Abbey gate. It was a prime spot, and the restrictions involved in renovating a listed building hadn’t daunted him. His years in London had given him experience enough in working round constraints, and he’d managed to update the rooms to his satisfaction without going over his budget. He’d hired a secretary to preside over his new reception area, and begun the slow task of building an architectural practice.

And if a small voice still occasionally whispered, Why bother? he did his best to ignore it and get on with things the best way he knew how, although he’d learned in the last few years that plans were ephemeral blueprints. Even as a child, he’d had his life mapped out: university with first-class honors, a successful career as an architect … wife … family. What he hadn’t bargained for was life’s refusal to cooperate. Now they were all gone—his mum, his dad … Emily. At forty, he was back in Glastonbury. It was a move he’d have found inconceivable twenty years earlier, but here he was, alone in his parents’ old house on Ashwell Lane, besieged by memories.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he sat at his desk and positioned a blank sheet of paper in the pool of light cast by his Anglepoise lamp. Sitting round feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to do a bit of good, and he had a client expecting a bid tomorrow morning on a residential refurbishment. And besides, if he finished his work quickly, he could look forward to the possibility of dinner with Winnie.

The thought of the unexpected entry of Winifred Catesby into his life made him smile. Besieged by arranged dates as soon as his mother’s well-meaning friends decided he’d endured a suitable period of mourning, he’d found the effort of making conversation with needy divorcees more depressing than time spent alone. He’d begged off so often that the do-gooders had declared him hopeless and finally left him alone.

Relieved of unwelcome obligations, he’d found himself driving the five miles to Wells for the solace of the Evensong service in the cathedral more and more frequently. The proximity of the cathedral choir was one of the things that had drawn him back to Glastonbury—he’d sung at Wells as a student in the cathedral school, and the experience had given him a lifelong passion for church music.

And then one evening a month ago, as he found his usual place in the ornately carved stall in the cathedral choir, she had slipped in beside him—a pleasantly ordinary-looking woman in her thirties, with light brown hair escaping from beneath a floppy velvet hat, and a slightly upturned nose. He had not noticed her particularly, just nodded in the vague way one did as she took her seat. The service began, and in that moment when the first high reach of the treble voices sent a shiver down his spine, she had met his eyes and smiled.

Afterwards, they had chatted easily, naturally, and as they walked out of the cathedral together, deep in discussion of the merits of various choirs, he’d impulsively invited her for a drink at the pub down the street. It wasn’t until he’d helped her out of her coat that he’d seen the clerical collar.

Emily, always chiding him for his conservatism, would have been delighted by his consternation. And Emily, he felt sure, would have liked Winnie. He extended a finger to touch the photograph on his desktop and Emily gazed back at him, her dark eyes alight with humor and intelligence.

His throat tightened. Would the ache of his loss always lie so near the surface? Or would it one day fade to a