Dreaming Of The Bones

be sociable, especially here, and now.

“Morgan, darling?”

Oh, Lord, it was Francesca. The last thing he’d meant to do was upset her. How in hell had she found him?

“In here,” he called out, and hurried to meet her in the more neutral territory of the hall. She stood beside the cold radiator at the bottom of the stairs, huddled in the old brown coat she kept for taking out the dogs.

He grasped her shoulders and looked down into her anxious face. “Fran, what are you doing here?”

“I came into town with Monica to get some knitting wool. I ran out of the indigo. And then when we drove by I saw the car.”

“The wool shop is nowhere near St. Barnabas Road,” he said gently. “Nor do you go to town in that old rag of a coat.” He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so that she had to look into his eyes. “How did you know?”

“I knew you’d have to come. And I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”

“Only because I didn’t want to worry you.”

Francesca reached up and pushed a stray lock of hair from his brow. “When will you ever get it through your thick head that the not knowing, the not talking about it only makes it worse? You’ve been moping about the house for days, working yourself up to this. I could feel it.”

“You’d think I’d have learned, by this time, that I can’t keep anything from you,” he said, forcing himself to smile. “But the house had to be attended to, and I didn’t see why you should be upset by it.”

“Then let it go this time, Morgan. Let her go. You’ve been picking at this scab for more than twenty years and it will never heal unless you stop. Call an estate agent tomorrow and you need never set foot in this place again. We have a good life together. Let us get on with it. Please.”

Morgan gathered his wife into his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest. He stroked the top of her head, then the thick plait of brown hair, now finely threaded with gray. Francesca had rescued him from the disaster of his first marriage, and he had loved her because she was everything Lydia was not. She had less pretension about her than anyone he had ever met, and though intelligent, she lacked any intellectual conceit. Steadfast, she had supported him in his battle with depression, buffered others from his moods and his temper, and she’d borne with grace and courage their failure to conceive the children she had wanted so badly.

They had made a good life. Francesca’s reputation as a textile artist had grown over the years, as had his as a photographer, and together they’d turned their renovated farmhouse studio in the countryside west of Cambridge into an artistic retreat. What more, he asked himself, could any man want?

And how could he possibly tell Francesca that he could not let Lydia go?

*   *   *

Afternoon tea at last, Daphne Morris thought with a sigh of relief as she heard the knock at her office door. She looked up from the history essays she’d been marking and called, “Come in,” as she pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose.

“Sorry it’s a bit late,” Jeanette said as she maneuvered the tea tray through the heavy door. “What with one thing and another.”

Daphne smiled beneath her tented fingers. Jeanette was always “a bit” late, what with one thing or another. But she was so invaluable to the running of the school that Daphne had learned to adapt. After all, what did a few minutes matter?

“It’s that Muriel again,” Jeanette informed her as she set the tray on the desk and poured tea into Daphne’s favorite mug. “She’s been bothering Cook, telling her the girls have all decided to eat ‘lower down the food chain,’ or some such nonsense, and so apparently they’ve decided to boycott beef. Can you imagine?” She sank into the chair on the other side of Daphne’s desk and sighed. “I had to chase her out of the kitchen, then it took me a good half hour just to smooth Cook’s feathers.”

“I’m afraid I can imagine all too well.” Daphne rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you not having yours?” she added, nodding at the teapot as she sat back with her mug and nibbled on a Rich Tea biscuit.

“Had my tea with Cook. Seemed the best way to mend the bridges.”

Daphne smiled and made a mental note to add that to her collection of Jeanette’s mixed metaphors. “You’d better send Muriel on to me and I’ll sort her out,” she said without relish. “I’m sure this was all her idea, but still I suppose I’d better speak to the assembly about it. I wouldn’t mind if I thought this business was motivated by any genuine concern for the environment, but I smell the unpleasant odor of lemminglike political correctness.”

“I heard her instructing some of the more feebleminded girls, in a huddle under the staircase. Jarvis, and the new girl, what’s-her-name with the horn-rimmed spectacles and beetle brows.”

Daphne laughed. “Oh, Jeanette, you’re too awful. You know perfectly well her name is Quinta. You’re just being stubborn because you think it’s affected. And anyway, it’s not the poor girl’s fault her parents gave her a dreadful name, and she’s really not that bad, just easily influenced.” The thought sobered Daphne, and brought her back to the matter under discussion. “The girls can certainly leave meat off their plates if they are so inclined, but I won’t have Muriel browbeating them into submission.”

Thank heavens this was Muriel Baines’s last year at St. Winifred’s, for the Head Girl had sorely tried Daphne’s policy of impartiality. Some of the teachers whose heads had been turned by Muriel’s flattery had coaxed Daphne into appointing her Head Girl, against her better judgment. She had never liked Muriel, with her bossy manner and jutting bosom, and closer acquaintance had done nothing to improve her opinion.

As difficult as it was not to show her dislike of Muriel and a few other girls, it was more difficult to disguise her affection for those she did like. But that, Daphne had learned early on, was something a good headmistress must never do. Girls were too vulnerable to crushes, and the slightest remark could be misinterpreted under the influence of adolescent longing, the simplest gesture mistaken for a declaration.

“Well, I’d best be getting back to the fray,” said Jeanette, pushing herself to the edge of the chair. “Rested my pins for long enough.”

Startled out of her reverie, Daphne said, “Oh, Jeanette, I’m sorry. Was I daydreaming? It’s been that sort of