A Christmas Grace

polite evasions.”

“No,” Emily agreed. “I need your help. Are you wishing to give it? If not, let us agree that we do nothing.”

Susannah winced. “Do nothing. That sounds so…weak, so dishonest.”

“Or discreet?” Emily suggested.

“In this case that is a euphemism for cowardly,” Susannah told her.

“What are you afraid of? That it will have been someone you like?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t knowing it’s one person better than suspecting everybody?”

Susannah was very pale, even in the glow of the candlelight. “Unless it is someone I care for especially.”

“Like Father Tyndale?”

“It couldn’t be him,” Susannah said instantly.

“Or someone Hugo cared for?” Emily added. “Or protected?”

Susannah smiled. “You think I am afraid it was him, to protect the village from Connor’s probing eyes.”

“Aren’t you?” Emily hated saying it, but once the question was asked, evasion was as powerful as an answer.

“You didn’t know Hugo,” Susannah said softly, and her voice was filled with tenderness. It was as if the years since his death vanished away and he had only just gone out of the door for a walk, not forever. “It’s not my fear you are speaking about, my dear, it is your own.”

Emily was incredulous. “My own? It doesn’t matter to me who killed Connor Riordan, except as it affects you.”

“Not your fear of that,” Susannah corrected. “Your doubts about Jack, wondering if he loves you, if he’s missing you as much as you hope. Perhaps a little realization that you don’t know him as well as he knows you.”

Emily was stunned. Those thoughts had barely even risen to a conscious level of her mind, and yet here was Susannah speaking them aloud, and the denial that rose to her lips would be pointless. “What makes you think that?” she said huskily.

Susannah’s expression was very gentle. “The way you speak of him. You love him, but there is so much of which you know nothing. He is a young man, barely forty, and yet you have not met his parents, and if he has brothers and sisters, you say nothing of them, and it seems, neither does he. You share what he does now, in Parliament and in society, but what do you know or share of who he was before you met, and what has made him who he is?”

Suddenly Emily had the feeling that she was on the edge of a precipice, and losing her balance. This was the night of the Duchess’s dinner. Was Jack there? Who was he sitting beside? Did he miss her?

Susannah touched her softly, just with the tips of her fingers. “It is probably of little importance. It does not mean it is anything ugly, but the fact that you do not know suggests that it frightens you. I don’t believe it is that you don’t care. If you love him, all that he is matters to you.”

“He never speaks of it,” Emily said quietly. “So I do not ask. I made my family serve for both of us.” She looked up at Susannah. “You love Hugo’s people, don’t you? This village, this wild country, the shore, even the sea.”

“Yes,” Susannah answered. “At first I found it hard, and strange, but I became used to it, and then as its beauty wove itself into my life, I began to love it. Now I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else. And not just because Hugo lived and died here, but for itself. The people have been good to me. They have allowed me to become one of them and belong. I don’t want to leave them with this unresolved, whatever the answer is. I don’t want to go with it unfinished.”

“Then help me, and I will do anything I can to find the answer,” Emily promised.

Emily started to think about it seriously that evening, but she was too tired after so much missed sleep with the storm, and it was the following morning before she felt her mind was clear enough to be sensible.

She went for a brisk walk, this time not towards the village but in the opposite direction, along the shore and around where the rock pools were, and the wind rustling in the grass.

After seven years the questions of means and opportunity to kill Connor Riordan would be difficult, or even impossible to answer. The only clues would lie in motive. Whose secrets could Connor Riordan have known that were dangerous enough, and painful enough for him to be killed? Had he known anyone in the village before he was washed up that night?

When Maggie O’Bannion came to clear out the fires, and do some of the other heavy jobs, such as the bed linen, Emily decided to help her, partly because she felt uncomfortable doing nothing, but actually more to give her the chance to speak naturally with Maggie as they worked together.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Radley, I can do it myself for sure,” Maggie protested at first, but when Emily insisted she was happy enough. Emily did not tell her how long it was since she had done any housework of her own, although Maggie might have guessed from her clumsiness to begin with.

“Daniel seems to be recovering,” Emily remarked as they put the towels into the big copper boiler in the laundry room, and added the soap. “Although it’s taking time.”

“’Course it is, poor boy,” Maggie agreed, smiling when she saw Emily’s surprise that it was bought soap, not homemade.

Emily blushed. “I can remember making it,” she said, although Maggie had made no remark.

“Mr. Ross always did things very nicely,” Maggie replied. “Went to Galway once a fortnight at least, and got the best things for her, right up until he died.”

“He wasn’t ill?” Emily asked.

“No. All of a sudden, it was. Heart attack, out there on the hillside. Died where he’d have wanted to. And a better man you’ll never meet.”

“His family is from around here?” Now Emily was sweeping the floor with the broom, a job she could hardly mishandle. Maggie was busy mixing ingredients to make more furniture polish. It smelled of lavender, and something else, sharper and extremely pleasant.

“Oh, yes,” Maggie said enthusiastically. “A cousin of Humanity Dick Martin, he was.”

“Humanity Dick?” Emily was amused, but had no idea who she was talking about. A local hero, presumably.

“King of Connemara, they called him,” Maggie said with a smile, her shoulders a little straighter. “Spent his whole life saving animals from cruelty. Over in London, most of the time.”

“Are they worse to animals in London than here?” Emily tried to keep the offense out of her voice.

“Not at all. He was a Member of Parliament, and that’s where they change the laws.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She made a mental note to ask Jack if he had heard of Humanity Dick. But now she must bring the conversation back to the thing she needed to know. “Daniel still hasn’t any memory yet.” She felt as if she were being ungraciously obvious, but she could think of no subtler way of approaching it. “Do you suppose the ship was making for Galway? Where would it have come from?”

“You’re thinking we should see what we can do to help him,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “Thing is, it could have been anywhere: Sligo, Donegal, or even farther than that.”

“Does his accent tell you nothing?” Emily asked. “I don’t know in Ireland, but at home I might have an idea. I would at least know Lancashire from Northumberland.”

“And would that help you, then?” Maggie said with interest. “I heard England was a very big place, with millions of people.”

Emily sighed. “Yes, of course you’re right. It wouldn’t help much. But Ireland has far fewer, hasn’t it?” That was only a polite question. She knew the answer.

“Yes, but it’s different being a seaman. They pick up expressions from all over the place, and accents too, sometimes. I’m not good at it. I can hear he’s not from this bit of coast, but it doesn’t even have to be north that