Read Online A Christmas Grace by Anne Perry - Free Book Online

you?” He reached out for it and since it was heavy, she was happy enough to pass it to him.
    â€œHow is Susannah this morning?” he asked. There was more than concern in his face—there was fear. “And Maggie O’Bannion—is she all right?”
    â€œYes, of course she is. We’re all tired, and grieved for the loss of life, but no one is otherwise worse.”
    He did not answer; in fact he did not even acknowledge that he had heard her.
    She was about to repeat it more vehemently, then she realized that he was asking with profound anxiety, the undercurrent of which she had felt increasingly since the wind first started rising. He was not asking about health or tiredness, he was looking for something of the heart that battled against fear.
    â€œDo you know the young man who was washed ashore, Father Tyndale?” she asked.
    He stopped abruptly.
    â€œHis name is Daniel,” she added. “He doesn’t seem to remember anything more. Do you know him?”
    He stood staring at her, buffeted by the wind, his face a mask of unhappiness. “No, Mrs. Radley, I have no idea who he is, or why he has come here.” He did not look at her.
    â€œHe didn’t come here, Father,” she corrected him. “The storm brought him. Who is he?”
    â€œI’ve told you, I have no idea,” he repeated.
    It was an odd choice of words, a total denial, not merely the ordinary claim of ignorance she had expected. Something was wrong in the village. It was dying in more than numbers. There was a fear in the air that had nothing to do with the storm. That had been and gone now, but the darkness remained.
    â€œPerhaps I should ask you what Daniel means to these people, Father,” Emily said suddenly. “I’m the stranger here. Everyone seems to know something that I don’t.”
    â€œDaniel, is it?” he mused, and a lull in the wind made his voice seem loud.
    â€œSo he says. You sound surprised. Do you know him as something else?” She heard the harshness of her words, the edge of her own fear showing through.
    â€œI don’t know him at all, Mrs. Radley,” he repeated, but he did not look at her, and the misery in his genial face deepened.
    She put her hand on his arm, holding on to him hard, obliging him either to stop, or very deliberately to shake her off, and he was too well mannered to do that. He stopped in front of her.
    â€œWhat is it, Father Tyndale?” she asked. “It’s the storm and Daniel, and something else. Everybody’s afraid, as if they knew there was going to be a ship go down. What’s wrong with the village? What is it that Susannah really wants me here for? And don’t say it’s family at Christmas. Susannah was estranged from the family. Her love was Hugo Ross, and perhaps this place and these people. This is where she was happiest in her life. She wants me here for something else. What is it?”
    His face filled with pity. “I know, my dear, but she is asking more than you can do, more than anyone can.”
    She tightened her fingers on his arm. “What, Father? I can’t even try if I don’t know what it is.”
    He gave a deep sigh. “Seven years ago there was another storm, like this one. Another ship was lost out in the bay; it too was trying to beat its way around to Galway. That night too, there was just one survivor, a young man called Connor Riordan. He was washed ashore half dead, and we took him in and nursed him. It was this time of the year, a couple of weeks before Christmas.” He blinked hard, as if the wind were in his eyes, except that he had his back to it.
    â€œYes?” Emily prompted. “What happened to him?”
    â€œThe weather was very bad,” Father Tyndale went on, speaking now as if to himself as much as to her. “He was a good-looking young man, not unlike this one. Black hair, dark eyes, something of the dreamer in him. Very