Read Online Aunt Dimity's Christmas by Nancy Atherton - Free Book Online Page B

ever heard of fake IDs? Maybe it’s some sort of sick joke.”
    Anne tilted her head to one side. “So he’s gotten to you, too,” she murmured.
    I looked away, disconcerted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œDon’t you?” Anne’s mouth curved upward in a strange, sad smile. “Then let me tell you about Kit. For your sake, as well as his.”
    â€œGo ahead,” I said gruffly, but I knew even as I spoke that nothing she said would convince me that the man I’d seen in the Radcliffe was crazy.
    â€œIn order to tell you about Kit,” Anne began, “I must tell you a bit about myself.” She paced slowly toward the fire, then turned to face Julian and me. “My first husband died of a stroke five years ago. He was thirty-two, and I was six months pregnant with our first child. I went into premature labor and lost the baby.” She knelt on the hearth rug and put an arm around Branwell. “It was a terrible time.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Julian, somehow managing to make the clichéd phrase sound sincere.
    â€œBlackthorne Farm was my late husband’s dream, notmine,” Anne continued. “I’d no idea how to manage it, but I refused to give it up. It was all I had left of him.”
    Julian nodded sympathetically.
    â€œAs you can imagine, the place soon began to go to pieces,” said Anne. “I was on the verge of selling out when I found Kit.”
    â€œFound him?” I said.
    â€œHe was in the church at Great Gransden, standing before the memorial window.” Anne gave Branwell’s chin a rub and sat back on her heels. “At first I thought he was an old airman—”
    â€œWhy would you think that?” I interrupted.
    â€œThe window’s dedicated to the bomber crews who flew from the airbase at Gransden Lodge during the war.” She closed her eyes, spread her hands upon her thighs, and recited from memory, “‘The people of these villages cared for the airmen who flew from R.A.F. Gransden Lodge. They watched for them and prayed for them.”’ Anne’s eyes opened and she smiled briefly. “My father made me learn the inscription by heart. He flew as a navigator during the war.”
    â€œWhat was Kit doing in the church?” I asked.
    â€œHe said he’d gone inside to escape the rain,” Anne replied. “His voice is … magical. I kept him talking just to hear it. When he said he was looking for work and a place to stay, I offered him my spare room and a job.” A faint blush stained Anne’s creamy complexion, but she continued in a level voice. “He was terribly kind, you see, and I was vulnerable.”
    â€œHow long ago was this?” I asked, a merciless inquisitor.
    â€œKit moved into the farmhouse just over year ago,” Anne answered. “I paid him next to nothing, yet in one short year he turned the place around—and taught mehow to manage it. He said he’d learned about farming from his late father, who’d owned a vast estate.”
    â€œDid you believe him?” Julian asked.
    â€œOh, yes,” said Anne. “It was clear to me from the start that Kit wasn’t just another itinerant farm laborer. It worried me, in fact.”
    â€œWhy?” asked Julian.
    Anne lifted her hands into the air, then let them fall. “Kit dressed in rags. He carried everything he owned in one small bag. He ate like a sparrow and worked like a dog, but it was all a charade. Any fool could tell he’d been born to money. You had only to hear him speak to know he was too well educated, too cultivated to settle for a life of ill-paid drudgery….
    â€œBut that’s not the only thing that worried me.” She got to her feet and returned to the settee. “Kit had one day free every week. On his free days he rose at dawn and drove off in the farm lorry. He never said where he