Free A Christmas Journey by Anne Perry Page A

say if I went back when you went on! It would be even worse for me than if I’d never come!”
    â€œYes, it probably would,” Vespasia agreed. “So you will blackmail me into going back and leaving that poor woman to discover that her daughter is dead—whenever she returns here, this year, or next!”
    Isobel blinked.
    â€œWe appear to have reached an impasse,” Vespasia observed coolly. “Perhaps we should both do as we think right? I am going to Ballachulish, or as far toward it as I can. As you may have noticed, there is very little snow so far.”
    Isobel bit her lip and turned away. “You always get what you want, don’t you?” she said quietly. Her voice was trembling, but it was impossible to tell if it was from anger or fear. “You have money, beauty, and a title, and by heaven, do you know how to use them!” And without looking back she swept out of the room, and Vespasia heard her steps across the hall.
    Vespasia stood alone. Surely what Isobel said was not true? Was she so spoiled, so protected from the reality of other people’s lives? Certainly she had great beauty; she could hardly fail to be aware of that. If the looking glass had not told her, then the envy of women and the adoration of men would have. It was fun; of course it was. But what was it worth? In a few years it would fade, and those who valued her for that alone would leave her for the new beauty of the day—younger, fresher.
    And, yes, she had money. She admitted she was unfamiliar with want for any material thing. And a title? That, too. It opened all manner of doors that would always be closed to others. Was she spoiled? Was she without any true imagination or compassion? Did she lack strength, because she had never been tested?
    No, that was not true! Rome had tested her to the last ounce of her strength. Isobel would never know what she would have given to stay there with Mario, whatever their ideological differences, his republicanism and her monarchist loyalty, his revolutionary passion and fire and her belief in treasuring old and beautiful ways that had proved good down the centuries. Over it all towered his laughter, his warmth, his courage to live or die for his beliefs. How unlike the ordinary, pedestrian kindness of her husband, who gave her freedom but left her soul empty.
    However, that was nothing to do with Isobel, and she would never know of it. This was her journey of expiation, not Vespasia’s.

    They set out immediately after breakfast, Mrs. Naylor’s household providing them with transport by pony and trap as far as Inverness and then beyond to the eastern end of Loch Ness, where they could hire a boat. It would take them the length of the long, winding inland lake with its steep mountainsides as if it were actually a great cleft in the earth filled with fathomless satin gray water, bright as steel. All the way there they had spoken barely a word to each other, sitting side by side in the trap, the wind in their faces, rugs wrapped tightly around their knees.
    â€œIt’s a good thirty mile to Fort Augustus, so it is,” the boatman said as they embarked. He shook his head at the thought. “Then there’s the canal, and another good thirty mile o’ that, before you reach Fort William on the coast.” He squinted up at the sky. “And they always say in the west that if you can see the hills, it’ll rain as sure as can be.”
    â€œAnd if you can’t?” Isobel asked.
    â€œThen it’s raining already.” He smiled.
    â€œThen we’d best get started,” she answered briskly. “Since it is a fine day now, obviously it is going to rain!”
    â€œAye,” he acknowledged. “If that’s what you want?”
    Without looking at Vespasia, Isobel repeated that it was, and accepted the boatman’s assistance into the stern of the small vessel, most of it open to the elements. It was the only