Free A Christmas Grace by Anne Perry Page B

in her eyes. She said something to Fergal and closed her other hand over his. Watching them, Emily was certain it was restraint, not affection.
    Brendan said something lightly, his voice too soft for Emily to hear anything of it. Maggie smiled and lowered her eyes. Fergal altered the way he was standing so that somehow in the moving of weight he had become vaguely belligerent.
    Brendan looked at Maggie, and Emily thought she saw a tenderness in his expression that brought a shiver of awareness to her of a hunger far deeper than friendship. Then she looked again, and there was nothing more than a pleasant courtesy, and she was not sure she had seen anything at all.
    She turned to Daniel to see if he had noticed it, but he was watching Padraic Yorke.
    â€œIt seems to have caught them hard,” Daniel said to her quietly.
    She did not understand.
    â€œThe ship,” he explained. “Do you suppose they knew some of the men? Or their families, maybe?”
    â€œI don’t think we know who they were,” she answered. “Not that it matters. Anyone’s death is a loss just the same. You don’t have to have known them to feel it.”
    â€œThere’s a weight in the air,” he said slowly. “As if a spark of lightning would set it afire. It’s good people, they are.” His voice was so soft she barely heard it. “To grieve so much for those they never knew. I guess that there’s a common humanity in the best of us, and there’s nothing like death to draw the living together.” He bit his lip. “But I still wish I could mourn my fellows by name.”
    Emily said nothing. It was not the loss of the others from the ship that haunted the village; it was the murder of Connor Riordan, and the certainty that it was one of them who was responsible.
    â€œOf course,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. The dead from the ship were his only connection with who he was, all that he had been and had loved. Without them he might never know again that part of himself. All they had endured together, the laughter, the triumph, and the pain, could be lost. “I’m sorry,” she added with profound feeling.
    He smiled suddenly, and it changed every aspect of his face. Suddenly she could see in him the boy he had been a few years ago.
    â€œBut I’m alive, and it’s poor thanks to the Good Lord who saved me if I’m not grateful for that, don’t you think?” Then without waiting for her answer he walked towards the nearest small huddle of people and introduced himself, telling how much he appreciated their hospitality, and the courage of the men who had spent all night in the gale to bring him in alive.
    She watched as he went to every person or group, saying the same thing, searching their faces, listening to their words. It occurred to Emily that it was almost as if he were trying desperately to find some echo of familiarity among them, someone who knew seamen, knew disaster, and understood him.
    As they were drifting away and only half a dozen were left, she stood on the rough pathway between the gravestones and was only yards from where Father Tyndale was saying good-bye to an old gentleman with white hair, like down on the weed heads. Father Tyndale’s eyes seemed to look beyond the man’s face to where Daniel was talking to Brendan Flaherty, and she saw in him horror, as if this were what had happened before, in the days leading up to Connor Riordan’s death.

    E mily and Daniel walked home slowly along the road. Daniel seemed tired, and she knew from the way he kept adjusting Hugo’s coat on his shoulders that his body still ached from the bruises. Perhaps he was lucky that the wreckage hurled about by the sea had not injured him more. He seemed lost in thought, as if the underlying pain of the village had added to his own.
    It could not go on like this. Someone must find the truth of Connor Riordan’s death. Whatever