had known Ramsay, the older man’s kindness and his patience had never failed. Was it a veneer beneath which there was emotion only barely controlled? It was hard to believe it, yet circumstance forced it into Dominic’s mind.
“Do you really believe he meant to push her?” he asked aloud.
She looked at him. “Oh, Dominic, I wish I could say no. I’d give anything to be back in yesterday again, with none of this having happened. But I heard her, too. I couldn’t help it. I was just coming into the hall. She cried out ‘No! No, Reverend!’ And the moment after that, she fell.” She stopped, her breathing rapid and shallow, her face white. “What else can I believe?” she said desperately, staring at him with horror.
It was as if someone had closed a door on hope, an iron door without a handle. Until this moment some part of him had believed there was a mistake, a hysteria prompting ill-judged words. But Vita would never have confirmed such a thing. She had no love for Unity, no divided loyalties, and no one had questioned or pressured or confused her. He tried to think of an argument, but there was nothing that did not sound foolish.
Vita was looking at him with frightened eyes. “As the policeman said, there is nothing up there to trip over.”
He knew that was true. He had gone up and down those stairs hundreds of times.
“It is something I would much rather not face,” she went on softly. “But if I run away, it will only make it worse in the end. My father—you would have liked my father, I think—he was a truly great man. He always used to teach me that lies get more dangerous every day. Every time you feed them by another lie, they grow bigger, until in the end they become bigger than you are, and consume you.” She looked down at last, and away from him. “And dearly as I love Ramsay, I must honor my own beliefs as well. Does that sound selfish and disloyal?”
“Not at all,” he said quickly. She looked very fragile in the dappled light through the leaves. She was a smaller woman than she at first appeared. The strength of her personality sometimes made one forget. “Not at all,” he repeated with greater conviction. “No one has the right to expect you to lie about such a thing in order to protect him. We must do what we can to contain the damage, but that does not include denying either the law of the land or God’s law.” He was afraid he sounded pompous. He would have said the same words to a parishioner without a moment’s hesitation, but with someone he knew well, saw every day, it was different. And she was in every way senior to him; that she was older in years did not matter, but she was so much senior in the life of the church.
He was startled by her reaction. She swung around and gazed at him with wide eyes, bright, almost as if he had offered her some real and tangible comfort.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “You don’t know how much you have strengthened me with your conviction of what is right and true. I don’t feel as if I am alone, and that is the most important thing. I can bear anything if I do not have to do it alone.”
“Of course you are not alone!” he assured her. In spite of the chill of shock inside him, and a strange tiredness, as if he had been up all night, with her words a kind of ease spread through him, an unraveling of long-knotted muscles. He would never have wished such a tragedy upon anyone, least of all upon the family who had given him so much, but to have the strength and the compassion to be of help to them was the core of the faith he believed and upon which he built his calling. “I shall be here all the time.”
She smiled. “Thank you. Now I think I must compose my thoughts for a while …”
“Of course,” he agreed quickly. “You would prefer to be alone.” And without waiting for her response, he turned and went back along the brick path to the hall. He was crossing towards the library when Mallory came out. As soon as he saw Dominic his face shadowed.
“What have you been doing in the conservatory?” he said sharply. “What did you want?”