A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,23

did, with that familiar reserve, the only communication coming from his eyes. "Thank you, Simon," she whispered. She tucked the card back into the flowers, swallowed an emotion she couldn't define, and forced herself to speak lightly. "How did you ever find this place?"

"Do you like it?" he asked in answer.

"You couldn't possibly have chosen anything more wonderful. And you know it, don't you?"

He didn't reply. A knock at the door, and he looked at her, a smile dancing round the corners of his mouth, his expression plainly saying:

What's next? "Come in," he called.

It was the girl, Danny, a pile of blankets in her arms. "Sorry. Forgot these. There's an eiderdown already, but Auntie thinks the world's as cold as herself." She walked into the room with an air of friendly proprietorship. "Eddie get your things in?" she asked, opening the wardrobe and plopping the blankets unceremoniously inside. "He's just a bit thick, you know.

Got to excuse him." She studied herself in the wavy mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, fingered a few wandering hairs just a bit more out of place than they'd been before, and caught them watching her. "Now you'd best beware of the baby's cry," she pronounced solemnly. It was as if she'd spoken exactly on cue. The hounds would surely howl next.

"The baby's cry? Have the Americans a child with them?" Deborah asked.

Danny's dark eyes widened. She looked from woman to man. "You don't know? Has no one ever told you?"

Deborah saw from the girl's behaviour that they were soon to be enlightened, for Danny wiped her hands prefatorily down the sides of her dress, glanced from one end of the room to the other for unwanted listeners, and walked to the window. In spite of the cold, she unfastened the latch and swung it open. "Has no one told you about that?" she asked dramatically, gesturing out into the night.

There was nothing for it but to see what "that" was. Deborah and St. James joined Danny at the window, where, in the distance, the skeletal walls of a ruined building rose through the fog.

"Keldale Abbey," Danny intoned and settled right in next to the fire for a confidential chat. "That's where the cry of the baby comes from, not from here."

St. James pulled the window closed, drew across the heavy curtains, and led Deborah back to the fire. She curled up on the floor next to his chair, warming herself, allowing the fire to tingle against her skin.

"A ghost baby, I take it?" she said to Danny.

"An absolute one that I heard myself. You'll hear it as well. Wait and see."

"Ghosts always have legends attached," St. James noted.

Glad you asked, Danny's posture replied as she wriggled back into her chair. "As does this," she said solemnly. "Keldale was Royalist, you know, during the war." She spoke as though the late seventeenth century were only a week removed. "Loyal t' the last man of 'em t' the King. The village of Keldale, down the road a mile. You've seen it?"

St. James chuckled. "We should have, but I'm afraid we came in from a...different direction."

"The scenic route," Deborah added.

Danny chose to ignore the diversion. "Well," she went on, "was towards the end of t' war. And old blackguard devil Cromwell" - obviously Danny had learned her history at her auntie's knee - "got word that the Lords o' the North were planning an uprising. So he swept through the dales one last, grand time, taking manor houses, ruining castles, destroying Royalist villages. Keldale's well hidden."

"So we discovered," St. James put in.

The girl nodded earnestly. "But days in advance the village got word that the murd'rous Roundheads was coming. 'Twasn't the village that old Cromwell wanted, but the villagers themselves, all o' them that was loyal t' King Charlie."

"To kill them, of course," Deborah prompted as the girl paused in her story to catch her breath.

"T' kill every last one!" she declared. "When word came that Cromwell was looking for the Kel, the village got a plan together. They'd move every stick, every stitch, every soul t' the grounds o' the abbey. So when the Round-heads arrived there'd be Keldale, all right, but not a soul in her."

"Rather an ambitious plan," St. James remarked.

"An' it worked!" Danny replied proudly. Her pretty eyes danced above rosy cheeks, but she lowered her voice. "'Cept for the baby!" She inched forward in her chair; obviously they had reached the climax of the tale. "The Roundheads arrived. 'Twas just