Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,7

cries like noisy children. The wind rippled the grass, flowerless, and everything smelled of salt.

"This is wonderful!" Maude said happily. "I have never smelled anything so clean and so madly alive. It is as if the whole world were full of laughter. It is so good to be back in England. I forgot how the spirit of the land is still so untamed, in spite of all we've done. I was in Snave so short a time I had no chance to get out of the house!"

She is not sane, Grandmama thought to herself grimly. No wonder her family wants to get rid of her!

They breasted the rise and the whole panorama of the English Channel opened up before them, the long stretch of sand, wind, and water bleached till it gleamed bone pale in the light. The surf broke in ranks of white waves, hissing up the shore, foaming like lace, consuming themselves, and rushing back again. Then a moment later they roared in inches higher, never tired of the game. The surface was cold, unshadowed blue, and it stretched out endlessly till it met the sky. They both knew that France was not much more than twenty miles away, but today the horizon was smudged and softened with mist that blurred the line.

Maude stood with her head high, wind unraveling the last of her hair from its pins and all but taking her shawl as well.

"Isn't it glorious?" she asked. "Until this moment I had forgotten just how much I love the sea, its width, its shining, endless possibilities. It's never the same two moments together."

"It always looks the same to me," Grandmama said ungraciously. How could anyone be so pointlessly joyous? It was half-witted! "Cold, wet, and only too happy to drown you if you are foolish enough to give it the chance," she finished.

Maude burst into laughter. She stood on the shore with her eyes closed, her face lifted upward, smiling, and the wind billowing her shawl and her skirts.

Grandmama swiveled around and stamped back onto the tussock grass, or whatever it was that tangled her feet, and started back along the lane. The woman was as mad as a hatter. It was unendurable that anyone should be expected to put up with her.

***

The following day was no better. Maude usurped every moment by regaling them with tales of boating on the Nile, buffalo standing in the water, unnameable insects, and tombs of kings who worshipped animals! All very fashionable, perhaps, but disgusting. Both Caroline and Joshua took hospitality too far, and pretended to be absorbed in it, even encouraging her by asking questions.

Of course the wretched woman obliged, particularly at the dinner table. And all through the roast beef, the Yorkshire pudding and the vegetables, followed by apple charlotte and cream, her captive audience was made to listen to descriptions of ruined gardens in Persia.

"I stood there in the sand of the stream splashing its way over the blue tiles, most of them broken," Maude said, smiling as her eyes misted with memory. "We were quite high up and I looked through the old trees toward the flat, brown plain, and saw those roads: to the east toward Samarkand, to the west to Baghdad, and to the south to Isfahan, and my imagination soared into flight. The very names are like an incantation. As dusk drew around me and the pale colors deepened to gold and fire and that strange richness of porphyry, in my mind I could hear the camel bells and see that odd, lurching gait of theirs as they moved silently like dreams through the coming night, bound on adventures of the soul."

"Isn't it hard sometimes?" Caroline asked, not in criticism but perhaps even sympathy.

"Oh yes! Often," Maude agreed. "You are thirsty, your body aches, and of course you can become so tired you would sell everything you possess for a good night's sleep. But you know it will be worth it. And it always is. The pain is only for a moment, the joy is forever."

And so it went on. Now and then she picked at the macadamia nuts she had brought to the table to share, saying that her family had given them to her, knowing her weakness for them.

Only Joshua accepted.

"Indigestible," Grandmama said, growing more and more irritated by it all.

"I know," Maude agreed. "I daresay I shall be sorry tonight. But a little peppermint water will help."

"I prefer not to be so foolish in the first place," Grandmama