Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,82

knew many people's secrets," he went on. They were now almost back to the far side of the village green. "Do you not think perhaps the father could have told him?"

"Oh, no, indeed not. The father...never knew. It would have been quite impossible for him to marry me. There was no purpose in my telling him about it. I simply went away. It is what girls do, you know."

"Yes, yes. I do know." He did not say any more. It was an age-old story of love and pain and sometimes betrayal, sometimes simple tragedy. It had happened untold times, and would happen again. Had it been here in this village?

Whoever the father was, she had protected him all these years. She would not betray him now, and it was not part of her penance that she should.

Dominic was still holding her arm, and he gripped it a little more tightly as they stepped into the rutted road, icy where wheels had pressed it down, deep between ridges.

"Thank you for speaking to me," he said sincerely. "Please don't think of it any further, except with love, or grief, but never again with guilt."

She nodded, unable even to attempt words.

He left her at her door and turned to walk back toward the vicarage. He was quite certain that he had said to her exactly what the Reverend Wynter would have, and his admiration for the old man's wisdom and compassion grew even greater.

How would Dominic follow in his footsteps and guide and comfort the people of this village-be strong for them, judge wisely, know the hearts and not merely the words?

He would be here for Christmas-that much he was certain of. What could he say that was passionate and honest and caught the glory of what Christmas was truly about? It was God's greatest gift to the world, but how could he make them see that? There would be Yule logs and carols and bells, mulled wine, gifts, decorated trees, lights across the snow. They were the outer marks of joy. How could he make just as visible the inward ones?

He wanted Clarice to be proud of him; he wanted it with a hunger close to starvation. He must give her the gift she most wanted, too-finding the best in himself for both of them.

***

Of course he said nothing to her of what Sybil Towers had told him, and he found that a hardship. He would have liked her advice, but he never considered breaking the trust.

Instead, over luncheon, Clarice told him that Mrs. Wellbeloved had been in that morning, bringing yet more onions and another rock-hard cabbage, which with a strong wrist and a sharp knife she would be able to slice. Mrs. Wellbeloved was full of gossip about the poor vicar's death, and the fact that John Boscombe had had a terrible quarrel with him shortly before. The village was buzzing with the news, but no one had the faintest idea what the argument had been about.

"His marriage, or lack of it, I should think," Dominic replied. Since it was Clarice who had discovered it, that was not a confidence between the two of them. "Poor man."

"You sympathize with him?" Clarice said in surprise.

"Don't you?"

"I do with Genevieve, if she didn't know. Very little if she did," Clarice responded.

He smiled. "If I had been married unhappily, and met you, I might have done the same."

"Oh." She did not know whether to smile or disapprove. She tried both, with singular lack of success.

He saw the conflict in her face and laughed.

"And you think I would have lived with you anyway," she said hotly. She took a deep breath and speared a carrot with her fork. "You're probably right."

He smiled more widely, with a little flutter of warmth inside him, but he was wise enough not to answer.

At almost two o'clock he set out to go up to the manor. There were one or two favors he wished to ask Peter Connaught with regard to villagers he knew were in need, but more than that he wondered if perhaps Peter's father could have been Sybil Towers's lover. If the Reverend Wynter had known that, was it a secret worth killing him for? Did it even matter now, so many years afterward? It would be a scandal, and Peter was inordinately proud of his family and its heritage of honor and care in the village. It was not his fault, of course, but the stain would touch him. Was he protective enough of