Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (51 page)

He turned to his book on criminal law as it pertained to the Northern Ireland court system and began reading, thinking with no small cynicism that many of these laws only seemed to apply to half of the population, and them only some of the time.

He was thus absorbed, taking in a statute from 1778 concerning the theft of a cow, when he heard an engine chugging along the narrow lane at the head of the drive. He frowned, not feeling in the mood for company. It was likely Gert, who seemed to be of the opinion that he hadn’t a notion on how to feed nor care for himself.

The car stopped at the head of the drive and then drove quickly on. Finbar cocked his head toward the door. Pat, dog in tow, went to see what the disturbance was. The wind shoved the door in when he opened it, bringing with it a whirl of snowflakes.The storm had begun.

A woman was making her way down the drive, the wind pushing her along and flaring her skirts around her, making her resemble a violet petal blown about in a seastorm. Blown about she must be feeling as well, for she was clutching the trunk of a young birch as though for dear life.

Pat crossed the yard, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes and the snow whirling around his head. He coughed loudly as he approached, for she had not noticed him yet and seemed disinclined to let go of the tree. She looked about wildly, settling eventually on the air just over his shoulder. He realized with a small shock that she was blind.

“Can I help ye?” he asked, coming within a few feet of her. He was scared to go any closer as she seemed so like a startled deer that she might bolt at the least provocation.

She was clutching a parcel tightly to her chest. “I’m looking for Pamela. Is she here?”

“I’m sorry, but they’re away just now. They’ve taken the babby an’ gone for the weekend. Was she expectin’ ye?”

“No, she wasn’t. I came on the spur of the moment like, because I have a gift for her. I’ll just leave it here, if I may?” She was slightly stiff and formal in her manner, considering the snow was now coming down in earnest and she was quickly turning from windblown violet to frosted blossom.

“Of course,” Pat said. “But won’t ye come in? I’m Pamela’s brother-in-law. Ye look as though ye need to get in out of the weather for a bit. I’ll make ye some tea. I’m here lookin’ after things until they get home.”

She hesitated, and he stood patiently waiting for her to decide. Not that there was much choosing as far as he could see, for the car had dropped her off at the head of the lane and gone onwards. And it was far too cold to hang about in the dooryard.

He gave her his hand to guide her into the house. Finbar wagged his tail and ambled over to her. Not for the first time, Pat thought that the dog lacked somewhat in the way of vicious guard-dogging abilities.

“How about I seat ye near to the stove?” he asked, uncertain what to do with the woman now that she was in the house. He had offered her tea, so that was likely where he ought to start.

A few minutes later he had her seated in a chair, her wool coat hung to dry and the kettle on the boil.

“Do ye have a name, then?” she asked, fussily brushing melting snowflakes from the folds of her skirt.

“Aye, it’s Patrick. An’ yer own?” he inquired, feeling a tad testy and not knowing quite why.

“Kate Murray,” she said briskly. “Just Kate, not Kathleen, or Katherine, or Katie—just Kate.”

“Alright then, Just Kate, how is it ye like yer tea?”

“Just a bit of lemon,” she said, crossing her heavily stockinged but very dainty ankles.

She picked up the damp parcel that had been clutched to her chest, removed the brown paper wrapping and shook out the contents.

“Would ye be so kind as to hang this up so that it might warm an’ dry?”

Pat took it, the weight of it hanging nicely from his hands. “It’ll be a gift for the wee man?”

“It will. I did want to give it to him for Christmas but I didn’t finish it until a few days ago,” she said primly, clasping her hands together in her damp lap.

It was a quilt, done in various shades of blue, the fabric in blocks of velvet and sateen and cotton prints. It was a beautiful piece of work.

“Did ye sew this yerself?” he asked.

“Yes. I tell my brother what I want for materials and he picks them out for me an’ then we sit an’ he describes each bit while I touch them. He cuts the blocks an’ then I tell him what order to put them in, but I do the actual sewing myself,” she said with a note of pride. Well justified too, for the stitches were near to invisible.

“Yer brother?” He had a sudden memory of Casey saying Pamela had encountered Noah Murray’s sister some time back. He was rendered mute for a moment at the idea of the feared Noah Murray cutting quilting blocks.

“So what is it that ye do for a living, Patrick?”

“I run the Fair Housing Association,” he said, still studying the intricate stitching of the quilt and wondering how she had managed it. “I work with my brother part-time with the construction, an’ I go to law school.”

The kettle was whistling and he stood to fetch it and fill the brown betty with fresh tea leaves and water.

“A solicitor is it? What will ye hope to do with that?”

“Well,” he said slowly, for his own thoughts on this were only half-formed. “I should like to be part of justice in this land, rather than ignorin’ the problems we have.” Then he swallowed, realizing just how much a part of the crime equation this woman’s brother was.

“That’s a fine ambition,” she said, “but maybe none so easy to do in this country.”

“Aye, maybe not, but a man has to try or what’s the point of livin’?”

He brought the tea to the table along with two clean blue mugs, wee crooked things that Pamela had made at a pottery class at the local church. They held the tea fine though, and were charming if not pretty. He poured out the tea and cut up the lemon, putting a slice by his own plate and picking up a wedge for hers.

“Are ye a handsome man, would ye say?” she asked suddenly, startling him into squeezing the lemon into his own eye.

“Damn it!”

Apparently unruffled by his profanity, she asked again.

“Well, would ye say ye are?”

“Are what?” Pat asked, dabbing his face with the tea towel, which he realized belatedly he had wiped up the dog’s water with earlier.

“Handsome?”

“I—I—well…” he took a breath and frowned. He wasn’t given overmuch to thinking about his looks and being that he didn’t think about women very often these days, it seemed moot. Between that and his studies he rarely thought to get a haircut and beyond making sure his clothes were clean and neat, he didn’t give his attire a great deal of attention either.

“Hmm—ye must not be, I find handsome men usually know as they are handsome, so if ye don’t know, ye musn’t be.”

Pat was starting to feel persecuted by the woman’s sharp assessments.

“Well, I don’t shame the dog when I take him out walking,” he said, tossing the tea towel aside and putting the abused lemon on the woman’s saucer. She could bloody well squeeze it herself.

“Yer tall though? Six one?”

“Six two,” he said through his teeth.

“Will ye tell me what the kitchen is like, the layout?”

He looked about the comfortable room, which was really half kitchen, half sitting room. It had a squashy couch at one end, covered in a tatty old blanket to save it from Finbar and Rusty, who often curled up on it together. A copy of one of the
Father Brown
books lay face down on one end. Bookshelves flanked the couch, for Pamela was of the opinion no room was whole without books. Across from the couch was the hearth, built of rough stone by his brother’s sure craftsman hands.

It was indeed a cheery room, with the blue Aga taking up part of one wall, the pine floors a golden brown as they started to age with use, the deep windowsills filled with herbs and flowers. The countertops were thick and serviceable, and dotted with crockery in various shades of blue. A print of John Singer Sargent’s
Carnation, Lilly, Lilly, Rose
graced the wall above the sofa, bringing the soft strains of twilight into that corner.

He described it to her in detail, both the dimensions and the colors, the decorative touches and the atmosphere, which was one of lovely, cozy homeliness. Pamela might not be the world’s greatest cook, but she certainly knew how to make a home feel just right to whoever stepped over the threshold. He even described the views out the windows, the stone wall so thickly covered with brambles and rose cane that even now, in the depths of winter, it looked like a hedge, rather than an ancient stone retaining wall.

“It sounds wonderful, but I could feel that. It’s a home with a great deal of love soaked into its walls, no?”

“Yes, it is,” Pat said, thinking of all that Pamela and Casey had overcome, and how it had knit something incredibly fine and strong into the weft of their home and life together.

She stood suddenly, startling him.

“I’ve two hours until my ride comes back to fetch me so I’ll cook ye somethin’. It’s likely, bein’ male, ye don’t feed yerself properly. An’ to be honest, I’m less nervous when I’ve spoons an’ bowls to hand.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. His father had often said that if a woman offered to feed a man, he ought to mind his manners and let her do so unimpeded.

“I’ll need potatoes, a bit of chicken if some is handy an’ some herbs an’ such. A few veg as well. Is there an apron about?”

Pat gathered the things required, and ducked into the cold room that Casey had built off the kitchen’s boot room. The potatoes and vegetables were kept here, as well as the cool stone crocks for milk. It smelled pleasantly of the autumn harvest of onions and fat potatoes in burlap sacks, the dirt still clinging to their skins. Carrots too, still with a sweet snap to them, and the bittersweet earthiness of leeks. He gathered a bit of each and brought them back to the kitchen to find Kate with her face buried in a pot of herbs. She nodded to herself and switched two pots around.

“I know them by scent,” she said, briskly tying the apron he had taken off the door hook for her around her waist. “Then I order them alphabetically, to make things quicker. Now dump the potatoes and veg in the sink for me an’ I’ll give them a scrub.”

Her hands were long and narrow, with short nails and pale skin. She was efficient and made short work of the scrubbing, lining the vegetables up across the counter and chopping them up on the oak cutting block. Then she broke off a sprig of thyme, some savory, and a bit of basil and chopped them up fine as grass. Her dexterity with a knife was something to behold, Pat thought, as she ordered him about to fetch a pot and get a bit of flour and where was the salt an’ pepper anyway? He wondered if she bossed her brother around in this manner, and felt his first pang of pity for Noah Murray. She was a wee harridan, to be sure.

An hour later he was seated to a chicken stew such as he had never tasted in his life. There were even wee dumplings floating in the golden liquid. The pot, used to his sister-in-law’s cooking, wouldn’t know what to make of it and nor did he. But well instilled with his father’s teachings, he ate it and was grateful for it.

Kate ate only a little, and then fed part of her portion to a grovelling Finbar. Rusty, curled up in her lap, eyes half closed in bliss, was treated to tiny pieces of chicken as well. Pat leaned back in his chair, surprised by how relaxed he felt.

He took a leisurely look at his guest. She was quite pretty when she smiled, which she did now as she murmured to Finbar. Eyes deep blue, reminding him of the violets that hid amongst tree roots and under thick covers of bramble. Hair a color somewhere between dark brown and black like the winter woods. She was upright and slim, and the color she wore flattered both her eyes and skin. He wondered if her brother helped her decide what to wear as well. It was the first time, he realized, that he had really looked at a woman since Sylvie’s death. It caused a wave of guilt to flush over him and he looked away.

“Have I done something to make ye uncomfortable?” she asked, and he was mildly annoyed at her perspicacity.

“No, I was just musin’ on something,” he said, feeling to lie was the lesser of a few evils. Just then, the chug of an engine reverberated through the still of the early evening. She stood abruptly, dislodging Rusty, who made his discontent clear with several loud meows.

He walked her out into the sparkling evening. There were several inches of snow, mounded softly over posts and icing tree branches. The sky was still light with snow-laden clouds, and what was on the ground sparkled bright as a field of diamonds.

She turned back at the gate, dark hair and slender figure framed against the snowy branches of an elm. One hand rested on the gate latch and she put the other to his jawline, startling him. The scent of herbs and onions rose from her skin, mingled with the quixotic scent of violets.

“Thank ye for a pleasant afternoon.”

“Yer welcome. Thank ye for a delicious meal.”

He watched her get into the car, partially hidden by the high hedge that bordered the lane. It was clear the driver did not wish to be seen. He wondered who it was she could trust so far.

He walked down the drive, the scent of snow fresh in his nose. He felt oddly twitchy, as though there were an itch beneath his skin that he could not scratch.

He whistled to Finbar, who bounded up with something thoroughly disreputable clenched between his teeth. He sighed, contemplating the law books awaiting him inside.

Finbar looked up at him eagerly, long body a shimmer of excitement over the possibility of another tramp through the woods.

“D’ye think me handsome?” he asked the dog, who cocked his head to one side as though giving the question serious thought. He even paid him the compliment of dropping whatever disgusting thing he had been clutching in his jaw.

“Don’t take too long about answerin’. ‘Tisn’t flatterin’ to a man if ye have to think on it for more than a few seconds.”

Finbar wagged his tail vigorously. Pat was wise enough to accept a compliment when one was offered.

“Ye may not be the world’s best guard dog, but ye’ve fine taste in humans,” he said. “Now, let’s go off on the tramp again, shall we?”