'No, I don't.'

'It's too easy, you see, to get trapped in the past. The past is very seductive. People always talk about the mists of time, you know, but really it's the present that's in a mist, uncertain. The past is quite clear, and warm, and comforting. That's why people often get stuck there.'

I struggled to absorb the thought, unhappy.

'It's better this way,' she told me gently. 'Really it is. Otherwise you might go on reliving that single summer, year after year, when you ought to be getting on with life in the here and now.' 'And how much longer will it be,' I asked, 'before the circle closes, as you say?'

Mrs. Hutherson smiled. 'Not long. You'll know the moment, when it comes. Are you finished with your breakfast? Yes? Well, then it's time you were home, in bed. You'll feel better once you've slept, and so, for that matter, will I.' She stifled a yawn. 'I've had a busy night, keeping up with you.'

Of course, I thought, a little shamefaced. Someone must have been following me around, opening the doors of the manor house for me, seeing that I came to no harm. Someone had even gone to the bother of oiling the lock on the courtyard door, in preparation for my coming, so that my key would turn.

I apologized for putting her to such trouble, but she brushed the apology aside.

'I found it fascinating, to tell the truth,' she admitted. 'You never spoke aloud, if you want to know. You only stood, and looked, and reacted. And in the Cavalier bedroom you were the very image of the ghost I'd seen all those years ago. It was Richard's return that you saw, wasn't it, that caused you such pain?'

I nodded. 'He fell from his horse, you see. He fell, and then ..." I bit my lip, the pain resurfacing, and she leaned across the table to cover my hand with her strong one.

'I am so sorry, my dear. I forget that you lost him only this morning.'

I smiled, gathering the pieces of my composure round me like a shield. 'It's odd,' I told her, 'that his burial wasn't noted in the church register.'

'Not so odd, really.' She rose to clear the table, practical as always. 'It was a time of great confusion, the plague year. It's hard to keep a written record when the world is tumbling down around you. Besides, it's all worked out for the best, this way.'

'How's that?'

'It was better, I think, that you did not know ahead of time what happened to Mariana and Richard,' she explained mildly. 'Better to find out certain things by living them, not by reading them in a book. Would you have been as anxious to go back, do you think, if you had known that Richard would die young?'

'Perhaps not.' I considered the logic of her argument, and accepted it. 'May I ask you something?'

She smiled. 'If it concerns Geoffrey, I'm still not interfering on that front.'

'It's nothing to do with Geoff. Actually, it's about you.'

'Oh?'

'The other day, when we were talking, you were about to say something. About you and Jabez Howard, and how you knew his temper.'

She hesitated, but only for a moment. 'He was my brother.'

I stared at her, realization dawning. 'Then that makes you ... you must have been ...'

'So you see,' she said, 'why I had to help you through this. I'd left you once, when you needed me. Left you to the mercy of my brother, and as a spirit I could only watch and suffer with you when you suffered. This life is my way of making up for that.'

It should have been a glorious reunion. I should have hugged her, kissed her, wept over her. But I merely sat in my chair, and she went on wiping dishes, and somehow the love and comfort and understanding flowed between us anyway, like waves washing back and forth along a windswept beach. There would be time for talking later. For now, the knowing was enough.

The plain truth was, I had no more emotion to give at the moment. My grief for Richard was still a living pain, my nerves were strung like tightropes and my eyes were raw and dry with weariness and unshed tears.

When I finally left the kitchen, instead of leaving by the back door, I went back through the main passageway and out into the courtyard. The air was still, there, and nothing moved. The ivy on the wall had changed colour in the autumn air, no longer green alone, but green tinged with vivid crimson and gold, so bright it almost hurt the eyes to look at it. I pushed aside the ivy and stooped, looking for the door.

It had been oiled, as I suspected. Not just the lock, but the hinges as well. My key was still protruding from the lock, and when I turned and withdrew it the oil came with it and clung to my fingers. I pulled open the little door and stepped out into the lane, closing my hand possessively round the key.

Richard had given me that key, I reminded myself, and I would not part with it. Richard ...

I blinked the tears away, stoically, and turned my steps toward home, stumbling a little on the uneven ground of the roughened fields. A face swam before my eyes—a dark, achingly handsome face with serious, forest-green eyes. 'Which one of us do you see?' Geoff had asked me. 'Geoff, or Richard?'

I was further than ever from being able to answer him.

Thirty-three

I believe I knew, even in the moment before I closed my eyes, that it would be my last journey back.

Only a few hours had passed since my return to Greywethers, but it had seemed an intolerable length of time. I had gone immediately to bed, trying my best to heed the advice of Mrs. Hutherson and the voice of my own weariness, and there I had lain, staring at the ceiling, while the sun passed above the house and spilled through the dancing poplar leaves that screened my bedroom window.