Snow Shadow Read Free Page A

guests whenever I am in town. Having been a friend of the family for years, I was her first guest. It was my good fortune to be associated with Dr. Austin in the assembling of his collection. And that corner room is most suitable for a writer. It partly overlooks the garden and the quiet is most conducive to work, as I can testify.” He might have been a rental agent, so did he extoll Northanger Abbey. There was a bus line offering only a ten-minute ride to the university and the library. Miss Elizabeth also provided breakfasts, and other meals if arrangements were made.
    “Miss Elizabeth is home tonight,” he ended. “If you wish I can escort you across the garden, save you the trouble of a second trip out.”
    He was moving too fast. I always react to pressure with the only defense I had learned during my Aunt Otilda years, digging in my heels and becoming evasive. Not that this had ever worked, and perhaps it would not now.
    I wanted to discuss it with Theodosia, the only one here I could claim as more than a casual acquaintance. But she was now the center of a group deep in conversation. I did not have the courage to break into that.
    Though I admit that the delights of the Abbey, asPreston Donner recited them, attracted me (and I know there are some people who have a compulsion to settle matters neatly for their fellows), yet I did not want to be so summarily pushed. But he was already on his feet, and I did not again have the strength to say no.
    Our leaving was not marked as we stepped out into moonlight. The sleet storm was over. Slush hardened on the ground, and our booted feet left misshapen tracks. In this light, the carriage house we had just left had some of the eerie, yet perilous, charm of a Rackham drawing.
    “It is attractive,” I commented.
    My escort paused. “Yes. A pity things turned out the way they did. But Miss Emma will come to her senses. She must! She had the coach house converted for her nephew, the son of her sister Anne. Poor boy, he’s in the Naval Hospital now—a returned prisoner of war from Vietnam. He was quite badly treated.”
    “But if it was a gift—” I was more intent in picking a cautious way over treacherous footing than I was in the information Preston Donner seemed so eager to supply.
    “Unfortunately not a complete gift, though that was the understanding. Miss Emma had been unwell. She fell some months back and fractured her hip, which perhaps makes her so difficult to please. The Frimbees have a small child, and she thought that a child so close to her own dwelling bad for her nerves. She wanted only adults, so she offered a short lease to Mr. Cantrell. Then she had a sudden bad turn and now she is convalescing at Idleacres. Until she returns, nothing morecan be decided. Irene and the child are living at the Abbey for the present.”
    This hint of family quarrels—nothing can be more vindictive or deadly—slowed my pace. I began to wish even more that I had never left Theodosia’s hearthside. And I began to concoct, mentally, excuses to use once I reached the Abbey.
    Our walk wound around the end of an untrimmed hedge into a frost-killed garden. There were clumps of trees and tall shrubs, and I caught a glimpse of a statue miserably cold in the moonlight. Beyond loomed the Abbey. Judging by a sky-outlined turret or two, it was certainly mock-gothic, perhaps of the worst General Grant period. In the dusk it repelled rather than charmed.
    “It’s big.” To me it looked monstrous. There was only a faint glimmer of light in one or two widely separated windows.
    “Ugly, too,” he admitted promptly. “About the ugliest house in the county, which does give it distinction. Old Polchek had it built for his wife, then gave it to his daughter for a wedding present. Too bad for his granddaughters that he didn’t have the foresight to tie up the funds in trust. Now it’s just a white elephant poor Miss Elizabeth can’t sell because of the will.”
    “The