Snow Shadow Read Free Page B

will?”
    “All that is left of the capital is to provide additions to the library. That was Edward’s dream. It doesn’t matter to Miss Emma; she has life interest in Alexis Horvath’s estate and her own money besides. And another daughter, Elinor, is dead. But Anne’s a widow. Her husband went down with his ship during the warwith Japan. She has only her pension. While Miss Elizabeth—” He slid his hand deftly under my arm in support as I slipped. “This is treacherous in this weather. I was not aware how much—”
    I did not pull away from his touch, though I wanted to. Not because it was Preston Donner’s hand, which was a firm support, but because—was I ever going to be allowed to forget? I called on the armor I had so harshly learned to wear.
    Luckily the path now narrowed, so we had to go single file. With a murmur of excuse he went ahead. And he was not looking back when there was movement among the bushes to my left. Later, when it was to be very necessary for me to recall details of what—or what I thought—I had seen. I was not sure. How much was true, how much imagination?
    I stopped so short I nearly slipped again as I sighted a figure between two overhanging shrubs. I gasped and it was gone, just as Preston Donner swung around. Luckily I had sense enough to edit my explanation, one of the few times in my life I thought fast.
    “I thought I saw something moving—over there.”
    He peered along the line of my pointing finger.
    “The bushes do assume odd shapes at night. I have noticed that myself.”
    But did any bush, no matter how large, I wondered, as I followed him on, ever assume the guise of a naval officer in full-dress, details of gold braid glinting in the moonlight? And particularly a naval officer in the type of uniform which had not been worn since the very early 1800s?

    Either the Austins had some very lifelike and movable garden embellishments or—I suppressed my imagination with a heavy hand. On one small drink? No, I could not have seen that I thought I had.

2
    Preston Donner turned into another walk, which brought us to an impressive portico. Inside the house, warmth enfolded us with that stuffy comfort promised by the late and very ugly Victorian solidity of such furnishing as could be seen.
    The thick carpet did show some signs of wear, but what might have once been strident coloring now blended with oak paneling, which framed a wide marble staircase rising into shadows. If heat was abundant, the same was not true of light. The fixtures (including a marble goddess with a torch at the foot of the stair rail) were provided with bulbs of low wattage, which made little resistance to the general gloom.
    “Who is there?” The call sounded from the cavern of a room to our right.

    “Miss Elizabeth.” Preston Donner came to attention. “It is I.”
    Though he motioned to me, I took time to shed boots, pull loose my headscarf. But, as I followed him, even the manners drilled into me by Aunt Otilda could not make me repress a startled gasp. If the hallway had been of the 1880s, this room underlined that promise with all of the period’s unique hideousness.
    There was an interference course of small tables, all crowded to the very edge with silver picture frames, china and glass. These elbowed velvet upholstered chairs, to form a near-impenetrable barrier between us and the woman seated beside a quite unnecessary blaze on the tiled hearth. All the clutter would have taken hours to catalog. I tried not to stare at such notable exhibits as a bunch of peacock feathers in a quite unbelievable vase—instead, I centered my attention on Miss Elizabeth Austin.
    As the room, she was a period piece. Perhaps she was very near eighty. I would not have ventured to guess. But the age she chose to represent was the mature years of someone of a much earlier day. Her dress, the gored skirt of which brushed the toes of her velvet slippers, was black silk of a quality one no longer sees, meant to