Page 41 of The Winter Companion

His words were slow, and drawn out, as if he were retrieving each one from the bottom of a murky well. Clara gathered that it was difficult for him to speak in long sentences. To explain things to her with any degree of complexity. His frustration at the process was palpable. Were his hands not in his pockets, she was certain she’d find that one of them was again clenched into a fist.

“You knew Mr. Boothroyd as a boy?”

“Yes.” He looked straight ahead, his jaw set. “The orphanage… It was a b-bad place. He…he helped us.”

Clara fell quiet again. It was all very complicated. Far more than she’d have guessed from her first, or even second, impressions of the residents and guests assembled at the house party.

And yet, she wasn’t entirely surprised.

There was an element of darkness to the group. Of lingering tragedy. She’d felt it from the moment she arrived at the Abbey, so high atop the cliffs overlooking the sea. At the time, she’d attributed it to the Gothic architecture of the place, and to the wind and rain that stormed all about it.

But it was the people that created the atmosphere. Mr. Thornhill with his burn scars. Mr. Finchley with his world-weary blue gaze, so much older than all the rest of him. And even Mr. Archer. The way he looked at his wife. The way he stayed close to her and held her hand. It was love, of course. But there was something else there as well. The thirst of a man too long deprived of water.

And what of Mr. Cross? The most mysterious gentleman of all.

He wasn’t like the others. And she began to understand why.

“How long did you remain at the convent?” she asked.

“Until I c-came here. When Thornhill…bought the Abbey. Nearly f-four years ago.”

Four years?

She couldn’t hide her dismay. “Do you mean to say you’ve only lived at the Abbey for four years? That you’ve spent most of your life living in a convent?”

He gave her a wary look.

“But you’re a grown man. At least thirty, by my guess.”

“One and thirty,” he said. “I lived at the c-convent for…for sixteen years.”

She gaped at him, so stunned she nearly lost her footing on a patch of loose stones. His hand shot out to grasp her elbow, steadying her before she could fall. Clara’s heartbeat surged into a gallop. For all his shyness and halting speech, he was a strong, capable man. Quick enough to catch her before she could come to harm.

“Careful,” he said.

“Yes, thank you.” She was breathless, and sounded it. “I wasn’t paying proper attention.” His touch sent a pleasurable shiver through her veins. Was it possible to feel the warmth and weight of his hand all the way through the folds of her cloak and the sleeve of her woolen bodice? Or was she imagining it?

She suspected the latter.

Another incidence of romanticizing things, no doubt. And who wouldn’t succumb to such? She was alone with a handsome gentleman on a cliff top above the sea. A gentleman who had just saved her from falling. And who had been raised in a convent, of all places.

“Like Sir Galahad,” she blurted out.

A look of bewilderment passed over Mr. Cross’s face. “Who?”

Clara closed her eyes briefly against a swell of embarrassment. She wished she’d kept that particular thought to herself.

But there was no unsaying it.

“Sir Galahad.” Her arms tightened around Bertie. “A knight of King Arthur’s Round Table. The one who found the Holy Grail. He was raised in a convent, too.”

“I don’t read fairy stories.”

“Sir Galahad isn’t a fairy story. He’s part of Arthurian legend. Mr. Tennyson wrote a poem about him some years ago.” She recited the first lines from memory:

“My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,