LITMIR.BIZ

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gown and with her hair hanging down her back in a long gray braid. “Praise the Lord Lucas got you out alive!” she cried, the beam of the flashlight she carried swinging in a wide arc over them where they huddled on the lawn. “You could all have fried in your beds!”

      “You must be terribly disappointed,” Monique retorted with a malevolent glare.

      “That’s a wicked thing to say, Monique Lamartine. I wouldn’t wish anyone dead, not even you.”

      Perhaps it was as well that the sound of sirens split the night just then, signaling the arrival of emergency vehicles and thus preventing another round in the yearsold feud between the two dowagers.

      “Three casualties, none too serious,” Lucas informed the ambulance attendants, while the fire marshall organized his crew. “This one had a stroke recently, the other two suffered some smoke inhalation. A night in the hospital won’t hurt any of them.”

      “I do not require hospitalization,” Monique declared, struggling to sit up, “but by all means take Consuela. She’s wheezing like a locomotive.”

      “This hasn’t been easy on you either, Mrs. Lamartine,” he said as the paramedics loaded Consuela onto a stretcher. “You need rest and a thorough check-up, too.”

      “You’re supposed to be a doctor and you’ve just given me a check-up. How many more do I need?”

      “You’ll be better cared for in a properly equipped medical center.”

      “No,” she said, waving aside his concern. “This is my home and here I intend to remain.”

      “That’s impossible, as I’m sure you know,” Lucas replied, with thinly veiled impatience. “If you refuse to follow my advice then you’ll have to find some other place to stay because there’s no way you’ll be allowed back into your house tonight, nor, I suspect, for some time to come.”

      “You’re quite right,” Emily said. “Grand-mère, we’ll phone for a taxi and take a room at the hotel, then in the morning I’ll contact the family and make temporary arrangements for you to stay with—”

      “You will do no such thing, Emily Jane! Furthermore, if you attempt to use this unfortunate incident to convince me that my children are correct in thinking I’m unable to care for myself without their help, then not only are you a dreadful disappointment to me, are you also no longer welcome in my home.”

      “Well, she’s welcome in mine,” Beatrice put in. “And so, come to that, are you, Monique Lamartine, though why I should put myself out for you I don’t know. It’s a miserable old woman you’ve become, and I pray I don’t turn out the same when I’m your age.”

      “You’re already my age and then some!”

      Beatrice did an about-turn and prepared to march back the way she’d come. “I’ll not waste breath arguing with you. If my house isn’t good enough, you can sleep under the stars for all I care. Emily Jane, if you decide to take me up on my offer, you know where I live.”

      She was almost at the boundary of the two properties when Monique called out grudgingly, “I never said your house wasn’t good enough, you silly woman.”

      Beatrice spun around in her tracks. “Are you saying you’d like me to prepare a room for you, then?” she inquired, exacting a full measure of revenge in the way she pointedly waited for a reply.

      Emily could have sworn she saw her grandmother swallow the huge chunk of pride threatening to choke her before she managed, “Under these very unusual circumstances, I find that an acceptable alternative, yes.”

      “In that case,” Beatrice said, “I’ll ask you, Lucas, to fetch the car round so that poor, feeble Mrs. Lamartine doesn’t have to trek through the woods at such an ungodly hour and her in nothing but a sootstained nightie.”

      Even outdoors, with people and space between them, Emily felt his presence too acutely. The idea of finding herself confined with him in the close quarters of a car, even for the short time it would take him to drive them next door, filled her with dismay.

      Apparently, Lucas felt likewise. “Of course,” he said, politely enough, his eyes resting on Emily, but then his gaze flicked away from her as if she were nothing but the unpleasant figment of someone else’s imagination.

      

      Beatrice assigned her to the second guest suite, a big square room with a sitting alcove at one end and an en suite bathroom at the other. She had laid out a long cotton gown which, while it was certainly several sizes too large, was infinitely preferable to Emily’s own grassstained, smoke-drenched nightshirt. That and the deep tub lured her to delay the pleasure of crawling between the sweet-smelling sheets until she’d shampooed her hair and soaped her skin clean of the fire’s residue.

      She had just emerged from the bathroom with her hair turbaned in a towel when a tap came at the bedroom door. “Emily Jane, darling, are you in bed yet?” Beatrice called softly.

      “Not quite,” Emily said. “Come in, Mrs. Flynn.”

      “I’ll not disturb you,” Beatrice said, popping her head around the door. “I just want to make sure you have everything you need. Also, I’ve made cocoa, and if you’re ready for it I’ll bring it up to you.”

      “You’ll do no such thing,” Emily said, walking over to the door and opening it wider. “It might be over ten years since I was last here, but I haven’t forgotten where the kitchen is and you’ve been disturbed enough for one night. Go to bed, please, or before you know it it’ll be time to get up again.”

      “Well, I will, then, if it’s all the same to you.” Beatrice took Emily’s hands affectionately. “It’s a lovely woman you’ve grown into, Emily Jane, and I’ve missed you. Don’t let another ten years go by before you come to stay again.”

      Was it being assailed by yet another shock, the after-effects of smoke or plain and simple fatigue that had Emily’s eyes threatening to fill with tears? “You were always so kind to us, Mrs. Flynn, despite...”

      Beatrice knew what she meant. The ill-will between the grandmothers had been as much a part of everyday life as the river flowing past the bottom of their gardens. “And why would I not be? Two silly old women feuding over the Lord knows what have no business putting innocent children in the way of their bickering.”

      Emily experienced a flash of guilt at that. How innocent had she been the night she’d tried to bring her romantic dreams to fruition? But if her grandmother held Lucas responsible for the outcome it was obvious from Beatrice’s attitude that she either remained ignorant of the true order of events or else chose not to assign blame.

      “Make yourself at home and sleep as long as you like in the morning, darling,” she said, planting a kiss on Emily’s cheek. “There’s no rush to be up and about. We’ll look after your grandma for you; never doubt that.”

      When Emily stole downstairs fifteen minutes later, the air was filled with the hush of a house at rest and nothing but the quiet tick of clocks to mark the passing hours. Except for a ray of light spilling out of the kitchen into the downstairs hall, the rooms lay in darkness.

      Despite the addition of two built-in convection wall ovens and a dishwasher, the kitchen hadn’t changed much over the years. The same scrubbed pine table still occupied the middle of the red tiled floor, the copper pots still hung from a circular rack above it, and if the geraniums flowering on the windowsill above the sink weren’t the ones that had flourished in her childhood Emily couldn’t have told the difference.

      She ought to have considered that he might also be in the room. Even if the theory of feminine intuition was based on nothing but a lot of wishful thinking, sheer common sense should have warned her, when she saw the tray containing a Thermos and two saucers but only one cup, that she was not alone.

      But it was the shiny chrome surface of the Thermos that alerted her to his presence, mirroring his reflection as he stirred

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