A Fall from Grace by Maggie Ford

Author:Maggie Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

His mother died just a week later. It had happened so quickly. They had not been there when it happened. They were notified not by Anthony but one of his mother’s staff arriving to hand them a note from him, the wording almost cold in its content: ‘Mother passed away early hours this morning in her sleep. Anthony.’

But James saw nothing wrong in his terseness. His eyes filled with tears as he put the short note to one side after reading it aloud to Madeleine and murmured, ‘He must be utterly devastated. Such a wonderful woman – a kind and truly wonderful woman – all alone she brought up her son after my brother died, ever soldiering on. Why her? She didn’t deserve…’

His voice faltering, he drew himself up, his rounded, somewhat ageing features firming. ‘We must go to him straight away. He may have need of us there. I shall telephone my office and tell them.’

He thought for a moment while she watched him, then he said slowly, ‘I shall have to set about the funeral arrangements.’

‘Anthony will probably do that,’ Madeleine said, but he cut her short.

‘He will need all the help I can give him, a young man having just lost his mother, his father gone, he is alone in the world. He’ll need my help.’

As if he were a child rather than a grown man, she thought. But she said nothing, thinking only of him with sadness in her heart, for herself as well as for him; her emptiness telling her she had lost him. How could they go on as they had, while he grieved so? No, it was over and that was grief enough for her, quietly consuming her. And all the time James was regarding her in the belief that her sadness was purely for his nephew’s sense of bereavement as he put what he imagined was a comforting arm about her shoulder and laid a light kiss on her brow. If only he knew…

The following week beside his mother’s grave, while the vicar’s dull voice intoned the prayers for the departed, Anthony hardly looked in Madeleine’s direction. When he did it was as if across a gulf, his eyes pleading – for what, she couldn’t fathom. Aching love for her or the desolate loss of his mother? She ought to have been weeping for her sister-in-law. Instead she wept for what seemed for her the end of their wonderful times together. How would he want that, his mother so recently dead? It would probably feel to him like blasphemy. No, it was ended.

Eventually he would find comfort in some other young woman, fall in love, marry, and she would have lost him forever, destined to live the rest of her life with James, this old man she had married and maybe it served her right for having thought to use someone like him for her own ends. And even that had backfired on her. She was no nearer to tracing her child than at the beginning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.