The Secrets of Winter by Nicola Upson

Author:Nicola Upson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHRISTMAS DAY

1

Josephine made sure she was back in her own bed well before the eight o’clock curfew and braced herself for another strained encounter with Mrs Pendean, but her early morning call came from a young housemaid she hadn’t seen before. The girl wished her a happy Christmas and put a tea tray down on the bedside table, then went over to draw the curtains, flooding the room with winter sunlight. Josephine waited until she was alone again, then pulled her dressing gown on and drank her tea by the window. The morning laid out before her was radiantly beautiful, with every ounce of the blizzard’s nocturnal ferocity replaced by an unshakeable sense of peace and hope: the ideal expression of Christmas, but so rarely its reality. The castle’s turrets and terraces were blanketed in a fairytale white, and down below in the village she could see tiny figures scurrying about their business in the snow, like a scene from a Bruegel painting. There were no boats coming or going from the mainland, she noticed, and it was as if the causeway had never existed: its cobbles were invisible beneath an ever-changing palette of greens, blues and greys – but it was hard to resent being cut off in such a magnificent place, particularly when every conceivable luxury had been catered for. The isolation that had seemed so unsettling under cover of darkness now felt like a magical protection from the outside world, and Josephine was more excited by Christmas morning than she had been since she was a child.

She allowed herself another ten minutes to enjoy it, then dressed quickly in the perfectly pressed woollen suit that somehow looked better than on the day she had bought it. There was no reason to think that the church would be miraculously warmer than the rest of the castle, so she took her coat from the wardrobe and checked her bag for the envelope wrapped in tissue paper that was Marta’s Christmas present; as far as she could gather, the day’s itinerary was packed with communal activities and they were unlikely to find any private time together until the evening, but she wanted it with her in case the right moment came. It looked a poor thing next to the collection of presents that Marta had brought with her, but Josephine knew how much the gift would mean, and she couldn’t wait to hand it over.

The gathering on the terrace outside the church was in high spirits, and the small crowd took her by surprise. There were lots of people she didn’t know, as well as one or two familiar faces from the household staff, and she guessed that most of them were islanders who had come up from the village for the service. The terrace had been efficiently cleared of the night’s snow, which now rested in large, manmade drifts against the outer walls, proving an irresistible temptation to the Mount’s children, who lobbed great handfuls at each other, laughing

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.