Chapter 168

Bash

There was a candle burning on my desk when I came back into the study, and I hadn’t lit it.

I stopped in the doorway with the glass in my hand.

It was past two. The house was asleep. I had gone down to the kitchens for ice, because I had sent the boy to bed hours ago and I didn’t like my whisky warm, and I had been gone perhaps five minutes. When I left, the study had been dark except for the lamp on the desk. Now the lamp was off. On the blotter, beside the letter I had been failing to write all evening, a plain white candle stood in a tin holder, burning very steadily with no draught to move it.

And in my chair, behind my desk, there was a woman.

She had her feet up on the corner of the desk. Muddy boots, on my father’s mahogany. A long dark coat, open, over something gray and plain. Her hair was dark and shot all through with silver, pinned up carelessly. One arm lay along the arm of the chair, stiff, as if it didn’t bend the way it used