to blot out the fact that she would be returning to an empty house. A silent, echoing mausoleum, where everything from the daintiest ornament to the lovely music room with its shining grand piano was a haunting reminder of the husband and friend who had been taken from her much too soon…
‘Move on with your life when I’m gone,’ Donal had feverishly entreated her from his hospital bed, with a light burning in his eyes that had scared Marianne, because it had told her that he wouldn’t hang on for much longer. ‘Sell the damn house and everything in it, if you want! Go and see the world…meet new people, travel…live, for God’s sake. Live for the both of us.’
And she would…but not yet. She was still finding her bearings without a compass, in a world empty of the one person who had really cared for her. She was inching forward slowly but surely.
Busking in the street might seem a strange place to start. But having had a dread of performing in public that she wanted to overcome, so that from time to time she could sing in the local folk club without going to pieces, as far as moving on with her life went Marianne saw it as an entirely positive step. Not only was she facing down her fear and thriving at the same time, she was saying to the universe Is that the worst you can do? Take my husband from me and leave me alone again? Well, just watch this! Every day she was becoming more and more confident. Yet again, music had saved her. Donal would have been proud that she’d found the courage to take such a radical if unconventional step towards her own healing—even if his two adult children from his previous marriage were not, instead taking it as a sign that she must be unstable… A sign that she must have had some ‘not quite right’ influence on their father, to make him ignore them and leave everything to her in his will instead.
Just then, out of the blue, a stranger’s chiselled hard face overlaid her husband’s kind, familiar one, and Marianne was shocked to recall the man who had put a fifty-pound note in her cap. Not for one second did she doubt it had been the real deal. Not only had he looked wealthy—as if he lived an elite lifestyle that was way beyond the ordinary dreams of a secure, comfortable life for regular people—but he had smelled wealthy too. He’d spoken perfect English, with a trace of an accent—South American, perhaps? He had also exuded the kind of authority that would have made Marianne shrink inside herself not so very long ago. But nursing Donal through his long, ultimately fatal illness, then sitting beside his hospital bed for nigh on two months while he clung doggedly to life before lapsing into a coma, had fostered in her the type of courage and tenacity that she was determined never to be without again.
Cupping her mug of hot chocolate, she stared into the crackling flames in the fireplace, the compelling features of the man who had disturbed her becoming even stronger in her mind. Marianne had never seen eyes quite that unique shade of blue before. They’d been the frosted hue of a cloudless winter sky and, although his hair had had tones of amber-gold threaded through its tawny strands, his lashes had been the intense dark brown of richly melting chocolate. He’d had an aquiline nose, with a slight bump in the bridge and his mouth, though firm and well-shaped, had nonetheless been so stern that it had seemed to suggest it would physically pain him to smile. Even though she had briefly conversed with him, she still got the impression that he projected the kind of impenetrable fortress that even a seasoned campaigner didn’t have a hope of breaching! After she had declared she didn’t sing just for money, challenging him with her question as to if he hadn’t ever done something just for the sheer love of it, Marianne had immediately regretted her outburst.
She squirmed at the ill-mannered way she had accused him of trying to make himself feel good by putting so much money in the hat. She shouldn’t have done that. How could he know that after the tragedy she had suffered she’d vowed never to accept or need help from anybody ever again? That her trust in anything good had been utterly shattered when, after a hellish childhood with a neglectful alcoholic father, she’d finally found some happiness in her marriage, only for her husband to die just six months later?
But the stranger had stared back at her as if he’d had his own demons to face, she remembered, and for a few tense moments there Marianne had barely known what to think or do as she met his stricken gaze. Then, before she’d had a chance to apologise, he had walked away… limping. Had he suffered an accident or been ill? It didn’t seem right that such a big, well-made and relatively young man should have such an obvious infirmity—though it didn’t lessen the impact of his imposing stature and riveting carved features at all…merely added to those assets.
Frowning, Marianne realised she had watched him almost as though in a trance…as if totally forgetting where she was or what she was doing. Then the biting cold that had been like the touch of knives against her face had forced her attention back to the present, and she’d resumed her playing and singing with a stoic determination to defy the worst the weather could throw at her. But underneath her singing Marianne had been completely bemused, and not a little shocked that a total stranger could command her attention so avidly….
‘You’ve been overdoing it again, haven’t you?’
‘For God’s sake, I’m not a child!’ Grimacing at the older man’s frowning face, Eduardo wished he could dispense with the doctor’s fortnightly visits for good. But after nine operations on his shattered leg he had needed access to regular medical attention once settling in the UK, and Evan Powell was one of the top orthopaedic surgeons in Harley Street. Plus, he had been recommended to him by his own surgeon back in Rio de Janeiro.
‘Then take my advice, man, and stop treating your body as though it were some mechanical machine instead of very human flesh and bone!’
‘I was told I would recover complete and normal use of my leg, given time,’ the younger man challenged impatiently. ‘Why the hell is it taking so long?’
‘Your femur was all but crushed in the accident. The bone has been practically rebuilt from scratch. Did you really expect to recover from nine major operations as easily as you would get over a cold?’
‘When I want your opinion on how I conduct myself,’ Eduardo hissed, his already sour mood worsening by the second, ‘I will ask for it!’
‘Well, then…’ Powell retrieved his cashmere coat from the winged-back chair to fold it carefully over his arm. As tidily as he no doubt expected his staff to lay out the surgical instruments of his profession in theatre before an operation, Eduardo mused without humour. ‘Don’t bother calling your man. I’ll see myself out and bid you goodnight, Mr De Souza.’
‘It’s been a bad day—’ he started, rising to his feet from his chair, bitterly suppressing a groan of pain after the short but thorough examination of his leg by the surgeon. Eduardo glanced at the ornate French antique clock on the marble mantelpiece. Sometimes he marveled that time continued as it did on its relentless course, when the tragedy that had ripped his wife and her unborn child away and all but left him a useless cripple should by rights have stopped the world in its tracks. ‘I should not have spoken to you like that. It was good of you to come out all this way on such an inclement night as this. Forgive me.’
‘No harm done.’
Quickly overcoming any offence he might have taken previously, Evan Powell shrugged his rather bony shoulders in his charcoal-grey pin-striped suit, then glanced interestedly round the beautiful lamp-lit drawing room, with its huge bay windows overlooking the surrounding moat, a network of fields and the dense forest beyond it. A landscape that was now shrouded in the blanket of surely one of the most severe winter frosts on record.
‘Perhaps what you need is some company?’ he suggested, the sudden ‘man to man’ glint in his eye speaking volumes. ‘You’re very isolated out here, and it would help to take your mind off things’
Eduardo’s gaze narrowed. ‘You mean a woman?’ What surprised him was that for the first time in two years he didn’t immediately dismiss the idea. What shocked him was that in response to this suggestion his mind helpfully conjured up for him a very engaging picture of the roadside busker, with her big hazel eyes, pretty mouth and rippling river of honey-brown hair. He was suddenly appalled at himself. How old was she? Seventeen…eighteen?