A Christmas Escape Read Online Free PDF

guileless men believe, a plea by a returned soldier asking for help for his business. He had invoked Charles’s elder brother’s name and told some story of being with him the day before the battle in which he died. Charles should have paid more attention. And if he had been the sort of man his father had confidence in, his father would have asked Charles’s opinion; he would have seen the lie for what it was—or at least not believed it so readily—and the whole terrible business might not have happened. There would have been no loss, no suicide, no shame and grief for his mother. She would still be alive.
    Why had he never found the right words to give her heart to live? Hester would have. James would have, were he not dead and buried a thousand miles away. Charles had said and done everything he could think of—but it was not enough. To be fair, Hester had never blamed him—she blamed herself for being too far away to help. But that did not alter the facts, nor his deep ache of failure.
    He had married suitably. It had gone as well as most marriages, except that there had been no children. They had been loyal to each other, adequate companions. They seldom quarreled.
    And yet he could never remember laughing.
    Perhaps that summed it all up—no remembered laughter.
    Now she was gone, and he was halfway up a volcano in the Tyrrhenian, wondering how to find some hunger for life, some passion, some belief in himself that would drive him with the kind of inner fire that Candace Finbar had read about in Quinn’s book.
    He started to walk upward again. It didn’t truly matter if he reached the top or not, whether he could stand up there on what would seem like the roof of the world and stare downward into the crater of a live volcano where the molten rock of the earth was red-hot, like a beating heart of all life. But it would be a kind of victory, all the same.
    There seemed to be some kind of path, at least a track where the grasses were flattened by human footsteps. He followed it automatically, perhaps because it was easier or maybe because it suggested that there might be someone else up there ahead of him.
    It was another hard fifteen minutes before he saw them: two figures on the slope a hundred yards away, silhouettes against the vivid blue of the sky. He knew who they were instantly. One was a man, tall and a little bent as if he were weary. The other was as slender as a wand, head high, a coltish grace to her movement. They could only be Roger Finbar and Candace.
    For a moment Charles was not sure if he wanted to catch up with them or not. His legs were tired and he was a little short of breath. Nevertheless, he started forward and increased his pace. He did not want it to seem as if the climb was too much for him.
    He was panting a little, and fifty yards behind them, when Candace turned and saw him.
    She called out to him, but the increasingly strong wind carried her words away. Then realizing that he had not heard her, she touched Finbar on the arm; he turned to look back, saw Charles, and waved. They stood still. Charles made an effort that tore at the back of his calves and set his lungs aching, but he caught up with them in moments. Then he had to give in and stop to catch his breath. They were very high up. The view was marvelous, as far and wide as the sea on all sides except where the volcano towered into the sky, a huge and brooding presence, almost naked of trees or growth at this altitude.
    Candace was beaming.
    “I thought you’d have to come. It’s different, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like anywhere else at all. Except I suppose other really big volcanoes. Have you ever been up Vesuvius? That’s huge. It wiped out whole towns when it blew up in the time of Pliny the Younger, you know?”
    Charles struggled to get his breath and speak in a voice something like normal.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s far bigger than this, and quiet nearly all the time. When it does blow, it’s stupendous.