Destiny's Path Read Online Free PDF Page B

patiently.
    A young woman with a cheerful face and the white apron and cap of a maid answered it.
    ‘I’m Ronan Maguire. Your master and mistress are expecting me.’
    She beamed at him. ‘Oh yes. Welcome to Outham, sir. If you’ll please to come in and leave your luggage here in the hall, I’ll get someone from the shop to carry it up to your bedroom in a few minutes.’
    He paid the lad and followed her upstairs, where his hostess was waiting for him. She was glowingly beautiful, as some women are when expecting a child.
    ‘Mr Maguire. How kind of you to come and see us!’
    He took her hand and shook it. ‘I’m always interested in visiting new places.’
    She smiled. ‘You sound like my older sister Xanthe. She’s intending to use some of the money we’ve inherited to travel.’
    ‘With her husband?’
    ‘She’s not married.’
    He hoped he’d hidden his surprise but he couldn’t help saying, ‘It isn’t usual for single ladies to travel on their own.’
    ‘I doubt we’re any of us “usual”, Mr Maguire. Our father worked in the mill and yet was learning Greek, while my sisters and I usually have our heads in a book when we have time.’ She sighed and glanced at an open book, lying beside her on the sofa. ‘At the moment, I have all too much time on my hands.’
    He could only assume that her sister didn’t share her beauty, because it was normally dried-up spinsters who became globe trotters, a modern phrase he rather liked. He’d met a few such women on his travels and found them eccentric, bizarrely dressed and sometimes rather free in their behaviour.
    Mr Carr didn’t come in from the shop to join them until the evening meal, which was served at six o’clock and which everyone called ‘tea’. After that he apologised for needing to go back to the shop, which didn’t close until nine o’clock.
    ‘Your husband works hard.’
    ‘Yes, but he loves it. I do the accounts but women aren’t welcome to serve in the better class of shop.’
    She’d surprised him again. ‘Would you want to?’
    ‘Oh, yes. It’d be much more interesting than sitting here twiddling my thumbs.’ She smiled. ‘Most men wouldn’t let their wives near the accounts, but I’ve always been good with figures.’
    ‘Tell me about your sisters and how they wound up in Australia. Did you not want to go with them?’
    So she explained about their aunt forcing them to go to Australia by kidnapping Cassandra and threatening to kill her. As their aunt had already killed her own husband, they’d been too afraid to refuse. ‘But I could never settle in Australia and was so homesick I became ill. In the end I had to come back to England on my own, but I miss my sisters dreadfully.’
    It was said simply and quietly, but he could sense the deep sadness behind the words.
    ‘They’re starting to reduce the travel time now that steamships are coming into their own, and once the Suez Canal is finished, it’ll be even easier to get to and fro. If they prosper, and from what you’ve told me they sound very capable, I’d guess that one day they’ll come to visit you here.’
    Her face lit up. ‘Do you really think so?’
    ‘I do indeed.’
    ‘Then you’ve given me a bright hope to comfort me.’
    Fenella Maguire sat stabbing at a piece of needlework, bored with her own company and wishing she hadn’t quarrelled with her son. Ronan would come back, though, she knew he would. Didn’t they always make up their differences?
    When she heard a carriage outside, she went to peep out of the window and saw Kathleen Largan get out, her black clothes fluttering in the breeze.
    Fenella hurried to greet her in the hall. ‘Are you all right? I thought you’d be resting after the funeral.’
    ‘That was over a week ago.’
    ‘What shall you do now?’
    She shook her head, frowning. ‘I don’t know. Kieran has told me he doesn’t want me staying at Shilmara. He’s offered to buy me a house wherever I like, Dublin, Belfast or