Jowan followed behind her, leaving Aldous to cower under the kitchen table.
Down the stone steps and across the lawn, now so waterlogged Minty struggled to keep up her pace. Down the dark rhododendron valley lit only at intervals by the flashes in the sky.
Minty only understood what had happened when she stumbled over the first of the masonry blocks blown clean off the chapel roof by the lightning strike. Still, she picked her way towards the chapel, her hands extended in front of her, expecting at any second to make contact with the wall but meeting only airy nothingness.
Jowan finally caught up to her, calling her name. ‘Stay back,’ he cried, but she couldn’t hear him.
The thunder clouds, blowing fast, now passing over the main road, heading inland, gifted them one last bright burst that confirmed all Minty’s fears. The chapel was gone.
She stepped up onto the great pile of slate shards, rubble, shattered glass and splintered wood. It was as though an incendiary device had detonated inside the place.
‘Minty!’ Jowan called again. ‘Come away, get back inside.’
The lights from the Big House began to penetrate the gloom a little as their vision adjusted.
‘It’s ruined,’ she said, barely audible. Minty turned blank eyes upon him as she staggered out of the destruction. ‘You,’ she said, rain drenching her hair and soaking through her layers of clothing to her blouse, her skin prickling with cold. ‘You kissed me, and you regretted it.’
‘Mint, I…’ Jowan tried to protest but gave up, seeing the tears shine in her eyes. ‘Mint, this is the camellia grove where I proposed to my Isolde. This is the village where she lived and breathed… and you… you loved her too, I know you did. No woman could have a better friend, but I… I am her husband still, even though I’m a widower. I…’
Minty’s face turned hard like flint and she pushed past him. She didn’t look back when she spoke. ‘There’s a bed made up for you in the ballroom.’
Making her way back to the house like a woman in a trance, Minty’s muddy feet carried her to the small bedroom she called her own at the back of the kitchens. She brushed her wet hair back and changed into a nightgown, letting her sopping clothes fall in a heap on the bare floorboards. Her body rattled with shock and cold until she was under the covers in the dark.
That night she cried herself to sleep while the storm blew itself out over the hills and towns inland, its anger calming as Christmas Eve dawned in Clove Lore.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Stowaway
Magnús had kept the fire burning all night. The shop was warm, even if there was no electricity to light the place. In the middle of the night he’d climbed the stairs looking for blankets and they’d made a makeshift bed by the hearth.
Alex stirred first. ‘Happy Christmas Eve,’ she told him, placing a kiss on his chest where she lay wrapped in his arms.
Magnús smiled lazily and slid down the sheets so he could kiss her mouth. ‘Good morning.’
‘Do you hear that?’ said Alex. ‘The wind’s dropped. I think the storm’s over.’
Rain pattered softly on the cobbles outside, nothing like the torrents of last night, like a kitten following in the footsteps of a lion. Distracted by the need to kiss him again, she let herself ease into his arms, reaching for his mouth.
When they pulled apart, Magnús let his eyes rove over her face like he was seeing her for the first time.
‘You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever met,’ he said, all the air leaving his lungs with the force of feeling behind his words. ‘This thing between us,’ he told her, pressing kisses to her mouth as he spoke. ‘Do you feel it too?’
‘I feel it,’ she told him.
‘I’ve never had this before,’ he confessed.
‘Me neither, but I like it.’
Everything was so easy between them. All he had to do was rake his fingertips softly over her back and she would melt into his body. She needed only to smile and he could forgot his own name.
Neither of them spoke again about what would happen at the end of next week. It was too soon for all that, so they stayed together, kissing by the hearth until the watery winter sun came up.
Eventually, Alex told him with a grin that she had something for him. ‘For Christmas Eve.’
A few moments later Magnús was standing before her, modelling Alex’s oversized ‘Crocombe’s Ices’ T-shirt and nothing else.
‘New clothes. To keep the Yule Cat away, remember?’ she said.
