“Thank you,” he said, and handed her the handkerchief again as he got to his feet and strode down the slope toward Andrew.
Chapter Ten
Nicholas shook his head slightly as he strode down the slope. Since when had he been a doctor for souls that had been bruised perhaps beyond repair? What good was that advice when he had no idea how to help her?
Remember that day and all your woes will be solved…
He could not even imagine what it must feel like to be so rootless. He had always had family in abundance.
But dash it all, helikedher.
The best thing he could do now was give her some privacy. She had never shared her inner self with anyone else, she had told him. He had no idea why he was the privileged one. She did not even like him or feel comfortable with him. But he believed her. She was neither a whiner nor a complainer. She had a fierce attachment to her parents and her family, especially, he had noticed, this deaf brother and the troubled one—Robbie—with the dog. And the young twins, who would undoubtedly have nasty scars of their own to carry into the future.
At least his wounds—both the physical ones acquired during the wars and the terrible blow of discovering what a blackguard his beloved father was—had come when he was old enough to deal with them. He wondered sometimes about Owen and Stephanie, who had been children at the time.
Andrew, he discovered, was no longer gazing into the fishpond, though he was still squatted down on the ground beside it. His eyes were on a pile of stones of various sizes and shapes that had been artfully arranged to one side of it in a sort of cairn. He was touching them and smoothing a finger, sometimes his whole hand, over a few of them.
Nicholas squatted beside him. The boy turned his head and frowned at him for the first moment, though he did not seem to resent his presence. He would not have heard him come, of course. The boy pointed to one large, roundish stone at the bottom of the pile. It looked as if it might be holding up the whole structure. He patted it and looked with eager inquiry at Nicholas.
“Pretty,” Nicholas said. It was a stupid thing to say, not least because the boy was deaf.
Andrew touched the stone with both hands then and made a pulling gesture. There might be an avalanche if he tried pulling it out. Nicholas touched his hand and pointed to a similar stone almost at the top. But the boy shook his head vigorously and patted the stone at the bottom.
What the devil?
He wanted it, a stone that had no apparent merit except to be a weight bearer—and virtually inaccessible. But Andrew’s pulling gestures were becoming more insistent. He looked intently at Nicholas and made an incoherent sound in his throat.
Howdidone communicate with someone who was totally deaf?What on earth did he want with a large stone and a specific one at that? A dashedinconvenientstone. Obviously no other was going to do, however. And he was probably going to pull the whole heap down upon himself if Nicholas simply shook his head or walked away.
He sighed.
Someonewas going to be displeased about this. The gardener who discovered the vandalism would complain to the head gardener, who would complain to Devlin’s steward, who would complain to Devlin himself. The whole episode would become anincident. Assuming, that was, Andrew had not been half buried in tumbling stones and the fish stunned at the bottom of the pond.
Nicholas could see that it was going to be impossible to remove that specific stone while leaving the rest of the cairn intact. There was only one way to do it. He was going to have to dismantle the whole thing from the top down and try to piece it back together afterward, one stone short. It would not be easy. The cairn must have been there for some time. There were blades of grass and even a few wildflowers growing out from the spaces between stones, all to very picturesque effect.
He was not going to be popular with his brother.
It took a good ten minutes, perhaps longer, and that was just removing the stones one at a time. And let no one say that individual stones, even the smallest, were light in weight or easy to grip. A few of the larger ones weighed a ton—an exaggeration, of course, but theyfeltthat heavy. And who would have guessed there were so many of them?
He had grown soft during the last few years from spending too many hours at an office desk, Nicholas decided. That was not a good thing. He batted the boy’s hands away when he tried to help.He did not want to have to deal with squashed fingers as well as a vandalized cairn. But Andrew grew visibly excited as his stone was gradually exposed and he could touch more of it, both hands spread over it.
Oh, for some communication tool, Nicholas thought. What went on inside the head of someone who had no way of sharing or explaining himself to others? A whole, rich world? An empty void? Nicholas suspected the former. Winifred had devised some system of sign language to convey basic information. Which was admirable of her, but it could not possibly be satisfactory. Yet the boy always seemed happy enough, even if he preferred to be alone most of the time. That last was understandable, of course. How could he be a sociable person even if he wanted to be?
Nicholas allowed the boy to help him lift the stone clear of its berth at the bottom of the pile. This one weighed a ton and a half. He hoped Andrew had no plan of carrying it all the way back to the house. But what did he want it for? It would not make the prettiest of ornaments.
Perhaps Winifred would understand, but he did not want to intrude upon her just yet. She was still sitting at the top of the slope, her arms wrapped about her updrawn legs, as they had been when he first came upon her. Her forehead was resting on her knees.
She had not told her story, including the most important missing part of it, to Owen, then? Yet Owen was the one ready and willing to help suffering humanity—as she was herself. It was not difficult to understand the connection between those two, but just how close was it as a personal relationship if she was suppressing part of herself? Was a full and lasting relationship possible without complete openness?
Was Grace suppressing a part of herself? But he did not want torevive those doubts and worries today. He did not know Grace Haviland. He had already admitted that to himself.
Andrew kneeled on the grass beside his stone while Nicholas rebuilt the pile to the best of his ability. He did not have an artistic soul, he decided at last, or an engineer’s eye. The new structure seemed sturdy, but would it stand the test of time? It did not look nearly as picturesque as the old. It looked now merely like a pile of stones. But it would have to do.
Andrew was smoothing his hands over his stone, his head bent over it, his eyes closed. Nicholas would have given a great deal to know his thoughts.
He stood when he was finished, and flexed his back. Andrew looked up at him and smiled. It was an unexpectedly sweet smile. He scrambled to his feet and stooped to lift his stone. He did indeed intend to take it with him, then? Nicholas made a staying gesture with one hand. This was something he was going to have to do himself, with the boy’s help. But Winifred was coming down the slope, his neatly folded handkerchief clasped in one hand. All traces of her tears were gone.
“Thank you,” she said, holding the handkerchief out to him. “Has Andrew found a stone?”
