A Christmas Escape by Anne Perry Page B

this rather uncivil hour. I am not sure if I will have another chance. I think no one knows what this day will bring.”
    “No one ever knows the future,” Charles pointed out. “Or do you mean this day in particular?”
    Finbar gave a slight nod; in the slowly broadening light it was visible only in a shifting of the shadows.
    “I mean it of this day in particular.”
    “If you are thinking of that ass Bailey, then don’t worry about him.” Charles tried to sound assured, although he wasn’t. He was anxious himself about what further trouble Bailey would cause.
    Finbar made a slight gesture of dismissal with one hand. “Oh, Bailey is a wretched man, and no doubt the cause of a great deal of unnecessary misery, but I was thinking of something quite unstoppable that not even Bailey can affect in the slightest.”
    Charles did not interrupt with a question.
    “Did you hear the mountain in the night?” Finbar asked, his eyes searching Charles’s face as much as he could in the dim light.
    “Yes,” Charles said warily. “I woke once. I think it was a particularly loud crash and then a sort of rumbling, rather the way a house does if it is set too close to the railway track and a heavy train passes by. I looked, but I couldn’t see anything. Could it have been a rockfall? Does it do that? Higher up, some of the slopes seem loose, like scree.”
    “I don’t know,” Finbar admitted, “but it has been rumbling most of the night. In spite of all assurances to the contrary, I think we are going to have a real eruption with lava flow, bombs, and—”
    “Bombs?” Charles could not hide his alarm.
    The light was now broad enough for Charles to see the smile on Finbar’s face. “Small lumps of lava, molten rock, and gas that fly up in the air out of the crater and land anywhere within a few miles, depending on size and the violence with which they are hurled. They explode whenever they hit something, much as a bomb would. They set fire to anything combustible, such as grass or the brush on the mountainsides.”
    “Oh.” It was an acknowledgment. He should have realized it. “What is it you think I can do? That seems like a convulsion of the earth beyond any human intervention at all.”
    “Of course it is,” Finbar agreed quietly. “But if the fires are too bad, the heat too intense, then we will all leave here and make for the sea, as fast as we can. I will do my best, but I’m afraid I have nothing like the strength I used to have. I’m slow. I falter and could fall. I want you to promise that if anything happens to me, you will look after Candace. She has no one else. I am the last of her family. She needs more than a roof over her head in some distant relative’s house, until they can marry her off to someone they consider suitable.”
    The very idea of it revolted Charles. Such a situation would crush the joy out of Candace.
    “I see that you find the idea repellent,” Finbar said softly. “You can see the spark in her. And I know she likes you. She will trust you, and if you are honest and gentle with her, she will love you for it. Before you refuse, consider what the alternative is for her, please?”
    He would not beg, but Charles could see the depth of emotion in his face, even in this pallid light. His instinct was to refuse, to tell Finbar what a failure he had made of his own life. If the old man had any idea how feeble, how directionless Charles was, he would never entrust him with such a task. He surely had nothing in his life as precious to him as that child!
    “We’ll get you down the mountain,” he said. “That is, if it does erupt. Stefano has lived here all his life, and he doesn’t seem to think it will.”
    “Charles,” Finbar said very quietly, “you know as well as I do that Stefano puts on a front for all of our comfort. Maybe it won’t blow, but maybe it will. I’ve heard it rumbling all night. The strength of it is building. I only ask you to promise me that if