A Second Spring Read Online Free Page A

had nothing to do with the absence of visitors from the manor.
    She persuaded Letty to allow Daphne and Donald to go out for a while, well wrapped up. They came back sniffling, and Sarah complained about the wet clothes hanging in her kitchen. Letty’s silently reproachful glance both irritated Catriona and made her feel guilty.
    Fortunately the sniffles came to nothing. The wind veered to the northeast, frigid, blustery gusts off the North Sea that split the clouds and sent them scurrying. Leaves whirled from the trees, and the twins returned pink-cheeked from an expedition to the copse, with pocketfuls of brown shiny horse chestnuts.
    “For cannonballs,” Donald explained.
    “To shoot at paper ships.”
    “We met Mr Hilton in the wood.”
    “He showed us a badger’s sett.”
    “That’s what you call its hole.”
    “Where it lives.”
    “They only come out at night.”
    Daphne gave him a repressive look and changed the subject. “Mr Hilton says it’s shaping up to a rare blow.”
    The bailiff’s prediction was borne out by the rising wind. A tile slid off the roof and crashed to the ground, and Lois’s bonnet blew away as she returned in the late afternoon from visiting her family. By nightfall a gale whipped the trees and moaned eerily around the Dower House.
    Catriona and Letty ate their early dinner with the twins, put them to bed, and settled for the evening in the cosy haven of the sitting room. Letty read aloud from Waverly while Catriona sewed. The howl of the wind and the creaking of the house timbers were punctuated by an occasional bang or clatter from outside. A splintering crash made them both jump.
    “There goes the cucumber frame,” said Catriona with a sigh. “Everything which is not tied down—”
    A thunderous shock rocked the house. Plaster fell from the ceiling, and a porcelain shepherdess dived from mantelpiece to hearth, shattering in a hundred pieces. From the hall came a wail.
    Paling, Letty set down the book and jumped to her feet. With a shaking hand, Catriona stuck the needle in her work and laid it aside. Lois rushed in .
    “Oh, my lady, I was that startled I dropped the tea tray. It was an earthquake, that’s what it was.”
    Betty appeared in the doorway, Sarah’s round face visible over her shoulder. “The elm’s down, my lady,” she said grimly. “Hit the roof square on, from what we could see out the kitchen window.”
    “The twins!” White as a ghost, Letty pushed past the servants and ran to the stairs. Catriona at her heels.
    Before she reached the landing, Letty stopped with a cry of despair. The upper flight of the narrow staircase was a jumbled, impenetrable tangle of splintered elm branches, their yellow leaves stirring fitfully in the gusts that blew down from above.
    “Daphne!” Letty screamed. “Donald! Answer me!”
    Only the roar of the wind answered.
    “Oh, ma’am, they’re dead.” Lois began to cry as Letty frantically pulled at the obstruction.
    “Be quiet, you silly girl,” Catriona commanded, a cold, unnatural calm enveloping her. “Go and fetch the hatchet from the shed. Hurry.” She stood behind Letty, helpless, the stair too narrow for her to lend her aid. They could not be dead, her darlings! They must be too frightened to call out. “They are too frightened to call out,” she said, trying to persuade herself.
    With a reverberating cr-r-a-ack the tree shifted as a beam gave way beneath its weight. A huge limb shoved the tangled mass of smaller branches at Letty.
    “It’s not safe, my lady,” cried Betsy. “The whole house’ll be down next.”
    “Outside with you. Keep Lois out. Letty, my dearest, you cannot reach them this way. We must see what we can do from outside. “Come, love.”
    She took Letty’s scratched, bleeding hand and forced her down the stairs and out into the garden. The moon shone bright between fleeing clouds, then disappeared again. Stumbling through a litter of fallen tiles and broken branches, they sped