Mariana (35 page)

'I wanted to.' This time the gray eyes didn't look away. 'Believe me, I wanted to. I've been to hell and back, this summer. But Freda said you'd get it right, in time, if I would only wait.'

'Iain ...'

'Ordinarily,' he went on, evenly, 'I'm a patient man. But I think I've waited long enough.' He pitched the cigarette away and came toward me with slow, deliberate steps. 'Time we both stopped waiting, and began to live.'

The tone, the stance, were briefly Richard's, but it was Iain who came to me, Iain who stood before me with his broad shoulders blocking out the light. How could I have been so blind, I wondered, not to have seen it long before? Everything I wanted, all that I had ever been or could ever hope to be, was there in those steady gray eyes.

For a long, aching minute he just stood there looking down at me, silent and serious. And in my eyes he saw his answer, for at last he smiled, and took my face in his strong hands, tracing my cheekbone with a delicate touch.

'These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett,' he promised me softly. And as he lowered his head to mine and
kissed me, a flock of starlings rose beating from the hollow in a shifting, glorious cloud, wheeled once against the blood-red sky, and then was gone.

The circle was closed.

About the author

Born in Canada in 1966, Susanna Kearsley has been writing since the age of seven. She studied politics and international development at university, has worked as a museum curator, and has had two short novels published in the U.S. She lives in Ontario.

Susanna Kearsley is the second winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize, which was set up in 1992 to celebrate the achievement of Dame Catherine Cook-son. The prize is awarded to a novel that features the strong characterization, authentic background, and storytelling ability that have been the outstanding qualities of Catherine Cookson's work.