A black-and-white dog who’d settled at her feet looked up at Gavin’s approach and gave a soft, “Wuff.” She glanced up at him without speaking and he recognized Norah. She was different. Her face was deadly pale and full of despair and she looked as if all the fight had been drained out of her. Suddenly the firm words he’d rehearsed vanished from his head, leaving only one thought.
He said gently, “I’m so very, very sorry. It must be dreadful for you.”
Chapter Two
“It’s you,” she said, as if dazed.
“Weren’t you expecting me after-what’s happened?”
“I don’t know-I haven’t taken it in yet. It seems only yesterday that I waved them off…” She gave a little shudder. “It was only yesterday. And now the whole world has changed.”
He sat beside her on the bench. “How is Peter? Does he know?”
“He knew before anyone else,” she said huskily. “The worst possible thing happened. He was watching the news, and he saw it first. Nobody had called to warn us. It was a dreadful shock for him. He came and told me. At first I didn’t believe him. I thought he’d misunderstood. He kept crying and saying, ‘It’s true, it’s true.’ Then we cried together for most of the night.”
“It’s a terrible burden for you,” he said sympathetically. “But I’m here now.”
She gave him a strange look which he failed to interpret, and said, “Peter fell asleep about an hour ago. I came out here because it’s where I feel closest to Dad. We built all this up together. He loved it so much. He used to say all the money in the world didn’t mean as much as an animal’s trust.”
Gavin thought that a man who’d attached himself to a rich woman was free to be indifferent to money, but it would have been cruel to say it to her, so he kept silent.
“They all trusted him,” Norah said, looking around at the animals who were beginning to awake and appear. “How am I going to tell them?”