Read A Christmas Grace for Free Online Page B

she were fixed to it.
    The lightning flared again, at almost the same moment as the thunder, sheets of colorless light across the sky, then forks like stab wounds from heaven to the sea. And there, quite clearly out in the bay, was a ship struggling from the north, battered and overwhelmed, trying to make its way around the headland to Galway. It was going to fail. Emily knew that as surely as if it had already happened. The sea was going to devour it.
    She felt almost obscene, standing here in the safety of the house, watching while people were destroyed in front of her. But neither could she simply turn around and go back to bed, even if what she had seen were a dream and would all have vanished in the morning. They would be dying, choking in the water while she lay there warm and safe.
    It was probably pointless to waken Susannah, as if Emily were a child who could not cope with a nightmare alone, and yet she did not hesitate. She tied the shawl more tightly around her and went along the corridor with a candle in her hand. She knocked on Susannah’s bedroom door, prepared to go in if she were not answered.
    She knocked again, harder, more urgently. She heard Susannah’s voice and opened the door.
    Susannah sat up slowly, her face pale, her long hair tousled. In the yellow light of the flame she looked almost young again, almost well.
    â€œDid the storm disturb you?” she asked quietly. “You don’t need to worry; the house has withstood many like this before.”
    â€œIt’s not for me,” Emily closed the bedroom door behind her, a tacit signal she did not mean to leave. “There’s a ship out in the bay, in terrible trouble. I suppose there’s nothing we can do, but I have to be sure.” She sounded ridiculous. Of course there was nothing. She simply did not want to watch its sinking alone.
    The horror in Susannah’s eyes was worse than anything Emily could have imagined.
    â€œSusannah! Is there somebody you know on it?” she went forward quickly and grasped Susannah’s hands on the counterpane. They were stiff and cold.
    â€œNo,” Susannah replied hoarsely. “I don’t think so. But that hardly makes it different, does it? Don’t we all know each other, when it matters?”
    There was no answer. They stood side by side at the window staring into the darkness, then as the lightning came again, a searing flash, it left an imprint on the eyes of a ship floundering in cavernous waves, hurled one way and then another, struggling to keep bow to the wind. As soon as they were tossed sideways they would be rolled over, pummeled to pieces and sucked downwards forever. The sailors must know that, just as Emily did. The two women were watching something inevitable, and yet Emily found her body rigid with the effort of hope that somehow it would not be so.
    She stood closer to Susannah, touching her. Susannah took her hand, gripping it. The ship was still afloat, battling south towards the point. Once it was out of sight, would anyone ever know what had happened to them?
    As if reading Emily’s thoughts, Susannah said, “They’re probably bound for Galway, but they might take shelter in Cashel, just beyond the headland. It’s a big bay, complicated. There’s plenty of calm water, whichever way the wind’s coming.”
    â€œIs it often like this?” Emily asked, appalled at the thought. Susannah did not answer.
    â€œIs it?”
    â€œOnce before…” Susannah began, then drew in her breath in a gasp of pain so fierce that Emily all but felt it herself as Susannah’s fingers clenched around hers, bruising the bones.
    Emily stared out into the pitch-darkness, and then the lightning burned again, and the ship was gone. She saw it in a moment of hideous clarity, just the mast above the seething water.
    Susannah turned back to the room. “I must go and tell Fergal O’Bannion. He’ll get the rest of the