He maneuvered his limbs to work the stiffness out of them, then leaned against the corner of the house again. Storm and Sophia were now walking away from him, over the field, towards the ruins of Belham Abbey. The gibbous moon hung bright out there above the wedge of wall. With only the last faint clouds wafting over it, it looked like a woman drawing a veil across her face.

Storm and Sophia stopped at the edge of the graveyard, and Bernard saw them close with each other. Saw Storm put his arms around the young woman, and she lean her head against his chest. He breathed the night in deeply and caught the sweet aroma of pipe smoke in the mist. The gruff voice sounded just behind him.

“Ah. Ha-ha.”

Harper moved up to stand next to him. She had her pipe clamped in her teeth and was holding the skull-shaped bowl gingerly. She was following Bernard’s gaze, looking off across the field at where the lovers in the graveyard embraced.

“Don’t,” Bernard said to her. “I mean it, Harper. Don’t be pleased with yourself. I really think that would be one thing more than I could bear.”

Harper tilted her head to one side, plucked the pipe from her mouth. Peered through her glasses at Storm and Sophia. “Well …” she said.

“Well, what?” Bernard crossed his arms on his chest and looked down at her, his shoulder still pressed to the wall. “Well, what? Is this your idea of a happy ending? Her father’s dead, her lover’s dying. They don’t understand the half of what’s happened here tonight. They probably never will. All they’ve got is this … this little space to hold on to each other in, all surrounded by a sea of confusion and grief. I mean, what the hell do you call that?”

“Life, Bernard,” said Harper Albright quietly, watching Storm and Sophia still. She drew on her pipe again for a moment. The smoke filtered out of her mouth as she spoke. “I call it life.”

“Life,” Bernard mimicked her. “That’s the best you can come up with when Iago’s got dead away?”

Harper nodded thoughtfully for a long moment. “He works his work,” she said again. “I mine.”

After that, the two of them stood there for a while without speaking. Watching, as in the last of the mist, in the best of the moonlight, in the shadow of the abbey ruin, Storm lifted Sophia’s face and kissed her gently.