After a time he left her there, and walked back to the village. On impulse he stopped at the church. The heavy west door was locked, but the smaller one in the porch was not. He lifted the latch and walked inside. There was a chill in the place, the stone cold as death. He stood for a moment looking at the architecture, the style of the arches, the strength of the pillars, the tall nave that bowed before a shorter, older choir. It was a very fine church, but not distinguished. Its proportions made it fall just short of perfection. The carvings, unlike the angel in the churchyard, were heavier, earthier, more formidable and less delicate, like some of those he’d seen in Normandy.

He walked down the central aisle, looking back over his shoulder at the Victorian organ in the loft, then towards the stone altar that was rather handsomely carved, as if it had come from an old monastery. The choir was plain, the stalls of dark oak, and off to its left was an octagonal chapel dedicated to the Trevelyan family dead.

There was a knight in the far shadows, old and worn, and memorials set into the walls for the dead lying in the crypt below. A very beautiful marble sarcophagus, made for two, held the remains of Rosamund Trevelyan’s parents. Weeping figures at each corner, veiled and bent, must have been carved to represent earthly mourning. Above the tomb, where the arches entwined in perpendicular harmony, a cherub with a trumpet floated among voluptuous robes. To one side was a smaller tomb carved from what appeared to be a solid block of alabaster, with a delicate tracery of flowers and birds more like a wedding bower than a place of burial. A figure on the top was barely visible in its shroud, the body seeming to melt into the marble earth almost as it touched. But at the head, the shroud was opened to show a woman’s features with curling strands of hair escaping to frame them, as if holding back death. It was Rosamund, he realized as he looked down into her face.

There was beauty and strength, dignity and love there. Warmth. A woman who had much to give in her own right, and in the arms of her family. A woman who had lost three husbands and two of her children, but never faltered, a veritable pillar of life even in death.

He touched the cold marble cheek, and almost swore he could feel its own warmth against his hand. But it was an illusion, and he knew it.