Mulligan's Yard (52 page)

He crossed the space and knelt before her.

‘Get up,’ she chided. ‘I shall only laugh.’

‘Marry me,’ he ordered.

‘I will,’ she returned, ‘but get off your knees.’ She smiled up at him after he had risen. ‘Why didn’t you come as a priest? Why did you pretend to be a
layman?’

He laughed softly. ‘Would you have done business with a priest? A raving Roman?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answered.

‘Then never mind, for we are agreed, are we not?’ He spat on his hand, shook hers. ‘That’s a good bit of business we just did, my love, and we have shaken on it,
too.’

‘Yes, James, you played a good hand there.’

They left the cellar, left the past behind and climbed stone steps into the kitchen.

In the hallway of Pendleton Grange, an elderly Irishwoman wept into her apron. With the turn of an ace, her brother had brought together this wonderful couple. She dried her eyes and spoke into
the soft silence of morning. ‘For once, you played well,’ she told Thomas Mulligan. ‘May God forgive me for saying so.’

THE END

Ruth Hamilton is the bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including
Mulligan’s Yard
,
Dorothy’s War
,
The Judge’s Daughter
,
The
Reading Room
,
Mersey View
and
That Liverpool Girl.
She has become one of the north-west of England’s most popular writers. She was born in Bolton, which is the setting for
many of her novels. She now lives in Liverpool.

Also by Ruth Hamilton

A Whisper to the Living

With Love from Ma Maguire

Nest of Sorrows

Billy London’s Girls

Spinning Jenny

The September Starlings

A Crooked Mile

Paradise Lane

The Bells of Scotland Road

The Dream Sellers

The Corner House

Miss Honoria West

Saturday’s Child

Matthew & Son

Chandlers Green

The Bell House

Dorothy’s War

The Judge’s Daughter

The Reading Room

A Parallel Life

Mersey View

Sugar and Spice

That Liverpool Girl

Lights of Liverpool

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My family – Alice, David, Michael, Susan and Elizabeth.

Dorothy Ramsden, researcher, Bolton.

Members of America On Line who also helped with research.

Staff at Bolton Central Library.

Sweetens Books of Bolton, who provided me with information.

The Revd Geoff Garner and his wife, Elisabeth, for investigating crematoria throughout Britain.

All my friends for sensing when to visit and when to stay away!

Father Albert Shaw of St Helen’s Church, my friend and confessor.

I say goodbye to Jenny Byrne, who died in June 2000.

First published 2012 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-76492-7 EPUB

Copyright © Ruth Hamilton 2012

The right of Ruth Hamilton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
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liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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