Читать книгу Her Own Rules - Barbara Taylor Bradford - Страница 11

“I know you thought I was being stubborn the other day,” Patsy Canton said, “when I wouldn’t discuss the inns with you, but—”

“More like evasive,” Meredith interrupted.

“Not evasive, not stubborn either. Just cautious. I didn’t want you to get any preconceived ideas, especially from me, before you saw the inns. But now I can give you a sort of—preview, shall we say. The owner of the inn near Lake Windermere in the Lakes sent us a batch of photographs. They arrived yesterday. Let me get them for you.”

Patsy pushed herself out of the chair, walked across the small red sitting room of her house in London’s Belgravia, where she and Meredith were having a drink before lunch on Sunday.

In her late thirties, she was an attractive woman, in a way more handsome than pretty, almost as tall as Meredith and well built. Her hair was blonde, cut short, and it curled all over her head; her gray eyes were large and full of intelligence. But it was her flawless English complexion that everyone commented on.

Pausing at the small Georgian desk, Patsy picked up a large envelope and walked back to the sofa, where she sat down next to Meredith.

“Ian Grainger, the owner of Heronside, is rather proud of the pictures. He took them himself, last spring and summer.” So saying, she handed the envelope to Meredith, who pulled out the photographs eagerly.

After a few seconds spent looking at them, she turned to Patsy and said, “I’m not surprised he’s proud of them. The pictures are beautiful. So is Heronside, if these are anything to go by.”

“Very much so, Meredith. In a way, the photographs don’t really do the inn and the grounds justice. There’s such a sense of luxury in the rooms, you feel pampered just walking into one of them. The whole inn is very well done, lovely antiques and fabrics, and I know you’ll like the decorative schemes, the overall ambiance. As for the grounds, they’re breathtaking, don’t you think?”

Meredith nodded, shuffled through the pictures again, and picked one of them out. It was a woodland setting. The ground was carpeted with irises and rafts of sunlight slanted down through the leafy green canopies of the trees. Just beyond were brilliant yellow daffodils growing on a slope, and, far beyond this, a stretch of the lake could be seen—vast, placid, silvery, glistening in the sun.

“Look, Patsy,” Meredith said, and handed it to her partner. “Isn’t this gorgeous?”

“Yes, and most especially the slope covered in daffodils. Doesn’t it remind you of Wordsworth’s poem?”

Meredith stared at her.

“The one about the daffodils. Don’t you know it?”

Meredith shook her head.

Patsy confided, “It’s one of my favorites.” Almost involuntarily, she began to recite it.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

“It’s lovely,” Meredith said.

“Didn’t you learn it at school?”

“No,” Meredith murmured.

Patsy went on. “I like the last verse best of all. Would you care to hear it?”

“Please,” Meredith replied. “You recite poetry extremely well.”

Once more Patsy launched into the poem:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

“It’s really beautiful,” Meredith said, smiling at her. “It’s very peaceful…serene.”

“That’s how I feel about it.”

“I think I’ve heard that last verse before. Somewhere. But I’m not sure where,” Meredith murmured. “Not at school, though.” For a moment or two she racked her brain, but try though she did, she could not remember. And yet the poem had struck a chord in her memory, but she was unable to isolate it. The fleeting memory remained elusive.

Patsy remarked, “Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the inn near Ripon. The Millers, who own it, did have a few photos, and they were very good, too. Yet somehow they didn’t quite capture the spirit of the place, its soul. So I decided not to take them. You’ll have to judge it cold when we get to the site.”

“That’s no problem.” Meredith looked at her closely. “But you do like Skell Garth, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, Meredith, very much, otherwise I wouldn’t be dragging you there,” Patsy quickly reassured her partner. “The setting is superb, the surrounding landscape awe-inspiring, picturesque actually. And from the inn there’s a most fabulous view of Fountains Abbey, one of the most beautiful ruins in all of England. Yes, Skell Garth is a unique place.”

“Skell Garth,” Meredith repeated. “You know, when you first mentioned it, I thought it was such an odd name.”

“I suppose it is. Let me explain. The Skell is a river that flows through Ripon and through the land on which both the inn and the abbey stand. Garth is the ancient Yorkshire word for field, and many of the local farmers still refer to their fields as garths.”

“So the name actually means the field of the river Skell. Am I correct?”

Patsy laughed, delighted with Meredith’s astuteness. “You’re absolutely correct! I’ll make a Yorkshirewoman of you yet.”

The two friends and partners sat talking about the inns for a while as they sipped their white wine, and then they moved on, became involved in a long and involved discussion about their business in general.

It was Patsy who brought this to a sudden halt when she jumped up, exclaiming, “Oh my God! I smell something awful. I hope that’s not our lunch getting burnt to a cinder.”

She flew out of the sitting room and ran downstairs to the kitchen.

Meredith charged after her.

Patsy was crouching in front of the oven, looking at the roast, poking around in the pan with a long-handled spoon.

“Is it spoiled?” Meredith asked in concern as she walked in.

“Fortunately not,” Patsy said, straightening. She closed the oven door and swung to face Meredith, grinning. “A couple of potatoes are singed around the edges, but the lamb’s okay. It’s the onions that are a bit scorched. They’re black, actually. Anyway, everything’s ready, well, almost. I hope you’re hungry, because I’ve cooked up a storm.”

“I’m starving. But you didn’t have to go to all this trouble, you know, I was quite happy to take you out to lunch. Or have you come to the hotel.”

“I enjoy doing this occasionally,” Patsy assured her. “It reminds me of my childhood growing up in Yorkshire. And anyway, Meredith, it’s not often you get a traditional English Sunday lunch, now, is it?”

Meredith chuckled. “No, and I’m looking forward to it.”