Читать книгу Dearest Love - Бетти Нилс - Страница 8

CLUTCHING the puppy, Arabella was swept into his house, one of several similar houses with their backs overlooking the canal and their fronts restrainedly Georgian. The hall was square with a curved staircase to one side and several doors leading from it. Out of one of these emerged a large, bony woman with a severe hairstyle and a long thin face.

‘Ah, Alice. Miss Lorimer—this is my housekeeper, Mrs Turner. Alice, I’ve brought Miss Lorimer back for tea; could we have it presently?’

Arabella offered a hand and Mrs Turner shook it and said, ‘How do you do?’ in a severe manner and cast a look at the puppy. ‘In five minutes, sir. And perhaps the young lady would like to leave her jacket.’

‘No need,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She won’t be staying long—it can stay on a chair.’ He took the puppy as he spoke and Arabella took off her jacket and laid it tidily on a rather nice Regency elbow chair and went with him into the drawing-room.

It was large, running from front to back of the house, the back French windows opening on to a small wrought-iron balcony which overlooked the canal. She crossed the room, dimly aware of its beauty but intent on looking out of the window. ‘It isn’t like London at all,’ she declared, ‘and there’s a garden…’

As indeed there was, below the balcony—small, high-walled, screened from the houses on either side by ornamental trees and shrubs, with the end wall built over the water.

Dr Tavener stood watching her and saying nothing and presently, aware of his silence, she turned to look at him. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been rude, but it was such a lovely surprise.’

He smiled then. ‘Yes, isn’t it? I’ve lived here for some years and it still surprises me. Come and sit down and we’ll have tea.’

She looked around her then, at the comfortable chairs and the wide sofa before the fire; the Chippendale giltwood mirror over the fireplace and the rosewood table behind the sofa; the mahogany tripod tables with their lamps and the Dutch marquetry display cabinets each side of the fireplace. It was a beautiful room, furnished beautifully. There was a rosewood writing-table under the windows, its surface covered by silver-framed photos. She would have liked to have examined them but good manners forbade that so she sat down composedly in one of the armchairs as Mrs Turner came in with the tea tray.

Cucumber sandwiches, muffins in a silver dish and a rich fruit cake. She sighed silently and swallowed the lump in her throat; it was a long time since she had seen such a tea, eaten and drunk from fine china with the tea poured from a silver pot.