Читать книгу I’ll Bring You Buttercups - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 5

Alice Hawthorn had never been so happy, and not in her seventeen years past nor surely in the seventeen to come could she be this happy again.

To London! She was going to London by railway train; rushing and thundering through six counties to a city which was to her only a far-away fairy tale. Not that she didn’t know all there was to know about that city. Miss Julia had spoken often of the parks and the genteel folk who strolled through them, and the shops – streets and streets of them – and theatres and music halls and squares of townhouses. Oh, and people everywhere and the King and Queen reigning over half the world!

She wriggled deeper into the feathers of the mattress and pulled the blankets high over her ears. She was so happy she was afraid, for sure as anything could Fate snatch back her happiness. Fate always had, ever since she could remember. That was why she had hurried to tell it to the rooks, for not until she had told it, shared it, could this happiness be safely hers to keep. It was important the rooks should know. Rooks kept confidences and held secrets safe. You told them all: of birthings and dying, of sorrow and joy and hopes and fears. You always told them.

Rooks, it’s Alice here. She had stood, eyes closed, beneath the tallest tree in the wood, leaning against the trunk as though to link herself to the black birds that nested in it and wheeled and cawed above it. You know me. I’m sewing-maid at Rowangarth and I’m to go to London with Miss Julia and I’m that excited I shall burst if I don’t tell someone …

She had almost gone on to tell them about Tom Dwerryhouse but had decided against it, though heaven only knew why. Tom and Alice. Even their names seemed to fit; sounded so right together that it sent a glow of contentment from the tip of her nose to the tips of her toes. Tom, the under-keeper with whom she was walking out – well, almost walking out. Tom who was tall and twenty-two and had fair hair and blue eyes and a smile that completely transformed a face inclined to seriousness.

She was glad he was clean-shaven, because when he kissed her – and one day very soon now he would – she didn’t want it to be spoiled. Cousin Reuben had a moustache and he’d kissed her cheek the day he visited Aunt Bella with whom she once lived. She couldn’t have been more than eight at the time, but the memory of that prickly kiss lived on through the years. Reuben wasn’t really her cousin, though she called him that out of politeness, and because he was old.

She smiled, closing her eyes. She’d been on her way to Reuben’s cottage the day she met Tom – and all because of a lovable, lolloping dog who’d caused more trouble in the few months he’d been at Rowangarth than two dogs in two lifetimes.

‘Off you go, boy,’ she had whispered, slipping his lead, smiling as he hurtled into the green deeps of the wood, and hardly had she placed a hand on Reuben’s garden gate when she heard a roar so enraged that the whole of Rowangarth must have heard it, too.

‘Drat you, dog, you great daft animal! There’ll not be a game-bird left in this wood!’ The man who strode towards her carried a shotgun over his right arm, his other hand firmly grasping the collar of a bewildered spaniel. ‘Does this creature belong to you?’

‘N-no, but he’s with me.’ Alice gazed up into eyes deep with anger. ‘He belongs to Mr Giles and he isn’t a creature. He’s called Morgan and what’s more he’s got every right to run where he pleases,’ she ended, breathlessly defiant.

This was him, it had to be: the new under-keeper whose coming not two weeks ago had sent housemaids and kitchenmaids for miles around into a tizzy of delight; the man who had been so oh’d and ah’d over at table that Mrs Shaw had been obliged to tell them to stop their foolish talk, and if he were as tall and broad and good to look at as they made out, didn’t it stand to reason he’d be married, or at the very least promised?

‘That animal runs where I say he can, and where I’ve got pheasants sitting on eggs, he isn’t welcome. There won’t be a bird to show for it come October if he frightens the hens off the nests. And Morgan? What sort of a name is that for a dog, will you tell me?’

‘It’s the name Mr Giles chose.’ Alice tilted her chin.

And this was Mr Giles’s wood, like all the woods on the estate, or his as made no matter with his elder brother away in India. ‘And what’s more, I think Morgan suits him!’

‘So it does. A daft name for a daft dog, and likely you aren’t responsible for an animal not your own. But I’ve bother enough with hawks and magpies taking chicks and eggs: I can do well without that animal adding to my troubles. Now do you understand me, miss?’

‘But I always walk him here.’ Her mouth drooped at the corners.

‘Not any more you can’t, so best keep him near the house; trees enough for him there. Or you could let him run in the big meadow – if he isn’t afraid of cows, that is.’

He threw back his head and his laugh showed white, even teeth, and made her want to laugh with him. But she refused to give him the pleasure, for even though there was no denying that all she had heard whispered about him was true – he was as handsome as the devil – she tilted her chin still higher, for the new keeper was bossy and full of his own importance. Taking the lead from her pocket she murmured, ‘Come on home, Morgan.’ They wouldn’t stay where they weren’t welcome. She would call on Reuben tomorrow and, anyway, it was almost time for tea.

Servants’ tea at Rowangarth, when the big brown pot was set beside the kitchen range to warm and Mrs Shaw presided over bread and jam and fruit cake, was a happy time; the kitchen a haven of laughter and warmth where Alice Hawthorn could forget this slight.

‘Bid you good day,’ she had murmured in her most ladylike voice, deliberately refraining from using his name, though she knew it to be Tom Dwerryhouse. Everyone had known it; even the servants over at the Place.

Now she poked her nose out of the blankets to let go a sigh of relief, grateful that her hoity-toity behaviour hadn’t frightened Tom off for good. And well it might have, she admitted, had it not been for Morgan and his disorderly ways, for to Tom a dog so undisciplined was a challenge, a creature to be taught its place. And she had to admit that no dog she’d ever known was as tiresome and unbiddable as a spaniel called Morgan – and no dog so lovable. She would miss him when she went to London.

‘London,’ she whispered into the darkness. So far away that the journey could take hours and hours and they would have to eat luncheon on the train from a picnic basket, Miss Julia said. And when they arrived at King’s Cross station it would be she, Alice, who would call a porter with a raising of her forefinger and the slightest inclination of her head and instruct him to procure a cab for them. He would place their luggage on his trolley – Miss Julia would have three cases at least, as well as a hatbox and a travelling bag – and wheel it to the cab rank. Already Alice had been well-schooled by Miss Clitherow, the tall, thin housekeeper whose back was as straight as a ramrod and who carried her head so high that when she looked at anyone it seemed she was looking down her nose at them. The housekeeper, if she consented to let a body get to know her, was a kind, lonely woman who was neither below stairs nor above and had long since learned that to keep herself to herself was by far the best solution.

Yet she had taken to Alice, right from the day the nervous girl of almost fourteen had presented herself in her ill-fitting clothes and too-big boots for the close scrutiny of Rowangarth’s housekeeper; had found the girl’s innocence and candour pleasant after some of the pert, badly spoken young women she had interviewed. Without hesitation she had given the position of under-housemaid to the brown-eyed child who came without references but with a glowing report of her docility from the aunt who had brought her up and from Reuben Pickering, head keeper at Rowangarth, related to the girl through a niece, once removed. And though she was never to know it, it had been on Miss Clitherow’s recommendation that she was accompanying her employer’s daughter to London, and the well-instructed Alice knew exactly how a lady’s maid behaved; exactly how much money she should carry in her coat pocket and how much to tip – if the service had been good, that was. Because a lady like Miss Julia never called a porter or a cab, or stooped to ask the cabman how much, Miss Clitherow stressed, let alone proffered a tip. It was why a lady never travelled without a maidservant or chaperon. It was why, Alice exulted, she was going to London in two days’ time and, even though it would part her from Tom for almost a fortnight, she wouldn’t have missed it for all the tea in China or, to be fair to Rowangarth, in India!

‘To the mews off Montpelier Place,’ she would tell the cab driver in a softly spoken, genteel way; to the Knightsbridge home of Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton, maiden aunt to Robert, Giles and Julia, elder sister of the late Sir John of Rowangarth, God rest him, who had gone to his Maker before his time and at great speed: at fifty-eight miles an hour, to be fatally exact.

Alice closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Tomorrow she must be up early, for there was unfinished work in the sewing-room; buttons to sew on Lady Helen’s tea gown – fifteen of them – and heaven only knew how many darts and tucks her dinner dress needed.

Poor Lady Helen. It would make her sad to wear that long, full gown in lavender slipper-satin. Alice was prepared to bet she would have gone anywhere at all in it rather than to Pendenys Place. After all the long months in mourning for her husband, must she not be dreading this first public engagement for three years, Alice brooded. Wouldn’t it have been better had she been able to accept some other, kinder ending to her years of black drapes and widow’s weeds, for Pendenys was not the friendliest of houses to visit, even at the best of times.

But the Suttons of Pendenys Place were kin to the Suttons of Rowangarth, and it was to kin that a woman turned when her mourning had run its course and she was able to step back into society again – even kin she disliked.

‘Lady Helen has lost weight,’ Miss Clitherow remarked to Alice only the week before as together they shook out and pressed the morning dresses and tea dresses and dinner dresses and ball gowns put away for the period of milady’s mourning. There would be a lot of work to be done before her sewing-maid went flitting off to London, she suggested pointedly, or where would her ladyship be, after so long in nothing but dreary black and purple? And Alice had fervently agreed and made a mental promise that Lady Helen’s clothes would all be seen to in good time, for she cared deeply for the mistress of Rowangarth, would always be grateful for the stroke of good fortune that landed her with the Rowangarth Suttons and not the Suttons of Pendenys Place. To have been in service at Pendenys, with the ill-tempered Mrs Clementina and the need always to be on the lookout for young Mr Elliot who thought all servants fair game, would have been unthinkable. She wondered why Lady Helen did not employ her own personal maid; why she preferred the aid of the housekeeper to help her dress and herself, the sewing-maid, to look after her clothes when Mrs Sutton of Pendenys had a lady’s maid from France to keep her clothes immaculate and even to style her hair.

Alice sighed, and thought instead of the lace-trimmed, blue-flowered tea gown and the pernickety sewing-on of fifteen shanked buttons in mother-of-pearl. And so fiddling a job was it that she was soundly asleep by the time she had bitten off the cotton attaching button number three.

‘I heard it whispered,’ said Mrs Shaw, who stood on a three-legged stool in the servants’ sitting-room, ‘that you and Tom Dwerryhouse are walking out.’ She had been longing to ask the question, but had refrained from asking it in public since it was obvious the lass wanted it kept a secret.

‘Not walking out exactly,’ Alice whispered from the swinging folds of Mrs Shaw’s hem. ‘But he does seem to have taken Morgan in hand: sits when he’s told, that dog does now, and comes when I call him – or most times he does. And you can’t say it isn’t an improvement, and not before time, either.’

Alice didn’t usually sew for Rowangarth staff, it being understood that when she had attended to the needs of her ladyship and Miss Julia, any spare time was spent repairing household linen. But Lady Helen was taking her afternoon rest, Miss Clitherow was away to town on Rowangarth business, and Miss Julia was out bicycling, so no one would be any the wiser if Alice spent a little time pinning up the hem of Cook’s newly acquired skirt. And it was, remarked Mrs Shaw, an ill-wind that blew nobody any good because here she was, the recipient of a quality skirt, passed on by a friend in service in Norwich as a direct result of the sinking of the SS Titanic and the late owner of the skirt having no further use for it, so to speak. And more bounty to come. A good winter coat, Mrs Shaw had been promised, and anything else the poor unfortunate lady’s executors thought fit to dispose of.

‘He’s a well set-up young fellow, yon gamekeeper,’ Mrs Shaw pressed.

‘Yes, and he likes dogs. Even sees good in Morgan.’ Alice was not to be drawn. ‘Can make him do anything. Now me – still sets me at defiance, sometimes. Fairly laughs at me – aye, and at Mr Giles, too. Turn round a little to your left …’

‘Was Mr Giles that found him – the dog, I mean. By the side of the road, wasn’t it?’

‘It was, Mrs Shaw, and in a terrible state, all battered and bleeding. Wrapped the poor thing in his jacket and carried him to the village, to the veterinary. Vet said the dog had been whipped something cruel, and neglected too, and it looked as if he’d run away or been abandoned. Best put the poor creature to sleep, he said.

‘But there were no bones broken, so Mr Giles brought him back to Rowangarth and him and Reuben got him on his feet again, between them.’

‘Aye. And a nuisance he’s been ever since, the spoiled animal,’ the cook sniffed. ‘For ever knocking things over; always in the kitchen, begging for scraps. And when I go to chase him back upstairs he looks at me with those big eyes. Well, what’s a body to do, will you tell me?’

‘Just like Mr Giles to bring him here, though. He don’t like animals suffering.’ Alice removed pins from her mouth. ‘Don’t like it when the shooting season starts. Not a one for killing, not really – well, that’s what Cousin Reuben said. A waste of two keepers Rowangarth is, though it might have been better if Mr Robert had been here. You can step down now, Mrs Shaw …’

She gave her hand to the small, plump cook, who said that now the pinning was done she could see to the sewing herself and thanks for her trouble.

‘No trouble, Mrs Shaw. And if your friend at Norwich sends you anything else, I’ll be glad to help alter them. But tell me about Mr Robert? Why didn’t he stay at Rowangarth after his father died? Why did he go back to India when her ladyship needed him here?’

‘Mr Robert? Sir Robert it is now, him having inherited. And as to why he came home from India after Sir John got himself killed and saw to everything and got all the legal side settled then took himself off again with indecent haste leaving his poor mother with the burden of running the estate …’ She inhaled deeply, not only having said too much for the likes of a cook, but had run out of breath in the saying of it, ‘… beats me,’ she finished.

‘But there’s Mr Giles here, to see to things.’ Alice liked Mr Giles. It was one of the reasons she took Morgan for a run every day.

‘Happen there is, and I’m not saying that Mr Giles isn’t good and kind and it isn’t his fault he’s got his nead in a book from morning till night.

‘It’s his brother, though, who should be here, seeing to his inheritance and not bothering with that tea plantation, or whatever it is they call it.’

‘A tea garden, Miss Clitherow says it is, and it’s tea that keeps this house on its feet,’ Alice reminded. Tea came every year from Assam; two large chests stamped Premier Sutton and the quality of it unbelievably fine.

‘Yes, and a tea garden that could well be looked after by a manager and not by the owner, my girl,’ came the pink-cheeked retort. ‘But it’s my belief –’

‘Yes, Mrs Shaw?’ Alice whispered, saucer-eyed.

‘It’s my belief there’s more to it than tea. More to it than meets the eye.’ Nodding, she tapped her nose with her forefinger.

‘A woman?’

‘A woman. Or a lady. Can’t be sure. But one he’s fond of, or why did he go back to India when his duty’s here, now that Sir John is dead and gone? Why doesn’t he marry her and bring her back here as his wife, eh?’

‘You don’t think she’s a married lady!’

‘A married woman.’ corrected Mrs Shaw from the doorway, ‘and if you ever repeat a word of what I’ve just said –’

‘Not a word. Not one word, Mrs Shaw. And I’ll be off, now, to give Morgan his run.’ And maybe see Tom, and perhaps discover where he would be working tonight, for gamekeepers worked all hours, especially when there were pheasants and partridges to see to, and poachers to look out for. ‘See you at teatime, Mrs Shaw.’

Oooh! Young Sir Robert and a married woman! And him in love with her, or so it would seem. But it was easy to fall in love, Alice acknowledged, thinking about Tom and how far they’d come since that first stormy meeting. Very easy indeed.

Reuben Pickering spooned sugar into the mug of tea then handed it to the young man who sat opposite at the fireside. He was pleased enough with the underling who had recently come to Rowangarth and who, if he behaved himself, would one day be given the position of head keeper. When he, Reuben, had presided over his last shoot, that was, and snared his last rabbit and shot his last magpie, and gone to live in one of the almshouses on the edge of the estate; in the tiny houses where all Rowangarth servants ended their days, were they of a mind to. And when that day came, young Dwerryhouse would leave the bothy where he lived and come to this very cottage with his wife, like as not – a thought that prompted him to say, ‘Kitchen talk has it that you and young Alice are walking out.’

‘Then talk has got it wrong, Reuben.’

‘So when you meet her this afternoon it’ll be by accident and not by design? Trifling with the lass, are you then?’

‘Trifling? No. But what do you know –’ He stopped, eyebrow quizzing.

‘Know that whenever she brings that dog of Mr Giles’s along the woodland path you always seem to be there, checking nests or just plain hanging about!’

‘It’s the only way I can see her,’ Tom coloured. ‘She’s like a dandelion seed, is Alice Hawthorn. You think you’ve got her, then puff, she’s away. But I didn’t know there’d been talk, for there’s nothing to tell,’ he shrugged.

‘Didn’t hear it from gossip – not exactly,’ Reuben chuckled. Hadn’t he seen the pair of them; seen them often? It hadn’t been all that difficult. A gamekeeper learns quickly to move like the shadow of a passing cloud; learns to drift in and out of sunlight dapples and to tread carefully and soft-like, so that neither beasts nor poachers know he’s there, watching or waiting or following. ‘Fond of the lass are you, Tom?’

‘That I am, though I’ve held my tongue. Wouldn’t do to tell her. I’ve a feeling she’s a lass that might be easily frightened off.’

‘So you haven’t even kissed her?’

‘That I have not!’ The head jerked up and blue eyes blazed, staring into Reuben’s paler ones, growing dim with age. Though it was more fool him, Tom silently admitted, for Alice’s mouth was made for kissing, her tiny waist for cuddling, and that pretty, pert nose made him want her all the more when she tilted it, all hoity-toity.

‘Then best you get a move on, or you’ll be beaten to it.’ By the son of Rowangarth’s head gardener for one, who was serving out his time at Pendenys Place, or by the young red-haired coachman for another. ‘Well, if you’ve got decent and gentlemanly intentions towards her, that is,’ he added solemnly, him being related to Alice in a roundabout way and therefore responsible for her because of it.

‘You think I don’t know it? But I can’t seem to make any headway. She’s a fey one.’

‘So are all lasses. They play you along like a fish on a line till they’re ready to pull you in. Unless,’ said Reuben, placing a log on the fire, ‘you show her you mean business.’

‘And how am I to do that? She tells me nothing; doesn’t even talk about her family nor where she comes from; no, nor even if she has a young man back home. Won’t give me a straight answer.’

‘Nor will she, Tom. She has no family – save for me and my niece Bella. It was Bella took on the rearing of Alice when she was nobbut a bairn – and did it with bad grace, an’ all. Many’s the time that woman nearly packed the lass off to the workhouse. Well, stood to reason, didn’t it; another mouth to feed on nothing but charity. Had her for seven years and begrudged every mouthful the bairn ate. Mean, my niece is.’

‘Poor little Alice,’ Tom said softly. ‘To lose her folk, and her so young …’

‘Younger than you think. Only a babe of two when her mam died, so her father left her with his mother and went off to be a soldier, the barmpot, and got himself killed at Ladysmith. And the old granny didn’t last long after that, neither, so Alice was farmed out again.’

‘An orphan at three,’ Tom frowned. ‘She’s never known a childhood.’ Not like his own. Not a growing-up secure in the care of parents and a brother and two sisters to fight and squabble with and stand solid against the rest of the world with. ‘Never known anything, really, but charity.’

‘Aye, and charity that’s given grudging is a cold thing, and as soon as the lass was old enough she came here, into service. The only good thing that woman did for Alice was getting me to speak for her to Miss Clitherow, or she might have ended up with the wrong Suttons; might have gone to that martinet over at Pendenys Place. And heaven help any lass that ends up there – especially one that’s bonny to look at. The Place Suttons have no breeding, see? Brass, yes; background, no. Not the right background, any road.’ Like all servants who were fortunate enough to end up with a family of quality, Reuben was a snob, and looked down on the Suttons at the Place.

‘Now the Suttons here at Rowangarth – the Garth Suttons – have breeding. Goes back hundreds of years. Pedigree. That’s what counts.’ Reuben knew all about pedigree, from gun dogs upwards. ‘So be sure to give Pendenys as wide a berth as you can, lad, for even their head keeper is crooked as they come and feathering his nest.’

‘But she’s all right now?’ Tom didn’t care about the Pendenys Suttons. All he wanted was to talk about Alice Hawthorn who had scarcely been out of his thoughts since the afternoon he met her. ‘Alice seems happy enough at Rowangarth.’

‘Oh my word, yes. A different young lady, these days. And done well for herself. Her mother was a dressmaker, so I’m told, and Alice seems to have inherited her skills. She’s sewing-maid, now, and answers to nobody but Miss Clitherow – and Lady Helen, of course. And her’s going to London, maiding Miss Julia.’ To London, and her not eighteen till June. All that way away when most folk never strayed beyond the Riding, let alone set foot outside of Yorkshire. ‘Ah, well,’ he consulted his pocket-watch, checking it with the ponderously ticking mantel-clock, ‘if you’ve finished your sup of tea we’d best get on with the rounds. You take the woodland and I’ll see to the rearing field.’

‘Right, Mr Pickering.’ Tom jumped instantly to his feet, giving the older man his full title, which was only polite once in a while. ‘There’s still a few nests not hatched out yet.’

Nests? Reuben chuckled, eyeing the fast disappearing back, when Alice and that Morgan dog should be walking the woodland? Always did, wet or dry, before servants’ tea. And to be hoped when the lad met her he talked about summat more interesting than dogs and the weather, or he’d lose her, sure as eggs was eggs, he would. And Reuben didn’t want that to happen, for he’d found a lot of good in young Dwerryhouse and he was more than fond of the lass who took the edge off his loneliness and was ever willing to sew on a patch, or a button or two, for an old widower. To have her settled with Tom would please him greatly.

‘Sure as eggs is eggs,’ he muttered, pulling on his hat.

Helen, Lady Sutton, sighed deeply and gazed at the lavender dinner dress draped carefully over the bed; at the matching satin shoes, the white silk stockings and the garters laid beside them. She did not want to wear those clothes, for when she had bathed and had her hair pinned and finished the time-consuming ritual of dressing, she would be going to dinner at Pendenys Place and she did not like Pendenys, nor anything about it, nor care overmuch for anyone who lived there – except Edward, that was.

‘Why the frown, Mother?’ Julia Sutton slammed shut the door behind her. ‘I told you not to wear the lavender, didn’t I? You’re out of mourning now and lavender and mauve and purple are mourning colours and you shouldn’t –’

‘Julia! When will you learn to knock on a bedroom door and please, don’t ever tell your mother anything! And what do you expect me to wear, newly out of black? Red, should it be, like a music hall soubrette?’

‘Blue would have been lovely. Pa always liked you in blue.’

‘Your papa is no longer here,’ she whispered, her voice sharp-edged with remembered grief.

‘No, darling. Sorry.’ Julia brushed the pale cheek with gentle lips. ‘And the lavender is perfectly acceptable, come to think of it, for a visit to Pendenys. Shall you wear your pearls?’

‘I think not.’ She didn’t want to wear the pearl choker tonight; not her husband’s wedding gift. ‘Just the ear-drops, and flowers. They’re in the pantry now, keeping fresh.’

Flowers. She would be wearing Pa’s flowers, Julia frowned; she should have known it. Her mother had carried orchids as a bride, and thereafter Pa had ordered the cream-coloured beauties to be grown in the orchid house at Rowangarth. No one was to pick them without milady’s permission, and no one was ever to wear them but her ladyship. A dashing declaration of love it had been, for though their marriage was arranged, they had loved deeply, too. And she, Julia Sutton, would marry for love or not at all. One day she would find the right man, and at the first meeting of their eyes he would know it and she would know it and …

‘Darling Mama.’ She hurried to where her mother sat, dropping to the floor at her feet, resting a cheek on her lap. ‘I know how awful it will be for you without Pa, this coming out into the world again. But Giles will be with you tonight. And I think she meant to be kind, asking you over there when she knew the time was right.’

‘She, Julia?’ The voice held a hint of reproof.

‘Aunt Clementina, I mean, only I do so dislike calling her Aunt. It means she’s really family …’

‘Which she is,’ Helen Sutton sighed.

‘Well, Uncle Edward married her, I suppose, though the poor old love had to, him being –’

‘No one has to do anything. How many times have I told you that?’

‘Then when you say I must marry, can I remind you of what you just said?’

‘I merely meant that Edward married her of his own free will.’

‘And for her money …’

‘Married Clementina Elliot of his own free will, Julia, and what else was he to do? What else is a second son whose expectations are nil to do?’

‘Hm. I suppose Giles will have to do the same, poor pet – marry for money, I mean.’

‘Your brother, I hope, will eventually love where money lies. It would be to his advantage were his wife to have some means of her own.’

‘I don’t think Giles will ever marry,’ Julia shrugged. ‘It’s a pity he can’t go to Cambridge. He’d be happy, there. Why must he stay here, just because Robert is too selfish to –’

‘Julia! You mustn’t speak of your brother in that way.’ Helen Sutton rose swiftly to her feet and strode to the window. Mention of her eldest son always agitated her – and the secrecy he wrapped around himself; his selfishness in returning to India.

‘Why mustn’t I?’ She was at her mother’s side in an instant. ‘You know he should have stayed here after Pa died. Why should Giles have all the bother of Rowangarth when it won’t ever be his? Why can’t Robert come home and marry and do what’s expected of him? Why? Will you tell me?’

‘Because your brother is his own master. Because he’s a grown man and –’

‘Then why doesn’t he act like one? He’s needed here, now, but he’s oceans away, growing tea.’

‘Tea keeps Rowangarth going – and besides, Robert loves India.’ They were on dangerous ground and her daughter, Helen Sutton was forced to acknowledge, was altogether too blunt for her own good. ‘And I don’t wish to talk about Robert.’

‘No. Nor his love for India – though I’ll bet anything you like that isn’t what her name is!’

‘Julia! I will not –’ Her voice trailed away into despair and she covered her face with her hands as if to block out the conversation.

‘Mama! I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you. And I know it’s just three years since Pa went and I shouldn’t be talking like this because you’re the dearest mother anyone could wish for. You know I didn’t mean what I said.’

‘I know you didn’t. But could we talk about tonight instead? Could I tell you how much I’d rather stay home – how much I’d rather do anything than accept Clemmy Sutton’s hospitality.’ Her lavish, ostentatious hospitality; her patronizing of the Garth Suttons, who were poor compared to the Suttons of Pendenys. Why did they irritate her so when it was obvious to anyone that jealousy was at the root of Clementina’s discontent; because not all the money in the Riding could buy the one thing she – and yes, her father, too – coveted above all else and would never, could never possess.

She had come to Edward Sutton, that only child of an Ironmaster, with nothing to commend her but her father’s riches, knowing she was tolerated but not accepted by the county society into which she had married. Her father was in trade – it was as simple as that, and Clementina was considered to be as vulgar as the house her father’s money had built. An obscenity in stone and slate was Pendenys Place; a flat-roofed, castellated building that had set out to be a gentleman’s house and ended up believing itself a castle, so much pride and defiance had gone into it. For old Nathan Elliot’s imagination had run wild when he built his daughter’s house, and the architect, being young and ambitious and extremely poor, had not gainsaid his patron.

Pendenys boasted a butler, a housekeeper, two footmen and many servants, most of them young and poorly paid. It stood out like a great grey scab on the beautiful countryside, the only thing to commend it being that it could not be seen from the windows of Rowangarth.

Pendenys Place stood brash on a hilltop, a defiant monument to the pride of a self-made man, lashed by wind and rain and still not one iota mellowed by them.

Helen Sutton signed, becoming aware that her daughter’s eyes regarded her with an openness she had come to expect, a frankness that was a part of her.

‘Is something wrong?’ She drew her fingers across her cheek. ‘A smut?’

‘No, dearest. Whilst you were miles away, thinking, I was thinking how beautiful you are and wondering why I’m not in the least bit like you.’ Why she had not inherited the fineness of her mother’s bones, her clear blue eyes, her thick, corn-yellow hair.

‘Not like me? And you aren’t like your father, either. I think you favour your aunt Sutton, child. You have her independence and her courage. But don’t grow into an old maid like she is, because you have your own special beauty, though you won’t admit it.

‘Why do you freeze men out, Julia? Because you do, you know. Sometimes I think you go out of your way to do it.’

‘I know I do. But it’s only because the right man hasn’t come along yet, and you did say, you and Pa, that you’d never interfere and let me marry where I wished. And I shall know him, when we meet. I’ll know him at once, so don’t worry about me. Let’s talk about tonight, shall we, and Aunt Clemmy and her awful Elliot?’

‘Must we?’ Helen Sutton shuddered. She intensely disliked her brother-in-law’s elder son; wondered why a stop hadn’t been put to his extravagant ways, his drinking and his women. And especially to his whoring.

Blushing, she checked herself at once. She had allowed herself to think a word no lady should even know. But whoring – and there was no other word for it – and Elliot Sutton were synonymous, and she would rather her daughter entered a convent than marry a man with so dreadful a reputation. ‘Must we talk about Clementina and her everlasting complaining about the cost of servants and the amount they eat?’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Nor about her son who is no better than – than he ought to be.’

‘Elliot … I suppose you can’t entirely blame him for being as he is.’ Julia Sutton was nothing if not fair. ‘After all, his father spends his time buying books and reading books. I think Uncle Edward loves learning better than he loves his son, and you can’t, as Mrs Shaw is always saying, make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Elliot can’t ever be a gentleman with a mother like Aunt Clemmy. She’s common!’

‘That is unfair! And Mrs Shaw shouldn’t say things like that,’ Helen gasped, though her eyes were bright with mischief and her lips struggled against a smile. And hadn’t her John always said that a man could choose his friends, but his relations he was stuck with and must make the best of.

So tonight she would try her best to be kind to Clemmy and her eldest son. She would wear her almost-out-of-mourning gown because it would be expected of her, and she would take the arm of her younger son for support and wear John’s orchids with love.

Tomorrow it would be all over, and she could pick up the threads of her shattered life and face the world alone. And tomorrow, too, she would wave a smiling goodbye to Julia and Hawthorn and do nothing that would cast the least sadness on their great adventure.

‘Let’s talk about London,’ she smiled.

‘So what’s this, Alice Hawthorn? You dog-walking again tonight, an’ all?’ The young keeper’s face so reflected his pleasure that he even forgot to reprimand her for bringing a dog to the rearing field, where coops and runs for game chicks stood in orderly rows. ‘Thought Mr Giles usually gave him his late-night run?’ He bent to pat Morgan’s head and fondle his ears and the spaniel whimpered with delight and wagged his tail so furiously that his rump wagged with it. ‘Gone out, has he?’

‘Gone out with her ladyship, and Miss Julia’s away into Holdenby for supper at the vicarage, so Cook said staff could eat cold tonight and I wasn’t needed to help out.’ She finished, aware she was blushing furiously on account of her being here, because Reuben had told her when she passed his gate that Tom was in the rearing field shutting up the coops for the night, and that if she hurried she might just catch him there.

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ she’d said, all airy-fairy as she strolled past, but she had run like the wind the moment she was out of sight of the cottage, desperate to see him. They were leaving for London early tomorrow morning, and if she didn’t see him tonight, she had thought despairingly, she didn’t know how she would live out fourteen days away from him.

‘There now. That’s the last of them done.’ He placed a board against the slats of the coop, leaning a brick against it. ‘I’ll walk you back, if you’d like.’

‘You don’t have to, Tom …’

‘No trouble. It’s on my way to the bothy.’ He smiled again. ‘Come on now, Morgan. Keep to heel,’ he said in the stern voice he kept for the dog, nodding his satisfaction as the spaniel did exactly as it was told. ‘So Lady Helen is visiting? Gone to Pendenys, so the coachman told me’

‘Mm. Sad for her, isn’t it, without Sir John? And she looked so beautiful tonight. We all stood in the hall to see her go – and so she’d know we wished her well, poor lady.

‘There was Cook and Tilda from the kitchen, and Bess. And Mary who waits at table, and me. And Miss Clitherow gave her a hand downstairs. That frock has a bit of a train on it, so she had to walk very straight, and careful.’ And proud, Alice thought, with her lovely head held high. ‘She smiled when she saw us, Tom, and we all gave her a curtsey, though she don’t ever expect it.’ Not like one she could mention who – though she wasn’t a lady and never would be, Cook said – had her servants bobbing up and down like corks in a bucket.

‘Not a lot of staff at Rowangarth,’ Tom offered his hand at the woodland stile. ‘Not for a gentleman’s house, I mean.’

‘Happen not, but we manage. After all, Sir Robert’s in India, Miss Julia’s no trouble at all and Mr Giles is as often as not shut up in the library. And with her ladyship being so long in mourning and her not going out or receiving callers or giving parties – well, we haven’t been overworked, exactly.’

‘Do you remember what it was like at Rowangarth, Alice, before Sir John was killed? I reckon there’d be some fine old shoots, here on the estate?’

Alice didn’t know about the shooting, she said, but she remembered one or two parties.

‘They’d just had their silver wedding when the master was taken. My, there was half the Riding at that do. But I’d only been here a couple of months, then the house went into mourning when Sir John was killed.’

‘A motor accident, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye, and all the fault of King Edward and his speeding.’ All because the King had driven at sixty miles an hour, would you believe, along the Brighton road. After that, every motor owner had donned cap and gloves and goggles and tried his damnedest to do the same. But the Prince of Wales – they’d hardly got used to calling him King when he died – had waited so long to get his throne, Cook said, that he lived life fast and furious as if he’d known he’d get less than ten years out of his crowning. ‘Sir John tried to drive faster than the King, you see, and skidded at a bend, and –’

‘And that’s why her ladyship won’t have a motor,’ Tom finished, matter-of-factly.

‘That’s why. And Mr Giles and Miss Julia both able to drive and desperate for motors of their own and not daring to buy one. Miss Sutton in London has a motor – it’s at Aunt Sutton’s house we’ll be staying when we’re in London. Oh, who’d have thought it? Someone like me maiding Miss Julia!’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘Well, someone – ordinary.’

‘But you aren’t ordinary, Alice Hawthorn.’ He stopped, resting his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. ‘You’re extraordinary pretty, to my way of thinking.’

‘Pretty?’ Her eyes met his and she felt trapped and excited and peculiar, all at the same time. ‘Oh, but I’m not! If you’d wanted to see what pretty is, you should have seen her ladyship tonight. So lovely she was, and all shining in satin. And no jewels at all, ’cept for her earrings. And her orchids, Tom; her own special orchids, all creamy-white, same as she carried to her wedding to Sir John.

‘They were special between them, those orchids. Oh, mustn’t it have been wonderful, them loving like that – and romantic, to be given orchids. But listen to me going all soft. No one will ever give me orchids,’ she sighed.

‘Happen not, pretty girl, but it isn’t all women are suited to orchids, and you are one of them. You, lass, are more in keeping with –’ he bent to pluck some of the flowers that grew wild in the grass at their feet, smiling as he tilted her chin – ‘to these. You’re a buttercup girl, Alice. All fresh and shining you are, so hold yourself still so I can see if you like butter.’ He held one of the flowers to her throat and smiled at the golden glow that shone from the whiteness of her skin. ‘Oh, aye, you’re a buttercup girl, and no mistake.’

‘I am?’ She closed her eyes because his mouth was only a kiss away and she had wanted so long for him to kiss her.

‘That you are. Let them keep their fine flowers, Alice. I’ll give you buttercups, my lovely lass, and they’ll be more special between us than the rarest orchid that ever grew.’

He touched her lips gently with his own and fire and ice ran through and left her shaking and afraid to open her eyes lest he should see what shone there. And when he gathered her to him it was like a homecoming, and she lifted her arms and wrapped them gently around his neck because it was the only way she knew to tell him that she would like to be kissed again.

‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice?’

He had never expected it would be like this; never thought he would feel tenderness for her along with his wanting, nor once imagined he would feel like throttling with his own hands any man who threatened to harm her innocence.

‘I’m your girl, Tom …’

‘So we’re walking out steady, now, and you’ll sit by me in church?’

‘When I’m back from London.’

‘Then look at me, and tell me so.’

‘Tom?’ All at once it was easy and she looked smiling into his eyes and whispered, ‘I’m your girl, Tom Dwerryhouse, and I love you. There now, does that suit you?’

‘It does, sweetheart. It suits me very nicely.’ His eyes loved her as he handed her the buttercups. ‘Very nicely indeed.’

She closed her eyes again and sighed tremulously. In her lonely youth she had longed for this; yearned to be close to someone, and special. Not so long ago she had been so happy about London she had told the rooks she was fit to burst of it, but this was different. This was even better than happiness. Tonight, Tom had kissed her, and she was loved.