ELIZABETH ELGIN

Daisychain Summer

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995

Copyright © Elizabeth Elgin 1995

Elizabeth Elgin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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

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Source ISBN: 9780006478874

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008271190

Version: 2018-11-12

Dedication

To my grandsons

James, Simon, Matthew, Martin and Tom

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Peace for Our Time

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

1

1920

She should have told him long before this. When she held their firstborn in her arms she had said it would be, yet that baby was four weeks old now, and still he did not know. Nor had he asked. It was as if he had pushed that part of her life behind him; locked it in a small, secret corner of his mind, never to be spoken of again.

‘Whatever it was,’ Tom had said, ‘is in the past. It’s you I want, Alice. Just you.’ And in that moment she had known that one day she would tell him the truth of it, explain how it had been so he might understand – and forgive.

‘Very well, if you choose not to know. But since you are taking me on trust, I’ll make you a promise, Tom. The day I hold our firstborn in my arms, then you shall know – every last word of it …’

Yet was this really the right day on which to tell him? Why not yesterday, or tomorrow? Why today, the first anniversary of their wedding?

She dropped to her knees beside the cot. She spent so much time just gazing at her daughter, trying to believe the wonder of her birth, the ease of it and the joy. And Tom, eyes moist, holding her close, telling her how happy he was.

‘She’s so beautiful, so perfect.’ The tiny fingers had twined around his own and claimed his heart. ‘I thought newborn bairns were – well …’

‘Ordinary?’ she smiled. ‘They are. Every one of them. Pink and puckered, or looking as if they’ve been in a fist fight. But there’s one exception – your own. They are always born beautiful, and perfect.’

‘I love you,’ he’d said, huskily, and she knew that when the midwife came to shoo him from the room he would go to his hut, and weep. Tom was like that. Hard on the outside and given to sudden anger, yet soft and gentle inside.

‘And might a man be told his daughter’s name?’ Alice should choose, he’d always said, if they had a little lass.

‘Daisy Julia Dwerryhouse,’ she announced promptly.

‘Daisy Dwerryhouse.’ He liked the name, truth known. ‘And Julia for –?’

‘For my best friend – her godmother.’

‘You’ve asked her?’

‘No, but she’ll come. She didn’t get to our wedding. I want her here, for the christening.’

That had been when the midwife bustled in, bearing a cup of sweetened gruel, announcing that the new mother needed to sleep and that he could come up, later, and see them again.

Alice lifted the sleeping child, kissing her as she laid her in her pram, raising the hood against the bright August sunlight. She had wanted to buy the magnificent perambulator long before Daisy was born, but no! she had been told. Didn’t she know it was bad luck to have the pram in the house before the babe – the first babe, that was?

So Alice had chosen a model in shiny black, with large wheels and the body suspended on leather straps and paid a deposit on it, explaining that it wasn’t convenient, yet, to have it delivered, and so flushed with excitement had she been that the awfulness of it only struck her on the way home.

Five guineas, the pram would cost, to be paid for with her own money; her private money Tom didn’t know about – money Giles had given to her. Sir Giles Sutton, Julia’s brother, who died not of war wounds, but because of them; a stretcher bearer and the bravest of the brave. Giles, whose name reminded her that today she must tell Tom what she should have told him before they were married, yet had bitten back the words because she hadn’t wanted her secret to lie between them on their wedding night.

She gazed at her child, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Beautiful, her little one, with eyes blue as Tom’s and a newly-grown haze of hair that promised she would be as fair as he was. And did you ever see such a mouth; pink as a rosebud, puckering into little sucking movements as she slept.

Reluctantly, Alice turned away. She had a man to feed and a cake to ice for the christening, Sunday week. It might have been nice, she thought, taking the cake from its tin, sniffing its richness, if the christening could have been tomorrow; the date on which they were married. But she wanted Julia to stand godmother and a christening on a wedding anniversary might seem they were flaunting their happiness in the face of a woman whose husband had not come back from the war.

Julia did not travel south for their wedding. Alice had forbidden it. I love you dearly, she wrote, but my joy would be your sadness. Come instead when our babe is christened – if the good Lord grants us one quickly –

Hastily, she rewrapped the cake, glad that food rationing was over. Eighteen months after the Armistice the very last commodity was de-rationed. Sugar, it had been, and many the housewife who spent the whole day baking cakes the likes of which had not been seen for five years. And with sugar on sale to all again, they could really put the war behind them – or try to, though with some the scars were slow to heal.

She glanced through the window, smiling. The man who stood beside the pram never passed the gamekeeper’s cottage without stopping. Tom’s employer had been besotted by Daisy before she was a week old. ‘She is exquisite,’ he’d said as Daisy Dwerryhouse fixed him with her eyes, and since then Mr Hillier called often to peer into the pram and smile his pleasure. Once, he had held her, then passed her quickly back, shaking his head sadly.

‘Foolish of me not to marry and have children of my own, Mrs Dwerryhouse. Too busy making my way in the world,’ he’d whispered shakily, making for the door.

Ralph Hillier. So rich that folk hereabouts said his pocket was bottomless. Poor, lonely man. Alice welcomed him with a smile.

‘Good morning, sir.’ She bobbed a curtsey. Not being servile, but mindful of her position and Mr Hillier’s position and to put their strange friendship onto its proper footing. To remind herself, too, that he owned the house in which they lived and paid her husband’s weekly wage. ‘She’s asleep – again.’

‘No matter. The vicar tells me she is to be christened next Sunday. Would you think me presumptuous if I gave her a small gift?’

‘Why, not at all! Thank you for your kind thought.’

‘Hmm.’ He liked his gamekeeper’s wife. There was a dignity about her he couldn’t fathom; that, and her way of speaking that lifted her above her class. ‘Daisy Julia, isn’t it to be?’ he asked, seeing in his mind’s eye the name and date inscribed on the silver christening mug he had already ordered from a Bond Street jeweller.

He left, smiling almost shyly, raising his hat, thanking her, and she stood at the door until he reached the garden gate, nodding her head deferentially.

Poor soul. Alone in that great house. Pity he couldn’t marry some war widow with children of her own; heaven only knew there were plenty of them around, Alice frowned.

She looked at the watch pinned to her apron; the one she had looked at so often when nursing, in France. Tom would be home soon for his dinner; would arrive promptly at noon because that had been the time of their wedding. They were given no choice. There was to be a service of thanksgiving in the church at two, followed by sports for the children and a splendid tea for all, the vicar had said. She and Tom had chosen to marry, though they hadn’t known it at the time, on the day the entire British Empire was to celebrate the victory of the Great War – and another reason, she had conceded, for not asking Julia to be there.

Alice raked the fire, then pulled out the damper to redden the coals, placing the vegetables on the hob to simmer. Last year, just about this time, she had been brushing her hair, twisting it into a knot, tilting her rose-trimmed hat this way and that before she was satisfied enough with its angle to secure it with a hatpin. A bride in waiting, ready to walk to the church, yet one year on she was a wife and mother, fervently grateful for something she thought she had lost for ever. Blessings she had in plenty – and a secret, still to be told. It hung over her like a confession unwilling to be made, because the penance might be more than she could accept.

Tom came home one minute before noon, dipping into his gamebag, telling her to close her eyes. She knew what he had brought her, had hoped he would remember.

‘Just to let you know I haven’t forgotten,’ he smiled, giving her the flowers, tilting her chin to lay his lips gently against hers.

He had brought her buttercups, the flower so special between them. He had picked one and held it beneath her chin, so long ago. Seven years, if you counted.

‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice – my buttercup girl,’ he’d whispered, kissing her for the first time.

‘Alice?’ His voice invaded her thoughts. ‘You were miles away, lass.’

‘No, love – years away.’ She felt her cheeks pinking. ‘I was remembering when you first gave me buttercups. And I know I shouldn’t be thinking back – not today, especially – but there’s something I want to tell you, Tom; something I promised more than a year ago.’

‘To love, honour and obey?’ he teased.

‘No. Something else I promised and I’ve made up my mind to tell you, today.’

‘And what if I don’t want to know?’

‘You must know, Tom. For both our sakes. What I did – it wasn’t what you thought …’

‘How do you – did you – know what I thought?’

‘Because I saw betrayal in your eyes, and it wasn’t like that.’

‘I still don’t want to know, Alice.’

‘And I still want to tell you. When I held our firstborn, I said it would be.’

‘Sweetheart.’ He reached for her, holding her tightly. ‘This has been the best year of my life – don’t spoil it?’

‘But you’ve got to know about the child, Tom – how it really was.’

‘You call him the child, always. He’s Drew, Miss Julia’s son, now. He’s a Sutton.’

‘Yes.’ Oh, he was a Sutton, all right! ‘But Tom, will you let me tell you? Not meaning to hurt you, but won’t you hear me out? I love you so much, you see, that I can’t bear to have this thing hanging over us.’

‘All right, then. We’ll talk about it tonight – there’ll be no pleasing you, until we do. When Daisy is in her cot, we’ll talk about it.’ He nodded towards the mantel clock, smiling. ‘And round about now, a year ago, you were saying, I will – so what have you to say to me?’

‘I love you, Tom Dwerryhouse; so much that it’s like a pain inside me, sometimes. I love you so much that I’ve got to tell you.’

‘And I love you so much, wife darling, that I’ll listen – but later. So does a man get a kiss, and his dinner, then?’

They sat either side of the fire, Tom with a mug of ale, Alice twisting the stem of a wedding present glass, gazing down at the last of the Christmas sherry.

‘Happy anniversary, lass. Thank you for Daisy and for the twelve-month past. It’s been good, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’

‘I know it. But will you love me as much when I’ve told you?’

‘Dammit, woman!’ He hit his knee with his hand. ‘Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?’

‘You said that tonight you’d listen …’

She rose to kneel at his feet, her hand on his knees, remembering the quickness of his temper, the highs and lows of his emotions. ‘It has always bothered me, Tom, that you thought I married so soon after your death – after they told me you’d been killed, I mean.’

‘Aye – and I’ll admit it bothered me, an’ all. When the war ended – when I got back to England – I came to Rowangarth, looking for you. I thought you’d have waited. Even though you thought me dead, I’d never have imagined that so soon after, you’d take another man to your –’

‘To my bed?’ she interrupted, sharply. ‘Make a child with him?’

‘Since you put it that way – yes.’ He winced at the directness of her words. ‘But Alice love, must we rake up the past? It’s you and me, now, and Daisy. That war is over, and best forgotten and all the misery it caused.’

‘I was in France, too, don’t forget. I saw the degradation of men treated no better than animals. But it can’t be forgotten until what it did to you and me is brought into the open, Tom.’

‘You’re set on me knowing, aren’t you? Even if you hurt me?’

‘You won’t be hurt – angry, more like. Reuben knew about it, and Julia. And Nathan Sutton, an’ all. They’ll bear out my story.’

‘Seems the world and his wife knew; everyone but Tom Dwerryhouse. When you walked in on me that day at Reuben’s house – why didn’t you tell me, then?’

‘When I’d just seen a ghost? When you were standing there, back from the dead? And you didn’t help any, Tom. You turned away from me as if I were beneath contempt – tipped your cap to me and called me milady. You knew how to hurt!’

‘I’d come looking for you. I couldn’t go to Rowangarth; I was dead – or so the Army had told my folks.’

‘I understand that, and that you were a deserter. You had to be careful, or they could have had you shot.’

‘Not any more. The war was over, by then. They’d have put me in prison, though – still could …’

‘There’ll be an amnesty for you, soon – for all deserters. The newspapers say so.’

‘Happen. But we are talking about now, and about you and me. I went to Reuben’s house. I thought he’d get word to you that I was back. I couldn’t wait to see you, touch you …’

‘And instead he told you I was married and had a child; that I was Lady Sutton, newly widowed.’

‘Something like that. It was as if he’d slammed a fist into my face. You wedded and bedded and though your being a widow made you your own woman again, I knew you’d never leave your son and come away with me, even if you still loved me – and it seemed you didn’t.’

‘But I did leave my son. I left him with Julia and her ladyship because Rowangarth was where he belonged – his inheritance. And I followed you here, Tom, wanting to tell you the truth of it, even then.

‘You’ve said I never use my son’s name – always call him the child – and you are right. I had little to do with him – I was ill after he was born. I wanted to die. I tried to. I’d been nursing Giles, you see. He died in the ’flu epidemic’

‘Died of it – like my mother did.’

‘Just as she did, Tom.’ She rose to her feet, backing away from him, returning to her chair, standing behind it as if to shelter from the fury she feared would come.

‘I had a difficult confinement, Tom. When my pains started, we couldn’t get the doctor. He was working all the hours God sent – half of Holdenby was down with that ’flu. Julia was with me from start to finish. She’d just delivered the child when Doctor James arrived.

‘There was only time to tell Giles he’d had a son before he died. Her ladyship was sitting beside his bed. She said, afterwards, that he’d gripped her hand, as if he understood.’

She stopped, taking in a shuddering breath, tilting her chin defiantly, wondering, now that she had started the awful business, where it would end.

‘Go on,’ Tom urged.

‘I had a fever. Doctor James said I’d taken influenza from Giles. I was so ill they kept the baby away from me – didn’t want him to get it. Julia was in a bad way. She’d just come back from France. Andrew had been killed only days before the Armistice and it was as if she wasn’t with us; as if she were sleep-walking, all the time. I thought she’d die of a broken heart.

‘But the baby saved her sanity. She had to look after him, you see – find milk for him, make sure he lived. By the time I was well enough to get out of bed he was six weeks old – and Julia’s. They’d bonded, each to the other. The child was the son she would never conceive and I was content to leave it that way.’

‘It didn’t bother you that some other woman had your bairn?’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It was like giving him away.’

‘Yes, it was. But I didn’t want him – didn’t want to touch him, even. When I was well enough to think for myself, I was even glad there’d been no milk in my breasts for him.’

‘Alice!’ He slammed down his mug, spilling ale over the hearthstone. ‘How could you – your own son? There must have been some affection for Giles Sutton? You must have felt something for him, or how could you have got that child?’

‘I had great affection for Giles – always. I worked at Rowangarth for his mother, remember, and when he was brought to our hospital wounded and more dead than alive, I asked Sister if I could stay with him. He was in another world – on morphine. They used to give them morphine, Tom, to let them die peacefully – those who were lucky enough to be got to a hospital, that was.’

Her eyes filled with tears and she was back again in France with the stench and the horror and the hopelessness of it all. Then she pulled her sleeve across her face, sniffing loudly, facing him defiantly.

‘Yes, I felt affection for Giles Sutton, I’ll not deny it, and pity, too. And I think I could have cared for the child, if it had been gently got. But that bairn wasn’t the result of love or affection, Tom. When Giles was brought to our hospital, I was already four weeks pregnant. And before you pass judgement,’ she hastened, ‘before you say what I can see in your eyes – let me tell you just one thing. The child – Drew Sutton – was got the night I’d been told you were dead. Your sister wrote to tell me. Julia was in Paris, on leave with Andrew. I had no one to turn to, so I ran out of the nurses’ quarters, half out of my mind.’

‘And someone …?’ His face was chalk white, his lips so tight with distaste he had difficulty speaking.

‘Yes. Someone. He smelled of drink; his eyes were wild. He didn’t know what he was doing – I’ll swear it.’

‘He must have!’

‘Don’t, Tom? Let me tell it the way it was?’ she whispered dry-mouthed. ‘We nurses were quartered in what had been the schoolhouse of a convent. There was a shed at the back where the nuns once kept their cows. He dragged me in there. I didn’t have a chance and anyway, I think I wanted him to kill me. You were dead, and I wanted to be dead, too.’

She walked across the room to stare out of the window, taking in gulps of air, holding them, letting them go in little steadying puffs. Then, hugging herself, she turned to face him again.

‘I fainted. I must have done, because when I could think clearly again, he’d gone. But it had happened – there was no telling myself it hadn’t – and I got myself back to the schoolhouse. It was dark, by then, and when I got upstairs, Julia was back.

‘She was waiting there, with Nurse Love. I’d thrown your sister’s letter down, and they’d read it. They were kind to me. Julia held me – then it all came out. Not just about you being reported killed, but about him, and what he’d done to me. Julia took my uniform off – it was all dirty and torn – and got me into a bath. Nurse Love wanted to tell Sister, have the Military Police arrest him, but Julia said not to.

‘She was livid, though. You know what she could be like, when she had a temper on her? She said to wait a bit – that with luck no harm had been done. She was only thinking of me. She knew I’d been through it before, you see.’

‘But she was wrong. Harm was done, it seems, and you passed that child off as Giles Sutton’s. How could you, Alice?’

‘Because Giles didn’t die, did he, though it might have been better if he had – with hindsight, that is. He survived to become only half a man. He told Julia one night that he would never father a child, though I think I’d known it, all along. I’d helped dress his wounds, you see. There were no niceties in those wards, in France. And she told him that life was cruel, because I was carrying a child I didn’t want.’

She looked into his eyes, hoping to find understanding there, or pity, even, but there was none.

‘Anyway, Nathan had been coming in every day, to see Giles,’ she rushed on. ‘He was stationed only a couple of miles away – an army chaplain, you’ll remember – and Giles told him about me and the terrible mess I was in; said it was on his mind to ask me to marry him – say the child was his. The baby would be the one her ladyship had always wanted, and if it was a son, so much the better.’

‘So you were glad to wed him, Alice – let him claim the child as his?’

‘Not glad. Grateful, more like. And I didn’t say yes, right away. I had this feeling inside me that I was going to hear from you or about you. I couldn’t accept you were dead, you see. I thought that one day you’d come back.

‘Julia stood by me. She’d wanted me to go to Aunt Sutton to have the baby and maybe get it adopted into a good home. Then Giles came up with a better idea – to marry me.’

‘And the rest we know, Alice. I suppose it was Nathan who married you and him?’

‘In the convent chapel,’ she nodded, eyes on her hands. ‘Just Julia and Nurse Love as witnesses. I’d not have done it, but Geordie Marshall came to see me. He was passing through Celverte – where we were nursing – and he brought me your Testament, and letters I’d written to you. Said that you’d been sent on special duties and that he’d heard that twelve of you in an army transport had all been killed by a shell. No chance you were alive, he said, but at least it had been quick and clean. I was grateful for that. I’d not have wanted you to die like some I’d nursed …’

‘And you got away with it? Didn’t you feel one bit of shame, lying to her ladyship – deceiving her?’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘It wasn’t me told the lies. I just went along with them. And they were white lies. Sir Robert had been killed – you knew that already – and with Giles not being able to have children, the title would have been lost to Rowangarth – passed to the Pendenys Suttons and you know how that would have grieved her ladyship.’

‘So what did you all cook up, between you?’ He looked at her as if she were a stranger; a lying, deceiving woman and not the girl he married a twelve-month ago; not the mother of his Daisy.

‘We cooked nothing up. So Nathan Sutton and Julia knew about it – that didn’t make them criminals. And the child would be born in wedlock, which made him the rightful Rowangarth heir – what harm did we do? Her ladyship was overjoyed, looking forward to it being born …’

‘And you? Did you feel grand, being a lady of title in the house where once you’d started off a housemaid?’

‘No, Tom. That part of it took a lot of getting used to. And I’ll admit I was always aware of the deceit. But it was Giles told his mother the child was his. He didn’t mention about it being a rape child. Said he’d come across me all distressed, because I’d just heard that you’d been killed – told her he’d held me and soothed me and well – it had happened between us, just the once. An act of comfort.’

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, covering her face with her hands as if she were afraid to look at him; see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

‘Tom, love – don’t you think it was better for the poor, dear woman to think her grandchild had been conceived that way? And it explained away the fact that he was born eight months after we were married. When a boy was born, that night Giles died, it helped her, a little, to accept it.

‘I had the child named Andrew Robert Giles for all the Rowangarth men the war had taken. Julia was pleased about it because he’s Sir Andrew, now – he’s got her husband’s name. Little Drew – there, I’ve said it again. It’s as if telling you has driven all the hurt out of me and I can really think of him as Giles’s son. Do you forgive me, Tom?’

‘For what?’ Still he sat there, making no move to take her in his arms, kiss her, tell her he understood. ‘It wasn’t your fault some drunken soldier got you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’

‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’

‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’

‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’

‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’

‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.

‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.

‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’

‘My son, Tom!’

‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’

‘Dear, sweet heaven, you can be so stubborn!’ She stood, hands on hips, cheeks blazing red. ‘I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d understand, aye, and happen sympathize, an’ all. But everything is either black or white to you, isn’t it? You don’t allow for the shades of grey, in between.

‘And I wasn’t going to tell you all, because I thought there’d be no need to. There was one thing I didn’t want you to know; but since you see fit to set yourself up as judge and jury and find us all guilty, then best you should know that young Drew is a Sutton! He’s taking what would, in the course of time, have passed to his father – to Elliot Sutton!

‘There, Tom! You have it all, now – every last sordid bit of it. The drunk who tumbled me on the floor of a cowshed was the man you so hate, so think on before you pass judgement on me!’

She stood, tears streaking her cheeks, shaking with anger and dismay at what she had said. And she looked into the face of the man she loved and saw hatred in his eyes.

‘Elliot Sutton!’ he spat through clamped jaws. ‘So he had his way with you, in the end?’

‘Aye. He tried it in Brattocks Wood, didn’t he, when I was a bit of a lass. But I had Morgan with me then, and Reuben within calling distance. And I had a young man who thrashed him for what he’d tried to do. But no one was there to help me that night in Celverte, Tom; neither the dog nor Reuben, nor you! You were dead, remember?’

‘Thrashed him? I should have killed him!’ He drove his fist hard into the palm of his hand. ‘That first time he tried, I should have beaten the life out of him. And I would, if I’d thought I could’ve got away with it.’

His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.

It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.

She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything would she!

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’

He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.

She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’

‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.

‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’

‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’

‘So the little lad is fair?’

‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’

‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’

‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’

He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.

‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’

‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’

‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.

‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’

‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.

‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d lost you. The past is over and done with, I promise it is.’

‘Happy anniversary, Tom.’

Yet even as they kissed passionately, kissed as if there was to be no tomorrow, she knew he would never completely forget; that his hatred for Elliot Sutton would fester inside him and that if ever he could do him harm, he would.

Without so much as the batting of an eyelid.

2

Helen, Lady Sutton closed the door behind her, then let go a gasp of annoyance.

‘The fool! The smug, unfeeling fool! I am so angry!’

‘Oh, dear.’ Julia MacMalcolm kissed her mother’s flushed cheek. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened at the meeting to make you so very cross.’

‘That vicar! I don’t know how I kept hold of my temper!’

‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s only a locum. He’ll be gone when Luke Parkin is fit again.’

‘But Luke won’t get well and we all know it, Julia. Six months, at the most,’ she whispered bitterly.

All the men she could once rely on, lean upon – all dead, her husband, her sons, her son-in-law; bluff, brusque Judge Mounteagle and soon, Luke Parkin. That ugly war – how dare they call it the Great War – had taken so many young men and now the older ones, weakened by four years of too much responsibility and too little consideration and overburdened with the worry of it, were themselves falling victims to its aftermath.

‘Sssh. Just tell me?’

‘We-e-ll, it was the usual parish meeting – or should have been. I knew they’d be talking about the war memorial; I was happy about that.’ She had promised any piece of land the parish saw fit to choose so the war dead of Holdenby should be remembered. ‘But to suggest a German field gun should stand beside it!’

‘A what!’ Julia flushed scarlet. ‘Whose damn-fool idea was that?’

‘Our temporary vicar’s! He said that any city or town – Holdenby, even – could claim a German gun as spoils of war and wouldn’t it be a splendid thought to have one here and site it beside the war memorial? So I said that upon further consideration, I wasn’t at all sure that I could offer that piece of land – leastways, not if an enemy gun was to stand on it. Indeed, I said, if anyone was thoughtless enough to bring one here, I would hope to see the wretched thing rolled down the hill and into the river! That’s what I said!’

‘And then you swep’ out! Good for you, mother! How could he even think such a thing?’

‘How indeed, when not one household in Holdenby came through that war without loss. The last thing they want to see is a German gun. Julia – did we really win? It makes me wonder when I see heroes with no work to go to; men with a leg or an arm missing, begging on street corners. Half our youth never to come home again and oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to remind you.’

‘You didn’t, because I don’t need reminding. And I’m glad you put him in his place. If Luke retires, I hope that vicar doesn’t get ideas about getting the living for himself. When the time comes for a new parish priest, I think it should be Nathan. I’d like to have him here. He’ll be back from the African mission, soon – and who better?’

‘I agree, and since Rowangarth will have some say in the matter, perhaps we can help him. Nathan saw service as an army chaplain – he’d be a popular choice, hereabouts. But this is not the time to talk of such things. We must hope for a miracle for Luke. And meantime –’

‘No German field gun,’ Julia supplied.

‘Not on any piece of Rowangarth land!’ And since Rowangarth owned every square yard of Holdenby village and much, much more besides, it seemed that Helen Sutton would have her way.

‘I shall miss you when you go to Hampshire for the christening.’ Deftly, she changed the subject.

‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, mother? Drew can be rather a handful, now.’

‘Of course I can manage. I’ve been looking forward to having him all to myself. And isn’t it wonderful that Alice has a little girl of her own?’

Dear Alice. She at least was happy. It was to her, Helen acknowledged, they owed the beautiful boy who would one day inherit Rowangarth. So sad that Giles never lived to see his son.

‘I reared the three of you with no trouble at all. One small boy won’t put me out in the slightest.’

‘But we three had a nanny – and a nursery maid!’

‘So you did, but nannies are going out of fashion and there’ll be Miss Clitherow to help me – if I need help.’

‘Yes, and Cook and Tilda and Mary’ – all of whom spoiled Drew dreadfully.

‘A growing child cannot have too much love and affection. Children are treated differently, now,’ Helen smiled, calm again, for just to think of her grandson gave her such feelings of love and gratitude that any anger was short-lived.

‘I’d thought to leave a day earlier – stay the night with Aunt Sutton, whilst she’s at Montpelier Mews.’

‘A good idea.’ Her sister-in-law, Helen frowned, spent so little time in England, now. ‘How long since anyone saw her?’

‘Oh, ages.’ Since not long after Andrew was killed, Julia recalled. ‘She couldn’t wait to get back to France, once the war was over. We can have a nice long chat – catch up with the news, then I’ll go on to Hampshire. It will mean being away for five days – you’re sure you can manage?’

‘Of course.’ She loved him dearly, the grandson who was walking sturdily, now, and had cut most of his teeth with scarcely a disturbed night. Drew, who made her young again. ‘Think of it, Julia. He’ll be two, at Christmas.’

‘Mm.’ The months had rushed past. Soon, there would be the second anniversary of Andrew’s death to be lived through and that of Giles who died the day his son – Alice’s son – was born.

‘Julia?’ Her mother’s voice came to her softly through her rememberings.

‘Sorry. Just thinking …’

‘Aah.’ Her daughter was often just thinking. Sometimes she was far away, eyes troubled; other times there would be a small smile on her lips and she would be a girl again, impatient to come of age, marry her young doctor. There hadn’t been a war, then, nor even thoughts of one. Her elder son, Helen pondered, had been in India and Giles with his nose in a book, always, and nothing more to worry her than the next dinner party she would give. Lovely, gentle times. Days of roaring fires and hot muffins for winter tea and sun-warmed summer days and the scent of flowers at dusk and the certainty that nothing need change.

But then the war had come and nothing could be the same again. Only Rowangarth endured.

‘And talking about Alice – and we must talk about it, sooner or later – do you think you might mention it to her – and Tom, of course – whilst you are there?’

‘That people should be told she was married again, you mean?’

‘Well, it is all of eighteen months since she left Rowangarth; people will want to know what is happening.’

‘But it isn’t anything to do with people – not really, mother, though I agree with you. I’ll have a word with her. After all, she’s done nothing wrong. She had every right to remarry.’

‘I accept that – and Tom was her first love.’

‘Her only love.’ Her once and for ever love. ‘None of us ever pretended she cared in the same way for Giles – those of us who knew the real truth of it – about their marrying, so soon after Tom was killed, I mean …’

The real truth of it? Not even her mother knew that, nor ever could. There were things never to be told – even to Drew.

‘I know, my dear. I have always accepted the circumstances of Drew’s conceiving and been grateful to Alice for leaving him with us. I’d longed so for a grandson, you know; for a boy, for Rowangarth.’

‘And you got him,’ Julia smiled. ‘And what’s more, you can’t wait to have him all to yourself, can you?’ Best drop the subject of Drew’s getting. For his sake alone, it must remain a closed book. ‘Do you suppose he’ll miss me?’

‘I’ll do my best to see that he doesn’t. And you deserve a break, Julia. Just think how much news there’ll be to catch up on; it seems such a long time since Alice left us. And I’m sure she’ll let you share her little girl, if your maternal instincts get the better of you.’

Her maternal instincts, Julia brooded. Drew had been hers from the moment of his birth. She it had been who fought for him when Alice lay desperately ill and unable to feed him. That fatherless babe had given her something to live for after Andrew’s killing. She was Drew’s mother, now.

‘You must take a lock of his hair, for Alice,’ Helen smiled. One of his fair, baby curls, now cut off. Drew had remained in his long baby clothes until he walked, though Julia hadn’t entirely agreed with keeping little boys in nursery frocks, she acknowledged, and allowing their hair to grow untrimmed so that many were hard put to know if the child was a girl or a boy. But it had been the custom when her sons were toddlers and she had wished it for Drew, though now he was a real little boy, her hair cut short and wearing his first breeches. ‘Well – if you think it won’t upset her too much. That child is the image of his father when he was little, you know.’

‘Take one of his curls? No – she won’t be upset.’

Not in the way you mean, mother. Alice won’t go all emotional and want to take him from us when she sees a lock of his hair. She never wanted him, couldn’t love him – but you didn’t know that, dearest. And never say Drew is the image of his father, because he isn’t – and please God he never will be.

Only she and Nathan knew, and perhaps Tom, now. And Giles had known; had married Alice knowing she carried another man’s child, then claimed it to be born a Sutton – a Rowangarth Sutton, and Rowangarth’s heir. Little Drew. Two years old, at Christmas.

‘Alice says I’m to take tweeds and tough shoes.’ Julia, too, was adept at subject-changing. ‘They live right out in the country – it’s quite a walk, I believe, into the village to post a letter. And it’s Reuben’s birthday in September,’ just three days after Andrew’s, ‘so she wants me to bring his present back with me.’

‘Dear old Reuben. He misses Alice for all there’s a letter from her every week. That’s why people should know Alice and Tom are married, now. Reuben isn’t getting any younger. There might come a day when Alice is needed here.’

‘But she can return to Rowangarth any time she likes. She’s done nothing wrong!’

‘Of course she hasn’t – but there’s Tom …’

‘A deserter, who could be put in prison for it, if people knew? Is that what you mean? But who is going to tell on him? Not you, mother; not me! I agree with what he did and so would Giles, if he were alive. Tom was a soldier who was pushed too far! He was reported killed in action – the authorities think him dead – so all we need say is that he wasn’t killed at all but taken prisoner and the Red Cross was never told about it. He wouldn’t be the first man to come back from the dead! I see no reason why the pair of them shouldn’t walk through Holdenby, heads high!’

‘Julia, child – hush your anger! You’ll never be rid of that Whitecliffe temper! Small wonder the old lady was so taken with you. And I agree with you about Tom Dwerry-house; there is nothing I would like more than to see them both back here, even though it can’t ever be.’

‘And why not, pray?’

‘We-e-ell, if they were to come back to Keeper’s Cottage – and we all thought that when Reuben retired, Tom would live there, with Alice – if they came back, just what would their position be? Alice is Drew’s mother; Drew – Sir Andrew – will one day inherit, so he would be Tom’s employer …’

‘Mother, how you do run on!’ Julia laughed. ‘I don’t think Tom and Alice will ever come back here. From what I read in her letters, she’s well suited in Hampshire. But I would like her to be able to visit us, from time to time. Tom would understand her need to see Reuben. And remember, she is still Drew’s legal guardian.’

‘Exactly – and that’s one reason I want it to be known she isn’t Alice Sutton any longer. I would like her to come home to Rowangarth whenever she has a mind to. She was my son’s wife, albeit for less than a year, and I cared – care – for her, deeply. And she’ll never take Drew away from us, I know it.’

‘She won’t. Not ever. I know it too, dearest. So what are we worrying about? I’ll have a talk with Alice and Tom – see what they think. We’ll be able to work something out and had you thought, there might soon be a pardon for deserters, so Tom wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of and never, ever, anything to be ashamed of. He fought in the trenches which is more than Elliot ever did!’

‘Julia! Why ever must you bring him into it? And why, since we are talking about your cousin –’

‘My nasty, over-indulged, awful cousin!’

‘Talking about Elliot,’ Helen went on, calmly, ‘why do you always get so prickly when his name is mentioned and make excuses not to meet him?’

‘Because I detest him, mother. No, I hate him. I dislike his womanizing and his arrogance and I won’t ever forgive his mother for arranging two safe postings for him when he joined the Army. She bought them, for him!’

‘You mustn’t say that of your Aunt Clemmy!’

‘Not even when it’s true?’ Julia jumped to her feet and stood, arms akimbo, at the window, staring out across the lawns and the wild garden to Brattocks Wood. ‘And I hate him because he’s alive – because he hardly got his boots dirty in that war, yet Robert and Giles and Andrew will only be names, soon, on a war memorial!’

And she hated him, too, for what he had done to Alice, and the fact that they could never be sure that one day he might not say, ‘Giles’s son? Are you sure …?’ That was the reason she hated him so much, though she could never speak of it. Giles was Drew’s father as far as her mother was concerned, and if she ever learned the truth of their deception, her heart would break.

‘Oh, darling – forgive me?’ Julia hurried to her mother’s side, falling to her knees, laying her head on her lap as she had done since childhood. ‘And try to understand my bitterness?’

‘I do.’ Helen dropped a kiss on her daughter’s head. ‘I know what it is like to lose the man you love, always remember that, will you, when you think the world is against you.

‘And go upstairs, why don’t you, and take a peep at Drew, then come with me for a walk around the garden, before the light goes. This is such a beautiful evening. Let’s walk quietly, and count our blessings?’

‘Let’s. I won’t be a minute.’ Blessing-counting. It always worked for her mother, Julia thought sadly as she opened the nursery door. Why, then, did it do nothing for her? Why could she never accept Andrew’s death nor cease to want him until her body throbbed and ached from it? And why, no matter what her common sense told her to the contrary, did she still fear the harm Elliot Sutton could do?

‘Alice – I do so long to see you,’ she whispered as she tucked in the cot blankets. ‘You can’t know how I have missed you; how much I would give to have you back here.’

But Alice would never return to Rowangarth.

Clementina Sutton began her scheming the moment she learned about the people next door, in Cheyne Walk. She had been anxious, during the war, about the house standing empty next to hers, worrying that the Army would commandeer it as a billet for soldiers or, worse, that it would be filled with refugees, foreign refugees, thus lowering the area in general and the value of her own property in particular.

She had bought the London house for mixed reasons, though mainly to use for entertaining during the social season when mothers, desperate for good marriages for their daughters, paraded them at dances and parties, at race meetings and concerts like hawkers setting out their stalls.

It was at one of these events she had hoped her eldest son Elliot would meet a suitable young lady and if she came with a title, it wouldn’t matter how poor she was; Clemmy Sutton had money enough to support her. Nor would it matter if she were plain as a pikestaff, so long as she came from a line of good breeders and had the stamina to produce two sons at least. And if that were not all, the favoured young lady would have the ability – and the sense, if she knew what was good for her – to turn a blind eye to her husband’s excursions into infidelity for it was certain that no one woman, no matter how beautiful and bed-worthy, would satisfy her Elliot. Clementina had come to expect it and even to forgive him for it, because it wasn’t his fault he was born so handsome and so attractive to the opposite sex.

Mind, it had to be acknowledged that Elliot always seemed to attract the worst kind of woman; sometimes married ones but most often women that she, his mother, would refuse to touch with the end of a long stick. Ladies of easy virtue. Whores! Why did they attract him so when he could have had all the pleasuring he wanted free, and in his own bed, if only he’d had the sense to marry!

Of course, with the coming of the war, young women had been quick to throw off their chaperons with alacrity and delight; had raised their hemlines, spoken to young men to whom they had not been introduced and smoked and drank cocktails in public. And they had taken to uniforms with high delight, driving ambulances, being lady typists in the Women’s Army Corps – even nursing as her niece Julia had done; gone to France an’ all to do it, risking life and limb for her stupidity.

Well, now that was over, and young women would be falling over themselves to get their hooks into a husband and husbands not so easy to catch, either. Stood to reason, didn’t it, with many millions of men killed and thank God her own three sons had come through it unscathed, though Nathan had ended up in the thick of it with the soldiers in the trenches and him not caring one jot for his mother’s feelings.

But now she could forget the war and its inconveniences, for she had embarked on the task of seeing her eldest son safely wed – and before another year ran, if she had anything to do with it!

‘I think,’ she said to her husband, ‘that I might have acted a little hastily, putting up that fence …’

‘Fence?’ Edward Sutton lowered the evening paper he was reading.

‘At Cheyne Walk.’

‘Aah. To keep out the gypsies next door?’

‘Not gypsies, Edward.’ She squirmed at her own foolishness. ‘There was a man – a giant of a fellow …’ He had lived in the basement area, emerging from it from time to time to yell at dogs or glower at any passer-by who was foolish enough to linger outside. A thick black beard he’d had and terrified Molly more and more with every sighting. ‘I got it wrong; Molly got it wrong. The dark fellow was a Cossack it would seem, and Cossacks were loyal to a man to their Czar. I should have known better than to listen to her, but what can one expect from a woman of her class?’

‘Or for three shillings and sixpence a week,’ he added, raising his newspaper again.

‘She gets a pint of milk a day and old clothes! And all she does is caretake an empty house …’

‘So am I to take it that the fence will be removed – or at least lowered a couple of feet? Are the new tenants next door all at once acceptable?’

‘I don’t know. One hears such stories. That is why I shall go to London and see for myself; see if they are socially acceptable, that is.’ She might even leave her card, though card-leaving did not have the same social power it once had. Standards had been lowered since the war ended, she sighed. Things would never be the same. The working man had fought a war and thought he was as good as his master, now! ‘Shall you come with me?’

‘I think not.’ Edward Sutton disliked London. Even this house he lived in – Clemmy’s great, ornate, completely vulgar house – was to be preferred to noisy, smoky, overcrowded London. ‘I’m sure you can manage without me.’

‘Of course.’ She hadn’t for a moment imagined he would want to leave Pendenys. ‘But if you don’t come, I shall need someone with me. I shall take a couple of servants.’

‘Take whom you wish, Clemmy.’

She usually did. She considered it cheaper to buy train tickets for them than pay out good money to keep permanent servants there – apart from what they ate and stole in her absence.

‘Yes.’ She intended to. After all, it was she who paid their wages, not her husband.

‘When will you go?’

‘Tomorrow, Edward, I think. I shall take a cook, a housemaid and a footman.’ Sufficient to impress the people next door if they were what she supposed them to be. She would have taken her butler, pompous and arrogant though she thought him, had she imagined for a moment he would agree to go with her. But the Cheyne Walk house was far beneath the man’s dignity. For one thing, its cellars were completely empty of wine and for another, it did not provide him with his own sitting-room and a man in his position, he stressed, whenever London threatened, was entitled to his privacy. A snob, Clementina brooded, who looked down his nose at her; at Mrs Clementina Sutton whose hand fed him. She only put up with him because as butlers went he knew what he was about and she got his expertise cheaply on account of his liking for red wine. They understood each other, she and that butler!

‘I said I would take –’

‘Yes, my dear. Do as you wish. Take Elliot, too.’ Elliot had been on his best behaviour these few weeks past. Soon, his instincts would surface and better they surfaced in London – and under the eye of his mother!

‘You can’t bear to be alone in the house with him, can you?’ she countered tartly. ‘Can’t speak a civil word to your own son …’

‘Clemmy – let us not quarrel over Elliot?’ he sighed. ‘Leave him here at Pendenys, if that’s what you wish.’

She did not reply. Her mind was back at Cheyne Walk and the people next door. Refugees, of course, but what refugees! Not destitute, if what she had heard was to be believed, and real aristocrats, possessed of a title! A daughter, too, and unmarried; strictly chaperoned by the fierce Cossack whenever she ventured out.

She purred inside her, just to think of it. To have what she had been searching for landed next door to her was past belief. Such luck – even if they were Russians. She wouldn’t mind betting they’d got out of St Petersburg with a small fortune sewn into their corsets and the benefit of a London bank account set up long before the shooting of the Czar. Oh, my word, but it was worth looking into. Well worth looking into!

Tom Dwerryhouse checked his pocket watch with the station clock and found they agreed. He was in time. He had sent the pony along at a brisk pace, determined that Julia MacMalcolm should not arrive before him and take the station taxi.

He needed time alone with her to explain the way it had been; thank her for what she had done for him. But mostly he wanted to tell her that he knew about young Drew and that Rowangarth’s secret was safe with him. It was why he had taken time off work and harnessed up the pony and trap provided by his employer for the use of the estate workers – them being so cut off from civilization. The pony and cart could be used by any employee at any time, provided due notice was given to the groom who looked after Ralph Hillier’s hunters.

He had, Tom considered, done very well for himself, all things taken into account. A decent employer, a good house, now that Alice had licked it into shape; a suit of clothes every second year and boots and leggings, an’ all. And by far the most important, he had Alice and Daisy.

Why, then, should Miss Julia’s coming disturb him? Not entirely on account of her being gentry and him being working class nor because he was an army deserter, either, though he wasn’t proud of it nor ever quite free of the fear that one day the Army would arrive to cart him off.

He set his jaw tightly, shaking such thoughts from his head because they were not the cause of his misgivings. The truth of it, he was bound to admit, was that she was coming from Rowangarth; from the place where he and Alice met and where they had expected to end their days. Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate had a woodman in it now because these days there was no need of a gamekeeper there; not until young Drew – Sir Andrew – was old enough to handle a shotgun, that was.

Yet that was still not all and if he were honest, he would admit it. Miss Julia would be bringing the north country with her and Tom Dwerryhouse was a son of the north and no matter how well suited he was with the way his life had turned out nor how contented Alice was with her new little bairn and her own hearth, one thing could never be denied. Northern roots did not easily transplant into southern soil. He was surprised Mr Hillier had seen fit to do it, him being a northerner, an’ all. But maybe it was all right for the likes of someone who owned another house in Westmorland and who could take off whenever the fancy took him. Windrush Hall, on the edges of the New Forest, was where it was convenient for Ralph Hillier to live, being close to a port and near enough to London where most of his business deals took place. But whenever his early years tugged on the thread of memory, he need only order his motor to be driven round to the front entrance and he could be away and back to his roots.

It was different for Tom Dwerryhouse who could never return to Rowangarth. For one thing, most folk thereabouts thought him dead, killed in the last year of the war; and to go back there would be to carry hate inside him for a man he might meet at any time. Elliot Sutton lived only a cock-stride from Rowangarth and for Alice’s sake – and for young Sir Andrew’s, too – it were best the two of them should never meet.

A signal fell with a clatter. A porter pushing a trolley and the stationmaster with top hat and green furled flag appeared on the platform. The train, no more than a noiseless speck down the track, would arrive on time. Julia was coming, and bringing their past with her.

She got down from a third-class compartment, lifting a gloved hand to bring the porter hurrying from the far end of the train and the first-class carriage that usually put a sixpenny tip his way.

She had not changed. Everything about her proclaimed her status; her understated air of command, her well-labelled leather suitcases, the way she held her head, even. She was still a Sutton. Not even what she had endured in the war could wipe out her breeding. She saw him, and smiled, and he walked towards her, removing his cap.

‘Tom!’ She held out her hand, her voice low with emotion. ‘It is so good to see you. How long is it?’

‘More’n five years, Miss Julia, and it’s right grand to see you, an’ all.’

They walked unspeaking beside the porter, waiting as he lifted her luggage into the cart.

‘Step up carefully, Miss Julia.’ Tom offered his hand, settling her comfortably, laying a rug over her knees. Then he jerked the reins, calling, ‘Hup!’ and clicking his tongue.

They were well out of the station environs before he said, ‘I want to say I’m sorry about what happened to the doctor, Miss Julia. And I’d like to thank you for being so decent about giving me a reference. It got me the job, though I’d have understood if you’d have wanted no truck with a deserter, after all you’d been through.’

‘Alice gave you the reference, Tom …’

‘Aye, but written in your hand, Miss, and it was you signed Alice’s name to it. I’m grateful.’

‘Then don’t be. Any man who had the guts to desert that war has my understanding. And Tom, there’s one thing I’d like to say to you. You must not call me Miss Julia. Not only am I Mrs MacMalcolm, now, but I am also a guest in your house. Alice calls me Julia – I would like you to do it, as well.’

‘But it wouldn’t be right! I used to work for her ladyship and you are still her daughter.’

‘Those days are long gone and besides, Alice is my friend. I still look on her as my sister and it would please me if you would treat me as she treats me.’

‘It’ll be a mite strange …’

‘Alice found it strange, too, but it didn’t take her long.’

‘I can but try,’ he smiled, touched and embarrassed both at the same time. ‘Though how you can show such kindness to someone who ran away –’

‘But I understood and my mother understood, too. Alice told us how it was. It was a terrible thing to have to shoot a man – a boy – in cold blood. That you threw down your rifle afterwards and risked the death sentence for what amounted to an act of mutiny, was a brave thing to do.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘I was beside myself with disgust; all twelve in that firing party were. One man stood there shaking as if he was going to throw a fit and another was sick. I just stormed up to that officer and told him I wouldn’t do a thing like that again, and they were all of them in such a state that I got away with it. But I wasn’t acting the hero. It’s this temper of mine …’

‘I can understand. I’ve got one, too. My mother calls it my Whitecliffe temper,’ she laughed. ‘Act first then think afterwards. You and me both, Tom.’

‘Aye. I was thinking on the way here about Rowangarth and that no matter how much I miss the old days, it’s as well I’m here. If Alice and me lived there, then I’d always be on the lookout for him.’ His eyes sought hers, asking understanding.

‘Elliot Sutton, you mean?’ Her gaze met and held his. ‘So you know?’

‘I know. Alice told me. It bothered her, you see. Told me it all.’

‘I see. And do you agree, now, that we did what we had to do? Giles needed a son and had just been told he would never father one – his injuries, you see – and Alice was demented with worry about your death and the pregnancy she didn’t want – a child she could never accept, or bring herself to love.’

‘And her ladyship …?’

‘She believes what Giles told her; that Drew is Giles’s son, conceived in a single act of compassion. She accepts it. She even thinks that Drew was meant to be.’

‘I’ve come to accept it, too.’ Tom slowed down the pony at the crossroads, turning to the right. ‘Almost there. And I’m grateful to Sir Giles. He was a decent man, and a brave one, too. Geordie and me would go out into No Man’s Land at night with the stretcher bearers, picking up the wounded. We’d hide ourselves and keep watch; try to give them some protection if they were seen by the German gunners. It took a brave man to be a stretcher bearer, like Sir Giles was. Brave fools, we called them – and the orderlies and doctors who went under the barbed wire with them.’ He slid his eyes to where she sat and saw her sudden sadness. ‘I’m sorry, Miss. We must try not to look back …’

‘Oh, but you are so wrong, Tom! We must always look back. We must remember, so it won’t happen again to Drew and Daisy. But we must always remind ourselves that the pain of remembering will grow less – or so I’m always being told.’ She lifted her head, and smiled. ‘I’m so looking forward to being with you both. I’ve missed Alice so. And as for seeing my god-daughter – oh, this will be such a wonderful holiday for me!’

Alice stood at the gate, waiting impatiently for the sound of the pony and cart. Beside her, in her shiny black perambulator, her baby girl slept.

The house was clean and shining; a joint of beef roasted in the fire oven. Vegetables stood ready for cooking; an apple pie cooled on the slate slab in the pantry.

Flowers from the garden were newly arranged in her best vases; Julia’s bedroom was as perfect as ever it could be. She hoped Julia would not find it inconvenient, there not being a bathroom at Keeper’s Cottage, but no one hereabouts had one. Water, except at Windrush, came out of wells or pumps or rain butts.

And why was Daisy asleep? Why couldn’t she be awake to fix Julia with brilliant blue eyes? She didn’t smile, yet, but she recognized voices and turned towards familiar sounds. She knew the minute Tom gave his warbling whistle. Tom loved her so much …

Impatiently, she walked to the turn in the lane, standing still, listening; walking back to the gate, again, sure the wheel must have fallen off the cart.

Then she heard a faraway sound and held her breath, making out the steady clopping of hooves, the round grinding of wheels. Her cheeks reddened; she felt a sudden tensing of her hands.

Then Tom was pulling on the reins, smiling, calling, ‘Well, here she is, now!’

Slowly, carefully, Julia got down, then stood, not moving nor speaking, as if she didn’t believe any of it. Then as one they ran, arms wide, clasping each other tightly, saying not a word, standing close, cheek upon cheek.

‘Oh, my word!’ Alice was the first to find her voice. ‘Let me look at you. My dear, dear Julia – I’ve missed you!’

‘And I you.’ Julia’s eyes pricked with tears and she blinked rapidly, smiling through them. ‘Sixteen months! It’s been so long. And do let me see her!’

‘Asleep, as usual,’ Alice sniffed, pulling back the pram cover. ‘Don’t know what I did to deserve such a placid babe.’

Daisy Dwerryhouse lay on her pretty pink pillow, face flushed from sleep, half-moons of incredibly long eyelashes resting on her cheeks.

‘But she is beautiful! She is incredible!’

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll leave the pair of you to it.’ Tom deposited suitcases on the doorstep. ‘Best take the pony back. Supper at half-past six, will it be?’ He didn’t even try to conceal his pride.

‘There or thereabouts,’ Alice nodded. ‘Let’s go inside, Julia? You must be fair gasping for a cup of tea. The kettle’s on the hob and the tray set and oh, my dear, it’s so good to be together again!’

‘It is,’ Julia whispered throatily. ‘So very good …’

When Tom had excused himself after supper and Daisy had been fed and settled in Julia’s arms in the fireside rocker, Alice set about restoring order in the kitchen.

‘You must be tired, love,’ she murmured.

‘Not if you aren’t.’ Julia cupped the little head protectively in her hand, smiling softly. ‘She smells of breast milk and baby soap. She has a mouth like a little rosebud. You should have called her Rose …’

‘No. Her mother is a buttercup girl and daisies go best with buttercups. Now – tell me about Aunt Sutton? How was she, when you called?’

‘She insists she came back to London to see her bank manager, but she let it slip that she also visited her doctor – then went to great pains to hide it. Said she might as well let him have a look at her, whilst she was over, but she was altogether too casual about it. It’s my belief she came especially to see him and when I said as much she told me it was all stuff and nonsense and that she had no intention of taking the pills he’d given her. A fussy old woman, she called him.

‘She’ll be back in the Camargue, now, and I’ve got a peculiar feeling about it all. I wonder if I should try phoning her doctor – get to the bottom of it.’

‘He wouldn’t tell you – you know he wouldn’t.’

‘No, and nor would Aunt Sutton. All she said was, “Fiddle-de-dee!” If only Andrew was here …’

Alice remained silent, then, drying her hands, she walked to where Julia sat, standing behind her chair, hands on her shoulders. For a moment she stood there, then said softly, ‘Is she asleep? Why don’t you take her upstairs to her cot? I don’t have to tell you how to do it, now do I?’

Julia was quite composed by the time she came downstairs and Alice was setting out cups and saucers.

‘Kettle’s just on the boil,’ she smiled, removing her apron. ‘Now we can have that chat. Tom won’t be back, yet.’

‘Does he always work this late?’

‘Bless you no – leastways, not these days. Windrush was very run down when Mr Hillier bought it. The Army were in it right through the war – the place had gone to rack and ruin. Game covers overgrown and hardly a pheasant in them. Tom’s had to start from scratch. There was no shooting last back end, though he’s hopeful there’ll be good sport come October. He’ll need another keeper, by then. Mr Hillier is keen to have his business friends from London for a few shoots, so Tom wants it all to be in good order.

‘Said he was going to make up the hour he took off, this afternoon, but really it’s only to let you and me have a good gossip.’

‘And you’re happy, Alice? No regrets – about leaving Rowangarth, I mean, and starting afresh here?’

‘No regrets –’cept that I miss you and Reuben and her ladyship. We’re so out of the way, here, and I only see people on shopping day – apart from the district nurse. She calls once a week but we shan’t be seeing so much of her, once Daisy gets to be six weeks old. I write to Reuben, though it isn’t often he writes back …’

‘I see him often. He’s fine, Alice, and tells me what you have written, though often you’ve already given me the same news. But I’m sure he’d like to see Daisy.’

‘I’d like him to. If he decided to visit us, either Tom or me would go to London and meet him. Wish I could persuade him to come.’

‘Or you and Daisy could come to Holdenby to see him?’

‘Oh, my goodness!’ Alice set down the tea tray with such force that the cups and saucers rattled. ‘You know I couldn’t! When I left Rowangarth the excuse was that I’d had a bad time getting over Drew’s birth and I was going to Aunt Sutton for a change and a rest. But that was ages ago! What are they going to say if I turn up with a baby in my arms?’

‘Well, you won’t shock Reuben nor mother, because they knew you were really going to Tom and they know about Daisy, so who else is there? Everyone else at Rowangarth is your friend. Oh, I tell them from time to time that you are fine and they know that you and I write to each other – but I’m sure they often thought about you and wondered when you’d be back. So why don’t you let me tell them that you have married again? You had every right to.’

‘But married to Tom?’

‘A deserter, you mean? But who knows about that? Mother, Reuben, and me – and we aren’t going to tell. And the Army thinks he was killed, so where’s the bother? You know the way we feel about it – we’re on Tom’s side.’

‘Yes, an’ I’m grateful. But what do I say – that I’m Alice Dwerryhouse, now, and that Tom was never killed? Are folks going to accept that?’

‘Of course – if you tell them he was a prisoner and the authorities were never told about it by the Germans. It happened often, in the war – men turning up like that. Everyone who knew you both would be glad.’

‘Aye,’ Alice frowned. ‘I think they’d believe it–especially as Jinny Dobb knows about Tom, already.’

‘Old Jin knows! How on earth …?’

‘She saw him the day he came back to Reuben’s cottage, when he came looking for me. Reuben had to tell him I’d wed Giles, and had a bairn …’

‘I know. I’m not likely to forget that day. But you’re sure Jin saw him?’

‘Certain. She told me she had and wanted to know why I wasn’t going with him.’

‘Yet she never said a word about it to anyone – not to my knowledge, at least.’

‘She promised she wouldn’t. But when I left Rowangarth, Jin must have suspected I wasn’t going away for the good of my health.’

‘Well – there you are, then,’ Julia smiled. ‘It would be a five-minute wonder. They’d all be so busy ooh-ing and aah-ing over Daisy that they’d pay no heed to what you and Tom had been doing.’

‘I don’t know …’ Alice frowned, biting her lip, cupping her blazing cheeks in her hands. ‘I’d have to talk to Tom about it. I mustn’t do anything to risk him being caught and happen he’d not be so keen to have me visit – well, you know what I mean?’

‘Elliot Sutton? Well, you’d just have to promise to keep out of Brattocks Wood. And anyway, you’d have no need to go there. Reuben lives in the village, now.’

‘But I think I’d want to go there – just once, for old time’s sake. It was where Tom and me did our courting, remember. I used to take Morgan out and hope like mad I’d bump into Tom.’

‘And you’d want to tell the rooks what had been happening, wouldn’t you,’ Julia teased. ‘Then I’d have to come with you, that’s all. Have you any rooks here, to talk to?’

‘Some over in the far wood – but I haven’t made their acquaintance, just yet. And happen I’ve grown up a bit, since I used to tell my secrets to the Rowangarth rooks.’

‘They’d be glad to see you, for all that,’ Julia urged.

‘Maybe. But what about her ladyship? Would she be glad? And if I did come – and I’m not saying I will, mind – where would I stay? There isn’t room for me and Daisy in Reuben’s little house.’

‘But mother would love to see you again – and as for sleeping, what’s wrong with Rowangarth? It was your home, wasn’t it? You would stay with us.’

‘What would they all say, though – Miss Clitherow and Cook and Mary and Tilda?’

‘Alice – you know staff don’t usually make comments about mother’s house guests, even though I know they would all say, “Welcome back, Alice!”’

‘There’s Tom …’ She was wavering, she knew it; knew, too, that she desperately wanted to see Reuben just once more – see Rowangarth, too.

‘Tom was a prisoner of war. I shall tell them that and mother will confirm it. And anyway, Tom wouldn’t be coming with you – not on your first visit. Are you afraid Will Stubbs would poke and pry and ask his business?’

‘Will!’ Alice gasped, remembering the inquisitive coachman, bursting into laughter. ‘Is he still a terrible busybody?’

‘As bad as ever, though he’s careful to keep his own affairs a secret – or so he thinks,’ Julia grinned. ‘We all happen to know that he’s setting his cap at Mary.’

‘Mary Strong? Her ladyship’s parlourmaid?’

‘The very same Mary. And Alice – don’t revert to your old ways entirely? You were once married to my brother – you were Lady Alice Sutton. Mother thinks of you still as hers. If you should come home to Rowangarth, don’t call her milady or refer to her as her ladyship? You used to call her dearest, as Giles did – remember?’

Nodding, Alice closed her eyes. She remembered so much and almost all of it security and kindness and the sweet sense of belonging. All at once, Rowangarth called her.

‘I couldn’t leave Tom,’ she gasped.

‘Not if he’d want you to pay Reuben a visit? Tom was fond of him – and Reuben isn’t getting any younger.’

‘You think I don’t know it? He’ll be seventy-five, come September. I’d hoped you would take his birthday present back with you – give it to him on his birthday. I’ve got tobacco and mints and knitted him two pairs of good thick socks.’

‘I’ll take them, gladly, and see he gets them, too. But mightn’t it be nice to be able to tell him on his birthday that one day soon you’ll be bringing Daisy to see him? At least don’t dismiss it entirely?’

‘Don’t, Julia! I want so much to visit, and you know I can’t! There’d always be Elliot Sutton at the back of my mind – not just meeting him, though that would be bad enough. What if he saw me – and blurted it all out? What then?’

‘Elliot won’t say anything – not now. If he’d been going to make trouble, he’d have made it when he realized he’d been cheated out of hopes of the title. He can’t know – not for certain – that Drew is his. Hateful though he is, I’d give him credit for keeping his mouth shut.

‘And you wouldn’t be staying long – a week, at the most? Surely for so short a time we could make sure you and he didn’t meet?’

‘We? You and your mother, you mean? But she doesn’t know that Elliot Sutton is Drew’s father – had you forgotten?’

‘No. But I’m trying to. From the day he was born I always thought of Drew as Giles’s son – just as mother does. You must do the same, Alice. Elliot Sutton is a womanizer and a lecher but he isn’t so stupid that he’d stand on the top of Holdenby Pike and shout it out to the three Ridings, now is he?’

‘N-no …’

‘There you are, then! We stand together, you and I – just as we did when we were nursing. We each took care of the other, in the old days – we can do it again. We’d wither cousin Elliot at a glance. And remember, Alice – I hate him as much as you do.’

‘You can’t. You don’t know what it’s like to – to’

‘To be raped by him? No, I don’t. But he’s alive and my husband was killed in that war, so I hate him more than you do – and never forget it!’

‘I believe you do,’ Alice said, wonderingly. She hadn’t thought, not for a moment, that anyone could hate him as much as she. ‘You really do …’

‘Oh, yes. And you and Daisy would be safe with me. And bring Morgan with you, if you’d feel better. Morgan hates him, too …’

‘Oh, I couldn’t come. It wouldn’t be right to leave Tom on his own. I want to come, Julia – you know I do – but how could I?’

Yet even as she said it, she knew it was only a matter of time. One day, and soon, she would return to Rowangarth. Nothing was more certain.

3

‘I tell you it was Alice,’ Mary Strong insisted. ‘That’s where Miss Julia has been! Miss Julia and her ladyship were talking on the telephone and it was Alice Hawthorn they were talking about! Her ladyship said, “Where are you ringing from, Julia?” and then she said, “Good. That’s handy to know if ever we need to get in touch with Alice.”’

‘Alice Sutton, don’t you mean, and have you forgotten, Mary, that parlourmaids don’t listen to private telephone conversations?’ Cook corrected, her mouth a round of disapproval. ‘And then what did she say?’

‘Then …’ Mary pushed her cup across the table to be refilled, taking another piece of cinnamon toast without so much as a by-your-leave,‘ … then her ladyship said, “And how are Daisy, and Morgan? We mustn’t forget dear old Morgan.”’

‘Alice took Morgan with her, didn’t she,’ Tilda frowned, ‘when she left for Aunt Sutton’s, I mean. And why has she stayed away so long without so much as a word? Surely she’s better, now. And who is Daisy?’

‘Don’t know anything about any Daisy,’ Mary shrugged. ‘But I happen to know that Alice keeps in touch with Miss Julia. I’ve said so all along, haven’t I? I know her writing on the envelopes.’

‘Aye, and as for us not hearing a word,’ Tilda defended, ‘we did make it pretty plain when Alice came back from France Lady Sutton that things had changed, now didn’t we?’

‘Things had to change,’ Cook murmured. ‘Alice wasn’t below stairs any more – Miss Clitherow made sure we knew that, right from the start. And we still aren’t any the wiser, are we?’

‘Curiouser, though.’ A pity, Mary thought, she’d had to move on in mid-conversation, so to speak, but there was a limit to the time it took any one person to walk across the hall. ‘Wonder if Miss Julia will tell us about it? After all, Alice is supposed to be with Miss Sutton and that’s where Miss Julia was supposed to be going. The very last thing her ladyship said to her when she left was, “Give my dearest love to Anne Lavinia, don’t forget. Tell her we don’t see half enough of her.” I heard her!’

‘A lot of supposing, for all that,’ Cook murmured, half to herself.

‘Yes, but Miss Sutton spends most of her time in France,’ Tilda insisted. There could be no doubting it when her ladyship always gave her the stamps from the envelopes for her little brother who collected them. ‘So why do Alice’s letters have a Southampton postmark on them?’

‘Hmmm.’ Cook thought long and hard, then ventured, ‘Happen letters from France get brought over to Southampton on ships and the Post Office there –’

‘Happen my foot!’ Mary interrupted, forgetting herself completely. ‘I see all the letters that come into this house and Miss Sutton’s have a Marseilles or a Nice postmark on them so why, will you tell me, don’t Alice’s?’

‘That’s enough!’ Cook snapped, aware the conversation had gone too far. ‘What Upstairs does and where their letters come from is none of our business and we’d all do well to remember it if we want to keep our positions in these hard times. And not one word of what’s been said in my kitchen is to go beyond these four walls – do I make myself clear?’ She fixed Mary with one of her gimlet glances. ‘We’re all getting as bad as Will Stubbs,’ she added as a final reminder.

‘There’ll be none hear anything from me!’ Mary countered archly. ‘Never a word passes my lips when I’m in Will’s company. I hope I know my place here and have always given satisfaction, Mrs Shaw!’

‘That you have, Mary; that you have – so don’t spoil it!’

Whereupon her ladyship’s cook rose from her chair, indicating that morning break was over. ‘Now let’s all of us be about our business. If we’re intended to know, we’ll be told when Miss Julia gets home, Tuesday. If not, then we keeps our eyes down and our mouths shut tight!’

All the same, she pondered, there were things that didn’t add up, postmarks on letters apart. Just why had Alice stayed away so long? And who was Daisy?

Clementina Sutton was in a tizzy of delight. Not only had the first visiting card she left at the house in Cheyne Walk been accepted by a servant dressed in black from top to toe, but the next day – the very next day, mark you – a card had been delivered by the black-bearded Cossack which indicated, if Russian etiquette ran parallel with English, that Clementina was now free to call. Hadn’t the Countess added the time – 10.30 – in small, neat letters in the bottom, left-hand corner, and tomorrow’s date?

The Countess. Just to think of it made Clementina glow. Merely to look at the deckle-edged card bearing what could only be the family crest embossed in gold and the name Olga Maria, Countess Petrovska beneath it, gave her immense pleasure.

She knew little of the family next door, save that they had fled St Petersburg where the Russian revolution started, though now those Bolsheviks were calling the city Petrograd, if you please! Mind, the Bolsheviks appeared to have gained the upper hand, so were entitled to call it what they wished. The last of the British troops sent to help restore the Czar to his throne had long ago left and heaven help anyone who had the misfortune to fall foul of the men – and women – who waved their triumphant red banners. Shot, like as not, just as the Czar and his family had been.

But it couldn’t happen here, Clementina insisted nervously, even though men were joining trade unions as never before and threats of strikes were always present. But they wouldn’t strike. For every man who withdrew his labour there were ten only too grateful to take his place. She dismissed the British working man from her mind, thinking instead of tomorrow’s call. Investigating the pedigree of refugee Russians and whether the daughter of the house was in the market for a husband might prove interesting. It could turn out to be an extremely enlightening talk.

Talk? But what if the family next door spoke no English; used French as their international language as diplomats did? She would not only feel a fool, but be shown to be one! Then she comforted herself with the thought that any foreigner of any consequence spoke English and if the Russians did not, then they were not worth wasting her time on – which would be a pity, because the daughter of a countess was exactly what she had set her heart upon, for Elliot.

She sighed deeply, then began to search her wardrobe for something suitable to wear, regretting having brought so few clothes with her. And this town house, though small, she resolved, must be brought into full working order and before so very much longer, too. Elliot had dillied and dallied far too long. Now he would be given to understand that he had a twelve-month in which to get himself wed – or else!

She closed the wardrobe door firmly. Nothing there; nothing half good enough in which to call upon a countess. Best take a stroll through the Burlington Arcade and along Bond Street – buy new …

Julia felt a warm glow of homecoming the moment the station taxi entered the carriage drive that swept up to the steps of the old house. For more than three hundred years Rowangarth had stood there, blessing Suttons on their way; welcoming them back.

‘I’ve missed you both!’ She kissed her mother’s cheek, then swept the small, pyjama-clad boy into her arms, closing her eyes, hugging him to her, amazed he should feel so solid, so robust against Daisy’s newborn fragility. ‘It’s good to be back, though it was such a joy being with Alice again. I wanted to bring her home with me.’

‘Come inside, do. It feels quite cold out here.’ Helen Sutton shivered. ‘I promised Drew he should stay up to welcome you, though he’s been fighting sleep this past half-hour.’

‘Then I shall take you upstairs at once, my darling, and tuck you in,’ Julia smiled, kissing him again. ‘Have you had your supper?’

‘Mm. Mummy not go away again?’

‘No, Drew. Next time, you shall come with me. We’ll go for a lovely long ride on a puffing train – now what do you say to that?’

He regarded her solemnly through large grey eyes – Andrew’s eyes – stuck a thumb in his mouth, then laid his head on her shoulder. Almost before she had tucked the bedclothes around him, he was asleep.

‘Now, give me all the news,’ Helen smiled as they sat at dinner. ‘How was Anne Lavinia?’

‘She seemed fine. I gave her your love, as you asked.’ Best not spoil tonight with vague suspicions about her health. ‘She’ll be back in France, by now. I think it was business brought her home. Figgis has retired now, remember. There’s no one in the house, so maybe she thought she’d better check up on things – pick up bills. And she popped in on her doctor. Nothing wrong. Just a quick check-up,’ Julia hastened, feeling better for having mentioned it, albeit briefly. ‘It was good to see Alice again. She and Tom are very happy – and as for little Daisy! Five weeks old and a beauty already. I could have stolen her to be Drew’s sister!’

‘She is Drew’s sister,’ Helen reminded, fork poised. ‘Had you forgotten?’

‘No.’ Nor was she likely to. ‘The christening was lovely. Quiet, but lovely. Alice sent you a piece of cake, by the way.’

‘And Morgan – I almost forgot the old softie. Is he all right?’

‘Morgan’s fine. I’m glad Alice took him with her. He’s never looked so fit – thinner, because he gets a lot more exercise.’

‘And no titbits from Cook,’ Helen supplied.

‘Absolutely not. His coat shines, now. He shares brick kennels with Tom’s two labradors, though he’s really Alice’s dog. When Tom is at work, she lets Morgan out and he sits beside Daisy’s pram, on guard.’

‘Good. Giles would have been pleased …’ Helen paused, reluctant to ask the question uppermost in her mind. ‘About Alice – did you feel – I mean …’

‘Did I ask her about well – what we talked about – and yes, I did. I put it to her, then left it at that; didn’t want her to feel I was pressurizing her to come home. Where Tom is – that’s really her home, now. But I don’t want to lose her. The war took so much from me and she is one of the people I have left who understands. She was with me the day I met Andrew …’ Her eyes took on a remembering look, then she tilted her chin, and smiled. ‘When I left, Tom drove me to the station. He told me they’d talked about it – about Alice visiting us, I mean; said there was no reason at all why she shouldn’t stay with us. And he agreed with me that people should know that he and Alice are married.’

‘Then what are we to tell them?’ Helen frowned. ‘That he wasn’t killed, but taken prisoner …?’

‘Exactly that. Alice and I will tell the same story, be sure of it. No one shall ever know what really happened. We wouldn’t be so foolish as to say anything that would get him arrested, now would we?’

‘Then everything would seem to have worked out very well.’ Helen smiled tremulously. ‘And if we ever need to get in touch with Alice – about Drew, I mean – I believe there is a number we can use?’

‘In the village – it’s called West Welby, by the way. You can ring up from the Post Office, there. They’ve got a tiny switchboard at the back of the office, and if you give them one-and-sixpence for every trunk call, they’ll put you through with no trouble at all. Just one snag. They use an extension phone, so it isn’t very private. People waiting at the counter for stamps and postal orders can have a good old listen.’

‘But they could get a message to Alice?’

‘Of course they could. Alice sews for the postmistress; I believe they are quite friendly. But you seem obsessed with getting in touch with Alice. What has put the idea into your head?’

‘I don’t know. Just don’t want to lose touch, I suppose. And she is Drew’s mother, you know. In law –’

‘Dearest! Alice left Drew in our keeping and she knows we would do anything we had to for him. And I’m sure that if a real emergency arose, we could always ring Windrush – that’s where Tom’s employer lives. Mr Hillier seems a decent man and he’s devoted to Daisy. Never passes the house without taking a peep at her if she’s outside, in her pram. He gave her a beautiful christening mug …’

‘So everything would seem to be all right?’

‘More than all right. They are all very happy and one day soon Alice will visit us. I shall tell Reuben when I give him Alice’s birthday present that before so very much longer he’ll be seeing her. And would it be all right if she and Daisy stayed here?’

‘It would be perfect. And it would be good for Drew to get his nose pushed out a little. He gets far too much attention, that young man,’ she said fondly, complacently. ‘And he can get to know his sister.’

‘His half-sister,’ Julia cautioned. ‘But he isn’t old enough, yet, to be told the truth of it. We’ll have to be very careful when we do tell him; say the right things and not have him imagine his mother abandoned him.’

‘You are the only mother he’s ever known, Julia; he even calls you Mummy. But I agree we must break it to him carefully – when the time comes.’

She stopped, abruptly, as Mary brought in a joint of mutton.

‘What were you saying about Aunt Clemmy being in London?’ Julia hastened, filling the void.

‘I was – er – saying, dear, that she went down there two days ago, though why,’ Helen sighed, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. She did tell me, though, that Nathan should be on his way home from Africa by now. So good to see him again …’

‘Will you carve, milady, or shall I?’ Clearly, Mary realized, there were to be no snippets to carry back to the kitchen.

‘You do it, Mary – then I’m sure we can look after ourselves quite nicely,’ Helen smiled.

No news at all, Mary brooded, as she closed the dining-room door behind her, because everyone already knew that the Reverend Nathan was expected home at any time and it was the best-known secret hereabouts that Mrs Clementina spent more time in her London house, nowadays, than ever she spent at Pendenys Place. And anyway, who was interested in the Pendenys Suttons? Even that Mr Elliot seemed to be behaving himself these days, she shrugged. Not so much as a whisper of scandal from that quarter. There were times, she was forced to admit, when life around Holdenby could be very dull indeed …

Tom rocked back and forth, humming softly. This was his special time; the time he took Daisy after her evening feed, laying her over his shoulder, cradling her tiny body with his hand, loving her nearness, the softness of her and her sweet baby smell.

‘Is she asleep, yet?’ Alice whispered. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

‘Leave it for a while. Sit yourself down, lass.’

Gladly, she did as he asked her, pulling off her shoes, wriggling her toes, contentment pulsing through her like a steady, warm heartbeat.

She looked at her husband through half-closed eyes, seeing the small smile of pleasure that tilted the corners of his mouth. This last half-hour of the day always belonged to Tom and Daisy; their together time, when he would rock her to sleep.

She smiled, wondering what pleased him so – apart from his daughter, that was. Closing her eyes, she set her chair rocking.

My, but they’d had a grand time, the three of them, Tom thought. These past four days had done Alice a power of good. He had never before realized how close the two women had grown. Sisters? They were that, all right. And how proud he’d felt at the christening. It was, Julia had said as he’d driven her to the station to catch the early morning train, quite the nicest she had ever been to.

‘I did so enjoy it. Daisy was very good,’ she smiled. ‘Well, apart from that cry of utter rage when she felt the water on her head. Did you know, Tom, that Daisy is my only godchild? No one has ever asked me before.’

‘It was kindly of you to accept, though Alice wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. The day the bairn was born she said she wanted you to stand for her. And it was good of you,’ he murmured, ‘to give her such a lovely present.’

‘It belonged to Grandmother Whitecliffe. I know it isn’t usual to give a brooch at a christening, but I thought sapphires would suit her eyes – if they stay so beautifully blue, that is.’

‘Alice was overcome. There are twenty-one stones in it. She counted.’

‘Very small stones, Tom. I really chose it because it was in the shape of a daisy, though daisy petals aren’t blue and the pearl in the middle should have been yellow.’

‘Alice says she won’t be allowed to wear it till she’s old enough to take good care of it.’

‘She’s my only god-daughter – take good care of her.’

‘You know I will. And here we are …’ He slowed the pony to a walk, guiding it carefully into the station yard, tying the reins to the fence before helping her down.

‘It’s been grand, having you with us. Come and visit again – bring the little lad.’

‘I will. As soon as Alice can accept him, I promise I will. And thank you for making me so welcome. When things get bad, I shall know where to run, now …’

‘It still hurts, then?’ There was understanding in his eyes, and compassion.

‘Like the very devil, Tom. Sometimes I want to beat my fists against the wall, and scream. It’s a good thing I’ve got Drew to keep me sane.’ The train let off a hiss of steam, then clanked to a stop. Smiling bravely, she turned to him, holding out her hand in goodbye. ‘Don’t wave me off, Tom? Just give me a hand with my cases, then go?’

‘If that’s what you want …’

‘It is. I like to be met, but partings dismay me.’

‘Right, then!’ He lifted her cases high onto the luggage rack, then stepping down he gathered her to him, holding her tightly. ‘Thanks for all you did for Alice when she was in need of a friend. If there’s ever anything we can do for you, we’ll do it – no questions asked.’ He cupped her face in his hands, laying his lips gently to her forehead. ‘You’re a lovely lady, Julia MacMalcolm. Come and see us again, soon? Don’t wait for the next christening?’

‘I won’t – be sure of it. Now off you go – please? No goodbyes …’

He thought a lot about Julia and her ladyship on his way home and about the little lad up there at Rowangarth. And he thought about what he and Alice had talked about, last night in bed. It had been her decision entirely, yet he had agreed with it, even though he told her to sleep on it, then sleep on it again before she wrote to Lady Helen. But when Alice’s mind was made up there was nothing would change it. She would think on, like he said, yet still she would write that letter to Rowangarth, and now that she had accepted the way things were, it was best for all concerned she should do it.

He felt a sudden pricking of tears and coughed sternly, blowing his nose loudly. And it hadn’t really been tears he had felt – more like a tingling of happiness – nay, gratitude – that his world should be so damn-near perfect, because how many men had everything they could wish for on the face of this earth? How many?

Tom Dwerryhouse was not a praying man, but he had lifted his eyes to the early morning sky and whispered, ‘Thanks’; whispered it so quietly that only God could hear him. Then he shook his head, feeling foolish at his daftness, and slapped the reins down hard and called, ‘Hup!’ to the pony.

But how many men were lucky as Tom Dwerryhouse? Certainly not Giles Sutton nor his brother Robert, nor Andrew MacMalcolm. They had nothing but a hero’s death; no Alice, no nestling girl child to rock to sleep. And Julia had so little. Only young Drew, and her memories. Happen this morning he should not have kissed her goodbye, but he’d done it on an impulse, seeing the naked sadness in her eyes, the aloneness. It had been a kiss of compassion, of comfort, and she had not taken it amiss. That brief closeness between them had prompted him to whisper,

‘No goodbyes, but don’t look so lost, Julia lass. Alice shall come and visit, I promise you. All I ask is that she won’t meet up with young Sutton. I couldn’t abide it if he was to upset her again. If I ever thought there was the smallest chance of that, I wouldn’t want her to go.’

‘He won’t upset her, be sure of that! You know how I detest him,’ Julia had said, tight-mouthed. ‘Alice and Daisy will be safe, at Rowangarth.’

‘Detest? Aye, that’s how I feel about him an’ all. That one’s a creature only a mother could love – and there must be times when even she loses patience with him.’

‘Don’t worry, Tom. Always remember that I don’t want them to meet, either. It’s every bit as important to me he should never suspect that Drew is his.’

‘But mightn’t he suspect already?’ Tom frowned.

‘He might, but suspicion is one thing; proof is quite another. It’s his word against Rowangarth’s, don’t forget. Even his brother Nathan is on our side. Elliot wouldn’t dare!’

‘Happen you are right. And why are we spoiling the last of your holiday talking about him,’ he’d laughed, making light of it, and she had stepped onto the train, taking the window seat, smiling. She was still smiling, chin high, when he turned for a last look at her. She would be home, now, at Rowangarth, poor lass; back to her lonely bed with no one to kiss her, make love with her, tell her everything would be all right.

‘Damn that war!’ he gasped.

‘Tom?’ Alice was at his side in an instant, eyes anxious. ‘What is it, love? What was it you just said?’

‘Dreaming,’ he mumbled, cursing his carelessness. ‘Must have nodded off. Aye – happen I was dreaming …’

‘About the war! It’s been over two years, almost, yet still it’s always there, at the backs of our minds. Don’t think anyone who was in France will rightly forget …’

‘No. It’s got a lot to answer for. But let’s get this bairn up to her cot? She’s fast asleep.’

Carefully, he got to his feet, cupping the little head protectively in his hand. Then half-way up the stairs he turned abruptly.

‘Alice, I do love you – but you know it, don’t you?’

‘I know it,’ she said softly, and there was no need for reassurance, because her eyes said it for her. I love you. I shall always love you …

‘Off you go,’ she said softly. ‘Put her in her cot. I’ll set the kettle on. We’ll have a sup of tea, then I’ve got a letter to write …’

‘There, now.’ Alice lay down her pen and corked the ink bottle. ‘That’s over and done with. I’ll post it in the morning when I go to the village. Just one thing more, Tom …’

‘Whatever else?’ he smiled indulgently. ‘Can’t it wait until morning?’

‘That it can’t! I’m in the mood for setting things to rights. I’ve written to Rowangarth – now there’s one thing more I must tell you.

‘You mind you said that Daisy did well at her christening – had so many lovely things given to her that the West Welby lads’d be courting her for her dowry – or something daft like that …?’

‘A joke, love, though I’ve given the matter a deal of thought,’ he said gravely, though his eyes were bright with teasing, ‘and there’s none in that village half good enough for our Daisy! But what’s brought all this on?’

‘Like I said – setting things to rights, because happen you should know that you might be more right than you realize – about the bairn, I mean …’

‘Alice?’ He moved towards her, but she got to her feet, taking up a position behind her chair. And she always did that, he frowned, when something bothered her. ‘Tell me, sweetheart?’

‘Our Daisy does have a dowry,’ she whispered, eyes on the chairback. ‘First thing I did after she was born was to open a bank account in her name.’

‘And what’s wrong with that, bonny lass? Nice to think she’ll have a bit of brass to draw on if ever she should need it. I’ve set my heart on her getting a scholarship to the Grammar School – there’ll be fancy uniform to buy, and –’

‘Tom! Stop your dreaming! There’s years and years before we need think about that. She’s hardly six weeks old, yet! And if you’re set on educating her,’ she added reluctantly, ‘she can always be paid for.’

‘And just how, might I ask? It costs good money every term at that school if a child hasn’t the brains to get a free place, though happen we’d manage.’ Rabbits to sell, he calculated. Rabbits were vermin and all a keeper caught, it was accepted, were his own. And rabbit skins and mole skins fetched a fair price and –

‘Will you listen, Tom? It would be nothing to do with managing. Daisy has enough money of her own!’

There now, she’d said it and please God that Dwerry-house temper wouldn’t flash sudden and sharp.

‘Her own? Tell me, Alice?’

His voice was soft, ordinary almost. They weren’t going to have words if only because it was Daisy they were talking about. She drew in a breath of relief.

‘When I was married to – when I was at Rowangarth and I thought of you as dead …’

‘When you were Lady Sutton, wed to Sir Giles,’ he supplied. ‘Lovey, we’ve had all this out. It happened. You did what you had to. Don’t talk about it as if it’s something to be ashamed of. Just tell me about Daisy’s bank book.’

‘All right, then. Giles made me an allowance – I didn’t touch it, hardly. It didn’t seem right. Any road, when I came to you there was most of it left …’

‘And all we’ve got in this house – it was that money paid for it,’ he gasped.

‘No. You know that after you and me were wed, I sent to Rowangarth for my things – my own things – all the bedding and linen I’d collected, the rest of my clothes, the chest of drawers Reuben gave us …’

‘Aye. And instead of them being delivered by the railway, they came in a carrier’s motor, and all manner of things, beside!’

‘Yes. Another bed, a washstand and jug and bowl, and rugs and kitchen chairs and –’

‘It was good of Julia to send them and wrong of me to think otherwise.’

‘Furniture Rowangarth had no need of, and kindly given. And the rest of our home came out of my own savings, Tom, I promise you. I didn’t use a penny of Giles’s money. All I ever took from it was money for Daisy’s pram – and whilst I’m about it, that pram cost five guineas. Our little one was to have the finest coach-built perambulator I could lay hands on, I vowed. And besides, it’ll come in nicely for the rest of our bairns. Good things always last,’ she added with defiant practicality.

‘That great posh pram will outlast six more, then!’ he laughed. ‘We’re going to have to be busy if we’re to get our value out of it.’

‘Sweetheart – you aren’t angry? You don’t think I should have told you before this?’

‘I’m not angry.’ He loved her too much. They were too happy, the three of them, that he’d be a fool ever to lose his temper again. ‘But might a man be told how wealthy a daughter he’s got?’

‘Aye. I reckon I owe you that.’ Alice opened the dresser drawer, slid her fingers beneath the lining paper and took out the bank book. ‘See for yourself …’

‘Heck!’ His eyes widened; he let go a gasp of disbelief. ‘That’s enough to buy this house we’re living in and then some!’

‘That’s just about it. And not a penny of it can be touched till she’s seven and can sign her own name to get at it. But I don’t want her to know about it, Tom; don’t want her thinking she can have all the toys she wants, nor any bicycle she thinks fit to choose. Daisy Dwerryhouse cuts her coat according to our cloth; I’ve made up my mind about that. So not one word, mind …’

‘Not a word! But think on, eh – our Daisy rich!’

‘Rich my foot! She’s got something put by, that’s all. Rich is – well, it’s like Mr Hillier is and the Pendenys Suttons.’ She stopped, abruptly. ‘Sorry, Tom. We don’t talk about them, do we? Only about Nathan …’

‘Only about the Reverend, who’s the best of the bunch of them. But tell me what’s in yon’ letter to her ladyship?’ He nodded towards the envelope on the mantelpiece, waiting to be stamped and posted. ‘Or am I not to know?’

‘I think you know already, but I’ll tell you all about it when I get her reply – which will be soon, I shouldn’t wonder. Now give the fire a stir, will you, and hurry that kettle up. And Tom – I do so love you. We aren’t too happy, are we?’ she whispered, all at once afraid.

‘No, sweetheart. I’ve always been of the opinion that we get what we deserve in this life and what we’ve got, you and me, we paid for – in advance. So stop your worriting and make your man that sup of tea!’

Almost without thinking, his hand strayed to his pocket and the rabbit’s foot he kept there; his lucky rabbit’s foot. Reuben had given it to him the day before he’d left Rowangarth to join the Army; given one to Davie and Will Stubbs an’ all, and all three of them came through that war. He had great faith in that old rabbit’s foot, he thought, curling his fingers around its silky softness. It had taken care of him in the war and now it would take care of Alice and the bairn – and their happiness. Stood to reason, didn’t it? And Alice should go home to Rowangarth just as soon as maybe – let old Reuben see Daisy – be blowed if she shouldn’t!

He smiled his contentment, pushing the kettle deeper into the coals.

Too happy? Of course they weren’t!

4

‘I think you should read this letter. It’s from Alice, and it’s about Drew.’

‘It’s nothing –’ Helen Sutton’s head jerked sharply upwards, eyes questioning.

‘It’s nothing wrong,’ Julia smiled comfortingly. ‘Read it.’

‘My spectacles.’ Still a little alarmed, Helen reached into the pockets of her cardigan. ‘I must have left them upstairs. Read it for me?’

‘Only if you drink your coffee, and relax. It isn’t anything awful. Listen …’

My dear Julia,

It was lovely our being together after such a long time. Those few days were so good and just like it used to be. We must not let it go so long again. Seeing you made me realize how much I have missed Rowangarth.

I have thought about it a lot – talked to Tom about it, too, and he agrees that I must visit Reuben, though before I do I hope you will tell them all about the way it is now – about Tom not being killed and our getting married – prepare them beforehand.

There is something else, too, more important. We talked about it after you left. Drew is rightfully a Sutton. Rowangarth will belong to him one day and he belongs to Rowangarth. He is yours, and I think the time has come for me to give him up completely. Not meaning that I must never see him again, but I want you to adopt him, and even though you look upon him as your son, my dearest friend, I would wish her ladyship to do it so he may keep his Sutton name.

I accept that legally Drew is mine, but things change. I am no longer Lady Sutton and Drew must be brought up by his own kind. Will you think seriously about it?

‘There’s more, of course, but that’s the bare bones of it. Just think – Drew, ours. I think Alice could well be right …’

‘Adopt him? Oh!’ Helen let go her indrawn breath in a startled gasp. ‘I would like to – I think I always wanted to, truth known – but I never dared ask for fear of losing him.’

‘But Alice would never have taken him away from us. Just as she says in the letter, Drew is a Sutton and belongs here. I think we should think seriously about it – make an appointment with Carvers.

‘Alice means it kindly. She doesn’t want rid of Drew; she just wants what is best for him and for us. Shall I ring them up now – ask when’s best for us to see them? Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Don’t fuss me, child! This is a serious matter. We must look at it from all angles.’

‘But what is there to look at?’ Julia buttered and jammed a slice of toast, cutting it into small slices, arranging it on Drew’s plate. ‘All you would be doing is assuming responsibility for Giles’s son until he comes of age. Legally signed and sealed – that’s all it would amount to. For the rest, there would be no change. Alice left Drew in our care. He has been ours, I suppose, from the day he was born.’

‘You are right – and I do want Drew. It was a surprise to me, that’s all, yet you seem not one bit put out, Julia. Did you talk about it with Alice when you were there?’

‘Not a word. All we talked about was that perhaps she would visit Rowangarth – and now she’ll have to, won’t she? There’ll be papers to be signed, though there shouldn’t be a lot of legal fuss, especially if we are all in agreement. Which Carver do you want to see – old, middle, or young?’

‘I feel I should see the old gentleman. I wouldn’t like to upset him.’ Carver, Carver and Carver – father, son and lately, grandson, had dealt with Rowangarth’s affairs since before ever she and John were married, Helen pondered. ‘I have heard, though, that the young Mr Carver is very astute and wide-awake.’

‘Well, middle-Carver is more the financial side of the partnership, so I’ll tell their clerk you would like to see the old man but would take it kindly if you could meet the grandson, too. You haven’t met him, have you?’

‘Not yet.’ Helen shook her head. Giles had always taken care of legal matters after John died – when Robert had returned to India, that was.

‘Then you’ll get two for the price of one, that way. I’ll ring them now.’ She wiped strawberry jam from Drew’s chin. ‘When do you want to go? Friday? That would give us plenty of time to have a good long talk about it.’ And still come to the same conclusion. Of course her mother must adopt Drew. She pushed back her chair noisily and made for the telephone.

‘That’s it, then. Eleven on Friday will suit them nicely,’ Julia beamed, returning to the table again. ‘And Drew and I will come with you.’

‘Julia, dear, you mustn’t rush things so.’ Helen had not yet recovered from the suddenness of it. ‘We must think very carefully …’

‘Of course we will – and there’s no one more careful than Carver-the-old. But you know that what Alice suggests makes good sense – and there’s the other matter,’ she rushed on. ‘Alice wants it made known that she and Tom are married and I think it’s something we should do at once, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do, though it will be like letting her go, sort of. I care so much for her. Having her was such a comfort. And when she had Drew – oh, it would have been such a good day, had Giles not died.’

‘But he left us Drew. And he was very ill – you know he was, dearest – and often in pain from his wounds. Don’t let’s be too sad?’

‘You are right. This is a good day and we will start it by giving Miss Clitherow Alice’s news.’

‘I agree. Best she should be the first to know. But let’s both tell her? Then I’ll go to the kitchen and tell them exactly the same story – and let them know how glad about it we both are.’

‘Tell the same story? Don’t you think that sounds as if we are being a little underhanded?’

‘Telling lies about Tom having been a prisoner of war and Alice leaving Rowangarth to be with Aunt Sutton, you mean, when all the time she was with Tom in Hampshire? Yes, it is underhanded, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth a little.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Helen sighed, comforted. ‘But first you must tell Reuben. He’s known about Alice and Tom all along – it’s only right we should put him in the picture. And don’t you think Miss Clitherow should be the one to tell staff about it?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Julia’s reply allowed for no compromise. ‘It’s such lovely news that I want to be the one to tell them. Besides, Miss Clitherow might tell it her way. She never quite approved of Alice becoming Lady Sutton.’

‘But she did, Julia! She was extremely correct about it and insisted that Alice was given the respect due to her.’

‘She overdid it. Alice didn’t know where she stood. All right – so she had been your sewing-maid, then came back from France mistress of this house, though she never once exerted her authority. She was still Alice, and staff should not have been barred, entirely, from showing her kindness. And it was Miss Clitherow at the bottom of it!’

‘Did Alice complain? I never once thought she wasn’t happy.’

‘She was happy as she could be. But she and Giles didn’t live a normal married life – we both know it – yet for all that, she nursed him and cared fondly for him – and she gave Rowangarth a son.

‘But I want to tell staff about Alice and Tom. When Miss Clitherow has been told I shall go downstairs at once and take Drew with me if he isn’t asleep. I’ll have tea with them – like I used to.’

She called back staff teatime, with bread and jam and cake and sometimes, on special days, cherry scones. So long ago. So much water under so many bridges. So much heartache.

‘I remember. Cook spoiled you, just as she spoils Drew. You were always her favourite. And you are right. I’ll leave it to you to tell staff.’

‘Fine! I’ll put Drew in his pushchair and walk to the village. I intended calling on Reuben, anyway, to tell him about the christening and take his piece of cake. Now I’ll be able to tell him that Alice plans to visit. He’ll be so pleased.’

‘But not a word about the adoption, mind!’

‘Of course not.’ Not until they had seen the Carvers, old and young, and the legalities were set in motion. ‘Do you know, dearest, for all I was glad to be home again, I still had a sad feeling, leaving Alice. But now I’m so glad. Drew will be ours completely and Alice and Daisy will soon be coming to stay.’ She lifted the small boy from his high chair, throwing him into the air so he laughed with delight and demanded more. ‘Come on, young Sutton – let’s get you cleaned up. There isn’t a child anywhere who can get himself so sticky at breakfast! You’ve even got jam in your ear! Say ’bye to grandmother!’

Child on hip, she slammed out of the room, almost like the Julia of old, Helen thought. Almost …

Clementina Sutton, feeling quite splendid in a rose-red calf-length silk costume and toning bell-shaped hat, brought the knocker down three times, then took a deep breath.

It was all most exciting. She had never before met a Russian, much less been received by a countess who had one thing above all in her favour. She, Clementina, did not have the cut crystal voice of a true aristocrat – she knew it. Even her expensive schooling had not entirely removed her Yorkshire accent. No! She had never had that, exactly; more undertones of northness, perhaps. Yet she still had to pause, she admitted, before saying butter, government, and good luck. It was the way with northern vowels. They could give one away, no matter how very rich one might be. But the countess, being foreign, would have no ear for English dialects. It would be quite relaxing to sip tea from a samovar and not have to watch every word she said.

The door was opened by the same black-clad servant, who took the offered card, indicating with a graceful movement of her hand that the caller was to sit. Then she walked down the hall to announce the visitor. And she didn’t walk, Clementina pondered; rather she placed one foot before the other with the haughty, considered precision of a ballet dancer so that her long, full skirt swirled as she moved. Far more pleasing, Clementina thought nastily, than the pompous plodding of the flat feet of Pendenys’ butler.

‘Plis?’ Again the delicate movement of the hand, the indication she was to be followed.

A middle-aged woman, also dressed in black – even her beads and eardrops were of jet – rose to her feet, her hand extended.

‘Olga Maria Petrovska,’ she said softly, inclining her head.

‘Clementina Sutton of Pendenys,’ came the prompt reply. ‘It is kind of you to receive me.’

‘Please to sit down. Tea will be brought – or coffee?’

‘Tea is most satisfactory. You will realize that I live next door to you – when in London, of course.’ She spoke carefully, slowly, shaping her mouth like a mill girl in her eagerness to be understood.

‘Ah, yes. Karl – he is our coachman and houseman – keeps me informed of what happens in the world outside. I am little interested in it at the moment. I am in mourning. I rarely receive visitors.’

‘I am sorry. Might I ask for whom?’ The woman’s English was good – very good – for a foreigner. ‘That dreadful war – will we ever forget it?’

‘The war – yes. But for me my bête noire is the uprising, the Bolsheviks. My husband and elder son were killed by the rabble; Igor is still in Russia – though I would beg you not to speak of it outside this house. They have their spies everywhere. And I mourn for my country, also.’

‘But they will be defeated and punished, those terrible people. You will go home to Russia …’

‘No. Perhaps Igor and Anna, but not me.’

‘Your children?’ Clementina was enjoying herself immensely.

‘Igor is my younger boy; Anna my only daughter. Basil, our firstborn, died at his father’s side, defending our home. Igor tries to – to find things we left behind us,’ she hesitated, ‘but please not to talk of it until he is safely back?’

‘Not a word,’ Clementina breathed. ‘I have sons of my own. You have my sympathy and understanding …’

The door opened without sound and the servant in black placed a tray on the table at the countess’s side. Then, dropping a deep, graceful curtsey, she left on feet that seemed scarcely to touch the floor.

‘Please – something we have done wrongly?’ The countess challenged her caller’s inquisitive, roaming eyes.

‘N-no. Foolish of me, but I had expected a samovar. And your furniture …’ she faltered.

‘You expected us to be very Russian? You thought to see oriental carpets, silk hangings and rare paintings? And it surprises you that I use so English a teapot?’

‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ Clementina said with complete candour. ‘I had thought that –’

‘That you would have wealthy people living next to you? Then you are much to be disappointed. Our homes – the winter town house and the one in the country we used each summer, are gone. We could not bring them with us, nor our estates and possessions. To arrive here with our lives was itself a miracle, thanks be to Our Blessed Lady.’ She crossed herself and nodded to the – what was it? Clementina frowned. Some sort of religious picture?

‘A holy icon,’ supplied the countess. ‘Once, it hung over my bed. Always, in summer, we left Petersburg for the country – so much cooler. And when we heard of the trouble in the city, we stayed there, even though winter was near – Anna and I, that was …

‘My husband and our sons returned to Petersburg at once – the mobs were looting, we were told. They got out what valuables they could from the town house and left them with me in the country – until the revolutionaries were defeated and it was safe for us to go back. But they were not defeated. We dare not return to Petersburg.’ She passed a cup with hands that shook.

‘And then?’ Clementina breathed.

‘Igor stayed behind to take care of Anna and me. My husband and elder son returned to St Petersburg to do what they could. Basil and Igor were in the army during the war, at the Military Academy. They were too young to be sent to the Eastern Front – Basil might have lived, had he been there.’

‘And your younger son? Why did you not insist he left Russia with you?’

‘Because he is a man – or almost a man – and his Czar needed him. Besides, there were – things – still to be found; hidden things. Anna and I brought what items of value we could with us – and Our Blessed Lady. It was She got us to safety. I pray to Her each night for Igor’s life – that he may soon find us here. This house – he knows of it …’ She stopped, abruptly, breathing deeply, lifting her shoulders, ashamed she had let down her guard before a complete stranger. ‘Do you think it will rain today?’

‘That is very English of you,’ Clementina smiled. ‘And might I say how well you speak our language? I thought –’

‘That I would speak only Russian? I have French, also. Our children had an English governess and spoke only English in the schoolroom. But I am so angry with those Bolsheviks that I took a vow that only English should be spoken – except on saints’ days – until there is a Romanov on the throne once more.’

‘Dear lady – forgive me – but the Czar is dead; his heir, too.’

‘I fear so. But there are Romanovs still alive; the Grand Duke Michael – the Czar’s brother – what has happened to him we do not know. We only know that our Czar, God rest him, was murdered.’ She bowed her head and crossed herself piously. ‘But I speak too much which I ask will not be repeated by you. For the sake of my son, I ask it.’

Once, in the Imperial days, she doubted she would have received any woman without first checking her pedigree most thoroughly. Indeed, in St Petersburg, their circle of acceptable friends had been select and small. Now, even though she was as nothing in a strange country, she should not let her standards drop. It was just, she sighed inside her, that she was lonely and homesick for Russia and afraid, still, that those who had in even the smallest way served the Czar would be hunted down no matter where they might be.

‘Not a word shall pass my lips,’ Clementina breathed, eyes wide, heart bumping.

‘So, Mrs Clementina Sutton of Pendenys – now you shall tell me about your children …’

The countess had, Clementina was to think later, deftly changed the subject and not one more word about her refugee neighbours had she gleaned. Yet the countess had indicated that though in mourning she would return the call, Clementina thought with satisfaction, and meantime she had deduced that the lady was a widow; that her elder son had been killed and that her younger son was somewhere in Russia, still – St Petersburg, perhaps? – looking for things, though what he sought was still a mystery. Nor had she met Anna.

Anna, had her parents’ title been English, would have been Lady Anna, she frowned. In England, of course, a countess would be the wife of an earl and she was as sure as she could be that Russian aristocracy sported no earls. Maybe though, the husband had been a count? She shook her head. It was all very confusing – and there was something else that might well put a different complexion on things. Anna Petrovsky could already be promised!

She removed her costume and placed it carefully on a hanger. It had been a mistake, she admitted; a very expensive mistake and entirely the wrong colour in which to impress someone who must surely detest anything red.

When the countess returned her call she would be more careful and dress more suitably. And when that happened, surely Anna – Lady Anna – would accompany her mother? She did so want to meet her; decide whether she was wasting her time in patronizing the family next door. It might well be, she was forced to admit, that she would have to cast her net wider in her quest for a wife for Elliot, though she hoped not. After all, it was not essential her son’s wife should have money; what she must have, though, was breeding. Breeding such as Helen had. No amount of money would buy it – a fact of life she had learned the painful way – and no amount of poverty could disguise it. But only let the girl next door be in the market for a wealthy husband, she pleaded silently, and the search was over – and Elliot’s womanizing too, did he but know it!

‘Well now, Miss Julia, and what have you come to tell us?’

Cook placed two cushions on the kitchen chair, then perched Drew on top of them. Ever since this morning, when Miss Julia had begged afternoon tea in the kitchen in exchange for some very, very good news, Cook had been on tenterhooks.

‘Like I promised – good news; cherry scone news.’ Julia drew her chair up to the table. ‘And no, Mrs Shaw, Drew may not have all those cakes’. Deftly she removed an iced bun from his plate, returning it to the tin, ‘even though I know you made them especially for him.’

Eyes bright, she waited until cups had been filled and passed round and Mrs Shaw had nodded that tea might begin before she said. ‘It’s about Alice.’

‘She’s well again? Her ladyship is coming home?’ Tilda gasped.

‘Yes – and no. She is very well, but she is no longer her ladyship and she won’t be coming to Rowangarth just yet. She has her very own home, now. That is where I have been – acting godmother to her little baby. Alice has married again …’

‘Oh, my word!’ Cook dropped her knife with a clatter, gazing stunned around the table. At Mary, who’d suspected, hadn’t she, where Miss Julia had been; at Tilda’s bright pink cheeks and at Jinny Dobb, whom Julia had said should be asked. There was no pleased surprise on Jin’s face, Cook thought. Jin, the sly old thing, merely looked – sly. Her face was without emotion – if you could ignore the I-know-something-you-don’t-know look in her pale blue eyes, that was. ‘Married?’

‘A year last July, Mrs Shaw.’

‘So when she left …?’ At last, Mary found her voice.

‘When she left us she wasn’t going to Aunt Sutton. I’m sorry if you were deceived, but Alice felt that people she knew and cared for might not take too kindly to her leaving her little boy behind.’

‘But she did leave him behind, for all that!’ Tilda Tewk had a way of putting things that was rarely the embodiment of tact.

‘Yes, but not for the reason you might think. Alice had a choice – and she made it!’

Julia took a deep breath. This was not as easy as she had thought. Miss Clitherow had taken the news calmly; below stairs, it would seem, they had not the same control of their curiosity – nor their emotions.

‘You mean, she had the choice between this little lad, here, and – and …’

‘And should we be talking like this in front of him?’ Mary whispered, sliding her eyes to the small boy.

‘It’s all right. He doesn’t understand. The cherry on his bun is of far more interest to him, at the moment,’ Julia smiled. ‘And Alice wasn’t an uncaring mother. She put Drew’s interests first; best he should grow up with his inheritance, she felt, and mother and I agreed with her.’

‘But where did she go, if it wasn’t to Miss Sutton?’ Tilda demanded. ‘Was it to him – the man she’s married to?’

‘To him,’ Julia said softly. ‘We wanted her to, once we knew he was not –’

‘Dead?’ For the first time, Jinny Dobb spoke. ‘That Tom Dwerryhouse hadn’t been killed, after all?’

‘That Tom was alive,’ Julia nodded. ‘The Army thought him dead, but he’d been taken prisoner.’ The lie slipped out easily.

‘And them Germans had locked him up and never told no one about it?’ Cook choked.

‘It happened a lot.’ All at once Julia felt relief that the news was to be accepted with no more than a modicum of surprise. ‘When it happened, things were in a turmoil at the Front. The Germans and Austrians were getting the better of us and things were in a bad way. No news of any kind was getting through. But how did you guess, Jin? Did you see it in the bottom of your teacup?’

‘Something like that, Miss.’ Slowly, she smiled.

‘But married …’ Cook took her apron corners, ballooning it out, ready to weep into it as she always did, when overcome.

‘And a mother,’ Tilda gasped, her romantic heart thumping deliciously. ‘What did she have, Miss Julia?’

‘A little girl. Daisy Julia Dwerryhouse. She’s very beautiful. I took my camera with me. As soon as the reel has been developed, you shall see Alice and Daisy – and Tom.’

‘Then she’s had two beautiful bairns,’ Cook pronounced, taking another bun from the tin, placing it defiantly on Drew’s plate. ‘And this lovely little lad here has a sister!’

‘A half-sister. Alice asked especially that I should tell you all about her remarriage. I hope you’ll all be happy for her. Mother and I are. We are hoping she will come and stay with us as soon as Daisy can make the journey.’

There, now! She had done it! Not only had she broken the news about Tom, but she had also let it be known that the Suttons – the Rowangarth Suttons, that was – were delighted about it. How the Pendenys Suttons would react to the news remained to be seen. To Nathan, it would come as no shock at all; to Elliot, it might have entirely different repercussions.

Determinedly, she pushed Pendenys to the back of her mind. Drew was Giles’s son; was even Sutton-fair, even though Elliot was dark as a gypsy.

‘Where is she, Miss?’ Tilda’s voice broke into her broodings. ‘I want to write – tell her how pleased I am.’

‘Alice would like that. I know she misses you all. She’s in Hampshire, but I’ll write down her address for you. And might I have another scone, Mrs Shaw? There is no one can bake cherry specials like you!’

Cook obliged, beaming, spreading the butter thickly. ‘But oh, my word; Alice Hawthorn wed and to her Tom, and a little babbie an’ all!’

‘It’s like a story in a love book, isn’t it?’ Tilda breathed. ‘One with a happy ending …’ Tilda, who read every love story ever published, was an authority on happy endings. ‘I’ll write to Alice tonight.’

‘Us all will,’ Cook nodded. ‘And send a present for her little lass.’

‘Good. Well, best be off!’ Julia made to lift Drew into her arms, but Cook was quick to ask,

‘Leave him with us, Miss Julia? He does so enjoy playing with my button box. Just like Sir Giles did …’

‘Very well. But make sure he doesn’t put buttons in his mouth, and don’t dare,’ Julia gazed pointedly at the cake tin, ‘give him another iced bun – not even if he says pretty-please for it!’

‘And I’d best be getting back to the bothy.’ Jin rose to her feet. ‘Thank you kindly for having me, Mrs Shaw,’ she murmured, following Julia out.

‘You knew, Jin Dobb.’ Julia closed the kitchen door behind her. ‘Alice told me you knew about Tom right from the start, yet you never breathed a word – not even to me. How ever did you manage to do it?’

‘Easy, Miss Julia. For one thing, I promised Alice I’d never tell I’d seen him, and for another – well, scrubbing woman in the bothy I may be, but it was nice, all them months, knowing summat that lot in the kitchen didn’t know! And Miss – it was a sin and a shame there couldn’t have been another come back from the dead …’

‘It wasn’t to be, Jin. And I’ve got Drew.’ She took a long, unsteady breath. ‘Alice left me the child …’

‘That she did. And take heart, Miss. I saw happiness in Alice’s hand and there’s happiness to come for you, an’ all. I know it.’

‘How can you know, Jinny Dobb?’ Julia’s words were harsh with bitterness. ‘You’ve never read my hand.’

‘No more have I. But it’s all around you, like a glow. No one can see it but Jin, and Jin Dobb isn’t often wrong!’

‘It isn’t possible. I couldn’t. Not again!’ She didn’t want to be happy with any man but Andrew.

‘Not love again? With respect, Miss, there’s first love and there’s last love and love of all shapes and sizes in between, so don’t shut your heart to it, when you chance on it …’

‘But I won’t chance on it, so don’t ever say such a thing again!’

‘I won’t.’ She’d said what she had to say – now let it rest.

But Miss Julia would encounter love – when her heart was good and ready, that was; oh my word, yes! What she would make of it might be altogether another thing, but love again she would. One day …

5

Clementina Sutton had fretted and fumed alternately for the remainder of the week. How much longer she could remain in the London house waiting for the countess to return her call, she did not know. And when was she to meet Anna Petrovska? Clearly, something must be done, yet etiquette decreed she could not call again at the house next door. Correct behaviour demanded that she must now await a return visit and as yet the silly woman hadn’t even left her calling card!

How long before she must return to Pendenys? How long dare she leave Elliot alone, virtually, with no one to pull on the reins when he became bored and restless and decided to take himself off in search of pleasure!

His father didn’t care. Edward disliked his eldest son with undisguised feeling and avoided the poor boy like the plague. Trouble was, she brooded, Pendenys Place was so vast that avoidance came easily. So many rooms, inner doors, outer doors, unexpected staircases. People could go for days without meeting, if they were set on it.

It was then she had jumped moodily to her feet, lifted the lace curtain that covered the window and saw, oh, thanks be! a young woman in the garden next door who could only be Anna Petrovska.

At once she felt relief she’d had the good sense to have the fence removed; the fence she caused to be built – with good reason, mind! – when it seemed certain the people next door might be European refugees, common soldiers or gypsies.

In less than a minute she was standing at the garden wall, smiling a welcome over it, whispering, ‘Good morning, my dear – you must be Anna. I have heard so much about you.’

‘Good morning, ma’am. Are you the lady who called on Mama – Mrs Sutton of Pendenys? I am so pleased to meet you.’

She extended a delicate hand. ‘Aleksandrina Anastasia Petrovska,’ she smiled. ‘Anna …’

‘You have a very beautiful name.’ Genteelly Clementina touched her fingertips.

‘Ah, yes, but so long. I decided when I was a little girl that my birth-name was too awful to have to print out, so I insisted I became Anna. Vassily and Igor had short names – it was most unfair!’

The corners of her mouth lifted in an enchanting smile to show white, even teeth. She was, Clementina was bound to admit, not only aristocratic but beautiful and if Elliot didn’t think so, she would box his ears!

‘You have the same name as the poor little Grand Duchess,’ she murmured for want of something better to say.

‘Ah – the dear Anastasia, God rest her.’ Exactly as her mother had done, she crossed herself, head bowed. ‘She and I share the same natal day – birthday. I was called in her honour. We were, Mama assures me, born only two hours apart.’

‘Are you Roman?’ Clementina had to ask it, even though it was as wrong to enquire about a person’s religion as it was to ask the extent of their bank balance. ‘A Catholic?’ Well – all that crossing themselves …

‘I am Orthodox – Russian Orthodox …’

‘And is that Christian?’ Clementina sensed difficulties.

‘Yes, of course!’ She laughed with delight. ‘We are as devoutly Christian as the English, only we worship a little differently.’

‘Aaah.’ Clementina’s relief was heartfelt. ‘You mentioned Vassily and Igor. I thought –’

‘Vassily is Basil. I forget we speak only English, now, by command of Mama, though today they talk away in our own tongue – twenty to the dozen, is it you say?’

‘Then today is a saint’s day?’

‘No. Far, far better. Last evening my brother returned safely to England and we all laughed and cried and hugged and kissed. Mama is so happy.’

‘He’s back? Then be sure to tell the countess how very glad I am.’

‘I think you may tell her yourself. She intends to call on you tomorrow or the next day, she said, and give you her good news. You will not spoil it for her? You will be suitably surprised – yes?’

‘Not one word will I breathe,’ she beamed, happy beyond words. ‘And when she calls, might I hope you will be with her?’

‘I shall visit, I thank you. Now, you see, I am permitted to take off my black clothes, though Mama still wears her mourning – for Vassily and Papa, of course …’

‘I shall look forward to your coming. Is your brother well? Were things bad for him, in St Petersburg – oh, your mother told me about it, never fear,’ she hastened to add.

‘He came back safely – and successfully – though doubtless you will hear of it, soon. But Igor is safe, now, and we will try to start living again!’

‘Of course you will! And you, my dear – you’ll be getting married?’ Clementina hesitated. ‘When the countess is out of mourning, that is …’

‘I fear not.’ All at once, the dark eyes were sad. ‘My marriage money, now, is much diminished – and besides, no one has spoken for me though Mama says I am old enough.’

‘And how old would that be?’

‘Nineteen – soon …’

‘Then you must hope. You are very beautiful and that will more than compensate for your dowry. The solution is simple. You must insist upon a wealthy husband! Forgive me, I beg you, for saying so on such a short acquaintance.’ A husband like Elliot, perhaps? All at once, Clementina decided that no other but Anna Petrovska would do. She was the answer to all her prayers. The girl had beauty and breeding and was not so well-heeled, it would seem, that she could afford to be over choosy. And she, Clementina, had the brass. She had a money tree grown tall and thick from a seed planted by Mary Anne Pendennis! ‘And I do so hope I may have the pleasure of receiving you, very soon.’

Clementina knew when to end a conversation. She smiled a goodbye, stumbling in her eagerness to get to the telephone and call Pendenys Place.

‘Edward!’ she gasped when finally her husband lifted the phone. ‘Tomorrow! I won’t be home! I must stay here a few more days!’

‘What is it, Clemmy? You sound quite upset. Has something happened?’

‘Happened? Everything has happened! Oh, I do believe things are working out, at last!’

‘Are you all right?’ Working out? What bee had she got in her bonnet, now?

‘I am perfectly all right! Will you tell Elliot to telephone me back – at once!’

‘I’m afraid he’s in York – a visit to his tailor.’

‘Damn! Well, the very minute he gets back, tell him to get himself down here! Train or motor – I don’t care which. But I want him at Cheyne Walk by ten in the morning – and no prevaricating!’

‘But what if he has other plans?’

‘Then he’d best cancel them. And if he starts making excuses, just say, “Allowance” to him! Now don’t forget, Edward. Ten o’clock tomorrow! Perhaps it’s best he should get the overnight train. Either way, I want him here!’

Edward Sutton was given time to ask no more; the click of the receiver put paid to that. But no matter, he shrugged. He would telephone again tonight when hopefully his wife was calmer.

He reached for the bell-pull. Best order his son’s packing to be done, for Elliot would do as his mother ordered. Any mention of his allowance usually carried the veiled threat of cancellation and commanded instant obedience. It was the only thing, Edward considered with relish, that could bring his wayward firstborn to heel – apart from a good thrashing, that was, and no one yet had dared to give him that. Only the gamekeeper, and that hadn’t been half hard enough, he thought with regret.

He turned his thoughts to his wife. What in heaven’s name was she up to, now?

Tom Dwerryhouse walked the game covers, his dogs at his heels. He had schooled them from brash, bouncy pups to obedient retrievers. They were a fine pair; would work well when the shooting began in October. Until then, it pleased him to see the covers so well stocked with game. This year, Mr Hillier would have the shooting he so looked forward to.

He was a decent employer, Tom conceded, understanding that the keeper had yet to be born who could conjure up instant sport when an estate had been left to neglect over the war years and everything that ran or flew taken by the soldiers to eke out their rations.

He’d had to start from scratch, yet now he had good reason to be satisfied with the young birds in his rearing field. Plump and fine-feathered, they would be turned out before so very much longer to join last year’s rearings.

He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin with pride. Before so very much longer, Windrush shoots would be the talk of the county – he would see to that – and it made him wonder if now wouldn’t be the best time to bring up the matter of an assistant. Soon, the night patrols must start. With the coming of earlier darkness the poachers would be out. Not, Tom accepted, that the one-for-the-pot man was all that much of a nuisance. That kind of poacher took one or two birds only, easily hidden beneath his coat, his need to feed his family far outweighing the risk of being caught and brought before the Magistrates.

It was the organized gangs from the towns a keeper feared; those who took birds by the score. That, Tom said, was greed and not need and the time was not far distant when he would have to talk to Mr Hillier about taking on another man.

He grinned, suddenly, remembering Daisy and the smile she had given him that morning. Her very first smile, and for him! Not wind, Alice assured him solemnly, and before so very much longer they would hear her first chuckle, she had promised.

He was a lucky man. The country was plagued with the Irish troubles, with unemployment and the workhouses full of decent men, tramping the roads begging, almost, for a job; any job. And where were the homes for heroes those fighting men had been promised, once the war was over? What wouldn’t so many of them give for a house such as his? He shivered. Someone had just trailed an icicle the length of his backbone – or was it that someone had just walked over his grave?

It was neither. It was a feeling of sudden alertness; the scent of danger primitive man must have known. It had served Tom well on those forays into No Man’s Land and he had obeyed it without question. He spun round, aiming his shotgun at the bush.

‘Come out. Come out slow …’ he hissed.

There was a rustling and a voice said, ‘All right, mister.’ Two hands appeared in a gesture of surrender, then a face; white, thin, full of fear.

‘Out here …’ Tom took a few steps backward. The man straightened himself.

‘Don’t shoot, sir?’

‘I won’t. It isn’t loaded.’ Tom lowered his gun. He didn’t need to threaten. He could take the man with one hand behind his back. Skin and bone, he was. ‘After game, were you? This is private land!’

‘Not birds, sir. Had a couple of snares down, for a rabbit …’

‘Got bairns, have you?’ Poor devil. A square meal – one like Alice cooked – would send his stomach into cramps, by the look of him.

‘One little lad. At home, with the wife.’

‘And where is home?’

‘Near Camborne – Cornwall. She’s with her mother. Had to leave her there. No work, see.’

‘So you’re tramping – looking for a job?’

‘That’s it. But who’ll employ a man with a badly foot? I was a keeper myself before the war, but who wants a lame keeper? You should know the walking that’s got to be done.’

Tom knew – especially now. He’d been wondering about another keeper, he thought wryly, and one had popped out of the bushes in front of him, though one who’d be little use to anybody!

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And what’s to do with you, then?’

‘Wounded in the war. My foot. Two toes gone. Makes it awkward, when it comes to walking.’

‘Then how come you’re damn-near starving? What about your pension? The Army gives pensions to badly wounded men.’

‘Pension? You don’t get one of them when it was your own doing – or so they said!’

‘And did you? Did you shoot yourself?’ It hadn’t been uncommon. Driven to desperation, some soldiers had put a round into their own foot; an easy way out of the Army – a ticket to civvy street.

‘Did I hell! We went over the top, one night. I tripped and my rifle went off. Did you ever know what it was like, out there in No Man’s Land?’

‘I knew,’ Tom said grimly. ‘I was a marksman.’

‘And so was I. Like I told you, I was a keeper, and I know how to shoot, mister. If I’d had a go at my own foot I’d have made a tidier job of it than that!’ He stuck out his right boot. The front of it had been hacked away to accommodate the distortion of flesh and bone. ‘So they wouldn’t give me a pension. Told me I was lucky I wasn’t being put on a charge with a firing squad at the end of it.

‘My wife goes out scrubbing. She goes without so the boy can eat. If I had a loaded gun now, it wouldn’t be my foot I’d aim it at!’

‘That’s enough!’ Tom rapped. ‘You’re alive, man! Think back to how it was, and be grateful. There’s many a one who’d be glad to be as hungry and alive as you!’

‘Aye. Then more’s the pity I wasn’t one of them,’ he said without self-pity. ‘I’d be a hero, now, with a tidy gravestone to show for it – and my Polly with a widow’s pension.’

‘Sit you down, man. You don’t have to make excuses to me. How bad is that foot? In pain, are you?’

‘Sometimes. It’s my balance, though. I have to walk on my heel. Bairns make fun of me and you don’t get any help – not a penny parish relief – when your discharge papers say you shot yourself in the foot. A coward, that makes me, and I’ll swear on my son’s life it was an accident.’

‘How old is he?’ Tom was still remembering Daisy’s smile.

‘Just gone three, though I haven’t seen him for six months. Don’t know how it is with him and Polly – no fixed address, as they say, for them to write to. But you believe me, don’t you, sir?’

‘I believe you.’ He did – and besides, what right did a deserter have to stand in judgement on any man? ‘But you’re a long way from your wife and child – how come you ended up here? You’ll not find work in these parts, either.’

‘Maybe not. But I was billeted here, in the war, for six months. All of the summer of ’fifteen. A grand time it was, and the war something that was happening to the other poor sods – not to me.

‘The Army took over Windrush Hall as a billet. Polly was in service, then, ’bout two miles away. That was when I met her. When I knew I was going to the Front we got married and she went back home, to Cornwall. Her father was badly. She helped her mother to nurse him, though he died …

‘But that time around these parts were the best months of my life. I knew this estate and the big house, too, like the back of my own hand. Can’t blame me, I suppose, for making my way back.’

‘No, though the army left a right old mess behind them when they moved out. Windrush had gone to rack and ruin and as for these woods – nothing but a wilderness and not a game bird in them. I came here about eighteen months ago; been trying to lick things into shape, ever since. Reckon we’ll have some decent sport, though, come October.’

‘Aye, sir. And you’ll not turn me over to the constable? I’ll be off your land as soon as maybe if you’ll turn a blind eye to the snares.’

‘Did you catch anything?’

‘A rabbit. It’s in the bush, yonder. I’d aimed to light a fire, tonight – cook it. That was one thing you learned in the army. You were never stuck fast to find a way to cook a rabbit.’

‘Nor a chicken,’ Tom grinned. ‘But look over there.’ He pointed to the church tower. ‘Over to the right – that clump of oaks. There’s a hut, beside them. You can kip there.’

It was a keeper’s hut, usually to be found near the rearing field but moved away, now the chicks were grown, to the edge of the estate. On small, iron wheels with a tin roof, it was snug and dry with a stove inside it and a kettle and pan. A fine place for a keeper to shelter in on cold, wet nights when a poacher might be forgiven for thinking the weather was on his side.

‘I know it – remember it from way back.’

‘Then you’ll know there’s a little iron stove in there. Find yourself some dry wood, and light a fire. You can cook your rabbit on it. There’s matches on the ledge over the door, and water in the beck, nearby.’

‘How will I get in?’ he demanded, eagerly.

‘About twenty yards from the door you’ll see some stones. The key is under the big one …’

‘I’ll find it – and I’ll not take liberties. I’ll leave it tidy.’

‘You better had! And there’s no hurry, for a couple of nights. If anyone finds you there, tell them Dwerryhouse said it’s all right.’

‘I will, and thank you, sir. God bless you, and yours.’

‘Aaar. Be off with you,’ Tom grated, embarrassed. ‘And here – catch!’ he called to the limping man, throwing his packet of sandwiches. ‘Have these. You need them more than I do. And by the way – got a name, have you?’

‘Purvis, sir. Dickon Purvis …’

Tom turned abruptly, striding angrily away. It should not have been like this – a decent man begging, his wife and bairn miles away. And when he’d see them again, only God knew. Nothing but skin and bone, poor devil. He’d never see another winter through, in his condition. What would become of his wife, then? And what about the little lad; what if it had been Tom Dwerryhouse with a badly foot and Alice and Daisy miles away and living on charity and Alice taking in sewing, like as not, to help ends meet?

‘Come on!’ he snapped at his dogs, though they had never left his heels all morning. ‘Home!’

He took a deep, steadying breath. Alice would cut him more sandwiches and besides, he needed to see her, tell her about the man. Alice would listen, understand his anger, and happen Daisy would smile for him again.

And that lot had better not start another war! They’d never get him into a uniform again, if they did; not if they begged him on bended knees and offered him a cushy billet for the duration.

Then he stopped his rantings, and thought on. They would never get him. How could you call a man to the colours who’d been killed at a place called Epernay; wiped out with eleven others on a March morning, more than two years ago?

‘Alice!’ he called, breaking into a run. He needed to touch her, hold her, pour out his bitterness. At his garden gate, he paused. The big black, shiny pram stood there, with Morgan asleep beside it, head on paws. It would be all right. Alice would know what to say to ease his conscience.

She heard the snapping of the sneck as he opened the gate and came, smiling, to stand on the doorstep.

‘Hullo, love,’ she said softly and all at once his world was sane and safe again.

‘Put the kettle on, lass, and make us a sandwich, eh?’

‘But I cut you some, this morning. Didn’t you think on to take them?’

‘I did, love, only – oh, come on inside, and I’ll tell you …’

‘Well, now.’ Julia checked that the compartment door was properly closed, then settled Drew beside the window. ‘That wasn’t as awful as you thought, now was it?’

‘I wasn’t entirely looking forward to it,’ Helen admitted, ‘but Mr Carver was very understanding, and the young one seems efficient enough, though he asked a lot of questions.’

‘Officious, more like.’ Julia had not liked Carver-the-young. His manner had been patronizing; he didn’t like doing business with women, and it showed.

‘Neither could see any difficulty. We might not even have to go to court, if everything works out as it should. And I suppose it’s only right they should want to meet Alice and have a talk with her. After all, we might be domineering in-laws, bullying her into giving up her son.’

‘Gracious, mother – they know we aren’t like that! It will all go through smoothly.’

‘I hope so. And do keep hold of Drew. He mustn’t stand on the seat.’

‘Sit down, you little horror!’ Julia ordered. ‘But you’ve got to admit he was very good at the solicitors,’ she defended. ‘We’ll have a good run on the lawn before bedtime – tire him out,’ she smiled.

‘Play cricket,’ he demanded, then turned his attention again to the window and the fields and animals slipping past it.

‘He’s a good little soul,’ Julia smiled, fondly. ‘He ought to have someone his own age to play with.’

‘A sister, you mean? But he has one, and when Alice visits they’ll have the time of their young lives.’

‘But Alice will be with us quite soon – especially now that the Carvers want to see her. Daisy will hardly be big enough to have a rough and tumble with Drew.’

‘Perhaps not just yet – but Alice will come to see us often, I hope. And when they are both old enough to understand, we shall tell them they are –’ She left the sentence in mid-air.’

‘We’ll have to be careful,’ Julia frowned. ‘But the sooner they know, the better. It would be awful if they were never told, then fell in love.’

‘Julia!’ Helen laughed. ‘That kind of thing only happens in storybooks – not in real life. And even if you and I were determined they should never know, there would be some busybody think it their duty to tell them.’

It was Helen’s turn, now, to reassure her daughter. And soon, Drew would be theirs entirely and Alice would visit often. She had loved Alice deeply; would ever be grateful for Drew – for the little boy who laughed with delight as the engine driver let go three important hoots at the approaches to Holdenby station.

‘He does so love trains. I suppose he’ll want to drive an engine, when he grows up.’

‘Most small boys do, mother. But Drew will grow up to care for Rowangarth and those who work for it – and Shillong, too. And to make a happy marriage, I hope, and have sons.’

‘He isn’t two, yet.’ Helen put out a protective arm as the train began its slowing in a series of small jerks. ‘And at nearly two, hardly anything is more important than a ride on a train. This has been a good day, hasn’t it?’ She looked for her handbag, gathered the parcels from the seat beside her. ‘And there is Will, in the yard.’

Will, thought Julia; waiting with the carriage and pair. They really ought to have a motor. It was so unlike her mother to forbid one to her. Everyone had motors, these days. Why must Julia MacMalcolm not be permitted to drive?

‘Come on, young Sutton!’ She scooped Drew into her arms. ‘Say goodbye to the train.’ And why shouldn’t she drive? Why, just because Pa had been killed in a driving accident, should motors be taboo at Rowangarth? ‘And come and say hullo to the horses.’

Their homecoming was robbed of its usual pleasure. Immediately she saw the expression on the face of the housekeeper who waited at the top of the stone steps, Julia knew that something was wrong.

‘Milady – this came, two hours ago. I took the liberty of ringing the solicitors, but they said you had left and didn’t know which train you’d be coming back on.’

Julia held out her hand for the small, yellow envelope that could still send fear tearing through her, even though the war was long over. Tight-lipped, she ripped open the telegram.

‘It’s signed Bossart. That’s the name of the farmer Aunt Sutton stays with. Mlle Sutton injured. Please come with haste. What’s happened, mother?’

‘Injured. A motor!’

‘No. She rarely drove, in France. Doesn’t like the wrong side of the road. Probably an accident horse-riding.’

‘Then the best way to find out is to go at once. I can get the overnight train to London. With luck, I could be with her by tomorrow evening.’ Helen frowned. Her fear was real, her distress obvious.

‘Mother – first have a cup of tea, then we’ll talk,’ Julia soothed. ‘Take a deep breath. It might not be as bad as it sounds. Perhaps Monsieur Bossart was being overcautious.’

‘I shall go tonight, for all that!’

‘Then I shall come with you. Do you think we could take Drew?’

‘Certainly not! You must stay here. Anne Lavinia would want you to.’

‘Then let me at least see you safely onto the boat train?’

‘Julia! I am not quite in my dotage. I’ll manage. And let us hope you are right. Monsieur Bossart might be overreacting. I can get the last train from Holdenby and still be in good time for the York sleeper to King’s Cross. When we have had our tea, I want you to ring up York; make a reservation for me. I shall manage well enough but oh, poor Anne Lavinia.’

Aunt Sutton, to most. Her husband’s sister, Helen thought sadly. Forthright, outspoken, unmarried. A woman who cared more for horses than for most human beings. Julia had always been her favourite; Julia, so like her aunt in many ways.

Poor, poor Aunt. Julia stirred her tea thoughtfully. She had visited her doctor when in London, but this appeared to be an accident, not an illness. She wished there was some way she could be with her.

‘Mother – why don’t I go to France, instead? You could take care of Drew, then.’

‘No. I shall go.’ Her voice was firm. ‘John would wish it to be me who is with her – if it is serious, that is. And like you say, I think I shall find her not as ill as Monsieur implies. She’ll be all right. She’s a very strong-minded lady. Whatever it is, she’ll pull through!’

‘If that’s what you want. I’ll phone Reservations, then I’ll ring Pendenys. They ought to be told, and mother – why doesn’t Uncle Edward go with you? After all, he’s her brother and more nearly related than you.’

‘I agree. So stupid to forget such a thing. By all means he must come. But don’t suggest it when you ring, Julia. If he feels he should be with me, he’ll say so at once. Be tactful.

‘And now I must ask Miss Clitherow to give me a hand with my case. Don’t want to pack too much – travel as light as possible …’

God – let everything be all right? Julia lifted her eyes to the ceiling. She’s such an old love … Picking up the phone, she asked the operator for York station.

6

‘It’s Mr Edward, milady,’ Mary announced. ‘With the motor.’

‘At last!’ Already, Helen was gathering up her cape and travelling bag, eager to be away. ‘Now be sure to take good care of Drew, and yourself …’

‘I’ll be sure,’ Julia soothed, following her mother to the door at which Edward Sutton waited. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. Just have a safe journey and give my best love to Aunt Sutton, when you get there.’

She was relieved her uncle was going to France – had offered to go at once, without being asked. Now she would worry less, even though her mother was capable of making the journey alone – a considerable achievement, come to think of it, when not so very long ago a lady wouldn’t even have visited the shops alone.

‘My dear!’ Raising his hat, Edward Sutton kissed his sister-in-law’s cheek. ‘Tell me – are we going to arrive to a ticking-off, when we get there, for panicking? Shall we find it’s nothing more than a broken arm?’

‘No, uncle,’ Julia said softly, firmly. ‘I think Monsieur sent the telegram without aunt knowing. Had her injuries been slight she wouldn’t have allowed it, be sure of that. You know what a tough lady she is!’

‘Then the sooner we are there, the better!’

‘Oh!’ Helen’s eyes lit, surprised, on the young man in the back of the car. ‘Is Elliot coming, too?’

‘Elliot is summoned to London,’ Edward smiled wryly, ‘though for the life of me I don’t know why. Doubtless Clemmy has her reasons.’

‘Doubtless.’ Helen’s relief showed in her expression, her voice. ‘And I’m so grateful you’ll be with me, Edward. The journey there I could have coped with; what I might find when I get there is altogether different. Have you told Clemmy?’

‘I have. Sadly, she is not able to go with us. A previous engagement, I believe, though she would come at once should Anne Lavinia’s condition warrant it.’

‘Of course,’ Julia murmured. And please God Aunt Sutton was sitting up and taking nourishment, when they arrived. ‘Let me take your bag, mother, and get you settled in the motor. You’ll be in York in good time for the sleeper. Good evening, Elliot,’ she murmured, opening the door. ‘I thought – just for a moment – that you too were going to France.’

‘Sadly, Julia, I am needed at Cheyne Walk and one’s own Mama –’ he shrugged, his cousin’s vinegar-tipped words washing over him.

‘One’s own Mama must be obeyed,’ Julia nodded, eyes mocking. ‘I do hope you find Aunt Clemmy in good spirits,’ she added obliquely, stepping aside as the chauffeur closed the door. ‘Take care, dearest,’ she smiled. ‘And try not to worry too much?’

She stood until the car was lost round the sweeping bend of the drive then turned sadly, shivering in spite of the warmth of the evening, wishing she were going with them.

Dearest Aunt Sutton, get well soon. I love you very, very much, you grumpy old love …

Walking quickly up the steps she bolted the door behind her, taking the stairs two at a time, eager to be with Drew, draw comfort from the love she felt for him. Drew, the natural son of Elliot who had lolled, bored, in the softly-cushioned car. Could he know that the child he had fathered so brutally lay asleep upstairs – a fine, Sutton-fair boy who would one day be master of Rowangarth?

Yet if Elliot knew – or even suspected – why had he kept a still tongue? Was he ashamed of what he had done, that early spring evening in France, or would he, one day in a future so distant that they would have all completely forgotten about it, claim Drew as his own?

She lifted her chin, setting her mouth tightly. He would not, could not claim Drew. Drew belonged to Rowangarth and there was nothing Elliot Sutton could do about it!

Gently, she touched the sleep-flushed cheek. Drew was hers, the child she and Andrew had never made together, and she would go to any lengths to keep him.

‘Goodnight, little one,’ she whispered – and why, oh why, should even the sight of her cousin evoke such revulsion inside her, make her wish, passionately, that he too had been killed. ‘Any lengths at all, Drew, I promise you …’

Tom gave his best boots a final rub, then clasped on his leggings. To be summoned to Windrush at all was unusual; to be sent for in such haste at nine o’clock at night made him wonder what the blazes Mr Hillier was about.

But doubtless it was about a new gun his employer was eager to buy or some such matter that could well have waited until morning, truth known.

‘Won’t be long, love,’ he smiled, kissing Alice’s cheek. ‘I’ll be back to rock Daisy off, once you’ve fed her …’

‘Come on in, Dwerryhouse and sit you down!’ Ralph Hillier called as the footman closed the door behind him.

‘Sir?’ Tom frowned, unused to being invited to sit in his employer’s presence.

‘Sit down, man,’ he ordered irritably. ‘I’ll not keep you. Just wanted a word about things in general – and maybe get to know what’s going on in the hut at Six Oaks. I saw a light in it. Didn’t go to investigate – that’s your job. Was it you, in there? Didn’t know you’d started night patrols, yet.’

‘With respect, sir, if I’d been on the lookout for poachers, I’d not have lit the lamp in the hut,’ Tom laughed. ‘Don’t go letting them know I’m around!’

‘So you weren’t out after poachers?’

‘No, Mr Hillier, though if there were any about, I hope they saw that light – worry ’em a bit! Fact is, there’s a roadster in the hut – a decent man to my way of thinking,’ he hastened. ‘Down on his luck and tramping in search of work – if tramp you can call it, with one foot injured bad.’

‘War wounded, was he?’ Ralph Hillier had not fought in the war; his lame leg had seen to that.

‘Aye, though without a pension to help keep him. Seems the brasshats decided he’d done it deliberate and didn’t deserve one.’

‘And had he?’

‘He said not, and I believed him. The man was once a keeper. If he’d wanted to work his ticket home, he’d have done a neater job on his foot, to my way of thinking.’

‘So you said he could sleep in the hut?’

‘Only for a couple of nights – cook the rabbit he’d taken. Thin as a rake – nothing of him – and a wife and bairn back home in Cornwall. I hope I did right.’

‘You did, though you might have thought to mention it, first. Skin and bone, you said?’ Ralph Hillier had a guilty conscience about the war. Not only had he not fought in it, he had made a lot of money from it, buying and selling army supplies. ‘Hungry, was he?’

‘Half starved, from the looks of him. I gave him my sandwiches to tide him over till he got the rabbit in the pot.’

‘A job,’ Ralph Hillier frowned, rising impatiently, standing back to the fire. ‘There’s no one going to employ a man that’s lame, now is there?’

‘There isn’t, sir – unless it’s a gentleman with a bit of compassion in him, like.’

‘Now what kind of job could I give him, Dwerryhouse? Cleaning shoes? Running errands? Dammit – that wasn’t the right thing to say, was it?’

‘Yon’ Purvis won’t run anywhere again.’

‘Purvis? You got his name, then?’

‘I did. He was on my beat – it’s my business to get it.’

‘It is. And you’d say he was all right?’

‘I don’t know about him being all right, sir, but I believed what he told me about his wife and bairn and about the army cheating him out of a pension. But I’ll move him on in the morning, if that’s what you want.’

‘I don’t want it, and you know it!’ Ralph Hillier snapped. ‘If the man is genuine then it’s my duty to do something for him. If I gave him a couple of pounds to help him on his way, d’you think he’d spend it in the nearest ale house?’

‘That I can’t say, though if you’ve got a pair of boots you’ve no need of, I think they’d serve him better. The ones he’s wearing aren’t a lot of use.’

‘I see.’ He gazed long into the fire before he said, ‘And if you were me, Dwerryhouse, what would you want to do for him?’

‘I’d want to set him and his family up in Willow End Cottage and give him a job as dog boy.’

There now, he’d said it. He looked down at the toes of his boots.

‘You would, eh? But then, you’re a crafty devil, aren’t you, Dwerryhouse. In need of another keeper, aren’t we? Is that what you’re getting at?’

‘No, sir. If I’m to speak truthfully, I can manage this estate nicely on my own – well, near as dammit. I could do with a hand, though – especially at rearing time. I’m not one for buying fancy feed for chicks; like to make my own. Someone to see to the dogs and mix the feed – help generally with the rearing – would suit me nicely. And him once being a keeper, he could school your dogs – keep ’em in form.’

‘Ha! And how’s that little girl of yours, eh?’

‘She’s grand, thank you kindly. Smiled, this morning, for the first time.’

‘I see. And is that usual?’

‘Alice says it is. Next thing, she’ll be chuckling, I’m told,’ Tom grinned, eager to talk about Daisy yet sad his suggestion had fallen on barren ground. ‘I was doing a blackbird for her – you know, that tock-tocking they give out when they’ve been alarmed. It must have tickled her fancy.’

‘A blackbird?’ Tock-tocking, whatever that was? ‘Willow End Cottage, did you say? But it’s in a bad state, or so I’m told.’

‘Don’t you believe it, Mr Hillier. Nothing that a good scrub out and a lick of paint won’t put right – and fires lit, regular, so it won’t go damp.’

‘Hmm.’ Again the gazing into the fire. ‘All right, then. I’ll hold you responsible for his good behaviour since he’ll come without references. He can have Willow End. Ten shillings a week as dog boy, all the fallen wood he can gather, and the usual rabbits. One month’s trial, after which he can send for his family. Is that all right?’

‘I’d say, sir, it’s a fine and kindly gesture and he’ll thank you for it. And Alice’ll be glad, having another woman living within earshot, an’ all – especially when I’m out nights watching the woods.’

‘Right, then. You’d better tell him in the morning. And don’t forget to let them know in the estate office!’ Abruptly, he picked up his newspaper, the interview over. ‘And not a penny more’n half a sovereign, remember!’

‘Right you are, sir. I’ll see myself out – and I reckon Purvis will do all right for Windrush.’

A bit of a come-down, Tom pondered, from keeper to dog boy, but ten shillings a week, a roof over his head and firewood and rabbits was more than a lot of men had, these days. And with luck there’d be a pair of boots thrown in, an’ all!

Not a bad bloke, Mr Hillier – for an employer, that was. A bit abrupt in his speaking, but he’d pulled himself up from nothing, talk had it, and didn’t have the easy way with words that real gentry were born with, Tom allowed.

He wished his father were alive, could tell him what had happened between him and Ralph Hillier. ‘The job of keeper is yours, Dwerryhouse,’ Mr Hillier had said. ‘I owe your father a favour from a long way back, though you might not know it. If your references are all right, you can start at once.’

That had been two years ago, though what the favour, nor when, Tom had never discovered. Sufficient that a deserter should get a job so easily, he’d thought gratefully and left it at that.

He made quickly for home, and wondering what odds to offer that tomorrow didn’t find Mr Hillier gazing into Daisy’s pram, doing his best to make a sound like a blackbird alarmed, he grinned.

A secret man, his employer, and not given to outward emotions, yet a man with a kind heart beneath his waistcoat, and a man who remembered favours owed …

At King’s Cross station, Elliot Sutton wished his aunt and father goodbye, then took a taxi to Cheyne Walk.

‘I hope you’ll find Aunt Sutton much improved.’ He raised his hat, smiling charmingly at his aunt.

‘I’ll keep in touch with your mother,’ Edward said briefly as his son drove away.

‘Perhaps you should have looked in on Clemmy,’ Helen frowned. ‘Put her in the picture …’

‘At seven in the morning?’ Edward demanded. ‘No, I’ll leave it to Elliot to tell her, though he knows no more than I. And what’s going on there and why Clemmy needs Elliot so urgently is beyond me. She has her reasons, I suppose, and I shall be told when the time is right.

‘Now let’s get ourselves onto the Dover train. We should have a smooth crossing. I’ll send a telegram to Monsieur Bossart from Calais – let him know we’re on our way.’

‘You are a good man, Edward. I really shall be glad of your company and the sooner I see for myself that Anne Lavinia is all right, the better.’

‘But you know I’m fond of her – she’s my sister, after all. It’s my duty to go to her, apart from the fact that I want to. So stop fretting, Helen. We should be there by early evening and till then, leave all the worrying to me.’

‘I will indeed.’ He was so like John; so good, so considerate. He didn’t deserve Clemmy nor Elliot; a pity he’d had to follow the only road open to most second sons and marry where money lay. Clementina, the only child of a wealthy ironmaster, had proved to be his salvation, if salvation it could be called, and now Clemmy was richer than ever, her foundries having profited from the war. Sad that Edward could not have been as happy as she and John; a pity his firstborn had been so indulged by his mother.

‘What are you worrying about now?’ Edward cut in to her thoughts. ‘You were frowning.’

‘Oh, just – just hoping Clemmy won’t worry too much,’ she hastened, blushing.

‘Clemmy will not worry at all. My wife is receiving a countess this morning and cannot possibly spare the time to worry about anything else. That Elliot’s presence is needed there makes me think she has started her matchmaking again. She wants him married, you know.’

‘Just like every mother,’ Helen defended loyally. ‘Now things seem to be getting back to normal after the war, I think Clemmy has every right to expect grandchildren.’

‘She has one in America already, don’t forget.’

‘I mean an heir, for Pendenys. We have Drew – it’s only natural Clemmy should want to see things settled, too. Let’s hope Elliot soon finds himself a wife.’

‘You are too charitable, Helen. All I can hope is that the young lady, whoever she might be, comes with plenty of backbone. She’ll need it, married to my son,’ he murmured as a taxi drew up beside them. ‘But let’s see to Anne Lavinia first and leave Elliot’s future in Clemmy’s most capable hands.’

If anyone could get the better of his eldest son, it was his wife. Clemmy had the money; she it was who called the tune. And sooner or later, Elliot would dance to it.

‘So, you’ve got yourself here at last! What kept you?’

‘Mama!’ Elliot bent to kiss his mother but she jerked her head away. ‘I didn’t think to – to –’

‘To find me up so early? I’m up because there’s a lot to do and only three servants to do it! The countess and Lady Anna are calling this morning, so shape yourself! I want you bathed and shaved and your linen changed as soon as maybe! Breakfast is in five minutes; the hairdresser is calling at nine. And a word to the wise, Elliot! The girl next door has taken my fancy, so behave yourself!’

‘Mother, dear – you aren’t playing Cupid again? You know, I really am capable of –’

‘You are capable of nothing, boy! I’ve warned you and warned you. I want you settled down. I want grandchildren!’

‘But you have one already, in Kentucky.’ He shifted uneasily, an eye on the staircase, and escape. His mother was in one of her or-else moods. Do as I say, or else! His allowance, that’s what it would be. She had only stopped it once, but what an uncomfortable month it had been.

‘The one in America doesn’t count. I want a grandson from you, Elliot, and born in wedlock, an’ all. Your Aunt Helen has one. Giles did his duty. Rowangarth has an heir.’

‘Ah, yes – the sewing-maid …’

‘An heir, Elliot, no matter by who! That grandchild of Helen’s kept the title from Pendenys. Your father would have had it, but for him! Helen always lands on her feet!’

‘As did the sewing-maid – or was it on her back?’

‘That will do!’ Clementina’s cheeks blazed bright red. ‘I’m not going to argue the toss with you. You’ve sown your wild oats from Leeds to Paris and back! Now either you find yourself a wife, or else!’

Or else no allowance; bills unpaid and no money for a wager, either! And this morning, he was forced to admit, his mother looked as if she meant it.

‘Mother, dear – can we not go in to breakfast?’ Did they have to talk about it in the hall in full hearing of below stairs, who would be shivering with delight at every syllable of it? ‘Can’t we have our chat over a cup of coffee? I understand perfectly your wish to see me married.’ And I know how damn-awful it is to be without money and that you know that I know it, too.

He opened the dining-room door, jabbing the bell-push as he walked past it, pulling out his mother’s chair.

‘Married? You do? And you are willing to be nice to Lady Anna and the countess – just to please me? It’s all I ask and you know you can charm the birds from the trees when you set your mind to it.’

‘I will be nice to them.’ The worst was over. She had had her say; now she would change to the surely-you-can-do-this-one-little-thing-for-me approach which was better than the dramatic ‘… and-in-my-own-house-too!’ – followed by a fit of sobbing vapours. ‘I promise you I’ll be especially nice to your countess.’

‘And to Lady Anna?’

‘Her too, mother. And now can we eat like civilized people? Breakfast on the sleeper was untouchable. Oh, and father says he’ll keep in touch about Aunt Sutton and that you are not to worry.’

‘Ha! Can’t see why he should go tearing off to France at the drop of a hat! And why does Helen have to be poking her nose in? She’s no more related to your aunt than I am! We are both sisters-in-law, so why was that telegram sent to her in the first place?’

‘Why indeed?’ Elliot comforted, glad they were on a different tack. ‘But you can’t be expected to drop everything, mother. You have a full social calendar …’

‘Yes, I have.’ She held out her coffee cup to be filled. ‘And it’s probably nothing worse than a cut finger! They are soft, those Suttons – not like my side; not like your Grandfather Elliot and the Pendennises …’

She stopped, horrified. This morning, when she was at home to a countess, the last person she must think about was her Cornish ancestress Mary Anne Pendennis!

She gazed across the table at her son; at the only Sutton who was Pendennis dark. All the rest were fair and grey-eyed; all but Elliot whom she loved all the more because of it.

‘You are a great comfort to me,’ she whispered. ‘Only settle down with a respectable girl and you shall have anything you could ever want. That is my promise to you, so think on, Elliot …’

7

The Countess Petrovska arrived punctually, accompanied by her daughter and the servant in black. The servant pressed the bell-push, curtseyed deeply, then returned to the house next door, hands demurely clasped, eyes on her boots.

Clementina Sutton’s door was opened at once by the footman who had waited there for five minutes, flexing his white-gloved hands. Fuss, fuss, fuss. You’d have thought the Queen and Princess Mary were visiting, not some women the Ruskies had flung out!

The footman bowed; Clementina appeared in the sitting-room doorway.

‘My dear countess.’ She offered a hand, fingers limp. ‘And Lady Anna.’

Anna Petrovska smiled prettily, then bobbed the smallest of curtseys in deference to an elder.

‘Countess – may I present Elliot, my son?’

Elliot bowed low over the offered hand, raised it almost to his lips, his eyes all the time on those of the countess. Then he turned his gaze to Anna, nodding, smiling, claiming her attention for a fleeting, intimate second.

He did it so beautifully, Clementina thought with pride. Money, that’s what! Money paid for education and grand tours. It didn’t buy breeding, but most other things came within its giving. So vast a sum spent on Elliot’s upbringing had returned a good dividend. If only he had been born fair like all the other Suttons he would be perfect, she sighed.

‘Please?’ she gestured with a hand. ‘I have rung for tea and coffee. Do sit down.’

Elliot hovered attentively, moving side tables a fraction nearer, offering a footstool, his eyes appraising Anna.

She was tall and slender. Her brown hair was thick and simply dressed. Remove the combs either side of her face and it would cascade almost to her waist.

Elliot Sutton liked long hair; deplored the newest short cuts women were taking to. Tresses and breasts were fast disappearing and both excited him.

Anna Petrovska had high, rounded breasts he could cup in each hand. Her eyes were demurely downcast, her lashes thick and long on her cheek.

She was undoubtedly a virgin. He liked taking virgins but this one he would first have to marry.

Now the servant in black – the one he had watched this morning from his bedroom window – was altogether another thing. Virginal, too, but servants were available. He had observed her closely, pegging sheets to dry; had never before seen so menial a task so gracefully performed. The servant’s breasts were rounded and high, too; her waist was handspan small and her ankles, when glimpsed, had excited him.

He wondered if she spoke any English, but a kiss was a kiss in any language. Mind, he had promised his best behaviour, and there was the rub. If he was to impress the countess as his mother had so firmly demanded, perhaps it were best to place the servant out of bounds for the time being.

‘My mother tells me,’ he smiled at Anna, ‘that you speak the most beautiful English almost all the time.’

‘Except two days ago, when Igor came home,’ she dimpled. ‘Then we forget and we laugh and cry in Russian. Did you know, Mr Sutton, that it is possible even to weep, in Russian?’

‘Your son is home, countess?’ Clementina knew it already, but she wanted the entire story.

‘He is, thanks be. And the boy did well.’ Her eyes misted briefly, then she lifted her chin. ‘Ah, you tell them, Anna. It still pains me to speak of it!’

‘Igor was hurt?’

‘No. All the time he was in Russia he was in danger, but never hurt,’ Anna spoke slowly, softly. ‘My mother is distressed about our houses – our homes. Igor was much put out, you see, to find so many people living in the Petersburg house. Eighteen –’

‘All those people? They just walked in without a by-your-leave; took your house?’ Clementina was genuinely shocked.

‘They did. But not people – families! Mama was desolate when Igor told her. Our rooms shared out, two to a family. Igor had great difficulty getting in there – finding what we had left hidden …’

‘Such a beautiful house.’ The countess had recovered her composure. ‘On the Embankment near the Admiralty – close to St Isaac’s Cathedral, you know,’ she confided as if her new-found acquaintance knew St Petersburg as intimately as she.

‘Near the river?’ Clementina faltered, grasping at the word embankment.

‘Ah, yes. The Neva …’ Briefly Anna’s eyes showed sadness. ‘Such a river. It freezes over in winter, then in the spring the ice begins to break. Such a noise it makes – to let us know winter has gone.’

‘You will return, one day,’ Clementina comforted, ‘to take back what is rightfully yours.’

She made a mental picture of Pendenys Place, that monument to her late father’s riches; saw it packed to overflowing with people from the mean streets of Leeds and her butler, her pompous, plodding butler, pouring her best wines down his greedy throat.

‘Tell me, dear lady, about your country house? Surely not there, too …?’

She handed a cup to Elliot who placed it on the table at the countess’s side.

‘Peasants there, too. Families farming our estate as if it were their own. Igor had to work there, merely to find something we had hidden in a barn …

‘There is much still there – I pray it will never be found – but my son returned with the important things – the title deeds to both properties, and our land. We had taken them from our vaults as a precaution and put them in safer places. One day, perhaps, Igor will be able to go back there and claim what is ours – his.’

‘I would like to meet Igor. He did well. You must be very proud of him.’

‘You shall, and I am, madam. He was also able to find the English sovereigns – gold, you know – and the American silver dollars. They were more than sufficient to buy him out of trouble and pay for his journey back to England. But he had to dress like a peasant and work and act like a peasant to do it.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Genuine dismay showed on Clementina’s face. ‘But so very brave,’ she gushed.

‘So brave. He has proved himself a man, and worthy to inherit his father’s title – such as it is worth, now.’

‘Igor,’ whispered Anna, ‘was also able to obtain the keys to safe deposits we have here in England. My father had left them with a trusted servant. And most important –’

‘The Petrovsky diamonds,’ the countess exulted. ‘Without those we should have been lost, but now we shall not starve. And Anna’s marriage dowry is secure.’

‘So Lady Anna may now be – courted …?’ Clementina breathed.

‘She is young; not yet nineteen. I would like to see her betrothed, though, by the time she is twenty. There is time,’ she said comfortably, ‘and we cannot yet be sure of which of our own young men have escaped the revolution. Many are scattered in Europe, now. But we can wait. Petrovskys do not put up their womenfolk as the English aristocracy does. Had we remained in St Petersburg, of course, Anna’s marriage would already be a fait accompli. As it is –’ she shrugged, expressively. ‘– we must wait a little …’

‘I see.’ Clementina was clearly disappointed. Lady Anna was not going to fall like a ripe plum into her eager hands. ‘She will marry a fellow countryman, perhaps?’

‘Not of necessity. So many of our young men died at the Eastern Front and later, fighting the Bolsheviks. Once, only a Russian husband would have been considered, and from Petersburg, too. But now –’ Again the eloquent lifting of her shoulders.

‘Oh, I do so understand.’ In spite of the setback to her plans, Clementina put on a brave face. ‘It is a parent’s privilege to want only the best for their children. I have two sons yet unmarried, but like you, there is no hurry.’

He had, Elliot thought, as his eyes smiled secretly into Anna Petrovska’s, to give full credit to his mother. Not by the flickering of an eyelid had she betrayed the frustration of her hopes. And since the girl seemed not to be in the marriage market, then the way was open, surely, for a liaison with the servant in black?

He stood at the door when they left, smiling with something akin to relief, bowing low, behaving himself to the very end.

‘And that,’ said his mother as the front door closed, ‘was a wasted morning. I had great hopes of the girl next door – she is attractive, you must admit, Elliot.’

‘Extremely attractive – but only for a fellow aristocrat, it would seem.’

‘Oh, yes! That Igor found the loot they’d hidden. Keys to safe deposits – they probably knew that uprising was coming for years – got their money and jewels out before the war started, I shouldn’t wonder. When the uprising came it was already safe. It’s called hedging their bets and now they’ve got their hands on the family jewels, too, they’re going to be a mite pernickety!

‘Well, you’re going to have to try just that little bit harder, Elliot, because I’ve set my heart on Anna Petrovska – or someone like her!’

‘Did you have to say all those things, Mama?’ Anna tearfully demanded when they were safely out of earshot. ‘You know my dowry will not get me a Russian aristocrat and I wish you hadn’t said I am not yet wanting a husband. Soon I shall be nineteen, then twenty, and too old! And I did so like Mr Elliot Sutton!’

‘Then that is good, because Mrs Clementina is married into an old family and has a great deal of money – that, at least, I have discovered. And always, rich people in England want a title or two in the family. They are name-droppers, the English nouveaux riches, and the lady next door runs true to form. Indeed, she is too eager, too obvious. Does her son please you, Aleksandrina Petrovska?’

‘I find him pleasant – and handsome.’ Anna blushed deeply.

‘Then you shall have him, daughter. Your mother will see to it that he doesn’t escape. Only we must not appear too interested – give me time to consider what else is on the market.’

‘But I am not on the market. I am drawn to Mr Sutton. He has such beautiful dark eyes.’

‘He has the eyes of a gypsy, though what he looks like doesn’t matter. What you must consider, child, is his inheritance, and when I have established what I believe to be true, then you may rely upon me to do what is best for you – as your dear papa would have wished, God rest him.’

In that moment, though she could not know it, Clementina Sutton’s hopes for her son became fact, for Anna Petrovska had fallen deeply in love.

And that, Catchpole thought sadly as he firmed down the last of the six young rowan trees he had just planted, was his final job for her ladyship. Now, with the rowan trees safe in the earth, he could hand Rowangarth’s lawns, flowerbeds, rearing houses and forcing frames to his son, a situation which pleased him enormously. For one thing, he would be able to keep a watching eye on his offspring, warning him of the likes and dislikes of trees and shrubs grown with loving care over the years, and for another, Rowangarth’s walled garden, the most peaceful place on the face of God’s earth to Percy Catchpole’s way of thinking, would still be his to wander in when the mood was on him.

‘There you are then, son. Alus – alus – make sure of the continuity. Rowan trees have grown here since that old house over yonder was built, and while they thrive, the Sutton line won’t die out …’

Suttons had lived at Rowangarth since James Stuart succeeded to the Tudor throne and rowan trees planted at each aspect of the house had ensured its freedom from all things evil and especially from witches. Once, in every generation, new rowans were planted as an insurance.

‘It very nearly did, though – die out, I mean.’ That little lad had saved it in the nick of time. ‘Both sons lost to the war – even Miss Julia’s husband.’

They still called her Miss Julia, but then, she had been married for so short a time. Three years she had been a wife and her man in France, except for a few days together. So few days, you could count them on the fingers of two hands, Cook once told him.

‘Nearly,’ Catchpole nodded. ‘There are things, though, that must survive.’ Like the creamy flowers in the steamy orchid house; milady’s orchids they were called. Once, no one could wear them, save herself. She had carried them in her wedding bouquet and Sir John had said thereafter that no one else but she should have them. ‘There’s yon’ special orchids – her ladyship’s own. But you know all about them, lad. Alus watch them and let me know if those plants ever show signs of distress …’

‘I will, dad.’ Young Catchpole had served his time at Pendenys Place and been glad to see the back of it, truth known. The Pendenys Suttons weren’t real gentry – apart from Mr Edward who’d been born at Rowangarth. That Mrs Clementina paid starvation wages, now, on account of there being so few jobs and too many wanting them, was a known fact. That woman would be an ironmaster’s daughter till the day she died. ‘You can leave it all to me – though be sure there’ll be a lot I shall ask you.’

‘Aar.’ Mollified, he made for the kitchen garden and the seat set against the south-facing wall where he had smoked many a contented pipe. ‘Just one last look around, then it’s yours, lad. You’m working for decent folk, now, and never you forget it.’

Mary Strong looked at her wristwatch, tutting that Will Stubbs was late again. She had been able to buy that watch and many more things besides, from the money she had saved in the war. Good money she had earned in the munitions factory in Leeds. Fifty shillings a week – sometimes more – though every penny of it deserved on account of the peculiar yellow colour they’d all gone, because of the stuff they’d filled the shell cases with. But she was a canary no longer, and back at Rowangarth, taking up her position as parlourmaid again as if that war had never been, though heaven only knew it had!

Gone, now, were Rowangarth’s great days; the luncheon parties and dinners and shooting weekends in the autumn and winter. Just her ladyship left and Miss Julia and that little lad Drew – Sir Andrew – to care for. Tilda, once a kitchenmaid and promoted to housemaid, and Cook and herself; that was all the house staff that was needed, now. And Miss Clitherow, of course; straight-backed as ever, ruling her diminished empire as if Sir John were about to roar up the drive in his latest motor, and Master Robert and Master Giles roaming the fields with young Nathan, from Pendenys. And Miss Julia a tomboy from the minute she’d learned to walk, Cook said.

Mary sniffed and dabbed an escaping tear. Things would never be the same; the war had seen to that – taken all the straight and decent young men and sent back men old before their time and unwilling ever again to speak of France. And they had been the lucky ones …

‘There you are,’ she snapped as her young man appeared from behind the stable block, face red with running. ‘I swear you do it on purpose, Will Stubbs! One night you’ll come here to find me gone!’

‘Sorry, lass. Young lad from the GPO got himself lost round the back of the house – a telegram for Miss Julia. Had to sort him out.’ Telegrams were always delivered to the front door, parcels to the back.

‘A telegram?’ Mary forgot her pique. ‘From France, was it?’

‘Now how would I know? I didn’t ask and if I had, he wouldn’t have told me. So say you’re sorry for being narky and give us a kiss, like a good lass.’

Julia MacMalcolm had learned to dread the small, yellow envelopes since the day, almost, she had fallen in love. They had rarely brought happiness; rather disappointments and death in their terse, cruel words. That day in France they had been laughing with disbelief and weeping tears of pure joy; even dear, straight-laced Sister Carbolic had joined in their unbelieving happiness. The war was over! No more broken young bodies, blinding, killing. Their harsh hospital ward had shone with a million sunbeams, that November day. Over! Soon, she and Andrew would be together and nothing and no one would part them again.

Then the telegram came in its small, yellow envelope. Andrew dead, six days before the Armistice. She didn’t just dread telegrams. She hated them.

‘Probably good news, from France,’ Miss Clitherow had smiled, though her eyes were anxious.

‘Of course.’ It would have been kinder, could her mother have phoned. One day, people said, it would be as easy to telephone from France as it was to ring up the grocer – but until then …

She slit open the envelope. She should have known, she supposed. And hadn’t she expected it?

Aunt Sutton passed peacefully away. Returning immediately. It was signed Sutton.

‘No!’ Julia handed over the telegram. ‘Read it …’

‘I’m sorry. So very sorry. What can I do – say – to help?’

‘Nothing, Miss Clitherow.’ From which Sutton had the telegram come? Which – or both? – was returning immediately, and when? What was she to do?

‘What will happen, Miss Clitherow? Surely they’ll bring her home to Rowangarth?’ Tears spilled from her eyes and she shook her head in bewilderment. ‘And did they get there in time, I wonder.’

‘The telegram was sent a little after noon; see – the time on it …’

‘Then they would be there, with her?’

‘Be sure they would, Miss Julia. Now let me ring for tea for you and then, perhaps, it might be wise to telephone Pendenys.’

‘No. Uncle Edward is in France, remember, and Aunt Clemmy and Elliot are in London. We’ll have to wait – stay by the phone; they’ll ring, once they get to Dover. And no tea, thanks.’ She strode to the dining room, pouring a measure of brandy, drinking it at a gulp, pulling in her breath as it hit her throat.

Rowangarth was plagued. First Pa, then the war and now Aunt Sutton – accidentally, and before her time.

She slammed down the glass, running, stumbling up the stairs to the little room where Drew lay asleep. Drew was all right. She drew in a shuddering breath. What was there to do, now, but wait? Andrew, I need you so …

She closed the door quietly, trying to ignore the ringing of the doorbell. Let Tilda cope with it. She wanted no more bad news, no intrusions into her sudden grief. She wanted to weep, to cry out her sorrow – but in whose arms?

She walked slowly, reluctantly, down the stairs, then ran into the welcoming, waiting arms she had so longed for.

‘Nathan! How I need you!’ Her cousin, thinner than ever, his skin bronzed by the African sun.

‘Tears, Julia? What is it, old love?’

‘Oh, my dear! You just home and to such sadness.’ She hugged the young priest to her, giddy with relief. ‘But you are always around, somehow, when I need you. Come inside, won’t you?’ She pushed the crumpled telegram into his hands, then placed a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry. Brandy. I needed it …’

‘Always around? But I came because when I got home they told me Pa was in France and Elliot and mother in London. Thought I’d come here, and find out what’s going on.’

‘Read it, Nathan.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He reached out, gathering her to him again. ‘I know how deeply you cared for Aunt. Is that why Pa is in France?’

‘Yes, and mother, too. Injured, the telegram said. They went at once.’

‘All right, love. Let it come.’ He had taken it calmly, but a priest must soon learn to cope with grief. ‘Then tell me, uh?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. Monsieur Bossart sent the telegram; Mother and Uncle Edward would get there late last night. I was waiting – for good news.’

‘You’re cold, shaking. Come and sit down. I’ll put a match to the fire.’

‘Don’t go, Nathan? Stay with me? I can’t cope with this. Stay at Rowangarth, tonight?’

‘Of course I will. Not a lot of use being at home, come to think of it; no one there. I’ll just nip back to Pendenys and pick up a few odds and ends. Won’t be long. We’ll have a pot of tea when I get back. Chin up, Julia?’

Gently he kissed her forehead. Always there when she needed him? And he always would be, just as he would always love her, though please God she would never know.

‘Only be a few minutes,’ he smiled. ‘And then I hope to meet my godson. He’s well?’

‘Drew’s fine – wonderful – walking and talking. But hurry back, Nathan – please?’

8

Exactly on time the train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh pulled into York station and Julia wished she could have brought Drew to see the thundering green monster that hauled it. But her mother was returning from France and it was not a day for watching trains.

‘Dearest!’ Julia saw her at once; saw sorrow in her face, the sorrow they all felt.

‘Oh, my dear! Awful. So awful.’

‘Hush, now.’ Julia took her hand, holding it tightly. ‘The Holdenby train is already in. Let’s get ourselves settled.’

With luck they would find an empty compartment and her mother could pour out the heartbreak she had carried with her from the bedside of a dying woman.

‘I spent last night in London,’ Helen offered when they were seated on the train that would take them to the tiny, one-line station. ‘I wanted to get back, but –’ It had been her instinct to make like a small, bewildered animal for the safeness that was Rowangarth, but there had been things to do. ‘I went to see Anne Lavinia’s solicitors, you see – and her doctor. Only when I told him she had died, would he tell me.’

‘I know Aunt had seen him last time she was in London, but she made nothing of it.’

‘Well, it wasn’t nothing. She had a serious heart condition; she shouldn’t have been riding that great strong horse. Probably that was why she took a tumble. She didn’t regain consciousness – died not long after we got there.’

‘She went the way she’d have wanted to.’ Julia’s mouth was right with hurt. ‘Will it be in France?’ She couldn’t say the word; not burial.

‘No. We want to bring her home. She was born at Rowangarth and your Uncle Edward and I want her in the Sutton plot. She’ll be near your Pa. When all the French formalities have been seen to, Edward will come home with – with her.’

‘When?’ The train began to move. Julia looked out to see the Minster towers, blinking her eyes against tears.

‘A week today, I think it will be. I’ll have to see the vicar. Sad that it couldn’t be Luke to do it.’

Luke Parkin had a kindly way at burials; gentle-voiced, so those who stood at Holdenby gravesides drew comfort from his compassion. Poor Luke.

‘Mother – I don’t want that vicar!’ Not the locum; Luke Parkin’s stand-in, Julia called him derisively. ‘Nathan is home – why can’t he read the service? There’s nothing in canon law, surely, that says he can’t?’

‘Oh, but I’d like that. Your aunt would have, too. I phoned Cheyne Walk, by the way. Clemmy and Elliot will come back to Pendenys, of course, when I can give them a date.’

‘Of course.’ Julia didn’t want Elliot at the funeral; not standing there, imitating sorrow. And why should he be alive and Andrew dead? ‘Try not to be upset, mother. You know how Aunt Sutton loved horses …’

‘Yes, I do. Her solicitor holds her Will, by the way. He wants to see you, Julia.’

‘Yes – but not yet.’ That she was her aunt’s sole beneficiary had not slipped her mind, though now it seemed less important than on the day she had learned of it. Just a few days after their wedding, it had been. She and Andrew hadn’t had a honeymoon – not the usual one, because of the war – but 53A, Little Britain had been an enchanted place. Andrew’s cheap lodgings near St Bartholomew’s church had seen their first, fierce loving. She still paid the rent on those rooms; couldn’t bear to let them go. Now, she had two London addresses and decisions would have to be made.

‘Try to make it soon, dear. He said things had best be settled quickly. He’s putting her death in The Times obituary – save me the trouble, he said.’

‘He’ll charge for it, you know.’

‘Doubtless he will but oh!’ Helen covered her face with her hands. ‘It seems that life is slipping away from me. Everyone I love, leaving me one by one.’

‘But there’s me, and Drew. We won’t leave you.’ Julia smiled as the train hooted three times as it always did when it neared the bend, half a mile from Holdenby station. ‘And we are almost home, now.’ Soon they would be back within the shelter of Rowangarth’s dear, safe walls and things would not seem so bad. ‘Chin up, dearest.’

Alice waited in the village shop that was also a Post Office and telephone exchange, glancing up at the clock almost every minute, wondering what could be so important. Julia’s last letter had told her of Aunt Sutton’s death. Dear Aunt Sutton; such a fine lady. Indestructible, somehow. Alice had never linked her with death.

… I know how much you cared for her and I have ordered flowers for you, Alice. I will write a card, with your name on it. But there is something, more important, and I need you with me.

Is it possible Tom will allow you to come to London? I’ll telephone, and explain. Can you be at your Post Office at eleven, on Wednesday morning …

So now she waited, one eye on the clock, glancing all the while through the window at Daisy’s pram.

Julia had always been dramatic, always spoke before she thought. Marriage and widowhood hadn’t changed her. To her, everything was larger than life; her lows abysmally low; her highs acted out on a pretty pink cloud.

Alice had passed the letter to Tom who said of course she must go. Daisy would be no trouble, her being on breast milk and sleeping most of the time, though he’d heard London water was dirty, and best boiled – especially if a baby was to drink it.

‘It seems that Julia needs you urgent and a few days away will make a change from the quiet, here,’ he’d smiled. ‘Though by the time you get back, there’ll be someone in Willow End …’

‘It’s here, Mrs Dwerryhouse,’ called the postmistress from the switchboard at the back of the shop. ‘Just lift the phone, my dear. You’re through, caller,’ she said most professionally, then went to stand at the counter to let it be known she wasn’t listening in. And anyway, she’d be content with Alice’s half of the conversation.

‘Julia? What’s the matter? You’ve got me worried.’

‘Sorry, love. Didn’t mean to. But I’m coming to London. It’s Aunt’s funeral on Friday and I plan to travel down on Saturday. I’m her executor, you see – me and her solicitor. I’m seeing him on Monday. But could you come down, some time after that – I’d meet you at the station. Daisy will be all right. I’ll get hold of a pram and cot, for her. We’ll stay at Aunt Sutton’s. There’ll be plenty of room – but please come?’

‘Julia! Calm down! What’s so awful about seeing a solicitor that you want me there? What’s really the bother?’

‘Little Britain, if you must know. I’ve made up my mind to go there!’

‘To Andrew’s place? But you haven’t been there since he –’

‘No. Not since he died. You understand, Alice, so I want you with me. I’m not brave enough to go alone. Please tell Tom, so he’ll understand. I’m sure he’d let you come if –’

‘Oh, whisht! He’s already said it’ll be all right. I’ll travel on Sunday, though. Tom has most Sundays off, so he can see me and Daisy onto the train. There’ll be a couple of cases – nappies, and such like. But I’ll come, Julia. When I know the train times, I’ll write you. I’ll send the letter to Aunt Sutton’s – and yes, I do know the address! I’ve stayed there before, remember?’

‘I know you have. That’s why I need you with me. Bless you for coming – and say thank you to Tom, for me.’

‘Goodness, mother, I didn’t know a small boy needed so much paraphernalia!’ Julia put her head round the sitting-room door. ‘Be with you in a tick. Almost finished packing, then we’ll have a sherry. I think I’ve earned one!’

‘You could always leave him with me …’

‘Thanks, dearest, but no. He’s got to meet Daisy.’ And more important, Alice.

The door closed with a bang. Her daughter had never learned, Helen thought, the smallest smile lifting the corners of her mouth, to enter and leave a room in a lady-like manner. Only she could hurtle into a room, setting it into chaos at once, or leave with a door-slamming that set ornaments dancing.

Thank you, God, for Julia and Drew, she had whispered inside her as she stood at her sister-in-law’s grave. Had it not been for Nathan’s kindness, she must surely have broken down and sobbed, and that would never have done. So she had listened instead to the gentle, sincere voice reading the burial service – so like Luke Parkin’s, the poor dear man – and thought about anything save that Anne Lavinia was leaving them.

Another Sutton gone; one more from the good days, she had thought with pain; days that would never come back.

Things were changing. Now, young people danced all the time; an act of defiance, almost, to convince themselves that the fighting was over and never, ever, would they go to war again. So they laughed too loudly, some of them, and smoked too much and danced foxtrots and two-steps and lately, a dance called a Tango.

And young women cut their hair defiantly short and wore tight brassieres to flatten their breasts as if it were important they should look more like willowy boys than girls. Now, picture houses flourished, with two different films each week, even though there had never been such unemployment with mills and factories going bankrupt every day of the week.

Seaside outings seemed to have become essential and charabancs set out every Sunday morning as if everyone was frantic to live a little before people who should know better started another war.

I think, when the living is vacant, that Nathan should be our next parish priest. Helen directed her thoughts to the flower-covered coffin. It would be splendid to have Nathan with us. He’d be such a good influence on Drew; Drew needs a man, Anne Lavinia – even you, who had little time for men in your life, must agree. Maybe, even, Nathan could give Drew his lessons. I don’t want to send him away to school. Not as they had sent Robert and Giles away. So many precious young years gone, but they hadn’t known, she and John, that neither of their sons had so few years left to live.

I shall miss you, dear Anne Lavinia, but I will never forget you. Not John’s sister. Two of them gone, now. Only Edward left, of the three of them.

She looked over to where Edward and Clementina stood. Clemmy was heavily veiled; always went too far, when it came to a public show of grief. Jaws clenched, Edward stared ahead. Remembering, was he; thinking back to the way it had been at Rowangarth, when they were all little?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Helen had stooped, taking a handful of Holdenby earth.

Goodbye, Anne Lavinia Sutton …

Once the train had come to a standstill, Alice laid Daisy on the seat, reaching for her cases, placing them one by one on the station platform. Then she scooped up her daughter.

‘We’re here in London and oh, it’s such a place you’d never believe it, Daisy Dwerryhouse!’

Carefully she stepped down, and then she saw them. Julia did not move nor take Alice into her arms, kiss her, say how glad she was to see her. Instead, her eyes spoke for her.

I’m sorry, they said. I know it shouldn’t have been this way, but try to understand?

A small boy held her hand. He was sturdy and he was fair. His hair was carefully parted and looked as if it had recently been combed. He hopped from one foot to the other, excited by the noise and bustle.

‘I had to bring him,’ Julia whispered. ‘I promised I would, next time I went on a train. And you’ve got to come to terms with the way it was.’ She held out her arms for Daisy. ‘Let me have her – show her to him?’

Bemused, Alice did as she asked, running her tongue round lips gone suddenly dry.

‘Drew, darling,’ Julia said softly, ‘this is my dearest friend, Mrs Dwerryhouse and this –’ she bent low so the small boy might see the child she held, ‘– is baby Daisy. Say hullo.’

‘Hullo, baby,’ he repeated obediently, then gazing up, he held out a small, gloved hand and whispered, ‘Hullo, lady.’

Alice looked down at her son; at the child of rape she had wanted never to love, and saw only a small boy, not yet two years old; saw Julia’s son.

‘Hullo, Drew,’ she said softly, bending down, cupping the small face in her hands. ‘You are so like Giles, except that you have Andrew’s eyes …’

The child pursed his mouth, frowning. Giles and Andrew were words he did not know and Mrs Dwerryhouse was a word too difficult to say. So instead he smiled brightly, pointing to the engine that still hissed steam and puffed coal smoke.

‘Puffing train,’ he said.

‘Nice puffing train,’ Alice nodded, kissing Julia warmly. ‘It’s all right, love. You’ve done well. He’s grown into a fine little boy.’

‘Let’s get a taxi.’ Julia closed her eyes briefly, relieved that the meeting of mother and son had gone better than she had dared hope, holding up a hand to call a porter. ‘Soon be at Montepelier Mews. Sparrow knew where to lay hands on a pram and cot.’

‘Sparrow? I’d forgotten …’

‘But she’s been looking after Andrew’s place for me – you knew that. I sent her the key to Aunt’s house – asked her to light fires, air the beds. She’s there, now.’ Emily Smith, who had cleaned for Andrew and devotedly washed and ironed his shirts. His cockney sparrow, he’d called her. ‘I send her wages each month – surely you remember? She still talks about Andrew as if he’ll soon walk through the door, back from Bart’s, and asking how her rheumatics are. It’s as if she wiped the war from her mind. Bless you for coming, Alice. It’s going to make going back to Little Britain so much easier.’

‘Do you have to go back?’ Come to think of it, did she have to keep up the lease on Andrew’s lodgings, act like Sparrow who tried not to admit he would never come home?

‘Yes, I do, but I’ll tell you about it when we get to Aunt’s house.’

‘Yours now, don’t forget.’

‘Not quite. Almost, though. Still a few things to be seen to before it’s legally mine. And I haven’t been in Hyde Park, yet. I was waiting for you …’

‘Then we’ll take the children there, tomorrow,’ Alice said firmly. What was Julia up to? Why the urgency of this visit? She offered her hand to Drew. ‘Come along, Drew. Take lady’s hand.’

Her eyes smiled into Julia’s. It’s all right, they said. At least my problem is solved – now let’s get you sorted out, Julia MacMalcolm!

Aunt Sutton’s little mews house behind Montpelier Place had changed little, Alice thought, since she had stayed there that enchanted May, seven years ago. Then, she had been maid and chaperon to Julia Sutton, her employer’s daughter, and never had she had such a time! It had been in nearby Hyde Park that Julia and Andrew met and –

‘Sparrow! Here they are! Here are Mrs Dwerryhouse and Daisy.’

Alice shook her head, blinking away the past, smiling at the small, thin woman who bobbed a curtsey then said, ‘Oh, the little love,’ to Daisy, who was, for once, wide awake and gazing about her with blue-eyed alertness.

‘Hullo. Am I to call you Sparrow, too?’ Alice hesitated.

‘Bless your life, mum, everybody else does! It was the doctor gived me the name and if it’s good enough for him, then who’s to say different? The kettle’s on the boil, Mrs MacMalcolm. You’ll both be wanting a drink of tea?’

Alice looked around her, remembering. The house was still pretty and white; white windows and doors, outside; white-painted woodwork inside, with white-painted furniture in a style popular at the turn of the century and Anne Lavinia Sutton had not thought to change. The house was full of greenery, then. Pots of ferns and trailing plants everywhere, though now there were none to be seen. Died from neglect, she supposed. ‘The plants?’ she ventured.

‘Mm. I shall have to buy more. I want it to be just as it was when Aunt lived here. Sparrow will see to them. She’s coming to live in, caretake the place – did I tell you?’

‘You didn’t – but it’s time for Daisy to be fed. Can I go upstairs?’

‘That you can, mum,’ Sparrow smiled. ‘The cot is made up and a warmer in it. And there’s a comfy chair for you to sit in. Anything you want, just call out. Sparrow’s here to take care of you all.’

‘She’s so pleased to be moving in here,’ Julia murmured as she watched Daisy feeding contentedly. ‘She’s a widow; her son was killed in the war, too. She’s only got the pound I send her each month for keeping an eye on 53A, and a few shillings a week pension. Hadn’t much to live on, when her rent had been paid. She’ll be a lot better off, when she lives here. Paradise, she says it will be.’

‘And will she still look after Andrew’s lodgings?’

‘No. I – I’m going to let the place go. The lease expires at the end of the year. I won’t renew it.’

‘I see. I think you’ll be doing the right thing, though it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?’

‘It’ll hurt like hell – as if I’m betraying him. That’s why I want you with me. I’m not brave enough to do it alone. You were with me the night Andrew and I met. You are a part of us. I want you to be there when I say goodbye.’

‘And I will be, though it won’t be goodbye, Julia. Just an acceptance that he’s gone. It won’t be easy. I didn’t want to let Tom go. And where is Drew?’ she demanded, eager to talk about other things.

‘Drew’s fine. He’s in the kitchen with Sparrow. He always finds someone to fuss over him. At Rowangarth he’s got Cook wrapped round his little finger – now it’s Sparrow. They’ve both got one thing in common – a cake tin filled with iced cherry buns.’ Julia was smiling again. ‘You do like him, Alice? Seeing him didn’t upset you, like it used to – bring it all back?’

‘No. I’m Alice Dwerryhouse, now. Drew is your little boy. And nothing that happened was his fault; I accept that, now. How is the adoption going?’ she murmured.

‘We-e-ll – I’ve been going to tell you about that. After a lot of thought – mostly by Carver-the-young – I think it won’t be so much an adoption as a change of legal guardian. Young Carver says it’s all that’s necessary and won’t be half so much fuss. Things are a bit behind, because of Aunt Sutton, but we’ll keep you au fait with everything. You aren’t going to change your mind?’

‘You know I won’t. Drew belongs at Rowangarth – it’s as simple as that. And one day, when they are older, we’ll tell them, won’t we?’

‘You and me both, Alice. One day …’

They took the motor bus to Newgate Street, walked up King Edward Street, then they were there, in Little Britain; in the street where Andrew’s lodgings stood beside a shop that sold stationery and newspapers, a few yards from the gates of St Bartholomew’s church.

53A, Little Britain. Julia looked at the windows, clean and shining, and the curtains; exactly the same curtains as when he had lived there.

‘It isn’t much of a street, is it?’ Alice had need to break the bleak, brooding silence.

‘No, but it was near the hospital and it was all he could afford. He was saving hard, you know, to buy his own practice. I told him I’d have money when I was twenty-one, but it made no difference, the stubborn man …’

‘I remember the day you first came here. Oh, but you had me worried, Julia. There was I, supposed to be looking after you, see you came to no harm, and there you were, insisting on going out alone – and to a man’s lodgings, an’ all!’

‘Things change, Alice. The war changed them,’ she smiled, sadly. ‘I remember how agitated you were when I told you I was going to call on Andrew. It wasn’t right, you said. And what if his wife answered the door …?’

‘Yet you came back safe and sound and in love. I could see it in your eyes.’

‘I told you it would be all right; said I wouldn’t do anything unladylike. Word of a Sutton, I said. I was shaking, though. It was such a relief when it was he who opened the door. And I remember exactly what he said.’

‘Tell me?’

‘He opened the door. I couldn’t speak, I was so ashamed at what I’d done. After all, I was running after him, wasn’t I? Then he smiled. He smiled and he said, “My dear – I hoped you would come.” And that was it, Alice. I knew there’d be no going back for either of us.’

‘And there wasn’t. Now unlock the door, love …’

The passage was dark and gloomy because all the doors leading off it had been closed. Julia stood still, listening, then tilting her chin she walked on, opening the kitchen door, standing again, waiting.

The room was clean, the table top scrubbed to whiteness. The cooking range was black and shining, a fire laid ready for a match.

‘When we were married – next morning – I couldn’t light that fire,’ Julia murmured. ‘I’d never cleaned out a grate nor laid a fire in my life. I was so angry, I wanted to weep. So we boiled a kettle on the gas ring and ate bread and jam for our breakfast.’

‘And I’ll bet he didn’t care.’

‘He didn’t. We just left everything and went to Aunt Sutton’s. She hadn’t come to our wedding, you’ll remember, so I wanted her to meet Andrew.

‘She gave us an oil painting of Rowangarth – a very old one – for a present, then announced, calm as you like, that she’d just made a new Will and I was to get everything.’

‘She liked Andrew, didn’t she?’ There was nothing for it, Alice knew, but to go along with Julia’s heartache – let her get it out of her the best way she knew how.

‘Mm. She said he had a look of Pa. Mother thought so, too. Mother adored him, right from the start.’

‘We all did. He was a fine man.’ Alice opened the parlour door and the same air of loneliness met them.

‘We never sat in this room. Not ever,’ Julia said, half to herself. ‘We were only here three days and when we weren’t out walking in London we were – well, we went to bed. Do you think that was awful?’

‘Of course I don’t, silly!’

‘His surgery.’ Julia turned her back on the parlour, gazing at the door opposite and the small brass plate bearing her husband’s name. Andrew MacMalcolm MD.

Alice opened the door wide, then stood aside.

The desk was highly polished, everything on it arranged by Sparrow with care and precision. Medical books and journals stood tidily on a shelf; a sheet was draped over a skeleton, covering it completely. Sparrow had not liked that skeleton.

‘I have all his instruments, at Rowangarth. I went to the field hospital after he was killed, took all his things away with me.’

‘Yes. You told me that day you came home to Rowangarth. I’d almost gone my full time, with Drew.’ Julia had come back from the war a sad, pale-faced wraith. There had been no comforting her, so desolate was she. It had taken the birth of a baby to wrench Julia MacMalcolm back to life. Drew had been her salvation.

‘I’m not going upstairs today, Alice – I couldn’t. Tomorrow, maybe. But I want to take the bed back to Rowangarth, and I want –’ She lifted her chin, her eyes daring Alice to defy her. ‘I want to take everything in his surgery back, too.’

‘No reason why you shouldn’t.’ What was going through that tormented mind, now?

‘No, Alice – you don’t understand. The room next to the sewing-room at Rowangarth. Do you remember it?’

‘Not particularly, ’cept it was full of old furniture and bits and pieces nobody wanted. No one used it.’

‘Yes – but think! The window and the fireplace – the door, even …’

Alice shook her head, unspeaking.

‘Think. Almost the same black iron fireplace with a window on the wall to the left of it. And the door opposite it. Just like this room. I could hang Andrew’s curtains at the window. All his things, Alice – arranged just as they are here. I’d have his surgery at Rowangarth, don’t you see?’

‘No! Not his surgery! You’d be creating a shrine – hadn’t you thought?’

‘Yes, I’d thought. I thought about it even before we came here. It’s the only way I can do it, Alice – give up these lodgings, I mean. Don’t you see? I’m not being maudlin nor mawkish. I still love him every bit as much as the first day I came here. I’m going to do it, you know!’

‘Then if you’re set on it – what can I say?’ Alice took her friend’s hand, leading her to the door. ‘Let’s go, now? Before I go home, we’ll see to it, together.’ She closed the front door, locking it behind them. ‘And I know what today is. It’s his birthday, isn’t it – the last day of August. He’d have been thirty-three …’

‘Yes. That’s why I wanted to come here, today. And bless you for remembering, love.’

‘Did you think I’d forget those times – any of them?’ She linked her arm in Julia’s. ‘Now let’s get back. Between them, I’ll bet those two bairns are driving poor Sparrow mad.’

‘You’re a dear person, Alice. I couldn’t have gone there without you. You’re still my sister, aren’t you?’

‘Still your sister,’ Alice smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s get ourselves to the bus stop!’

‘Talking of buses,’ Julia murmured. ‘Or talking of the nuisance of having to wait for buses when you’ve got a car, I mean –’

‘No!’ Shocked, Alice stood stock still. ‘You don’t intend buying one? What would your mother say? You know you can’t keep a car at Rowangarth, so why think of getting one?’

‘But I already have one. Aunt Sutton’s. It’s in her garage at the end of the Mews. She drove it all the time in London, remember. I shall drive it up to Holdenby.’

‘Not with Drew beside you, you can’t! It wouldn’t be safe – not even if you tied him to the seat!’

‘Not yet. And certainly not with Drew to distract me. But that car is mine now, and I intend using it, Alice!’

‘There’ll be trouble, Julia.’

‘There will.’ Her chin tilted defiantly. ‘But Will Stubbs learned about motors in the army – he could look after it for me.’

‘You’ve been determined all along, haven’t you, to get your own motor?’

‘Yes. And if Andrew had gone into general practice, he’d have needed one, so what could mother have done about that, will you tell me?’

‘In your own home, it would have been different. But it isn’t right you should take Miss Sutton’s motor back to Rowangarth; not against her ladyship’s wishes. Don’t do it, Julia. It’ll be nothing but trouble, I know it. Your mother is set against motors and you should try to understand her feelings.’

‘And this is 1920, and I’ll be twenty-seven, soon. I endured almost three years in France. I saw things that will stay to haunt me for the rest of my life. So now that I have my own motor, I shall drive it and there is nothing either mother or you can do about it!’

So Alice, who knew Julia almost as well as she knew herself, said, ‘All right! Subject closed. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

‘Elliot and I,’ said Clementina Sutton firmly, ‘will be going to London, shortly.’

‘But you’ve just come back.’ Edward laid aside his newspaper. ‘Have you mentioned it to Elliot?’

‘I’ve told him. We’d have still been there, if it hadn’t been for Anne Lavinia.’

‘Yes. Sad her funeral had to interrupt your stay! But why go back there so soon? Is something happening that I don’t know about, Clemmy?’

‘Happening? But that’s just it – nothing is happening! And can I, just for once, have your attention, Edward, because this is important. It is time Elliot was wed!’ she announced dramatically.

‘I agree with you entirely. But who Would have him?’ The question slipped out without thought.

‘Have him? His own father asks who’d have him! Why, there’s half the aristocracy would have him, truth known! There’s those with no brass and daughters they want off their hands, for a start. Plenty of that sort about. And there’s young girls as’ll never get a husband, what with the shortage of young men, these days.’

‘Clemmy – please? So many families lost sons to the war. I beg you not to be so – so direct.’

‘But it’s a fact of life that it’s a buyer’s market when it comes to brides, so –’

‘So you intend to buy a wife for Elliot? And have you anyone in mind?’

‘I have, and you know it, Edward Sutton. There’s a girl next door, at Cheyne Walk. A refugee, but well connected – well, in Russia that was …’

‘I see. And talking about Russia, there was a small piece in the paper – the Czar’s brother Michael has been officially declared dead, now. Seems he was shot about the same time as the Czar – at a place called Perm. There’s a son, it seems, who might still be alive.’

‘So there’s still a Romanov? The countess will be pleased.’

‘Don’t think the son will count, m’dear. Born out of wedlock.’

‘Hm!’ There’d be weeping and wailing again in the house next door in Cheyne Walk, Clementina thought grimly. Weeping in Russian, hadn’t Lady Anna said, and crossing themselves like Papists. A peculiar lot, really. It was a sad fact, Clemmy admitted, that she still might have to cast her net wider if those Petrovskys weren’t on the breadline as she’d thought they would be. But go to London again she would, if only to sort it out, one way or the other. ‘She’s a lovely-looking girl,’ she said absently, ‘and well-bred enough for Elliot.’

‘Then I’m pleased.’ Anyone, Edward reflected, was good enough for his eldest son. It was a sad and deplorable fact. There wasn’t a father worth his salt around these parts who would want his daughter married to Elliot – his past record had seen to that. ‘And when will you leave?’

‘Tomorrow. You’ll be all right on your own.’ It was more a statement than a question.

‘Of course, my dear. And there is Nathan to keep me company, don’t forget.’ He opened his newspaper again, regretting that Nathan had not been their firstborn. But even if he had, Clemmy would have ruined him, just as she had spoiled and ruined Elliot. ‘We’ll have plenty to talk about. Just enjoy yourself, in London …’

And stay as long as you like – the pair of you!

‘Well – home tomorrow, Alice; both of us. Have you had a good time?’

They were walking in Hyde Park; Julia pushing Daisy’s pram, Drew with his hand in Alice’s.

‘It’s been lovely.’

No. Not all of it had been lovely, Alice thought sadly. Some of it had been awful, especially after the removal van left 53A, Andrew’s furniture inside it and Julia standing there, her face ashen, unwilling to lock the front door for the last time. She had not spoken a word, all the way back to Aunt Sutton’s house. Her face had been harsh with grief, just as it was that morning she had arrived at Rowangarth, wet and cold and half out of her mind with misery, just three weeks after the end of the war.

‘What is he like, your aunt’s solicitor?’ It was all Alice could think of to say.

‘He’s nice. Far nicer than young Carver, and he doesn’t dislike women – or if he does, he’s careful not to let it show. We’ll soon get things settled. Aunt made a watertight Will, so he’s only waiting for something from France before it’s all wrapped up.’

‘And can you afford to keep the place going?’ Alice demanded, ever practical.

‘No trouble at all. Aunt left quite a bit of money. Carefully invested, there’ll be income enough to take care of expenses. Mind, if I were to put it on the market, that house would fetch a pretty penny, or so Mark Townsend says.’

‘That’s his name?’

‘Mm. He wants me to make a Will. I’ve never made one you know and I ought to if only for Drew’s sake. Once Carvers have settled Drew’s business, then I’ll go back to London and get one drawn up, and witnessed.’

‘Can’t Rowangarth’s solicitors do it? You said that the young Carver had his wits about him.’

‘I know. But I don’t like Carver-the-young. Oh, he’s scrupulously honest, but there’s something about him I don’t like. His eyes are shifty, Alice. He never looks me in the eyes when he’s talking to me. Andrew did. Always.’

‘Andrew was different, and very special.’

They had come to the place, now; to where it had started all those years ago, near the Marble Arch gate. Emily Davison selling suffragette news-sheets for a penny and young women appearing out of nowhere it had seemed, eager to buy from her. And the police appearing out of nowhere, too, and that awful fight. Alice Hawthorn giving the big policeman an almighty shove from behind and him falling on top of Julia, knocking her unconscious.

That was when it happened. Julia had opened her eyes and fallen immediately in love with the young doctor who bent over her.

‘Give me the pram. Drew and Daisy and me will walk back, slowly. You stay here, for a while?’

Call him back to you, Julia. Say goodbye then tell yourself he has gone. Remembering the good times will be easier if only you can accept that he isn’t ever coming back.

‘We’ll wait for you at the bandstand. Take your time, love …’

9

‘Tired, Alice love?’

‘Mm. But happy.’ It had been a long day and that last mile seemed so long in her eagerness to see Keeper’s Cottage again. ‘Being with Julia was grand. She’s got herself sorted out – as much as she ever will, that is. She’s had all the furniture from Andrew’s surgery packed up and sent to Rowangarth, would you believe? Intends setting it out in one of the spare rooms – just as he had it. I didn’t agree, but who am I to deny her a bit of comfort – me, who’s so lucky. Oh, Tom, this little house is good to come to home to. So quiet, after London. No one here, but you and me.’

‘And Daisy. And there’s Willow End now, don’t forget. Seems that Purvis is going to suit. Mr Hillier said I was to tell him to send for his wife, so we’ll have a neighbour before so very much longer.’

‘How soon?’ It would be good to have someone near. ‘I’ll do a bake for her so she’ll have something in the house to tide her over. And I’ll put down extra bread and –’

‘Stop your fussing, lass! When her and the lad arrive is going to depend on when her cousin is coming this way with an empty lorry. Seems he makes a trip twice a month to Southampton docks. Purvis says they haven’t got much in the way of furniture, but it’ll be a help, them getting moved here for nowt.’

‘Poor things. Ten shillings isn’t much of a wage.’

‘Happen not, but it’s riches to that man down the lane. And a house and firewood, remember. He’s been living frugal since he moved in; sends most of his wage to his Polly. But for all that, he’s come on a pace since I came across him in the woods.

‘Having to beg strips a man of his dignity, Alice. To have a roof and a job makes a lot of difference to a man’s pride – and a man that hasn’t had a fair crack of the whip for a long time. His little lad is called Keth, by the way.’

‘Keth?’

‘Said his wife wanted something a bit different.’

‘Then I hope Mrs Purvis isn’t going to be different in her ways; not hoity-toity.’

‘Don’t think so. By what I’ve gleaned, she’s a decent woman who’ll be glad to be with her man again. Now give that little lass to me and I’ll get her to sleep. I’ve missed her.’ Missed them both more than he’d ever have thought. Each day had seemed endless. He’d been glad, truth known, just to see the lampglow from Willow End windows at night. ‘Think Mr Hillier has missed our Daisy, an’ all. Bet he’ll be at the garden gate tomorrow, trying to get a smile out of her.’

‘She smiled a lot while we were away, especially at Drew. He hardly left her side. Said he wanted to take her back with him.’

‘I’m glad you’ve come to accept him, Alice. Nothing of what happened was the lad’s fault. And you’ll be going to Rowangarth before long, to get that legal business seen to. He’ll see her again, then.’

‘No sooner back home than I’m talking about going away again. I’m sorry, Tom. It has to be done, though it won’t be yet, a while. Before the bad weather sets in, I’d like it to be – and I do want to see Reuben again.’

‘And you shall, sweetheart.’ Tom settled his daughter on his shoulder, setting the chair rocking. ‘I don’t begrudge you going. Rowangarth was good to us both and I’m not likely to forget it. And lass – have you anything more to tell me?’

‘Aye,’ she said softly, gentling his cheek with her finger-tips. ‘I love you, Tom Dwerryhouse.’

And tonight she would sleep in his arms again …

‘Well!’ said Clementina Sutton, brandishing the letter. ‘He’s obviously read it, yet not so much as a word about this did your father utter, last night when I rang him. I asked him if there was any news and he said no, there wasn’t. Ooooh!’

‘What’s happened now?’ Elliot disliked dramatics at breakfast.

‘You may well ask!’ She handed over the letter. ‘Read it! From Kentucky – from Amelia! Go on. Read it out loud!’

‘All of it?’

‘The second page. Half-way down. I don’t believe it!’

Obediently, reluctantly, Elliot did as she commanded. Then his eyebrows flew upwards.

‘Another baby? That’s twice in – how long is it? How old is that boy of theirs?’

‘Sebastian is about two and a half. And you’re missing the point. My youngest son a father twice over in three years yet you, heir to all I’ve got, can’t even get yourself down the aisle. Now do as you’re bid, and read that letter! Out loud!

‘Er …

and you’ll all be glad to know that Albert and I expect a brother or sister for Bas in six weeks. We didn’t announce it before this – things just might have gone wrong – but now I am safely seven months pregnant I feel I can uncross my fingers and give out our news. We are both delighted. We had intended visiting Pendenys Place as soon as it was safe to travel again, but decided against it for obvious reasons. However, when the babe is old enough we shall book passages and let you see your grandchildren at long last. It might be nice, Albert thinks, to have the new babe baptized in Yorkshire England by his Uncle Nathan, but it is early days, yet …

‘Congratulations, Mama. You don’t look old enough to be a grandmother twice over,’ he smiled, knowing what was to come. ‘I’d never have thought Amelia and Albert would have had children. Why did Albert imply she was too old?’

‘Albert didn’t say she was old, now that I think back on it. A little older, he said, which could be two or three years at the most. You should know. You stayed with them in Kentucky. You’re the only one who has met Albert’s wife. But it was you who put it around he’d wed a woman old enough to be his mother. Well, your trouble-making has come back to make a fool of you, my lad, because I’m not best pleased, I can tell you!’

‘But Aunt Helen was delighted when she became a grandmother.’

‘Your Aunt Helen –’ She stopped, button-mouthed. Looks years younger than me, she had been going to say. ‘Helen needed a boy for Rowangarth – and so the title shouldn’t pass to us, at Pendenys,’ she added, vinegar-voiced. ‘And she got one, just in the nick of time. I’d bet it was more relief than delight! So relieved, she overlooked the fact that it had taken a servant to get that child for her!’

‘Mama, dear – I know how much you want me married and now that the war is over, I agree entirely with you.’ She was getting red spots high on her cheeks – a sure sign that a tirade of abuse was imminent. ‘Find me a suitable wife and I’ll go down on bended knee to her – I promise you.’

‘You couldn’t find one for yourself, I suppose? Too much trouble, is it? Albert got himself wed without help from anyone and so did your cousin Giles, so what’s so special about you, my lad? Lose interest in a woman, do you, once you’ve had her in your bed?’

‘Mother, I beg you!’ Elliot dropped his knife with a clatter. ‘You can be so – so direct!’ And so common, when she was crossed. He’d been with prostitutes more refined than she. But it was all because of Mary Anne Pendennis. A woman who’d followed the herring boats from port to port, gutting fish, his great-grandmother had been. A fishwife. And when the season was over, she’d taken in washing which made her a washerwoman, too! And beneath his mother’s ladylike exterior lurked a Cornish washerwoman who could curse like a fishwife when angered and not all her riches would ever breed it out of her. It was all a question of pedigree and there was no avoiding the fact that somewhere in his ancestry, a mongrel bitch had got over the wall!

‘You’ll get more’n direct if you don’t shape yourself and get me a grandson; and get me one in wedlock, an’ all! I want no more hedge children – do I make myself plain? I’m taking tea with the countess at the Ritz, tomorrow; intend getting to the bottom of it even if I have to ask her outright if her daughter is in the market for a husband. And if I get the answer I hope I’ll get, then you’ll start paying attention to Anna Petrovska – or else!’

‘Or else what, Mama?’ It was the nearest to defiance he was capable of.

‘Or else you’ll see how nasty I can be, son! On the other hand,’ she lowered her voice to a soft coo, ‘only give me a couple of grandsons and I’ll turn my back on your goings-on, I swear I will. Now do you get the message – because if you aren’t for me then you’re against me – it’s as simple as that. Think on, Elliot …’

Only two days after her return from London and before she could do the baking she had intended, Alice watched a large, green-painted lorry drive up Beck Lane and come to a stop outside Willow End Cottage. They had come, and Tom not even thinking to tell her!

Clucking with annoyance, she set the kettle to boil. At least she could make them a pot of tea though it would have been more neighbourly to have been able to offer something more substantial. She was slicing the currant loaf when the knock came at the back door.

‘Hullo! Anyone at home?’

The woman who stood there was young, her thick, dark brown hair pulled into a severe knot in her neck. Her face was pale but her smile was wide and open.

‘You’ll pardon the intrusion.’ She stepped into the kitchen, ‘but in case you think we’re tinkers and breaking in – well – I’m Polly Purvis. Come to live at Willow End, only my Dickon don’t know we’re arriving. Only knew myself, late last night when Sidney told me if I wanted a lift to Hampshire I’d better shift myself! Sidney’s my cousin. He had an extra trip on if I was interested, he said, which was better’n waiting a fortnight to get here.’

‘Goodness – what a rush …’ So overwhelmed was she it was all Alice could think of to say.

‘No rush at all, m’dear. Took no more’n half an hour to get our bits and pieces loaded. Most of what I started out with all sold, see? Had to be. But things’ll be better, now. I shall like this place, I know it. You’ll be Mrs Dwerryhouse?’ She held out her hand, still smiling. ‘And it’s your husband I have to thank for all this – and thank him I will, when I’ve got things seen to! But best be off. Sidney can’t wait. Got to be at the docks in less’n an hour …’

In a flurry of long black skirts she was gone, striding down the lane at almost a run.

‘Well!’ said Alice to the kettle on the hob. ‘And what do you make of that!’

Friendly, though, and a countrywoman – that was plain enough, for who but a countrywoman knocked on back doors then walked in, unasked?

Work-roughened hands she’d had. Alice had felt their sharpness against her own. Sleeves rolled up to the elbow; a long, flower-patterned pinafore tied at her waist. And such a smile! Dark, though. A bit of gypsy in her, somewhere. Maybe, like Jinny Dobb, she could read tea leaves, look into the future. But of one thing Alice was certain. Her new neighbour would not be difficult, as she had feared. Rather the opposite, she thought as she stirred the coals to hasten the kettle. Her new neighbour seemed outgoing and uncomplicated and one who wouldn’t be opposed to a gossip over a cup of tea! She wished she had been better prepared; been able to do the bake she had intended offering in welcome. Now, she sighed, a pot of tea and a plate of currant bread would have to suffice.

The green lorry parped its horn as it passed her house. The new tenant at Willow End had spoken nothing but the truth; there had indeed been little to unload.

Alice walked carefully up the lane, teapot in one hand, plate in the other. The small boy sitting on the doorstep sucking his thumb got to his feet as she approached.

‘Hullo,’ she smiled. ‘It’s Keth, isn’t it?’

The boy nodded, dark eyes gazing up into her own.

‘And I’m Mrs Dwerryhouse. I live at Keeper’s, down the lane.’

He was too thin, but there were a lot of too-thin children about, these days. Fatherless bairns, most of them, with mothers hard put to it to feed them on the pension the Army allowed.

‘Well, if it isn’t Mrs Dwerryhouse and carrying a pot of tea! Come you in, and welcome. You’m my first caller. Sit you down, m’dear!’

‘I’m sorry. Can’t stay. I’ve left my little one in her pram. I’d intended baking you a pie. As it is …’ She placed the plate on the table, gazing around her.

The floor was bare. A table stood in the middle of the room with three chairs around it. Arranged beside the fire, already burning brightly, stood two rocking chairs and an upturned box with a cushion on it.

‘A cup of tea would go down a treat – and is that curranty bread home-baked?’

‘It is, though I’ve been away and my cake tins are empty.’

‘Away, is it? Well, now that I’ve got here, it’ll take more’n wild horses to drag me from this house. Beautiful, it is – and Dickon and me never setting eyes on each other for nigh on six months. When he finds us here and smells his dinner cooking, he’ll be bowled over!’

‘You’ve brought meat with you, Mrs Purvis?’

‘No, but first thing I set eyes on was a rabbit hanging in the pantry. I’ll soon get the skin off it and get it into the pot. I’ve brought potatoes and onions with me. It’ll be such a surprise for him!’

‘A lovely surprise, but I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to the village. Is there anything I can get you when I’m there?’

‘Thank you, but no. I’ve brought adequate with me, though it’s kindly of you to ask. And tomorrow, when I’ve got myself straight, I hope I might return the compliment and entertain you to tea.’

Brought adequate? Alice frowned as she walked the lane that wound into West Welby, yet both of them thin as rakes, just like Dickon Purvis. But she would find a way to help them; do it without hurting their fierce pride. She, who had so much, whose little one was chubby-cheeked and whose husband walked straight-backed and true, would help the unfortunates who seemed to have so little. Not only was it her duty, but it would be in thanks for her blazing happiness. And she would favour especially the thumb-sucking Keth. A few mugs of milk, a few slices of dripping toast would work wonders for that pinched little face!

She raised her eyes to the clear September sky.

I’m so happy and I thank You with all my heart. And may it please You to let me keep it, God?

‘Psst! Lady Anna!’ Glancing at the house next door in case the formidable Cossack should appear, Elliot Sutton stood at the back garden wall hidden, he hoped, by a large flowering shrub. ‘Good afternoon to you.’

‘Why – Mr Sutton!’ She pretended surprise. She had known he’d been watching her from an upstairs window and it did not disturb her to hear him call her name. ‘Should we be talking like this?’

‘I see no reason why not. We are neighbours; we have been introduced and anyway, it is more fun this way – secretly.’

‘Yes, it is. And since our mothers are at this very moment discussing our future, then I think it perfectly correct for you and me to talk. After all, there is the thickness of the wall between us!’ she smiled, impishly.

‘Our future? I wouldn’t say that, exactly!’

‘You wouldn’t, Mr Sutton? Then I have a half-crown in my pocket that says you are wrong.’

‘I accept your wager!’ He threw back his head and laughed. Not only was Anna Petrovska disturbingly direct, but free from maternal supervision there was the makings of fun in her. ‘Though I’d rather you made it a kiss!’

‘Then a kiss it shall be.’ Her eyelashes dropped coquettishly. ‘And you shall pay it tonight, at this very place at – nine o’clock, say?’

‘How about ten? It’ll be darker!’ He said it in all seriousness, his eyes challenging hers. ‘Though if the hairy Cossack sees us –’

‘Karl? Don’t worry about him. He wouldn’t tell Mama. He and I are the best of friends.’

‘What is he, in your household? A butler – a caretaker?’

‘Neither. He is – Karl,’ she shrugged. ‘We are grateful to him. He helped us escape from the Bolsheviks. We owe him a great deal, though who he is we have never quite discovered. Sufficient that he is a Czarist. When we got to England we kept him with us – a debt of honour, you see.’

Elliot Sutton did not see. In his eyes, the man was a hanger-on, though since Anna Petrovska seemed so attached to him he had the good sense not to say it.

‘Debt of honour – yes, of course. And here he comes, now, to protect your honour, my dear!’

Karl bore down on them, gesturing, calling out in Russian, ignoring Elliot completely.

‘My mother is home – yours too. I must go.’ Then she smiled, her eyes teasing. ‘Until ten,’ she whispered.

‘So you’ve made a start?’ Clementina remarked as Elliot entered the room. ‘I saw you out there – wouldn’t be surprised if the countess didn’t see you, an’ all!’

‘Don’t worry. The faithful Karl came to warn Anna. But might one be informed of one’s fate?’

‘One’s fate? Talk straight, lad! If you want to know if the countess is willing for you and Lady Anna to meet, then the answer is yes. And don’t thank me,’ she rushed on. ‘I’m only the mother who’s got your interests at heart which is more than you deserve what with your carrying-on and your wilful ways and –’ She stopped to draw breath. ‘And from now on, you’ll mind yourself with women – and you know what I mean! That girl next door is a virgin. And don’t look so shocked. Virgins still exist, though I reckon it’s all of ten years since you chanced on one!’

‘Mother – please?’ She really should take more care. The family – and himself in particular – were well used to her directness, but one day she would forget herself in polite company and he shuddered, just to think of it. ‘And I do thank you for all you have done for me. I appreciate it more than you know. But do you think she should be addressed as Lady Anna?’

‘Her mother’s a countess, so surely her daughter has right to a courtesy title.’

‘But her father, I believe, was a count. Does that entitle Anna to –’

‘It entitles me to call her what I want, and as far as I’m concerned, the daughter of a countess is entitled to the courtesy. And them that don’t like it can lump it! Anna Petrovska is aristocracy!’

‘Russian aristocracy. Is it the same as ours?’

‘Their Czar was our king’s cousin; that’s good enough for me! Now then – when do you aim to shift yourself and get this thing settled?’

‘I intend, dearest mother, to meet Anna at ten o’clock tonight. We made a wager this afternoon, and it would seem I have lost it. I must honour my debt.’

‘Sneaking out in the dark? You’ll do no such thing!’

‘Try to stop me!’ He planted a kiss on his mother’s cheek, pinching her bottom as he did so.

‘Impudent young puppy! Mind your manners!’ She made to cuff his ear, but he sidestepped her.

Impudent, yes – but hers, she thought fondly as he waltzed nonchalantly out of the room. Elliot had the devil in him but she would always love him best. People misunderstood him because he was handsomer than most men – and richer than most, an’ all. Or would be, one day.

‘Now mind what I’ve told you,’ she called to his blithely retreating back. ‘Watch your step, son – or else …’

Of course he would watch his step, Elliot Sutton promised the mirror image he so often gazed upon. Didn’t he always – or almost always? And hadn’t his mother as good as promised that as soon as he was married and had provided a couple of sons for Pendenys, he could please himself what he did?

He frowned, wondering what it would be like, getting sons with Anna Petrovska. A virgin, his mother said; an aristocratic virgin. Yet there had been a challenge in her eyes, a promise. She might make him a tolerable wife in spite of her careful upbringing. He must now, he admitted sadly, forget about the servant in black, next door. Too near to home. Best he should concentrate on establishing himself with Anna – with Lady Anna. All things considered, he’d had a good run for his money. He must watch himself for a while; be on his best behaviour until he had done his duty by Pendenys and earned his reward for doing it.

He sighed, pleasurably. Anna Petrovska, he supposed, would do very nicely; better, indeed, than some of the mare-faced daughters of English aristocrats with their lumpy, childbearing hips. It pleased him to think that the Almighty had created women in man’s image, but had had the good sense to create them sufficiently different to make them interesting and pleasurable – and infinitely accommodating. It was his unshakable belief, his gospel.

He hoped the girl next door would not put on the required show of modesty and refuse him twice before she accepted him. And more to the point he hoped she would be there, tonight. She had very kissable lips. And very exciting breasts. It mightn’t be half bad, married to her.

He began to think of expensive motors and a bank account credited with an amount equal to his mother’s approval. Aleksandrina Anastasia Petrovska. Would she – or wouldn’t she? More to the point, when she did, would she prove fertile? His own virility, he knew without doubt had already been established. There was nothing wrong with the breeding prowess of Sutton males. Even his cousin Giles had surprised him, getting the servant pregnant. A sly one, that sewing maid; pretending modesty, fighting for her honour. Like a wildcat she had clawed him, that first try in Brattocks Wood. If it hadn’t been for the damned dog things might have been different, like the second time. At a place called Celverte, hadn’t it been? Very vague, that second time. He’d been well in his cups that night. Pity he couldn’t remember more about it.

Yet think – could he have had anything to do with that child Julia hawked about with her? Could he, had Giles lived, have challenged him?

But the child Drew was everything a Sutton should be; was fair, as Giles was. He supposed he should give credit for that begetting to Giles who, after all, was dead whilst he, Elliot Sutton, was gloriously alive – and that was all that mattered.

But it was a thought, for all that!

‘Take her will you, Tom?’ Alice withdrew her nipple from her daughter’s lips. ‘Asleep, already. Put her over your shoulder, just in case there’s any wind to come up. Don’t want her waking, soon as she’s put down.’

‘What is it, love?’ Tom gathered his daughter to him. ‘Got a bad head?’

‘No.’ She rarely got headaches. ‘Just that – oh, it’s nothing!’

‘Then why’ve you hardly said a word since I came in, tonight? Summat’s bothering you.’ He knew her too well to accept denial.

‘It’s something or nothing. I suppose. When I went to Willow End –’

‘To see if she’d got herself settled …?’

‘Settled – yes. She put the kettle on and we had a chat. And then she said – oh, I’m daft, even to think it, but –’

‘But best you tell me, for all that.’

‘Well, like I said, I thought I’d push Daisy down the lane – give Keth the sweeties I’d bought for him in the village – just trying to be friendly. Polly Purvis is a worker, I’ll say that for her. She had a stew cooking and the windows cleaned and bread rising on the hearth, when I got there.’

‘She was in service in these parts, I believe, when she met Dickon. But you knew that.’

‘I did, Tom, though Polly reminded me of it. Said she’d soon get the family on its feet again, now they were together and money coming in regular. Said she had contacts around these parts from way back and would be looking for work, to help out.’

‘But what about that little lad?’

‘She isn’t going out to work. She intends taking in washing, if there’s nothing to stop her doing it. I said I was sure Mr Hillier wouldn’t mind, if she hung it out of sight at the back.’

‘Nor will he. But it isn’t the washing that’s bothering you, is it, Alice?’

‘No. It’s more something she said. “We’ll manage all right,” she said. “And once Keth goes to school, I’ll be able to go out mornings, scrubbing.” And had you thought, Tom, that she’ll even have to dig that garden of theirs; Dickon can’t use a spade with one foot near useless, now can he?’

‘Come to think of it, he can’t – though there’ll be plenty who’ll give a hand. But go on?’

‘Well – I wished her luck, told her I was sure there’d be work. And then she said it. Said she looked like Mary Anne and that any woman in their family who’d ever looked like Mary Anne inherited her luck, too.’

‘Mary Anne who?’ All at once, Tom was uneasy.

‘Mary Anne Pendennis, that’s who! I couldn’t believe it at first, so I said – casual as I could – that Pendennis is an uncommon name but she said no, it isn’t. Not around Cornwall, it seems.’

‘But there’ll be a fair few Mary Anne Pendennises in Cornwall.’

‘So there will, I grant you. But how many by that name married a northerner – a foundry worker, by name of Albert Elliot? Polly had all the family history off pat.’

‘Too much of a coincidence.’ Now Tom knew the reason for his unease.

‘Is it? Think on this, then. Didn’t Mrs Clementina call her house Pendenys Place, and name her first son Elliot – her maiden name? And Nathan and Albert she called for her father and grandfather. Coincidence, Tom? And Polly Purvis was Polly Pendennis, before she married Dickon. She’s actually related to Clementina Sutton. Polly’s grandfather was a Pendennis. She told me he had two sisters; one of them called Sarah Jane – the other –’

‘Don’t tell me! The other was Mary Anne! But what luck did that great-grandmother of Elliot Sutton’s ever have? Took in washing, didn’t she, and worked as a herring woman. You think that’s lucky?’

‘Look, Tom – Polly said it. Mary Anne’s luck, because Mary Anne’s husband ended up with his own foundry and their son got even richer.’

‘All right, then. Polly Purvis – Pendennis – is cousin twice removed to that Elliot? Can’t hold that against the woman!’

‘No, but there’s her son – that little Keth. He’s dark, too. I don’t think I want him to come to my house.’

‘Dark, like his many-times removed cousin, Elliot Sutton, you mean? So you’re going to hold it against the bairn? You, who said you’d make a fuss of the little lad; feed him up a bit? Yet now it seems he’s got bad blood?’

‘I didn’t say that, Tom!’

‘Bad blood,’ Tom urged, his temper rising quick, Alice acknowledged, as it always did when he got himself bonny and mad. ‘And that little lad isn’t going to be allowed near our Daisy because he’s Elliot Sutton’s distant kin? Oh, Alice, I thought better of you. And it isn’t even proven, either!’

‘It is, Tom. As far as I’m concerned, it is.’

‘Then you’ll tell Polly Purvis; tell her about Elliot who is dark because it threw back from a great-grandmother he never knew? But being dark is nothing to do with it; being wicked is more to the point and being spoiled and indulged by his mother and made to think he can do no wrong. He’s what that foolish Mrs Clementina made him and the washerwoman four generations back has nowt to do with his womanizing nor his wickedness!’

‘I never thought to hear you defending one of Mary Anne’s, Tom!’

‘But Elliot Sutton isn’t one of hers! He’s got her Cornish darkness, that’s all. Mary Anne Pendennis was a woman who worked hard to help her man start his first foundry, and was a decent woman, if all Reuben told me is true. I’ll not have you thinking such nonsense, Alice! I thought you had more sense about you. I thought –’

‘Whisht, Tom! Stop your shouting or you’ll wake the bairn. Here – give her to me and I’ll put her to bed. I won’t have you frightening her!’

‘And I, lass, won’t have you getting yourself into a tizzy because Polly Purvis seems to be related to that Elliot, and so distantly related as makes no matter,’ he insisted, his voice gentle again. ‘And I’m sorry I made a noise. It’s something I’ll have to check, this temper of mine.’

‘Very well, and I’ll try not to let myself worry over it. And I’ll not take it out on that little Keth, either.’ Her lips moved into the smallest of smiles. ‘And when he comes to see Daisy, I’ll give him some toast, well drippinged, and sugared bread, an’ all. Does that please you?’

‘It does.’

‘Then will you take that little lass up to her cot, or are you going to sit there, nursing her all night?’

‘I’ll take her up now – if you’ll forget all you’ve heard this day about Mary Anne Pendennis and not chew it over with Polly Purvis and make more of it than it deserves. Any road, who wants to be saddled with kin like him? Do the young woman a favour, and forget it? And remember, that Cornish great-grandmother is nothing to do with you, nor me, nor Daisy!’

‘Nor is she. And I won’t talk about it again – I promise …’

She watched her man cradling their child, supporting her with a work-roughened hand, and tears sprang to her eyes, just to see the way he loved her.

And he was right – or almost so. That long-ago Mary Anne had nothing to do with her nor Tom nor Daisy. But what of Drew, her firstborn; almost the same age as Keth, and Keth’s cousin, though many times removed.

Yet Keth was dark – Mary Anne Pendennis dark – and Drew was Sutton fair and she, Alice Dwerryhouse, was a happy, contented woman who would be kind to the little boy who lived at Willow End, if only because he had the misfortune to look like a man whose very name she detested. And would never say again, if she could avoid it.

10

He saw her from his window as she turned the corner by the church, and hurried to his front door. When she opened the gate to his tiny front garden, he was standing on the doorstep, arms wide.

‘Lass!’ He folded her to him, awkwardly patting her back.

‘Reuben! Let me look at you,’ she smiled tremulously. ‘So long …’

‘Too long, Alice. But come you in. I’d heard tell you’d be arriving today. I’ve been watching out for you.’

‘News still travels fast, in Holdenby.’ She closed the almshouse door behind her. ‘I hope you’ve got the kettle on.’

He had. He nodded to the tray, set ready with cups, then asked, ‘And where’s that little Daisy, then?’

‘Fast asleep in her cot, with Julia watching over her. I’ll bring her to see you, in the morning – Drew, too.’

‘Aye. I like to see the boy. Her ladyship brings him, sometimes, when she visits us pensioners. He’s growing into a fine lad – a Rowangarth Sutton if ever I saw one.’ He looked at her, meaningfully.

‘He is, thanks be. And I’m coming to accept that nothing of what happened was his fault,’ Alice said softly. ‘All at once I saw him not as –’ She stopped, cheeks flushing. ‘I saw him as Julia’s son. He said, “Hullo, lady,” when we met. That was when I began to see things differently. And tomorrow, Lady Helen will be his legal guardian. It’s why I am here – to sign the papers.’

She could talk to Reuben and not watch every word she said. Reuben knew about Drew’s getting: knew everything.

‘And how’s Tom? Seems he got himself a good employer. Gentry, is the man?’

‘N-no. I wouldn’t say Mr Hillier is gentry, exactly. But he’s a gentleman and so taken with Daisy.’ Best they should talk about Daisy. ‘Makes a real fuss of her. And Tom’s well, and a fond father. There’s nothing too good for his little girl. It’ll be the start of his first real season at Windrush Hall, come October. Since we went there, he’s been busy rearing birds, and stocking up. There was only rough shooting and vermin shoots for Mr Hillier, but this year the game birds are thick in the covers. There’ll be good sport.’

‘You’ll be wanting to be back before it all starts, lass. It’ll be Tom’s busy time.’

‘I know,’ she smiled guiltily. ‘I’ve got to stop this gallivanting about. I’ve been away from home twice, this summer.’

‘Home? Is home down there now, Alice?’ Reuben lifted the kettle, pouring splashing, steaming water into the teapot.

‘Home’s where Tom is though we’ll always be northerners, him and me. It felt as if I’d never been away when I got into York and saw the Minster.’

‘You travelled up with Miss Julia, didn’t you?’ Reuben stirred the pot, noisily. ‘What was her doing in London this time?’

‘Legal business – about Aunt Sutton’s estate. I met up with her in London. I was glad of her company. It’s a long journey, with a baby.’

‘So you’re happy, lass? It turned out all right for you?’

‘I’m happy, Reuben.’ She picked up the teapot. ‘But I worry about you and I miss you. I wish you’d come and live with Tom and me. We’ve got three bedrooms.’

‘An’ you’ll need them all when you have more babbies! Thanks, lass, but I manage well enough, here. This little house is easy to keep warm; at Keeper’s, I rattled about like a pea in a tin can. And there’s Percy for company. Percy Catchpole’s retired – didst know?’

‘I did, but I’d still rather you were near me.’

‘And I’d rather you were here, Alice; you and Tom living beside Brattocks Wood, like we alus thought it would be. I looked forward to seeing you and him wed, and bairns around you.’

‘But that can’t ever be, Reuben. Rowangarth has no need of a keeper, now.’ She took his hand, holding it to her cheek. ‘Even if Giles had lived, he’d not have wanted birds reared to be shot out of the sky. He was against any killing. And come to think of it, if Giles had lived me and Tom wouldn’t have been married.’ She sipped her tea, frowning. ‘There won’t be any keeper here, for a while. Drew won’t be handling a gun for another ten years.’

‘You’re right – but even old men have dreams. You can’t blame me for wanting you up here, even though it would have its drawbacks – if you see what I’m getting at?’

‘You mean I wouldn’t have felt easy living near Pendenys? You are right – and as for Tom being here, when him and Elliot Sutton could meet and cross swords – oh, no! I’d always be on edge. Tom has a temper on him when he’s roused; best we’re well away from Rowangarth.’

‘So Tom’s still bitter about young Sutton?’ He held a match to his pipe, puffing thoughtfully, avoiding her eyes.

‘He is, Reuben. When he found out who Drew’s real father was, I never saw him so mad. He went white and quiet and walked out of the house; didn’t come back for hours. He said he’d shot better Germans. Tom can hold a grudge for ever. Some things he’ll never forgive and one of them’s Elliot Sutton.

‘So you see, that’s another reason we couldn’t come home to Rowangarth – not if something happened to make it possible. If Elliot and me chanced to meet, it might stir something up; something about Drew, I mean. While I’m out of sight I’m out of his mind.’

‘But Elliot Sutton is bound to have seen young Drew from time to time.’

‘I accept that, Reuben, but Julia is very protective of the boy. As far as she’s concerned, Drew is her brother’s child. Julia isn’t afraid of Elliot as I am, though she hates him every bit as much as me, because he got through that war without ever getting his boots mucky, whilst Andrew was killed. She’ll never forgive him for that as long as she lives. But forget him. Tell me, what’s been happening in Holdenby.’

‘Not a lot, ’cept that the Reverend Parkin was buried, last week. Another of her ladyship’s friends gone, though it’s thought hereabouts that Mr Nathan is looking for a living and Holdenby vicarage might suit him nicely. And talking about those Pendenys Suttons, talk has it that yon’ Elliot is courting serious.’ Without meeting Alice’s gaze, he refilled his teacup.

‘Talk by way of Will Stubbs, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Will had it from Pendenys’ groom, so there’ll be a grain of truth in it. Some foreigner, I believe. Seems no one at Pendenys had seen hide nor hair of him these last weeks. Busy chasing the lass around London, I shouldn’t wonder. But while he’s down there he’s out of your way, now isn’t he? No chance of you bumping into him whilst you’re here.’ He patted her hand reassuringly.

‘I’ll be able to walk in Brattocks Wood, then?’ All at once, she felt less uneasy.

‘Don’t see why not. I’d mention it, though, to the woodman; tell him who you are. Suppose you’ll be wanting to have a word with they old rooks?’ he winked.

‘You remembered, Reuben! But good news or bad it’s best told to the rooks.’

‘Surely no bad news?’

‘None at all. I’d just be catching up with things, and oh, Reuben,’ she sighed, ‘it’s so good to be back. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed you and Rowangarth and – and everything.’ And even though he didn’t hold with such goings-on, she cupped his face in her hands and gently kissed his cheek. ‘But me and Tom are happy, and there’s a home for you in Hampshire, so think on. And I’d best not stay too long – not tonight.’

Wouldn’t be polite, for one thing, and for another, Daisy Dwerryhouse would soon be clamouring for her evening feed and there was no one but she could give it her.

‘You’ll come again tomorrow, lass?’

‘I’ll come, Reuben – and Daisy and Drew. I promise.’

The air held a hint of chill as she walked back to Rowangarth and dusk came suddenly as it always did, in late September.

Dear Reuben, Alice thought dreamily as Daisy fed gently at her breast. He hadn’t changed in the almost two years since she left. He was snug in the little almshouse with his dogs for company and Percy not far down the road when he needed to talk about the old days; times when there had been two coachmen at Rowangarth and three gardeners – and three apprentices living in the bothy: Robert and Giles away at school and Miss Julia a tomboy who would one day grow up to beauty.

They had been good days, and her ladyship so fair and beautiful that just to look at her made you think of fairy-tales and happy-ever-afters. Alice called back the golden days. Fourteen, she had been, with all memory of Aunt Bella behind her and Rowangarth her first real home.

Yet still she had not been prepared for the feeling of homecoming that this afternoon had reached out to gather her close. To turn the sweep of the drive and see the old house, unchanged and unchanging, made her want to weep with joy.

And then the scent and sound and feel of the house. The slightly musty, slightly smoky smell that came from old books and wide chimney flues; beech logs snapping in stone hearths, flames flickering on old wood and old, uneven walls. Dear, safe Rowangarth that would one day belong to Drew. She had been so happy, so in love in that precious summer of ’fourteen. And then war had come.

She laid Daisy against her shoulder, patting her back, rocking her gently as Tom always did. Tom would be missing his little girl tonight. Happen he’d have taken the dogs to walk the game covers and let it be known the keeper was not sleeping, or maybe he’d have called on Polly and Dickon; shared a sup of tea with them. They would do all right in Willow End. Dickon had a settled look about him, now, and young Keth had stopped sucking his thumb and smiled more often.

Yet nothing could change the fact that Keth Purvis was dark – Mary Anne Pendennis dark – because from way back he was related to her. Did that mean, she frowned, he would grow up in the image of Elliot Sutton, with the same gypsy looks; grow up to remind her?

Not that the boy could help the way he was. Nature could be capricious. Drew, who should have been dark, had been born Sutton fair. During the long weeks of his coming it was the thing she most dreaded; that the rape child she carried would be born to father himself and make a nonsense of the fact that Giles had claimed him.

Yet Drew had been lucky and because of that luck she should be grateful to the Fates who had decreed it and not harbour suspicions about the young boy at Willow End.

‘Asleep?’ The voice from the doorway broke into her thoughts.

‘No, Julia. Just thinking – about Keth Purvis, if you must know.’

‘The child you say looks like Elliot Sutton? Surely you don’t hold that against him?’

‘Not really. Keth’s a nice little boy.’ Of course he was. Keth would be company for Daisy; would walk with her the mile to school and back, four summers from now.

But why did he have to remind her, every time she saw him, of a March evening and a stable in a French village called Celverte? The twenty-sixth day of March. The day they told her that Tom had been killed; the night Elliot lurched down the path towards her. The last day, come to think of it, that Julia was ever to see Andrew. A black day.

‘A nice little boy,’ she repeated, firmly. A little lad who came to her door for dripping toast. An ordinary, dark-haired child, for goodness sake, and shame on Alice Dwerryhouse for thinking otherwise! ‘And would you mind, Julia, if I slipped down to the kitchen for a chat? If I remember rightly, Mrs Shaw always puts the kettle on, just about this time.’

A chat with Cook and Mary and Tilda, just like it used to be, before she climbed into bed and listened to the night sounds she remembered so well; to creaking boards and rattling window frames and outside, in Brattocks, the cries of hunting owls.

‘I’ll come with you. Bet you anything,’ Julia smiled, ‘that Cook has made cherry scones.’ Mrs Shaw always made cherry scones on special days. ‘And I do so wish you were staying, Alice. For ever, I mean. I wish you were in the sewing-room again and you and I sharing secrets like we used to. And Andrew with me, still, and Tom waiting for Reuben to retire so he could leave the bothy and live with you in Keeper’s Cottage.’

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