A Winter’s Tale (9 page)

As we walked along I noticed lighter patches on the walls where pictures had been removed—perhaps when Grandfather was searching for something to pay death duties with. How odd to think of him here, planning the implications of his impending death on the Inland Revenue, making sure everything was settled before I was even told he had gone.

‘Are the missing paintings still away being cleaned and valued?’ I asked.

‘No, they have been returned. They’re stacked in the Blue Bedroom waiting to be rehung.’

At the end we turned left past a suit of armour made for a short, fat gentleman and went through a door into the West Wing, down two steps, round a corner, and up one step to a passage.

‘This is the Blue Bedroom,’ Hebe said, indicating a door, ‘then my room and a bathroom. The Red Bedroom will be Jack’s when he arrives. Of course, he should have had my brother’s room, only,’ she added resentfully, walking on and throwing open another door, ‘Ottie
insisted
that you should have it.’

‘But really, I don’t mind at all if Jack has Grandfather’s room,’ I protested. (Especially if Grandfather actually died there!) ‘I thought perhaps my old room on the nursery floor…’

My voice petered out: someone had lit an incongruous little gas heater in the magnificent fireplace and the red glow reflected off a great mahogany bed covered with the kind of jewel-coloured crazy patchwork that I make myself. The curtains were of the
same soft, faded gold velvet as the bed hangings and, like the Long Room, the oriole windows jutted out over the terraces at the rear of the house, with a distant glimpse of the river at the bottom and the wood across the valley.

‘What a lovely room! You know, I don’t think I ever came in here when I was a child,’ I said, pulling back the drapes. Below were laid out the intricate, lacy shapes of terraced knot gardens, though the lowest level looked to be still very much a work in progress.

‘I’m so happy to be back, Aunt Hebe!’ I said spontaneously, turning to smile at her. ‘I haven’t forgotten how kind you always were to me, telling me bedtime bible stories and giving me rose fondants when I hurt myself.’

She softened slightly. ‘Couldn’t have you growing up a
complete
heathen. We missed you when Susan took you away, but we thought she’d be back again eventually, when the money ran out. And of course you were only a
girl
. It would have been different if you had been a boy.’

‘Sorry about that,’ I said drily, though her casual dismissal hurt.

‘My brother hoped that Susan would come to her senses and get married, and there would be more children—a son,’ she added, rubbing it in. But I’d already got the message: to Aunt Hebe, girls didn’t count, and illegitimate girls counted even less.

‘But then my cousin Louisa died and eventually Jack was sent back to school in England, and spent all his holidays here.’

‘Well, I’m sure that made everything right as rain, then,’ I said sourly. I mean, I liked Jack, but much more of this kind of thing and I would start to go off him rapidly.

‘It should have done, but I’m afraid Jack was a disappointment to my brother. Their characters were just too dissimilar, though Jack did try, by taking an interest in the architecture of the house and the family history. Then
William somehow got the idea that Jack was thinking of marrying Melinda Seldon—or Christopher, as she has been calling herself again since her husband died. But if he
had
been, which I personally very much doubt, he gave it up once William made it clear he disapproved of the match. He never liked her, though of course she’s very wealthy now and, goodness knows, Winter’s End could do with a rich heiress marrying into the family.’

‘Was she the blonde woman on the grey horse that ran into my car?’ I asked, thinking rather despondently that the equestrian Helen of Troy and Jack would have made a wonderful couple—but also that Jack hadn’t seemed the kind of man who would meekly give up the woman he loved just to please his grandfather.

‘Yes, that was Melinda. She was widowed last year and moved back here to live with her mother, who is one of my oldest friends. Naturally, she and Jack saw a lot of each other. For one thing, they have lots of friends in common, but also he had entered into a business arrangement with her to develop the property she inherited from her late husband.’

‘She is very beautiful,’ I said wistfully.

‘She is, but also a great flirt—as a girl she played all the local boys off against each other quite shamelessly—but if Jack was tempted after she was widowed, then I expect he thought better of it, even before William mentioned the matter. He had already made one misalliance, you see, soon after he left university—a short-lived affair.’

‘So was mine, though in my case it was my husband’s family who thought he’d made a misalliance.’

‘Oh no, dear, nobody marrying a Winter could possibly think that,’ Aunt Hebe assured me—but then, she had never met the Mistress.

‘Things did seem to improve between Jack and William until they had that last ghastly argument…’ She shuddered.

‘Oh? What was that about, Aunt Hebe?’

‘Jack had long wanted William to transfer ownership of Winter’s End to him, to try and avoid death duties, but he wouldn’t hear of it. This time Jack told his uncle that if he didn’t divert some of his income into keeping the house standing, he would have nothing but a garden to inherit anyway.’

‘Well, goodness knows, he was right about the house. Another couple of years of neglect and possibly it would have passed the point of no return.’

‘Yes, but my brother took it badly and told Jack he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatched. And then, to top it all, he’d heard about one of Jack’s business deals—such a
clever
boy—and accused him of only wanting to get his hands on Winter’s End so he could turn it into an apartment block. I told him he was being absurd, because Jack wouldn’t dream of doing anything of the kind to his ancestral home.’

‘No, I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ I agreed.

She smiled approvingly. ‘I’m sure my brother would have seen sense if he hadn’t suddenly discovered where
you
were and made that disastrous will. I can’t think what got into him.’

‘Sickening for you and Jack,’ I agreed, fascinated despite myself by this one-viewpoint argument, because it had obviously never occurred to either of them that I had any kind of right to inherit Winter’s End.

‘Yes—you do understand, don’t you? William didn’t even tell us he had found you, so the will came as a complete shock. And although Mr Hobbs says he was in his right mind and the will can’t be challenged, he can’t have been, really.’

‘He seemed to be all there with his cough drops when I met him,’ I assured her. ‘He spent most of his visit arguing with Lucy and it perked him up no end.’

‘Lucy?’

‘My daughter.’

‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten.’ Clearly, yet another girl was not
of great interest. ‘Didn’t Jack say she was working abroad somewhere?’

‘Japan—teaching English, but only for a year to make some money. The wages are good, and they run up such huge debts these days with the student loans, don’t they?’

‘Jack didn’t. In fact, that’s when he started his property renovation business.’

With an effort I refrained from remarking that Lucy had not had a rich parent to buy her a house when she went to university.

‘So you see,’ Aunt Hebe said insistently, turning her finely lined, hawk-nosed profile towards me, ‘Winter’s End should have been Jack’s. You
do
see that, don’t you? But he says he is going to buy it from you, so everything will be right again.’

‘He
did
offer to buy it when he visited me in Northumberland,’ I agreed, and again that overwhelming burst of feeling for Winter’s End ran through my veins like liquid fire, ‘but of course I hadn’t seen it then. I—I didn’t realise…’

‘No, I suppose you barely remember it. It can’t mean to you what it means to Jack.’

‘Until I got here I only had a few random memories…and dreams. I used to dream about Winter’s End,’ I said. ‘But from the moment I stepped into the house it felt like…like
home
.’

She was looking at me sharply now, seeing a little of what I felt in my face. ‘Of course—and it is your home. Dear Jack said that you would always be welcome to visit Winter’s End. We’re very happy to have you back in the family circle again.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Aunt Hebe,’ I said, then took a deep breath and added, ‘but actually…well, I think it is going to be the other way around.
Jack
will always be welcome to visit Winter’s End, but I’m not parting with it, even to him!’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘But Jack said you
would
—he’s had the documents drawn up and everything—and
now I have explained it all to you, you
must
see that it is Jack’s by right!’

‘No, it’s not—it’s mine. Grandfather trusted me to look after Winter’s End and his dependants, and that’s what I’m going to do. The house
needs
me. I’m sorry if Jack is disappointed, but that is my final decision. Here I am, and here I’ll stay—whatever it takes!’

She stared at me. ‘You looked just like my brother when you said that! Strange, for you are so dark you could be a changeling in the family. But you are quite attractive, in your way,’ she added in a non-sequitur, ‘and possibly not too old to give Winter’s End an heir.’

‘I already have—Lucy,’ I pointed out, ‘and I wasn’t planning to have any more.’

She shrugged off Lucy and changed tack. ‘Jack is coming down this weekend. He is
very
handsome, isn’t he?’

To my annoyance I felt myself grow pink. ‘Very.’

‘And very persuasive,’ she added, and smiled slightly acidly. ‘I am sure you will soon see sense once he has explained things to you in person. He sent you the bouquet over there, by the way, with a very nice message.’

One of those arrangements of out-of-season, sterile-looking blooms in an incongruously modern vase filled with what looked like (and possibly was) frogspawn, stood on a side table, a white card propped up against it: but shouldn’t my message have been sealed in a little envelope?

‘We won’t discuss it any more at the moment, because I am sure things will work out for the best in the end,’ Aunt Hebe said, seemingly more to herself than to me. ‘Right will prevail, one way or the other.’

I could see which way her mind was now heading—and whose rights she was concerned about—but I no longer knew quite what to think of Jack. For one thing, I’d like to know if my grandfather’s suspicions were correct and
something had been going on between him and this Melinda Christopher, who would be a rather hard act to follow…I was just about to try a bit of delicate—or indelicate—probing on the matter, when I saw that Aunt Hebe was staring fixedly at the shabby carpetbag I’d dumped on the bed.

‘Wasn’t that your mother’s?’

‘Yes. She had very few possessions because she was always travelling about, and she tended to give her stuff away. But this she hung on to.’

‘But the book—Alys Blezzard’s household book—Jack said you hadn’t got it? You don’t think your mother would have given
that
away or…or lost it? We assumed, when we discovered that it was missing, that she took it with her.’

I looked directly, and slightly accusingly, at her. ‘Mum did tell me about Alys Blezzard’s book, and that the original was kept locked away. But just how did Jack know about it? I thought it was supposed to be a secret, passed down only through the women of the family?’

She shifted a little, guiltily evading my gaze. ‘Oh, Jack thinks it’s only an old book of household hints and recipes—which it
is
, really. He’s terribly interested in anything to do with the history of Winter’s End—and anyway, it isn’t
truly
secret because copies of the recipes have been passed on by generations of Winter women, especially daughters leaving to get married—but not all of it, of course, just the useful bits. We always assumed your mother took it with her, but I suppose she could simply have hidden it somewhere before she left.’

‘If you thought she took it, you probably haven’t had a real search for it. I expect it’ll turn up,’ I suggested, noticing for the first time that Charlie had managed to scramble on the bed and now had his head inside the carpetbag.

So
that’s
where I had put the Eccles cakes.

Chapter Seven: Cold Embers

Father hath ridden over and hastily closed with the bargain, not seeking my wishes in the matter, though it is contrary to my will. I hear rumours that he too is to wed again, not a month after my mother and the babe departed this life…

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1580

After she had gone I let Charlie finish the Eccles cake, since he clearly needed feeding up—but on the floor, not the ancient and quite beautiful patchwork quilt.

It obviously refreshed him, because afterwards he started to chase invisible mice around the room, energetically leaping and pouncing.