Dazedly Walter stretched a hand out, reaching for the nearest solid surface. He made contact with the table, knocked a cream jug over, sent a cheese knife skimming to the floor. What on earth had happened? Fifteen minutes ago he had been the happy patriarch of a united family. He had been about to ask William to stay behind when the others went in to the drawing-room for coffee; he had been going to tell him he was handing the mill over to him lock, stock and barrel.
And now? Using the table for support he backed unsteadily towards his chair. Someone had righted it for him. Noel? Nina? He didn’t know. He only knew that William had walked out of the room as if were never going to enter it again, that Lottie was still crying, and that Rose … his Yorkshire Rose … was looking at him out of eyes so appalled his knees felt as if they were turning to jelly.
He sat down heavily. He could take it all back, of course. He could go after William and tell him he had been talking in rash anger, that he shouldn’t have done so and had now reconsidered and would be pleased meet the young woman in question. And then what would happen? William would marry her. He would be unable to hand the mill over to him – at least not with any peace of mind. There would then be no Scarborough for himself and Polly, or not in the near future and he couldn’t wait for a distant future. Dear God in heaven, hadn’t he already waited far too long? Twenty-five years too long?
“I think you should go after William, Uncle Walter,” Rose said unsteadily, uncaring of the fact that it wasn’t her place to tell her uncle what he should, or should not do. “Otherwise I think William may not come back and—”
Walter made a weary, silencing motion with his hand. He wasn’t angry at her impertinence. It hadn’t even registered on him. “No,” he said, thinking of Scarborough, knowing that Harry was more than capable of taking over the mill and was committed to it in a way William never had been. “No. I’m not going to be browbeaten. I’ve made my mind up. I’m standing by what I said. Harry can have the mill. And he can have it tomorrow.”
Before anyone could make a response there came the sound of the front door being slammed in someone’s wake. Seconds later Harry strode into the room. A Harry so blazingly angry Rose scarcely recognized him.
“William’s gone,” he hurled at his father from the wide-open doorway, his legs apart, his hands on his hips, his eyes so dark with outraged fury they looked to be black. “And he isn’t coming back! As for the house and the mill! If you think for one minute I’d take what is rightfully William’s you must be stark, staring senseless! I won’t accept a single brick or a penny-piece that should be his! Not now! Not ever!”
Nina made an agonized, strangling sound. Harry was oblivious. He’d known for years that his father was weak-willed and that, like most weak-willed characters, he could also be irrationally stubborn, but his stubborness had never before been cruel or pointless. This time it had been both. This time it had resulted in William leaving Crag-Side, probably for ever, just as their Aunt Lizzie had once done.
“You know what you’ve done, Father, don’t you?” His voice was as cutting as a whip. “You’ve split the family, just as Grandfather once split it. William will marry Sarah but he won’t bring her here. And he won’t bring their children here. You’ll grow old not knowing them, just as your father grew old not knowing Noel and Nina and Rose,” and unable to bear the pain and fury and utter frustration he felt for a moment longer, he spun violently on his heel, striding away through the adjoining drawing-room as if he, too, were never going to return.
It took Rose all her will-power not to run after him. She wanted to comfort him; to assure him that nothing would be quite as bad as he thought it would be for the simple reason that neither William nor his father were men of unbending pride. Caleb might have been capable of carrying grudges with him to the grave but neither William nor her uncle were remotely capable of doing so. Only the knowledge that it was Nina’s comfort Harry would want, not hers, kept her seated at the table.
Lottie was the first person to move. Very stiffly, keeping tightly hold of Noel’s hand, she rose to her feet. Looking across at her father she said in a cracked, strained voice, “If William doesn’t come back I shall never forgive you, Papa.”
Walter didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. He was way beyond speech. What had happened? How had everything gone so wrong? He’d been firm, for once. Decisive. And still he’d been undermined as he was always undermined! If Harry refused to take over the mill … He groaned and lowered his head into his hands. If Harry refused to take over the mill then an early, happy retirement in Scarborough with Polly would remain nothing more than a shimmering mirage.
“He only wanted to do what you once wanted to do,” Lottie continued, her voice so brittle it was a miracle to Rose it didn’t break completely. “And I’ve met Sarah. We’ve all met Sarah. She’s a grand girl. She wouldn’t shame William or show him up. She’d be sensible about the difference in their backgrounds. Even if you’re not a quarter as knowledgeable about English literature as she is, she wouldn’t have made you feel uncomfortable about it.”
Rose felt as if she were at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. First her uncle had behaved in a way she would never have thought him capable of. Then William had reacted with a passion so totally out of character it had stunned everyone present. And now Lottie – Lottie who had been so adamantly hostile towards Sarah – Lottie was championing her!
As Lottie walked from the room, her hand still in Noel’s, Rose knew by the set of Noel’s shoulders that Lottie had at last achieved what she had long ached to achieve. She had gained his admiration.
“I think … if you’ll excuse me, Uncle Walter …” Nina rose to her feet, her face taut with distress.
Rose felt a rush of warmth towards her. It was unlike Nina to care very greatly about anyone’s problems but her own and that she was so distressed now, by William’s quarrel with their uncle, just went to show what a very united family they had become.
Walter groaned, his head still in his hands. Rose sighed. She didn’t feel in the least like comforting him. He’d brought all his troubles on himself and her sympathies lay entirely with William. He did look abject, though, his shoulders slumped like those of a man of sixty or seventy. With another sigh she moved her chair closer to his. Someone had to make him see how wrong he had been, speaking to William as he had. Someone had to make him see that he had to put things right – and that he had to do so with all possible speed.
“You have to put things right with your father,” Nina said urgently to Harry.
It was the next day. William hadn’t returned to the house. Noel had gone to Leeds, taking Lottie with him. Rose was intent on returning to Bradford and Beck-Side Street and Harry, certain he would find William at the Thorpes, had said that he would drive her there.
The family’s motorcars were all garaged in what had once been stables and a horsey aroma that reminded Nina of the Porritt’s carthorse and Beck-Side Street still hung over the cobbles and empty stalls.
“You have to make sure he knows you didn’t really mean it when you said you would never accept Crag-Side or the mill,” she continued, seizing the first moment of privacy that they’d had and hoping Rose wouldn’t put in an appearance for several more minutes. “You have to let him know you were speaking in anger; that you were distressed by his falling out with William and …”
They had reached the Renault by now, she on the passenger side, Harry on the driving side. He stared at her across its open-topped width. Her upswept, deeply waving titian hair was burnished almost gold by the mid-morning sun. Her ivory silk blouse was high at the throat, the sleeves tight at the wrist and fastened by buttons of mother-of-pearl. Her skirt was the colour of rich caramel and from beneath its hem peeped shoes as pale as buttermilk. With the halo-like effect of her hair she looked ethereally lovely; as lovely as an angel in a pre-Raphaelite painting. But what she was saying wasn’t lovely. What she was saying was scarcely believable.
“Of course I meant what I said.” He had been about to open the car door but now he stood, not moving, his eyes holding hers. “William is the eldest,” he continued, hoping to God he had simply misunderstood her and speaking slowly and carefully so that she shouldn’t misunderstand him. “Crag-Side and the mill go to him. Only if William dies will I inherit them.”
Panic began bubbling deep in the pit of Nina’s stomach. All through a wakeful, restless night she had tried to convince herself that Harry hadn’t meant what he had said to his father; that out of a sense of fairness he had merely been trying to frighten his father into reconsidering what would, after all, be a very far-reaching decision. And all along, knowing how reckless and, in his own way, how high-principled he was, she had had doubts.
Now, facing him in the bright light of day, her doubts were certainties. Unless she persuaded him otherwise he was going to turn his back on all his father was offering him – and he was going to do so out of a loyalty to William that was entirely unnecessary.
Taking a deep steadying breath, knowing how very, very important it was that he should see things as she saw them, she said in what she hoped was a voice of sweet reason, “William doesn’t want your loyalty, Harry. Not where Crag-Side and the mill are concerned. Sarah would hate to be a mill owner’s wife. Her mill working friends would have nothing further to do with her and what other friend would she have? William’s tennis club friends wouldn’t want to know her and William’s mill owning acquaintances and their wives certainly wouldn’t befriend her. She would be completely isolated …”
“She would have her family.” He was standing with one foot resting on the Renault’s broad running board, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, his hair tumbling low over his brow. “She would have you, me, Rose, Noel, Lottie. Your mother and father. Her own mother and father. That would count for something, surely?”
There was an odd note in his voice; a note she had never heard before; a note that sent fresh waves of panic beating up into her throat. She wasn’t convincing him. He wasn’t changing his mind. And she knew now that he had to change his mind; that if he didn’t do so she would never marry him; that his turning his back on Crag-Side and the mill would be an action she would never be able to forgive.
Trying to keep her panic from showing in her voice, she said with passionate intensity, “Please listen to me, Harry! Even with all our support Sarah wouldn’t be happy living at Crag-Side. Forcing her to make such a social leap would be a cruelty to her, not a kindness. And William isn’t interested in the mill as you are. You’re the one who, whenever the opportunity arises, goes to the London wool sales. You’re the one your father talks business with and seeks advice from. You know yourself you’re far more cut out to be master of Rimmington’s than William is—”
“That’s not the point!” He ran a hand through his hair, hardly able to believe they were having such a conversation. How could she think, even for a minute, that he would stand by and watch his father disinherit William? Didn’t she understand anything about him? And why were they standing on either side of the Renault like two strangers? What was happening to them for God’s sake?
“It’s William’s right to inherit Crag-Side and the mill,” he said, wondering if, because her own parents had nothing to bequeath, she didn’t quite understand how inheritance worked.
He began to walk around the Renault towards her, intending to put an end to the nonsense by taking her in his arms.
As he did so two things happened simultaneously. Rose entered the stable yard, hurrying because she knew he had been waiting for her for at least ten minutes, and Nina’s tightly-reined self-control slipped at last.
“You’re wrong!” she flared, her cat-green eyes flashing such sparks he stopped dead in his tracks. “It isn’t his right to inherit it now! Not when your father doesn’t want him to inherit it! Not when he’s going to marry Sarah Thorpe!”
“What on earth …?” Rose came to a faltering stop.
“We should have Crag-Side!” Nina was oblivious of Rose’s presence. She couldn’t believe Harry could be so stupidly obstinate. If he’d ever lived in a back-to-back in Beck-Side Street he wouldn’t be so obstinate! Where did he think they were going to live when they were married? What did he think they were going to live on?
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Rose stared at her, hardly able to believe her ears. “Last night, at dinner, you were as upset as the rest of us when Uncle Walter said he was going to disinherit William …”
Her words tailed away, sickening understanding dawning. It hadn’t been the quarrel between William and his father which had so distressed Nina; it had been the prospect of having Crag-Side so suddenly and tantalizingly placed within her reach only, in the same few moments, to have it snatched away again.
Nina was uncaring of Rose’s opinion. All that mattered to her was that Harry should agree with her that Crag-Side should be theirs.
“Crag-Side’s never going to be ours,” he said, wishing to God he’d realized earlier the effect his father’s words had had on her. At least then he would have been prepared for the present ghastly scene. He would have been able to explain to her with a little more care; to have let her down with a little more gentleness. He ran his hand through his hair yet again, desperately wanting her to understand how impossible her demands were.
“Leastways, it’s not going to be ours in the way you want it to be ours,” he added with a conciliating smile. “We shall be able to live there, of course …”
“Live there?” Nina’s eyes blazed like emeralds. “How can we live there if William and Sarah are living there? If Crag-Side is theirs? And what about the mill? Are you going to oversee the running of it for William as if you’re one of his employees? As if you’re a … a … skivvy?“
Rose gasped.
The blood fled from Harry’s face. Until now he had assumed that, because of a basic misunderstanding, he and Nina were enduring a nasty scene that would soon be over and would have no far-reaching consequences. Now he knew differently.
Closing the distance between them in one stride he seized hold of her shoulders so hard she cried out in pain. “Christ Almighty!” he shouted, not knowing which emotion was uppermost, rage or bewilderment. “What the devil’s got into you, Nina? Yes, if William wants me to, I’ll run the mill for him! I’ll run it because I want to run it! Because like my grandfather I’m a wool-man to my fingertips!“
“But I don’t want to be married to a wool-man!“ There was hysteria in her voice now, the word ‘wool-man’meaning no more to her than the word ‘warehouse-man’. “I want to be married to a man of consequence!“ and with tears streaming down her face she twisted violently away from him, running out of the stable yard and towards the house as if all the hounds of hell were at her heels.
For a long moment neither Harry nor Rose moved and then, sucking in his breath, his jaw and neck muscles bunched into ugly knots, he wheeled round towards her. “Get in the car,” he ordered harshly. “I’m taking you to Bradford.”
“It doesn’t matter …” Still hardly able to believe what had just taken place, Rose’s voice was little more than a croak. “You don’t have to—”
“Get in!”
He had already seized hold of the Renault’s cranking-handle and, not knowing what else to do, she did as she was told.
It was a hideous journey. Harry didn’t speak and drove as if he were intent on inadvertently killing them both. When they finally reached Beck-Side Street he didn’t vault over the Renault’s driver’s door and walk her into the house to have a word with her parents, as he usually did. Instead, a pulse throbbing at the corner of his clenched jaw, he roared away over the cobbles intent on tracking down William.
Rose made her way dazedly into the house. How could Nina have behaved so appallingly? She had said terrible things to Harry. Things so terrible she didn’t even know how Nina could have thought them.
“Is tha … at you, li … ttle love?” her father called out from the cellar-head where, with difficulty, he was putting the lid back on the biscuit jar. “Your Mo … ther’s over at Ge … rtie’s. Did you ha … ave at nice time at Cra … ag-Side? Is everyone ke … eping well?”
“Yes, Pa,” she lied, glad he couldn’t see her face; glad her mother was out of the house. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, though. I’m going to lay down for a little while.”
Quickly, before he emerged from the cellar-head, she ran up the short, curving flight of stone steps that led to the two bedrooms. She wouldn’t say anything to her mother and father about the scene that had taken place at Crag-Side the previous evening. If her Uncle wanted her parents to know about it, then he would tell them about it himself. And she certainly wouldn’t tell them about the scene that had taken place between Nina and Harry. How could she? How could she possibly find the words?
She sat on the edge of her brass-headed bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. What would happen now? Would Nina and Harry’s love affair continue? And if it didn’t continue, would they still be friends?
Her hands tightened, the knuckles showing white. Unless Nina and Harry were friends, family get-togethers, such as the forthcoming trip to London for the Coronation, would be strained, miserable occasions.
Suddenly, very much, she wanted to be with Micky. Micky was moody at times, but he wasn’t likely to suddenly have a tempestuous row with anyone.
She sprang to her feet, clattering down the stairs, shouting out as she did so, “My headache’s gone now, Pa! I’m just going to Micky’s! I won’t be long!”
When she returned home three hours later it was to find Noel at home.
“Nina’s gone back to London,” he said bluntly, standing on the immaculately white-stoned front doorstep and giving her all the news even before she stepped inside the house. “William was round a little earlier. He wanted Ma and Pa to know about Sarah, and about the fall-out with his father. He and Sarah are getting married in three weeks time and he’d like us all to be there.”
“And Harry?” Her heart was beating fast and light as she wondered if Harry had been with William; if he was perhaps in the house now, talking to her father. “Was Harry with William? Is he here now?”
Noel shook his head. “No. William came by himself.” He gave a wry grin. “You’ll never guess what our surprising cousin is thinking of doing now.”
Still standing on the pavement, well aware that half a dozen neighbours were peering nosily at them from behind crocheted half-curtains, Rose couldn’t even begin to guess.
“No,” she said, knowing that if William was marrying Sarah in three weeks time, he certainly wasn’t contemplating an early return to Crag-Side, “I can’t.”
“He’s hoping to stand as the local Labour candidate in the next election.”
Rose’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “But that … that would be wonderful!“
“A Rimmington as a Bradford Labour candidate?” Noel chuckled, tickled pink by the idea. “It’d be more than wonderful. It’d be down right amazing. Can you imagine what our grandfather would have said if he’d still been alive? He’d have had a blue fit.”
She stepped up onto the step beside him. “Do Ma and Pa know?”
“Oh aye.” Noel lapsed into a Bradford accent almost as broad as Micky’s. “Pa’s so taken wi’idea he’s all set to go out canvassing for him, speech impediment or no speech impediment!”
Three weeks later, when William married Sarah in Bull Royd Methodist Chapel, the only members of the family not present were Walter and Nina. Nina had, however, sent a pretty lace-edged tray cloth to the happy couple as a wedding present and a note, apologizing for her absence and wishing them well.
Noel, who had been back in London for two weeks out of the intervening three, had travelled back to Bradford the previous day. Without telling anyone she was going to do so, Lottie had gone to Bradford’s Exchange Railway Station to meet him, running down the platform as he stepped off the train, throwing herself into his arms as if he were a hero returning from the wars.
When the wedding ceremony was over and Thorpes, Sugdens and Rimmingtons had filed out into the June sunshine in William and Sarah’s wake, Lizzie had tightened her hold on Laurence’s arm.
“Do you see what I see?” she had whispered to him in fierce hope as, in front of them, Noel and Lottie walked out of the church hand in hand. “Do you think perhaps …?”
He had patted her hand gently. “Do … on’t let’s leap to con … elusions, dear hea … rt,” he had said gently, knowing how savagely disappointed she was that Harry and Nina’s romance appeared to be over. “Lo … ttie’s little older tha … an Rose, and we wouldn’t be ima … gining our Rose in lo … ve with anyone, would we? She’s still li … ttle more than a bairn.”
The bairn in question, well aware that now she was sixteen she, too, could have been standing at the altar in bridal white if only the young man she loved, loved her, was smiling brightly, hiding her inner misery as she always hid it. Harry and Nina’s love affair might have come to a catastrophic finish, but Harry still loved Nina. She knew that, because he had told her so.
“And I think it’ll be all right eventually,” he had said to her, smiling lopsidedly down at her in a way that always made her tummy do somersaults. “She just doesn’t understand the principles governing the inheritance of family property, that’s all.”
“That isn’t all,” Rose had said bullishly, hating the fact that even after all the terrible things Nina had said to him, he was still trying to find an excuse for her behaviour. “When Nina wants something for herself she simply doesn’t think about other people. She certainly wasn’t thinking about William, was she? And why would she want Crag-Side? It isn’t as if she’ll ever want to live in it – or at least not permanently.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
They had been walking towards the tennis-court, about to have a game, and he stopped, his racket resting against his shoulder as he looked down at her with a perplexed frown.
Rose had given an exasperated shrug. “London and Paris and Rome,” she had said, wondering how he could possibly have forgotten. “Nina wants to be an internationally famous dress designer and that’s where internationally famous dress designers live. They don’t live in Yorkshire, at the edge of the moors.”
An absolutely unreadable expression had crossed his strong-boned face. It was almost as if such a thought had never before occurred to him. Rose had dismissed the notion as ridiculous. Everyone knew that Nina wanted to be an internationally famous dress designer. It was why she was in London, studying at St Martin’s.
She was so deep in unhappy thought that for once her sunny smile was absent. Seeing her sunk in deep gloom while everyone around her was boisterously congratulating the bride and groom, Harry walked towards her.
“What’s the matter, Funny-Face?” he asked affectionately. “You look as if you’re at a funeral, not a wedding.”
He often called her Funny-Face and until now she had never taken umbrage. Her face was a little odd but, as her father had once pointed out to her when, as a child, she had tearfully complained about its oddness, it was nicely odd.
“Nothing,” she said stiffly, wishing he would call her Yorkshire Rose, as his father did. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
“Well, if it makes you look so unhappy, don’t.” He stood companiably beside her. He had been William’s best man and he looked wonderful, a white bud rose in his lapel buttonhole, his starched linen shirt collar fashionably high, his dark hair curling over it in a way that was positively gypsyish. “You still haven’t been round the mill, have you?” he said suddenly. “Would you like me to show you round it one day next week?”
All her unhappy thoughts immediately vanished. To go round Rimmington’s! And to do so as a member of the family!
“Oh, yes Harry!” she said fiercely. “Oh, I should like to do that more than anything else in the whole, wide world!”
“We’ll start off in the wool-sorting,” he said four days later as they strolled across the cobbled mill yard. “I’ve always thought it’s what I’d choose to do myself if I was an ordinary mill worker.”
“I’ve been inside Lutterworth’s,” she said, having to walk very quickly to keep pace with him. “But only the design office and the weaving sheds.”
“And you didn’t mind the noise?” He shot her his down-slanting smile and she flushed rosily, happy to be on her own with him; happy to be inside the mill that had dominated her thoughts for so many years.
“No. Just as you think you could enjoy being a wool-sorter, I think I could enjoy being a weaver, or at least I could if I was allowed to make up my own designs.”
He laughed, amused at the thought of the mayhem that would ensue if his father’s weavers were allowed their heads where designs were concerned.
“Have you always been so passionately interested in textile design,?” he asked as they left the wool-sorting and made their way towards the scouring.
“Always.” Her eyes shone, testifying to the truth of her response. “My father used to take me with him to Lutterworth’s when he was Head Tapestry Designer there and I was a little girl. I thought it was wonderful. All the different pieces of cloth and the different textures and the colours and patterns. And I’m doing really well in design at school; it won’t be long now till I’m finished there. Then when I do, I want to be a Head Tapestry Designer, just like my father.”
They were outside the scouring shed, but the strong stench wasn’t bothering her. Not as it would have bothered William, who avoided the scouring sheds like the plague. He tried to imagine Nina in the wool-sorting and the scouring and failed utterly. Nina might want to be a mill owner’s wife but she certainly wouldn’t want to be familiar with the mill itself. Just as, in many ways, William didn’t.
“This isn’t the pleasantest part of the mill,” he said, leading the way into it, realizing for the first time just why it was the two of them had always enjoyed such a sense of compatability and rapport. It was because they, unlike William and Lottie and Noel and Nina, had inherited their grandfather’s passion for a piece of good cloth.
With increasing enjoyment he took her round the wool-combing and the spinning and the twisting. She was far more knowledgeable about everything than he had remotely imagined she would be. With happy enthusiasm he began telling her of just what he hoped to achieve over the next few years.
“And Uncle Walter won’t mind you making such radical changes?” she queried, having to raise her voice to a shout as they stepped into the roaring clatter of the weaving shed.
“Pa’s always been happy for someone else to do all the hack work for him,” Harry shouted back to her wryly. “And he doesn’t have a passion for the mill in the way I do. He never comes down here unless he really has to, and you can’t run a mill like that. The hands don’t like it. They’ll accept me as his stand-in, though. I spent every free hour of every school holiday I ever had, trotting around the place in Grandfather’s wake. He took me to my first wool sale when I was seven and when I was ten I was going with him to Bradford Wool Exchange!”
They lingered for quite a time in the weaving. Rose wanted to see the designs being woven and as the women stood at their looms, shuttles flying, she stopped to shout a friendly few words to one after another of them.
By the time they began making their way back to the offices her legs ached and her voice was hoarse.
“You were quite a hit,” Harry said, pushing open the door of a vast boardroom. In every part of the mill he had introduced her to every overlooker as his cousin. They had all known his grandfather had also been her grandfather. In many respects it had been almost a royal tour, and his only regret was that it was a tour their grandfather hadn’t taken with her. “Do you want to have lunch here, or do you want to go into Bradford to lunch?”
“If we have lunch here can we go to the design offices afterwards? Can I ask your Head Designer why he does so many check and herringbone designs and so few heather mixtures?”
Harry had rolled his eyes to heaven in pretended long-suffering patience, said yes of course they could eat in the boardroom, and wondered why on earth he hadn’t spent such a day months and months ago.
Later, as she sat beside him in the Renault and he took a long, scenic route back to Crag-Side over Baildon Moor, he felt buoyantly optimistic for the first time since Nina had rushed off back to London. It was the Coronation in a few days time. With the exception of William, they would all be together again as a family.
He increased speed and Rose gave a cry of delight as the wind tugged even more violently at her hair. He grinned, enjoying her enjoyment, suddenly certain that Nina would be looking forward to the family reunion as fiercely as he was looking forward to it. She would say she was sorry for her hysterical outburst; that she hadn’t meant the ugly things she had said; that she loved him as madly as he loved her.
He felt a rising in his crotch just imagining their reconciliation. As William had married so precipitately there was no reason why he and Nina shouldn’t marry precipitately also. It was June now. If they became engaged on Coronation Day they could be married by Christmas.
He began to whistle as the Renault plunged down towards Ilkley. By the time he and Nina married his father would, hopefully, have come to his senses over his disapproval of William and Sarah’s wedding. They would be able to have a grand wedding reception at Crag-Side, perhaps turn the winter garden into a ballroom …
Rose broke abruptly into his thoughts. “What on earth is Lottie doing waiting by the gates. Is she waiting for us, do you think? And if so, what on earth for?”
Harry slowed down, shouting out as he did so, “What the devil are you doing, Sis? Waiting for the postman?”
“No.” As the Renault came to a halt Lottie walked across to them, saying with typical bluntness, “There’s been a telegram from London. Nina is engaged to Rupert Winterton.”