Mistletoe Marriage. Jessica Hart

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      CHAPTER THREE

      HARRIET BECKWITH came out of the kitchen the moment she heard Sophie let herself in at the front door. In spite of wearing an apron and actually holding a rolling pin, she managed to look the antithesis of the clichéd farmer’s wife. No buxom figure or floury hands for Sophie’s mother. Instead she was a handsome, well-groomed woman, with every hair perfectly in place and an air of brisk competence.

      ‘Look at the state of you, Sophie!’ She tutted as Sophie took off her jacket. ‘You’re absolutely covered in mud! And as for your hair…’ She trailed off in despair. ‘I suppose you’ve been up at Haw Gill?’

      As always, she managed to make Sophie feel like a scrubby, rather exasperating schoolgirl. Sophie tried not to feel sullen and defensive in response, but it was hard sometimes to remember that she was thirty-one and not fourteen.

      ‘I thought I’d go and see Bram,’ she said placatingly.

      ‘I don’t know what on earth you two find to talk about,’ said Harriet, shaking her head.

      What would her mother say if she knew they had been talking about marriage? Sophie watched Harriet pick up the jacket she had just slung carelessly over the chair and brush it down fussily.

      Knowing her mother, she’d probably just sigh and say, Not with your hair like that, surely, Sophie?

      ‘Oh, you know—this and that,’ she answered vaguely.

      Harriet was still brushing fastidiously. ‘Where have you been in this jacket? It’s covered in dog hairs and leaves!’

      ‘That’ll be from the Land Rover,’ said Sophie. ‘Bram drove me home.’

      They had talked easily enough once they had dropped the bizarre marriage idea. Bram hadn’t tried to persuade her to change her mind, and Sophie thought that it was just as well. She had been perilously close to taking him up on his offer at one point, and, even though she was sure that she had made the right decision, she had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t have taken much for her to give in.

      It was all just the same as ever. Or almost. Sophie had been aware of a faint constraint on the drive down to Glebe Farm. ‘I’ll maybe see you at Christmas, then,’ was all Bram had said when he dropped her off. He hadn’t asked her to think about marrying him, to take her time and maybe reconsider.

      So that was that.

      ‘I’m glad to hear that Bram didn’t let you go wandering around in the dark,’ sniffed Harriet. ‘At least he’s got some sense.’

      Bram was always sensible, always practical. Which made it all the more amazing that he would come up with that idea of getting married. He had even managed to make it sound like the obvious solution.

      ‘It’s only half past six,’ Sophie protested, following her mother into the kitchen as she tried to shake the whole thought of that strange proposal from her mind.

      The kitchen at Glebe Farm could not have been more different from the one at Haw Gill. In place of comfortable, shabby chairs and cluttered dressers there were gleaming steel surfaces, installed when Harriet’s catering business had begun to take off. That had now been expanded into a specially designed outbuilding, where Sophie’s mother controlled the five women from the village who helped there with the ruthless efficiency of a Harvard MBA graduate. Talk about the iron fist in the oven glove.

      ‘How is Bram getting on, anyway?’ her mother asked as she went back to rolling pastry. When Sophie tried to make pastry she got flour everywhere, but Harriet’s apron was pristine. ‘It must be difficult for him now Molly’s gone.’

      Sophie clambered awkwardly onto one of the modern stools at the breakfast bar. ‘He’s managing.’

      ‘He needs to find himself СКАЧАТЬ