A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ Mistress?’

      ‘That’s how she liked to be addressed by her staff,’ I explained, ‘which I was, until I ran off and married her cousin Rory. Then after I had Lucy I got the job here at Blackwalls with Lady Betty, keeping everything clean and in good repair, passing on her orders to the other staff, taking guided tours around the house on open days, being her PA…you name it, I did it. Lady Betty didn’t pay me a lot, but she was very kind to me and Lucy, and I was fond of her.’

      I touched the little gold, enamel and crystal bee brooch I wore. ‘She gave me this as a keepsake when I visited her in the hospital, because she said she had a premonition she wasn’t going to see Blackwalls again. And she was quite right, because once she signed the power of attorney, her nephew had her moved to an upmarket old people’s home and she just lost the will to live. The last time I visited her she didn’t really recognise me.’

      I fished a tissue out of the box and blew my nose, while Mr Hobbs looked away tactfully.

      ‘After he had been up here to see you, your grandfather said, and I quote his very words, “It seems to me the women of the family have always run things behind the scenes here at Winter’s End, so one might as well take over as head of the family and have done with it.” He thought you would make a better job of it than Jack ever would, especially with Lucy to help you. Yes…’ he added thoughtfully, ‘he was particularly taken with your daughter.’

      ‘He was? But they quarrelled the whole time he was here!’

      ‘He said she had the typical Winter temperament, allied with an almost masculine sense of business.’

      ‘Well, I suppose he meant that as a compliment,’ I conceded. ‘She is very bossy and argumentative, though it’s called assertiveness these days, and she did business studies and English at university.’

      ‘Those would be considerable assets in running the estate. Sir William also said that, although so unlike your mother in character, in appearance Lucy reminded him very much of how Susan had been at the same age.’

      ‘Yes, she’s tall, slender and has that lovely red-gold hair—nothing like me. I don’t look like a Winter at all. Even Jack, who is only a cousin several times removed, looks more like a Winter than I do!’

      ‘Oh, there are the occasional darker Winters,’ he assured me. ‘Sir William told me that he was deeply sorry that he had not seen you grow up, but I believe he would have discovered your whereabouts much earlier had your mother not changed her name to all intents and purposes, to—’ he looked down at his papers—‘Sukie Starchild.’

      ‘I know. Dreadful, isn’t it? She wanted to call me Skye, but I stuck to Sophy. I did have to use the surname Starchild on the few occasions when we stayed somewhere long enough for me to go to school, though, so Grandfather couldn’t find us. She said she was afraid I would be taken away from her, but I often wondered if there was something else making her so paranoid about it.’

      ‘There was,’ Mr Hobbs said. ‘Sir William did tell Susan that he would cut off her allowance and have her declared an unfit mother if she didn’t change her ways, but those were merely empty threats that he had no intention of carrying out, for he often said things in temper that he afterwards regretted.’

      ‘But my mother obviously believed he meant them that time?’

      ‘That is so, but when she left she also took with her a diamond necklace that was not actually hers to dispose of—a family heirloom, in fact. He circulated its description, so he would have been notified if it came up for sale, but when it didn’t he assumed it had been broken up and the stones recut.’

      ‘I wondered how she bought the van in the first place!’ I exclaimed. ‘And she did have some very dodgy friends when I was very small and we were living in squats in London.’

      ‘Sir William assumed she would return when the money ran out, so by the time he realised she wasn’t going to, and began to try to trace you both, you had vanished.’

      ‘She was terrified of him finding her, and I suppose that explains why—but she never could stand anger and loud voices; she was such a gentle person.’

      ‘He never quite gave up hope that you would both be found, Sophy—and then, of course, he discovered that your mother had died in an accident. You know that her body was repatriated, and is buried in the family plot in the Sticklepond graveyard?’

      I nodded. ‘Though I didn’t find out until much later what had happened.’

      ‘Your grandfather assumed you had been in America with her, so that is where he searched again for you, without result.’

      ‘No, I was fourteen by then, and I’d had enough of travelling. I didn’t like my mother’s new boyfriend much, either, so I didn’t want to go to California with them. We’d been living in a commune in Scotland and my best friend’s mother offered to look after me if I stayed, so I did until I got a live-in job at the castle, when I was sixteen.’

      ‘And stayed lost until someone pointed out the unusual name “Sophy Winter” in a magazine advert,’ Mr Hobbs said, ‘when, on making enquiries, Sir William discovered that you were indeed his granddaughter.’

      ‘Yes, I reverted to my real name after my mother died. I always felt ridiculous as a Starchild—so old hippie. And I didn’t change my name when I married Lucy’s father, I just stayed a Winter. I was only married for five minutes anyway.’

      Actually, that was a slight exaggeration: it was five weeks, just long enough for me to fall pregnant and for commitment-phobe Rory to get such cold feet that he went away to find himself. So far as I know, he’s still looking.

      ‘Yes, that did worry your grandfather a little—but at least you had got married.’

      ‘Unlike my mother?’

      He ignored that, smoothing out the papers in front of him with a dry, wrinkled finger. ‘You have no contact with your former husband?’

      ‘No, none. He was a cousin of the owner of the castle I was working in, a diver working on the oilrigs—you know, six weeks on, six off. He was ten years older than me, but we fell in love and married in Gretna Green—very romantic—and then settled down in a rented cottage. Then he supposedly went off back to work and instead vanished.’

      I had waited and waited for him, sure he would come back, until I finally realised that he’d taken everything he valued with him and never meant to return at all. With hindsight I could see that I had been the one in love with the idea of marriage and domesticity, the family I yearned for, and he had simply gone along with it in a moment of madness, or frustrated lust, or…something.

      ‘And that is the last you saw of him?’ Mr Hobbs prompted gently. ‘He never contacted you again?’

      ‘No, though I’m sure his family knew where he was. But they wouldn’t have anything to do with me, of course, because they were horrified when he married the help. I’ve heard that he has been working abroad ever since, and I divorced him eventually. There hasn’t been anyone serious in my life since then. I don’t need anyone really; I’ve usually got a dog.’

      ‘Quite,’ he said, though looking slightly perplexed. ‘That does, however, simplify matters. I would most earnestly advise you not to consider selling the property at this juncture, СКАЧАТЬ