PENNY JORDAN - Scandals

‘She hasn’t said anything to me,’ Ella admitted. ‘In fact, if anything she was rather evasive when I brought up the subject, so I could be wrong, but somehow I don’t think so.’

In their room – the room that had been hers when she had been growing up, but which her mother had had redecorated five years ago, along with the rest of the house – Emerald dropped into one of the pretty Louis Quatorze-style chairs, the elegant arch of her feet in the high heels she insisted on wearing no matter what the fashion, revealed as she crossed her legs.

‘Why must our children be so exhausting, Drogo?’ she demanded.

‘Probably because they’re your children,’ Drogo answered with a smile.

‘I would never have tried to do anything as pointlessly silly as Katie,’ Emerald claimed, quickly changing the subject to continue, ‘Poor Janey, she’s beginning to look quite old. She really should take a bit more care of herself

‘I doubt she has the time – or the money,’ Drogo said mildly.

‘They’d be a lot better off if they let Fitton and moved in here with Mummy and Jay. After all, John could run both estates just as easily from here as he can from Fitton. Denham’s a far more comfortable house, and Janey would be on hand to help Mummy and Jay when they need it.’

‘Fitton means far too much to John for him to ever want to do that, and even if it didn’t, John would still have the problem of Cassandra living in the Dower House.’

Emerald gave a small exasperated sigh.

‘I do hope that Rose isn’t going to get too involved with Nick and those children of his now that he and Sarah are separating. Not now, when we’re hoping to expand into the commercial market. If we do get contracts to provide the soft furnishings and the interior designs for hotel bedrooms, then we’re going to need Rose. She fusses far too much over Nick – I’ve always said so. He isn’t even her child, and there’s no real proof that Josh fathered him.’

‘Apart from the fact that Nick looks exactly like Josh, you mean,’ Drogo pointed out. He was used to his wife criticising her relatives, and he knew that in reality Emerald’s critical manner was just a cover for the concern that her nature would not allow her to express openly.

‘It’s all very well us coming here to Denham, Drogo, but the family would be every bit as comfortable at Osterby as they are here. More so, in fact, since Osterby is properly staffed.’

Since Osterby, the Lenchester family seat, was of a similar size to Blenheim, whereas Denham was of far more modest proportions, at Emerald’s comment Drogo gave her a wry look.

‘Osterby might have the grandeur and stature of a would-be palace, but Denham is a proper home.’

‘It isn’t as though Mummy and Jay couldn’t afford to employ more staff. Mummy inherited all Greatgrandmother’s money, after all, and that was millions. Heavens, when Mummy grew up here, there were dozens of servants. Now, apart from the Leggits and the estate workers, there’s no one. Janey’s actually cooked virtually all the food for Christmas herself. I really do think we’re going to have to say something to Mummy. I mean, Janey was actually talking about drawing up a rota for kitchen duties!’ Emerald wrinkled her nose, making Drogo laugh. ‘It’s all right for you,’ she objected. ‘My manicure will never last until we get back to London.’

‘You do realise that you are the world’s worst snob, don’t you?’ Drogo teased her. ‘And that we’re going to be in the Australian outback for nearly three weeks when we leave here?’

‘You might be in the Australian outback, counting your sheep or whatever it is people do on sheep stations; I shall be staying in a decent hotel in Sydney or the Whitsunday Islands.’ A sudden smile illuminated her face, the other side of her nature breaking through like a patch of brilliantly blue in an otherwise grey sky.

‘I am so lucky to have married you, Drogo.’ She reached up to cup his face, leaning forward to kiss him, and then stopped to add in her normal manner, ‘but not, of course, as lucky as you were to marry me.’

‘Happy?’

Olivia nodded, turning her face towards Robert, the wind tangling the normal sleekness of her hair, her hand held warmly within Robert’s clasp as they walked together through Denham’s frost-rimed formal gardens, their Wellington boot-clad feet crunching on the gravel pathways. They startled a couple of male pheasants that had been foraging for food and that now walked slowly away in that manner peculiar to pheasants, meant to convey the impression that they actually weren’t there at all.

‘Yes, I am happy,’ Olivia reaffirmed. ‘And you?’

‘Not as happy as I would be if I was kissing you, but I think we’re already the subject of enough family curiosity, without stoking up any more for the time being, don’t you?’

His answer couldn’t have shown better how similar their thinking was. Olivia loved that there was no gameplaying between them, no having to contrive artificial tests and tricks so that each could lure the other into being the first to admit to their feelings. It had charmed and delighted her that instead of holding back from her, in the style favoured by New York men – who promised to ring and then didn’t, only to do so just when you’d given up, requiring a girl to pretend then that she wasn’t interested, or risk losing face – Robert had been prompt and plain about seeking her out this morning, after picking her up at the airport yesterday, discreetly creating an opportunity for them to be alone together via the simple expedient of announcing after breakfast, ‘Come on, Olivia. It’s Christmas Eve, and you and I are on holly-finding duties. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas at Denham without holly’

‘Mom’s already been quizzing me, saying that we seemed to be “getting on very well”,’ she informed Robert ruefully, loving the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed.

‘That’s probably because my mother will have been warning her not to let you seduce me,’ he teased her, mock solemnly.

Olivia aimed a playful punch at his shoulder with her free hand, retaliating, ‘My mother has been warning me to remember that you’ve got a decision to make about Lauranto.’

‘Is that an issue?’

Oh, she did like his directness. It made everything feel so easy and natural.

‘Not for me,’ she answered him truthfully. ‘It must be a difficult decision for you to make, though?’

‘I do feel I have a duty to the people of Lauranto. My grandmother is set in her ways; the whole country is in need of modernisation.’ He turned to her. ‘And I, Olivia, have a very great need of you in my life.’

So this was happiness, this giddy, dizzy, disbelief, this delight that made everything – every sensation, every sense, every thought – feel as though it was imbued with a special wonder.

Hand in hand they continued through the garden. The crisp winter air smelled of frost and wood smoke from Denham’s chimneys, the sky swept clean of clouds by the sharp easterly wind blowing down from the Derbyshire hills, the Cheshire plain cradled snugly between those hills and the Welsh mountains to the west. The Romans had marched and fought and settled here, mining the area’s rich deposits of salt, building the fortress city of Chester, but it was a county that belied the bloodiness of its history, blanketing it with its rich farmland, which spoke more easily of orderly contentment and peace.

They’d reached the end of the walled garden now, the land beyond it parkland scattered with the handsome specimens of trees originally planted by Denham’s first owner.

With unspoken mutual consent, Robert opened the age-silvered oak door in the wall to let Olivia pass through ahead of him. To the west of the formal garden lay the vegetable garden and the Victorian succession houses, whilst in front of them, beyond a pretty wooded area in which winter crocuses were still showing their lavender petals, lay the ha-ha that separated the formal gardens from the park, with its muntjac deer.