SUSANNE MCCARTHY - Forsaking All Others

The older woman glanced up, her expression registering a faint surprise. “Madeleine…!” She recovered herself quickly. “You managed to find the time to come over, then?” she enquired with stiff cordiality. “Is Jamie with you?”

Maddy refused to allow herself to be needled. “Yes, he’s here—he’s down in the kitchen, playing with his kitten.” With a flicker of surprise, she recognised the two children who had arrived with her sister-in-law. “Goodness, it’s…Aubrey and Venetia, isn’t it? How you’ve grown!”

“It’s a long time since you’ve seen them,” Julia reminded her with a touch of asperity. “Run along downstairs, you two,” she added briskly to the children. “And don’t make a nuisance of yourselves.”

Aubrey, the older of the two—he would be about ten now, by Maddy’s reckoning—slanted his mother a look of cool insolence that would have earned Jamie a good smack, and with a small shrug of his shoulders which implied that his mother’s injunction was insultingly juvenile for one of his mature years strolled away in the direction of the kitchen door. Venetia, meanwhile—a plain, dumpy child of the same age as Jamie—pouted and put her thumb in her mouth, clutching at her mother’s skirt.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.