A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance. Trisha Ashley
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with the legacy?’
‘I…no, what responsibilities?’
‘Apart from your grandfather charging you to complete a garden restoration scheme that has, in my opinion—and I have to say in all fairness, Jack’s—nearly brought the house to ruin, the livelihoods of several people working for the Winter’s End estate depends on your decision. You might also want to consider that Winter’s End has been your Great-Aunt Hebe’s home for all her life, though she does, of course, have some means of her own, as does her twin sister, Ottilie, who resides for part of the year in the coach house.’
I felt responsibility settle round my shoulders like a lead cape. ‘But I know nothing about managing an estate! How could I possibly take it on?’
‘But you do have relevant experience in looking after old properties, Ms Winter. Sir William thought you were just what Winter’s End needed.’
‘He did? But I’ve no experience of running one, only doing the donkey work and passing on orders to the other staff. And do call me Sophy—I have a feeling we are likely to see a lot of each other.’
His face broke into a smile like a rather jolly tortoise. ‘Or one of my sons—I am semi-retired, you know, though I like to keep my brain active by retaining one or two clients. But to get back to business, Sophy, Winter’s End is not a large house, although the gardens are extensive and take quite some keeping up, especially the yew maze and all the box hedges and topiary. Do you remember the spiral maze?’
I nodded. ‘At the front of the house.’ I felt a sudden pang for the small, mischievous Sophy who used to run through it with Grandfather’s pack of miniature spaniels chasing after her, yapping madly—and who would then usually have to go back and rescue one or two of them who had got lost among the labyrinthine turns. ‘It was quite low, wasn’t it? Most tall adults would be able to see over the top of the hedges.’
‘That’s right, and all those curves and rounded edges take a good deal of clipping. Then there is a considerable area of woodland on the opposite side of the valley to the house and one tenanted farm. Are you interested in gardening at all?’
‘I had enough of mulching and digging in all weathers when I lived in the Scottish commune to cure me of wanting to be a hands-on gardener, but I do love the frivolity of gardens made just to look at.’
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘And Sir William told me that you have considerable expertise in caring for old houses and their contents from your previous employment, do you not?’
‘Oh, yes, I left school at sixteen and my first job was in a Scottish castle. The Mistress saw to it that I learned the correct way to clean it and all the valuable things it contained.’
‘The 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,