CHAPTER ONE

      ‘DARLING, it’s so good to have you home. You can’t imagine how much there is to do! Sophy’s aunt hasn’t the faintest idea of how to go about organising a large wedding, and so she’s left absolutely everything to me.’

      As always, implicit in her mother’s welcome was the message that her love was conditional upon Gemma’s performance in her unwanted role as daughter of the house. All through her years at boarding school and then later at college Gemma had heard that dual message. At one time she had even been hurt by it, wishing that her mother wanted her home purely because she loved and needed her. But with maturity had come the wisdom to accept her parents as they were.

      It was not entirely her mother’s fault that she held all real emotion at bay; first her parents and then her husband, Gemma’s father, had actively encouraged her to be the pretty, silly, dependent woman she was.

      In an era that encouraged women to think and live for themselves, her mother was something of an anachronism, Gemma recognised. At one time, just as she had ached for her mother’s love, so she had also ached to see her assert herself as a human being, but now she could recognise what she had not been able to see then. Her mother had worked too hard and too long at being the wife her father wanted her to be to change now.

      Her father did not want an independent woman as his wife, he did not want her mother to be able to meet him on his own level; he preferred to treat her as a pretty, dim-witted child, and Gemma had long ago recognised that that was their pattern of living and that to change it would mean that their relationship would end. It was when she had seen the futility of fighting against the feminine mould her parents wanted to cast her in that she herself had left home. She was not like her mother; she could never settle for the life her mother had led, always the inferior partner in a relationship that was totally opposed to everything that Gemma believed the relationship between a man and a woman should be.

      She knew that both her parents were disappointed in her, in their different ways. Her mother had wanted her to be a carbon copy of herself: a daughter who would grow up to enjoy her love of shopping and lunches with her women friends; a daughter who would marry early, have two children, and make her home within easy reach of her parents.

      Her father had wanted very much the same thing, with one qualification. First and foremost he had wanted her to be her ‘daddy’s girl’ and he had been prepared to pay for the privilege with expensive presents and spoiling.

      Gemma had learned enough about life and human nature now to feel saddened and sorry by the narrowness of her parents’ lives and perceptions.

      Other people viewed them differently, of course. Her father was an extremely successful businessman, and her parents were among the most wealthy inhabitants of the small Cheshire village where they lived.

      David, her brother, was one of the directors of her father’s building company. Unlike her, he seemed quite happy to fit into the mould their parents had designed for him.

      Now David was getting married and it was his wedding that had brought her home. Luckily the date of the wedding fell right in the middle of her school’s long summer holidays, so there had been no problem about her giving in to her mother’s plea that she return to Marwich to help with the preparations for the big day.

      She hadn’t been surprised to learn that her mother was organising everything. No doubt her father had had a hand in that decision somewhere. She could just see him now, his rather austere face creased into a faint frown as he stood in front of the fireplace in his study, hands clasped behind his back in his favourite Prince Philip pose, whilst he suggested to David that it might be as well if their mother handled all the arrangements for the wedding.

      She wondered rather wryly what Sophy Cadenham had thought of that decision. Gemma didn’t know her brother’s fiancée very well; for one thing Sophy was only twenty-one to her own twenty-five and, for another, both she and Sophy had spent all their teenage years away at their respective boarding schools. Sophy’s schooling had been paid for by one of her more well-to-do relatives. Although an orphan, Sophy was what Gemma’s mother described rather snobbishly as ‘extremely well connected’, which meant, Gemma reflected rather ruefully, that she was a cousin, once or twice removed, to the Lord Lieutenant of the County.

      Both Gemma’s parents were pleased about the match, and Sophy’s aunt, a rather thin, tired-looking woman who had been widowed just about the same time that Sophy lost her parents, and who lived just outside the village in a pretty grace and favour house of Queen Anne origin, owned by ‘Sophy’s cousin, the Lord Lieutenant’, had apparently been more than delighted to hand over total responsibility for organising the wedding to Gemma’s mother.

      Despite her rather vague and ‘helpless little me’ airs, Gemma’s mother was a skilled organiser. Their house, the largest in the village with its extensive grounds, would make a perfect setting for a June wedding. The date had been decided when David and Sophy announced their engagement at Christmas, and now, with the big event only a week away, the hired gardeners were working tirelessly to bring the lawns and flowers to perfection.

      A huge marquee was going to be erected in the grounds; Sophy’s wedding dress, which had come from the Emanuels, was hanging upstairs in one of the guest room wardrobes, and the Lord Lieutenant and his lady had deigned to accept their invitation. In fact, the Lord Lieutenant had actually agreed to give Sophy away, much to her mother-in-law-to-be’s delight.

      The last thing her mother really wanted was her help, Gemma recognised, remembering ruefully down through the years how often she had heard the same plaintive sound in her mother’s voice, and how often her childish heart had leapt with delight at the thought of being able to help her.

      It had taken her a long time to learn that her mother did not really