CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE ANCIENT CHURCH of the village of Little Amwell was crowded to its massive Norman door, its pews brimming over with flowery hats, their wearers keeping up a steady murmur of conversation which vied with Mrs Broad, the organist, as she laboured through a selection of suitable wedding music. The groom was already there, and his best man, it lacked only the bride for the ceremony to begin.

      She was at the door now; Mrs Broad’s sudden burst of chords sent every head over its shoulder as she began the short journey down the aisle on her uncle’s arm to where her bridegroom was waiting and her father stood ready to marry them. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed and slim, a vision in white silk and lace, followed by four very small bridesmaids, enchanting in pale blue with wreaths in their hair, and behind them, shooing them gently along, came the only other bridesmaid, a tall curvy girl with a face as pretty as her sister’s, only her hair was a burnished golden red and her eyes green. She was in blue too, a colour in which she didn’t look her best, but since the bride had strong views about the unlucky properties of green, she had resigned herself to pale blue silk and a wide-brimmed hat of the same shade. She followed slowly down the aisle, looking demurely ahead of her and still managing to see that old Mrs Forbes from the Grange was wearing a quite astonishing mauve hat, and Lady Byron from the Manor House was in her everlasting beige. She saw Tony, too, standing on the bride’s side, looking devastating in his morning coat; a pity he had refused categorically to be one of the ushers. He was marvellous, of course, but sometimes she wished he wasn’t quite so conscious of his dignity. She supposed that once she was married to him, at some not yet decided date, she would have to mend her ways; there were several things for which he had already gently but firmly reproved her.

      She came to a halt behind Nancy, took her bouquet and hushed the youngest of the bridesmaids. James was beaming at his bride in a most satisfactory way and her father, while not actually smiling, was looking pleased with himself. And why not? she mused. Nancy had done well for herself; James was something up and coming in the business world and had a rather grand flat in Highgate Village, besides which he was a thoroughly nice young man.

      Her father began the service and presently, bored with standing still, the bridesmaids began to play up. It was in the course of preventing one of them from prancing off down the aisle that Prudence became aware of the best man. True, she had known that he was there, conspicuous even. From the back he was a large man, topping James by a good head and with massive shoulders. He turned round now, for the very good reason that the bridesmaid had him by the trouser leg, and Prudence could see his face—nicelooking in a rugged way, with fair hair already sprinkled with grey. He removed the small girl’s arms from his leg and handed her back and smiled at Prudence. His eyes were very blue and crinkled nicely at the corners. Not a patch on Tony, of course, but he might be fun to know… She smiled back, and then composed her features into suitable solemnity as the choir launched itself into ‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden’, the little boys cast their eyes to heaven in an unlikely piety and the men behind them rolled out their notes in a volume of sound. Prudence, from under her brim, watched Mr Clapp, the butcher, bellowing his way through the hymn; he had a powerful voice, used frequently in his shop to cry the virtues of his meat. She took a quick peep at the best man, although there wasn’t much to see; broad shoulders and a ramrod back, and when he turned his head slightly, a high-bridged nose and a firm chin. She looked down at her bouquet. The choir had filled their lungs ready for the last verse, but she wasn’t heeding them. Traditionally, the chief bridesmaid and the best man paired off at a wedding; it might do Tony a lot of good if he were to be given a cold—well, cool—shoulder; he was, she suspected, getting too sure of her. She hadn’t met the best man yet; he had been abroad, James had told her, and had only arrived in time to see that James got safely to the church. Really she knew nothing at all about him. Married most likely, certainly engaged; it would be fun to find out.

      The choir, conscious of a job well done, subsided into their pews and her father began the little homily he must know by heart, for she had heard it at countless weddings at which he had officiated. By turning her head very slowly, she could see her mother, still a pretty woman, wearing a Mother of the Bride’s hat, and a slightly smug expression. She caught Prudence’s eye and smiled and nodded. Prudence was well aware what her mother was thinking—that she would be the next bride, with Tony standing where James was standing now. She would have liked a quiet wedding, but there would be little chance of that. It would be exactly the same as Nancy’s, white silk and chiffon and more little bridesmaids. No plans had been made, of course, but she was quite sure that her mother had it all arranged. That lady had been puzzled and disappointed that Prudence hadn’t been the first to marry anyway. She was, after all, the eldest, and she was twenty-seven, with a long-standing engagement behind her, there had seemed no reason why she and Tony shouldn’t have married before Nancy and James, but Tony had lightheartedly declared that they had plenty of time, there was no hurry. He had a splendid job with a big firm of architects, a pleasant house on the edge of Little Amwell and the prospect of a trip to New York within the next month or so. ‘After I’m back,’ he had told Prudence easily. ‘After all, you’re perfectly content and happy at home, aren’t you?’

      She had been aware of a faint warning at the back of her mind, so absurd that she had ignored it, and then, in the excitement and bustle of the wedding, forgotten it.

      But now it came back to tease her. She was by no means content to sit at home and wait for Tony; there had been no reason at all why she shouldn’t have married him months ago and gone to New York with him; somehow, the excitement of marrying him had fizzled out like a kettle going off the boil—and yet surely, after three, almost four years, she should know if she loved him or not? Something, she wasn’t sure what, would have to be done.

      Her father had finished, Mrs Broad was thumping out the opening