The Virgin's Wedding Night. Sara Craven
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could only imagine the scene when her mother, eighteen and unwed, had defiantly announced that she was pregnant, that marriage to the father was out of the question, and that she would never agree to a termination. Could imagine too that the subsequent explosion would have rocked the Richter scale.
Certainly the news had created a breach that had caused Caroline Flint to be barred from the family home, especially when she’d refused to atone for her sins by giving the baby up for adoption. And it had been six years before contact was resumed.
‘Your grandfather wants to see you, darling,’ her mother had announced lightly one day. ‘Which means that the prodigal daughter is being given a second chance too. Wonders will never cease.’
Her partner at the time, an unemployed session guitarist called Bryn, had glanced up at her. ‘Don’t knock it, Princess. We could use a fatted calf.’
They went down to Gracemead the following day, and as the station taxi turned the corner in the drive, and the house lay in front of them, Harriet drew a breath of stunned, incredulous joy. Because it didn’t seem possible after the cheap flats she was used to that she could be even marginally connected with such a truly magical place.
In time, she’d come to see that Gracemead was not really beautiful. That her Flint ancestor, the wealthy Victorian merchant who’d taken a classic Georgian house and embellished it with a Gothic façade, before adding turrets at each end in imitation of his sovereign’s Scottish retreat at Balmoral, had actually been something of a vandal.
But, seeing it that first time as a confused and not always happy child, she gasped in wonder as the afternoon sun touched the windows, and flecked the stones with gold, telling herself it was a fairy palace, and that her mother must genuinely be the Princess that Bryn called her to have been born there.
The interview between Gregory Flint and his errant daughter was conducted in private. Harriet was whisked off to the kitchen by a plump, elderly woman who’d been Caroline’s old nanny, and plied with milk and small iced cakes with smiley faces that had been piped on to them by Mrs Wade, the cook-housekeeper.
When she eventually joined them, her mother was smiling too, but with a kind of rigid determination, and her eyes were red.
‘Such fun, sweetie. You’re going to stay here with Grandpa and have a wonderful time. Spoiled to death, I expect, don’t you, Nanny?’
‘Aren’t you staying too?’ Harriet asked in bewilderment, but Caroline shook her head.
‘I’ll be going with Bryn, darling. He has a marvellous tour of America coming up with a very famous singer. We’ll be away for ages, so it’s best that you’re here. It’s a wonderful place to grow up in,’ she added, the lovely face momentarily shadowed with something like regret.
And so it had proved, thought Harriet. Because she’d never actually lived with her mother again after that, seeing her only from time to time as someone whose visits became less and less frequent.
The house had become the constant in her life—had become her home. And that initial sense of wonder—almost of recognition—had never faded. She’d felt from the start that the place was reaching out to her to hug her—to soothe away any sense of abandonment she might feel. And she’d hugged it back, knowing that it was where she truly belonged.
Accustomed to London’s restrictions, she’d found Gracemead and its large grounds had provided her with a magical playground to explore for hours at a time. And Nanny and Mrs Wade had almost vied with each other to make sure she lacked for nothing to make her feel comfortable and secure.
Her relationship with her grandfather had taken rather longer to establish. He’d been awkward with her at first, taciturn and more than a little gruff. And sometimes she’d found him watching her as if he was puzzled about something. Then, one day, she’d heard one of the local ladies refer to her as ‘Poor Caroline’s little girl. You would never know, would you?’ and understood.
It was the day he’d found her in his book-lined study, deep in Black Beauty, twining a strand of hair round her finger as she read, that everything had changed between them.
She hadn’t realised immediately that she was no longer alone, and when she’d looked up and seen him watching her, she’d been apprehensive in case he was angry.
But his sudden smile had been strangely tender. ‘Your mother used to do that when she was reading,’ he told her. ‘And this was her favourite book too.’
He sat down in the big wing chair by the fireplace and began to talk to her, listening patiently to her halting replies, and encouraging her to be less shy, and say whatever was on her mind.
Looking back, Harriet could even say with honesty that she’d had a pretty good childhood in spite of her mother’s continuing and prolonged absences. There’d been postcards at first, and letters from the States, then from Europe, after the relationship with Bryn had finally crashed and burned like all the others, and Caroline had joined up with a professional tennis player, not quite in the top rank.
Eventually, as the years had passed, the letters had become fewer, then dried up altogether. At the last contact—a card for her twenty-first birthday—Caroline had seemed to be in Argentina living with a former polo player. But no address had been included, and since then there’d been nothing to indicate whether her mother was alive or dead.
Harriet had come to accept over the years that her mother lived solely on her own terms, and that the existence of her child belonged to a long-discarded past. She was left to remember only Caroline’s beauty and zest for life, however misplaced, and to try and forget the negative elements of their relationship. At the same time, however, her life with her grandfather, though never lacking in affection, grew marginally trickier.
Gregory Flint was clearly determined that Harriet was not going to follow in her mother’s footsteps if there was anything he could do to prevent it. Accordingly, Harriet found her life controlled by a kind of benevolent despotism, her freedom restricted and her judgement regularly called into question.
And the fact that she could—almost—understand why it was happening made it no less irksome.
The first major clash between them had come when she was eighteen, and had just left her convent school, and he’d announced he’d found her a place in a Swiss establishment where she would improve her foreign language skills, and embark on a cordon bleu cookery course.
She’d stared at him open-mouthed. ‘You mean I’m going to be finished? Gramps, you can’t mean it. Anyone would think we were living a hundred years ago.’
His brows snapped together. ‘You have some other idea?’
‘Well, of course.’ She tried her most winning smile. ‘I’ve decided to join the family business. Carry on the Flint name for another generation.’
‘You—want to work for Flint Audley?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And where did this ridiculous notion spring from, I wonder?’
‘It seems an obvious choice,’ she countered.
‘Well, it’s not obvious to me,’ he said scathingly. ‘What on earth do you think you know about property management on the scale we deal with? Dealing with our range of tenants, contracts, maintenance—the thousand and one issues you’d be faced with? You—a chit of a girl just out of school?’
‘I’d know about as much as you and Gordon Audley did when you started out in the fifties.’ Harriet lifted her chin without flinching. ‘And certainly as much as Jonathan Audley with his 2:2 in Fine Arts,’ she added, her tone edged. ‘Yet he seems to have been welcomed with open arms—even by you. I could run rings round him, given the chance.’
She paused. ‘Because I’m not just “a chit of a girl” as you claim. I’m a chip off the old block, and all I want is an opportunity to prove myself.’ She added more quietly. ‘I—I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Then you can think again, and quickly