Newspaper Company and its Canadian subsidiaries, and she was always after him to slow down a bit. But he paid not the slightest attention to her, merely commented that they all worked like demons, which was true, of course. It was the way her Gran had brought them up. Emma had only disdained slackers, so naturally they had all become over-achievers.
How lucky I am to have Winston, Emily mused, settling back in the chair, idly drifting with her thoughts, putting off preparing the menus for that day’s meals for a few moments longer.
Sometimes, when she turned her gaze back into the past, she realized she had managed to catch him by the skin of her teeth, understood how easily she might have lost him to another woman.
Emily had been in love with Winston since she was sixteen. They were third cousins. His grandfather and namesake, Winston Harte, had been her grandmother’s brother. Although Winston was five years older than she, they had been bosom pals as children, but once he had grown up he had hardly noticed her again, at least not as an attractive young woman with whom he might become romantically involved.
He had gone off to Oxford with his best friend, Shane, and the two of them had rapidly acquired reputations as terrible womanizers. Almost everyone had been scandalized by their disreputable antics. She had ached with a mixture of jealousy and longing, wishing she were one of the girls Winston chased and bedded. Only her Gran had been sanguine. Emma had simply laughed, had said they were merely young bucks sowing their wild oats. But then neither Winston or Shane could do much wrong in Emma Harte’s eyes and she had had a special fondness for them both.
And so Emily had worshipped Winston from afar, hoping that one day his glance would fall on her again. But it hadn’t, and much to her profound dismay he suddenly became seriously involved with a local girl, Alison Ridley. At the beginning of 1969 the gossip going around the three clans was that he was about to get engaged to Alison. Emily had thought her heart was going to break.
Then everything had changed. Quite miraculously, Winston had noticed her at the christening of Paula and Jim Fairley’s twins in March of that same year. And all because of an incident with Shane which had upset her grandmother. She and Winston had been called into the library at Pennistone Royal and had been grilled by Emma about Shane’s feelings for Paula. When they had finally escaped, they had gone for a walk in the gardens to recover from their gruelling ordeal, and for some reason Winston had been prompted to kiss her. This action on his part had been as sudden as it was unexpected, and Emily, loving him though she did, had been as stunned as he by their intense physical reaction to each other as they had sat on the bench by the lily pond, entwined in each other’s arms. The world had turned dizzily and wonderfully upside down for them both.
Winston, in typical Harte fashion, had wasted little time. The moment their affair had begun he had broken off with Alison, and shortly thereafter he had asked Emily’s grandmother if they could become engaged. Emma had given her consent, thoroughly approving of the match between her granddaughter and her great nephew. And one year later, when her Gran had returned from Australia, they had been married in the quaint old church in Pennistone village, and Gran had given the most beautiful wedding reception for them in the gardens of Pennistone Royal; her life as Winston’s wife had begun … and it was the best life any woman could ever want …
Emily sighed with contentment, brought her thoughts back to the present, picked up her pen and began to write out the menu for lunch. When she finished, she started on the one for dinner, but stopped abruptly as an idea occurred to her. Tonight, she and Winston, Paula and Shane, would drive over to Beaulieu and have dinner at La Reserve. Just the four of them. Without the tribe. That would be much more peaceful. Not to mention romantic. Winston will approve, she thought, and smiled a small secret smile.
‘You clot! You unbelievably stupid clot! Look what you’ve done! You’ve splashed my beautiful painting and ruined it!’ Tessa Fairley yelled at the top of her lungs, glaring at Lorne, adopting an angry stance, waving the paintbrush in the air.
‘The side of the swimming pool is hardly the proper place to set up an easel and start painting,’ Lorne rejoined loftily, returning her glare. ‘Especially when everyone’s leaping in and out of the pool. It’s your own fault the watercolour’s been splashed, not mine. And one more thing – I’m not a stupid clot.’
‘No, you’re a stupid CRETIN,’ his twelve-year-old twin shot back, then sucked in her breath with a horrified gasp. ‘Don’t do that, Lorne Fairley! Don’t shake yourself like that! Oh! Oh! you rotten thing. You’ve spoiled my other pictures. Oh, God, you’ve made them all trickly.’ She had the sudden murderous urge to bash her brother in the head, to do him some kind of bodily harm, but instantly suppressed it because of her mother’s presence this morning. ‘Mummy … Mummy … tell Lorne to stay away from my paintings drying on the grass,’ she wailed.
‘I want this hat,’ Linnet announced matter-of-factly and snatched Tessa’s large yellow sun hat from the chaise near the easel, placed it on top of her bright red curls and happily marched off, dragging a rubber duck on a string behind her and pushing the hat up as it kept sliding down over her eyes.
‘Bring my hat back at once, you naughty girl!’
When her five-year-old sister paid not a blind bit of notice, Tessa exclaimed to no one in particular, ‘Did you see that? She took my hat without my permission. Well! Her behaviour certainly leaves a lot to be desired. Mummy … Mummy … that child’s spoiled rotten. You and Daddy have ruined her. There’s no hope – ’
‘Pompous, pompous, Tessa’s being pompous, just like Lornie, she’s parroting Forlornie,’ Gideon Harte taunted in a sing-song tone from the relative safety of the pool.
‘I won’t dignify that ridiculous remark,’ Lorne sniffed with hauteur and lowered himself onto a mattress, picked up his copy of Homer’s Iliad and buried his face in the book.
‘Bring my hat back!’ Tessa screamed, stamping her foot.
‘Oh for God’s sake, leave her alone,’ a faintly disembodied voice admonished from the pool, and Toby Harte’s reddish-gold head bobbed up over the side. The ten-year-old grinned at Tessa, who was his favourite girl cousin, and then hauled himself out of the water, being careful not to splash her or her paintings, having no wish to incur her wrath. Reaching for a towel, he added, ‘After all, she’s only a little itty bitty baby, and how could she – ’
‘Not a baby,’ a muffled voice informed them from underneath the large sun hat.
‘ – possibly damage it,’ continued Toby, towelling himself dry. ‘And why do you care so much, Tess? It’s only a stupid old hat you bought in Nice market … a cheap bit of rag.’
‘It’s not a bit of rag! It’s beautiful. And it cost me a whole week’s pocket money, Toby Harte!’
‘More fool you,’ called out Gideon, and with this inflammatory comment the eight-year-old paddled swiftly to the centre of the pool, flipped over, floated on his back, and began to make faces at her.
‘What do you know about anything, Gideon Harte! You’re a CRETIN like my brother. ’
‘Is that the only stupid word you know, Stupid?’ Gideon shouted back and stuck his tongue out at her.
‘Brat! Brat!’ Tessa yelled at him. ‘You’re a spoiled brat, too!’
‘Oh
