door, ‘Ottie insisted that you should have it.’
‘But really, I don’t mind at all if Jack has Grandfather’s room,’ I protested. (Especially if Grandfather actually died there!) ‘I thought perhaps my old room on the nursery floor…’
My voice petered out: someone had lit an incongruous little gas heater in the magnificent fireplace and the red glow reflected off a great mahogany bed covered with the kind of jewel-coloured crazy patchwork that I make myself. The curtains were of the same soft, faded gold velvet as the bed hangings and, like the Long Room, the oriole windows jutted out over the terraces at the rear of the house, with a distant glimpse of the river at the bottom and the wood across the valley.
‘What a lovely room! You know, I don’t think I ever came in here when I was a child,’ I said, pulling back the drapes. Below were laid out the intricate, lacy shapes of terraced knot gardens, though the lowest level looked to be still very much a work in progress.
‘I’m so happy to be back, Aunt Hebe!’ I said spontaneously, turning to smile at her. ‘I haven’t forgotten how kind you always were to me, telling me bedtime bible stories and giving me rose fondants when I hurt myself.’
She softened slightly. ‘Couldn’t have you growing up a complete heathen. We missed you when Susan took you away, but we thought she’d be back again eventually, when the money ran out. And of course you were only a girl. It would have been different if you had been a boy.’
‘Sorry about that,’ I said drily, though her casual dismissal hurt.
‘My brother hoped that Susan would come to her senses and get married, and there would be more children—a son,’ she added, rubbing it in. But I’d already got the message: to Aunt Hebe, girls didn’t count, and illegitimate girls counted even less.
‘But then my cousin Louisa died and eventually Jack was sent back to school in England, and spent all his holidays here.’
‘Well, I’m sure that made everything right as rain, then,’ I said sourly. I mean, I liked Jack, but much more of this kind of thing and I would start to go off him rapidly.
‘It should have done, but I’m afraid Jack was a disappointment to my brother. Their characters were just too dissimilar, though Jack did try, by taking an interest in the architecture of the house and the family history. Then William somehow got the idea that Jack was thinking of marrying Melinda Seldon—or Christopher, as she has been calling herself again since her husband died. But if he had been, which I personally very much doubt, he gave it up once William made it clear he disapproved of the match. He never liked her, though of course she’s very wealthy now and, goodness knows, Winter’s End could do with a rich heiress marrying into the family.’
‘Was she the blonde woman on the grey horse that ran into my car?’ I asked, thinking rather despondently that the equestrian Helen of Troy and Jack would have made a wonderful couple—but also that Jack hadn’t seemed the kind of man who would meekly give up the woman he loved just to please his grandfather.
‘Yes, that was Melinda. She was widowed last year and moved back here to live with her mother, who is one of my oldest friends. Naturally, she and Jack saw a lot of each other. For one thing, they have lots of friends in common, but also he had entered into a business arrangement with her to develop the property she inherited from her late husband.’
‘She is very beautiful,’ I said wistfully.
‘She is, but also a great flirt—as a girl she played all the local boys off against each other quite shamelessly—but if Jack was tempted after she was widowed, then I expect he thought better of it, even before William mentioned the matter. He had already made one misalliance, you see, soon after he left university—a short-lived affair.’
‘So was mine, though in my case it was my husband’s family who thought he’d made a misalliance.’
‘Oh no, dear, nobody marrying a Winter could possibly think that,’ Aunt Hebe assured me—but then, she had never met the Mistress.
‘Things did seem to improve between Jack and William until they had that last ghastly argument…’ She shuddered.
‘Oh? What was that about, Aunt Hebe?’
‘Jack had long wanted William to transfer ownership of Winter’s End to him, to try and avoid death duties, but he wouldn’t hear of it. This time Jack told his uncle that if he didn’t divert some of his income into keeping the house standing, he would have nothing but a garden to inherit anyway.’
‘Well, goodness knows, he was right about the house. Another couple of years of neglect and possibly it would have passed the point of no return.’
‘Yes, but my brother took it badly and told Jack he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatched. And then, to top it all, he’d heard about one of Jack’s business deals—such a clever boy—and accused him of only wanting to get his hands on Winter’s End so he could turn it into an apartment block. I told him he was being absurd, because Jack wouldn’t dream of doing anything of the kind to his ancestral home.’
‘No, I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ I agreed.
She smiled approvingly. ‘I’m sure my brother would have seen sense if he hadn’t suddenly discovered where you were and made that disastrous will. I can’t think what got into him.’
‘Sickening for you and Jack,’ I agreed, fascinated despite myself by this one-viewpoint argument, because it had obviously never occurred to either of them that I had any kind of right to inherit Winter’s End.
‘Yes—you do understand, don’t you? William didn’t even tell us he had found you, so the will came as a complete shock. And although Mr Hobbs says he was in his right mind and the will can’t be challenged, he can’t have been, really.’
‘He seemed to be all there with his cough drops when I met him,’ I assured her. ‘He spent most of his visit arguing with Lucy and it perked him up no end.’
‘Lucy?’
‘My daughter.’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten.’ Clearly, yet another girl was not of great interest. ‘Didn’t Jack say she was working abroad somewhere?’
‘Japan—teaching English, but only for a year to make some money. The wages are good, and they run up such huge debts these days with the student loans, don’t they?’
‘Jack didn’t. In fact, that’s when he started his property renovation business.’
With an effort I refrained from remarking that Lucy had not had a rich parent to buy her a house when she went to university.
‘So you see,’ Aunt Hebe said insistently, turning her finely lined, hawk-nosed profile towards me, ‘Winter’s End should have been Jack’s. You do see that, don’t you? But he says he is going to buy it from you, so everything will be right again.’
‘He did offer to buy it when he visited me in Northumberland,’ I agreed, and again that overwhelming burst of feeling for Winter’s End ran through my veins like liquid fire, ‘but of course I hadn’t seen it then. I—I didn’t realise…’
‘No, I suppose you barely remember it. It
