and there’s a smaller case inside marked Private and Confidential. And her name is on the same luggage label. Oh, and here’s a little key attached with a bit of string to the handle.’
‘What’s inside the smaller case?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t looked. After all, it is marked private and confidential …’ India’s sentence trailed off as she untied the small key and opened the case, murmuring, ‘Since our great-grandmother has been dead for many years, I suppose I can lift the lid at least.’
‘Of course you can,’ Linnet said confidently.
‘Linnet, please do leave that dress and come and look at what I’ve found. Please.’
Struck by the excitement and urgency in her cousin’s voice, Linnet jumped up and went to join India on the floor in front of the built-in cupboard.
She crouched down on her haunches next to India and followed her gaze. ‘Oh my God!’ Linnet’s hand flew to her mouth as she stared into the large suitcase. It contained the smaller one, which India had just opened, and Linnet couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Her eyes widened, and she reached out, touched the leather-bound books lying there side by side. What she was seeing made her heart miss a beat. And she was speechless all of a sudden. At last she said in an awed voice, ‘Emma Harte’s wartime diaries. Oh, India, what a find!’ She lifted one out and read the date embossed in gold on the black leather cover. ‘Nineteen thirty-eight. Long before we were born, and even before our parents were born. Gosh …’
‘This is a treasure trove, you know,’ India volunteered. ‘They run right through to nineteen forty-seven. Did you notice that?’
Linnet nodded, then tried the lock on the 1938 diary, which was still in her hands. It opened easily. Linnet was about to look inside the diary, but hesitated, then very resolutely she closed it again.
India, sounding nervous, said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t read anything. I know Grandy’s been dead longer than we’ve been alive, but I think it is rather an invasion of privacy, reading her diaries, don’t you, Linny?’
‘I do, and I think it’s my mother’s decision. After all, she was Emma’s chief heir. My mother should see them first. I’ll take them down to her when we’ve finished up here.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s the wisest thing, to be sure,’ India agreed.
Linnet put the diary back in its given place in the small case, and then slowly smoothed her hand over the ten books, her expression reflective, her eyes suddenly far away, as if she saw something no one else could see. After a moment or two, she focused her attention on the diaries. All of them were bound in black, the year embossed in gold, and she was sure none of them were locked. She could not help being curious about their contents, wondering what secrets they contained, and she longed to read them.
But her integrity, bred in the bone, would not permit her to violate her mother’s trust in her. The golden rule in the family was that anything pertaining to Emma Harte first passed through Paula, head of the Harte dynasty.
Linnet was honour-bound to abide by that rule.
Although she was fifty-seven, Paula McGill O’Neill looked younger. Her head of thick, luxuriant dark hair, coming to a widow’s peak above her smooth brow, was still the colour of jet, although she was the first to admit that it got a little help from her hairdresser these days. Her eyes, her most spectacular feature, were still that amazing deep violet, thickly fringed with dark lashes. They had always reflected her intelligence, but wisdom and compassion dwelt there now as well.
She sat in the upstairs parlour at Pennistone Royal with her cousin Emily Harte, but her thoughts were on her daughter Linnet, and Julian Kallinski, whom at one time she had thought Linnet would marry. She wished her daughter had confided in her more; wished that Linnet had not made such sweeping and drastic moves without at least one discussion. But when she herself had been in her twenties she had been headstrong, too; had believed she knew everything.
Oh, what it was to be young and impulsive, and so convinced of the rightness of what one did. She had married Jim Fairley when she was very young, and lived to regret it, as she had come to understand that it was Shane O’Neill who held her heart. But at least things had eventually worked out for her and Shane. They had been married now for almost thirty years, their love growing deeper and deeper with the passing of time.
Eventually, Emily said, as if reading her thoughts, ‘I think Linnet and Julian were made for each other, as you and Shane were—’
‘And you and Winston, too,’ Paula interrupted, as she roused herself from her thoughts of her daughter.
‘True. Anyway, I was going to say I hope those two begin to realize this, and very soon. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a lovely family wedding in the summer with the three clans present?’
‘You see, there you go, Emily!’ Paula exclaimed, shaking her head. ‘Bringing the clans into it. But yes, you’re right, it would be nice. In the meantime, there’s Gideon for us to worry about. He’s still a bachelor.’
‘He doesn’t settle down with any of the women he dates. Brief encounters, I call them,’ Emily muttered.
‘He just hasn’t met the right woman yet, that’s all,’ Paula asserted. She pushed herself up from the chair, walked across the floor of the upstairs parlour where they were sitting.
Emily’s eyes followed her. She thought her cousin looked beautiful tonight with her new short hairdo: sleek, stylish and youthful. She was wearing a long, straight, amethyst wool skirt and a matching turtleneck sweater that brought out the colour of her eyes and was a foil for her dark hair. The outfit was simple, even a little severe in a way, but it suited Paula, who was tall and slender.
Emily wished she had a figure like Paula’s, but try though she did she always looked slightly plump in comparison. No wonder Paula had affectionately dubbed her Apple Dumpling when she was little. She was still fighting the childhood propensity to put on weight.
In all the years of their growing up together they had never exchanged a cross word or had a quarrel, although sometimes the eight-year-old Paula had reprimanded Emily when she was five and they were staying at Heron’s Nest, Emma’s summer home in Scarborough, and she had been what Paula called ‘a pest’. Cousins, best friends and confidantes, they had been each other’s rock in times of trouble and adversity.
For the most part, these two had been brought up by Emma, were trained by her, and today they ran a large part of her empire between them, and did so with great skill. They were devoted to their grandmother’s memory, and in a sense they were the keepers of the flame.
Pausing at the door of the bedroom which adjoined the upstairs parlour, Paula said, ‘There’s something I want to show you before the others arrive.’
‘What?’
‘Linnet and India found it in the storage attics and—’
‘The famous beaded dress!’ Emily declared triumphantly.
‘No, not the dress. Oh, they found that all right, but they came across something else, something much more important.’
‘Hurry
