LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Title Page

      Part One

      One

      Two

      Three

      Part Two

      Four

      Five

      Six

      Seven

      Eight

      Nine

      Ten

      Part Three

      Eleven

      Twelve

      Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

      Sixteen

       Part Four

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-One

      Twenty-Two

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Rosie Thomas

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       One

      The cedar tree was four hundred years old; as old as Chance itself. The shade beneath the cedar was more fragrant, cooler and deeper than the shade of any of the other great trees across the park. From its protective circle the family could look into the dazzle of light over the velvet grass, back to the terrace and the grey walls rearing behind it. The splash of the fountain was a deliciously cool note in the heavy heat of that long afternoon of July 1916.

      Amy Lovell sat squarely at the tea-table, her chin barely level with the starched white cloth, wide eyes fixed on the sandwiches as fragile as butterflies, tiny circlets of pastry top-heavy with cream and raspberries, melting fingers of her favourite ginger sponge, and enticing dark wedges of rich fruit cake. A long time had passed since nursery lunch at twelve, and Amy was hungry. But she sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap, without even a rustle of her frilled petticoats. Her feet, in highly polished boots with intricate buttons and laces, did not nearly touch the grass, but she held them rigid. Only yesterday Papa had banished her from the tea-table for swinging her legs, and she had not even had a sandwich, let alone a ginger sponge finger. Amy allowed herself one sidelong glance at Isabel, six years old to her own four-and-a-bit, and saw that her sister looked as effortlessly still and composed as always.

      A flutter of white cloth to the right of the table heralded the silent arrival of Mr Glass, the butler, with another, subsidiary table. This one was laden with silver tea-things.

      ‘I will pour out myself, Glass, thank you,’ said Amy’s mother in her special, low voice. When Amy first heard the word ‘drawling’ it pleased her, because it sounded exactly like Mama.

      ‘Very good, my lady.’

      Mr Glass retreated across the grass, flanked by the maids with their apron and cap strings fluttering, and left them alone. Amy sighed with satisfaction. It was the best moment of the day, when she and Isabel had Mama and Papa all to themselves.

      Lady Lovell stretched out her hand to the silver teapot. Her dark red hair fell in rich, natural waves, and where it was caught up at the nape of her neck beads of perspiration showed on the white skin. Her afternoon dress of pale rose silk was pleated and gathered, but it failed to disguise the ungainly bulk of the last days of pregnancy. Her hand fluttered back to rest over her stomach, and she sighed in the heat.

      ‘Could you, Gerald? Glass does hover so, and it is so nice to be just ourselves out here.’

      ‘That is his job, Adeline,’ Lord Lovell reminded her, but without the irritation he would have felt seven years ago.

      He had fallen in love with his first sight of the exquisite eighteen-year-old American steel heiress dancing her way through her first London Season. And Adeline van Pelt from Pittsburgh, her head turned by her aristocratic suitor’s ancient title as much as by his formal charm, had agreed to marry him even though he was twice her age.

      They had not made an easy beginning of their first months together at Chance. Lord Lovell was a widower, already the father of a twelve-year-old boy. His interests, apart from a well-bred liking for pretty girls, were horses, cards, and his estates. The new Lady Lovell came home with him at the end of the Season with only the barest understanding of what their life together would be like. It had come as an unpleasant shock, after the blaze of parties and admirers, to find herself alone much of the day while Gerald rode, or shot, or saw his farm managers. Yet at night, in her bedroom, he miraculously became everything she could have wanted. It was inexplicable to Adeline that her husband found it necessary to pretend, all day long, to be somebody he clearly wasn’t, and only to let the passion, and the laughter, out at night when they were alone.

      To his concern, Gerald found that his wife was easily bored, capricious and unpredictable. She was either yawning with ennui, or filling the house with disreputable people and in a whirlwind of enthusiasm for painting the library

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