LITMIR.BIZ

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never even crossed. Here they had and purely because he was – to borrow a phrase from Mrs Abbey – the new young master of these parts. I realised belatedly that this must simply be the Manor’s equivalent of a pastoral visit to a needy cottager – he didn’t want anything from me at all – and I was making a terrible faux pas.

      First I answered his question hastily, ‘No, I’m absolutely certain he didn’t follow me. It took too long for him to get here. I think he must have gone through my bag at last and found the letter from my cousin. I can’t see how else he thought to come here.’ I added by way of an explanation, ‘She’d written the directions to her house in it.’

      And having brushed off that concern just as quickly as I could, I added rather more formally, ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to sit somewhere more comfortable? I probably shouldn’t be keeping you anyway, having already ruined your day by dragging you out of London in the first place.’ I made to get up, but as I lifted my hand with its teacup – to keep it clear of my knees while I rose – I felt the tug on the delicate china as his hand moved to intercept.

      He said, ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry, so please don’t do this. Don’t run away.’ And he took the teacup from me to set it down beside his own on the broad windowsill to his left. Across the faint rattle as china met brick, he told me with rather too much perception about the real cause of my discomfort, ‘I’m not trying to frighten you about this man. And you don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to, or justify yourself to me either. I’m not accusing you of anything any more, or trying to wade in where I’m not needed. This isn’t my home, you know. I’ve no intention of stepping into my brother’s shoes and acting the part of the new master about this place. And that means I can freely make a promise to leave off undermining the tranquillity of a certain young woman whose only mistake was to expend an absurd amount of energy sorting out a few homely comforts for my father.’

      It was there again; the question that I thought we’d left behind. It was the urge to ask me why I’d done it at all. And the uncomfortably exacting suggestion that it wasn’t enough to simply answer that he’d asked me to.

      As it was, he didn’t ask that. Instead, and a shade too promptly for it to escape feeling like a fresh accusation, he asked, ‘Why are you here? And don’t tell me it’s to holiday with your cousin because Hannis has already told me that she’s in hospital.’

      He must have caught my raised eyebrows as I settled back into my place on the front step, for all that I thought I had turned my head away. I heard him assure me wryly, ‘This isn’t a test, you know. I really am only trying to make conversation.’

      My attention snapped back round to him. ‘Are you?’ I asked. Then I relented. I didn’t want to distrust him any more and this was the price. I told him, ‘This is a holiday. I didn’t even know Phyllis was in hospital until I arrived here yesterday and was met by Danny’s note. And anyway, what else do you call a trip that was supposed to be a change of scene, a brief get-away from the old life in town?’

      ‘You don’t intend to go back, though, do you?’ He was quick, this man.

      ‘How can you tell?’ I asked. I knew why.

      ‘I remember your decisive remark earlier about having no occupation. You don’t intend to go back to – what was it? – a chemist’s shop in Knightsbridge?’

      I was sitting with my weight propped upon my straightened arms now and my hands laid palm down on either side of me upon the stone front step. The stone, the sky, everything, was ablaze and tension eased with a simple exhale of breath. The Captain wasn’t going to presume that I was taking a last solo holiday before preparing for a marriage because there was clearly no ring, so instead, since he had obviously committed to memory everything I’d said, he was going to ask the next inevitable question in the line for a single woman of my age, which was whether I was set to take over the reins of my father’s business now that the old man was hoping to retire. And I’d give my reply as a parody of the Captain’s own remark about being unwilling to step into his brother’s shoes and tell him that I felt the same about antiques. Only that wasn’t strictly true.

      I’d ruled out that career for myself when I’d insisted on leaving school at fourteen. Even then, the routine of running my father’s shop would have been the most respectable choice and back then I might have been meek enough to have accepted it, but my father had been slow to offer it. He’d thought a few years of hard work in the real world would do me some good, rather than rewarding the abandonment of my education by letting me laze within the cosseted life of the family business. He’d also been wary of introducing a young daughter into a shop front and restoration workshop fundamentally occupied by men. My father knew it was the sort of path that led to an unwise marriage at a painfully young age. Which, I thought, made it all the more ironic that my father was now in the position of being ready to give almost anything if I would only choose the nice safe route of staffing his shop and thereby put myself in the way of a nice tame future with his favourite apprentice.

      Today, in this pleasant sunshine, the man beside me, with the very different kind of presence, followed the predictable path. He asked that expected question about my future in the antiques trade. Only then I surprised myself by answering completely differently. Perhaps it was his easy self-assurance that made me brave enough to tell him, ‘I could go back, actually. I could manage the shop once I’ve finished indulging in improving stays with long-overlooked cousins. It’s what I’m supposed to do. But Dad doesn’t really need me there. He never did. One of the apprentices has survived his national service and has come back primed and ready to run the whole lot. I’d rather not get in his way.’

      ‘This counts as an improving stay?’

      He’d caught my slip about the truth behind this visit. I wasn’t in the habit of lying, as such, but I will admit that I tended to find it hard to stay true to my purpose if there was a choice between saying what I thought and hurting someone I cared about, or saying what they wanted to hear and, through that, picking the route that was quietest. It was cowardice, I supposed. So it was perhaps lucky for me that this man wanted to hear what I thought I ought to say. And there wasn’t really any danger that I would hurt him with this.

      ‘Very well,’ I conceded. ‘The truth is, my parents are pursuing the much-exercised route of giving me the chance to experience a few hard knocks in the wider world before it’s too late and I’m out in it with no chance of return.’

      He was quick with his reply. ‘I should have thought,’ he remarked dryly, ‘you’d experienced quite enough of the wider world as it was, growing up through the past few years in London. Haven’t your parents left it a bit late to take fright and evacuate their daughter to the country?’

      I grinned. ‘You think I’m here like a forlorn child with my name on a tag about my neck, waiting for an aged relative to claim me? Not a bit of it. My father isn’t really an overbearing sort of parent, you know. It’s me that is torturing him. I gave him a fright by first telling him that I was going to leave school and aim for adulthood at the age of fourteen; and then again as soon as I reached sixteen and I took to filling the gaps left in the dance halls as well since the older women were stumbling into hasty marriages with their brave RAF men in between bombing runs. Now I’m a grown woman and confusing him all over again by giving up the job I had to argue my way into taking in the first place and, actually, this visit to see my cousin wasn’t his idea. It was my mother’s. And besides all that, it was my choice to come here too.’

      If he noticed my defensiveness about the course of the decision-making, he didn’t show it. I cast him a shy glance. ‘Did your …?’ I began then flushed. ‘No, sorry, never mind. Ignore that.’

      My companion prompted calmly, ‘Did my what?’ When I only shook my head mutely, he added, ‘Do you mean to ask if my father is similarly dictating my choice of career? No. The Langton name has been put to many different enterprises, good and bad, but when it came to joining the army I found – how shall I put it? – well, without going into the details, it was easy to find this was one aspect that was purely me. I had the expectation from an early age that I would follow in Father’s

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