LITMIR.BIZ

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it had been frosty, and despite Nell’s protests Sir Hugo had insisted on going out, taking with him the German pointer that was his favourite companion. He had been seventy-eight then, crusty and irascible; and Nell had loved him desperately. He was virtually the only family she had.

      There was Grania, of course, but she and her stepsister had never been close. Grania had been with her mother and Nell’s father at the time of the horrific road accident in Italy which had robbed Lucia de Tressail of her life, and reduced Nell’s father to a speechless, bedridden form who never regained consciousness. He had survived his father by a matter of days, never knowing that he had inherited the earldom, and died before Nell had taken in the shock of her grandfather’s death. Grania had rung from Italy to break the news, saying, ‘It’s quite convenient in a way. That hospital must have been dreadfully expensive, and it wasn’t as though poor Daddy knew anyone, was it?’

      Grania had been taken in by the Italian relatives her mother and Nell’s father were on their way to visit. Nell had not accompanied them on that trip, primarily because someone had to remain at home with her grandfather. Naturally, when the news came through of her stepmother’s death and the full extent of her father’s injuries, it had been to her grandfather and Easterhay that she had turned.

      Easterhay had been her home for as long as she could remember. Her father, an army man like his father and grandfather before him, had brought her there when she was little more than a few weeks old, leaving her in the care of his father and unmarried aunt.

      His wife, Nell’s mother, had died at Nell’s birth and she had grown up here at Easterhay, unknowing of how out of date her grandfather’s mode of life was, because she had never experienced anything else.

      She had been five when her father had remarried, but because of his overseas postings Nell had been eight years old before she had ever been able to spend anything more than a brief holiday with her father and new stepmother.

      Lucia had tried to be kind to her; she was naturally warm-hearted, Nell recognised; but she, a child reared by a crusty retired general and his maiden sister, had shrunk from Lucia’s attempts to embrace and mother her, both literally and metaphorically. A shy, withdrawn child, she had grown up into an equally withdrawn adult, quite happily giving up her job in London to come home and nurse her grandfather when her aunt died, and Gramps announced that she would have to return home to take up her aunt’s duties.

      She had been just twenty then, and that had been over four years ago. Four years during which she had been forced to mature abruptly, once she realised how precariously balanced her grandfather’s finances were.

      The care of his son had eaten into his last small reserves of cash, and now with Gramps himself dead and the ominous threat of double death-duties hanging over Easterhay, Nell had no idea how on earth she was going to keep her promise to her grandfather.

      Deathbed promises were like something from Dickens, she told herself as she watched her efficient staff close the entrance to the marquee. In a few mintues she would have to go down and preside over the buffet. No matter how much Grania might choose to deride today’s bride, her parents had still paid and paid well for their daughter to have her wedding reception here in Easterhay’s beautiful parkland, and the pride Nell had inherited from her grandfather, the sense of duty which living with him had instilled in her, would not allow her to do less than her very best for anyone.

      ‘Promise me you will keep Easterhay,’ Gramps had demanded almost with his last breath, and she, tears in her eyes and clogging her throat, had agreed.

      But she still had no idea how that promise was going to be kept.

      Oh, she was doing what she could … These weddings brought in a small income, kept the staff busy and paid, and also allowed her to give much needed weekend work to some of the youngsters from the village.

      There was also her plan to take in weekend guests, but first some of the bedrooms needed to be renovated. She could hardly expect people to pay to use the one cold and very draughty bathroom installed on both of the two bedroom floors. Deftly she added up her small profit, wondering if she could manage to get three more bathrooms installed by Christmas. She had the workforce to do it … Gramps had insisted on keeping on a large staff even though there was little enough for them to do, other than to try to continually repair the fabric of the house as best they could.

      Peter Jansen, the estate carpenter, had made the tables for inside the marquee. Harry White, the gardener, had supplied the flowers and helped her make the decorative arrangements. Mrs Booth, the cook/housekeeper, had organised the food, all of them only too glad to be doing something to lift a little of the burden from Nell’s shoulders.

      Once, they and their children would have found well-paid work in Manchester or Liverpool, but those days were gone. Work wasn’t easy to come by anywhere now, and scarcely a week went by without Nell being asked if it was possible for her to find a job for ‘our Jane’ or ‘our Robert’ …

      It was true that the staff lived relatively cheaply and well in the row of cottages owned by the estate, but the cottages were in need of repair, and Nell had no idea how on earth she was going to manage to finance her wages bill once it was winter.

      It had occurred to her that she could always hire out the ballroom for private dances, but how many times? This was a very quiet part of Cheshire not favoured by the wealthy, and there was very little demand for such affairs, especially with Chester and the very prestigious Grosvenor Hotel so close.

      Weddings were different, and there could be no better setting for a summer wedding than the parkland of Easterhay, with the house itself as a backdrop, sunlight reflecting on the ancient leaded windows set into their stone mullions.

      It had been a Jacobean de Tressail who had added the impressive frontage and extra wings to the original house. One wing connected to the stable block, the other via a covered walkway to the orangery, now sadly denuded of its glass and in a state of disrepair.

      ‘I must go out and check on how thing are going …’

      ‘Do they pay extra for having the “Lady of the Manor” serve them?’ Grania asked her with a sneer. ‘They should do.’

      Nell lost her temper with her. She had been under a constant strain since her grandfather’s death, and although she sympathised with her stepsister, she couldn’t stop herself from saying tartly, ‘You shouldn’t sneer at them, Grania, since it’s people like the Dobsons who have the commodity you seem to covet. They’re extremely wealthy.’

      Compunction swamped her when she saw the way that Grania’s eyes filled with tears.

      ‘There’s no need for you to be so horrid to me, Nell,’ she complained tearfully. ‘It’s not my fault that I hate being poor. Mama always said that …’

      She broke off and bit her lip, and Nell guessed that she had been about to say that her mother had always told her that the de Tressail family was a wealthy one.

      Sighing faintly, Nell dragged her attention away from the wedding and turned to her stepsister.

      ‘Gramps always liked to pretend that there was more money then there was. His pride wouldn’t allow him to admit how bad things were. And then, when Dad died … the death-duties …’ She saw Grania’s mutinous face and reflected that, in her way, her stepsister was as stubborn as her grandfather.

      ‘You must have noticed just from the house how bad things are, Grania,’ she counselled gently.

      ‘I thought it was just Gramps being mean. You know how he was … if things are that bad why on earth don’t you sell this place? It would fetch a fortune. It’s not fair!’ she burst out passionately. ‘Why should Gramps have left it all to you? It should have been split between us …’

      Nell stared at her, her heart sinking. She knew these temperamental moods of Grania’s of old, and winced mentally at the thought of the fiery outburst to come. Why was it that her stepsister always made her feel like such a pale shadow, a mere reflection when contrasted with her own glowing, brilliant colour?

      Her

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