Three Graces (23 page)

For a while, they walked arm in arm, happy to follow the haphazard route of the dogs and then Carys had an idea.

‘Let’s go to the walled garden,’ she said. Richard nodded.

Entering the archway covered in the yellow roses which had been Henry Bretton’s favourite, they looked around at the bare borders and empty beds.

‘It’s not much to look at, I’m afraid,’ Richard said.

‘But it could be. It could be the loveliest garden.’

Richard said nothing.

‘I think we should throw some money at it, don’t you?’ Carys said in a quiet voice, immediately regretting using the word,
throw
, knowing Richard would pick up on it.

‘
Throw!
It would be throwing money away at the moment.’

Damn, Carys thought. ‘But it wouldn’t. It would bring the tourists in. A walled garden is always special. We could feature it in our advertising. We could even sell the produce grown here.’

Richard’s eyebrows rose. ‘Produce?’

‘Yes. Ash and I have been talking about what we could grow here. We could have apples and pears and plums, great fat cabbages and beans and peas for the kitchen and herbs too. Just imagine.’ She sighed, dreaming of borders of fresh chives, fennel and rosemary. ‘It wouldn’t take much more work - another part-time gardener perhaps-’

‘Another salary to pay.’

Carys sighed. ‘You always look on the negative side.’

‘The realistic side,’ Richard countered.

Carys realised this wasn’t going well. ‘But this garden is special. It’s where we met,’ she said, stopping and squeezing his hand, determined that she was going to work her magic on him.

He smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t forgotten, you know.’

‘Well,’ Carys said, ‘I sometimes wonder.’

Richard brought her hand to his mouth and gave it the most tender of kisses. ‘I remember walking into the garden and hearing Dizzy being greeted by the happiest of voices - a voice I didn’t dare hope to recognise. I remember seeing you standing there, looking so shy, your cheeks burning scarlet as I approached. And I remember wanting to kiss you.’

Carys’s eyes widened.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I wanted to kiss you there and then and I knew that I would ask you to marry me.’

‘You did?’

Richard nodded. ‘What else could I do? I’d fallen madly in love with you the moment I saw you.’

Carys laughed.

‘What?’ Richard frowned. ‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I’m not sure what to believe.’

‘You’ve never driven a man crazy with desire before?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Then what is it?’ he asked. ‘You’ve gone all shy on me.’

And she had. She could feel herself blushing. She’d barely seen her husband even to speak to over the last few months and his undivided and amorous attention now was deliciously embarrassing. So she did what any self-respecting wanton wife would do. She kissed him.

‘That was nice,’ he whispered when they surfaced some moments later.

Carys nodded. And, as much as she’d have liked it to continue, she couldn’t shake the subject of the walled garden out of her mind. She was truly turning into a Bretton, she thought. She was putting Amberley before the people who lived there. But, she reasoned with herself, she might not get another chance to raise this subject with Richard for months.

‘I think we really should do something about this garden,’ she dared to say in a voice barely above a whisper.

At first, Richard didn’t say anything. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said at last and, for one wonderful moment, Carys thought she’d won. ‘But not for the next three or four years at least.’

Her smile vanished and was quickly replaced with a frown. Three to four
years
! That seemed a lifetime away. ‘But I thought the money from the new ghost tour-’

‘If you make any money at all from that then, by all means, spend it on this garden.’

‘You mean it?’

He nodded. ‘But don’t build your hopes up. I don’t think anybody will be interested.’

Despite Richard having no faith whatsoever in the success of Cary’s ghost tour, they spent the rest of the evening together without so much as a glance at a clock which was nigh on impossible in Amberley because there were more clocks than residents. Instead, they shared a long hot bath and had an early night. Richard even let Carys light a few candles in the bedroom.

‘Not many now. I’m not setting my own house on fire.’

‘But they’re just little tea-lights - look!’ Carys had pleaded with him in the past.

They looked so pretty now, winking and twinkling in their cranberry red glasses, turning the room into a magical place. And so they dismissed the very slight possibility of turning Amberley into a pyre, they forgot about the piles of papers in their offices, and they forgot about death duties. They even managed to forget to close their curtains before getting undressed but it really didn’t matter. They were on the second floor of a house surrounded by fields and trees. It would take one seriously devoted Peeping Tom to catch them.

They’d also left the window open and the cool summer night breeze whispered into the bedroom, sending goose pimples dancing across their skin but they kept each other warm with their kisses and, when they finally closed their eyes, much much later that night, they slept the sleep of the sated.

It was a typical Monday morning in the kitchen in their apartment. Nanny was making breakfast for the girls who were arguing over whose turn it was to claim the plastic finger puppet from the cereal packet. They’d succeeded in sending a shower of cereal over the tablecloth and were making such a noise that nanny actually shouted at them. But nothing could upset Carys that morning. Or so she thought. She felt she was glowing from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. The evening walk and early night of pampering and passion had done her the world of good. Richard too! He’d left for the estate office with a smile on his face instead of a frown.

‘Will you two stop fighting -
this instant!
’ Nanny shouted, grabbing hold of the plastic finger puppet and placing it in the pocket of her apron.

‘That’s not fair!’ Cecily whined. ‘See what you’ve done now, stupid!’

‘I’m not stupid. You’re stupid. And you’re too old for finger puppets, anyway. You’re always telling me you’re a grown-up!’ Evie retorted.

Carys couldn’t help but smile at Evie’s logic. Buttering two slices of toast, she munched happily, thinking of the day ahead. The ghost tour! She’d get to work on the advertising and the guide. And she had to ring Mr Morris about the Montella exhibition. He wanted to come over this week to discuss the paintings he wanted on loan.

Washing her breakfast down with a glass of cold apple juice, Carys danced down the stairs and almost skipped along the corridor to her office where she saw that the door was ajar.

‘Mrs Franklin?’ Carys called. It was early still but Mrs Franklin might have turned up early knowing how much work there was to get through.

Entering the office, she saw that it wasn’t Mrs Franklin at all. It was Richard.

‘Darling! What a nice surprise,’ she said, delighted to see him again so soon. ‘I thought you’d disappeared for the day and I wouldn’t see you for at least -’

‘What the HELL is this?’ he asked, throwing a newspaper down on her desk.

‘What?’ Carys asked, alarmed by his anger. ‘Is it that Barston Hall again? Don’t tell me, they’ve-’

‘It’s not bloody Barston Hall.’

Carys picked up the copy of
The Cuthland News
and immediately felt all the blood draining from her face. It was her! There was a photograph of her on the front cover of
The Cuthland News
. She was wearing Ash’s old tweed cap, her hair scraped away from her face in a ponytail. It had been whilst she was walking the dogs - taken at the precise moment when she’d been frowning up at the clouds.

‘
Duchess deep in thought’
the caption read.

Deep in thought! Like every other Englishman, she was doing no more than berating the weather.

Her mind reeled back. The photographer! That man hiding in the trees with his outrageously elongated camera.

‘He said he wanted some pictures of the house,’ Carys said.

‘Who did?’

‘The man who took this photograph.’

‘And what about this?’ Richard pointed to the headline.

Carys swallowed hard as she read the words
Duchess in Distress over Marriage
. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Why have they written that?’

‘You tell me!’ Richard thundered.

The telephone rang. Richard, without asking, picked it up. ‘No she bloody isn’t available for comment.’ And he slammed the phone down.

‘Who was that?’

‘One of the bloody nationals has picked up on this now. Carys, how could you?’

‘But I haven’t done anything!’

‘Then how do you account for this?’

Carys shook her head. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. Or did she?

‘What? What is it? Because you’d better tell me if you know something.’

‘I think somebody
has
been asking me questions,’ she said in a very quiet voice. ‘But I had no idea…’ her voice petered out as she picked up the newspaper and skimmed the story. It was awful.

‘
I don’t know what half the rooms are for,’ the duchess said, eyes glazed.

‘I didn’t say that!’ Carys protested as she read. ‘
She
said that!’

‘Who?’

‘The reporter!’

‘But you agreed?’

‘Well, I-’ Carys read on.

The new duchess complained that she never sees her husband and said that she had even thought about running away.

‘
This is the trouble when the aristocracy marries outside its own circle,’ Lady Bleasingdale of Haver Abbey said. ‘They don’t understand what they are taking on.’

Cary’s mouth dropped open at the thought of somebody she didn’t know passing judgement on her marriage in such a damning and knowledgeable manner.

‘Who on earth is Lady Bleasingdale?’

‘That’s of very little consequence,’ Richard said. ‘God, Carys! Do you realise what damage this could do to us? Do you realise how we come across in this piece? What’s everyone going to think?’

‘It’s not my fault!’

‘Then whose fault is it?’

‘Natasha’s! The reporter,’ Carys said, her face burning scarlet as she remembered talking to her - trusting her. What a fool she’d been.

‘She was only doing her job.’

‘But I wasn’t to know that. I didn’t know she was interviewing me.’

‘Whenever you speak to a reporter, you’re being interviewed. You really are very naïve.’

The words hung between them like a barrier. Carys could feel tears pricking her eyes at the harshness of Richard’s gaze and the sharpness of his words. How could he talk to her like that? How could this have happened after their wonderful, golden evening together?

Quickly, she blinked her tears back and took a deep breath. ‘I thought you said Amberley could use some extra publicity.’ She was grasping at straws, she knew, but she didn’t know what else to say.

‘That’s not the kind of publicity I had in mind,’ Richard said dismissively.

‘But Valerie Buckley-Stewart told me even bad publicity is good.’

Richard’s frown deepened. ‘You’ve been talking to the Buckley-Stewarts?’

Carys bit her lip. She could do no right at the moment; that much was obvious.

‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve got things to do. I could be doing without this at the moment. For God’s sake-’

She’d never heard him swear and blaspheme so much before.

‘-For God’s sake, don’t go talking to anyone else.’

‘I won’t,’ she said, frowning, and watched as he left the room. He didn’t take the paper with him.

Carys picked it up and opened it. The story continued on page three and there was another unflattering photograph of her striding across the lawn. She looked like a farmer in her cap and wellies. There was even an editor’s comment on page twelve.
What have the aristocracy to complain about?
No doubt that would spawn a deluge of letters in the next few days’ papers.

What really annoyed Carys was the fact that, underneath the headline were the words,
Exclusive by Natasha Bryant
. The cheek! The absolute effrontery of the woman. Carys could picture her running into the office the day after the YBG meeting.

Listen to this, everyone! You won’t believe the scoop I’ve got. That naïve Carys Cuthland - the new duchess - well …’

Carys winced. It was just too much. She sank down onto her chair, her shoulders slumped in defeat.

There was a light knock on the door.

‘What is it?’ Carys asked, half expecting it to be some impudent reporter.

‘My lady?’

‘Oh, Mrs Travis. What is it?’

‘I thought you might like a cup of tea,’ she said, crossing the room and placing a china mug on her desk.

‘Thank you,’ Carys said, hoping Mrs Travis wasn’t going to be too kind. Kindness, she thought, might just burst the dam of tears she was doing her best to hold back. ‘I suppose you’ve seen the paper?’

‘Oh! I do hope you’re not worried about that, my lady.’

‘It’s terrible. Just terrible!’

‘You should’ve seen what they used to print about Lord C’s mother during her time as duchess.’

Carys blinked. Francesca! She hadn’t even thought of her. She was going to see the paper, wasn’t she? What was she going to make of her new daughter-in-law now?

‘What did they used to say?’

‘Dreadful rubbish. All made up to sell a few extra copies. If they can’t dish the dirt on actors, they go after aristocrats.’

Carys gave a faint smile. ‘And I was a sitting duck.’

‘It isn’t your fault.’

‘Can you tell Lord C that for me, please?’

‘Oh, is he worried? He should know better than that. And it’s all publicity for Amberley.’

‘That’s what I told him.’

‘You’ll have people queuing round the block to catch a glimpse of you now.’

Carys started. ‘You think so?’