by Kate Hardy
Fenella was everything Holly herself wasn’t. No wonder Simon had fallen head over heels with her. If you put a scruffy archaeologist who wore ancient jeans and T-shirts and usually had a smear of mud on her face from the trench she was working in next to someone with perfect hair and make-up and a designer suit, it was obvious who’d win in the gorgeousness stakes. Who’d be enough.
‘I’ll set foot in the ballroom,’ Holly promised, ‘so you get a chance to do some dancing. And I appreciate you having my back.’
‘Always,’ Natalie said fiercely. ‘You’ve been my best friend since we were eleven. That’s not going to change. I’m quite prepared to fly over to New York and beat Simon over the head with an umbrella—and threaten to baste Fenella in the stickiest marinade and barbecue her.’
Holly couldn’t help smiling. ‘Thank you, but there are better things to do in New York.’
Natalie gave her an ‘are you insane?’ stare. ‘Can I at least make a mini-Simon out of modelling clay and stick pins into him?’
‘That’s money,’ Holly said, ‘you could spend more satisfyingly on posh gin.’
‘Oh, the modelling clay and pins would be satisfying enough,’ Natalie said. ‘But you’re right. Posh gin’s a good idea. And we are so having posh gin at the ball. So I’ll meet you at Paddington Station at four o’clock on Friday—next to the Paddington Bear bench—and we’ll get the next train to Bath.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve got our tickets. I’ll send you the email so you’ve got the PDF of our tickets, too, just in case something goes wrong with my phone.’
‘It’s more likely to be me forgetting to charge my phone. You know how hopeless I am,’ Holly said wryly. ‘You’re the best friend ever. Thanks, Nat.’
‘Roman archaeology, afternoon tea and a Regency ball. That’s all our favourite things covered,’ Natalie said with a smile.
‘And no matchmaking,’ Holly said, mindful of her best friend’s views about how to get over a broken relationship. ‘Just a nice girly weekend. You and me.’
‘A nice girly weekend. You and me,’ Natalie echoed.
* * *
Wine plus his parents really wasn’t a good combination, Harry thought. He was really glad that that his brother Dominic, his sister Ellen and their partners were here, too. It was the only thing that made a visit to Beauchamp Abbey bearable. He wished the meal had been Sunday lunch rather than Saturday dinner, because having small children around might have dampened the sniping a bit.
Then again, the sniping had been there when he’d been a small child, too. It had grown worse over the years, and it had been truly unbearable when Dom and Nell had both been at university. Harry hadn’t been able to keep the peace between his parents and he’d hated all the conflict, so he’d escaped to his grandmother’s as much as possible. His parents’ behaviour had gone a long way to putting him off the idea of ever getting married.
At least Ellen had asked him to stay with her, so he didn’t have to put up with a whole weekend of their parents. Now, with the cheese course over, his father was making inroads into the brandy and getting really snippy. ‘You’re thirty now, Harry. Isn’t it about time you got married again and settled down properly?’ George asked.
Trust his father not to pull his punches. And considering that Viscount Moran had made it very clear that Harry’s ex-wife was much too lower class for his son... Harry damped down the anger. Having difficult in-laws wasn’t the only reason, or even one of the main reasons, why he and Rochelle had broken up. But it hadn’t helped.
‘I’m a bit busy with my career, Pa,’ he said as blandly as he could. ‘It’s not fair to ask someone to wait about for me when I’m touring so much.’ And if marriage hadn’t worked with someone who was in the same business and understood that you had to travel a lot to make a living out of music, it definitely wasn’t going to work with someone who’d be left at home all the time.
‘I think we’ve given you your head for quite long enough, letting you mess around with your cello for all these years,’ George said. ‘It’s way past time you came back here, settled down and pulled your weight in the family business.’
‘Messing around’ wasn’t quite how Harry would describe graduating from the Royal Academy of Music with first-class honours, or working with a renowned string quartet for the last six years. Not to mention the fact that he’d paid for the repairs of the conservatory roof at the abbey last year. He did his share of supporting the family estate, except he did it from as much distance as he thought he could get away with.
And it was getting harder and harder to bite his tongue. He knew his father resented the fact that Harry had gone his own way, but did George always have to bring it up and try to make his youngest son feel as if his career was worthless and he was a useless son? But, much as he wanted to stand up to his father’s bullying and tell him where to get off, Harry didn’t want to make life hard for his brother and sister. They were the ones who lived locally and would bear the brunt of George’s temper, whereas Harry had the perfect excuse to escape to wherever the quartet was playing next.
‘I still think my father would turn in his grave at the idea of people poking around the house,’ George grumbled.
‘Nobody will be poking around the house, Pa,’ Dominic reassured him. ‘They’ll be following a defined visitor route. Nobody will go into areas we’ve roped off as private. And we’ve done Open Garden weekends for years without a problem; opening the house to visitors is just an extension of that.’
‘The gift shop, the plant sales and the café we’re going to set up in the Orangery will help to make the estate pay for itself,’ Ellen added. ‘We’re developing an exclusive range of biscuits at the factory, based on some of the old recipes we found in the library, and we can sell all the gifts through our website as well.’
‘Biscuits.’ George’s voice dripped with contempt.
Harry could see his sister-in-law Sally and his brother-in-law Tristan squirming, embarrassed by the escalating family row and not quite sure how to deal with Viscount Moran’s uncertain temper, worried that anything they did or said would make things worse. With age, George had become more and more crusty, to the point where he was almost a caricature. One of these days he’d be in a satirical cartoon, with his mop of grey hair he couldn’t be bothered to style, his jowls and his red cheeks, pointing a finger and shouting.
‘Well, I don’t want anything to do with it.’ George swigged his brandy crossly. ‘I don’t see why you can’t just wait for me to die before you start all this nonsense.’
‘That can be arranged,’ Barbara said, rolling her eyes at her husband.
George’s temper flared. ‘As for you, what do you care about Beauchamp? You grew up—’
Harry knew what was coming next: a pot-shot at his mother’s background as the daughter of a local biscuit manufacturer. She was a commoner with her background in trade, not the gentry. And that in turn would escalate to comments from his mother that the Morans hadn’t minded the money from Beckett’s Biscuits rescuing them when George’s father had drunk and gambled away the estate to near-penury, forty years before...
He stood up. ‘Both of you. Please. Just stop,’ he said quietly.
To his surprise, his parents did so.
It was a heady feeling that they were actually listening to the baby of the family for once. And maybe he’d drunk too much wine, because he found himself folding his arms and looking his father straight in the eye. ‘Pa, Dom and Nell are absolutely right. This house eats money and it needs to start paying its way. You’ll still have your private space and nobody’s going to disturb that. We’re simply letting people enjoy the garden and the artworks here, and it’ll mean you won’t have to sell yet another painting to pay for the next lot of repairs and work out how you’re going to hide the faded patch on the walls because you can’t afford to renovate the silk wall coverings.’
George stared a
t him in complete silence.
Warming to his theme, Harry said, ‘A gift shop with plant sales and a café will create jobs and bring in visitors to help the local economy. Everyone wins. Dom, Sally, Nell and Tris all work really hard and they’re doing a brilliant job. We all ought to appreciate that.’
More silence, and this time he could see that his brother and sister were squirming just as much as their partners.
He’d gone too far.
But he really wasn’t going to apologise. Not this time. He hadn’t said anything offensive. And he was so tired of treading on eggshells around his irascible father. Viscount Moran and his moods had dominated the family ever since Harry could remember, and it was way past time that changed. Harry was sick of having to kowtow to an entitled bully. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get some more water.’ He picked up the jug from the centre of the table and headed for the kitchen.
Ellen followed him. ‘Are you all right, Harry?’
‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Nell. I didn’t intend to stir things up. But I’m so sick of it. This is why I hardly ever come back to the abbey. I’m tired of Ma and Pa sniping at each other all the time. And I’m really tired of them treating you and Dom as if you’re useless, when actually you’re brilliant and without the pair of you Beauchamp Abbey would’ve collapsed under a pile of debt years and years ago.’ He grimaced.
‘In my professional life, I stand up to bullies. Especially if I see one of the older men trying to put the younger women down, or leering at them and trying to do the equivalent of the casting couch. It’s absolutely not OK, and I’m not going to stand aside and watch it happen.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish I knew how to deal with Pa.’
‘Just let it go,’ Ellen advised. ‘Pa can threaten whatever he likes, but he can’t actually carry any of it out. Grandpa Beckett left the majority share in the biscuit business to me, so Pa can’t sack me. The house is entailed, so Dom’s the only one who can inherit it; and it’d take an Act of Parliament for Pa to make anyone other than Dom the next Viscount—which we all know isn’t going to happen, because even people who’ve had a really good case for disinheriting their kids haven’t been able to stop them inheriting the title and estate. Pa has absolutely no grounds for disinheriting Dom. He’d be laughed at if he tried.’
‘I guess,’ Harry said.
She hugged him. ‘And ignore those stupid comments about your career. We’re so proud of you.’
‘Yes. Your quartet’s booked up for two years in advance, which is pretty amazing,’ Dominic said, walking into the kitchen, ‘and what about the awards you’ve won? Plus whenever I play any of your recordings it takes me into another world. You’re brilliant at what you do. Don’t listen to Pa.’
‘I was all ready to yell at him and tell him to stop being such a bully,’ Harry said, ‘but I stopped myself because I know I won’t be the one who has to put up with the tantrums, and it isn’t fair to make things worse for you. But I really, really hate the way he treats you all.’
‘It is what it is,’ Dominic said with a shrug. ‘I don’t think you’re old enough to remember, but Grandpa Moran was even worse than Pa.’
‘So why doesn’t Pa think about how Grandpa Moran made him feel, and ask himself if that’s how he wants his own children to think about him?’ Harry asked.
‘Because I don’t think he can. He’s too set in his ways,’ Ellen said gently. ‘But we love you, Harry. And we’re hugely proud of you.’
‘Seconded,’ Dominic said, clapping him on the shoulder.
‘Though,’ Ellen added, ‘he might have a point about letting someone back into your life. I know you were in pieces when Rochelle... Well.’ She coughed. ‘But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work with anyone else.’
Oh, but it would. Harry had faced a stark choice: his marriage or his career. And he’d chosen the thing built on solid foundations. The thing where he could be himself and not think about the might-have-beens: the little boy or girl who would’ve been five years old now.
‘Thank you for your support,’ he said, ‘but I don’t need anyone. I’m fine.’
‘We worry about you,’ Ellen said.
‘I’m fine. Really,’ he said. ‘Just sick of the parents.’ He grimaced. ‘They loathe each other, but they’ll never get divorced. They always bang on about divorce not being the done thing—’ and they’d both gone on about it most when he could’ve done with a bit of support, in the middle of his own divorce ‘—but I think we all know Ma married Pa for his title, and Pa married Ma for Grandpa Beckett’s money. Divorce means she’d lose the title and he’d lose the money. So they stay together and just make each other—and everyone around them—utterly miserable.’
‘Which is why we don’t live here with them.’ Ellen ruffled his hair. ‘Living in the village means there’s just enough distance between us to protect the kids. But not all marriages are like theirs, Harry. Or like yours was, sweetheart. Look at me and Dom. I’m happy with Tris.’
‘And I’m happy with Sal,’ Dominic said. ‘I know it was hard, what happened with Rochelle, but surely it’s worth trying again?’
Harry sighed. The wreckage had proved that he should never have married Rochelle in the first place. Marriage wasn’t for him. Not then and not now. ‘The women who want to date me nowadays don’t see the real me—they see either Harry the musician in the public eye, or Harry the younger son of Viscount Moran.’
‘Then you’re meeting the wrong women,’ Ellen said. ‘Why don’t you let me—?’
‘Thanks for the offer, but no,’ Harry cut in gently. The last thing he wanted was for his sister to start match-making, even though he respected her judgement. He didn’t want to fall in love again, only for it to go wrong. He couldn’t face any more ultimatums with a woman saying he had to choose between her and his music. Clearly it was greedy to want love and his job. But at least his job never let him down, unlike love.
Ellen took a key from her pocket. ‘Here. Escape back to ours, and get some fresh air. I’ll tell the parents you’ve got a migraine.’
‘You,’ Harry said, ‘are the best sister ever.’
She grinned. ‘I hope so. Do you really have to dash off tomorrow?’
Harry nodded. ‘Sorry, I have rehearsals.’
* * *
On Thursday evening, Holly was in the middle of packing her bag for the weekend when her phone shrilled.
‘Hey, Nat,’ she said, answering the call.
‘Holls, I’m so sorry.’ Natalie sounded thoroughly miserable. ‘There’s been a bug going round at work and I’ve picked it up—I’ve been throwing up all day and I feel like death warmed up.’
‘You poor thing,’ Holly said. ‘Look, I’ll ring the hotel and cancel, and then I’ll come round and make you something with apples and rice that you might be able to keep down.’
‘No, don’t come here—you might go down with this bug, too,’ Natalie said. ‘And don’t cancel. You picked up the dresses for us yesterday, so you can still go to Bath.’
‘Without you? No way!’
‘It’s all paid for,’ Natalie said, ‘and at this late notice we wouldn’t get a refund. It’s daft to waste the money.’
‘I can try asking,’ Holly said, ‘or see if they can reschedule.’
‘No. You go without me,’ Natalie urged. ‘Have a good time and take lots of pictures for me.’
It wouldn’t be the same on her own, but Holly didn’t want to throw her best friend’s kindness back in her face. ‘Only,’ she said, ‘on condition that we reschedule a weekend away for both of us later in the summer, and it’ll be my treat.’
‘Deal,’ Natalie said. ‘And this time I’ll try not to pick up any horrible sicky bugs.’
‘I’ll bring you back a Sally Lunn on Sunday evening,’ Holly promised, knowing how much Natalie enjoyed the historic Bath speciality: a teacake that
was a bit like a brioche, made from a recipe dating back to Restoration times.
‘Jane Austen’s favourite—and mine,’ Natalie said. ‘And I really hope I feel better by Sunday so I can do it justice!’
* * *
On Friday, Holly caught the train to Bath after work. Breakfast the next morning was as good as Natalie had promised; and then she headed to re-acquaint herself with the Roman Baths and drool over the lead curse tablets. She took a selfie while she drank a paper cup of the slightly warm and slightly disgusting water at the baths and sent it to Natalie, and followed it up with photographs of the gorgeous Georgian houses, tour guides walking around the city dressed up as Mr Darcy, and detailed pictures of the afternoon tea at the Pump Room. She called in at the ancient shop to buy a Sally Lunn, and picked up chocolates from the artisanal maker Natalie had been raving about since their last visit, then headed back to get ready for the ball.
She really didn’t want to go.
But Natalie had paid for the tickets and Holly felt it would be churlish to deny her friend a few photographs to cheer her up.
The red dress Natalie had chosen for her fitted perfectly. It had a flattering Empire line bodice, short puff sleeves, a net overskirt and a silk underskirt, and Natalie had also hired a pair of long white gloves and a small reticule to go with it. Thankfully Holly had a pair of flat black suede pumps that would work as dance shoes.
She knew from the costume events her best friend had attended in the past that she needed to put her hair up; she was used to wearing her hair tied back at the nape of her neck or in a braid for work, so it didn’t take her long to put her hair up in a bun, braid a section that she could twist round the bun, and then curl the strands at the front. She added the bare minimum of make-up, then took a selfie in the full-length mirror.
