English Lord, Ordinary Lady

She turned to face her mother and shrugged. She wasn’t apologising for looking as she wanted to look and being who she wanted to be.

Dinner was as long and tortuous as she’d expected it to be. At least Hattie seemed content to demolish two bowls of some fancy apple tart with mountains of ice cream.

Poor Sophie—Josie had only known the girl two hours and she already couldn’t think of her without adding the ‘poor’ in front of her name—was almost too scared to chew. Although she needn’t have bothered being so petrified, not with Josie there to suck up all the negative vibes.

Next to Josie, Sophie looked like a perfect angel. And she certainly seemed like one with her quiet demeanour and impeccable manners.

Poor Sophie. If she really knew what she was marrying into she’d run a mile, screaming all the way.

After the meal, when they had retired to the drawing room once again, Josie saw her mother fix a smile to her face and walk over to her.

‘Hattie is such a darling, isn’t she?’

Here we go, thought Josie. Mother was working up to something, she just knew it.

‘Yes, she’s a very special girl.’

Her mother’s face softened as she watched Hattie, lying on the floor with her head bent over a colouring book, the tip of her tongue poking out as she concentrated.

No doubt her mother approved of the frilly concoction her granddaughter had insisted on wearing. Josie shook her head. Hattie’s tights were spotless and unladdered and there wasn’t a spot of ice cream down the front of her dress.

Her mother must have been reading her thoughts. ‘She looks charming, doesn’t she? Quite the little lady. When I remember you at her age…’

Any comparisons were not going to be favourable to Josie. Her mother might as well come straight out and say it: she didn’t know how such a disappointment as Josie had produced something so perfect.

Truth was, Josie wasn’t quite sure she knew herself. All the seriousness and particular neatness definitely hadn’t come from her.

And, as far as she remembered, it hadn’t come from Hattie’s father either. Miles was the archetypal playboy. Plenty of charm and sophistication with just a hint of danger. And a smile that had been able to melt her knees at twenty paces. She hadn’t stood a chance.

And they’d both had too much money and too little sense to behave responsibly. Cue one pregnant eighteen-year-old and two very shocked sets of parents.

‘…maybe spend the holidays here?’

She suddenly became aware she’d drifted off and her mother was asking her a question.

‘Pardon, Mum?’

There was that look again. ‘I was asking whether Hattie should come and spend the summer holidays with us. She could learn to ride.’

‘I don’t know what our plans are yet.’

She knew she couldn’t keep stalling her mother for ever, but a vague answer would give her a bit of breathing room, time to plot and plan.

No way was Hattie going to spend six weeks at Harrington House. Short visits every couple of months were OK, but a month and a half was too long. She’d be brainwashed by the beginning of the autumn term.

All that innocence and joy at discovering life would be lost and replaced by a feeling that, no matter how hard she tried, she just wasn’t living up to the standards expected of a Harrington-Jones. Every activity, every decision would be measured by whether it was ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’, not by whether it was good for her soul.

Her mother was watching her.

‘I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but it’s no excuse to keep Hattie away from us.’

‘That’s not it at all.’

Her mother raised an eyebrow.

‘You know what it’s like in the summer months. I’m going to be so busy with work. It’s difficult to plan ahead.’

‘How convenient.’ Her mother pulled a finger along the mantelpiece to inspect for dust. ‘But you don’t have to work. I’ve said many a time that you and Hattie could come and live here with us—have your own apartments even, if you wanted a little independence.’

It wouldn’t be the same. A different front door would not stop the magnetic pull of her mother’s iron will. Before she knew it, she’d be married off to some minor lord who would put up with the skeletons rattling—no, lindy-hopping—in her closet and Hattie would be ‘coming out’ as a debutante.

‘I got myself pregnant, Mum. It should be me who deals with the consequences.’

Her mother brushed the few molecules of dust she’d found off her finger with her thumb. ‘Just don’t punish Hattie because you don’t want to live here.’

‘Mum, Hattie is hardly deprived! She’s got a lot more than some children have. I’m just letting her have a happy childhood. Not everything I do is a way of getting back at you.’

There was no warmth in her mother’s voice as she answered. ‘Well, that’s a relief to know.’

‘I know what you think, Mum. I know I messed up big time in the past, but that’s changed. Having Hattie made me grow up and take a good look at my life. I might not wear cardigans and pearls and have married into a good family—’

‘You had the chance.’

Well, she’d let her parents think that. Miles had disappeared in a cloud of dust when she’d told him the news. It was less humiliating to let them think she’d turned him down. She had turned down the appointment to ‘get rid’ of the problem at a Harley Street clinic.

‘I know you don’t understand, Mum, but I want the chance to work life out for myself rather than following some pattern laid out for me from generations past.’

Her mother stopped rearranging the ornaments on the mantel. ‘Josephine, the whole point of learning from history—and our family has a rich and successful history—is that it means we don’t have to make the same mistakes over and over again.’

She could talk until she was blue in the face and her mother would never get it. To be a lady, to live in a ghastly heap of stone like this, was all her mother had ever wanted.

‘Making my own mistakes, learning my own lessons is what makes me feel alive.’

And she had learned from other people’s mistakes, just not from her distant ancestors. The generation she had learned most from was right in this room.

She looked over at Hattie, absorbed in her drawing of a princess, and her heart pinched a little.

No way was Hattie going to grow up feeling as if she had to earn every little bit of love that came her way. And while she knew her own teenage years had been pretty wild, all it had been was attention-seeking. Hopefully Hattie would be grounded enough to never feel the need to do some of the things Josie’d done.

She looked over at Hattie, lying on her front and kicking her legs in the air behind her.

It was fine to talk about letting her have her wings when she was this age, more interested in frilly dolls and secret clubs with her best friends, but in a few years’ time it would be a whole different kettle of fish. Boys. Drink. Drugs. Avenues for self-destruction would be beckoning to her at every turn.

The urge to keep Hattie at Elmhurst for ever, playing trolls and fairies, was sudden and overpowering. She looked over at her mother again, who was staring into the flames of the fire.

She wanted to lean forward and give her mother a kiss on the cheek, to say she understood her protective urges but wouldn’t be confined by them, but before she’d managed to move her mother broke out of her trance and walked away.

‘Hattie? Look out of the window and see who’s at the door, will you?’ Josie raised her head from where she was kneeling over the bath, ignoring the pink drips plopping onto the bath mat. ‘Hattie?’