The Virgin's Wedding Night

When she eventually joined them, her mother was smiling too, but with a kind of rigid determination, and her eyes were red.

‘Such fun, sweetie. You’re going to stay here with Grandpa and have a wonderful time. Spoiled to death, I expect, don’t you, Nanny?’

‘Aren’t you staying too?’ Harriet asked in bewilderment, but Caroline shook her head.

‘I’ll be going with Bryn, darling. He has a marvellous tour of America coming up with a very famous singer. We’ll be away for ages, so it’s best that you’re here. It’s a wonderful place to grow up in,’ she added, the lovely face momentarily shadowed with something like regret.

And so it had proved, thought Harriet. Because she’d never actually lived with her mother again after that, seeing her only from time to time as someone whose visits became less and less frequent.

The house had become the constant in her life—had become her home. And that initial sense of wonder—almost of recognition—had never faded. She’d felt from the start that the place was reaching out to her to hug her—to soothe away any sense of abandonment she might feel. And she’d hugged it back, knowing that it was where she truly belonged.

Accustomed to London’s restrictions, she’d found Gracemead and its large grounds had provided her with a magical playground to explore for hours at a time. And Nanny and Mrs Wade had almost vied with each other to make sure she lacked for nothing to make her feel comfortable and secure.

Her relationship with her grandfather had taken rather longer to establish. He’d been awkward with her at first, taciturn and more than a little gruff. And sometimes she’d found him watching her as if he was puzzled about something. Then, one day, she’d heard one of the local ladies refer to her as ‘Poor Caroline’s little girl. You would never know, would you?’ and understood.

It was the day he’d found her in his book-lined study, deep in Black Beauty, twining a strand of hair round her finger as she read, that everything had changed between them.

She hadn’t realised immediately that she was no longer alone, and when she’d looked up and seen him watching her, she’d been apprehensive in case he was angry.

But his sudden smile had been strangely tender. ‘Your mother used to do that when she was reading,’ he told her. ‘And this was her favourite book too.’

He sat down in the big wing chair by the fireplace and began to talk to her, listening patiently to her halting replies, and encouraging her to be less shy, and say whatever was on her mind.

Looking back, Harriet could even say with honesty that she’d had a pretty good childhood in spite of her mother’s continuing and prolonged absences. There’d been postcards at first, and letters from the States, then from Europe, after the relationship with Bryn had finally crashed and burned like all the others, and Caroline had joined up with a professional tennis player, not quite in the top rank.

Eventually, as the years had passed, the letters had become fewer, then dried up altogether. At the last contact—a card for her twenty-first birthday—Caroline had seemed to be in Argentina living with a former polo player. But no address had been included, and since then there’d been nothing to indicate whether her mother was alive or dead.

Harriet had come to accept over the years that her mother lived solely on her own terms, and that the existence of her child belonged to a long-discarded past. She was left to remember only Caroline’s beauty and zest for life, however misplaced, and to try and forget the negative elements of their relationship. At the same time, however, her life with her grandfather, though never lacking in affection, grew marginally trickier.

Gregory Flint was clearly determined that Harriet was not going to follow in her mother’s footsteps if there was anything he could do to prevent it. Accordingly, Harriet found her life controlled by a kind of benevolent despotism, her freedom restricted and her judgement regularly called into question.

And the fact that she could—almost—understand why it was happening made it no less irksome.

The first major clash between them had come when she was eighteen, and had just left her convent school, and he’d announced he’d found her a place in a Swiss establishment where she would improve her foreign language skills, and embark on a cordon bleu cookery course.

She’d stared at him open-mouthed. ‘You mean I’m going to be finished? Gramps, you can’t mean it. Anyone would think we were living a hundred years ago.’

His brows snapped together. ‘You have some other idea?’

‘Well, of course.’ She tried her most winning smile. ‘I’ve decided to join the family business. Carry on the Flint name for another generation.’

‘You—want to work for Flint Audley?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And where did this ridiculous notion spring from, I wonder?’

‘It seems an obvious choice,’ she countered.

‘Well, it’s not obvious to me,’ he said scathingly. ‘What on earth do you think you know about property management on the scale we deal with? Dealing with our range of tenants, contracts, maintenance—the thousand and one issues you’d be faced with? You—a chit of a girl just out of school?’

‘I’d know about as much as you and Gordon Audley did when you started out in the fifties.’ Harriet lifted her chin without flinching. ‘And certainly as much as Jonathan Audley with his 2:2 in Fine Arts,’ she added, her tone edged. ‘Yet he seems to have been welcomed with open arms—even by you. I could run rings round him, given the chance.’

She paused. ‘Because I’m not just “a chit of a girl” as you claim. I’m a chip off the old block, and all I want is an opportunity to prove myself.’ She added more quietly. ‘I—I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Then you can think again, and quickly too.’ His voice was cutting. ‘I have very different plans for your future, my girl.’

‘Yes, I know. Polite French conversation halfway up some Alp.’ She shook her head. ‘Gramps, darling, it would never work. I’d be so bored. And you know what they say about idle hands,’ she added unthinkingly, and saw his face harden into real anger.

‘Is that a reference to your mother?’

She bit her lip. ‘No, I promise it’s not.’ Although maybe things might have turned out differently for her if she’d been allowed to have a real job—a career from the outset—instead of being expected to stay at home, the dutiful daughter. Perhaps that original love affair was her first chance to be herself. To make a choice, even if it was the wrong one…

She thought it, but did not say it. Instead, she went on coaxingly, ‘All the same, I’d like to pass on the social graces, and start earning my living like everyone else I know.’

There was a silence, then he said, ‘Well, there’s no need to be in too much of a hurry to decide about the future. Why not take one of those gap years, and spend some time at home, while you make up your mind? If you need an occupation, there’s always plenty of voluntary work about.’

‘Gramps, my mind is made up.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And Larry Brotherton is interviewing me for a job as an assistant in the rents review department on Monday.’

‘No one,’ her grandfather said ominously, ‘has seen fit to mention this to me. And I am still nominally supposed to be the chairman of the board.’

‘With your mind, presumably, on higher things than the recruitment of very junior staff.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, Mr Brotherton may turn me down.’

‘I doubt that very much.’ He was silent for a moment, then grunted. ‘I suppose if you’re determined I can’t stop you. And Flint Audley will do as well as anywhere—until, of course, you’re ready to settle down.’

And I laughed, and said, ‘Of course,’ thought Harriet.

She’d been too pleased with her victory to consider the clear implication in his words. That working at Flint Audley would be merely a stop-gap arrangement until she fulfilled her female destiny by making a sensible marriage.

And when, to her delight, she’d been offered the job, she’d thrown herself into it, working so conspicuously hard that promotion had soon followed. Now, six years later, driven by ambition and hard graft, she was at management level, with a salary to match, a generous bonus, and a possible brief to expand the commercial management branch of the company outside London.

That was if the afternoon’s meeting went her way, as she was determined that it should.

Her colleagues might not like her particularly—she knew that behind her back she was called ‘Harriet the Harridan’—but they couldn’t knock her achievements, and that was what she cared about.

If only Gramps could have been equally satisfied, she thought bitterly. But there’d never been any chance of that. His opinion of her career had remained totally unchanged—that it was simply a way of keeping busy until real life intervened, and she found herself a suitable man.

But over the past year his attitude had hardened to the point of disaster.

‘Gracemead is a house for a family, not a single woman,’ he’d growled. ‘You’ve wasted enough time, my girl. Find yourself a decent man and bring him home as your husband, or I’ll change my will. Arrange for the place to be sold after I’m gone.’

She’d stared at him open-mouthed. ‘Gramps—you’re not serious. You can’t be.’

‘I mean every word,’ he’d returned ominously. ‘I’m going to set you a deadline, Harriet. If you’re not engaged, or better still married, by your next birthday, I shall contact my lawyers. As my heiress, you’d be vulnerable—prey to any smooth-talking crook who came along. I intend to see you with a strong man at your side.’

‘I don’t believe this.’ She’d been breathless with shock and anger. ‘That kind of thinking belongs in the Ark.’

He’d nodded grimly. ‘And everything in the Ark went in two by two—exactly as nature intended. And if you want this house, you’ll do the same.’

Remembering, Harriet caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window, scowling ferociously, and hastily rearranged her expression into more agreeable lines. She made it a strict rule never to take any personal problems into the office, so no one knew about the rock and the hard place currently confronting her in her private life.

‘And they’re not going to know, either,’ she muttered under her breath. This afternoon she had to make a conscious effort to win hearts and minds for her expansion programme, and she already knew that her plans would be under attack by Jonathan Audley, just for the sake of it.