Man Of Stone. Penny Jordan

there in the brief, dismissive glance he gave her before turning his attention to Cressy.

      But then that indifference had changed to a fierce, biting contempt that had blasted her fragile self-confidence, leaving her acutely vulnerable to the dislike she had felt emanating from him.

      Was it just because Cressy had misrepresented her to him? She told herself that a man who could be so easily deceived by her stepsister’s pretty face wasn’t worth bothering about, but she couldn’t dismiss him so easily.

      If she stayed here, he was going to be part of the fabric of her life. Her grandmother plainly adored him. Sara was dangerously tempted to leave, but how could she? She had Tom to think about. Tom, who already seemed to have settled into his new environment.

      At least Luke wasn’t there all the time, if he constantly came and went on business. And if he really disliked her as much as she believed, he would be as anxious to avoid her as she was to avoid him.

      So why did she feel this nagging sense of danger? Why did she find herself thinking of him as the serpent in her new-found Eden?

      Although she hadn’t intended to, she did oversleep. Tom woke her up, announcing that he had had his breakfast and that he was ready to explore.

      ‘Harrison is going to show me everything,’ he told her importantly.

      Did Harrison know not to take him near anything furred or feathered? Anxiously, Sara got up, instructing him to stay inside until she was ready to go out with him.

      She donned her usual uniform of jeans and sweater, pausing only for a moment to admire the view from her bedroom window.

      Her grandmother, she learned from Anna, always had breakfast in her own room.

      ‘It’s her heart,’ the housekeeper told her. ‘She must rest as much as she can, but she does not always do so. Although Luke does what he can to remove most of the burden from her shoulders, there is still much work involved in organising the maintenance and running of a house such as this one.’

      Listening to her, Sara made a vow there and then that she would do as much as she could to remove that burden from her grandmother’s shoulders.

      After breakfast, Harrison showed them round the gardens. How easy it would be to allow oneself to slip back in time here, if only in the imagination, Sara thought, marvelling at the intricacy and cleverness of a cleverly fashioned knot garden.

      There was an avenue of clipped yews and quiet, shadowed pathways that led to small, secret, enclosed gardens with old-fashioned, wrought-iron benches. In one was a sundial, engraved with quotations from Shakespeare’s sonnets, and in another a white-painted summer-house, shaped like a small pavilion.

      How could her mother have endured to leave all this? Sara could only marvel at the power of human emotions. Had she been brought up here, could she have turned her back on it and the love of her parents to go off with a man like her father?

      Perhaps it was the insecurity of her own childhood from which had grown this deep-rooted need for security. Her mother, the child of such security, might not have experienced its need quite so sharply. It was true that familiarity could breed contempt.

      The gardens had such serenity, such a sense of time and timelessness. She listened as Harrison told her how each individual garden had come into being.

      He had been with her parents for many years. His family came from the village, he told her. He was in his sixties, a wiry, weathered man with a quiet voice and very sharp eyes.

      Tom had taken to him immediately. Like her, Tom craved security… and love.

      ‘Do you have any dogs here?’ Tom asked earnestly, and Sara quailed a little, remembering Cressy’s unkind promise to him.

      ‘Not now,’ Harrison told him, shaking his head. ‘We did once, but your grandmother says she’s too old now for a young dog.’

      They saw the peacocks and their wives, strutting beside the lake, fanning their tales in rage as humans invaded their domain. Tom stared at them in awe, fascinated by the iridescent ‘eyes’ in their tails.

      ‘A present from Queen Victoria, they was,’ Harrison told them, and Sara knew that he referred to the birds’ original antecedents. How many stories this house must hold, how many secrets! But it lacked the brooding quality that hung like a miasma over so many old houses.

      With very little imagination she could almost believe she could hear the sound of children’s laughter; almost believe she could see all those long-ago children who must once have played in these gardens. As her children might, perhaps, one day play here.

      It was an odd thought to have, and one that made her suddenly immensely aware of a deep inner loneliness she had been experiencing for some time.

      She loved Tom and she loved Cressy. She knew she would love her grandmother as well, but Sara knew that that was not enough. She wanted to experience the same kind of love her mother must once have felt for her father; the kind of love that transcended everything else; the kind of love that was shared between a man and a woman.

      Tom dragged slightly on her hand and she checked herself immediately. He must be tired, although already there was more colour in his face, a new happiness in his eyes.

      ‘I don’t know about Harrison and you, Tom, but I’m ready for some of Anna’s coffee,’ she said diplomatically, knowing how sensitive Tom was about his fragility.

      She saw from the relief in his eyes that she was right, and that he was tired.

      ‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ she suggested.

      ‘Do you know, Sara, I’m very glad we came here,’ he pronounced when they were sitting at Anna’s kitchen table, munching home-made biscuits and drinking coffee in Sara’s case and lemonade in Tom’s. ‘It makes me feel sort of happy inside being here.’

      Sara knew exactly what he meant.