I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin

and fork clattered on to his plate, ‘wish to marry him!’

      ‘Stop, at once! I have listened to more than enough for one night. You have deceived me, Julia, and I suggest you go to your room. I would like to speak with your brother alone.’

      ‘No. I’m sorry, Mama, but I won’t.’ Her voice was less than a whisper now, and trembled on the edge of tears. ‘I didn’t deceive you today; not wholly. I did buy roses for Hawthorn. But I am almost twenty-one – almost grown up – and will not be sent from the room like a naughty child, nor discussed behind my back.’

      ‘Let her stay, dearest?’ Giles pleaded. ‘Julia has been truthful, and told you all.’

      ‘Yes! But would she have been so forthcoming had this young man not announced his intention of confronting me in my own home?’

      ‘I think,’ said her son levelly, ‘that it is I he must confront if he wishes to marry my sister. In Robert’s absence, I am her legal guardian – for the five remaining months she is a minor, that is.’

      ‘I see. So after November, when she is of age, you will condone such a marriage, simply because you are not prepared to do anything about it, Giles?’

      ‘No, Mother. But at least receive the man. You’ll know at once if he is a fortune hunter.’

      ‘Your sister does not have a fortune!’

      ‘A social climber, then?’

      ‘Stop it! Please stop it!’ They were talking about her as if she were not there, and Julia had reached the limits of her tolerance. ‘And please don’t keep calling Andrew the man, and this man. He is a person, a doctor, and is entitled to your respect. Doctor MacMalcolm. It isn’t so difficult to say. He works at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and he’s saving hard to buy a partnership in general practice.

      ‘And, Mama, before you forbid it out of hand, will you remember that you said I might choose my own husband?’ Her eyes were stark with pleading; tears still trembled on every whispered word. ‘And will you remember that you and Pa were in love?’

      ‘Your father, Julia, had expectations. Doctor MacMalcolm appears to be without the means, even, to buy a practice.’

      ‘So if my father hadn’t been rich, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with him?’

      ‘You are being unfair, Julia, and pert, too.’ Her voice was softer now, for she could not deny a love that went even beyond the grave. ‘I am shocked and at a loss as to what to say. It is unbelievable that you can even consider marriage on so short an acquaintance.’

      ‘Mama, with the greatest respect it is not – and you know it.’

      ‘Julia, Julia – what am I to do with you, say to you?’

      Despairingly she closed her eyes. She was eighteen again, and John, love of her life, was signing her dance card, claiming the supper dance and the last dance, and she was looking into his eyes, knowing even then that if she never saw him again after that last waltz, she would remember him for the rest of her life. She had worn blue that night.

      ‘Do, Mama? You must do what you think right, but don’t say I must never see Andrew again. I wouldn’t want to disobey you or deceive you – but I would, if I had to.’

      ‘Then Doctor MacMalcolm may call,’ Helen said wearily, for in truth sitting opposite was the girl she herself had once been. And equally in love. ‘Might I be told how he will get here?’

      ‘He’ll walk. He’ll take the early train to Holdenby and I shall meet him there. I shall cycle over to the station and –’

      ‘Then you had better use the carriage. Let Miss Clitherow know …’

      ‘Oh, my dear!’ Julia pushed back her chair and was at her mother’s side, lips brushing her cheek. ‘It’s all right? You mean it?’

      ‘I mean that it will attract less attention than if you were to walk through the village with him, pushing your bicycle at his side!’

      ‘That’s settled, then?’ Giles demanded, eyebrows raised. ‘We can finish eating?’

      ‘By all means. And Julia, I am sure, is sorry for the commotion. But it is by no means settled,’ Helen said firmly. ‘It is not settled at all, but for the time being the matter shall be dropped, save to say that I will be receiving at ten in the morning.’

      Julia picked up her knife and fork, regarding her plate with dismay. She hadn’t lost, exactly, but neither had Andrew been received with the enthusiasm she had hoped for. Her mother’s gentleness had proved to be a cover for a sternness seldom seen. In future she would go carefully, think before she spoke, for so very much was at stake. And what was more, she thought mutinously, she would never again eat leg of mutton without extreme distaste, and she hoped with all her heart that Hawthorn was making a better job of it with the rooks than she had done. Because she had made a mess of it, had let Andrew down dreadfully. Tomorrow he would be received politely – too politely – which would make him begin to wonder if it was all worth it.

      But she would never give him up. Soon she would be her own mistress, and answerable to no one. And it was Andrew, or no one. She had loved him from the moment they met, and no one else would do.

       So sorry, Mama, and you too, Giles, but that’s the way it is and nothing will change it. Not ever.

       7

      The engine rounded the bend, whistling importantly, then came to a stop in a hiss of steam.

      ‘Holdenby!’ called the stationmaster as a single passenger alighted; a stranger, stepping down from the third-class carriage at the end of the train, which would be noted and remarked upon, of that Julia Sutton was certain.

      Smiling, raising his hat, he walked to where she waited. She acknowledged him with the slightest inclining of her head, holding out her hand which he shook, thanks be, and did not kiss.

      ‘Good morning, doctor.’

      ‘Miss Sutton,’ he murmured most properly for the benefit of the ticket clerk who waited at the barrier.

      ‘My mother thought it better we use the carriage,’ Julia whispered. ‘And my dear, be careful what you say? Anything William hears …’

      The red-haired coachman was a hard worker and a fine horseman, and for that his weakness for listening and gossiping was tolerated, it being politic, Helen Sutton had long ago decided, to make sure that when he was driving there was nothing for him to listen to and nothing, therefore, to repeat. William, Miss Clitherow declared, wouldn’t have lasted the week out at Pendenys, but he was cheerful and willing, and neither drank ale nor wasted his wages on tobacco, so his virtues far outweighed his one vice.

      ‘I’ve asked William to let us down at the gates so we’ll be able to talk.’ Julia inclined her head in the direction of the coachman who stood beside the open carriage door, eyeing the visitor, wondering what to make of him. Then he took up the reins and clicked his tongue, ordering the horses to walk on, guiding them carefully out of the station yard, and not until they were on the road did Julia reach for Andrew’s hand, to press it briefly. Then she sat straight and correct, saying not one word until Rowangarth gates came into sight and the horses were brought to a halt at the lodge.

      ‘I thought we could walk the rest of the way,’ she smiled as the carriage drew away. ‘Last night, you see, my mother was a little put out. I told her that you wanted to marry me. I’m sorry, but it just slipped out.’

      ‘Then small wonder she was not well-pleased. And your brother?’

      ‘Giles is on our side, I think. And when I’d reminded Mama she had promised I should marry where I pleased and that she and Pa were so in love, she agreed to be at home to you.’

      ‘There