Last Christmas. Julia Williams

for years.’

      Luke said this with unaccustomed savagery and Marianne was taken aback by his sudden vehemence.

      ‘Don’t you get on with your grandfather?’

      Luke smiled. ‘Oh, the old bugger’s okay, I suppose. He’s just a bit blinkered about the way the world works these days. Insists we have duties to our people, as he puts it. He likes to think we live in some bygone feudal age, when everyone doffs their cap to Sir. He can’t see the world’s changed.’

      ‘What does he think about your eco towns then?’

      ‘He doesn’t know anything about them,’ admitted Luke. ‘I’m the only one interested in the business side of things in this family. My mum and dad are more into playing bridge and drinking G&Ts than anything else. They’re pretty shortsighted too. I run the show in his absence. If he doesn’t like the way I do things he should turn up at board meetings more.’

      He swept the car into the circular gravel drive in front of the house and they got out and crunched their way up the path to the house. The large oak door was about twelve foot high and looked immensely imposing. Marianne could just about make out an inscription carved in stone above the door. Something about being happy and owing it to God.

      ‘What does it say?’ she asked, squinting up to try and see better.

      ‘Oh, nothing important.’ Luke dismissed her question with a careless wave, and lifted the brass door knocker and banged it really hard. That, too, was unusual, Marianne noted, as it seemed to depict a man—or was it a man?—wearing some kind of long robe and crushing a serpent underneath his feet. Marianne wanted to ask but, put off by Luke’s evident lack of interest in anything remotely connected to the house, she fell silent. Luke impatiently banged the knocker again, and eventually a rather dusty-looking retainer, who could have been any age from fifty to a hundred, came and opened the door.

      ‘Ah, Mr Luke, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while.’

      ‘Hello, Humphrey,’ said Luke. ‘This is my friend, Marianne.’Why doesn’t he say girlfriend,Marianne thought, with a disappointed lurch of her heart. ‘I just thought I’d show her round the old pad before we go to see the folks.’

      Humphrey nodded, and disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the house, while Marianne stood and looked at the vast hallway in awe. Compared to the suburban London semi that she called home, this was massive. The hallway was panelled in dark oak, and pictures of people in old-fashioned dress lined the stairs, which swept upwards to an imposing landing above. The black and white tiled marble floor echoed as she walked on it. She felt fantastically overexposed in such a huge space. Marianne’s stomach contracted. This was so different from where she grew up. How could she possibly ever fit in here? Surely now Luke had her on his home territory it was only a matter of time before he saw it too?

      ‘Jeez, it’s dark in here,’ said Luke, and opened some shutters to let in the evening light. Motes danced in the beams cast by the setting sun, dazzling Marianne as she stood, silently drinking it in.

      ‘Well, what do you think?’ said Luke.

      ‘It’s fantastic,’ murmured Marianne.

      He drew her to him, and her heart thumped erratically as he kissed her on the lips. Marianne felt a familiar flutter in her stomach. She had never desired someone as strongly as she desired Luke. It terrified her how much she wanted him. Suppose he didn’t want her as much?

      ‘There’s a four-poster in the master bedroom,’ he said mischievously.

      ‘We can’t,’ she protested. ‘Not here.’

      ‘There’s no one here but us,’ said Luke. ‘Who’s to know?’

      ‘Er—your butler?’ She went out with a man who had a butler? This felt so surreal. Any minute she was going to wake up.

      ‘He won’t say anything. Besides, he’s as deaf as a post so you can be as noisy as you like,’ said Luke, with a grin on his face that was impossible to resist.

      He dragged her giggling by the hand up the stairs, pointing out various ancestors en route: ‘The original Ralph Nicholas, went with Richard I to the Holy Land; Gabriel Nicholas, hid in the priest hole under Edward VI and lived to tell the tale; Ralph II saved Charles II at the battle of Worcester, nada, nada, nada…’

      ‘How can you be so dismissive?’ said Marianne. ‘I mean, in my family the height of historical interest is the time when Great Aunt Maud stood next to George VI at Windsor Park. I come from a noble line of labourers and serfs. This is…just…incredible. I’d love to have this kind of ancestry.’

      ‘You wouldn’t if you knew my family,’ said Luke, with a grimace.‘With power comes responsibility,manners maketh the man. We have a duty of care. We even have a Latin family motto, Servimus liberi liberi quia diligimus, which translates as: “Freely we serve, because we freely love”. Having that shoved down your throat from birth is pretty stifling.’

      ‘Oh,’ exclaimed Marianne. They had come to the landing, and Luke flung open the window shutters to reveal a landscaped lawn complete with fountains, walled gardens and, in the background, a deer park. ‘This is amazing. You’re so lucky.’

      ‘I am lucky—to have found you,’ he said, and her heart skipped a sudden beat. This was why she was with him. For the way he looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. For the way he made her feel so incredibly special. All her doubts and anxieties disappeared as Luke took her hand and knelt down. ‘I wasn’t going to do this now, but seeing you here looking so incredibly sexy, I can’t resist.’

      Oh my God, Marianne thought, was he going to…?

      ‘Hang on, I’ve forgotten something…’ Luke ran over to a set of curtains which was lying in a corner and unhooked a curtain ring. He came running back, fell back down on his knee, and said, ‘Now, where were we?’

      Marianne stood motionless as he kissed her hand, slipped the curtain ring onto her engagement finger, and said, ‘Marianne Moore, will you marry me?’

      ‘Yes,’ she whispered. She didn’t have to think for a second; this was what she’d wanted her whole life, to be with a man she loved and live in a wonderful place like this. ‘Yes, of course I will.’ And suddenly she was in his arms, and they were running through the house shrieking with delight.

      A sudden slam of the door brought them both to their senses.

      ‘What was that?’ said Marianne.

      A bell rang impatiently from the hall, and they ran to the banisters to look down.

      A smallish, elderly, dapper man stood in the hallway looking rather cross.

      ‘Grandfather?’ Luke’s face was a picture of shock and dismay.

      ‘Luke, my boy, is that you?’ the man said. ‘I can see I haven’t come home a moment too soon.’

Part OneI Gave You My Heart

       Last YearDecember 22

      Sainsbury’s was heaving. Catherine, already feeling hypocritical that she was here at all, felt her heart sink as she saw the hordes of people ravaging through the supermarket, frantically grabbing things from the shelves as if they were in the last-chance saloon and they might never have the chance to shop again. For God’s sake, she felt like saying, as she saw people staggering past with trolleys full to the brim with hams and turkeys, mince pies and brandy butter, and the inevitable bottles of booze, it’s not like we’re all going to starve, is it? Then she berated herself. After all, she was here too, wasn’t she?

      But