The Buttonmaker’s Daughter. Merryn Allingham

had drifted through the past few weeks wearing what she hoped was an impassive face, but all the time she’d been fighting a joy, that despite her best efforts, bubbled within. It was silly, ridiculous, but oddly liberating. Liberation, though, could play false, and her new sense of freedom might well end in disaster. If she doubted the danger, she had only to remember that the friendship with Aiden was not one she could admit to, let alone proclaim. She would do well to stay heart whole.

      ‘Come away from the window, my dear,’ Alice urged. ‘If you lack employment, why not work on your embroidery? It’s an age since you last took it up.’

      She looked with dislike at the half-finished tablecloth tossed to one side. French knots and satin stitch had long ago lost their appeal and she couldn’t prevent an audible sigh.

      ‘What is it?’ Her mother was immediately anxious.

      ‘Nothing, Mama. I am a trifle tired, that’s all,’ she lied.

      Alice was nested comfortably deep in the wing chair that was her favourite, but at this she put aside her crochet work and folded her hands in her lap. She is preparing to offer me unwanted advice, Elizabeth thought in irritation, but still she could not prevent a stab of pity. Her mother looked old and careworn beyond her years.

      As a child, she had instinctively sided with her father. He’d been the one to pet her, to buy her the most expensive toys or take her to the most exciting places. Once, when they’d been living in Birmingham – though now she could hardly remember it – he’d taken her to a factory he owned. The noise of the machines had been like thunder in her ears but it was a thunder that produced miracles – the smallest, most beautiful buttons she had ever seen: tortoiseshell and jet, ivory and glass, silk and abalone, the latter hand-crafted from the fragile Macassar shells fished from East Indian seas. She still had a linen bag full of Joshua’s exquisite designs. No wonder she had thought him king of the world.

      It was her mother who had been the enemy, who had made her do things she didn’t want to do, or stopped her from doing things she did: Pull up your stockings, Elizabeth; Smooth out your dress; stop running; sit quietly. For years, her mother’s unhappiness had barely touched her. Until lately. Lately, she had begun to realise just how much Alice had suffered.

      She picked up the hated tablecloth, hoping to deter any homily, and had placed just one listless stitch when the door flew open and her father marched into the room. He was back already. The excursion to Worthing had been unusually swift and this visit to her mother’s morning room even more unusual – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him here. Almost certainly, there was more trouble brewing. She had a moment of panic, thinking someone had told him of the few meetings she’d had with Aiden, a chance observer that neither had noticed.

      It was not the young architect, though, that was on her father’s mind, but Henry Fitzroy. Joshua strode across the room to glare down at his wife. At any moment, she thought, Alice might disappear from view, shrinking into the very fabric of the chair.

      ‘He’s coming, did you know that?’ When his wife did not answer, he raised his voice. ‘Henry Fitzroy. Your dear brother. He’s coming to the fête.’

      ‘That is surely good news,’ Alice said at last. There was only the slightest tremor to her voice.

      ‘And how do you come to that conclusion?’

      ‘If Henry attends, it will say he is happy for us to hold the fête. It will be an endorsement. An approval of Summerhayes.’

      ‘What kind of rubbish is that?’

      Alice blinked. ‘It’s hardly rubbish. If Henry attends a fête that his family has hosted for centuries, he will recognise our right to be here, your right to create the gardens. Recognise that it’s just for us to take water from the stream.’

      Elizabeth was unconvinced by her mother’s logic, but at least it seemed to be circumventing Joshua’s immediate rage.

      ‘If you like to see it that way.’ He grunted in a dissatisfied fashion.

      ‘I think we should. Being at odds with Amberley is pointless, and if we have the chance to talk to Henry, it could prove useful.’ Elizabeth saw her mother give him a meaningful look, but Joshua merely grunted again.

      She must interrogate Alice on that look, and was deciding on the best time to broach the subject, when the heavy crash of a body against the wood panelling of the morning-room door brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

      ‘What the devil!’ Her father spun round.

      ‘I’ll find out what’s going on,’ she said quickly, abandoning the embroidery to a nearby chair.

      On the other side of the door, she almost tripped over Oliver’s prone body. His face was pink from exertion and he had a rugby ball clutched between his hands. William’s head was just visible at the top of the stairs.

      ‘Go outside,’ she ordered. ‘At once. And take that ball with you.’

      ‘They don’t want us outside.’ William arrived on the landing, out of breath.

      ‘And why would that be?’ She could take a fairly accurate guess.

      ‘They said we were getting in the way,’ Oliver offered, scrambling to his feet. ‘They were quite cross, actually.’

      She tried to look severe, but couldn’t prevent a smile. ‘And people in the house will be quite, too, if you make much more noise. Why don’t you go to the Wilderness – lose yourself there? I’ll come and call you when lunch is ready.’

      Oliver shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose. C’mon on, Wills.’

      ‘Before you do…’ Elizabeth looked at their innocent faces and took a decision. ‘William, could you do something for me?’

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘Come to my room and I’ll explain. Oliver can go down to the kitchen. Cook has made at least a hundred pork pies for the fête. Tell her I said you could have one each.’

      ‘Thanks,’ Olly enthused. ‘You’re a top-hole sister. I wish I had one.’

      She wondered whether William would think so once she’d spoken to him.

Chapter Eleven

      Ten minutes later, William emerged from Elizabeth’s room pushing a small piece of white paper as far down his trouser pocket as he could. He wasn’t at all sure that he agreed with Olly’s claim of her being ‘a top-hole sister’. Right now, he wished he were sister-free. He loved Elizabeth – when he was very young he’d worshipped her – but what she wanted him to do was wrong. Yet she had asked him so plaintively that he’d had no alternative but to agree.

      He met Oliver coming out of the kitchen, his right cheek bulging with pork pie. ‘Here, I’ve got one for you. Let’s go to the retreat and stuff ourselves.’

      They skirted the lawn, making sure they kept a distance from the men who were still hard at work, then bounded along the path that led beneath the pergola, eager to get to their hideaway. It was another warm day and the slight breeze was welcome. In addition to the pork pies, Oliver had managed to secrete two large bottles of lemonade and filch a chunk of plum cake from the larder when Cook had her attention elsewhere. Evidently, there was serious eating to be done.

      In front of them rose the beautiful curved wall, dear to William since infancy, its face to the south, its espaliered apricots, pears and plums beginning to form their fruits for a late-summer picking. He felt a swell of love for the garden. Life at Summerhayes could be dull and, when it wasn’t dull, his father’s short temper made it unpleasant. But the garden never failed to calm. It was what he missed most when he packed his trunk for a school that knew nothing of the beauty his father’s despised money had created. And it was the garden he enjoyed most when once