They fell into silence as the car sped through the lanes of the village. Past the Feathers pub where Emma had bought her first drink, past the park where her father had chased her and pushed her on the swings. There were many happy memories but some were still too painful to think about. She looked away.
The car swung into the avenue of lime trees that ran up to the manor house. A grand Georgian mansion, set in 800 acres of grounds, Winterfold had a haughty, almost severe beauty. Emma knew the story well of how the house came to be in her family; as a child it had been told to her at bedtime like a fairy tale of the beautiful aristocracy and their fantasy lives. The house had once belonged to the Greystone family, who had built the house from the proceeds of their merchant banking fortune. Merrick Milford, Emma’s great-grandfather, was a local saddler’s apprentice who had developed a reputation for being exceptionally skilled. The lady of the house, Lady Eleanor Greystone, was a keen horsewoman and had admired Merrick’s work on her own saddles, so had asked to meet this young talent. Visiting the house, Merrick had been fascinated by a beautiful collection of trunks in the hall which Lady Greystone informed him were made by Goyard, the Parisian luggage house who supplied everyone from Indian maharajas to French aristocracy.
Buoyed by his mistress’s praise and full of the arrogance of youth, the handsome young artisan had boasted: ‘If you provide the materials, m’lady, I will make you a set of luggage even finer than this one.’
Taking him at his word, Lady Greystone delivered the finest leather, wood, brass pellets and canvas to Merrick’s cottage on the outskirts of the village the following week. Six weeks later Merrick delivered six trunks that all neatly fitted inside one another like Russian dolls. The leather had been hand-stitched and coated with beeswax to seal it. Each trunk had a fine brass lock, forged by himself. The influential Lady Eleanor told her friends and the young saddler was in business. When the First World War had passed and the upper classes resumed their travels, it was to the small Oxfordshire company Milford that they turned for exquisite bespoke luggage, not Goyard and Vuitton.
Twenty years and one good marriage later, Merrick Milford had elevated his position in society. The fortunes of the Greystone family, however, had not been so fortunate, so when Lady Eleanor’s son Nathaniel gambled away the family fortune, the Greystones found a wealthy and eager buyer in the form of Edward Milford, Merrick’s son. And in the Milford family, Winterfold had grown and thrived.
As Cassandra’s car pulled up at Winterfold it was obvious, even now, that it was a well-tended and much-loved home. Flanking the pillars either side of the whi
tewashed steps were clipped bay trees and the black and white tiles on the pathway positively gleamed. The dove-grey brickwork and vast, sash windows looked well-kept, while spirals of smoke ascended from the four chimneys dotted around the roof.
‘It really is a beautiful place, isn’t it?’ said Emma, almost as if voicing her own thoughts.
‘Do you think?’ asked Cassandra. ‘It rather gives me the creeps.’
As they were shown inside, Emma had to admit Winterfold was an acquired taste, a unique house that was part home, part museum, adorned with an eclectic mixture of antiques, art and objets d’art from Saul’s travels around the world. Crossed Maori war-clubs and grinning masks looked down disapprovingly over an exquisite Louis-Quinze writing desk; a stuffed lion’s head shot on the Serengeti plains loomed over a roughly-carved French medieval fireplace that Saul claimed had once belonged to Gallic royalty itself. The owner’s living environment reflected the man and Saul Milford had been an adventurer. So much so, that when Emma had heard about her uncle’s death, she had been surprised that it had been something as ordinary as a heart attack, and that he hadn’t been lost as he ballooned over the Pacific or been savaged by wild jackals in Tanzania. Emma smiled at the scene: amid all this chaos, this eclectic clash of cultures, tea and cake was being quietly, reverently served. Saul would have roared. Nevertheless Emma accepted an elegant bone-china cup from Morton, Saul’s butler, and watched as visitors quietly stepped forwards to offer condolences to the family, the only note of drama being the swelling sound of Wagner in a background. The wake lasted barely an hour; the mourners seeming to disperse almost as quickly as they had arrived at Winterfold. Slowly the mourners left and Roger began ushering the family into Saul’s study to the left of the grand staircase. Emma rubbed her red eyes; her jet-lag was kicking in and she would be grateful when the whole thing was over and she could get back to Boston.
‘Em! How are you? I haven’t managed to talk to you all day.’
A handsome young man in his mid-twenties nudged Emma’s arm.
‘Hello Tom,’ she smiled, grateful for the first genuinely warm welcome she’d had since she’d arrived in England.
‘How’s the mistress of the universe? That’s what they call you people, isn’t it?’
Emma laughed. ‘I’m a management consultant, not some Wall Street banker.’
‘Oh yes, Mum did tell me,’ grinned Tom, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Sounds like a right old racket to me. You’re brought in and paid millions of quid to tell the management team they’re not good enough at their job?’
She tapped him playfully on the arm.
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’
She liked Tom. He was funny, sweet and handsome, with a scrub of dirty blonde hair and a square chin that stopped him being pretty. She heard from him through emails full of smiley faces and barely legible missives about his latest line of work. Expelled from practically every public school that would have him, he had spent the time since he’d ‘mucked up’ his A-levels drifting round Europe and the US doing bar work in Amsterdam, photography in New York and some ill-defined ‘business’ or other in Dublin.
‘Ah, but you would say it’s complicated wouldn’t you?’ teased Tom. ‘Can’t have us cheeky little boys pointing at the Emperor’s New Clothes, now can we?’
Emma tried to look severe, but just ended up giggling.
‘So where are you working at the minute?’ she asked.
‘I’m considering my options,’ shrugged Tom. ‘Hey, maybe I need a management consultant to sort me out?’
‘Maybe,’ laughed Emma taking a cup of coffee from a waiter. ‘Or maybe you just need to get up before noon!’
‘Actually,’ whispered Tom theatrically, ‘I think I might be getting my big break at any moment. I’m sure Saul recognized my work ethic and business genius and is going to give me Milford lock, stock and barrel.’
‘You too?’ smiled Emma. ‘He used to promise it to me whenever he was drunk,’ she said remembering her uncle’s words, One day it will all be yours.‘You know what Saul was like. He probably told Morton he was going to leave it all to him every time he made him a decent martini.’
She paused as she noticed her Uncle Roger beckoning them into Winterfold’s study. Walking into the room with Tom she glanced around. It was a small room for a house of such size. There was barely enough space for the wide desk by the bay window and the two Chesterfield sofas on either side of the marble fireplace, but it certainly had all the trappings of the gentleman’s retreat: there were leather-bound books lined up neatly along oak shelves, heavy midnight-blue velvet swags hung at the windows, and a creaky red wing-back club chair completed the picture. Outside it was gloomy and the wind made a whirling racket though the lime trees.
Tom nudged Emma as Roger walked in, taking his place in Saul’s old club chair with an air of natural authority.
‘I think someone else fancies his chances of getting his paws on Milford,’ he whispered.
Anthony Collins, Saul’s solicitor, had made the journey from Pimlico especially for the reading and was rather flustered. Sitting at Saul’s desk and taking a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase, he fussed for a while, laying them in complicated piles and arranging his notes. Finally he looked up at Roger who inclined his head as if to indicate his permission to begin.