Her wardrobe wasn’t exactly bursting with fashionable clothes, her lifestyle didn’t require them, but the few clothes she did have were good, carefully chosen and well cared for. Before her death her mother had once remarked approvingly that Lucy had inherited her own eye for colour and design, and the dress she hurriedly selected, a soft wrap-over style in pastel hued silk with pleats falling from the hip, was both elegant and feminine.
The soft peachy pink fabric with its pattern of muted greys and blues emphasised her summer tan, at once making her hair seem fairer and her eyes darker.
There was no time for her to bother with make-up and, quickly running a brush through her shoulder-length hair, she slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals and hurried out of her room, almost colliding with Oliver at the top of the stairs.
He was, she saw with a sinking heart, looking oppressively sulky, his expression so like her father’s that she wondered that she had never realised the truth.
‘What’s wrong?’
He glowered at her. ‘I don’t want any lunch… I don’t want to have to talk to him… I don’t want him here, Lucy.’
‘Maybe not, but he is here and he has every right to be here,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘Oliver, I do understand how you feel, but you must try to realise how he feels as well. You don’t want everyone to think you resent the fact that he’s inherited the Manor do you?’
He shook his head slowly ‘I suppose not.’
‘Good. Now come down and have your lunch. It’s salmon. The colonel gave it to us.’
‘Did he?’ His face lit up. ‘I wish I’d been there when he came. He might have told me some more about during the war.’
Lucy laughed, relieved to see his sulks banished.
‘Well, there’ll be plenty more opportunities to talk to him I’m sure.’ Deliberately she didn’t let him go into the drawing-room alone, propelling him slightly ahead of her as she opened the door.
Fanny was sitting in one of the armchairs facing the french windows and to her astonishment Saul was standing close beside her, one arm casually draped over Tara’s shoulder as they all looked at something on her knee.
‘Oh there you are, Lucy dear…’ Fanny looked slightly flustered. ‘I was just showing Saul the photographs of our wedding. How pretty you look. It isn’t often we see you in a dress. That must be for your benefit, Saul.’ She smiled coyly up at him, blushing a little, while Lucy mentally seethed. She knew her stepmother to be completely innocent of any charge of guile, but nevertheless it was extremly galling that Saul should think she had dressed especially for him.
‘Well I could hrdly sit down to lunch in my work clothes,’ was all she said, but she was conscious of the mocking scrutiny in Saul’s eyes as she crossed the room with Oliver, and introduced him to the older man.
She was pleased to see that instead of talking down to him Saul shook hands with the boy, gravely treating him very much as the man of the house. Oliver visibly relaxed and Lucy gave a mental sigh of relief. Oliver could be extremely intractable and sulky when he chose—the result of too much laxity and spoiling, which she tried to counteract as best she could, all too conscious that once Oliver went away to school he would find that discipline was imposed upon him whether he liked it or not. Here again she blamed her father for not taking a firmer hand and not realising what a traumatic shock it could be for Oliver to go straight from his mother’s spoiling to the rigours of boarding school.
‘Darling, I think we’d better go into the dining-room for lunch.’ Fanny suggested. ‘Will you bring it in?’
It was good to see Fanny rallying from her depression and taking an interest in something once more and Lucy willingly complied, leaving the others to make their way to the dining-room while she hurried to the kitchen.
Everyone was seated when she went in with the asparagus.
The furniture in this room had been her mother’s, and if the Sheraton dining chairs were rather scratched and worn, they were still undeniably elegant.
‘Asparagus… Very English,’ Saul commented as Lucy served him. ‘From here?’
‘From the Dower House’s garden, yes,’ she agreed, making it plain to him that the asparagus was not from the Manor. In point of fact the vegetable garden attached to the Dower House was better stocked and cared for—a legacy from one of their tenants who had been a keen gardener.
She had the satisfaction of seeing the faint tide of colour creep up under his skin as he digested her remark.
‘Lucy, really,’ Fanny reproached her. ‘There’s no need for that. I’m sure that Saul wouldn’t have minded in the least had the asparagus come from the Manor.’