Jessica Steele – The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm / One Dance with the Cowboy: The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm / One Dance with the Cowboy (страница 2)

‘A robin!’ her mother had exclaimed. ‘You do know it’s Easter?’

‘There won’t be another bonnet like it,’ he had assured her.

‘You can say that again!’ Hester had retorted.

Phinn had not won the competition. She had not wanted to. Though she had drawn one or two stares, it had not mattered. Her father had decorated her hat, and that had been plenty good enough for her.

Phinn wondered, not for the first time, when it had all started to go so badly wrong. Had it been before old Mr Caldicott had decided to sell the estate? Before Ty Allardyce had come to Bishops Thornby, taken a look around and decided to buy the place—thereby making himself their landlord? Or…?

In all fairness, Phinn knew that it must have been long before then. Though he, more recently, had not helped. Her beautiful blue eyes darkened in sadness as she thought back to a time five, maybe six years ago. Had that been when things had started to go awry? She had come home after having been out for a ride with Ruby, and after attending to Ruby’s needs she had gone into the big old farmhouse kitchen to find her parents in the middle of a blazing row.

Knowing that she could not take sides, she had been about to back out again when her mother had taken her eyes from the centre of her wrath—Ewart—to tell her, ‘This concerns you too, Phinn.’

‘Oh,’ she had murmured non-committally.

‘We’re broke. I’m bringing in as much as I can.’ Her mother worked in Gloucester as a legal assistant.

‘I’ll get a job,’ Phinn had offered. ‘I’ll—’

‘You will. But first you’ll have some decent training. I’ve arranged for you to have an interview at secretarial college. You—’

‘She won’t like it!’ Ewart had objected.

‘We all of us—or most of us,’ she’d inserted, with a sarcastic glance at him, ‘have to do things we don’t want to do or like to do!’

The argument, with Phinn playing very little part, had raged on until Hester Hawkins had brought out her trump card.

‘Either Phinn goes to college or that horse goes to somebody who can afford her feed, her vet and her farrier!’

‘I’ll sell something,’ Ewart had decided, already not liking that his daughter, his pal, would not be around so much. He had a good brain for anything mechanical, and the farmyard was littered with odds and ends that he would sometimes make good and sell on.

But Hester had grown weary of him. ‘Grow up, Ewart,’ she had snapped bluntly.

But that was the trouble. Her father had never grown up, and had seen no reason why he should attempt it. On thinking about it, Phinn could not see any particular reason why he should have either. Tears stung her eyes. Though it had been the essential Peter Pan in her fifty-four-year-old father that had ultimately been the cause of his death.

But she did not want to dwell on that happening seven months ago. She had shed enough tears since then.

Phinn made herself think back to happier times, though she had not been too happy to be away from the farm for such long hours while she did her training. For her mother’s sake she had applied herself to that training, and afterwards, with her eye more on the salary she would earn than with any particular interest in making a career as a PA, she had got herself a job with an accountancy firm, with her mother driving her into Gloucester each day.

Each evening Phinn had got home as soon as she could to see Ruby and her father. Her father had taught her to drive, but when her mother had started working late, putting in extra hours at her office, it was he who had suggested that Phinn should have a car of her own.

Her mother had agreed, but had insisted she would look into it. She was not having her daughter driving around in any bone-rattling contraption he’d patched up.

Phinn had an idea that Grandmother Rainsworth had made a contribution to her vehicle, and guessed that her mother’s parents might well have helped out financially in her growing years.

But all that had stopped a few months later when her mother, having sat her down and said that she wanted to talk to her, had announced to Phinn’s utter amazement that she was moving out. Shocked, open-mouthed, Phinn had barely taken in that her mother intended leaving them when she’d further revealed that she had met someone else.

‘You mean—some—other man?’ Phinn had gasped, it still not fully sinking in.

‘Clive. His name’s Clive.’

‘But—but what about Dad?’

‘I’ve discussed this fully with your father. Things—er—haven’t been right between us for some while. I’ll start divorce proceedings as soon as everything settles…’

Divorce! Phinn had been aware that her mother had grown more impatient and short-tempered with her father just lately. But—divorce!

‘But what—’

‘I’m not going to change my mind, Phinn. I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried! But I’m tired of the constant struggle. Your father lives in his own little dream world and…’ She halted at the look of protest on her daughter’s face. ‘No, I’m not going to run him down. I know how devoted you are to him. But just try to understand, Phinn. I’m tired of the struggle. And I’ve decided I’m not too old to make a fresh start. To make a new life for myself. A better life.’

‘Th-this Clive. He’s part of your fresh start—this better life?’

‘Yes, he is. In due time I’ll marry him—though I’m not in any great hurry about that.’

‘You—just want your—freedom?’

‘Yes, I do. You’re working now, Phinn. You have your own money—though no doubt your father will want some of it. But…’ Hester looked at her daughter, wanting understanding. ‘I’ve found myself a small flat in Gloucester. I’ll write down the address. I’m leaving your father, darling, not you. You’re welcome to come and live with me whenever you want.’

To leave her father had been something Phinn had not even thought about. Her home had been there, with him and Ruby.

It was around then, Phinn suddenly saw, that everything had started to go wrong.

First Ruby had had a cough, and when that cleared she’d picked up a viral infection. Her father had been marvelous, in that he’d spent all of his days looking after Ruby for her until Phinn was able to speed home from the office to take over.

The vet’s bill had started to mount, but old Mr Duke had obligingly told them to pay what they could when they could.

Phinn’s days had become full. She’d had no idea of the amount of work her mother had done when she was home. Phinn had always helped out when requested, but once she was sole carer she’d seemed to spend a lot of her time picking up and clearing up after her father.

And time had gone by. Phinn had met Clive Gillam and, contrary to her belief, had liked him. And a couple of years later, with her father’s approval, she had attended their wedding.

‘You want to go and live with them?’ her father had asked somewhat tentatively when she had returned.

‘No way,’ she’d answered.

And he had grinned. ‘Fancy a pint?’

‘You go. I want to check on Rubes.’

It seemed as though her mother’s new marriage had been a signal for everything to change. Mr Caldicott, the owner of the Broadlands estate, had decided to sell up and to take himself and his money off to sunnier climes.

And, all before they knew it, the bachelor Allardyce brothers had been in the village, taking a look around. And, all before they could blink, Honeysuckle Farm and neighbouring Yew Tree Farm, plus a scattering of other properties, had all had a new landlord—and an army of architects and builders had started at work on Broadlands Hall, bringing its antiquated plumbing and heating up to date and generally modernising the interior.

She had spotted the brothers one day when she was resting Ruby, hidden in the spinney—property of Broadlands. Two men deep in conversation had walked by. The slightly taller of the two, a dark-haired man, just had to be the Tyrell Allardyce she had heard about. There was such a self-confident air about the man that he could have been none other than the new owner.

Phinn had seemed to know that before she’d over-heard his deep, cultured tones saying, ‘Don’t you see, Ash…?’ as they had passed within yards of her.

Ash was tall too, but without that positive, self-assured air that simply exuded from the other man. Listening intently, he must have been the younger brother.

Tyrell Allardyce, with his brother Ashley, had called at Honeysuckle Farm one day while she was out at work. But from what her father had told her, and from what she had gleaned from the hotbed of local gossip, Ty Allardyce was some big-shot financier who worked and spent most of his time either in London or overseas. He, so gossip had said, would live at Broadlands Hall when his London commitments allowed, while Ashley would stay at the Hall to supervise the alterations and generally manage the estate.

‘Looks like we’re going to be managed, kiddo,’ her father had commented jocularly.

Highly unlikely!

Further village gossip some while later had suggested that Mrs Starkey, housekeeper to the previous owner of Broadlands, was staying on to look after Ashley Allardyce. It seemed—though Phinn knew that, village gossip being what it was, a lot of it could be discounted—that Ashley had endured some sort of a breakdown, and that Ty had bought Broadlands mainly for his brother’s benefit.