Free The Proposal by Tasmina Perry Page A

chimed five in the distance.
    ‘I can’t say I was sad to leave the farm,’ replied Estella, sitting down. ‘Winter has been brutal this year. Fifteen chickens died during a particularly cold snap. To avoid going the same way, I was eating dripping on toast just to get fat and insulate myself.’
    ‘I don’t know how you cope, living in the middle of nowhere,’ said Sybil with a dramatic sigh. ‘You should have moved back to London years ago.’
    Georgia had to stop herself from nodding in agreement. She had recognised as soon as she returned home from Paris that the little pocket of Devon where she had grown up was beginning to lose its allure.
    ‘Perhaps. But I am an artist, and I need space and light. The farm is twice the size of this place, and if we moved to London we wouldn’t be able to afford a garage, let alone something with a studio and potter’s wheel. Besides, James would have wanted us to stay there.’
    ‘James would have wanted you to be comfortable, not eating goose fat to protect yourselves from hypothermia.’
    Georgia felt a wave of emotion at the mention of her father. He had died when she was only four years old, a victim of the war – a solicitor by trade, dispatched to the front line and killed in his foxhole in Normandy. Although she only had very vague recollections of him, Estella made sure that his presence was all around them at the farm. His fishing rods remained untouched in the hallway, photographs were displayed around the house, his books and papers were where he had left them in the study.
    Mrs Bryant came into the room and put a white china teapot in the middle of the table.
    ‘Sybil, I just want to say again how grateful we are to you for sponsoring Georgia,’ said Estella.
    Georgia almost snorted out loud. When Estella had first got it into her head that her daughter should do the Season, Georgia had been relieved to discover that not everyone was allowed to do it. You had to be presented at court by someone who had herself been a debutante, and traditionally this was supposed to be your mother. But Estella had learnt that there were ways around the system, and as Aunt Sybil had been a deb in the thirties – her debutante photograph sat for all to see on the new lacquered cabinet – it was decided that she should present Georgia, which had depressed Georgia for about a fortnight.
    ‘My pleasure,’ said Sybil, not entirely convincingly. ‘Although I have to say, Georgia, you are rather late arriving in London.’
    ‘I know. The train was very slow,’ she replied, sipping a glass of orange squash.
    ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Sybil more sharply. ‘You do know that the debs have been here since January, and some of the mothers since before Christmas. There have been lunches, dinner parties, all sorts of little getting-to-know-one-another soirées. Invitations to the best events of the Season have been secured before you even arrived.’
    ‘I’ve had things to do,’ said Estella, looking unconcerned at her ticking-off. ‘A very important commission to finish, for one. The Earl of Dartington wanted a life-sized portrait of his wife, and she just wouldn’t stay still, so it took for ever. Besides, Georgia didn’t get back from Paris until a week ago.’
    ‘I thought Madame Didiot’s school finished in February.’
    ‘It did,’ said Georgia sulkily.
    ‘So why have you only just returned to England now?’
    You’re lucky I came back at all , thought Georgia, knocking back the squash in one gulp.
    ‘Well, we can make up for lost time now,’ said Estella cheerfully.
    ‘Not if no one knows who are you. I heard that you did not submit a coming-out portrait for either Queen or Tatler magazine.’
    ‘Mum was going to paint me,’ said Georgia, sticking up for her mother.
    Estella stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘I thought she’d look sensational in oils. But time ran away from us a bit, didn’t it. Surely it’s not important, though?’
    ‘It’s