Free Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

Grace said at once: “Darling, could we compromise? If we changed our plans and spent our family holiday in the Lake District instead of Devon, we could leave all five children with Winifred for the first forty-eight hours and have that little holiday alone together after all. I don’t think Sandy could destroy Winifred in two days, and since Christian and Norman are old enough to be helpful with the younger ones, I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying about how they were getting on.”
    “Splendid! I’ll cancel Devon immediately.”
    “We’ve left it rather late in the day to change our plans—and of course it would involve a longer journey just when the government’s telling us we shouldn’t travel unless we have to—”
    “We do have to—and I’m sure we can easily find a cottage to rent. I’ll look at the holiday advertisements in today’s Church Gazette. ”
    She kissed me. “You’re not cross with me any more?”
    “My dearest love!” I said. “When have I ever been cross with you?” And before either of us could answer that question I took her in my arms.
    6
    The letters began to arrive. Dido wrote as she talked: fluently, with eccentric punctuation. She used a pencil, which always began sharp and ended blunt, probably as the result of her copious underlinings.
Dear Archdeacon,

Before I bare my soul to you I must tell you all about my background so that you can see my troubles in some sort of illuminating perspective …
    I learnt that her father had made a fortune by profiteering during the First War and had consolidated his wealth by adventurous skulduggery in the City. He was currently chairman of an enterprise called the Pan-Grampian Trust and played golf regularly with various luminaries of the Bank of England in an effort to consolidate his hard-won respectability. In addition to his house in Edinburgh and his nine-bedroom flat overlooking Grosvenor Square he had not only the usual millionaire’s castle in the Highlands but a country mansion in Leicestershire, where his daughters had pursued their passion for hunting. His wife, however, never left Edinburgh.
 … poor Mother is a good person but very shy . How glad I am that I haven’t inherited this devastating handicap! Fortunately Father’s mistresses have all possessed gregarious dispositions in addition to superb connections in Society, so my sisters and I have been able to surmount the difficulties which were inevitably created by Mother’s beautiful retiring nature.
Merry (that’s my sister Muriel, now Lady Wyvenhoe) and darling Laura (who became the Honourable Mrs. Anthony Fox-Drummond) and I (who’s so far become no one at all) were always invited everywhere , and since Father spent money like water on our coming-out, I can’t say I ever found it a handicap to be a jumped-up Scot—indeed quite the reverse, we were all regarded as exciting novelties and given a license to be entertaining. So no matter how outrageous we were, people just said: “Poor little things, they don’t know any better, but what a gorgeous breath of fresh air they are, blowing away all the boring cobwebs from London Society, let’s invite them to masses more balls and tea-dances and cocktail parties so that we can all continue to be madly amused!” So that was what happened and we were a simply enormous success, even when for a laugh we put on our Scottish accents, although of course our governess was told to make sure we knew how to talk like English ladies and in consequence we grew up bilingual.
Anyway, Archdeacon dear, you may disapprove of me talking faultless English and so pretending to be what I’m not, but let me assure you that in every other respect I’m entirely honest . I always say to a new friend right from the start: “My father’s a self-made man (though one of Nature’s Gentlemen, of course) and my mother doesn’t go out and about in Society because she’s afraid she’ll be thought common (a fear naturally enhanced by