Free A Winter's Child by Brenda Jagger Page A

closer than Claire liked, she whispered, ‘I have kept his room exactly as he left it. After dinner I will take you upstairs to see.’
    â€˜Oh! Oh yes – thank you.’ And for a shocked moment, blessedly soon over, Claire had no idea what she could mean.
    She had never seen Jeremy’s room at High Meadows. She had never thought of it. For his mother’s sake she attempted to do so now, to see him as a boy growing up, a young man, just to see him, her mind filling instantly, as she had dreaded, with Paul, a tremor of pain darting swiftly across her face which still looked for him in every crowd, hurting her beyond concealment so that she could think of nothing to do but convert it into an offering to Miriam who would naturally mistake it as grief for Jeremy. It seemed little enough to do for Jeremy’s mother and she knew that Paul would not have minded the deceit. Would Jeremy? She had never known him well enough to judge.
    â€˜My dear child,’ gasped Miriam, totally convinced, immensely gratified, ‘we must not upset each other.’
    But Miriam’s easy tears could not fail to communicate themselves to Eunice, her heart ever close to overflow, her sorrow graceless and red-eyed but utterly sincere.
    â€˜Poor Jeremy. How dreadful,’ she muttered, reaching out to her husband not only for the handkerchief which he automatically supplied, but to make sure that he was still whole and sound and safely there beside her; a gesture of tenderness instantly thrown into confusion as the door opened to admit her elder brother.
    â€˜Good evening,’ he said, speaking to no one, a neutral, entirely commonplace remark which nevertheless produced a tightening of the atmosphere, the slight feeling of alarm which Authority always arouses in those who expected to be caught out.
    â€˜Oh, Benedict.’ Eunice dropped her handkerchief on her lap, looking, for a desperate and foolish moment, as if she meant to hide it.
    â€˜So it is,’ murmured Nola, her long, supple body lounging in a slightly more provocative angle, her long eyes blinking lazily, nonchalantly, vindictively as a cat’s, as her husband did not look at her.
    â€˜Benedict – my dear fellow,’ said Edward, his voice richly and triumphantly proclaiming his right to use that formidable Christian name.
    â€˜Oh, Mr Swanfield,’ muttered Dorothy, who could never quite bring herself to do so, blushing as he took her hand and, becoming so flustered in her eagerness to make a good impression – for Edward’s sake – that she misunderstood the commonplace remark he made to her, answering awkwardly and at random.
    Toby Hartwell, finding nothing to say, swallowed jerkily, gave a nervous smile, a nervous cough.
    â€˜Benedict,’ murmured Miriam with the air of a sweet-natured child suggesting a party game, ‘do come over here, dear boy, and confess that you did not recognize Claire.’
    He came, shook her hand, agreed that she had altered. But somehow the compliment which Miriam had invited him to pay became overshadowed, in his cool clipped speech, by the implication that she had simply grown up. She had been very young. Now, four years later, she was less so. What could be surprising or even particularly interesting in that? Yet, smiling up at him in the open, friendly manner she used with everyone, she remembered that although he had been the only person who could have prevented her marriage to Jeremy, he had not done so.
    She had been terrified of him then, her knees shaking, her stomach hollow, on the day he had sent for her to attend him at High Meadows and await his judgement. And he had shown her no kindness, offered no reassurance.
    â€˜My brother has convinced himself he cannot live without you,’ he had told her dryly. ‘Whether or not he has convinced me is another matter which need not – as it happens – concern you. Under normal circumstances I would incline to