Free The Hardie Inheritance by Anne Melville Page B

of foot or bicycle; and her excitement increased as they turned off the road through an entrance guarded by two lodges and a pair of high wrought-iron gates painted in black and gold.
    A choice of two drives presented itself almost immediately. The chauffeur took the steeper and narrower of the two, climbing up the side of a hill until they were brought to a halt by a figure on horseback.
    â€˜Stand and deliver!’ called Lord Rupert. Swinging himself off the horse, he tossed the reins to the chauffeur. ‘Welcome to Castlemere, Cousin Grace. You’re to see it first from a distance. I forgot to tell you to wear sensible shoes’ – he glanced down at her feet as he helped her down from the motor car – ‘but you have anyway. Jolly good. This way then. It’s not far.’
    Grace smiled to herself as she followed the bridlepath which her young host indicated. Only a few days earlier she had insisted in much the same way that Ellis Faraday should enjoy a view of Greystones from far enough away to appreciate the whole design of the building. But there was to be no other resemblance between the two occasions. As a little girl she had thought of Greystones as a palace; but Castlemere was a palace indeed.
    Surrounded by a moat on which swans lazily floated, the house enclosed a courtyard spacious enough for half of it to be in sunshine even though the building was four storeys high. Around the central fountain a parterre was laid out in patterns outlined by box hedges and filled with herbs. At each corner of the house rose a turret whose grey slate roof was pitched as sharply as the point of a pencil. Grace, who had once spent six months in France, recognized the style even before she was given an explanation of it.
    â€˜The family had a Tudor home near here, on the river,’ Rupert told her. ‘This one’s only about two hundred years old. The marquess of the time fell in love with a Frenchwoman. But she – the story goes – had heard terrible things about English houses. So my ancestor ordered a house to be built that was stone for stone the same as her father’s. Monsieur le Due was so delighted when he saw the plans that he handed over not only his daughter but cratefuls of Louis Quinze furniture to make the rooms look right. I’ll show you. Would you like to get back in the car now and I’ll join you there.’
    Riding his horse by a more direct route across the deer park, Rupert had already handed it over to a groom before the car arrived at the bridge which crossed the moat.
    â€˜I expect you’ll want to freshen up after the drive,’ he said. ‘And then have a cool drink to get the dust out of your throat.’ Inside the house a maid bobbed in curtsy to indicate that Grace should follow her upstairs. By the time she was shown down again a footman was pouring ice and lemonade into tall glasses.
    â€˜My parents asked me to present their apologies,’ her host explained. ‘I specially chose a day when I knew they’d be at the races so that I could show you the house as though it were mine. If they’d been at home, we’d have had to waste hours in polite family chat. My mother’s a great one for family trees. She would have explained to you exactly who your ancestors were, without stopping to consider that you might know already. So what I thought was, an hour looking round inside, a glass of champagne before luncheon, and a walk round theouter gardens – the ones outside the moat – afterwards. Then a rest, if you need one, before tea. But tell me first what most interests you. I mean, pictures, furniture, silver, china, that kind of thing. We’ve got special collections that could take a day each to study, but I don’t want to bore you.’
    â€˜There’s too much to take in,’ said Grace ruefully. ‘I’d just like to get a general impression of the house itself, and the rooms in it. Not