Fairfield Hall Read Free Page B

wives and mothers and housekeepers. Her father’s farm would one day be hers – she was an only child – yet she had no interest in the
land. Every summer brought her hay fever misery and even getting too close to a horse could set her sneezing. Each June she spent time near the sea, which seemed to ease her symptoms.
    Crossing her fingers at the lie she was about to tell, she said boldly, ‘I’m coming to stay in Cleethorpes next week.’ She paused, knowing instinctively that he would suggest a
meeting. And he did.
    Their romance – if it could be called that – progressed swiftly, much to Sarah’s parents’ dismay. It was more a meeting of like minds, of shared ambition, than a
passionate love affair.
    ‘I don’t like it,’ Edward Armstrong said to his wife, Martha. ‘And I don’t like
him
. But what can I do? I’ve talked to her, pleaded with her, even
raged at her, but she’s set on marrying the fellow. She’s twenty-one next month and I suppose if they’re really in love . . .’
    Martha had put her arms around her husband and laid her dark head against his chest. ‘Is it because of the farm, my dear?’
    ‘Only partly. I wanted to pass it down the generations.’
    As she heard the heavy sigh deep in his chest, Martha had raised her head and said, with a twinkle in her violet eyes: ‘Never mind, perhaps Sarah will give you a grandson who will one day
take over Meadow View Farm.’
    But Sarah had only given them a granddaughter, Annabel, and it was on her that Edward now pinned all his hopes. He had never agreed with the belief that genteel young ladies should spend their
time drawing, painting, sewing and playing the piano. Instead, he had instructed his daughter, Sarah, in the basic rudiments of accountancy and had introduced her to the precarious delights of
buying and selling shares. At the time, he could not have foreseen that her quick mind and intuitive head for business, together with all that he had taught her, would equip Sarah not for running
the farm as he had hoped but for helping her husband run his growing business.
    Grudgingly, Edward was forced to admit that Ambrose was a clever and successful man. In 1883, Ambrose had been the first owner of a steam trawler and by the time Annabel reached adulthood, he
was the biggest steam trawler owner in the Grimsby docks. Seeing that Sarah was well provided for by her prosperous husband, Edward made his will in favour of his granddaughter, leaving his five
hundred-acre farm in the Lincolnshire wolds to her. One day it would all belong to Annabel, but for the moment, Edward and his wife remained in good health and continued to run Meadow View Farm
themselves. And on her frequent visits, Edward delighted in the young girl’s intelligence and her capacity for learning quickly. He was heartened that she seemed to possess nothing of the
ruthless ambition of her father and – it had to be said – of her mother. She soon knew all the farmhands by their first names and, as a youngster, played with their children. But it was
when riding on horseback around the fields with her grandfather that Annabel’s face shone and she chattered with a multitude of questions. In turn, Edward was thrilled by the girl’s
enthusiasm and growing love for the land. His farm would be in safe hands and he began to teach Annabel, too, the rudiments of bookkeeping and the ups and downs of the stock market. He introduced
her to the stockbroker he used in Thorpe St Michael, Henry Parker, and together the two men guided and schooled the young girl until she was old enough to deal for herself.
    What Edward didn’t know – and for a long time neither did Ambrose – was that it was on these journeys to visit her grandparents that Annabel and Gilbert Radcliffe began to
meet. Only Jane knew and now the burden of knowledge was too great for the young maid to endure. But she need not have worried that she would be questioned or even blamed; word had already