Liza Read Free Page A

looked down on the town. He brought with him a nurse, and a specialist who came in his own richly appointed carriage and left it in the drive. Millicent had not wanted the pregnancy and was determined to have all the assistance she could obtain for her confinement.
    Charles, her husband, backed her in this, but her money would pay the bills anyway. He waited on the landing outside the bedroom, pacing restlessly. At twenty-five he was tall and fair, florid and fleshily handsome. He heard the child ’s cry from behind the closed door with more relief than joy. ‘Thank God, that’s over.’
    His brother, Edward, a man of forty, smiled. ‘Congratulations.’ He was shorter, broader, fair but lean.
    Charles nodded brusquely. ‘Thank you.’ Then he reverted to the conversation of a minute or two earlier: ‘I think you’re wrong. If we sold all the old ships we’re running and bought just two or three new, bigger vessels, we could make a fortune.’
    Edward demurred. ‘As I’ve already said, I think that too much of a gamble. I prefer to go more slowly.’
    Charles flapped a hand impatiently, and the argument went on. They were partners in the shipowning business left to them by their father, but by the terms of his will Edward had the casting vote and he was implacable now.
    They broke off when the bedroom door opened and the doctor said, ‘Come and see your daughter, Charles.’
    They entered and Edwa rd congratulated Millicent, normally willowy, blonde and blue-eyed, now tired and wan: ‘You have a beautiful daughter.’
    The child was in the arms of her nurse and Millicent declared petulantly, ‘I’m exhausted. Take her to the nursery.’
    ‘ Have you decided on a name for her?’ Edward asked. ‘No,’ Charles said shortly. He glanced at his wife, his brows raised.
    She shrugged her shoulders in an elegant silken bed-jacket. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
    ‘ My mother — her grandmother — was Margaret,’ Edward suggested.
    ‘ No.’ Millicent wrinkled her nose. ‘Much too ordinary. I think ... Cecily. Yes — Cecily.’
    Soon afterwards Edward left. ‘I am expecting a young visitor.’
    ‘ I think you’re making a mistake, taking on something like that,’ Charles said, ‘but it’s your affair. You won’t stay to dinner, then?’ The invitation was lukewarm.
    ‘ Thank you, but I think I should meet him.’
    The specialist ’s carriage had gone but Edward’s was waiting for him. He patted the horses’ necks and stroked their noses. ‘My brother’s wife has just given birth to a daughter, Gibson. I’m an uncle.’
    ‘ Glad to hear it, sir.’ And his young coachman drove him home.
    The house was bigger than he needed with its six bedrooms — he lived alone — and another half-dozen for his servants, but it had been his childhood home and had been left to him by his father. He was happy enough there.
    The carriage wheeled in through the gates, always open by his order. He would not bar the way to anyone needing shelter. Mrs Taggart, his housekeeper, met him at the front door. ‘Mrs’ was a courtesy title; she had never married. Nor had Elspeth Taggart ever disclosed her age and no one dared ask it, but she had been in his and his father’s employ, at first as a scullery-maid, for twenty-five years. She was rosy-cheeked, red-haired and straight-backed, with a large bunch of keys dangling from the waist of her black dress. She greeted Edward with a smile. ‘The young person has arrived, sir. He’s in the parlour.’
    ‘ Good.’ He walked down the hall, polished floorboards gleaming either side of the carpet, with Elspeth at his heels, and turned into the drawing room at the front of the house — to her it was always the parlour. It was a big room but smaller than the dining room on to which it opened and which stretched the depth of the house.
    ‘ It’s like a barn,’ she would say. ‘You could have a dance in there.’
    The windows were tall and the furniture was good and plentiful,