The Virgin's Wedding Night
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She hadn’t realised immediately that she was no longer alone, and when she’d looked up and seen him watching her, she’d been apprehensive in case he was angry.
But his sudden smile had been strangely tender. ‘Your mother used to do that when she was reading,’ he told her. ‘And this was her favourite book too.’
He sat down in the big wing chair by the fireplace and began to talk to her, listening patiently to her halting replies, and encouraging her to be less shy, and say whatever was on her mind.
Looking back, Harriet could even say with honesty that she’d had a pretty good childhood in spite of her mother’s continuing and prolonged absences. There’d been postcards at first, and letters from the States, then from Europe, after the relationship with Bryn had finally crashed and burned like all the others, and Caroline had joined up with a professional tennis player, not quite in the top rank.
Eventually, as the years had passed, the letters had become fewer, then dried up altogether. At the last contact—a card for her twenty-first birthday—Caroline had seemed to be in Argentina living with a former polo player. But no address had been included, and since then there’d been nothing to indicate whether her mother was alive or dead.
Harriet had come to accept over the years that her mother lived solely on her own terms, and that the existence of her child belonged to a long-discarded past. She was left to remember only Caroline’s beauty and zest for life, however misplaced, and to try and forget the negative elements of their relationship. At the same time, however, her life with her grandfather, though never lacking in affection, grew marginally trickier.
Gregory Flint was clearly determined that Harriet was not going to follow in her mother’s footsteps if there was anything he could do to prevent it. Accordingly, Harriet found her life controlled by a kind of benevolent despotism, her freedom restricted and her judgement regularly called into question.
And the fact that she could—almost—understand why it was happening made it no less irksome.
The first major clash between them had come when she was eighteen, and had just left her convent school, and he’d announced he’d found her a place in a Swiss establishment where she would improve her foreign language skills, and embark on a cordon bleu cookery course.
She’d stared at him open-mouthed. ‘You mean I’m going to be finished? Gramps, you can’t mean it. Anyone would think we were living a hundred years ago.’
His brows snapped together. ‘You have some other idea?’
‘Well, of course.’ She tried her most winning smile. ‘I’ve decided to join the family business. Carry on the Flint name for another generation.’
‘You—want to work for Flint Audley?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And where did this ridiculous notion spring from, I wonder?’
‘It seems an obvious choice,’ she countered.
‘Well, it’s not obvious to me,’ he said scathingly. ‘What on earth do you think you know about property management on the scale we deal with? Dealing with our range of tenants, contracts, maintenance—the thousand and one issues you’d be faced with? You—a chit of a girl just out of school?’
‘I’d know about as much as you and Gordon Audley did when you started out in the fifties.’ Harriet lifted her chin without flinching. ‘And certainly as much as Jonathan Audley with his 2:2 in Fine Arts,’ she added, her tone edged. ‘Yet he seems to have been welcomed with open arms—even by you. I could run rings round him, given the chance.’
She paused. ‘Because I’m not just “a chit of a girl” as you claim. I’m a chip off the old block, and all I want is an opportunity to prove myself.’ She added more quietly. ‘I—I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Then you can think again, and quickly too.’ His voice was cutting. ‘I have very different plans for your future, my girl.’
‘Yes, I know. Polite French conversation halfway up some Alp.’ She shook her head. ‘Gramps, darling, it would never work. I’d be so bored. And you know what they say about idle hands,’ she added unthinkingly, and saw his face harden into real anger.
‘Is that a reference to your mother?’
She bit her lip. ‘No, I promise it’s not.’ Although maybe things might have turned out differently for her if she’d been allowed to have a real job—a career from the outset—instead of being expected to stay at home, the dutiful daughter. Perhaps that original love affair was her first chance to be herself. To make a choice, even if it was the wrong one…
She thought it, but did not say it. Instead, she went on coaxingly, ‘All the same, I’d like to pass on the social graces, and start earning my living like everyone else I know.’
There was a silence, then he said, ‘Well, there’s no need to be in too much of a hurry to decide about the future. Why not take one of those gap years, and spend some time at home, while you make up your mind? If you need an occupation, there’s always plenty of voluntary work about.’
‘Gramps, my mind is made up.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And Larry Brotherton is interviewing me for a job as an assistant in the rents review department on Monday.’
‘No one,’ her grandfather said ominously, ‘has seen fit to mention this to me. And I am still nominally supposed to be the chairman of the board.’
‘With your mind, presumably, on higher things than the recruitment of very junior staff.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, Mr Brotherton may turn me down.’
‘I doubt that very much.’ He was silent for a moment, then grunted. ‘I suppose if you’re determined I can’t stop you. And Flint Audley will do as well as anywhere—until, of course, you’re ready to settle down.’
And I laughed, and said, ‘Of course,’ thought Harriet.
She’d been too pleased with her victory to consider the clear implication in his words. That working at Flint Audley would be merely a stop-gap arrangement until she fulfilled her female destiny by making a sensible marriage.
And when, to her delight, she’d been offered the job, she’d thrown herself into it, working so conspicuously hard that promotion had soon followed. Now, six years later, driven by ambition and hard graft, she was at management level, with a salary to match, a generous bonus, and a possible brief to expand the commercial management branch of the company outside London.