A Mother's Love: An Exclusive Short Story Page 7

  Filled with the luscious scenery and enchanting characters her fans adore, Santa Montefiore’s The Woman from Paris confirms the remarkable power of love to heal broken families and tender hearts.

  “Santa Montefiore really knows these people inside and out. I couldn’t put this book down.”

  —Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey

  “The joy Montefiore infuses into her work shines throughout . . . a feel-good story, full of exuberance and passion and threaded with hope.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  Available wherever books are sold or at www.simonandschuster.com

  1

  Hampshire, 2012

  The beginning of March had been glorious. The earth had shaken off the early-morning frosts, and little buds had emerged through the hardened bark to reveal lime-green shoots and pale-pink blossoms. Daffodils had pushed their way up through the thawing ground to open into bright-yellow trumpets, and the sun had shone with renewed radiance. Birdsong filled the air, and the branches were once again aquiver with the busy bustle of nest building. It had been a triumphant start to spring.

  Fairfield Park had never looked more beautiful. Built on swathes of fertile farmland, the Jacobean mansion was surrounded by sweeping lawns, ancient bluebell woods, and fields of thriving crops and buttercups. There was a large ornamental lake where frogs made their homes among the bulrushes and goldfish swam about the lily pads. Towering beech trees protected the house from hostile winds in winter and gave shelter to hundreds of narcissi in spring. A nest of barn owls had set up residence in the hollow of an apple tree and fed off the mice and rats that dwelt on the farm and in the log barn, and high on the hill, surveying it all with the patience of a wise old man, a neglected stone folly was hidden away like a forgotten treasure.

  Abandoned to the corrosion of time and weather, the pretty little folly remained benignly observant, confident that one day a great need would surely draw people to it as light to lost souls. Yet today, no one below could even see those honey-colored walls and fine, sturdy pillars, for the estate was submerged beneath a heavy mist that had settled upon it in a shroud of mourning. Today, even the birds were subdued. It was as if spring had suddenly lost her will.

  The cause of this melancholy was the shiny black hearse that waited on the gravel in front of the house. Inside, the corpse of Lord Frampton, the house’s patriarch, lay cold and vacant in a simple oak coffin. The fog swirled around the car like the greedy tentacles of death, impatient to pull his redundant body into the earth, and on the steps that led down from the entrance his two Great Danes lay as solemn and still as a pair of stone statues, their heads resting dolefully on their paws, their sad eyes fixed on the coffin; they knew intuitively that their master would not be coming home.

  Inside the house, Lady Frampton stood before the hall mirror and placed a large black hat on her head. She sighed at her reflection, and her heart, already heavy with bereavement, grew heavier still at the sight of the eyes that stared back with the weary acquiescence of an old woman. Her face was blotchy where tears had fallen without respite ever since she had learned of her husband’s sudden death in the Swiss Alps ten days before. The shock had blanched her skin and stolen her appetite so that her cheeks looked gaunt, even if her voluptuous body did not. She had been used to his absences while he had indulged his passion for climbing the great mountains of the world, but now the house reverberated with a different kind of silence: a loud, uncomfortable silence that echoed through the large rooms with a foreboding sense of permanence.

  She straightened her coat as her eldest son, now the new Lord Frampton, stepped into the hall from the drawing room. “What are they doing in there, David?” she asked, trying to contain her grief, at least until she got to the church. “We’re going to be late.”

  David gazed down at her sadly. “We can’t be late, Mum,” he said, his dark eyes full of the same pain. “Dad’s . . . you know . . .” He looked to the window.

  “No, you’re right, of course.” She thought of George in the hearse outside and felt her throat constrict. She turned back to the mirror and began to fiddle with her hat again. “Still, everyone will be waiting, and it’s frightfully cold.”

  A moment later her middle son, Joshua, emerged from the drawing room with his chilly wife, Roberta. “You okay, Mum?” he asked, finding the emotion of such an occasion embarrassing.

  “Just keen to get on with it,” David interjected impatiently. Joshua thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. The house felt cold. He went to stand by the hall fire, where large logs entwined with ivy crackled in the grate.

  “What are they doing in there?” his mother asked again, glancing towards the drawing room. She could hear the low voice of her youngest son, Tom, and her mother-in-law’s formidable consonants as she held forth, as usual unchallenged.

  “Grandma’s demanding that Tom show her how to use the mobile telephone he gave her,” Joshua replied.

  “Now? Can’t it wait till later?” Her chin trembled with anguish.

  “They’re finishing their drinks, Antoinette,” said Roberta with a disapproving sniff. “Though I’m not sure Tom should be drinking with his history, should he?”

  Antoinette bristled and walked over to the window. “I think today, of all days, Tom is entitled to consume anything he wants,” she retorted tightly. Roberta pursed her lips and rolled her eyes at her husband, a gesture she wrongly assumed her mother-in-law couldn’t see. Antoinette watched her arrange her pretentious feather fascinator in front of the mirror and wondered why her son had chosen to marry a woman whose cheekbones were sharp enough to slice through slate.

  At last Tom sauntered into the hall with his grandmother, who was tucking the telephone into her handbag and clipping it shut. He smiled tenderly at his mother, and Antoinette immediately felt a little better. Her youngest had always had the power to lift her high or pull her low, depending on his mood or state of health. A small glass of wine had left him none the worse, and she ignored the niggling of her better judgment that knew he shouldn’t consume any alcohol at all. Her thoughts sprang back to her husband, and she recalled the time he had managed to telephone her from the Annapurna base camp just to find out how Tom was after a particularly bad week following a breakup. She felt her eyes welling with tears again and pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket. George had been a very good man.

  “You haven’t turned the heating off, have you?” exclaimed the Dowager Lady Frampton accusingly. “I never let it get so frightfully cold!” In her long black dress, wide black hat, and mink stole Margaret Frampton looked as if she were off to crash a Halloween party rather than attend her only son’s funeral. Around her neck and wrist and dripping from her ears like elaborate icicles was the exquisite Frampton sapphire suite, acquired in India in 1868 by the first Lord Frampton for his wife, Theodora, and passed down through the generations to George, who had loaned it to his mother because his wife refused to wear such an extravagant display of wealth. The Dowager Lady Frampton had no such reservations and wore the jewels whenever a suitable occasion arose. Antoinette wasn’t sure Margaret’s son’s funeral was quite such an occasion.

  “The heating is on, Margaret, and the fires are all lit. I think the house is in mourning, too,” she replied.

  “What a ridiculous idea,” Margaret muttered.

  “I think Mum’s right,” interjected Tom, casting his gaze out of the window. “Look at the fog. I think the whole estate is in mourning.”

  “I’ve lost more people than I can count,” said Margaret, striding past Antoinette. “But there’s nothing worse than losing a son. An only son. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. At the very least, one would expect the house to be warm!”

  Harris, the old butler who had worked for the family for more than thirty years, opened the front door, and the Dowager Lady Frampton stepped out into the mist, pulling her stole tighter across her chest. “Goodness me, are we going to be able to get to chu
rch?” She stood at the top of the stone stair and surveyed the scene. “It’s as thick as porridge.”

  “Of course we will, Grandma,” Tom reassured her, taking her arm to guide her down. The Great Danes remained frozen beneath the weight of their sadness. Margaret settled her gaze on the coffin and thought how terribly lonely it looked through the glass of the hearse. For a moment the taut muscles in her jaw weakened, and her chin trembled. She lifted her shoulders and stiffened, tearing her eyes away. Pain wasn’t something one shared with other people.

  The chauffeur stood to attention as Tom helped his grandmother into one of the Bentleys. Roberta followed dutifully after, but Antoinette hung back. “You go, Josh,” she said. “Tom and David will come with me.”

  Joshua climbed into the front seat. One might have thought that his father’s death would unite the two women, but it seemed they were still as hostile as ever. He listened to his wife and grandmother chatting in the back and wondered why his mother couldn’t get along with Margaret as well as Roberta did.

  “That woman is so trying,” Antoinette complained, dabbing her eyes carefully as the cars followed the hearse down the drive and through the iron gates adorned with the family crest of lion and rose. “Do I look awfully blotchy?” she asked Tom.

  “You look fine, Mum. It wouldn’t be appropriate to look polished today.”

  “I suppose not. Still, everyone’s going to be there.”

  “And everyone is going to be coming back,” grumbled David from the front seat. He didn’t relish the idea of having to socialize.

  “I think we’ll all need a stiff drink.” She patted Tom’s hand, wishing she hadn’t referred to alcohol. “Even you. Today of all days.”

  Tom laughed. “Mum, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. A few drinks aren’t going to kill me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I wonder who’s come,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Perish the thought of having to chat to Dad’s dreadful aunts and all the boring relatives we’ve spent years avoiding,” David interjected. “I’m not in the mood for a party.”

  “It’s not a party, darling,” his mother corrected. “People just want to show their respect.”

  David stared miserably out of the window. He could barely see the hedgerows as they drove down the lane towards the town of Fairfield. “Can’t everyone just bugger off and go home afterwards?”

  “Absolutely not. It’s polite to ask your father’s friends and relatives home after the funeral. It’ll cheer us all up.”

  “Great,” David muttered glumly. “I can’t think of a better way of getting over Dad’s death than having a knees-up with a bunch of old codgers.”

  His mother began to cry again. “Don’t make this any harder for me, David.”

  David peered around the seat and softened. “I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just don’t feel like playing the glad game, that’s all.”

  “None of us do, darling.”

  “Right now, I just want to be alone to wallow in my sorrow.”

  “I could kill for a cigarette,” said Tom. “Do you think I have time for a quick one round the back?”

  The car drew up outside St. Peter’s medieval church. The chauffeur opened the passenger door, and Antoinette waited for Tom to come round to help her out. Her legs felt weak and unsure. She could see her mother-in-law walking up the stony path towards the entrance of the church where two of George’s cousins greeted her solemnly. She would never cry in public, Antoinette thought bitterly. Antoinette doubted whether she had ever cried in private. Margaret considered it very middle-class to show one’s feelings and turned up her aristocratic nose at the generation of young people for whom it was normal to whine, shed tears, and moan about their lot. She condemned them for their sense of entitlement and took great pleasure in telling her grandchildren that in her day people had had more dignity. Antoinette knew Margaret despised her for continuously sobbing, but she was unable to stop, even to satisfy her mother-in-law. But she dried her eyes before stepping out of the car and took a deep breath; the Dowager Lady Frampton had no patience with public displays of emotion.

  Antoinette walked up the path between her two sons and thought how proud George would be of his boys. Tom, who was so handsome and wild, with his father’s thick blond hair and clear denim eyes, and David, who didn’t look like his father at all, but was tall and magnetic and more than capable of bearing his title and running the estate. Up ahead, Joshua disappeared into the church with Roberta. Their middle son was clever and ambitious, making a name for himself in the City, as well as a great deal of money. George had respected his drive, even if he hadn’t understood his unadventurous choice of career. George had been a man who loved natural, untamable landscapes; the concrete terrain of the Square Mile had turned his spirit to salt.

  She swept her eyes over the flint walls of the church and remembered the many happy occasions they had enjoyed here. The boys’ christenings, Joshua’s marriage, his daughter Amber’s christening only a year before—she hadn’t expected to come for this. Not for at least another thirty years, anyway. George had been only fifty-eight.

  She greeted George’s cousins and, as she was the last to arrive, followed them into the church. Inside, the air was thick with body heat and perfume. Candles flickered on the wide window ledges, and lavish arrangements of spring flowers infused the church with the scent of lilies, freesias, and narcissi. Reverend Morley greeted her with a sympathetic smile. He sandwiched her hand between his soft, doughy ones, and muttered words of consolation, although Antoinette didn’t hear for the nerves buzzing in her ears like badly played violins. She blinked away tears and cast her mind back to his visit to the house just after she had heard the terrible news. If only she could rewind to before . . .

  It seemed that every moment of the last ten days had been leading up to this point. There had been so much to do. David and Tom had flown out to Switzerland to bring back their father’s body. Joshua and Roberta had taken care of the funeral arrangements. Antoinette had organized the flowers herself, not trusting her daughter-in-law to know the difference between a lilac and a lily, being a Londoner, and her sister, Rosamunde, had helped choose the hymns. Now the day was upon them Antoinette felt as if she were stepping into a different life, a life without George. She gripped Tom’s arm and walked unsteadily up the aisle. She heard the congregation hush as she moved past and dared not catch anyone’s eye for fear that their compassion would set her off again.

  While Tom greeted their father’s aunts, David settled his mother into the front pew. He glanced around the congregation. He recognized most of the faces—relations and friends dressed in black and looking uniformly sad. Then amidst all the gray, pallid faces, one bright, dewy one stood out like a ripe peach on a winter tree. She was staring straight at him, her astonishing gray eyes full of empathy. Transfixed, he gazed back. He took in the unruly cascade of blond curls that tumbled over her shoulders, and the soft, creamy texture of her skin, and his heart stalled. It was as if a light had been switched on in the darkness of his soul. It didn’t seem appropriate to smile, but David wanted to, very much. So he pulled a resigned smile, and she did the same, silently imparting sympathy for his loss.

  As David left the church again with his brothers and cousins to bear the coffin, he glanced back at the mystery blonde and wondered how she fitted into his father’s life. Why had they never met before? He couldn’t help the buoyant feeling that lifted him out of the quagmire of grief into a radiant and happy place. Was this what people called “love at first sight”? Of all the days it should happen, his father’s funeral was the most inappropriate.

  Phaedra Chancellor knew who David Frampton was, for she had done her research. The eldest of three sons, he was twenty-nine, unmarried, and lived in a house on the Fairfield estate where he managed the farm. He had studied at Cirencester Agricultural College, for while his father had found the life of a country squire unexciting
, David was as comfortable in the land as a potato.

  Phaedra had only seen photographs of George’s sons. Tom was without doubt the most handsome. He had inherited his father’s blue eyes and the mischievous curl of his lips. But David was better looking in the flesh than she had imagined. He was less polished than Tom, with scruffy brown hair, dark eyes and a large aquiline nose that did not photograph well. In fact, his features were irregular and quirky, and yet, somehow, together they were attractive—and he had inherited his father’s charisma, that intangible magnetism that drew the eye. Joshua, on the other hand, was more conventional looking, with a face that was generically handsome and consequently easy to forget.

  She looked down at the service sheet, and her vision blurred at the sight of George’s face imprinted on the cover. He had been more beautiful than all his sons put together. She blinked away painful memories and stared at the man she had grown to love. She could see Tom and Joshua reflected in his features, but she couldn’t see David; he looked like his mother.

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with a Kleenex. Julius Beecher, George’s lawyer, who sat beside her, patted her knee. “You okay?” he whispered. She nodded. “Nervous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not sure this is the right day to drop the bombshell, Julius,” she hissed, as music began to fill the church.

  “I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it. They’re going to find out sooner or later, and besides, you wanted to be here.”

  “I know. You’re right. I wanted to be here very much. But I wish I didn’t have to meet his family.”