A Season of Secrets Read Online Free PDF

temporarily forgetting the huge disappointment she was feeling. Here, lying in the deep grass, with the hot sun on her back and
the vole pups to watch, she was happy.
    It was happiness that lasted until they finally rose to their feet and began heading back to the pony-trap. As they approached it, Jim, once again seated, picked up the reins. Thea didn’t
acknowledge any of them, not even Olivia, and as Carrie climbed into the trap her heart was heavy with the certainty that she was doing so for the last time.
    Jim dropped Hal off at the bridge and then, with Olivia chattering about what a wonderful morning it had been and Thea still silent, they returned to Gorton.
    When Jim reined the horse in, Carrie wondered what she ought to do. Should she just get out of the trap, as if nothing had happened between her and Thea? Should she stay in it and ask Jim if he
would take her back to her granny’s? Or should she get out of it, say goodbye to Olivia and begin walking home?
    It was Thea, getting out of the trap first, who solved the problem for her. ‘Jim will take you home,’ she said abruptly, standing on the gravel and looking up at her with an
inscrutable expression in her narrow eyes. ‘And then tomorrow we’ll take a picnic with us when we go to see the voles. I hadn’t understood about Hal, but I do now. I think
he’d like a picnic. I’ll ask Cook to make a seed cake.’

Chapter Three

    OCTOBER 1917
    Two years later Carrie wasn’t only best friends with Thea and Olivia, but friends with Violet, as well. Violet, now eight, was as eager to be independent of Nanny Erskine
as Thea and Olivia had been at the same age. Thea and Olivia, however, hated Violet tagging along with them, and whenever Violet escaped Nanny Erskine it was generally only Carrie who spent time
with her.
    On a mellow Saturday morning Carrie stepped out of Gorton Hall to find Violet sitting glumly on the magnificent flight of stone steps fronting it.
    ‘Do you want to come down to the village with me to post the officers’ mail?’ she asked, coming to a halt beside her.
    For more than a year Gorton Hall had served as a convalescent home for wounded officers, and Carrie – now regarded almost as family at Gorton – had taken it upon herself to act as
their postwoman.
    Violet’s pretty heart-shaped face brightened. ‘Are you going in the pony-trap or are you bicycling?’
    ‘Bicycling.’
    ‘Goody!’ Violet sprang to her feet.
    Like Thea and Olivia she had red hair, but whereas Thea’s hair was a deep chestnut and Olivia’s was the colour of pale marmalade, Violet’s tumble of waves and curls was a true
fox-red.
    ‘Just like Papa’s hair,’ Violet had once said to Carrie. ‘And my eyes are the same colour as Papa’s, too.’
    Her eyes, a deep golden amber, were as distinctive as her hair, but Violet didn’t mind being distinctive. Being distinctive was something she actively aimed for.
    She said now, as they made the long walk round the side of the house to the bicycle shed, ‘Papa is coming home on leave soon, did you know?’
    Carrie moved the pile of envelopes she was carrying from one arm to the other. ‘Yes. It’s going to be a very special few days.’
    A year ago, after suffering a wound on the Somme at Flers–Courcelette that had rendered his left arm near useless, Lord Fenton had been appointed to a staff job behind the lines. Until now
his leaves had always been spent in London, and Blanche and the children had always joined him there at their town house in Mount Street, just off Park Lane. This time, though, Gilbert Fenton was
going to be spending his short leave at Gorton. Carrie, who had only ever seen him from a distance and then not since before the war, was looking forward to his arrival almost as much as his
children.
    Once in the bicycle shed, Carrie took the spare bicycle that had been bought with Roz in mind and put the letters into its pannier. Seconds later, with Violet close behind her, she was