A Winter’s Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

with its faded gilt edges and the cover depiction of a small child praying, eyes cast up to heaven, but my icy hands fumbled and almost dropped the book.
A positive cascade of pressed roses fell out, with the papery whispering of old ghosts.

Chapter Three: Diamond Cut
They have given mee a chamber in the solar to be near Thomas. I spend much time there—or in the stillroom, which is sadly neglected, Lady Wynter having no interest in those arts in which it should be her pride to be accomplished. I walk in the gardens when I can spare the time and pick herbs. The plants I need that grow wild in the woods and pastures are harder to obtain and some must be picked by the light of the moon…To slip out here unseen is difficult.
From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1580
‘Anya!’ I said, when I finally managed to reach her. ‘My guardian angel is a golden Lucifer—diabolically handsome and slightly sulphurous round the edges. He’s hot—and I think I’m in love!’
‘How do you know?’ she said, sounding as if she was standing in a metal oil drum (which she might have been—you never know with Anya).
‘That I’m in love?’
‘No, that your guardian angel is a Lucifer.’
‘Oh—because he visited me yesterday,’ I said. ‘He’s sort of a cousin—a very distant cousin.’ Then I told her all about my grandfather’s death, my inheritance—and Jack’s offer.
‘And he was furious when he first turned up, because hethought I’d somehow managed to brainwash Grandfather into leaving Winter’s End to me. Once he realised I hadn’t he was really, really nice.’
‘I bet he was,’ she said, sounding unconvinced. ‘But after all you’ve told me about your childhood at Winter’s End and how you feel about the place, I can’t understand why you don’t sound delirious with pleasure.’
‘Well, for one thing I’m still stunned and wondering why on earth Grandfather did it; and for another, it isn’t the Winter’s End I remember, because it’s clear that Jack took my place soon after I left,’ I said slowly. ‘Apparently the house is really run down and there is a big outstanding bank loan against it too, which Grandfather took out to pay for his garden restoration.’
‘What were you expecting, a Shangri-La that always stayed the same?’
‘It did always stay the same, in my imagination—and part of me thinks it’s better left like that, and I should never try to go back there.’
‘Well, they always say, be careful what you wish for,’ Anya said breezily, ‘but actually, I always thought the only reason you started working in stately homes was because you were trying to recreate a bit of what you once had—and just think how useful all that experience will be now! Doesn’t the thought of doing such a major clean-up get your juices flowing?’
She knows me only too well.
‘I wish my angels would conjure something up like that, Sophy. I’m getting a bit tired of wandering around now,’ she confessed to my surprise, because she has been on the road since she was eighteen and left the commune. We did this sort of role-reversal thing. When I arrived at the commune I was tired of moving about and just wanted to settle down, while she was fed up with the whole thing and attracted to the kind of life I’d had with Mum.
‘I think when Guy gets a job I might settle somewhere near him,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘He’s got lots of interviews.’
‘I’m not surprised; he got a first-class degree.’
Guy is Anya’s son, a year younger than Lucy, and was always bright—and very determined. When he was eleven he insisted on staying with his grandmother in Scotland during the school terms and got grade A everything .
‘How is Lucy doing?’ Anya asked.
‘She seems fine, but I wish she wasn’t so far away. And some man keeps pestering her, which I find worrying. She says he seems fascinated by her being so tall and blonde. There have been a couple of cases of British women being stalked and even