Adored by Tilly Bagshawe Read Free Book Online Page B

up at school with a face like a wet weekend.
    When he turned to face her, tears were pouring down his cheeks. “Caro, I’m so sorry, so very, very sorry. I’ve had to sell Amhurst.”
    She felt the world spin and was grateful she was sitting down. She doubted her legs would have supported her if she’d tried to stand up at that moment. Sell Amhurst? What on earth was he talking about?
    “Please, darling.” Sebastian had looked at her beseechingly. “Say something.”
    What was there to say? His shame and distress were so obvious, and so acute, that she hadn’t the heart to reproach him or the energy to throw some sort of tantrum. She had opened her mouth, just to ask him why,
how
could this have happened, but closed it again before the words had even formed on her lips. What was the point of tormenting herself, or him, with such questions? Amhurst meant the whole world to Sebastian, just as it did to her. If he had sold it, then she knew he must have had absolutely no choice.
    For a few fleeting moments, she allowed her mind to fly back there, to linger on each image, on every remembered smell and sound and touch of her home. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear the rooks cawing in the treetops of the Great Park, and smell the dampness of the early-morning mist, intertwined with the sour smoke of the previous night’s bonfire. She could feel the smooth, polished wood of the banisters under her hand and see the vast, faded tapestries of hunting scenes that hung, so exquisite and yet almost unnoticed, against the cool stone walls.
    She pictured her old Nanny Chapman chasing her out of the cavernous larder, remembered the “slap, slap” sound of her bare feet as she ran across the cold flagstone floor of the scullery and out into the kitchen garden, with a slice of cook’s apple pie still clenched tightly in her sticky fist.
    Her father had sold Amhurst. It was gone.
    Silently, lovingly, Caroline folded away each of her precious memories. If she were going to survive this, she knew she could never, ever look back. She also knew, somewhere very deep inside herself, that her childhood had come to an end in that instant.
    Getting up slowly, she put her arms around her father’s neck and held him while he wept. The rose garden, always such a peaceful place, was racked by the sound of Sebastian’s sobbing. Caroline felt she would never be able to set foot there again.
    “Don’t cry, Daddy,” she whispered. “It’s all right. Really it is. We’ll get through it together. We’ll find somewhere else to live, maybe a lovely cottage like Granny’s or something? It’ll be gorgeous and cozy, and I can bring you your pipe and slippers by the fire every night, just like a really old man.”
    That, she realized, was exactly what he looked like, slumped and shivering beside her on the cold stone bench. Overnight, her strong, invincible father had become a broken old man.
    Sebastian stared at his daughter in wonder, deeply touched by her desire to comfort him, overwhelmed with gratitude for her forgiveness. “I’m afraid it isn’t just the house, you know,” he forced himself to continue. “I’m . . . the thing is, you see . . . well, there are some debts. A lot of debts, in fact.” Her heart felt wrenched with love and pity for him as he stared abjectly down at his shoes, all glistening and wet from the dewy grass. “I can pay them, of course. There’s no question of anything not being honored, of shirking anything.”
    “Of course there isn’t, Pa,” she assured him. “I know that.”
    “It’s just that after everybody’s been paid off, well, I’m afraid there’s really very little left. A couple of the paintings I should be able to hang on to, and your great-grandfather’s Egton chest. But everything else . . . Oh, Caroline, darling.” He was crying again now. “Your inheritance, and the boys’. It’s all gone. All of it. I am so terribly, terribly sorry.”
    Caroline was surprised to find