Ravenscliffe by Jane Sanderson

Author:Jane Sanderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780748130719
Publisher: Sphere
Published: 2012-09-26T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Samuel Farrimond drove his gig as slowly as was possible without actually stopping. He wanted time to observe his surroundings and order his thoughts, so he kept the pony in check up the elegant sweep of Oak Avenue in order to delay his arrival at Netherwood Hall. He was not a man to be easily awed; indeed, he was an imposing presence himself. The Methodist ministry called, as in all things, for simplicity of dress, but within those boundaries Reverend Farrimond was never less than immaculately turned out: a handsome, silver-haired fellow with a carrying voice that served him well at the pulpit. But this rolling parkland, this immaculately swept driveway of dusky pink gravel, this fine, long, classical house with its windows lit as if by homecoming beacons – perhaps he had been too long in Grangely, he thought, for it seemed he had forgotten how arresting was the world inhabited by the very rich. It was his first visit to Netherwood Hall, for what business would a Methodist minister from an impoverished neighbouring parish have at the sumptuous family seat of the local earl? None whatsoever, until life’s unexpected twists and turns made it necessary, and it was indeed an extraordinary sequence of events that had brought him here today to unite Eve and Daniel in holy matrimony. Actually, he mused, as he kept a crawling pace past the classical portico of the south front, if it wasn’t for him, none of this might have happened. Credit where it was due. It had been his idea, after all, that Eve should make a living from her peerless pies, and what a runaway success that had been. And now look – she had come so far that the Netherwood Hall family chapel was at her disposal, and the earl was sending a car to convey her to it. Fairy tales had been spun from less.

Ah, there was the chapel now: modestly proportioned, which was all to the good, and from what he could see through the open door, relatively unadorned inside. Well, perhaps the Hoyland ancestors had Methodist leanings, though from what he knew of the family, he had expected they would have thrown their money at God’s house in the same way they threw money at their own. Now, now Samuel, he chided himself, these are friends, not foe. And after all, they had shown real discernment and good taste when they took a shine to the lovely Eve, and her a poor Grangely girl, with a Grangely girl’s traditional burdens; a hapless wastrel for a father and a mother so reduced by illness and poverty that she surrendered her last breath with a grateful smile. Samuel Farrimond knew this, for he had been there at the time and had gently closed Dinah Whittam’s eyes, so that her children would understand she was gone. He had buried Dinah, and had feared for Eve, knowing her own resilience was all that would save her. And how she had

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