The Beekeeper's Daughter by Santa Montefiore Page B

will. I hope you enjoy a long life, dear boy, but to outlive the people you love is not necessarily something to be celebrated. One endures but one never recovers. Miss Hamblin, I remember when your dear mama died. You were too young to know her, which is a great shame. She was a sweet girl.’ Grace’s cheeks flushed as pink as her juice. The Dowager Marchioness acknowledged Grace’s tragedy with a grunt. ‘Who brought you up?’
    ‘My father.’
    ‘On his own?’ Lady Penselwood narrowed her eyes and gave a disapproving sniff.
    ‘Yes, m’lady.’
    ‘Good gracious. I commend him. Not an easy task, bringing up a child on one’s own, especially for a man. Men are useless in the nursery.’
    ‘He was helped. Auntie May helped,’ Grace interjected, hoping Lady Penselwood might approve of that.
    She did. ‘Family. You see, one simply can’t exist without family.’ Grace didn’t feel like telling her that Auntie May was a distant relative and not really family at all. She called her Auntie because she had been as close to her mother as a sister. ‘Grandparents?’
    ‘Yes, m’lady. My grandmother helped when I was little.’
    This pleased Lady Penselwood enormously. ‘Grandmothers, there’s no substituting them. Now Rufus here has always taken great trouble with me.’
    ‘Trouble being the operative word, Grandmama. You’ve always been trouble.’
    She chuckled. ‘When one is a grandmother, one is entitled to say exactly what one thinks. I endured years of keeping my thoughts to myself. Now that I am old and there is no one in the family above me, I have the right to speak my mind.’
    ‘And you most certainly do,’ he added wryly.
    ‘Now, I would like to endure another sting. On the other hand. What do you say, Miss Hamblin?’
    Grace was too young and unimportant to speak her mind, so she had no choice but to agree to the unfortunate killing of yet another precious bee. ‘Would you like me to find one in your garden?’ she volunteered dutifully.
    ‘That’s a splendid idea. Rufus, show her the lavender. There are always plenty of bees on that.’
    ‘As I’m a pleasure-seeking man, Grandmama, it will give me nothing but pleasure to show Grace the garden.’ He stood up. ‘Come on then, Grace. Let’s go outside and enjoy the sunshine.’
    ‘Take Amber, here,’ said his grandmother, gently pushing the dog off her knee. ‘She’s been inside all morning. It’s about time she did her business.’ Reluctantly, the white Maltese followed Rufus and Grace into the garden, where it soon disappeared into a bush.
    ‘So you see, two miracles in one day,’ said Rufus, putting on a pair of sunglasses.
    ‘What’s the other one?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Mama and Papa have gone up to London. They’re going to the theatre tonight.’ When Grace didn’t reply he added, ‘I didn’t want them to know about Grandmama’s sting, you see. They’d think I was brutal.’
    ‘Your grandmother doesn’t think you brutal at all.’
    ‘ She doesn’t, no. But Mama is a different kettle of fish. She’d think it was all a lot of hocus-pocus and there’d be a great deal of tutting and rolling her eyes and “Really, Rufus, can’t you think of something better to do with your time?” She finds her mother-in-law tiresome and demanding, which of course she is. Even though she thinks the old girl is about to pop off at any moment, and is rather wishing she’d exit sooner rather than later, she’d find the idea of a bee sting on purpose barbaric and do her best to stop her. There’d be the most almighty row and I’d be in the middle of it, as usual, trying to keep them apart. It’s bad enough that they live in the same house. Two devilishly strong women standing their ground; it’s hopeless. That’s why Mama disappears to London as much as possible. Grandmama likes to stay here, rattling around in this big old house all on her own.’
    ‘And you? Do you like rattling around in it, too?’
    ‘I don’t rattle much.