Page 122 of The Christmas Retreat
‘But then,’ said Timon slowly, his brows knitted, ‘I suppose we have no way of knowing if Arwen’s baby was Edwin Vane’s or Cosmo Caradoc’s, do we?’
‘I was waiting for someone to get there,’ said Evie. ‘Milly, who brought up the child, became convinced she was Caradoc’s, and I think she was right. She was very fair, as all the women in my family seem to be – except for Ginny – but my mother had surprisingly dark blue eyes, as have I.’
‘Yes, I’ve long observed that your eyes are the same unusual shade of dark blue as Nerys’s –andin that portrait of Caradoc, too,’ said Noel.
‘So …’ said Nerys, looking from Evie to me, ‘we’re more closely related than we ever thought, although in the circumstances I don’t suppose that’s something you welcome.Ifeel guilty just knowing what my great-grandfather did.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Evie robustly. ‘None of it was your fault. But now it’s all in the family, as it were, and Ginny and Rhys are going to get married, all that remains is to decide what must be revealed and what not!’
Nerys seemed to hesitate on the edge of speech, exchanging a look with Timon, who nodded encouragingly at her. Then she swallowed hard and said, in a quiet but resolute voice: ‘Before we do that, there’s somethingI’vebeen concealing, too. But I think Evie’s right, and there should be no more family secrets.’
39
Old Deeds
‘Since you got here, Evie, and revealed our relationship through Lewis Madoc and what you were researching, I feared you would find out that Arwen had helped paint some of Caradoc’s work. What he’d done didn’t seem too bad, since I’d no idea he’d actually appropriated some of her paintings as his own!’
She paused. ‘But I was more worried that you would dig out something else entirely.’ She got up. ‘Wait a moment, while I fetch something from my desk.’
She went out and we waited in silence until she returned with a large brown envelope in her hand, from which, after she’d sat down again next to Timon, she drew a smaller manila envelope.
‘This is a document and covering letter written by my grandfather, Hugh Caradoc-Jones, for his son, Ceri. My step-grandmother, Rose, was very keen on the idea that all written evidence of family history should be kept, whatever unwholesome light they shone on the family. I was in two minds whether to give it toyou, Rhys,’ she said to him, ‘since you are like a son to us and will be head of the family one day, but now,since it turns out that Ginny is so closely related and you are marrying, you ought to know about it.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Evie with a Cheshire Cat grin. ‘I can hardly wait! Can it possibly be any worse than what has come before?’
‘You can decide for yourself,’ Nerys said, pulling out some sheets of folded notepaper from the smaller envelope. ‘This is the covering letter Hugh wrote when he got the original document back from the solicitors, where it had been deposited, after Rose persuaded him to leave it for Ceri to read when he came of age. I’ve never typed it up, so perhaps Rhys, who has done more public speaking than I have, could read it aloud for us? And then the document itself, which is rather longer.’
‘OK,’ he agreed, taking the letter and opening it. ‘If you’re quite sure you want to reveal whatever is in there, Nerys?’
She nodded.
‘Right, then,’ he said, and began to read in his wonderfully deep and mellow voice, so familiar from his poetry readings on the radio, which I’d never been able to resist listening to in the past, however I’d felt about him.
Triskelion
5 May 1924
My dear son,
If I am not able to put the enclosed document into your hands myself by the time you reach your majority, I do beg you to read this letter first, for I hope it will lessen the blow of the revelations it contains.
Before my second marriage, to your stepmother, Rose, Ishowed her the deposition, which I had taken back from the solicitor after your mother’s tragic early death in 1921.
It was Rose who persuaded me not to destroy the document, for she believed that all the facts surrounding the events of the evening when your grandfather, Cosmo Caradoc, died, should be set down and kept within the family.
On consideration, I believe she is right, even though it does not show either myself or your grandfather in a good light. I deeply regret the part I played in what happened and only hope you will not think too badly of your father.
But of course, while I deeply regret the means I used to persuade your mother to marry me, which led to my making the enclosed deposition, I cannot entirely regret my past actions, for you, my beloved Ceri, would not otherwise exist! You are a constant delight to myself and to Rose, who loves you as she would her own son.
As to your mother, do not judge her too harshly. I have come to see that her father did not really care for her and I fell in love with her beauty and the sweetness of disposition I imagined went with it.
As you are already aware, she was killed in a train accident in the South of France, but what you do not know is that she had eloped with her lover. I would have offered her her freedom, so they could marry, had I known of it beforehand – she had been staying with an old schoolfriend in London when she met this man – but, poor creature, the Fates seem to have been against her happiness. I think her more sinned against than sinning, and Rose agrees with me.
With my second marriage, I feel I have more happiness than I deserve, for with Rose I have found the true meaning of love and the perfect amity of two minds meeting as one.
You probably know the story by now of how, after the vicar, Mr Trimble’s, sudden death, he left his three daughters, Lily, Rose and Daisy, in very straitened circumstances.
Lily, already considered as one of the family by the Prynnes, went to live at Castle Newydd as companion and now beloved aunt to Mark and Lesley Prynne’s children, while her younger sisters, Rose and Daisy, moved to the lodge by the rear drive to the castle.
