Stars Through the Mist. Бетти Нилс

large?’

      ‘Large?’ he considered her question. ‘No—but it is old and full of passages and small staircases; delightful to live in but the very devil to keep clean.’ He gave her a quick, sidelong glance. ‘Marijke and Mevrouw Smit see to that, of course. You will be busy enough in other ways.’

      ‘What other ways?’ asked Deborah with vague suspicion.

      ‘I told you, did I not, that I need to entertain quite a lot—oh, not riotous parties night after night, but various colleagues who come to the hospital for one reason or the other—sometimes they bring their wives, sometimes they come on their own. And there is the occasional dinner party, and we shall be asked out ourselves.’

      ‘Oh. How did you manage before?’

      He shrugged. ‘Marijke coped with the odd visitor well enough, my mother acted as hostess from time to time. Remember I have been away for two years; I spent only a short time in Amsterdam each month or so, but now I am going back to live I shall be expected to do my share of entertaining. You will be of the greatest help to me if you will deal with that side of our life.’

      ‘I’ll do my best, though it’s rather different from handing instruments…’

      He laughed. ‘Very. But if you do it half as well you will be a great success and earn my undying gratitude.’

      She didn’t want his gratitude; she wanted his love, but nothing seemed further from his thoughts. Dinner parties, though, would give her the opportunity to wear pretty clothes and make the most of herself—he might at least notice her as a person. She began to plan a suitable wardrobe…

      The road was surprisingly empty after they had left Salisbury behind. At Warminster they turned off on to the Frome road and then, at Deborah’s direction, turned off again into the byroads, through the small village of Nunney and then the still smaller one of Chantry. Her home lay a mile beyond, a Somerset farmhouse, with its back tucked cosily into the hills behind it, and beautifully restored and tended by Mr Culpeper and his wife. It looked delightful now in the afternoon sun, its windows open as was its front door, its garden a mass of colour and nothing but the open country around it. Deborah gave a small sigh of pleasure as she saw it. ‘That’s it,’ she told Gerard.

      ‘Charming,’ he commented. ‘I hope your parents will ask us back for a visit. I can see that it is a most interesting house—those windows…’ he nodded towards the side of the house, ‘their pediments appear most interesting.’

      He brought the car to a halt before the door and as he helped her out she said with something like relief: ‘Father will be delighted that you noticed them, they’re very unusual. Probably he’ll talk of nothing else and quite forget that we’re married.’ They were walking to the door. ‘Do you really know something of sixteenth-century building?’