Read Online Summer at Mount Hope by Rosalie Ham - Free Book Online Page A

would only go well for everyone if Lilith was happy – she pulled once more.
    By eleven she had a roast cooling in the meat safe and the smell of her hot damper was taunting the itinerants all the way up on the outcrop. She took creamy goat’s cheese and a jar of blackberry jam from the cellar and went to raid the vegetable patch, where she came across Aunt Margaret propped against the mesh fence with sketchpad and pencil, studying a caterpillar on a lettuce leaf.
    â€˜Are you coming to lunch?’ asked Phoeba, noting her aunt’s grubby skirt and fingers.
    â€˜I’m progressing from landscapes,’ said Margaret. ‘I’m tackling nature.’
    â€˜Well don’t let nature tackle my lettuces. Close the gate when you leave or we’ll be eating fat fricassee rabbit with no carrots for the pot.’
    Everyone was ready for Marius Overton by noon. Hopefully, thought Phoeba unkindly, Aunt Margaret would forget.
    He rode down from the outcrop an hour later than expected on a tall gold and brown Arab. It was a majestic, lively horse with a sweet, dished face and flared nostrils. Trailing it, pulling against its lead, was the new horse; a short, ordinary hack – grey, a gelding. In the dam paddock Spot lowered his ears and walked to the far fence were he stood, dejected, with his nose against a tree trunk.
    Phoeba put the carrots onto the hottest part of the stove, tied a thin black ribbon around her trim clerical collar, removed her apron and shepherded her mother and Lilith – both resembling rainbow lorikeets – to the backyard where they gathered around the new horse. Robert patted the grey horse’s cheek: it swung its head away. He ran his hand down its shoulder to its thigh and hock, lifted a rear hoof. ‘Ah ha, something’s up.’
    The horse wrenched its hoof free. Marius lifted it and dislodged a dirt clod with his penknife.
    â€˜Hello,’ said Lilith in her sweetest voice, and swung her shoulders like a schoolgirl.
    â€˜Hello,’ he said, warmly. He was pretty, rather than handsome, Phoeba decided. His face was brown but not wind-worn; his smart white moleskins were clean, almost new, and his riding coat was black linen. He tipped his boater – a city hat – to Maude and to Phoeba. ‘Ladies.’
    Lilith just stared at him, dumbstruck. Phoeba asked what the horse’s name was.
    â€˜Centaur.’
    â€˜What does that mean?’ asked Lilith, full of wonder.
    â€˜In Greek mythology, it’s a wild creature with the head, arms and torso of a man joined to the body of a horse,’ Marius explained, his gaze lingering on Lilith.
    â€˜How clever,’ she said, and fluttered her eyelashes.
    â€˜How are your sheep this year, Mr Overton?’ asked Maude in her most interested tone.
    â€˜Call me Marius,’ he said, with another tip of his hat, ‘and my sheep are thin and in need of a haircut.’
    Maude laughed a little too forcefully and Lilith nodded sombrely. ‘That’s because it’s been dry.’
    â€˜My word it has,’ said Marius, nodding with approval of her understanding.
    â€˜Which is very good for Dad’s grapes,’ Lilith responded, seizing the opportunity to sound knowledgeable herself. ‘Dad’s got a bottle of last year’s vintage especially for you to try.’
    â€˜I have?’ Robert was confused.
    â€˜His wine is marvellous,’ said Maude, who never drank it. ‘You must stay for lunch.’ She clasped her hands, her arms framing her large, lacy bosom and glared at Robert to support the invitation.
    â€˜You can show him your vines, Dad,’ said Phoeba, helpfully.
    Marius jumped at the chance. It would be nice to look around the place again, he said, as he’d hardly been there since his father sold it to the Crupps fourteen years ago and, he confessed, he was intrigued by the grapes.
    â€˜Last year we had the dust storm, of