Guilt in the Cotswolds Read Online Free

fallen into place. Dilemmas and complications had resolved themselves almost effortlessly. ‘We’ll live in the Cotswolds,’ Thea had said. ‘I’ll sell my Witney house, and you can put Maggs in charge of Peaceful Repose. I’ll work for you full time and we’ll do good business.’
    ‘But Maggs is having a baby,’ he’d demurred.
    ‘So we wait until she’s ready to work again. It’ll take a year or so, anyway, to get everything organised.’
    Since then, some of the earlier difficulties had re-emerged; not least the appalled reaction from Maggs herself. Pregnancy had done nothing for her temper, which had always been short. Her association with Drew went back to a time just after Stephanie was born and the natural burial ground established. He freely acknowledged that he could not have done it without her. He owed her an impossible debt of gratitude for the support she had given him on every level, and she was not afraid to remind him of it regularly. Thea had stepped into the middle of a relationship thatsometimes seemed more intimate than a marriage.
    Maggs’s reaction to Thea was itself an ongoing rollercoaster. At first ferociously protective, Maggs then opted to accept that Drew was at no risk after all. But she had come to see some of Thea’s shortcomings in recent months, with the reappearance of earlier misgivings. ‘You have to be gentle with him,’ she said at one point, with a worried look. ‘And instead you just expect him to be gentle with you .’
    ‘Can’t we be gentle with each other?’
    ‘I don’t know. Can you?’
    Thea had gone away with a churning sensation in her stomach. When had she ever been gentle? she asked herself. She was so often impatient, intrusive, rude, reckless. Did she have to change her entire nature in order to be worthy of Drew Slocombe?
    Drew himself didn’t appear to think so, which was obviously the main thing. He showed every sign of finding her funny, independent, capable and trustworthy. It was all in the eye of the beholder, anyway, she assured herself. The Drew that Maggs knew and loved was a subtly different person from the one Thea was intending to marry. He knew what he was doing, she supposed. Everything would be fine.
    As had become her habit, she phoned him at eight-thirty, after the children were in bed. She shared her observations of Richard Wilshire, the house and the shadowy glimpses she’d so far managed of Chedworth. ‘First impressions?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know. There’s something elusive about it. I know I’ve said the same about other places, but this one really does have some strange levels. I mean – there are no levels. Everything pitches at an angle. And there are two Chedworths, which doesn’t help. It took ages to find the house.’
    ‘Which one’s got the Roman villa?’
    ‘Neither. That’s off to the north, the other side of some woods.’
    ‘I make that three, then,’ he laughed.
    ‘So it is. I have a feeling there’s loads of good history attached to the place, but I won’t have time to look any of it up. Tomorrow’s going to be full on, sorting all the stuff that’s here. I can’t decide whether to start at the top and work down, or the other way round. Basically, I just have to open it all up and list what’s here. But that’ll mean moving lots of boxes and making heaps everywhere. Then I’ll have to pack it all up again, with descriptions of the contents on the top of each box or whatever.’ As she spoke, she felt a glow of anticipation at a task that would be full of interest. Who knew what she might find?
    ‘I think you’ll have to start in the attic, won’t you? I can’t see it working otherwise.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Well, if you have to put similar things together, you’ll need to bring stuff down. Or have I got that wrong?’
    ‘I wasn’t planning to rearrange it. Just open everything up and see what’s what. What’s in the atticcan stay in the attic. I was thinking I’d leave that for