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By the time she had sorted them out, it had started to rain quite heavily, and Marcus was frowning slightly as he concentrated on his driving.
The journey was taking them rather longer than the agent had indicated, Eleanor acknowledged as she glanced at the dashboard clock.
They had, the agents had told her, had several interested prospective purchasers who wanted to view Broughton House. It was after all very reasonably priced, and in a particularly attractive part of the country. Eleanor hoped that they were not going to be late for their appointment. She wanted to savour their tour of the house and its grounds and not have to rush it.
‘We’ve got to be there for one,’ she reminded Marcus as she tried to calculate how much further they had to travel.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he told her, ‘but it all depends on the traffic.’
‘It won’t take as long as this by train,’ Eleanor assured him.
And of course Marcus wouldn’t necessarily have to travel to London every day. Like her, he could work from the house as he already did sometimes from Chelsea. She closed her eyes, mentally picturing the future: a warm sunny afternoon, Marcus working in his study, its windows open to the garden while she took advantage of a break from her own work to join him. There was just time for the two of them to enjoy a short but leisurely stroll through the grounds before she set off to collect the boys from their local school, a duty she shared with a group of other mothers.
In the house, the downstairs rooms were filled with the scent of freshly cut garden roses and the lavender which was drying in bunches in the old-fashioned sunlit porch area at the rear.
In the kitchen you could still smell the cakes she had baked that morning and in the kitchen garden a long line of immaculate white washing flapped lazily in the soft breeze.
After supper she would iron it, breathing in its fresh, clean country smell, and then later, when it was on their bed, its scent would cling to Marcus’s skin, mingling with his musky erotic maleness as they made love.
Reluctantly she opened her eyes, grimacing at the steady downpour soaking everywhere.
‘How much further?’ Tom demanded from the back seat.
‘We’ll be there soon now,’ Eleanor promised him, her spirits lifting as she saw a signpost for Avondale.
She had read up on the town and was looking forward to exploring it. Enthusiastically she started to tell Marcus about its history.
‘Mmm… Well, I doubt that we’ll be seeing it today,’ Marcus interrupted her. ‘There’s a diversion up ahead.’
It was just after a quarter past one when they finally turned into the drive of Broughton House.
The weed-infested gravel, the overgrown rhododendrons which had become too tall and leggy, and the heavy rain which was now falling, did not quite fit in with the picture she had drawn in her imagination, Eleanor admitted, and the house itself, without the sun on it, and perhaps viewed from a slightly different angle than that from which the photograph had been taken, was not quite as she had visualised it either.
As Marcus stopped the car, Tom stared out of his window and exclaimed in disgust, ‘It’s just a house.’
Another car was already parked in front of the house and as Eleanor chivvied her sons into their jackets and out of the car she glanced towards Marcus.
He was frowning slightly as he studied the building in front of him, but when he realised she was watching him he turned towards her, his face relaxing.
‘How much land did you say it had?’ he asked her as they got out of the car.
‘Around four and a half acres,’ Eleanor told him happily. ‘There’s a walled kitchen garden. We’ll be able to grow our own vegetables; and then there’s the formal gardens, plus a small copse…’
‘Mmm… sounds expensive,’ Marcus commented, adding wryly as they walked towards the house, ‘Looks as if the last owner thought so as well, to judge from the way it’s been neglected.’
‘Mrs Broughton was very old, and the house has been empty for over six months,’ Eleanor pointed out, adding eagerly, ‘It will all look different in the summer. Gardens never look their best at this time of the year.’
‘Hmm. I suspect that this one is going to need rather more than a change of season,’ Marcus pointed out.
Eleanor frowned. Marcus was sounding rather tense and on edge, a note of terse irritation creeping into his voice, but then the drive down here hadn’t been particularly pleasant, she reminded herself.
‘It does all look a bit wild and forlorn,’ she agreed, slipping her arm through his. ‘And this rain doesn’t help. I hope it stops long enough for us to have a good look round the grounds.’
‘I doubt there’ll be time for that,’ Marcus told her as the front door of the house opened and the agent came towards them.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Eleanor apologised as he introduced himself.
‘That’s all right,’ he assured them. ‘My next viewing isn’t until half-past two.’
