Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(86)

As she left the stage to warm applause, her navy hood in place, like all the students before her, she hurled her mortar board joyfully into the air, the sign that her undergraduate days were behind her. She could only wonder what her dear mother would have made of such behaviour from a 36-year-old English lady, and in public.

Harry’s gaze moved from his wife to the distinguished professor of business studies, who was seated on the stage only a couple of places away from the university president. Cyrus Feldman made no attempt to hide his feelings when it came to his star pupil. He was the first on his feet to applaud Emma, and the last to sit down. Harry often marvelled at how his wife could subtly make powerful men, from Pulitzer Prize-winners to company chairmen, bend to her will, just as her mother had done before her.

How proud Elizabeth would have been of her daughter today, but no prouder than his own mother, because Maisie had experienced every bit as painful a journey before she could place the letters BA after her name.

Harry and Emma had dined with Professor Feldman and his long-suffering wife Ellen the previous evening. Feldman hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Emma, and had even suggested that she should return to Stanford and, under his personal supervision, complete a thesis for a PhD.

‘What about my poor husband?’ Emma had said, linking her arm through Harry’s.

‘He’ll just have to learn to live without you for a couple of years,’ said Feldman, making no attempt to disguise what he had in mind. Many a red-blooded Englishman hearing such a proposition made to his wife might have punched Feldman on the nose, and a less tolerant wife than Mrs Feldman might well have been forgiven for initiating divorce proceedings as her three predecessors had done. Harry just smiled, while Mrs Feldman pretended not to notice.

Harry had agreed with Emma’s suggestion that they should fly to England straight after the ceremony, as she wanted to be back at the Manor House before Sebastian returned from Beechcroft. Their son was no longer a schoolboy, she mused, and only three months away from being an undergraduate.

Once the degree ceremony was over, Emma strolled around the lawn, enjoying the celebratory atmosphere and making the acquaintance of her fellow graduates, who, like her, had spent countless lonely hours of study while residing on distant shores, and were now meeting for the first time. Spouses were introduced, family photographs shown off and addresses exchanged.

By six o’clock, when the waiters began to fold up the chairs, collect the drained champagne bottles and stack the last of the empty plates, Harry suggested that perhaps they should make their way back to their hotel.

Emma didn’t stop chatting all the way back to the Fairmont, while she was packing, during the taxi ride to the airport, and as they waited for their flight in the first-class lounge. No sooner had she climbed aboard the aircraft, found her place and fastened her seat belt, than she closed her eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep.



‘You’re sounding positively middle-aged,’ said Emma as they started out on the long drive back from London Airport to the Manor House.

‘I am middle-aged,’ said Harry. ‘I’m thirty-seven, and what’s worse, young women have started calling me sir.’

‘Well, I don’t feel middle-aged,’ said Emma, looking down at the map. ‘Take a right at the traffic lights and you’ll be on the Great Bath Road.’

‘That’s because life has just begun for you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly that. You’ve just been awarded your degree, and appointed to the board of Barrington’s, both of which have opened up a whole new life for you. Let’s face it, twenty years ago neither opportunity would have been possible.’

‘They’ve only been possible in my case because Cyrus Feldman and Ross Buchanan are enlightened men when it comes to treating women as equals. And don’t forget that Giles and I own twenty-two per cent of the company between us, and Giles has never shown the slightest interest in sitting on the board.’

‘That may well be the case, but if you’re seen to do the job well, it might help convince other chairmen to follow Ross’s example.’

‘Don’t kid yourself. It will still be decades before competent women are given the chance to replace incompetent men.’

‘Well, let’s at least pray it will be different for Jessica. I’m hoping that by the time she leaves school, her sole purpose in life won’t be to learn how to cook and to find someone suitable to marry.’

‘Do you think those were my sole purpose in life?’

‘If they were, you failed on both counts,’ said Harry. ‘And don’t forget you chose me when you were eleven.’

‘Ten,’ said Emma. ‘But it still took you another seven years to work it out.’

‘Anyway,’ said Harry, ‘we shouldn’t assume that just because we both won places at Oxford, and Grace is a don at Cambridge, that’s a path Jessica will want to tread.’

‘And why should she, when she’s so gifted? I know she admires what Seb has achieved, but her role models are Barbara Hepworth and someone called Mary Cassatt, which is why I’ve been considering what alternatives are open to her.’ Emma looked back down at the map. ‘Turn right in about half a mile. It should be signposted Reading.’

‘What have you two been plotting behind my back?’ asked Harry.