Read The Sweet Caress for Free Online

we’ve brought you some things just to settle you in with. Just fancy, you living in Rose Cottage. Frankly, I’m agog,’ said Cissie who was obviously thrilled at the idea.
    Ben Wheeler looked more dazed than surprised when he told her, ‘I and my firm have been looking after Rose Cottage for years and years, we take pride in it. The same cleaner has been coming here once a week, and so has the gardener. The rose garden has won prizes, you know, and is considered one of the finest, possible
the
finest rose garden in New England. Oh, I’m rambling on. What I mean to say is welcome to Rose Cottage and Tess, that’s the cleaner, will be along with her daughter Shirley later this afternoon to settle you in and show you how everything works. And do some dusting, I suppose; she would hate to be caught out with someone claiming the house and it needing a dusting. Well, I guess Rose Cottage must be as much of a surprise to you as you are to us since you have no memory of who you are.’
    ‘Jesus, Ben, you’re as subtle as an elephant!’ said Cissie.
    Jessica smiled and said graciously, ‘How do you do, MrWheeler.’ She put out her hand and there was much shifting of carrier bags and some nervous laughter as they shook hands. ‘Come in off the doorstep, all of you.’
    Cissie’s eyes were wide as she walked round the hall and took in the quality of the furniture and carpeting. Jim Raburn just stood and gaped.
    ‘Cisse,’ said Jessica, ‘all this shopping, how kind of you, you shouldn’t have bothered.’
    ‘She didn’t,’ said Jim. ‘The sheriff had me go to the supermarket, it’s just outside town. She said stock up Miss Johnson’s kitchen at Rose Cottage, and she said to tell you she’ll pick you up after your lunch with Cissie. Where’s that going to be and what time do you think the sheriff should be there, Cissie?’
    Cissie’s car was a white Oldsmobile convertible and the top was down, the heater going full blast to keep them warm. As they drove to lunch she chattered on, giving a short history of Newbampton and potted biographies of the townspeople they saw and those Cissie thought might be useful for Jessica to know. Jessica found the atmosphere of the town endearing, wholesome. The scent of autumn was in the air, youth and hope emanated from the students riding through the streets on their bicycles, wearing backpacks filled with books. Modern America hadn’t withered the town’s heritage, only enhanced it. The college’s powerful presence as a place of learning had somehow protected it from the bad and the ugly, in the same way that Oxford, her own university town, had been protected. She had indeed come home.
    The two women had a delicious lunch of New England fare: creamy fish chowder with hot corn bread and lashings of butter, chicken pot pie with green peas and candied sweet potatoes, apple pie and homemade ice cream. Wiggin’s Tavern was a rambling building that boasted a long history – its first guests had slept there in 1680 – and it containedone of the finest collections of Early American art and artefacts. It was still an inn of four-poster, canopied beds in rooms whose wallpapered walls were hung with Currier and Ives prints.
    Cissie rambled on giving a history of the famous men and women who through the ages had taken rooms there. It smelled of beeswax polish and cedar, cinnamon and cooking apples, and wood smoke from open fires that crackled hospitably. Jessica had never met anyone remotely like Cissie. Both Jessica’s parents had been American but since the age of five she had lived all over the world and had never encountered the charming, small-town American custom whereby you are told everyone’s life story as soon as you say hello. To be open and direct was the American way, but American-born or not, her way, like her mother’s, had been reserved and most assuredly private.
    Jessica was constantly stunned by the generosity of this young girl. Especially so when Cissie told