“Is there a problem?” she quipped, turning innocently to face him in the shadow of a boxwood hedge.
“I suspect there will be.”
“I’ve been told I’m a resourceful sort of girl,” she said sweetly. “I can probably find out on my own.”
He cursed and ran a hand over his jaw. The doors beside them suddenly pushed open, letting the warm yellow light and a gorgeous clarinet solo loose into the night. A man in uniform, whom Olive didn’t recognise, emerged, tugging the hand of Eileen Heatherton, a particularly nosy switchboard operator. Grinning, the pair hurried around the corner, trailing laughter in the dark. The doors fell closed behind them, but in the shrinking shaft of light, Aldridge was watching her, his blue-grey eyes seemingly glowing in the meagre light. No doubt he was wondering if he’d made a grave error in hitching his wagon to her star.
“If you’re going to cause trouble, perhaps we’d be better off finding another fancier.”
“Trust me, Jamie,” she said, smiling through gritted teeth, “you won’t find a better pigeoneer.”
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “The CO is Major Boom. He’s responsible for most of the explosions, so watch yourself and behave,” he said lightly, moving closer. “Now, are you ready to go in?”
Feeling as if he was deliberately thwarting her, she countered irritably, “Are you, Jamie?” before taking a deep, steadying breath. And another. Damn if he didn’t smell deliciously of aniseed.
“If you’re coming down with a cold, make sure not to get too close,” he said abruptly, peering at her as if he might catch the offending germs in the act of jumping ship, so to speak. Olive glared and resolved not to take another whiff.
Without a word, he pulled the door open with one hand and laid the other against the small of her back. Turning to get a look at him in the full light, she couldn’t help the tiny frisson that skittered over her skin. His shoulders were distractingly broad in his khaki dress uniform, but his jaw, as ever, was tight, and his eyes were cautious and remote. He looked as if a date with her wouldn’t necessarily be preferable to a firing squad. She grabbed his hand and tugged him onto the dance floor, determined to have a little chat. If they were going to perpetrate a deception, then they could jolly well make a good job of it.
A Victor Silvester record was slipped onto the player, and she shifted closer, one hand in his, the other gripping his shoulder, and began to move. He gazed down at her, a hint of a smile cracking his grim façade, and she tried to pretend the feel of his hand skimming warm against her waist wasn’t the least bit distracting.
“Shall I lead, or will you?” he asked dryly.
“Your choice,” she said. “But if it’s going to be you, you might at least pretend you like having me in your arms. I can’t be the only one upholding this charade.”
Mischief darkened his eyes, and a rather devastating smile curved his lips as his hand pressed her closer. Feeling beaten at her own game, she beamed up at him.
“Now,” she said primly, “we need to circle the room, making certain everyone gets a good look at you. I figure we’ll tell them you work at Brickendonbury—very hush-hush, of course—and that you found me trespassing with a basket of pigeons.” The corner of her mouth hitched. “I charmed my way out of trouble, and here we are.”
“Entirely believable,” he murmured near her ear. It was impossible to tell if he was serious.
She slid her gaze to look at him, relieved to see that some of the grim tension had leeched out of him. Her eye caught on his scar, and without thinking, she raised a finger to touch it where it curved over the hard line of his jaw. He flinched imperceptibly, and she tucked her fingers into a fist and laid it against his shoulder. “How did you get it?” She shouldn’t have asked, but she was desperate for some sort of connection. An opportunity to recast him in a role other than that of disapproving stranger so as to make this tremendous undertaking a bit less nerve racking.
“It’s not something I talk about.”
“Why not?” she pressed, not willing to give up so easily.
“You’re rather contrary, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am rather,” she agreed unrepentantly.
He rolled his eyes even as his hand tightened at her waist. He was back to being irritated.
“I did warn you, you might not like working with me,” she said, looking away from him to rake her gaze over the couples crowding the dance floor. “I don’t see Mr Tierney and his date.”
“He doesn’t have a date,” Aldridge said shortly, and she felt oddly as if she’d failed her first test.
As Olive tamped down her frustration at having to work with someone so bloody disagreeable, she kept her head on a swivel, alternating between beaming beatifically at the man beside her and catching the eye of every gossip-prone woman in the room. Mr Battlesby, wearing a Home Guard armband over the sleeve of his suit jacket, was eyeing her knowingly, as if he was onto her deception. With a weak smile, she spun Aldridge into a turn, only to be rewarded with a muttered curse.
The hall looked lovely, hung with lanterns and the familiar patriotic bunting, the happy faces of daffodils smiling from every table while dashing men in uniform from a nearby training base swayed alongside local girls doing their level best to keep up morale with lipstick and drawn-on stocking seams. Olive took a moment to sigh with appreciation. She hadn’t got around to dragging Liam to a village dance, but here she was with Aldridge. Sneaking a peek at him from beneath her lashes, she conceded that as long as he wasn’t talking or glaring, being caught up in his arms, whirling around the room, was tolerable—pleasant even.
When the song had swept to its conclusion and the scattered couples had shifted apart, clapping in appreciation, Olive navigated the pair of them off the dance floor to the corner where Harriet was holding court, her eyes snapping with curiosity. Sitting beside her, Jonathon was tearing through a serving of pudding that smelled warmly of cinnamon.
“Delighted to meet you, Mr Aldridge. I’m Harriet Bright, Olive’s stepmother.”
“It’s actually Captain Aldridge,” Olive corrected. “But he won’t mind if you call him Jamie.” She tugged gently on his arm, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Why don’t you sit down and have a little chat, and I’ll get us some punch. This is your chance to rest a bit before I drag you back to the dance floor.” Without waiting for a reply, she dodged away, having no compunction about leaving him to fend for himself in what would surely be a merciless interrogation.
Olive took her time, skirting the dance floor, scanning the crowd, and offering distracted smiles wherever they seemed to be expected. When she spotted Margaret, tucked away at a table on the other side of the room, she doubled back and came up behind her, the words ready on her tongue.
“If you want to break a date with me, you should have the guts to do it yourself,” she teased.
Margaret was one of those fortunate girls whose crying jags finished with her eyes wide and dewy and her cheeks delicately flushed, and it seemed Olive had caught her on the tail end. Despite her friend’s distress, Olive couldn’t help but admire her cinema-star good looks, complete with clear grey eyes, patrician nose, high cheekbones, and perfectly coiffed honey-gold curls, all of it made more alluring by firecracker-red lips. Her dress was also red, patterned in a blue-and-white flower print, with a neat line of buttons up the front.
“Who’s made you cry, Mags?” Olive asked quietly, pulling out the chair beside her and laying her hand on her friend’s arm.
Margaret sniffed and reached for her clutch, then unsnapped it to fish out her compact. Peering at herself in its little mirror, she pressed the powder puff to the skin beneath each eye, plumped up her lips, and tucked away a few stray hairs before folding the compact away and turning her attention to Olive.
“The shop is murder on Fridays,” she complained. She worked at Pratten’s Grocery and regularly complained that her time off barely balanced the exhaustion of dealing with people on a daily basis. “You wouldn’t
believe how many people accused me of hoarding onions. Onions! Utterly ridiculous. If I’m going to hoard something, it’ll be lipstick and cigarettes.”
“Sensible,” Olive said, not for a moment believing the excuse. “And yesterday?”
Margaret’s jaw tightened, and she snapped her clutch closed with a violent motion. “I didn’t come to the hall, because I didn’t trust myself not to throttle that woman.” Her voice had turned steely, and her nostrils flared in fury.
“Miss Husselbee, do you mean?” Olive said, playing coy.
“Well, naturally,” she said lightly, her voice cracking with strain. “Wretched woman.” She propped her elbow on the table and pressed her fingers to her temple, as if she could rub out a headache with a little focused effort.
“You’ve managed to abstain until now,” Olive pointed out. “From the throttling, I mean. What’s changed?” Clearly, something had, but she wasn’t ready to admit she already knew the half of it.
Margaret’s eyes glossed over with tears as she pressed her fingers against her breastbone. It was a moment before she spoke, her closed lips quivering, as if holding back words better left unsaid. “She’s seen one of the adverts from the years I was working in London.” She dashed away a tear that had started to fall, her lips curving self-deprecatingly. “She said some nasty things, that’s all.” Her eyes flicked to Olive’s and away again as she swallowed down emotion.
“But you know quite well that Leo’s already told you it doesn’t matter in the slightest.” She squeezed Margaret’s arm.
“I know, I know. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps I was foolishly naïve to hope that no one would find out, but can you imagine the tittering if they all find out the vicar’s wife has posed in her knickers? I can’t let that happen.” She shook her head vehemently. “I can’t.”
The vicious words of warning that had slipped so easily from her friend’s lips echoed in Olive’s mind, seeming entirely too dramatic now that she knew what had provoked them. Then again, Margaret wasn’t the first person to overreact to Miss Husselbee’s self-righteous pronouncements. The older woman had a knack for setting people’s hackles up.
“I’m sure Leo knows the precise line of scripture to put her squarely in her place,” Olive said with a glance back across the hall. Leo Truscott was dancing with Mrs Battlesby, whose eyes were closed, her face wreathed in contentment.
A sob tore through Margaret, bringing Olive’s gaze whipping back around. “There must be something else,” she insisted, covering her friend’s hand with her own.
“It’s Leo.”
“Don’t say he’s been brainwashed by the Sergeant Major,” Olive said in disbelief.
“He’s thinking of joining up.” She swiped her cheeks with her handkerchief and gazed beseechingly at Olive. “And while I admire his sense of duty and his determination—you know I do—I can’t bear the thought of him going.” Leaning closer, she spoke into Olive’s ear. “I’m trying to discourage him, but it’s not working, and I’ve been having rather . . .” She paused, steeled herself, and went on. “Wicked thoughts.”
Olive smirked. “Well, that’s certainly nothing new.”
Margaret huffed in exasperation. “I don’t mean that sort.” She glanced quickly around before clarifying in a whisper, “Treasonous thoughts.” Her eyes were huge and pleading, heavy with guilt and uncertainty.
“Tell me,” Olive insisted urgently.
“I daydream about kidnapping him—actually tying him up—because he’d never go along with it otherwise,” her friend said defiantly, her chin tipped stoutly up. She sniffed prettily. “I know it’s cowardly, but I can’t help it. I can’t lose anyone else.”
With a sigh of relief, Olive said carefully, “Miss Husselbee doesn’t know about this particular wickedness, does she?”
“Of course not! I haven’t even talked to Leo about it. But what am I going to do?”
“Let me think on it—but don’t do anything rash in the meantime,” she said quellingly. She really couldn’t expend any effort worrying about this peculiar development right now. Next, Margaret would be asking if she could stash her fiancé in the dovecote for the duration.
Olive turned, in search of Aldridge. He was precisely where she’d left him, smiling politely as Harriet chatted gaily away, seeming to offer an occasional shy word in response. He quite looked the part of a striking young captain interested in keeping company with her stepdaughter. Olive’s lip curled at the irony. She wondered if Harriet was fooled. When she turned back to Margaret, her friend’s lovely countenance had been transformed by a mask of furious hatred, which appeared to be directed at Miss Husselbee, who was currently poking Dr Ware in the chest. Pretending not to notice, Olive stood and stepped in front of her friend.
“I promised someone a glass of punch. Shall I bring you one, as well?” She focused on smoothing her skirts, more certain than ever that she’d caught her friend in a lie. “There’s no alcohol in it, but you could pretend,” she teased, forcing a smile.
“No, I couldn’t,” Margaret said emphatically, the mask gone. “I’ll be fine. A regular pillar of British womanhood.”
Seeing the lines of strain at the corners of her mouth and the smudgy shadows under her eyes, Olive would have lingered, but Leo would be back soon, and she couldn’t very well leave Aldridge alone for the entire evening. If she didn’t pretend a bit of infatuation, they’d be washed up before they’d even started. She’d already lectured him on that very topic.
So, she said only, “That’s the spirit, Mags,” and turned to move away, vowing to broach the mysterious subject with Miss Husselbee instead. Lord, help her.
“Olive,” Margaret called, her voice turned lilting and suggestive, once again familiar, “I’m going to want to know all about that dishy officer of yours.” The apples of her cheeks rounded prettily. “Bring him into the store. If I like him, I’ll find him an onion,” she said, winking.
Olive smiled mysteriously and slipped away, having no intention of doing any such thing.
As she approached the refreshment table, positioned against the windows at the end of the hall near the kitchen, Olive stared at the array of cakes and sandwiches without truly seeing them. Her thoughts were still distracted with Margaret and Leo. After a moment, she glanced up to see Miss Husselbee standing a few feet away. Dressed in a tweed skirt suit and a green felt hat with a duck feather tucked into its band, she was carving a sliver from a fluted honey-coloured cake, her mouth frozen in an angry grimace. Recognizing the distinctive blue of Miss Danes’s stoneware beneath the cake, Olive frowned. If she didn’t have a secret of her own to keep under wraps, she would make an effort to quell the inevitable accusations, but she did have a secret, and she couldn’t afford to risk Miss Husselbee’s beady-eyed attention. Although the thought of the Sergeant Major facing down Jameson Aldridge was certainly tempting.
She turned deliberately away, happy to direct her focus toward the other cakes. All the usual suspects, it seemed, except one. It stood out, distinctive in its appeal, topped with a lustrous layer of pale white icing. Someone must have saved a month’s worth of sugar rations. Olive felt a flutter of excitement to be the first to cut into it, and after selecting a plate, she bent to the task.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” a sultry voice drawled over the din of music and conversation.
Olive glanced up, the serving knife poised just above the smooth sweep of butter and sugar, to see a woman propped on the windowsill behind the punchbowl, the folds of blackout cloth making it appear as if she was sitting for a portrait. She looked utterly out of place and was very clearly not enjoying herself—she couldn’t even be bothered to raise her eyelids past half-mast—but she looked rather magnificent. Olive couldn’t imagine how she’d not noticed her before.
She wore a silk pantsuit the colour of forget-me-nots, the loose drape of the bodice gathered into a yoked waist above roomy trousers. Several gold chains encircled her neck, each of them hung with a single pendant. On
e was a filigreed timepiece; another, some sort of hieroglyph; the third, an opal medallion. A stack of bracelets clinked at her wrist as she raised a cigarette to dark red lips.
Here was the prodigal Darling. She was no Rose, but there were definite similarities of feature—the straight, narrow nose and wide-set blue eyes, the pale skin and subtly pointed chin. Yet it was as if Violet had got first pick of the lot, and Rose had been left to cobble herself together from what remained. Then again, perhaps the difference was that Violet clearly took significant pains to set hers to best advantage.
“Why not?” Olive asked, tearing her eyes away to scrutinise the cake.
The woman slipped a hand into her pocket and retrieved a folded tent of pale cardboard, which she carefully placed beside the cake. It read SPAM CAKE, WHIPPED POTATO ICING.
Olive recoiled, her eyes flicking up accusingly. “Why would you hide that important information?” she demanded.
Miss Violet shrugged her elegant shoulders. “I decided to have a little fun. It’s dreadfully dull in here, isn’t it?” she said, glancing around. “But I told you, didn’t I? Before you could make the ultimate sacrifice. At least as far as cake is concerned.” She spared a contemptuous look for the deceitful creation. “Who knows what might be mixed up in there? Beets? Turnips? If canned meat isn’t strictly off-limits, then clearly the standards have been breeched.” She dropped back down onto the sill.
Olive cringed at the possibilities. “Who made it?”
“Clearly a heathen. Or someone with a childish sense of humour. Beyond that, I’ve no idea.”
Pale thumbprint biscuits, their centres glinting glossily with jam, sat clustered on an adjacent plate. “I assume these are safe?” Olive said with mock seriousness as she reached for one.
With a sharp shake of her head and a shiver that nearly had Olive snatching her hand back, Miss Violet said, “I abhor raspberries,” and drew twitchily on her cigarette.
Olive shrugged, selected one, and took a bite, relishing the summery flavour of the berries. “Where’s Miss Rose?” She turned and scanned the crowd as she popped the rest of the biscuit in her mouth.
Olive Bright, Pigeoneer Page 11