Or was it west?
Tom felt himself vaguely disoriented as he circled around, more quickly now. Yes, the Labyrinth was east. That was Dartmoor to the north. The transition from lush pasture and woodland to bleak tableland never seemed so abrupt as it was from this bird’s-eye view. It was as if two worlds had collided with each other, knitted only by a silver seam that was surely Eggesbrooke, one of the streams rising on the moor. Westwards he twisted. Was that a stable block? And that the kitchen garden? That large irregular shape had to be the dower house. And what was that gorgeous turquoise lozenge glittering so blindingly in the middle of the lawn? He couldn’t tell, he was corkscrewing east again, now able to make out what had to be the Gatehouse and its forecourt, and there, a little farther east down a licorice strip of road, a cluster of cottage roofs and miniature gardens, and one square Norman church tower—evidence of the tiny village of Abbotswick.
North and westwards again, he noted the irregular mosaic of parkland and gardens cede to one large lawn, on which someone—one of Lord Fairhaven’s staff presumably—had chalked a fat Greek cross, white on green. The parachutes beneath him were streaming towards it like obedient geese.
The cross was his destination, too, the place of safe landing. At one arm of the cross was an elevated wind sock, its narrow end stiffened easterly by the west wind blowing off the Atlantic. This was his beacon and guide. He must loop around, steer into the ground wind, as indicated by the sock, and prepare to glide smoothly towards the target to make a soft landing. Like stepping off a step, their instructor had said in his reassuring voice. Tom glanced at the altimeter on his left wrist as Eggescombe Hall and its outbuildings fell behind him and he swooped down towards the expanse of the western lawn, feeling the earth rise to greet him with a sudden and unexpected force. The sweet tranquility of the canopied descent had somehow confounded time’s ineluctable passage. He was two hundred feet nearer the ground than he had imagined he was. It was here, at this height, that he was to prepare to land, to “flare,” as the instructor had said, to make his final approach in such a fashion as to ensure comfort and safety. It was here, too, that his squawk box was to intrude with voice commands to ease the novice’s final descent. But where is the voice?
“Hello,” he addressed the box, concern giving over to alarm. “Hello? Jumper Number Nine here awaiting instructions … Hello?”
The thing was mute.
It was then Tom realised something was awry. Something was worryingly, troublingly not kosher.
He wasn’t being ignored. The radio was dead.
The ground loomed up faster, no pleasant pasture now. The instructor’s directives flew, half remembered, into Tom’s brain: Take toggles at shoulders, pull down to breastbone, turn your wrists to your body and push the toggles between your legs in a smooth motion. Yes, he thought with giddy relief, he would make the target, not go hurtling into a hedgerow or drop onto the gorse-covered, rock-strewn moor. Yes, he was slowing, but now he felt little gentleness in his approach. The solid unforgiving earth seemed poised to open and swallow him. From the corners of his eyes, he could see a few who had already landed, jumpsuited, stopping in the scooping of their nylon canopies, staring up at him, helpless in the face of danger.
And now, heart again surging into his throat, eyes horrified to see individuated blades bloom in the chalky grass, he quickly lifted his legs behind him in the approved manner, then as quickly extended them, set to land first on the balls of his feet, to absorb the shock. But the ground raced to meet him with astonishing fury. As his feet grazed the armour of the soil, he felt only helpless surprise at his contorting, ungovernable body. His landing turned collapse. Something buckled and twisted. He sensed injury before his brain registered it and when it did, it came as the purest, brightest burst of pain.
CHAPTER TWO
“Tom Christmas.”
In the corona of light from the tent’s open flap the face fell in shadow. But the voice—pleasant, assured, faintly nasal in that North American way—was recognisable. “Jane Allan. How very good to see you again.”
“The last time we met you had a black eye.”
“I’m not normally accident-prone, I don’t think.” Tom frowned down the length of his supine form, past the right trouser leg pushed up to his knee, towards his elevated and naked foot. His swollen ankle was encased in a cold compress. “That time”—Tom wiggled his toes absently—“I got in the way of someone’s busy elbow.” He was referring to a graveside service at Thornford months earlier that had turned into a bit of a melee. “This time—”
“I heard.” Jane let the flap fall behind her and stepped farther into the tent’s stuffy interior, brushing a few damp strands from her brow. Her features resolved into the warm, reassuring eyes, the delicate but determined jawline, and the lean little apostrophe of a nose that Tom remembered from their last meeting. “I gather your radio didn’t work.”
“Still, we did take the training and I might have descended to earth with more finesse.”
“Your first time?”
“And likely last. I doubt I shall have the opportunity again,” he hastened to add, not to appear fainthearted before fair women. He struggled to rise onto his elbows on the narrow cot. In truth he was still suffering a bit of shock. In the second before his frangible body embraced the planet’s inflexible surface, he wondered with a strange detachment which bones might crack, which ligaments might tear. But he was, as the St. John Ambulance volunteer told him, very lucky. His feet, not his posterior nor his hands, had met the chalky grass, as prescribed in the training, but his right foot had inverted sharply, taking his full weight as his body careened awkwardly and collapsed in a sideways heap. The pain had been skewering, as if an arrow had pierced him. He couldn’t help but cry out and in a thrice Miranda was at his side, tugging and pulling at the nylon that had rolled over him in soft waves. But after being rushed in a van to the St. John Ambulance tent tucked by Eggescombe Hall, he had been diagnosed with that most banal of sports injuries, a sprained ankle.
“Jamie’s suggested I take the opportunity sometime—skydiving seems to run in the family a bit.” Jane tucked her dark hair behind her ear. “But I’ve told him I’ll wait until our kids are old enough to better cope with being motherless.”
“As opposed to fatherless.”
Jane smiled. “I’ve rarely brought ours to these Leaping Lords events, for that very reason. I know the boys do good works, but I’m not sure how popular skydiving really is with wives and girlfriends and mothers.” She glanced at the third figure in the tent, an older woman who had silently and efficiently attended Tom earlier. “We camp followers don’t always follow.”
“But here you are.”
“Well, I thought I would like to come down to Devon.” She shot Tom an enigmatic glance. “Jamie had an Old Salopian event to attend at Exeter before the Leaping Lords on Saturday, and so Hector and Georgina invited us to stay over a few days. Our two are in Scotland with Jamie’s parents. By the way, I met your daughter coming out of the tent just now. She looks well. Settling in okay?”
“Yes, actually. Miranda’s quite fiercely independent.”
“So is Olivia, my daughter. They’d make a fine pair. And you’ve met Marguerite, I see.” She nodded towards the other woman, who turned and smiled in acknowledgement.
“Marguerite?” Tom glanced at the third in the tent.
“Hector’s mother.”
“I am sorry. I didn’t realise.” He had been attended to by the Dowager Countess Marguerite, Lady Fairhaven. Fuzzed with pain, he had rather wondered why the two lime-and-orange-kitted St. John folk had melted from the tent after a few words with the mufti-clad figure.
“I should have introduced myself.” Marguerite’s voice was resonant, chesty, as if fashioned by ten thousand Gauloises. She was wearing a man’s white shirt, tails knotted in front, sleeves rolled up her arms, and loose-fitting white linen trousers. But it was her peerless blue eyes undimmed by age—only the fan of
lines from each corner proclaimed the dowager countess surely in her sixties—and her wide sensuous mouth that held Tom’s attention. Here was great beauty, not diminished, but somehow refashioned by time. Tom sensed this was a woman much used to lingering glances.
“And I am trained, as is Jane here,” Marguerite continued. “If one lives in the country, as I do, the St. John course proves quite useful. Doctors aren’t always to hand.”
“Marve.” Jane turned. “This is the Reverend Tom Christmas, vicar of St. Nicholas’s in Thornford Regis.”
“Yes, I made that deduction. You wear your dog collar even beneath a jumpsuit. I believe you’re the son of Mary Carroll and Iain Christmas. Am I correct?”
Tom nodded.
“I thought so,” Marguerite said. “There’s something at my cottage I should like to show you.”
Tom looked down at his foot helplessly.
“Later, of course,” she said briskly. “When the swelling goes down a bit, we’ll put your ankle in a compression wrap. There are crutches somewhere in one of the attic rooms. You’ll find walking a bit tender. We can try getting you up later.” She frowned in thought. “A cast boot, perhaps, though your sprain isn’t severe.”
Tom made a noise somewhere between a groan and grunt.
“Pain returning?”
“No, it’s quite numb now. I was thinking how inconvenient this all is. I’ve plans to drive with my daughter to Exeter this evening to visit my sister-in-law and then go on to London in the morning.” For my birthday celebrations, he didn’t add. “I expect I won’t be able to drive the car.”
Marguerite tapped his compress with a slim finger. “I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t you convalesce here at Eggescombe for a day or two?”
“Lady Fairhaven, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Nonsense.”
Tom flicked a glance at Jane, who was regarding the older woman with an interest bordering on curiosity.
“I should point out I have my daughter with me—”
“Splendid! She’ll be good company for Max, my grandson … and I believe your housekeeper is visiting with Hector and Georgie’s housekeeper this weekend.”
“Well … yes, she is,” Tom responded, thinking how remarkably informed the dowager countess was. He glanced again at Jane for some kind of adjudicating signal. Jane and her husband, Jamie—Viscount and Viscountess Kirkbride—he had met once, under somewhat fraught circumstances, but they had proved easy and delightful company, and, unprompted, of great service: It had been Jamie who had offered and organised the talents of the Leaping Lords to raise funds for St. Nicholas. The others at any Eggescombe weekend house party, however, would be unknown to him.
Jane flashed Tom a reassuring smile. “Yes, stay over, Tom. It would be good to have your company.”
“We’re only a few family this weekend,” Marguerite continued, “Hector and Georgina and the adorable Max, of course. Georgina’s brother will likely leave tomorrow or Monday.”
“Oliver.” Jane supplied the name.
“And Jane and Jamie. Quite a small party. You won’t be overwhelmed.”
“But …” Tom groped for a kind excuse. He felt very much the interloper. “Clothes!”
“Ah, yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” Marguerite’s doubt lasted only a beat. “But weren’t you on your way to London? What were you planning to wear when you got there?”
“Of course! Our luggage is in the boot.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll have Gaunt fetch your things from your car.” Marguerite frowned. “You haven’t a service tomorrow?”
“I’m on a fortnight’s holiday.”
“Good. Now I’ll change the ice along your ankle and we’ll wheel you out of here. You must keep your feet elevated for a while longer. I asked them to keep you on the trolley, so you could be pushed out onto the lawn. You don’t want to miss the show, do you? Jane, pull the tent flap back.”
Moments later, Tom emerged semi-upright like a pasha amid a pile of propped-up hospital pillows onto Eggescombe’s sleek and sunlit south lawn. A few heads turned, all recognisable. Half of Thornford, it seemed, had motored to Eggescombe Park for the fund-raiser, and a smattering of clapping and cheering—half in good-natured mockery—followed. Faintly mortified, glad Miranda wasn’t witness (he couldn’t see her), Tom bobbed his head and waved in imitation of a world-weary monarch. He got a laugh.
Eggescombe’s grounds were festooned as if for a summer fête. As he was trundled down the gently sloping grounds, the countess and viscountess straining a bit so he wouldn’t slip off the trolley and fly over the ha-ha, he noted a few of the traditional amusements for children, the bouncy castle and face-painting stall, among the usual homely carnival distractions. Hector and Georgina, Earl and Countess of Fairhaven, had given over their house and grounds for the day for this charitable event, for which Tom was most grateful. Cream teas amid the rich foliage of summer with, as backdrop, a rose-pink palace of gables and chimneys twisted into shapes a confectioner would envy was a great enticement to the villagers, especially as the Hall itself, usually closed the first two weeks in August when the family was installed, was open-to-view for the day. Electric carts took people between the Hall and the landing field, so visitors could admire those with the gumption to jump from an airplane, but the pièce de résistance was the Leaping Lords, a pool of peers of the realm who lent their time and talents a few times in the year to worthy causes. Ten lords were on tap this season and they would soon leap into the blue, not from the mingy few thousand feet that Tom and the novices had, but from a gasp-making twenty thousand—Tom shuddered anew thinking about it—free-falling through the air not only with the greatest of ease but for a heart-stoppingly long time, too, before gravity’s inexorable pull obliged them to open their chutes. Formation skydiving was the Leaping Lords’ claim to fame, feats of aerobatics and athleticism, the linked peers together shape-shifting in the sky, all of which would be as flying ants if it weren’t for closed-circuit television.
“This should do,” Marguerite said as she and Jane twisted the trolley around to face a giant television screen set by the ha-ha’s stone border.
“Thank you both.” Tom studied their distorted reflections in the glossy ebony lozenge. There were three other TVs—two on the terrace off the drawing room and another farther along the ha-ha—framing the lawn like a set of brackets.
“Shouldn’t be long, I don’t think.” Marguerite glanced at her watch. “Now, however do they do this? Someone wears a camera on his head, I think. Jane?”
“Someone they hire stays in the plane with a camera and films them through the open door. And one of the skydivers wears one on his head, so we get different views of the same thing. I think it’s to be Jamie. He’s done it before. He says the videographer always …” Jane’s voice trailed off. Tom noted her eyes slitting as she peered into the middle distance, towards the cluster of striped café umbrellas on the terrace. “… always has to be conscious of where he’s aiming his head … Marve, is that Lucinda?”
Marguerite turned to look, and Tom’s eyes followed. What he saw was a tall and slender young woman with fair floating hair and a light diaphanous skirt striding with an assured gait down the terrace steps onto the shimmering lawn, an immense straw hat in one hand. Even at a distance, he could make out the translucent skin, the slim neck rising from the plunging keyhole opening of her simple blouse. He rather wished he wasn’t, in his awkward state, stirred by this beauteous vision, but he was.
“Yes, it is Lucinda.” Marguerite’s tone seemed to contain multiple shades of meaning though her expression gave none away. “I thought she summered in Cap Ferrat. I’ll go and say hello, shall I? Georgina’s probably in her bedroom with a cold cloth on her forehead.”
Tom leaned a little to the left, as Marguerite’s moving figure was blocking Eggescombe’s newest attraction.
Jane noted the gesture and said, half amused: “She’s very beautiful, Lucinda.”
“Yes, she
is,” Tom responded primly, straightening himself against the pillows.
Jane laughed. “Vicar, you’re allowed some frailties.”
“Am I? All right then. She’s quite stunning. Who is she?”
“Georgie and Olly’s sister … well, half sister. Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett. Lucy, to family.”
“And is he her husband?” He studied the slim, pale man with modishly long fair hair following a step behind and recognised that a little envy had crept into his voice. Jane didn’t seem to notice.
“No,” she replied. “Lucy’s already shucked two husbands, and she’s only in her mid-twenties. That’s … it’s a little complicated. That’s Dominic fforde-Beckett. He’s Lucy’s cousin—and Oliver’s and Georgina’s, too, of course. They’re all related on the fforde-Beckett side.”
“Doesn’t seem too—”
“The complication, Tom, is that Lucinda and Dominic are both cousins and half siblings.”
“How—?”
“Oliver and Georgina’s father, Frederick, late Marquess of Morborne, had two wives. His first wife was my husband’s aunt, Christina. Got that so far?”
“Yes.”
“His second wife was Charlotte. Charlotte had been married to Frederick’s younger brother, Anthony. Charlotte and Anthony produced Dominic.”
“Anthony had died?”
“No. Frederick essentially stole his brother’s wife—or so gossip has it. Frederick and Charlotte produced Lucy.”
“Ah.”
“It was a great scandal at the time, Jamie tells me. Brother against brother. House of Morborne torn apart. Custody battles. Libel suits. Shock-horror headlines. I was barely out of diapers living in Canada so I had no idea.”
Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) Page 2