“Long before you were born,” Lucinda added unnecessarily.
“If Pater died, then I would become eleventh Earl of Fairhaven, wouldn’t I.”
“Max, darling, buzz off.”
The boy flashed his aunt a faltering glance before straightening himself and brushing an invisible dust mote from his jacket. “Yes, I really must see to my guest. I left Miranda in the drawing room.”
“Gruesome child,” Lucinda laughed when he had disappeared behind the French doors.
“ ‘Wizard’?”
“The antique slang, you mean? I suspect his grandmother’s influence. Sending him copies of Enid Blyton to read. Or what are those old books about that silly pilot …?”
“Biggles.”
“Or perhaps Wodehouse. Saki? I’m not sure. Anyway, he seems to have a healthy dose of the fforde-Beckett gene.”
“For … theatricality?”
“No, for a certain cold-bloodedness. Look us up. Not Burke’s. Try the Daily Mail. I think I will have this cigarette,” she added, placing her empty glass on the balustrade. “Do you have a light?”
“I’m afraid I don’t smoke. Do you? You seemed adamantly against it.”
“I’m not adamantly against anything, really, but I’d rather my nephew’s innocence not be poisoned by my brother.”
“Which brother?” Tom asked without thinking.
“Oliver, of course. ‘Mad’ Morborne, as he likes to call himself. The one who gave Maxie the cigarette.” She raised a shapely eyebrow. “Then you know a bit about the twisty twigs on the fforde-Beckett family tree.”
“Only a bit. Lady Kirkbride kindly filled me in.”
“My two brothers are only halves—to me. A good half and a bad half,” she added glumly.
“I expect you could get a light over there.” Tom gestured towards the other end of the terrace where a wreath of smoke floated lazily above heads in the evening’s luxuriant light. With the boy gone, he allowed himself a more candid appraisal of Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett, of whom he had only been vouchsafed glimpses through the afternoon from the prison of his sickbed in the middle of the lawn. The simple, creamy frock cut low across the shoulder seemed to hug the curve of her body, an invitation for his eyes to linger then follow as she waded through the human sea of villagers and children, her half brother Dominic, similarly attired in off-white, in tow. There was something alluring, too, in her bearing, with its athletic fluidity and self-confidence, and he realised, as his eyes roved around the lawn in search of her, that he was enduring an uncomfortable spurt of lust.
Now as she looked over towards the group of men at the other end of the terrace, he could behold her more properly. With the earlier flush subsided in her cheeks to tiny strawberry patches, her skin was revealed almost translucent, fine and white, in the Elizabethan ideal, even after months of summer sun in the south of France. There was a fineness, too, to the bones of her face, to the graceful jaw, and to her hair, tousled filaments of gold and auburn. But her eyes trounced all these measures of female delicacy. Heavy-lidded, under high-arched brows, they were immense, remarkable and bold, and somehow managed to seem both challenging and withholding. As she looked towards the knot of casually dressed men, Tom saw those eyes harden with a flashing hint of some strong emotion. At the same time, one of the men, Oliver, distinguishable by his embroidered African-inspired shirt and coloured kufi hat, turned his head, as if inexorably drawn to do so. He was at the centre of the men, a passel of other peers, winding up some story with a burst of chortle and boom, his right eye screwed up against the smoke ascending from the cigarette bobbing on his lips. He scowled, his left eye telegraphing a beam of such contempt that Tom caught himself suppressing a gasp. Brother and sister held each other’s gaze for a time longer than was decent. And then Lucinda turned back, her face altered by a thin veil of loathing. She flicked the cigarette over the balustrade.
“Do you have a family, Mr. Christmas? Of course you do. Maxie is entertaining your daughter. Where then is Mrs. Christmas this weekend?”
“I’m a widower, as it happens.”
“Oh?” Doubt shaded her voice as she glanced at his hands.
“I am, truly. Yes, that is a wedding band, but I’ve put it on my right hand. A little hard to let go completely.”
Lucinda regarded him speculatively for a moment. “Have they put you in the bachelors’ corridor then?” She smiled. “I expect not. Far too many stairs.”
“It’s only a light sprain,” Tom protested. “Lady Fairhaven has kindly supplied me with a pair of crutches.” He gestured to an antique dark oak pair leaning against the brick.
“Marguerite?”
“Your sister, actually, though I think Dowager Lady Fairhaven went looking for them.”
“Really? Georgie lifted a finger to help someone?” Lucinda’s smile tightened. “I’m sorry. Do go on.”
Tom blinked, uncertain whether to pursue the subject of her sister. “Apparently an ancestor of Lord Fairhaven’s in the nineteenth century had an accident similar to mine.”
“He couldn’t possibly have fallen from the sky.”
“No, I think he fell rather badly over a croquet hoop. He was an early enthusiast for the game.”
“Ah, then you’re in the Opium Bedroom on the ground floor. Whoever Hector’s ancestor was, he had it redecorated for his short convalescence. It really is the most splendid bedroom in the house. I am sorry about your wife.” Lucinda canted her head slightly. “Was it—?”
“Sudden? Yes, very. She was killed.”
“How awful.” The words were anodyne, but an eyebrow twitched with curiosity.
Tom was used to it. “Murder. By person or persons unknown. We were living in Bristol at the time.”
Lucy glanced again down the terrace towards the grouping of men. “At the time,” she murmured. “You don’t—”
“We live—my daughter and I—live at Thornford Regis now. I’m the vicar of St. Nicholas Church, have been for about the last year and a half.”
“Of course. It’s your church that today’s event was for. But your wife—”
“It will be four years in November.”
“Do you get lonely?”
Her candour gave him pause. “From time to time.”
“I don’t like being alone. I expect that’s why I forced Dominic to drive me down from London. Dominic’s my good half brother.”
“I know. Well, I know at least that he’s your half brother.”
“They have been talking about me.”
“No, not really.” Tom spoke honestly. All he had sussed was a vague air of concern wrought by her relatives’ reactions to her unexpected presence—Jane’s warning tone, Marguerite’s dash to the terrace, now Oliver’s cold glance.
An amused light in Lucinda’s extraordinary eyes suggested she didn’t believe him. “You don’t have a drink.”
“I did, a G and T, but someone scooped up the glass.”
“The redoubtable Gaunt, I expect. I’ll get you another.”
He watched her trim figure stride down the terraced steps, the back view as captivating as the front view had been earlier in the day, but he quickly sent his eyes elsewhere, through the falling light, across the dusky expanse of the park, lest he be caught out in an unvicarly oglefest. He noted the borders of the lawn, highlighted against the darker mass of trees, dotted with the detritus of the afternoon’s event, the tents and stalls, all waiting for tomorrow’s disassembly, soon to disappear into creeping shadow. He shifted his glance nearer, to the drooping bunches of wisteria along the balustrade, mauve in the afternoon, now, he observed, plum purple in evening. But he couldn’t help his eyes searching out Lucinda, though she was largely obscured by the stonework and floral array as she busied herself at a drinks table. More visible was Gaunt, Lord Fairhaven’s butler-valet, ramrod-stiff in his impeccably neat black suit and white shirt, ministering to a very large gas barbecue—untroubled, judging from his impassive expression, by spurting flames—from w
hich the smell of cooking beef wafted gorgeously into the evening air. The peerage sipping gin on the terrace, however—Tom couldn’t help noticing—appeared little distinguishable from those undoubtedly quaffing ale this fine summer evening outside Thornford’s Church House Inn, many in short trousers, all in knit shirts, men dressed as boys, in the modern and universal fashion. He looked down at himself, still in clerical shirt, clerical collar, and long dark trousers. He felt out of place.
With his head turned again towards Lucinda, who seemed to have fallen into conversation with one of the lords, he failed to notice the figure bending down towards him until a silver tray dotted with canapés slid under his nose.
“Mr. Christmas?”
“Mrs. Prowse?” Tom glanced at his housekeeper with astonishment. He had never seen her wearing the stiff black skirt and starched white blouse that was the traditional uniform of the housekeeper. And was that a spot of makeup? “Where did you—”
“It’s one of Ellen’s,” she cut in, adding, frowning down at the cinched belt, “It’s a bit loose, but it will do.”
“Mrs. Prowse, you’re meant to have a holiday, too.”
“I can’t very well sit about when Ellen is run off her feet, can I? The only staff are she and her husband. One of the dailies from the village was to come and help this evening, but there was a death in her family, so … Would you care for a nibble?”
“I’m sure the Gaunts can cope.” Tom selected something with salmon and crème fraîche. “Supper’s only a barbecue, very informal.”
“Oh,” Madrun murmured. “I thought it all might be a little more grand than this.”
“You mean no candlelit table groaning under the weight of crystal and china and silver. No evening dress. No gowns. This is the twenty-first century, Mrs. Prowse.”
“I do know that, Mr. Christmas.”
“And there are hardly any wives present.”
“Still, they might have made an effort.”
Tom sighed and popped the canapé into his mouth. He understood these Leaping Lords charity events were boys-only weekends for the peers involved. Wives weren’t forbidden, they were just discouraged. All the host had to do was crown the event with a slap-up meal of some nature that didn’t involve black tie—in Lord Fairhaven’s case a sort of slap-up déjeuner sur l’herbe—and send the boys on their way, to shoot in Scotland, as Tom overheard some of them say they were doing. He suspected there had to be a sleepover in some circumstances, but he had picked up from snippets of conversation through the afternoon that Lady Fairhaven was averse to company at Eggescombe. She had been, as Jane said she would, perfectly gracious when she had supplied the crutches and gave him directions to the Opium Bedroom, but Tom found her smile thin and fixed, her interest in her guest strained and formal.
“Well, I hope you’re enjoying yourself at any rate, Mrs. Prowse,” he said, conscious of rising voices down on the lawn. “At least the titles are grand. Do you know that’s the Duke of Warwick over there—that very tall one, knobby knees, balding a bit, like Prince William?” He detected a glitter in her eyes as she glanced across the terrace.
“Yes, I saw him on the television.”
He couldn’t help himself. An opportunity to prick Madrun’s balloon was too tempting. “He’s an estate agent somewhere in the southeast, you know.” Sic transit gloria, he thought, amused.
“Nonetheless”—Madrun straightened herself and cast him a withering glance—“it’s an ancient title. And anyway, His Grace owns several estate agencies in Kent and Sussex and Surrey, and according to the Sunday Times Rich List he’s the seventy-first wealthiest man in England.”
“I am humbled. How do you know this?”
“I used the Google.”
“Mrs. Prowse? You and a computer?”
“Your daughter’s been showing me. It has its uses, I’ll allow.”
“Signs and portents!” Tom reached out for another canapé. “We must be at the End Times. Mrs. Prowse?” he pleaded as the tray retreated from his hand, out of reach.
Then he saw that her attention had been distracted by a sudden commotion in the middle distance. He followed her gaze to witness Oliver in the midst of an abrupt exit from his friends and swift descent of the stone steps to the lawn, his features a clot of ferocity as his red hair, worn near Byronically long, caught the sun’s rays and flared suddenly like an angry flame. He seemed to lunge in Lucinda’s direction. Tom couldn’t see properly through the thick balusters. All he could do was hear, and realise he had been hearing the genesis of some unpleasant exchange. Now there was a shriek, a growling incoherence of invective, and an unmerry tinkle of shattering glass.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I seem to recall seeing you pull a rabbit out of a hat at some venue, Camden way, about fifteen years ago.” Oliver pulled the cigar from his mouth, enveloping his long, bony face in a cloudy wreath. “Can’t think what I was doing there.”
It was on the tip of Tom’s tongue to say that His Lordship had remarked on that very thing when they’d been introduced that morning at the Plymouth airfield.
He was growing impatient with his own self. His ankle was giving him gyp, his backside was growing numb, and he had been struggling to rise from the sun lounger onto his crutch with Max and Miranda as unhelpful witnesses when Oliver fforde-Beckett, who might have lent a hand but didn’t, sidled over, drink in one hand, cigar in the other, whistling for some unaccountable reason.
“I doubt I did the rabbit trick,” Tom grunted, balancing awkwardly on the crutch as he tried to recover a little dignity. Pulling small animals from headgear had largely vanished from his repertoire by his late teens. He glanced at Oliver, whose frown suggested Tom’s memory was the faulty one.
“Were you a magician, Mr. Christmas?” Max looked up at him brightly.
“Before I entered the priesthood, yes.”
“How spiffing! Do you—”
“I know.” Oliver’s drawl cascaded over his nephew along with a cloud of smoke. “You did something with a tie. I remember because the mark was sitting next to me. You snipped it to ribbons then restored it a moment later. Clever. I suppose,” he added dismissively.
Max coughed and put his fingers to his neck. “Could you do mine, Mr. Christmas?”
“A tie would be best, but—”
“Untie yours, old man.” Oliver addressed his nephew. “An unknotted bow tie would work as well, wouldn’t it, Vicar?”
“Don’t tell me, Maximilian, that you’re wearing one of those pre-tied jobs.” Dominic fforde-Beckett had been hovering near, glowering—Tom thought—at his cousin, but he turned to the child and spoke amiably.
Max grimaced. “Mater has a headache, and I couldn’t find Pater.”
“You should have asked Gaunt.” Dominic lifted the tab of Max’s collar for examination. “He tied all my ties when I was a boy.”
“Yes.” Oliver smirked into his drink. “I expect your dear mother was likely too tied up in some other fashion to be of any use.”
“Shut up, Olly.”
“Why don’t you see if you can find a tie for the vicar?” Oliver ignored Dominic and addressed his nephew.
“Oh! Shall I?”
“But—” Tom watched with dismay as Max darted back through the French doors into Eggescombe’s interior only to poke his head around a second later and say with a gallant smile to Miranda, “I shan’t be long.”
Tom, prepared to dissuade Max again, was distracted by his daughter, who had remained silent during the exchange. Usually, she would sigh or groan or roll her eyes in advance of any of his harmless feints of magic, having reached the age of finding her father faintly embarrassing in certain instances, but here she was smiling vacantly after Max, her dark eyes glistening.
“You need some things from your magic kit, don’t you, Daddy?” She turned to him.
“I’m afraid so, darling. It may be in the car, unless it was brought up with the luggage. Your grandmother has a notion for me to perform at their
church fête when we get to Gravesend, but I suppose I could pull a coin out Maximilian’s ear.”
“Oh, Daddy.” That one bored Miranda beyond measure.
“Speaking of tricks, Oliver,” Dominic said. “I’ve spent much of the last week consulting with Raymond Firbank at Thorpe End about his art collection. You know of Raymond, of course—”
“Yes, he’s an old queen with a taste for—”
“Interestingly,” Dominic interrupted, “he’s recently purchased—privately, but from whom he did not say—a Pissarro, specifically Church at Dulwich. I—”
“I had a notion you were in Cap Ferrat with Lucy and that bitch mother of yours.” Oliver scratched an eyebrow, dropping cigar ash onto his shirt.
Tom glanced with worry at Miranda then at Dominic, who bared his teeth and snapped:
“I wasn’t. As I said, I was with Raymond Firbank.”
“Looking at paintings? I’ll bet that wasn’t all you were up to,” Oliver drawled, smirking at Tom.
Dominic shared his cousin’s long face, though his jaw was squarer, more taut. Now his face blazed as he raised his voice: “I found it remarkable that Raymond had Church at Dulwich, as it has hung in the upstairs hall at Morborne House since I can remember. Pissarro did a number of paintings of the Pont-Neuf and the Louvre and Kew, but he only did one of a church in Dulwich.”
“How do you know? Perhaps he did two and one’s been hiding in some attic somewhere.”
“There isn’t! I went around to Morborne House last week—”
“What?” Oliver nearly spat the cigar, his languid tone vanished. “I gave Haddon strict instructions—”
“Haddon couldn’t reach you on your mobile. And as I am family and told him I only wanted to examine a painting in the course of my work, he let me in. Remarkably, Church at Dulwich was hanging where it’s always hung.”
“Said so, didn’t I. There are two.”
“Pissarro didn’t make exact copies of his own work, you idiot.”
Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) Page 4