He took in the situation with a single glance, and Kitty jumped to their defence. ‘I made them tell me,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was your ridiculous idea to keep it from me. I’m not a child, Xander – or a helpless old lady. I have every right to know when my home is threatened.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, rather dazedly. Jenna jumped up and brought another chair out from the conservatory and he almost fell on to it without seeming to have noticed who brought it. ‘Well, I’ve seen them both,’ he said. ‘I showed them a copy of my notarized statement – which included the fact that I had deposited a DVD with Hudson Carstairs. They both read it.’
‘And?’ said Kitty.
‘There was a certain amount of bluster,’ said Xander, ‘but Roger Beale at least could see the game was up. Sullivan tried to threaten me, but he told him to shut up in the end. Then he asked me what I wanted. I told him there must be an end to any scheme surrounding this house or any land in or adjacent to Holtby. And no reprisals against anyone involved.’ He stopped, and Kitty had to prompt him.
‘He agreed?’
‘Oh yes. But he couldn’t believe that was all. He thought I must want something for myself – money, or to be part of some other scam he’s running. Then Sullivan asked when he would get the DVD back. I told him never. It would be surety for his good behaviour, and Beale’s. They didn’t like that. I think they thought there would be some easy end to it all.’
Kitty frowned. ‘They’ll leave Holtby alone? But what about their other schemes? Are you going to let them get away with it? Bribery and corruption?’ she said indignantly. ‘And Sullivan getting into Parliament so he can do more wicked things? They ought to go to prison, both of them.’ She caught sight of Harry and said, ‘I’m sorry, but you know it’s true.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘My dad’s a bad lot. I’ve always known it.’
Her pity was instantly aroused. ‘Oh, my poor boy! I wasn’t thinking how awful it must be for you – and having lost your mother, too. What will Roger Beale do about Harry, Xander?’
‘He’s promised no reprisals. But he may cut him off, of course. I can’t really prevent that. And there’s the question of the flat.’
‘I don’t care if he does cut me off,’ Harry said, with as much conviction as he could manage. ‘I’d sooner try and make my own way.’
Jenna smiled faintly, remembering their conversation on that point.
‘Good for you,’ Kitty said heartily. ‘And you can come and stay here if you need to. Look on this as your home from now on.’
Jenna was watching Xander’s face. ‘But what about Caroline?’
He looked at her, and spread his hands slightly. ‘That’s why I can’t go too far – why I have to let them “get away with it”, Kitty, to a certain extent. Caroline’s bound up in it, and I know it’s her own fault, but she’s a woman, and you can’t destroy a woman’s reputation the way you can a man’s. I had a long talk with her after I’d left Beale and Sullivan.’
No wonder he looked exhausted, Jenna thought.
‘She’ll have to remake a life for herself,’ he said quietly, ‘if she gets away from her stepfather. I can’t make it too hard for her.’
‘If?’ Kitty queried.
‘She was defiant at first,’ he admitted. ‘Said it was none of my affair, and I didn’t understand how business worked these days. Said she was putting our finances on a firm footing for our future together. I told her it was her finances, not mine, and that I wanted nothing to do with any money she made that way. Told her she was a beautiful woman and could do better for herself than that sort of grubby scheme.’
‘But – you’re not still going to marry her?’ Kitty said doubtfully, hopefully.
‘No, that’s all over,’ he said. He looked round vaguely, as if half waking from a dream. ‘What time is it? Is it lunchtime?’
‘Nearly teatime,’ Kitty said. She looked round too. ‘None of us has had any lunch.’
Jenna got up. ‘Omelettes all round, I think.’
‘I’ll come and help,’ said Harry.
‘And let’s have some champagne,’ Kitty added. ‘To celebrate the scotching of a wicked plan.’ She looked at Xander. ‘And because it’s very good for shock,’ she added.
Later, when Jenna had carried the empty plates back into the house, Xander followed her and caught her up in the kitchen.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. I understand.’
‘I implied you were wrong to use the methods you did,’ he went on, determined. ‘I’m really very grateful that you went to so much trouble for Kitty’s sake. Anything I said to you that – well, if I hurt you, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ she said.
‘I see now that Caroline was suspicious of you from the start, and she coloured my view of you. It was when you asked me at the Buckminsters’ party why I wanted Kitty out of here that it made me think about Caroline’s attitudes – wonder whether in fact she wanted Kitty out, and why. I started to reassess a lot of things she’d said and done. It was painful to me to start doubting her, but once I started I couldn’t stop. And it made me realize I’d been uneasy about her for a long time.’
‘It must have been hard for you.’
‘It was. I value loyalty, and the last thing I wanted was to be disloyal myself.’ He frowned. ‘I haven’t come very well out of all this. I let Caroline influence me when I should have stepped back and used my own judgement. I think I behaved badly towards you on several occasions, when all the time you were Kitty’s truest friend.’
She couldn’t bear this. ‘Well, it’s all over now,’ she said. ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ God, there I go with the clichés again! ‘What will you do now?’
She didn’t know why she asked that, except to try to move on from the awkward apologies, but it seemed to release something in him and words burst out of him.
‘When I said to her she could do better, she said – she said she could certainly do better than me, and that she was going to marry a man with real power and drive who would go to the top, not a weakling content to sell second-hand furniture all his life.’
‘Oh Xander, I’m sorry,’ Jenna said, her throat tightening at the thought of the hurt to him.
‘I suppose that’s what I am, when it comes down to it,’ he said bitterly, staring at the floor.
‘People aren’t their jobs. I mean, that’s not how you measure the worth of someone.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Well, look at me – I don’t have a job at all. Does that make me nothing?’
He did look at her, with that odd, arrested look in his eyes she had seen once before. ‘No, you’re not nothing,’ he said at last. And then, ‘I’m very glad you came here to help Kitty. You might have been the saving of us all. I dread to think—’
‘Well, now we can all concentrate on Kitty’s opening,’ she said, a little too heartily. When he looked at her like that she could only think that he had loved Caroline, and must now be heartbroken.
‘Yes,’ he said, and removed his too-intent gaze from her at last. ‘I’d like to help with that, if I may?’
‘Kitty would be delighted,’ she said, and then, thinking it sounded unwelcoming: ‘We’d all be delighted. There’s an awful lot to do, and you have expertise that will be invaluable.’
‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘we must move on, and the opening will be a very good therapy for us all.’
She waited, but he didn’t say any more, and seemed, in fact, lost in his own thoughts, so she went past him to go out and fetch in the rest of the dirty things.
As she reached the door, he said, ‘Did Caroline really try to kill you? Hit and run?’
She froze. Surely Caroline hadn’t said anything on the subject? Or was she so mad and so sure of herself she felt she could even boast of that to her infatuated lover? But how it would hurt him if he thought he had loved
someone capable of that!
‘I didn’t see the car,’ she said. ‘It was all too quick. But I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. Just bad driving, I guess.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That must be what it was.’
Twenty-Five
The following Saturday Nicky Pearson arrived promptly in her rather beat-up old Peugeot 205. Jenna and Kitty went out on to the turnaround to meet her. She stepped out of the car, and opened the back door to let out her dogs: two miniature dachshunds. ‘Maisie and Molly,’ she said.
Watch and Barney approached with interest. The dachs took one look at them and flopped to the ground, rolling on their backs and wriggling their bottoms in humble greeting.
‘It’s all right,’ Kitty said, ‘they’re very dog-friendly.’ In a matter of moments the dachs were up and frisking around, with Barney and Watch following them, intrigued, trying to get a nose to these fast-moving strangers. ‘Why don’t you just let them have fun while we go inside?’
‘Is it safe?’ Nicky asked, looking doubtfully around at the wide open spaces.
‘There’s chicken wire round the whole perimeter – more to keep the neighbourhood dogs out than my chaps in,’ Kitty said, ‘so they can’t get lost. Barney will look after them. He always wanted to be a mother. I expect they’d enjoy a run.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ Nicky said. ‘I don’t think they’ve ever seen so much space in their whole lives.’
Kitty and Jenna conducted her round the house and she raved over the ceramics. ‘I’ve never seen such a collection. And some pieces must be quite valuable.’
‘I made a start cataloguing them,’ Jenna said, when they retired to the conservatory for coffee, ‘but I don’t really know the subject. You’re welcome to my notes, such as they are, as a starting point.’
‘What we want,’ Kitty said, ‘is for you to choose enough items to fill the cabinets – we’ll show you those when you’ve had your coffee. I leave the choice completely up to you, because I know less than Jenna about it. Just make an attractive display for the visitors.’
‘And, of course, they’ll need notes for the room sheets, and labels. I can do those, if you tell me what to put on them.’
Nicky said that it made more sense for her to do the notes than to have to tell Jenna what to write. ‘And I can print the labels at work – we have the right card and printer for it there. I say, this shortbread is delicious.’
‘Home-made,’ Jenna said. ‘Have another piece.’
‘Oh, look at those dogs!’ Kitty said with a smile in her voice, as they frisked up, panting, from their first long run around. Watch sloshed up water from the big bowl that stood just outside on the terrace, and Barney flopped on his back while the dachs jumped on him, in a fine reversal of roles. ‘I think they’re friends.’
They showed Nicky the cabinets, which Bill had finished restoring, and had moved into position in the housekeeper’s room – soon to be the China Room. ‘Oh, lots of space,’ she said. ‘I’m glad, because I’m going to want to choose a lot of things. And with several cabinets we can group things nicely.’
‘It’s very good of you to do this for us,’ Kitty said.
‘Not at all. I’m going to enjoy it. Really! I’m not just being polite.’
‘Then, could I ask you another favour? Could you pick out a few pieces for the drawing room and dining room? Jenna will show you the spaces we’d like to fill.’
‘I’d be happy to,’ Nicky said. ‘It’s so exciting to be in on the start of something like this. I’ve so often gone round houses and wondered about who chose what to go where.’ She smiled. ‘And generally disagreed with the choice, I have to say!’
It was Nicky who, on seeing the dining room for the first time, suggested the table should be laid as if for a formal dinner. ‘If you have some nice china for it. It looks rather bare as it is, and people do like seeing how other people lived.’
Jenna said, ‘That’s a good idea. Like “dressing” a house when you want to sell it?’
‘Exactly. Let the visitors see it’s not just a museum. It’s nice to leave a book or two around in the drawing room, too, and perhaps some music open on the piano.’
‘I can see you’re going to be a great help,’ Jenna said approvingly.
They had seen nothing of Xander in the week since the Great Revelation. He had been busy, Jenna supposed, with sorting out the detail of the agreement with Beale and Sullivan, policing its implementation – and finalizing matters with Caroline. A notice had appeared in the papers on Thursday.
The marriage previously announced between Caroline Eleanor Russell and Alexander Latham will not now take place. The couple have parted by mutual consent and request that their privacy be respected.
So that’s that, Jenna thought. She passed it silently to Kitty at the breakfast table.
‘It doesn’t look good for him,’ Kitty said, ‘after a similar announcement with Stephanie. It will make him look inconstant.’
‘I don’t know why people put engagements in the paper in the first place,’ Jenna said.
‘Usually it’s the bride’s mother who insists on that particular tradition,’ Kitty said. Then she sighed. ‘I wonder when we’ll see him again. I do hope he doesn’t go and hide himself away.’
‘He did say he wanted to help us with the opening.’
‘Did he? We must make a point of making him indispensable. Give him lots to do.’
‘There is lots to do,’ Jenna pointed out. ‘We could even have done with Harry.’
But Harry, after half-heartedly helping Bill move things around on Monday, had gone home on Tuesday. ‘It’s my flat,’ he said defiantly, even though it wasn’t really. ‘And I’ll have to face Dad some time.’ He hadn’t reappeared, so Jenna assumed that Roger Beale hadn’t turned him out on the street, at least.
Things were looking promising for the launch party. Acceptances were running at nearly a hundred per cent. The MP for the south of the county, Nick Easter, had rung Kitty personally to say he would be coming. Then he added, ‘I believe you had something to do with the fact that Derek Sullivan will not be standing at the election after all.’
‘Me? Not at all,’ Kitty said, flustered. ‘I knew nothing about it until it was over.’
He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, I shan’t spread any rumours. But everyone ought to be grateful to you: Sullivan’s a worm, and he wouldn’t have been a credit to the House.’
‘Do you know who’s replacing him?’ she plucked up courage to ask.
‘The constituency party’s chosen Harriet Hale, I believe.’
‘I don’t know her. What’s she like?’
‘Mostly harmless,’ he said. ‘She’s a bit of a party drone. But I don’t think she’ll get in anyway. It’s not natural Labour country. Ronnie Farebrother only held the seat for all those years because he was a farmer and a leading light of the NFU. They were betting everything on Sullivan because he was a local celebrity, but now he’s out of the frame, it’s blown the election wide open, so you can imagine how grateful we are to you.’
‘Not to me,’ Kitty said firmly.
‘Understood. But I wondered if your godson has ever thought of standing?’
‘Alexander? I don’t think it has ever crossed his mind,’ Kitty said in surprise.
‘Perhaps you might persuade him to let it,’ he said. ‘He’s just the sort of man we need – local, personable, intelligent, and with a reputation for probity.’
‘He’s the most honest man I know,’ Kitty said.
‘That’s what I mean. He might well crack the north of the county for us. Something to think about?’
‘You must speak to him yourself,’ Kitty said firmly. ‘I couldn’t possibly answer for him.’
‘I will. Perhaps at the party. And thank you again for the opportunity.’
Jenna was intrigued when Kitty relayed this conversation. ‘Xander in Parliament? He’d certainly look good in those interviews on the green outside. Most politicians ar
en’t much to look at.’
Kitty looked shocked. ‘That is not what people are elected for – their looks!’
‘I know – I was teasing.’ She thought that he would probably hate all the back-scratching – and stabbing – that went on in Parliament, if one believed the newspapers. On the other hand, it would mean he would be in London a lot more often, and she might therefore see him sometimes. The thought that in a couple of weeks’ time she would be going away, never to see him again, was clouding the otherwise perfect pleasure she was getting from this job for Kitty.
All the arrangements were going well. Gloria Buckminster was proving invaluable. She had not only recruited a pool of room stewards and drawn up a rota for the first month, she had got extra volunteers for the opening gala and was well on the way to having the tea done and dusted.
‘Mad Enderby’s getting us strawberries from her supplier – free – and she’s going to let us have her own cream. She says opening Holtby House will improve passing trade, and her supplier apparently agrees. I’ve got ten local ladies who will come in and make sandwiches early on the morning, and come back in the afternoon to serve. Paulson’s in Wenchester are donating the sandwich loaves, and Tealson’s Foods four dozen sausage rolls. Now, large cakes I’ve got organized, some from people in the village, and Paulson’s are giving a dozen of their Swiss rolls, but I need promises for small cakes. I’m working on Betty’s Tea Rooms in Belminster and the Copper Kettle in Wenchester, but that will probably only raise two dozen each – mustn’t over-milk the cow you know. And scones to go with the strawberries and cream: commercial ones are so disappointing, so I’d like them home-made.’
‘Nicky Pearson’s mum wants to help in some way. And my sister is a superb cook,’ Jenna said. ‘I’m sure she’ll do some scones.’
‘See if you can get her to promise two dozen. We’ll probably need six dozen at least. I’m going to work on Mrs Phillips – she used to make scones for the cricket tea and they were as light as a feather. If all else fails I can fall back on my sister, but it’s a problem getting them here. Where does your sister live?’
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