A Suitable Vengeance (9 page)

“Linen’s gotter ’ole in it, Mary. Brought another?”

“Not with. Set a plate down on’t.”

“’Oo the ’ell’s gonna sit squat in the middle of the table, Mar?”

Laughter drifted Nancy’s way as the dailies shook out a crisp white table cloth. It billowed from their hands, caught in a sudden gust of wind that managed to find its way through the armour of the trees. Nancy raised her own face to it, but it captured a patch of dead leaves and dust and flung them up at her so that she tasted fine grit.

She lifted a hand to brush at her face, but the effort drained her of strength. Sighing, she trudged on towards the house.

It was one thing, of course, to talk of love and marriage in London. It was another to feel the full range of implications behind those easy words when she saw them spread out before her in Cornwall. By the time she got out of the limousine that had met them at the Land’s End air strip, Deborah Cotter was feeling decidedly light-headed. Her stomach was churning as well.

Because she had never known Lynley in any way other than in her own environment and upon her own terms, she hadn’t thought about what it would mean to marry into his family. She knew he was an earl, of course. She’d ridden in his Bentley, been to his London house, even met his valet. She’d eaten off his china, drunk from his crystal, and watched him dress himself in his hand-tailored clothes. But all of that had somehow fallen into a category of behaviour which she had conveniently labelled How Tommy Lives. None of it had ever affected her own life in any way. However, seeing Howenstow from the air, as Lynley circled the plane twice over the estate, had served as the first indication to Deborah that life as she had known it for twenty-one years faced potential—and radical—alteration.

The house was an enormous Jacobean structure built in the shape of a variegated E with its central leg missing. A large secondary wing grew in reverse direction from the building’s west leg and to the northeast, just beyond its spine, stood a church. Beyond the house clustered a scattering of outbuildings and stables, and beyond these the Howenstow park spread out in the direction of the sea. Cows grazed on this parkland amid towering sycamore trees that grew in abundance, protected from the sometimes inclement southwestern weather by a fortuitous, natural slope of land. At the perimeter of all this, the skillfully crafted Cornish wall marked the boundary of the estate proper, but not the end of the Asherton property which was, Deborah knew, divided among dairy farms, agriculture, and abandoned mines that had once provided the district with tin.

Faced with the concrete, undeniable reality that was Tommy’s home—no longer an illusory setting for the weekend house parties she had overheard discussed by St. James and Lady Helen for so many years—Deborah’s mind became taken up with the risible notion of herself—Deborah Cotter, the child of a servant—moving blithely into the life of this estate as if it were Manderley with Max de Winter brooding somewhere within its walls, waiting to be rejuvenated by the love of a simple woman. Hardly an act in her line, she thought.

What on earth am I doing here?
The entire situation felt like a dream, with chimerical elements stacking one upon the other. The flight down in the plane, the first viewing of Howenstow, the limousine and uniformed chauffeur waiting on the air strip. Even Lady Helen’s lighthearted greeting of this man—“Jasper, my God! So sartorially splendid! The last time I was here, you hadn’t even bothered to shave.”—did little to allay Deborah’s qualms.

At least nothing was expected of her on the drive to Howenstow other than to admire Cornwall, and she had. It was a wild part of the country, comprising desolate moors, stony hillsides, sandy coves whose hidden caves had long been used as smugglers’ caches, sudden lush woodlands where the countryside dipped into a combe, and everywhere tangles of celandine, poppy, and periwinkle that dominated the narrow lanes.

The main drive to Howenstow shot off from one of these, canopied by sycamores and edged by rhododendrons. It passed a lodge, skirted the park, dipped beneath an ornate Tudor gatehouse, circled a rose garden, and ended before a massive front door above which a hound and a lion battled resplendently in the Asherton coat of arms.

They got out of the car with the usual jumble that accompanies an arrival. Deborah favoured the building with a single, fleeting look. It appeared to be deserted. She wished that were the case.

“Ah. Here’s Mother,” Lynley said.

Turning, Deborah found him looking not towards the front door, where she had expected to see an excessively well-dressed Countess of Asherton standing with one white hand extended limply in welcome, but towards the southeast corner of the house where a tall, slender woman was striding towards them through the shrubbery.

Deborah could not have been more surprised at the sight of Lady Asherton. She was wearing old tennis clothes, with a faded blue towel flung round her shoulders. This she used vigorously to wipe perspiration from her face, arms, and neck. Three large wolfhounds and a gangling young retriever bounded at her heels, and she paused, wrested a ball from one of them, and threw it with the skill of a bowler to the far side of the garden. She laughed as they disappeared in frantic chase after it, watching them for a moment before joining the party by the front door.

“Tommy.” She spoke pleasantly. “You’ve had your hair cut a bit differently, haven’t you? I like it. Very much.” She didn’t touch him. Instead, she gave her embraces to Lady Helen and St. James before turning to Deborah and continuing to speak with a rueful gesture at her tennis clothes. “Forgive my appearance, Deborah. I don’t always greet guests so decidedly un-turned out, but frankly, I’m lazy, and if I don’t take my exercise at the same hour every day, I manage to find a thousand excuses for not taking it at all. Tell me you’re not one of those dreadful health fiends who jog every morning at dawn.”

It was certainly not a welcome-to-our-family salutation. But on the other hand, it wasn’t the sort of clever greeting that managed to mix requisite courtesy with unmistakable disapproval. Deborah wasn’t sure what to make of it.

As if she understood and wanted to get them through the first moments as smoothly as possible, Lady Asherton merely smiled, squeezed Deborah’s hand, and turned to her father. Throughout the exchange Cotter had been standing to one side. In the heat, sweat sheened his face. He was managing to make his clothes look as if they’d been made for a man several inches taller and much heavier than he.

“Mr. Cotter,” Lady Asherton said. “May I call you Joseph? I’m only too delighted that you and Deborah shall be part of our family.”

So here was the standard welcome. Wisely, Lynley’s mother had saved it for the person she had intuitively known would most need to hear it.

“Thank you, m’lady.” Cotter clasped his hands behind him as if in the fear that one might jump out and begin pumping Lady Asherton’s arm of its own volition.

Lady Asherton smiled. It was a duplicate of Tommy’s crooked smile. “It’s Dorothy, actually, although for some reason that I’ve never quite understood, my family and friends have always called me Daze. Which is better than Diz, I suppose, since that suggests
dizzy
, and I’m afraid I should have to draw the line at something that comes so perilously close to describing my personality.”

Cotter looked rather dumbfounded at what was clearly an invitation to address the widow of an earl by her Christian name. Nonetheless, after a moment for thought, he nodded sharply and replied, “Daze it is.”

“Good,” Lady Asherton responded. “Lovely. We’ve a beautiful weekend for a visit, haven’t we? It’s been a bit hot, of course—today’s quite warm, isn’t it?—but I expect we’ll have a breeze this afternoon. Sidney’s already arrived, by the way. And she’s brought the most interesting young man with her. Rather dark and melancholy.”

“Brooke?” St. James asked sharply. He didn’t look pleased.

“Yes. Justin Brooke. Do you know him, Simon?”

“Rather better than he’d like, if the truth be told,” Lady Helen said. “But he promises to behave himself, don’t you, Simon darling? No poison in the porridge. No duelling at dawn. No brawls on the drawing room floor. Just utter civility for seventy-two hours. What perfect teeth-gritting bliss.”

“I’ll treasure each moment,” St. James replied.

Lady Asherton laughed. “Of course you will. What house party could possibly be complete without skeletons swinging out of every closet and tempers on the boil? It makes me feel quite a young girl again.” She took Cotter’s arm and led the way into the house. “Let me show you something I’m absurdly proud of, Joseph,” they could hear her saying as she pointed to the elaborate tessellated entry. “This was put in just after our great fire of 1849 by some local workmen. Now, don’t you believe this for an instant, but legend has it the fire…” Her voice drifted out of their hearing. In a moment, Cotter’s laughter rang out in response.

At that, the churning in Deborah’s stomach lessened. Relief shot through her muscles like a spring releasing tension and told her how nervous she had really been about this first meeting of their parents. It could have been disastrous. It would have been disastrous, had Tommy’s mother been any other sort of woman save the kind who swept away the diffidence of strangers with a few amiable words.

She’s wonderful
. Deborah felt the need to say it aloud to someone and without thinking, she turned to St. James.

All the signs of approval were on his face. The lines round his eyes crinkled more deeply. Briefly, he smiled.

“Welcome to Howenstow, Deb darling.” Lynley put his arm round her shoulders and led her into the house where a high ceiling and a mosaic floor made the air cool and moist, a refreshing change from the heat outside.

They found Lady Asherton and Cotter in the great hall to the right of the entry. It was an elongated room, dominated by a fireplace whose chimneypiece of unadorned granite was surmounted by the head of a wild gazelle. Pendant plasterwork decorated the ceiling, and drop-moulded panelling covered the walls. Upon these hung life-sized portraits of the lords and ladies of Asherton, representatives from each generation, who gazed upon their descendants in every kind of pose and every kind of dress.

Deborah paused before an eighteenth-century portrait of a man in cream breeches and red coat, leaning against a half-broken urn with a riding crop in his hand and a spaniel at his feet. “Tommy, good heavens. He looks exactly like you.”

“He’s certainly what Tommy would look like if we could only talk him into wearing those delicious trousers,” Lady Helen remarked.

Deborah felt Lynley’s arm tighten round her shoulders. She thought at first it was in response to the laughter that greeted Lady Helen’s comment. But she saw that a door had opened at the north end of the hall and a tall young man wearing threadbare blue jeans was padding in his bare feet across the parquet floor. A hollow-cheeked girl followed him. She too was shoeless.

This would be Peter, Deborah decided. Aside from his emaciated appearance, he possessed the same blond hair, the same brown eyes, and the same fine cheekbones, nose, and jaw of many of the portraits that lined the walls. Unlike his ancestors on canvas, however, Peter Lynley wore an earring through one pierced ear. It was a swastika dangling from a slender gold chain and it grazed the top of his shoulder.

“Peter. You’re not in Oxford?” Lynley asked the question smoothly enough—a demonstration of good breeding before the weekend guests—but Deborah felt the tension in his body.

Peter flashed a smile, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “We came down for some sun only to discover you had the same idea. All we need is Judy here for a sibling reunion, right?”

Fingering the clasp that held earring to earlobe, he nodded at St. James and Lady Helen and drew his companion forward. In a gesture that duplicated Lynley’s own, he put his arm round her shoulders.

“This is Sasha.” Her arm encircled his waist. Her fingers slid beneath his grimy T-shirt and into his blue jeans. “Sasha Nifford.” Without waiting for his brother to make a similar introduction, Peter nodded at Deborah. “And this is your bride-to-be, I take it. You’ve always had excellent taste in women. But we’ve seen that demonstrated well enough through the years.”

Lady Asherton came forward. She looked from one son to the other and extended her hand as if she would join them together in some way. “I was so surprised when Hodge told me Peter and Sasha had arrived. And then I thought what a lovely idea it was to have Peter here for your engagement weekend.”

Lynley replied evenly. “My thought exactly. Will you show our guests to their rooms, Mother? I’d like a few minutes with Peter. To catch up.”

“We’ve lunch planned in just an hour. The day’s so fine that we thought we’d have it outdoors.”

“Good. In an hour. If you’ll see to everyone…” It was far more an order than a request.

Hearing his cool tone, Deborah felt surprise. She looked at the others to gauge their reactions, but saw in their faces only a determination to ignore the unmistakable current of hostility that crackled through the air. Lady Helen was examining a silver-framed photograph of the Prince of Wales. St. James was admiring the lid of an oriental tea case. Cotter was standing in a bay window gazing out at the garden.

“Darling,” Lynley was saying to her. “If you’ll excuse me for a bit…”

“Tommy—”

“If you’ll excuse me, Deb.”