Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (43 page)

He gives in to temptation, brings out one of the oilcloth-wrapped kitchen matches found in the barn and lights the kerosene lantern. He situates it close by the milking stool, studies the lawyerwoman’s diary, the rock star’s photo case, and the plasticized card with the list of names and numbers on it as though lantern light might reveal something not seen before.

The only thing revealed is how bad the lantern is smoking and how quick he’d better be about dousing it. Which he’ll do as soon as he saves his meal from getting charred on one side. In his haste to adjust the spit, he forgets to put on the gloves and burns several fingers bad enough to want to yelp.

This leaves him a long ways from ready when he detects sounds coming from the adjoining barn and stiffens at sight of a moving beam of light sweeping back and forth as it comes closer and closer to his stronghold that isn’t much of a stronghold if this can happen.

“Toby? Are you in there? Show yourself, you bleedin’ bugger, you’re makin’ me miss tea,” a young voice calls out.

Hoop holds perfectly still; it’s his mind that races on ahead when a boy steps into view.

“Have you seen my dog, mister?” the boy says, showing no more surprise at finding the chimney house occupied than the dog did. He pokes at the shadows with the beam of his flashlight, showing no surprise at anything it reveals.

The boy cocks his head at the sleeping platform, then at the carcass charring over the fire. “Dad said some of you watcher blokes were scattered round in deep cover, but I didn’t know they were makin’ you live rough. You want me to leg it back and get you some proper supper? Wouldn’t be a bother and you wouldn’t have to say you ever saw me . . . would you? Your mates never say anything when I sneak out, so you wouldn’t have to . . . would you?”

The boy keeps up the wheedling talk and moves into the light coming from the smoking lantern and the cook fire. This allows Hoop to get a look under the billed cap he’s wearing and see that he’s one of the boys from the photo case, the older of Aurora’s boys, the one who doesn’t look so much like her.

“Maybe you saw my rooster? He comes here a lot too. For the bugs and snakes he fancies.” The boy goes on pestering and snooping with his flashlight till he sees the dog’s pelt and what’s left of the rooster—the bones and claws Hoop forgot to bury along with the offal—and is taken by sudden rage.

“You’re . . . you’re
him
! The boy screams, throwing himself at Hoop, flailing at him with the flashlight, kicking at him with lug-soled boots. “And that’s my dog, isn’t it, you bloody shite!” His cap flies off as he takes a wild swing, misses and instead sends the spitted carcass reeling off it supports, very nearly tipping over the smoking kerosene lantern in the process. “And
that
. . . that was my rooster!” he screeches as Hoop makes his move. “My Dad’s gonna
kill
you . . . you . . .” the boy manages to squeal before Hoop’s burned fingers grab him by the throat.

Colin mounts the front stairs lighter of spirit than he ought to be. He ought to be feeling at least moderate concern about the approaching storm some are calling a significant weather event and others are dismissing for not being a legitimate hurricane.

He gains the first floor, dismissive of the entire lot of forecasters. Especially Sam Earle, who may be getting just a bit carried away with that barometer of his and all that talk of isobars and ominously low pressure areas. Of those gathered under the porte-cochère when Nate and the others arrived, only Bemus and a few representative groundskeepers were giving serious heed to the predictions. But that’s what they’re paid to do. And won’t they be the ones to grumble after they’ve gone to the bother of battening down hatches and securing objects with airborne potential against a blow that may never even make landfall.

On the second floor, Colin identifies this distraction as the mood elevator he couldn’t account for and finds himself amused that something banal as weather talk could be actual relief from the subject that’s never far from anyone’s mind.

He bypasses the boys’ rooms, secure in the knowledge they’re both under the close supervision of his mother and Gemma Earle. And it will take close supervision, what with the mischief-provoking Thorne girls in attendance. The impromptu supper gathering which includes Chris and Susa and their brood, as well as the group down from London, is gaining significance by the minute. At the door to his own suite he upgrades the gathering to a grand show of resilience—of sheer endurance. A salute to concerted effort. A universal cock-a-snoot, to put it in Anthony terms. Carrying on against all odds, to put it in wartime vernacular.

He crosses the bedroom and enters the dressing room, where he hears the blast of a hairdryer coming from the en suite bath beyond. A look into the bath discovers Laurel, starkers, applying both dryer and brush to her gleaming expanse of dark hair. She’s again forgotten to switch on the vent fan, so the mirrors defining the grooming area are fogged to the extent she’s unaware of his voyeurism.

For a few moments he’s only transfixed by her supple motions—bloody elegant, they are. But when she tilts forward to sweep the flow of hair up and away from the nape of her neck, she necessarily showcases the peach-curves of her arse and he’s instantly and irrevocably aroused; he’s one garment away from starkers himself when she catches sight of him in a clear patch of mirror.

She stiffens to her full height without relinquishing either hairdryer or brush, seemingly caught in a fight-or-flight decision before grasping the situation. Then she switches off the dryer and sets aside both tools whilst watching his mirror image advance on her reflection.

He struggles free of his final clothing restraint and presses into those ripe rosy curves, twines his arms around her and for the next few moments sees with his hands and feels with eyes—eyes kept trained on the widening patch of clear mirror. She’s watching as well when his touch descends from her breasts to her hips to her belly and into the soft delta below. She widens her stance ever so slightly to admit his hand to the wet darkness between her legs and moans just perceptibly at his preliminary probing. He eases her into one of the few positions untried since she got the go-ahead from the doctor three days ago. Bent at the waist, supported by forearms braced against the vanity top and his one hand spanning her pelvis, she urges herself backward against him. He treads for purchase on the smooth floor tiles, grips her shoulder with his other hand as one might a skittish mount, and plunges ahead.

At the panting finish neither has made an intelligible sound nor taken their gaze from the mesmerizing mirrors. A quarter-hour later, fairly drenched in stolen pleasure, they join the party, where no one seems to have missed them.

The kitchen, risen to the challenge, is holding forth admirably, producing savory tidbits and cold seafood at regular intervals. The terrace is off limits because of the threatening weather, so the group has assembled in the seldom-used billiards room where Chris and Emmet are having a go at the table. Amanda appears reanimated by Nate’s nearness; Susa, engaged in lively conversation with Brownie Yates, appears to be her ebullient self. Children are heard in the distance, squealing up and down the central corridor, no less in need of venting pent-up energies than are the adults. All that’s missing is the yap and yowl of the indoor animals, presumably shut away in the interest of humane treatment.

Gemma Earle pokes her head inside the door, surveys the room, frowns and withdraws.

“What was that about?” Colin asks Laurel, who was nearest the door. “She estimating when to serve the meal?”

“That would be my guess,” Laurel says.

“If she comes back tell her we’re havin’ another round of drinks and could use some more of the—never mind I’ll tell her myself,” he says and sets out for the kitchen.

He doesn’t have far to go because Gemma’s headed in his direction when he starts down the backstairs. “It’s Master Anthony,” she admits without urging. “A bit ago I thought he might be with you, but it appears we’ve rather lost track of him.”

“What do you mean lost track of him? Didn’t he take his supper in the kitchen with the other sprogs? I understood when I left to freshen up that Anthony was surrounded by minders.”

“He was. I can promise you he was. Myself, your mum, full kitchen staff, and two of the regular maids looking on, we were.”

“Then how do you account for—”

“He’s very convincing, he is.”

“Devious, don’t you mean.” Colin lets out a groan of resignation. “Let’s have it, then.”

“He excused himself from the kitchen polite as plums,” Gemma responds. “Said he’d be taking his evening meal with the grownups because he’d been doing so well with his lessons. Not so farfetched, that, because we all know he
has
been doing right well under these strained circumstances and it’s
not
unlike his mum to grant extra privilege now and then.”

“Yeh, that’s true, but can you please just get on with it? Why are we havin’ this conversation? What got you thinkin’ he wasn’t invited to have his evening meal with the grownups?—which he wasn’t, by the way.”

“Your mum was onto him before me. Caught on just a bit before I did. Out of character, he was. He nipped away without flaunting his superiority to the Thorne girls or lording it over his brother.”

“I don’t suppose either of you considered checking with Laurel or me before things got out of hand?” Colin says with an edge to his voice.

“I did. I rang you on the house phone and when that went unanswered I sent one of the girls to your rooms and she said you were . . . indisposed.”

Considering how many doors were wide open and what the chances were for an innocent intruder to monitor mirrored images without herself being seen, he wagers indisposed is not the word the girl used in telling it over.

That comeuppance takes the edge off his voice when he thanks Gemma for keeping him informed and requests the additional appetizer bits and the delayed dinner hour he almost forgot about.

“Straightaway,” she says to the appetizer request and retreats a few steps down the stairs, where she again pauses. “Now don’t go thinking things have gotten out of hand, dear, because they haven’t,” Gemma says and goes on to remind that Anthony’s behavior is not exactly out of the ordinary. “Do you care to count how many times he’s crept off in similar circumstances to devise one of his devilish schemes for scaring the very piss out of those little girls and terrifying poor Simon into hysterics? No, I’ll wager not. So off you go now. Back to your guests. Your mum and I will get the lad sorted, we will,” she calls over her shoulder and disappears round the bend in the stairs.

The weight he feels he’s gained whilst standing on the stairs must be the aftereffects of stolen pleasure now turned to a burden of guilty pleasure. He rather trudges the rest of the way to the first floor and rejoins the party, where he pours a stiff drink and encourages the others to follow his lead.

“Eat, drink, and make merry . . . provided she’s willing,” Colin repeats the tired old play on words that Rayce never tired of. And never failed to get a laugh from. But this lot either doesn’t get it or doesn’t want to get it. Laurel’s the only one paying him any mind and the look she shoots him has more to do with what went on earlier than anything happening at the moment.

He moves to join her at the far end of the room, where she’s grouped with Susa, Chris, and Emmet. He notes that Bemus and Tom Jensen have arrived whilst he was out of the room and that Amanda is giving Nate a run for his money at the billiards table.

“Where’s the little dog? Toby, is it? I miss his kibitzing—unless he happens to have a rodent in his mouth,” Amanda says to him as Nate lines up a shot. “He’s come back by now, hasn’t he, or is he shut away because of the—”

“Come back? From where?” Colin demands loudly, Nate’s shot be damned.

This takes some explanation on Amanda’s part; an explanation Colin doesn’t have to hear through to the finish. “The bleedin’ dog, the goddammed oast houses, I should’ve known,” he mutters on his way down the back stairs at a dead run.

Nate realigns the billiards cue, prepares to take the shot aborted by Colin’s loud leave-taking and is again thwarted. This time by Amanda, who grabs his shooting arm and pulls him aside, cue and all.

“I think you better go after him,” she says, producing in Nate a flashback to the era when it seemed like that’s all he ever heard; when going after Colin was a fulltime job, his principal pursuit in every sense of the word.

“I’m serious,” Amanda says, urging him away from the billiards table and toward the door. “Something’s going on and I think you better see what it is.”

He could ask why he’s getting the nod with so many other qualified candidates around—a laughably moot point—or ask why she’s doing her best to shove him out the door.

“Wait a minute, hold on.” He stops short of the door. “What did you say to Colin just now, what sent him out of here?”

“I asked where the dog was. You know, Anthony’s dog that’s usually underfoot whenever we get together. I asked if it was back from catching rodents at that oast house place and Colin was out of here like a shot.”