The Bluebonnet Betrayal (28 page)

The air hung heavy with the unspoken invitation for a bit of one-on-one birding with his Lordship, but I swept the notion away brightly. “You'll have to keep an eye on them for us—won't he, Vesta?” I called over my shoulder. “And let us know how they get on.”

“Yes, yes, of course, I'll do that.” He left looking a bit crestfallen that I hadn't taken the bait. I felt only a tiny twinge of guilt—as grateful as I was to him for hiring me, I didn't think I should have to repay him with my life.

I got our sandwiches at lunch—apparently, Vesta didn't want to overplay her hand with Akash, showing up twice in one day. When I returned to the TIC, she was seated at the computer in the back half of our small space, with a fist of triumph in the air. “There you are, now, old girl,” she said, “I knew you'd come through for me.”

She wasn't cheering for her roast chicken sandwich, but rather at a photo online of Princess Anne.

“You see what she's wearing there?” Vesta asked, eyes shining as she pointed at the computer screen, which showed her Royal Highness shaking hands with someone at a charity do the day before. “That buttercup-yellow Chanel suit. She's worn it every spring for the past ten years, and so I put a few bob down on her to wear it this season, too. She's a great one for recycling—I knew she wouldn't let me down.”

Vesta, I learned early on, liked to place the occasional bet. “Did you win much?”

She swiveled in the chair and scooted over to our table. “Twenty pounds,” she said, shrugging. “It's just a bit of fun, only the odd wager.”

Odd is right. “Taking a flutter” it's called—placing these small, quirky bets. I've never seen the attraction of it, although it's practically a national pastime. Bookmakers will take on the silliest wagers—at their own discretion—and I'm sure a fair amount of betting goes on between private citizens.

When my sister, Bianca, was eleven, she went through a phase of betting on just about anything with our best friend, Stephen, ten at the time. I was nine and felt far older than the two of them—although it may be because I felt a bit left out. Bianca and Stephen would smirk and snigger as they placed ten-pence bets with each other over whether the next song on the radio would be U2. I don't think I even knew who Bono was at that age. And I think they liked wagering not because of the money, but because “taking a flutter” sounded slightly naughty to them. Still, to this day Bianca will bet on the most absurd things—like the year she bet me five pounds that someone would wear a real wedding cake as a hat at Ascot. Wouldn't you know, the one time I take her up on a wager, I lose.

Vesta departed after lunch. She worked for me half-time and always acted as if she had someplace she needed to rush off to. Toward the end of the afternoon, I made myself a cup of tea and sought inspiration for a new visitors' leaflet that would explain the history of the estate. “The Fotheringills,” I typed, “have a long association with Suffolk, and in fact, Hoggin Hall has been the family seat since the Jurassic period.” Delete. All right, perhaps it only seemed that long after a morning spent listening to Linus's tales of his waggish ancestors and their shenanigans.

I stood at the door, locking up at the end of the day, and in the window's reflection I caught a glimpse of something—a sight across the road that froze my blood. There, just beside the red post box at the corner—was it someone in a wide-brimmed field hat? I whipped round, but saw no one.
Stop imagining things.
I'd left my old life behind, and only Bianca knew where I lived.

Pipit Cottage sat in the middle of a row of former sixteenth-century flax workers' lodgings. “It suits you,” Linus had said, almost shyly, when he showed me my lodgings, “with your flaxen hair”—my first clue that he might wish to think of me as more than an employee. The cottage was small, but I had distilled my life into its essence and needed little. I had a cozy sitting room with fireplace, a kitchen with all the essentials, a bedroom up a steep set of stairs, and a back garden that had been trimmed, mowed, fertilized, and sprayed to within a centimeter of its life before I moved in. Now in spring, I was allowing it to grow into what I wanted—disreputable, wild, full of birdsong.

I let myself in as the road traffic began to thicken, flipped the switch on the kettle, and pulled off my heels to better climb the steep stairs. I stripped off my uniform and stretched, folded the thin wool cardigan, hung up the pencil skirt, and tossed the white blouse in a corner. We were nothing if not official, Vesta and I, in our navy-blue outfits. I pulled on denim trousers, a T-shirt, and a thick, woolly cardigan that reached almost to my knees. It had been my mum's, and everyone said the color, a warm chestnut, set off her golden-brown hair perfectly.

The door knocker clattered, and I considered the short list of possible callers. Rosy from The Hair Strand, telling me it's time for a trim? It wouldn't be Vesta—she knew where I lived, but we never called on each other. Linus—oh, let's hope he hasn't got so far that he'd drop by with a bottle of wine.

But it was none of them. Instead, Rupert Lanchester stood on my doorstep.

Every great mystery needs an Alibi

eOriginal mystery and suspense from Random House

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