Ten Lords A-Leaping.

C. C. Benison.

6 AUGUST.

Dear Mum, Short note this morning as it's the big day! Mr. Christmas has to be up and out to Plymouth airfield early so he and the others from the village can learn how to properly jump from an airplane without doing themselves an injury. He has looked a bit green about the gills the last few days, I must say. I was fetching a loaf at Pattimore's yesterday morning before I dropped your letter at the post office and I thought Roger looked a bit off, too, and I said so. He came over all huffy claiming it's the weight he's lost so he can fit into one of those leotards jumpsuits they have to wear. Ha! I thought, but didn't say anything. I don't think his mother is best pleased her son is going to throw his 16 stone into thin air with only a sc.r.a.p of silk to boy bouy buoy him up. Enid was very quiet, and I could sense she was working herself up to one of her little "turns." I said to Karla when I got to the wicket at the post office, 10 and a quarter of choc limes if Roger doesn't pull out at the last minute. But Karla wouldn't take the bet. As you know, she's set herself against the Leaping Lords fund-raiser for the new church roof, thinks it's not proper, although I'm not sure now whether she means it's not proper for St. Nicholas's or the church council or Mr. C. or the peerage-or her! Perhaps she means everyone. Anyway, I've come around to Mr. C.'s point of view, as it should raise a very good sum quickly and let work start sooner than later on the roof, before water starts to drip on someone's poor head at Sunday service. I haven't told Karla I've shifted my views, though, as she is apt to get her back up. I don't blame her at any rate for not wanting to jump from an airplane. Neither do I, as I've said, and told Mr. C. before he even asked! He has been very good at chivvying folk in the village to join in, though, getting everyone on the PCC (except Karla!) to sign up and get pledges and getting dozens more in the village, too, although some of the attraction I think is the treat of a day at Egges...o...b.. Park where there's to be a summer fair, too, and the chance to meet the peerage-once they've landed safely on the ground, of course. Ten lords have signed up at last count, Mum, a good job on the part of Lord Kirkbride. I am looking forwards to the day! I've never been to Egges...o...b.. Hall, though it is not far. Have you? I can't remember if you've ever said. Of course, I've seen pictures, and they did film one of Agatha Christie's books there not long ago, The Seven Dials Mystery, I think. Egges...o...b.. Hall stood in for "Chimneys." Anyway, I'm driving Miranda to Egges...o...b.. in Mr. Christmas's car later this morning after he and the others take the coach they've hired to the airfield. And then he and Miranda will take the car later this afternoon or evening and start their journey to Kent for their holiday. They're stopping overnight in Exeter with Miranda's Aunt Julia-did I mention before? I wonder if we shall ever see her at the vicarage again? But I expect not-after everything that happened last year when poor Sybella Parry was found dead in that big j.a.panese drum. Anyway, I mustn't dwell on past afflictions. The Met Office says the "barbecue summer" is to continue through the weekend (with chance of late-evening showers in the southwest). The Met is often wrong, of course, but I have my fingers crossed, as I expect all who shall be parachuting do, as leaping into dark clouds might be rather alarming. The sun's shining right now on the lovely blooms I have in your old golddish goldfish bowl on the window ledge. Of course, it will be grand to have some time away from Thornford R myself and it was so thoughtful of Ellen to invite me to stay a few days with her and her husband at Egges...o...b... I'm staying with them at the Gatehouse rather than at the Hall, it turns out. Which is just as well, as I would feel odd b.u.mping into Lord or Lady Fairhaven coming out the loo or the like. It was good of Lord Fairhaven to let their housekeeper have an old friend (me!) to stay, though it may be a bit of a busman's, Mum, as Ellen told me on the phone yesterday their best daily can't help at the weekend as she has had a family tragedy. I won't mind, I don't think. It will be like being "in service" as great-Grannie was up at the Big House in Thornford before the Great War-only with a dishwasher and a microwave and the other mod cons, of course. It will be good to see Ellen again, too. Hard to imagine it's thirty years-more!-since we were at cookery school together in London. I was never quite sure why we stopped writing, so I'm looking forward to a catch-up! Well, must go, Mum. I'll have to see that Miranda is properly packed for the trip and try to get a decent breakfast into Mr. C. He might be a bit squiffy this morning. I popped into the pub last night where all our "skydivers" were gathered having a bit of a knees up and there was much fortifying with Dutch courage, I must say! There's going to be a few thick heads on the coach this morning. I shouldn't care to jump from an airplane with a d.i.c.ky tummy, but there's always a price to be paid, isn't there! Cats are well as is b.u.mble, who will be minded while I'm away by one of the Swan children from the pub, though they haven't sorted themselves out as to whom who. Love to Aunt Gwen. Glorious day!

Much love, Madrun.

P.S. I can't believe that mobility scooter I ordered for you last month hasn't arrived yet! Aunt Gwen was telling me on the phone yesterday. I'll have to leave it be for the days I'm at Egges...o...b.., but when I return I shall let ScootersPlus have a piece of my mind!.

CHAPTER ONE.

"The things I do for the Church of England," Tom murmured, thinking he might as well have shouted it aloud. One could barely hear a thing anyway what with the fearsome roar. He could hear his heart crashing in his chest, though. It sounded like a big ba.s.s drum, accompanied by a simmering tintinnabulation along the fibres of his nerves, and he rather wished he could exercise some control over it-but he couldn't. The messy, squashy, beaty thing was coursing inexorably to a horrible bursting point. He would surely die before it was his turn. He would leave his daughter fatherless. It was too cruel. Miranda was already motherless.

His eyes raced around the fuselage with its great girdling ribs. The belly of Jonah's whale would have seemed like this, if the beast were aluminium and tore through the air at alarming speed. As a calming strategy, as the queue shuffled towards the beast's open jaws-to doom, surely-he focused his attention on the back of Mark's head, which was squashed into a leather helmet reminiscent of a Roaring Twenties aviator farce. Mark Tucker, faithful husband, young father, brilliant accountant, budding novelist, the best church council treasurer a priest could have. What if something unthinkable happens? How will I ever bear Violet's reproach? Those fearsome pinp.r.i.c.k eyes of hers.

But Violet was young. She could marry again. Mark would have set her up nicely with insurance. Her rich in-laws doted on her. She was not without education. She could find work, keep herself occupied. Oh, it would be dreadful at first. Too, too dreadful. The grief, the pain. He knew these things. But time heals. It does. She would carry on. You do, don't you. Well, don't you?

What have I done?

This is all my doing, Tom thought. I'm the one who pressed for this. But it seemed the right thing at the time. Anything to avoid years' worth of bring-and-buys and carboot sales and karaoke nights to raise funds for church repairs. Something that would bring the cash in a flash. It's always such a bore lying awake at night worrying more about stones than souls. And it would be enormously satisfying to rid St. Nicholas's churchyard of that ghastly plywood thermometer. It insulted him every time he walked up the pea shingle path to the church, with its sad little red plastic capillary and its unaccountably inelegant hand lettering. He had fought members of his church council against having such a thing set up by the north porch, and had lost. If funds raised from today's event proved insufficient, well ... The village had among its citizens a lovable kleptomaniac. Perhaps it had a likable arsonist.

The queue shuffled forwards. Tom stared past Mark's shoulder towards the gaping portal. Strong light, undifferentiated and cold, seemed to pour towards him and sear his startled eyes. Might this be what our moment of death is like? One of his parishioners in Bristol had described it thus, urgently, wonderingly, in a state of euphoria as she faded in and out of consciousness on her deathbed. The light, Father, the light! she'd rasped, her fingernails digging into his palm. I can see Our Lord, oh! And, look, is that Ivor Novello?

Mark bent forwards slightly, and what greeted Tom's eyes, try as he did to look away, was neither beckoning Jesus nor disoriented matinee idol, but tidy tiny patches of warm greens and golds knitted together like a fancy patchwork coat. How delightful! Heaven might look exactly like Devon. And look, off in the distance, the patterns of colour merged into a crease of soft grey brushed by a transcendent haze. Wasn't that ...? My G.o.d, it was! The Channel! How high in the air were they?

And then there was a terrible shout and Mark vanished. Tom shuffled forwards, to the head of the queue, into the full ring of light, and said a silent prayer. Now it was his turn. Blood roared in his ears; his heart swelled in his chest.

Some little time pa.s.sed-really, very little time (plunging through the ether did rather tend to play havoc with time)-when it dawned on Tom that all might not be kosher. Not frighteningly, horrifyingly not kosher. More worryingly, troublingly not kosher.

He had done everything as he ought to have done, as instructed by their skydiving teacher at the airfield. When the jumpmaster next to the door of the airplane roared at him the "go" command, the fear that had punctuated his waking thoughts for the last week, the fear that had grown through their four hours of on-ground instruction, the fear that had gripped him in the fuselage of this airplane, had hurtled to a crescendo. His heart leapt into his throat like a flapping fish and in a blinding moment of panic he'd seized the frame of the door like grim death. But the jumpmaster gently tapped his shoulder. It felt like an angel's grace, and his fright ebbed. He vaulted into the sky, somersaulted, gaped with wonder at the dome of hard blue and wispy white, and-he astonished himself entirely-felt a mighty whoop exit his throat as the adrenaline terror coursing along his veins turned to joy and he embraced the wildness of the moment. Air rushed past his popping ears-a new roar-as he executed his opening stance-legs up high behind, back arched, back up-while he tumbled. He was upside down in the sky! And then, in a second, he was facing the horizon, gasping as the line between earth and sky seemed to rise higher and higher and higher. Yet oddly, he felt suspended, held in place only by the whipping wind that pressed against his body.

The free fall was over in a seeming instant. Novices, he and the other villagers weren't as high in the sky as the Leaping Lords would soon be. Tom pushed down on his rip cord, felt a sudden tug along his body, and heard the distinctive whump! of rushing air suddenly trapped. It was exultation. His whole body lifted into the sky as air filled the cells of his canopy. The feverish rush of noise and wind stopped. The thrumming in his veins settled into a giddy groove as a kind of peace flowed through, above, and around him. All was silent but for the hum of the vanishing airplane, above, and the popcorn pops of other opening chutes. Thin clouds hovered over the Channel, he noted as he pulled at his steering toggles, but over this patch of Devon the sky was clear, allowing an unimpeded view of the collage of fields, ripe with golden grain this early August, of the dark green coombes riven by streams glittering in the sunlight like tinsel thread, and of the snug groupings of houses, their slate roofs turned to flashing planes of silver. Below him, too, like flowers flung from a balcony, fluttered the bright canopies of the other skydivers from the village who had risen-bless them all-to this sponsored fund-raising challenge: eager Mark, for instance, who had needed no persuading; tentative Roger Pattimore, who had strained to lose a stone to come below the maximum allowable weight; undaunted Jeanne Neels, who wouldn't let being born with one hand stop her; octogenarian Michael Woolnough, untroubled by his advanced age-all of them members of his parochial church council, the entirety of which, but for one, signed on for the adventure, along with forty more from Thornford Regis.

Tom tugged his right strap, sending him in a gentle twirl. Puzzled, though not concerned, he wondered a little that no one-in the air or on the ground-had tried to communicate with him on his squawk box, the radio nestled above his chest strap. Jumper Number Nine, you should be preparing to land, or the like. Most likely he was doing so splendidly, no one felt obliged to correct him. Really, once you'd got past the stomach-churning bit of leaping from an airplane at thirty-five hundred feet, it was all a bit of a lark. He was starting to feel a.s.suredly old-hand at it as he floated downwards, the earth and all its charms sharpening in delineation. He could clearly make out now the dark E-shape that was Egges...o...b.. Hall and the pale circle of its forecourt with two roads leading from it like shoots on a sprouting bean gently winding and disappearing into a thicket of greenery. And there, to the east of the Hall, on a little hillock, was the famous Egges...o...b.. Labyrinth, intricate and meticulous as if a sky G.o.d had pressed his signet ring into the soil.

Or was it west?

Tom felt himself vaguely disoriented as he circled around, more quickly now. Yes, the Labyrinth was east. That was Dartmoor to the north. The transition from lush pasture and woodland to bleak tableland never seemed so abrupt as it was from this bird's-eye view. It was as if two worlds had collided with each other, knitted only by a silver seam that was surely Eggesbrooke, one of the streams rising on the moor. Westwards he twisted. Was that a stable block? And that the kitchen garden? That large irregular shape had to be the dower house. And what was that gorgeous turquoise lozenge glittering so blindingly in the middle of the lawn? He couldn't tell, he was corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g east again, now able to make out what had to be the Gatehouse and its forecourt, and there, a little farther east down a licorice strip of road, a cl.u.s.ter of cottage roofs and miniature gardens, and one square Norman church tower-evidence of the tiny village of Abbotswick.

North and westwards again, he noted the irregular mosaic of parkland and gardens cede to one large lawn, on which someone-one of Lord Fairhaven's staff presumably-had chalked a fat Greek cross, white on green. The parachutes beneath him were streaming towards it like obedient geese.

The cross was his destination, too, the place of safe landing. At one arm of the cross was an elevated wind sock, its narrow end stiffened easterly by the west wind blowing off the Atlantic. This was his beacon and guide. He must loop around, steer into the ground wind, as indicated by the sock, and prepare to glide smoothly towards the target to make a soft landing. Like stepping off a step, their instructor had said in his rea.s.suring voice. Tom glanced at the altimeter on his left wrist as Egges...o...b.. Hall and its outbuildings fell behind him and he swooped down towards the expanse of the western lawn, feeling the earth rise to greet him with a sudden and unexpected force. The sweet tranquility of the canopied descent had somehow confounded time's ineluctable pa.s.sage. He was two hundred feet nearer the ground than he had imagined he was. It was here, at this height, that he was to prepare to land, to "flare," as the instructor had said, to make his final approach in such a fashion as to ensure comfort and safety. It was here, too, that his squawk box was to intrude with voice commands to ease the novice's final descent. But where is the voice?

"h.e.l.lo," he addressed the box, concern giving over to alarm. "h.e.l.lo? Jumper Number Nine here awaiting instructions ... h.e.l.lo?"

The thing was mute.

It was then Tom realised something was awry. Something was worryingly, troublingly not kosher.

He wasn't being ignored. The radio was dead.

The ground loomed up faster, no pleasant pasture now. The instructor's directives flew, half remembered, into Tom's brain: Take toggles at shoulders, pull down to breastbone, turn your wrists to your body and push the toggles between your legs in a smooth motion. Yes, he thought with giddy relief, he would make the target, not go hurtling into a hedgerow or drop onto the gorse-covered, rock-strewn moor. Yes, he was slowing, but now he felt little gentleness in his approach. The solid unforgiving earth seemed poised to open and swallow him. From the corners of his eyes, he could see a few who had already landed, jumpsuited, stopping in the scooping of their nylon canopies, staring up at him, helpless in the face of danger.

And now, heart again surging into his throat, eyes horrified to see individuated blades bloom in the chalky gra.s.s, he quickly lifted his legs behind him in the approved manner, then as quickly extended them, set to land first on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, to absorb the shock. But the ground raced to meet him with astonishing fury. As his feet grazed the armour of the soil, he felt only helpless surprise at his contorting, ungovernable body. His landing turned collapse. Something buckled and twisted. He sensed injury before his brain registered it and when it did, it came as the purest, brightest burst of pain.

CHAPTER TWO.

"Tom Christmas."

In the corona of light from the tent's open flap the face fell in shadow. But the voice-pleasant, a.s.sured, faintly nasal in that North American way-was recognisable. "Jane Allan. How very good to see you again."

"The last time we met you had a black eye."

"I'm not normally accident-p.r.o.ne, I don't think." Tom frowned down the length of his supine form, past the right trouser leg pushed up to his knee, towards his elevated and naked foot. His swollen ankle was encased in a cold compress. "That time"-Tom wiggled his toes absently-"I got in the way of someone's busy elbow." He was referring to a graveside service at Thornford months earlier that had turned into a bit of a melee. "This time-"

"I heard." Jane let the flap fall behind her and stepped farther into the tent's stuffy interior, brushing a few damp strands from her brow. Her features resolved into the warm, rea.s.suring eyes, the delicate but determined jawline, and the lean little apostrophe of a nose that Tom remembered from their last meeting. "I gather your radio didn't work."

"Still, we did take the training and I might have descended to earth with more finesse."

"Your first time?"

"And likely last. I doubt I shall have the opportunity again," he hastened to add, not to appear fainthearted before fair women. He struggled to rise onto his elbows on the narrow cot. In truth he was still suffering a bit of shock. In the second before his frangible body embraced the planet's inflexible surface, he wondered with a strange detachment which bones might crack, which ligaments might tear. But he was, as the St. John Ambulance volunteer told him, very lucky. His feet, not his posterior nor his hands, had met the chalky gra.s.s, as prescribed in the training, but his right foot had inverted sharply, taking his full weight as his body careened awkwardly and collapsed in a sideways heap. The pain had been skewering, as if an arrow had pierced him. He couldn't help but cry out and in a thrice Miranda was at his side, tugging and pulling at the nylon that had rolled over him in soft waves. But after being rushed in a van to the St. John Ambulance tent tucked by Egges...o...b.. Hall, he had been diagnosed with that most ba.n.a.l of sports injuries, a sprained ankle.

"Jamie's suggested I take the opportunity sometime-skydiving seems to run in the family a bit." Jane tucked her dark hair behind her ear. "But I've told him I'll wait until our kids are old enough to better cope with being motherless."

"As opposed to fatherless."

Jane smiled. "I've rarely brought ours to these Leaping Lords events, for that very reason. I know the boys do good works, but I'm not sure how popular skydiving really is with wives and girlfriends and mothers." She glanced at the third figure in the tent, an older woman who had silently and efficiently attended Tom earlier. "We camp followers don't always follow."

"But here you are."

"Well, I thought I would like to come down to Devon." She shot Tom an enigmatic glance. "Jamie had an Old Salopian event to attend at Exeter before the Leaping Lords on Sat.u.r.day, and so Hector and Georgina invited us to stay over a few days. Our two are in Scotland with Jamie's parents. By the way, I met your daughter coming out of the tent just now. She looks well. Settling in okay?"

"Yes, actually. Miranda's quite fiercely independent."

"So is Olivia, my daughter. They'd make a fine pair. And you've met Marguerite, I see." She nodded towards the other woman, who turned and smiled in acknowledgement.

"Marguerite?" Tom glanced at the third in the tent.

"Hector's mother."

"I am sorry. I didn't realise." He had been attended to by the Dowager Countess Marguerite, Lady Fairhaven. Fuzzed with pain, he had rather wondered why the two lime-and-orange-kitted St. John folk had melted from the tent after a few words with the mufti-clad figure.

"I should have introduced myself." Marguerite's voice was resonant, chesty, as if fashioned by ten thousand Gauloises. She was wearing a man's white shirt, tails knotted in front, sleeves rolled up her arms, and loose-fitting white linen trousers. But it was her peerless blue eyes undimmed by age-only the fan of lines from each corner proclaimed the dowager countess surely in her sixties-and her wide sensuous mouth that held Tom's attention. Here was great beauty, not diminished, but somehow refashioned by time. Tom sensed this was a woman much used to lingering glances.

"And I am trained, as is Jane here," Marguerite continued. "If one lives in the country, as I do, the St. John course proves quite useful. Doctors aren't always to hand."

"Marve." Jane turned. "This is the Reverend Tom Christmas, vicar of St. Nicholas's in Thornford Regis."

"Yes, I made that deduction. You wear your dog collar even beneath a jumpsuit. I believe you're the son of Mary Carroll and Iain Christmas. Am I correct?"

Tom nodded.

"I thought so," Marguerite said. "There's something at my cottage I should like to show you."

Tom looked down at his foot helplessly.

"Later, of course," she said briskly. "When the swelling goes down a bit, we'll put your ankle in a compression wrap. There are crutches somewhere in one of the attic rooms. You'll find walking a bit tender. We can try getting you up later." She frowned in thought. "A cast boot, perhaps, though your sprain isn't severe."

Tom made a noise somewhere between a groan and grunt.

"Pain returning?"

"No, it's quite numb now. I was thinking how inconvenient this all is. I've plans to drive with my daughter to Exeter this evening to visit my sister-in-law and then go on to London in the morning." For my birthday celebrations, he didn't add. "I expect I won't be able to drive the car."

Marguerite tapped his compress with a slim finger. "I have a brilliant idea. Why don't you convalesce here at Egges...o...b.. for a day or two?"

"Lady Fairhaven, I couldn't possibly-"

"Nonsense."

Tom flicked a glance at Jane, who was regarding the older woman with an interest bordering on curiosity.

"I should point out I have my daughter with me-"

"Splendid! She'll be good company for Max, my grandson ... and I believe your housekeeper is visiting with Hector and Georgie's housekeeper this weekend."

"Well ... yes, she is," Tom responded, thinking how remarkably informed the dowager countess was. He glanced again at Jane for some kind of adjudicating signal. Jane and her husband, Jamie-Viscount and Viscountess Kirkbride-he had met once, under somewhat fraught circ.u.mstances, but they had proved easy and delightful company, and, unprompted, of great service: It had been Jamie who had offered and organised the talents of the Leaping Lords to raise funds for St. Nicholas. The others at any Egges...o...b.. weekend house party, however, would be unknown to him.

Jane flashed Tom a rea.s.suring smile. "Yes, stay over, Tom. It would be good to have your company."

"We're only a few family this weekend," Marguerite continued, "Hector and Georgina and the adorable Max, of course. Georgina's brother will likely leave tomorrow or Monday."

"Oliver." Jane supplied the name.

"And Jane and Jamie. Quite a small party. You won't be overwhelmed."

"But ..." Tom groped for a kind excuse. He felt very much the interloper. "Clothes!"

"Ah, yes, I hadn't thought of that." Marguerite's doubt lasted only a beat. "But weren't you on your way to London? What were you planning to wear when you got there?"

"Of course! Our luggage is in the boot."

"Then it's settled. I'll have Gaunt fetch your things from your car." Marguerite frowned. "You haven't a service tomorrow?"

"I'm on a fortnight's holiday."

"Good. Now I'll change the ice along your ankle and we'll wheel you out of here. You must keep your feet elevated for a while longer. I asked them to keep you on the trolley, so you could be pushed out onto the lawn. You don't want to miss the show, do you? Jane, pull the tent flap back."

Moments later, Tom emerged semi-upright like a pasha amid a pile of propped-up hospital pillows onto Egges...o...b..'s sleek and sunlit south lawn. A few heads turned, all recognisable. Half of Thornford, it seemed, had motored to Egges...o...b.. Park for the fund-raiser, and a smattering of clapping and cheering-half in good-natured mockery-followed. Faintly mortified, glad Miranda wasn't witness (he couldn't see her), Tom bobbed his head and waved in imitation of a world-weary monarch. He got a laugh.

Egges...o...b..'s grounds were festooned as if for a summer fete. As he was trundled down the gently sloping grounds, the countess and viscountess straining a bit so he wouldn't slip off the trolley and fly over the ha-ha, he noted a few of the traditional amus.e.m.e.nts for children, the bouncy castle and face-painting stall, among the usual homely carnival distractions. Hector and Georgina, Earl and Countess of Fairhaven, had given over their house and grounds for the day for this charitable event, for which Tom was most grateful. Cream teas amid the rich foliage of summer with, as backdrop, a rose-pink palace of gables and chimneys twisted into shapes a confectioner would envy was a great enticement to the villagers, especially as the Hall itself, usually closed the first two weeks in August when the family was installed, was open-to-view for the day. Electric carts took people between the Hall and the landing field, so visitors could admire those with the gumption to jump from an airplane, but the piece de resistance was the Leaping Lords, a pool of peers of the realm who lent their time and talents a few times in the year to worthy causes. Ten lords were on tap this season and they would soon leap into the blue, not from the mingy few thousand feet that Tom and the novices had, but from a gasp-making twenty thousand-Tom shuddered anew thinking about it-free-falling through the air not only with the greatest of ease but for a heart-stoppingly long time, too, before gravity's inexorable pull obliged them to open their chutes. Formation skydiving was the Leaping Lords' claim to fame, feats of aerobatics and athleticism, the linked peers together shape-shifting in the sky, all of which would be as flying ants if it weren't for closed-circuit television.

"This should do," Marguerite said as she and Jane twisted the trolley around to face a giant television screen set by the ha-ha's stone border.

"Thank you both." Tom studied their distorted reflections in the glossy ebony lozenge. There were three other TVs-two on the terrace off the drawing room and another farther along the ha-ha-framing the lawn like a set of brackets.

"Shouldn't be long, I don't think." Marguerite glanced at her watch. "Now, however do they do this? Someone wears a camera on his head, I think. Jane?"

"Someone they hire stays in the plane with a camera and films them through the open door. And one of the skydivers wears one on his head, so we get different views of the same thing. I think it's to be Jamie. He's done it before. He says the videographer always ..." Jane's voice trailed off. Tom noted her eyes slitting as she peered into the middle distance, towards the cl.u.s.ter of striped cafe umbrellas on the terrace. "... always has to be conscious of where he's aiming his head ... Marve, is that Lucinda?"

Marguerite turned to look, and Tom's eyes followed. What he saw was a tall and slender young woman with fair floating hair and a light diaphanous skirt striding with an a.s.sured gait down the terrace steps onto the shimmering lawn, an immense straw hat in one hand. Even at a distance, he could make out the translucent skin, the slim neck rising from the plunging keyhole opening of her simple blouse. He rather wished he wasn't, in his awkward state, stirred by this beauteous vision, but he was.

"Yes, it is Lucinda." Marguerite's tone seemed to contain multiple shades of meaning though her expression gave none away. "I thought she summered in Cap Ferrat. I'll go and say h.e.l.lo, shall I? Georgina's probably in her bedroom with a cold cloth on her forehead."

Tom leaned a little to the left, as Marguerite's moving figure was blocking Egges...o...b..'s newest attraction.

Jane noted the gesture and said, half amused: "She's very beautiful, Lucinda."

"Yes, she is," Tom responded primly, straightening himself against the pillows.

Jane laughed. "Vicar, you're allowed some frailties."

"Am I? All right then. She's quite stunning. Who is she?"

"Georgie and Olly's sister ... well, half sister. Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett. Lucy, to family."

"And is he her husband?" He studied the slim, pale man with modishly long fair hair following a step behind and recognised that a little envy had crept into his voice. Jane didn't seem to notice.

"No," she replied. "Lucy's already shucked two husbands, and she's only in her mid-twenties. That's ... it's a little complicated. That's Dominic fforde-Beckett. He's Lucy's cousin-and Oliver's and Georgina's, too, of course. They're all related on the fforde-Beckett side."