“Be so good as to speak on your own behalf,” Bram said. “I don’t require you to offer gratitude for me. Wynn is, as always, a most thoughtful host.”
“Do pour yourself a sherry, Zebedee,” Wynn said. “If you care to smoke after dinner, there are cigarettes in the boxes around the house: please do help yourself, but I ask that my guests do not smoke in here or the dining room. I have a quite irrational aversion to the smell. I will just send to see if Jessamine will join us. Do please enjoy catching up with each other.”
Zeb was fairly sure they’d already managed all the courteous interaction of which a group of Wyckhams was likely to be capable. He went to look at the paintings on the walls as a pretext for not talking to anyone, slipping his hand into his pocket as he didso, and realised he’d forgotten to transfer the rosary from his other jacket. Blast.
There were several rather good pictures, including a Turner seascape and two portraits of a woman in her thirties, one of which had the sensuality of John Singer Sargent’s best work. In fact, Zeb realised as he examined them, itwasa Sargent, and the other one was John Everett Millais. That must have cost a few bob to commission, and he wondered who the woman was. Wynn had never married, so far as he knew, but Lackaday House’s previous owner, his father, had died around 1880—
“For goodness’ sake, must you?” Bram snapped in his ear.
Zeb jumped, startled. “What?”
“Fiddling and fidgeting. It is intolerable.”
Zeb had no idea what he was talking about for a second, and then realised he’d picked up a box of matches from the table in front of him and had been playing with it, pushing the drawer in and out. He hadn’t noticed himself doing it; he never did. “Sorry,” he said automatically, and then could have kicked himself. He had no need to apologise to Bram, for anything, ever.
At the door, Wynn clapped his hands. “Well! We are all here except Jessamine, and we will not wait for her. Let us go through.”
Two
They filed through to a grand dining hall with a table that would seat thirty. Their party of seven looked decidedly meagre clustered at one end, particularly since there was an eighth place set. Wynn nodded at the dour footman. “Miss Jessamine may not be joining us tonight. Leave the setting in case she changes her mind, but we will begin.”
“Is that the young lady I saw as I arrived?” Zeb asked.
“That’s right. Your cousin, or first cousin once removed, though we need not split hairs. As it were.” He chuckled.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Zeb could feel several people looking daggers at him, but he didn’t trust anyone here to explain matters discreetly at a convenient juncture. “I wasn’t aware I had a young lady cousin. Is she your daughter, Hawley?”
Bram made an explosive noise which Zeb connected too late to the footman who was serving out soup, as if the staff wouldn’tknow exactly what was going on.
Hawley had no interest in manners or discretion, but his lip curled anyway. “Of course she is not my daughter. The girl is barely ten years my junior.”
“She’s eighteen, and you’re thirty-five if you’re a day,” Elise pointed out. “I know you like to consider yourself an enfant terrible, but you’re really getting alittlepast that, don’t you think?”
“Thirty-four. And I’m quite sure a woman’s thirtieth birthday comes before a man’s fortieth.” Hawley delivered that with a smirk.
“That makes no mathematical sense at all,” Bram said.
Hawley clearly felt his aphorism should have received more applause. “How you can presume to comment on Art with your cloddish literality—”
Zeb felt a pang of sympathy for Wynn, unwittingly inviting this mess to his dining table, and for Gideon, not even a Wyckham but stuck here listening to them. “I still don’t understand,” he said, hoping to pull the conversation back on track. “Who is she?”
“It’s a sad story,” Wynn said. “You know I had a sister, Laura. Well, not quite a sister. She was our grandfather’s daughter by his fifth wife, born after his death.”
Zeb worked that out. “So, she was your aunt? My aunt too, I suppose.”
“Indeed, but she and I were born in the same year. My father took full charge of her, and Laura and I were brought up as siblings.”
“Why did your father take charge of her?” Zeb asked. “Whathappened to her mother? Oh, was that the housemaid?”
Bram harrumphed with annoyance. “Kindly don’t dredge up family history.”
“We’re talking about family history. And I’m sure Walter Wyckham’s last wife was his housemaid: I remember Father complaining about it.”
“Yes, he was nearly eighty when love’s young dream struck him in the servants’ quarters. Senility is a marvellous thing,” Hawley remarked.
“So why did—”
“There is no need to pry,” Bram said over him. “For heaven’s sake, hold your tongue.”
