“Oh, it got in the way when I was fixing the motorcar.”
He looked startled, which was what I had been intending, but the look quickly gave way to something dangerously close to a leer. “You don’t say. Fine figure of a girl like you, I’d like to see you bent over a fender.”
Even the servile version of Lady Dorothy had to object to that. “Edward! Miss Russell is Veronica’s University friend.”
“But the gel’s married, isn’t she? Not too many blushes left to her.”
His brother’s widow stepped in before I could choose which verbal skewer to run him through with. “Miss Russell has come to see if she can find any clues as to where Vivian might have gone.”
“Clues—hah! You make her sound like a Miss Christie sleuth.”
I smoothed my napkin across my knees. “Not Baroness Orczy? Lady Molly, perhaps?”
His blank stare suggested he was not a fan of the Baroness’ detective. My polite smile caused him to harrumph and reach for his glass.
Restored by drink, he attacked the soup that had been laid before him, not waiting for either of us to take up our spoons. I winced at his first slurp, and at every one that followed, wishing I had some crusty bread with which to drown the noise. As he clattered the spoon against the bottom of his bowl, I tossed out a topic of conversation, thinking he might chase it rather than the last scraps of carrot.
“I understand that felicitations are in order, my Lord. For your fiftieth birthday. I hope your party was satisfactory?”
“Have to do such things, it’s expected, even if it costs an arm and a leg. At least my sister didn’t pull her disappearing stunt beforehand, turn everything on its head.”
Well, if the man was so obliging as to bring up the topic, I was happy to run with it. “So where do you think she’s gone?”
“Probably on a ship to South America or something.” He shoved his plate away, causing the butler to step briskly forward.
“Do you think she convinced the nurse to go along?”
“I do. And then tipped the woman overboard the minute they set off.”
I shot a startled glance across at Lady Dorothy, but she was intent on straightening her silver. “Really?”
“Violent little minx, my sister. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt, twist you around her finger, but she was a flirt when she was small and vicious when she grew up—she came after me half a dozen times, once with a poker. Bled like Billy-o! See the scar?” He parted his hair, although I could see nothing past the lumps and discolorations of his mottled scalp.
“Artists, you know,” I said, keeping my irritation in check. “Temperamental sorts.”
“Art? You mean her scribbles? Kept her out of mischief, I suppose—you gels need a hobby, don’t you, until you’re married? Not that she’d ever marry, what with Bedlam and all. But I never saw her do anything I’d want to hang over the fireplace.”
I glanced down at the fork in my hand, idly contemplating what his scalp would look like with four neat holes to punctuate the bash-mark, but it would appear that the butler was well accustomed to the reactions of outraged guests, since he chose that moment to appear at my elbow and insert his dark arm into my field of vision.
I let go the fork, and dropped my hands to my lap as the oblivious Marquess drivelled on about a painting he’d helped a friend buy recently down in London, some Renaissance battle piece the size of a room with rearing horses and slashing swords, you could see the muscles and blood, now that was art, wouldn’t you say, Miss Russell?
“So they tell me. Are you often down in London, my Lord?”
“I get down occasionally. Not as much as I’d like—I’ve let out the London house to a bunch of Americans. God knows what they’re doing to the place, parties and whatnot with Reds and Negroes, bugger-boys and those idiotic Flapper girls. Probably using drugs and sticking their damned chewing gum on my Regency tables.”
Lady Dorothy murmured a protest at the word bugger, but I nodded solemnly. “Yes, Americans can be tough on the furniture.”
“Ought to be shot, all of them.”
“What, Americans? That seems a bit excessive.”
“No, the Nancy boys! Have you any idea—”
“Edward, please.”
The poor woman was so close to tears, I had to lay my teasing aside. “I’m curious, my Lord, why did you let out the house if you prefer to live in London?” I knew why: he couldn’t afford to keep it up. But I wanted to hear his reason.
“Responsibilities. Selwick needs a master. Place like this doesn’t run itself, you know. Tenants need a firm hand. And there’s Dot, here—she doesn’t have anyplace to go. I’m guessing the gel and her boy will end up here sooner or later.”
Dot, I suspected, would be as happy to be given free rein here, just as the gel, Ronnie, might have come back with little Simon long before this were it not for her overbearing uncle. As for the tenants…
“So what do you grow, here at Selwick? Not really wheat country, is it?”
“Um, well, some wheat. I think. Seem to be a lot of sheep.”
“The Baileys make a lovely Double Gloucester,” Lady Dorothy offered.
The Marquess brightened. “Yes, cows do fine, on some of the farms. And lots of pigs—nice bacon for the breakfast table, I’ll say that for them. Rents keep falling, of course—farmers always complaining, but you don’t see them starving, do you?” He laughed.
In fact, the children of farmers were the first to go hungry come drought, flood, or disease, although I bit back the remark.
Come to that, my topics of dinner conversation seemed to be growing as thin as my smile. We’d failed to find common ground in literature, art, or agriculture, and I refused to offer up my own interest in religion on the altar of his ignorance. What did that leave? The Fawcett search for a lost civilisation in the Amazon? Churchill returning us to the gold standard? The Scopes arrest? No, not that—I doubted this…person followed any news from America other than horse races and who was boarding a ship for Southampton.
Normally, given a choice between politics and sport, I would dredge up the names of some cricket players or make enquiry as to a preference for dry flies versus wet when it came to the local streams—but honestly, I could not be bothered.
“So tell me, my Lord, what’s the political situation hereabouts?”
Ronnie’s mother made a choking noise and reached for her glass. The butler and footman straightened a bit where they stood. The candles seemed to flicker briefly before they rallied—but the Marquess of Selwick looked first astonished, then ecstatic.
“The political situation? Political situation? A year ago I’d have called it somewhere between laughable and tragic—but at least we’ve got rid of that MacDonald looney and his Bolshevik friends, we can start pulling this country together again. Not that Baldwin’s all that much better. He and his cronies have no idea what this country needs. Have you been watching—no, of course you haven’t, women don’t—but I tell you, there are some interesting things going on in Europe these days, things we could learn from. The damned League of— What’s that?” He glared at his sister-in-law, whose objection to this curse had been marginally more assertive, but went on, regardless. “The League of Nations, they’re going to bleed us dry. You ever heard such nonsense as comes out of that lot, tying us to what other countries want us to do? They can’t even get the Krauts to pay the reparations they promised—ought to hand over some of their land to the Frenchies, if that’s what it takes. Not that the French can run anything more complicated than a vineyard. But you look at Italy, now. That feller they got in there is going to pull things together!”