The Haunted Season (4 page)

“If you are certain,” she said. “I thought holly—but that could be dangerous if Luther gets into it. It's not good for cats, you know. Ivy is always nice. But perhaps some roses mixed in?”

Luther, the freeloading lounge cat—was he aware of the loving concern for his well-being that cushioned all his days? Max looked at her as if she might be mad, but he put down his pen and said kindly, “Of course, we have to consider our mouser. Even though, and thank God for it, I don't think he has caught a mouse in years. He used to leave the poor things in the vestry for me to find.” He added in what seemed now a non sequitur, “I have always liked roses.”

“Red roses?”

“Yes, that would be nice. Thank you. Now, I really must—”

“Of course, of course! I mustn't keep you. I know you're busy. And soon there'll be all the planning for the duck race, too; I know how much you enjoy that. Not the planning. The race itself.” She gathered her parcels and packets and netted bits of things, the contents of half of which now spilled onto the floor, so of course Max had to kneel to help her collect them. Their fingers met over a packet of Ryvita and sparks literally flew—the scuffing of their shoes on the carpet in the dry air of the heated room had produced an electric current. Eugenia threw her head back, looking up into his eyes, a doe transfixed by headlamps.

What on earth was the matter with the woman?

“Oh,” she said now, completely undone. “Oh! It's the dark rye, isn't it? It's for feeding the poor on the next Bowls for Souls day. I think the dark rye is so much nicer than the light, don't you? Crunchier. It just looks nicer. They say it's more nutritious, too.” Even Eugenia seemed to realize she was babbling by this point. She stood awkwardly, gripping her shopping bags, which stood out from her hips like buoys around a dinghy. “It's for the poor,” she repeated.

At this reminder that Eugenia was also a vital component of the free-lunch initiative in Monkslip-super-Mare, Max again stifled his impatience. Really, the Anglican Church ran on the time, energies, and moneys donated by such as Eugenia. Her entire life seemed to revolve around the church, in fact.

That this totality of devotion had started when Max Tudor came to St. Edwold's escaped him.

Just then the door opened, this time followed by Awena. She held the baby, Owen, swaddled in a blue jumpsuit and blanket, leaving only the top of his fuzzy dark head visible. Max felt an access of relief—he was growing increasing desperate at the thought that Eugenia might never leave—and the customary jolt of transcendent happiness at seeing the pair around which his life revolved.

He bent over the sleeping bundle and, with his wife, gazed at their child in rapt devotion. Had any baby's eyelashes ever been that long and dark? Its cheeks that rosy? Even Owen's drool was adorable; Max stopped to dab with a corner of the blanket at the baby's pink rosebud of a mouth. Thea awoke from her slumber by the fire and trotted over to complete the family group.

Awena greeted Eugenia, and added, “I was wondering when you'd be ready, Max.” They had planned a visit to the pediatrician's in Monkslip-super-Mare, followed by some shopping and dinner out.

“Just wrapping up here,” Max said. He turned to Eugenia, his face still aglow.

And he was taken aback by the look on her face. If he hadn't known better, he might have thought it was a look of the purest venom.

The look was directed straight at Awena.

 

Chapter 2

BREAKFAST AT TOTLEIGH HALL

Even with only the family in residence, breakfast at Totleigh Hall, Nether Monkslip's manor house, was a surprisingly formal affair. The buffet spread of a full English breakfast, the standard offering when there were weekend guests, would have gone to waste on the small, loosely knit group that called itself the Baaden-Boomethistles. So rather than staggering in at all hours of the morning, in all states of dishabille, they arrived at the large dining room at more or less the same time each morning, and more or less properly composed, to have their individual breakfast orders taken by the hardworking but well-compensated Mr. Hargreaves.

Rosamund, the daughter of the house, was first down. She usually was, for Rosamund was an early riser, unlike her brother, Peregrine, who practically had to be dragged out of bed by the hair each day. But he had gone without breakfast often enough that he had now trained himself to arrive on time.

Rosamund took her seat, reached for the carafe, and poured coffee into the Spode mug at her place. Lacing the coffee with a generous splash of organic cream, she opened the newspaper to the arts and entertainment section; settling her glasses against her nose, she began to read. She wore different glasses to go with each day's outfit. Today it was a pair of rectangular frog green frames to set off her dark red hair and the violet-blue blouse she wore with jeans. Rosamund, being an art student, knew her color wheel.

Peregrine wouldn't know a color wheel if it ran over him.

Rosamund had nothing in common with her brother, a fact she liked to emphasize whenever possible. While they were of similar build—athletic from years of games (him) and horse riding (both) but in danger of running to fat early—they had different coloring and, more important, different temperaments. Rosamund was the bookish one—a proud egghead in a family of hearty, fox-chasing morons, as she saw it. She had a rather desperate need, born of guilt, to separate herself from the life of privilege into which she had been born. She was well aware from her reading that the world was an unfair place—there was, after all, no real reason her family should have easy access to whatever money could buy while others went hungry or died of preventable illnesses in Africa. What she could do to redress the balance, she was not sure. Writing a check to Oxfam every year seemed like a drop in the ocean. But at least she cared. Picture Peregrine caring.

He had become more awkward and gauche as he aged, which did not make her pity him, and did not stop her itch to torment him. Years of public schooling had done little to add to his attractions. Still, he was well liked by his peers, from what she could tell, although well tolerated might be a better description. She thought of him as the human equivalent of the battering ram, for he excelled at various sports, despite the embryonic paunch he carried before him. If he had other ambitions or hobbies apart from drinking, he kept them well hidden, and was usually to be found wandering aimlessly about the manor house or feeding carrots or forbidden sugar cubes to the horses in the vast stables at the back of the house.

And here he was now. Think of the devil and up he jumps—one of their old servants used to say that all the time. But she'd been from one of those places where they had little cults that still believed in the devil. One reason she hadn't lasted long in the position.

Peregrine lobbed his first grenade of the day.

“Do you have any idea how many calories are in that cream?” he asked, casting a significant glance at her waistline. For Rosamund was a big girl, broad and spreading as she grew, like an oak tree.

Not exactly fat. Not really.

Not like Jabba the Hutt here.

She dipped her paper momentarily to glare at him. What a way to start the morning, dueling with Peregrine, the sexist pig. Elephant, rather. With those stick-out ears, her favorite name to taunt him with in childhood had been “Dumbo,” but they had rather moved beyond that now. He honestly didn't seem to see the extra stone around his own middle. And why was he wearing his hair like that? When had he started combing it straight down from the crown into a doofus fringe across his forehead? And those glasses! Maybe thick black-rimmed glasses were the hipster style of the moment, but between that and the hair, he looked a complete dork.

It was a shame, really. To have to watch her brother ruin his looks through self-indulgence.

She wouldn't say a word to him. She wouldn't. Would not. Wouldnotwouldnotwouldnot. Detachment was all. Detach. Detach.
Detach.

Not for the first time, she lost the karmic struggle with herself. Self-control was not one of her strengths. Shooting from the hip was.

“If you didn't swill beer all the time with your rich hooligan friends, you might lose that spare tire.”

“No one says hooligan anymore.”

“Not in the sort of crowd you run with.”

“Organic doesn't mean nonfattening,” he informed her, continuing the dietary lecture as if she hadn't spoken.

“Is that something you learned in—what is it called? Land Management for Dummies?”

This was a favorite dig of hers. Peregrine was enrolled in a Land Ec course at Oxford, similar to the famous one at Cambridge. It was notorious as an academic refuge for thick athletes and the children of the landed gentry who would otherwise wander the world completely unenlightened. The recent attendance of HRH Prince William at a ten-week course tailor-made for the future proprietor of his father's estate had done nothing to diminish the cachet of the Cambridge course, although if his wife, Kate, had enrolled, it would have caused a mob scene at the admissions office on Trumpington Street.

“Bill Travis could totally rock that course, you know.”

The mention of the estate manager/horse trainer seemed to inflame Peregrine, who was generally impervious to any weapon his sister might choose to use on him. At any rate, this snobbish accusation reduced him to the monosyllabic responses of their childhood, endured in a state of armed combat in the nursery at the top of the house. Only a year separated the two of them, Peregrine's reign as king of all he surveyed cut short by the arrival of his little sister, a usurpation of power he never, ever forgave or forgot.

“Could not,” he muttered now, turning his attention to his own coffee, which he drank black and free of the offending cream, in the belief it would help a beer hangover. It would not.

“Could too,” she said. “
And
he's not letting himself run to flab, even though he's got twenty years on you. You could take a lesson from him. Travis is totally hot, and—”

She was cut short in her commendation by the imperious voice of her grandmother, their father's mother, known to everyone outside the family as the “Dotty Dowager,” and to everyone within the family as “Crazy Caroline.” She wafted in on a cloud of her expensive Paris perfume, dressed in a fluttery, lacy, feathery number, the sort of thing one of the Gabor sisters might have worn to breakfast.

“We are not,” she announced, “going to stoop to talk about that. I have warned you before, Rosamund.”

“I was just pointing out—”

“I know exactly what you were pointing out. Am I not a world-famous romance novelist? Am I not a spinner of tales designed to thrill and capture the imagination of every red-blooded woman? Have not my books been translated into forty languages, the better to transform the lives of the lonely and desperate around the globe?”

There was so much in this statement Rosamund felt she could reply to, but wisely, she held her tongue. Granny Dow could be tedious when she really let her megalomania get the better of her, although what she said technically was true. She was world-famous for writing the most incredible Regency dreck, a living testament to the lack of entertainment available to the shut-in, the bored housewife, the toiler in the secretarial pool.

“Your books are a public service, Gran,” said Peregrine loyally.

Little suck-up.

“You should use Travis as a model for your next story,” said Rosamund, not yet willing to lay down arms.

“What a good idea,” said Bree, strolling in wearing her usual outfit for a day spent either in the stables or in the saddle: tan low-rise stretch pants with tall boots and a short-sleeve polo shirt. Rosamund thought she must sleep in those boots; she had seldom seen her not wearing them. Not since the wedding to her father, and a dark day it was, when the newly anointed Lady Baaden-Boomethistle had outshone everyone in the room. Brides were supposed to be beautiful, but Bree was, well, ridiculous, like something out of a Disney cartoon in her perfection. She had even worn a diamond-studded tiara, given to her by her besotted groom. The whole scene needed only mice and small animals holding up her train.

Bree took her seat not at the head of the table but opposite the dowager and poured out a cup of coffee: “Travis would make a
mar
velous hero. Tall, dark, handsome—all the prerequisites.” Rosamund watched as she tipped easily a quarter of a cup of full cream into the brew. It wasn't fair that she never gained an ounce. Horseback riding couldn't answer for all the calories burned; Rosamund herself rode frequently. She suspected calories got burned in quite a different way where Bree was concerned.

The topic of Bill Travis seemed to disturb Granny Dow every bit as much as it disturbed Peregrine. But Rosamund didn't believe for a minute Bree would be so foolish as to mess about with the help. That would be suicide, knowing what Rosamund knew of her father's temper, not to mention his snobbishness. He wouldn't kill her as Othello had killed Desdemona. He might sell her horses and throw her out on her ear, though. An outcome devoutly to be wished.

Now the eyes of the two women—the present Lady Baaden-Boomethistle, bursting with youth and vitality, and the former, bursting with strangeness—met over the elaborate floral arrangement, which otherwise acted as a colorful shield during their warfare. Normally, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle, who by any measure had the upper hand in the situation, would not deign to meet the dowager's eyes. This time, though, she allowed herself a tiny smirk, a shot across the daisies, as it were, and the dowager, catching the superior look, flushed unattractively.

The dowager was thinking,
Mixed marriage.
This is what comes of a mixed marriage. The daughter of a groom who meets a member of the landed gentry at a horse show and ends up dragging him to the altar, against the advice of saner heads not addled by unaccustomed surges of testosterone. Heads such as her own. Oh, she had tried to stop him! She had warned him, giving many examples of catastrophic May-December marriages among members of their set. But it had been hopeless. He felt he deserved, he had informed his mother, some happiness.