gripped his arm and murmured, “I’ll go with you.”
“No. Stay with the boys,” he’d said softly, with a glance at Kit. “I can manage this, and they need you.”
She’d subsided in unhappy silence, watching him go with a sense of mounting panic. Surely he hadn’t walked into a murder on the first day of their holiday; that was too unfair for belief. It could be anything, she told herself— in her days on the beat she’d had more than one call from citizens convinced the remains of a stray dog were human. Now it was only because she’d worked so many homicide cases that the word “body” automatically conjured up murder.
“Gemma, boys,” Rosemary was saying, “come back to the kitchen.
I know it’s a bit late for tea, but I suspect none of us will be getting dinner anytime soon.” Kincaid’s mother had greeted her warmly, as she had the only other time they’d met, at Kit’s mother’s funeral. Although Rosemary’s chestnut hair had perhaps gone a bit grayer, she had the strong bone structure and fine skin that aged well, and she radiated a wiry energy.
As Gemma responded, she was aware of her own accent, her North London vowels sounding harsh and flat compared with Rosemary Kincaid’s educated Cheshire tones.
She glanced at Kincaid’s father, who had watched Duncan drive away but now came back into the hall and closed the door. Hugh Kincaid was tall, like his son, with a jutting forehead and chin and a prominent nose. His brushed- back gray-streaked hair and roll- neck fisherman’s jumper seemed to exaggerate his features, making his face seem severe. Then he smiled at her, revealing an unexpected charm, and Gemma found herself suddenly enchanted. Smiling back, she felt herself begin to relax.
“You’d better do as she says,” Hugh warned, with a glance at his wife, “or there will be consequences.” Gemma found she hadn’t expected the faint trace of Scots in his voice, although she knew he came from near Glasgow. It made her think of Hazel Cavendish, so far away in the Scottish Highlands, and she felt a pang of longing for her friend.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Rosemary countered, laughing. “Lally, Sam, come and introduce yourselves properly.” She put a hand on the boy’s head, as if holding down a jumping jack. “This is Sam. He’s ten.
And this is Lally,” she added, glancing at the girl, who still hovered a few treads up the staircase, “who must be just a few months older than Kit, here.”
Giving the girl all her attention for the first time, Gemma noticed first the inch of midriff bared in defiance of the weather, then the shoulder-length dark hair and oval face, the lips curved in a tentative
smile. Gemma’s breath caught in her throat. The girl was striking, beautiful in that heart-piercing way possessed only by girls on the cusp of womanhood, innocence poised on the brink of knowledge.
“Hi,” Lally said, and grinned, an ordinary teenager, and Gemma shook off her flight of fancy.
“Come and see Jack,” Sam said, raising his voice over the increasingly frenzied barking from the back. “He’s our sheep—”
He was cut off by a thump and a crash, and a blur of black and white came barreling down the hall towards them. “Sheepdog,” Sam finished, grinning. “He doesn’t like to be left out of things.”
Tess launched herself into the melee from Kit’s arms and the three dogs jumped, circled, and sniffed, a shifting mass of canine pandemonium.
“Well, that seems to be all right, then,” Rosemary said in the sudden quiet, eyeing them critically. “I thought we should let them get acquainted gradually, but Jack seems to have taken care of the formalities. Let’s go see what sort of damage he’s done to my kitchen.”
She took their coats and added them to the already overloaded pegs, then led the way towards the back of the house.
Still chattering, Sam latched onto Toby. “There’s geese, too, and ponies. Do you want to see them after tea? What are your dogs called? I like the little one—she’s cute.”
Toby answered him
happily—or at least tried to, between questions—but Gemma noticed that Kit, having fallen in next to Lally, didn’t speak. She couldn’t blame him for feeling a bit intimidated meeting so many new family members at once, but hoped that he would soon relax.
When they reached the kitchen, they saw that Jack had hurled himself against the door so hard that it had slipped its latch, banging open and causing a slight dent in the hall plaster. Rosemary grumbled something under her breath that sounded like “Daft bloody dog,” then herded them all into the room, as efficient as a sheepdog herself.
Gemma looked round in delight. The room was wide rather than deep, and she suspected it stretched across most of the back of the house. To the left was the cooking area, dominated by a cream Rayburn range and an old soapstone sink. Open shelves held a selection of dark cobalt-blue china in a calico design, and a few pieces in other blue-and-white porcelain patterns Gemma didn’t recognize.
To the right was a long, scrubbed pine table, surrounded by mismatched pine chairs, all with tie-on cushions covered in a blue-and-cream floral print. The back wall held a nook for cut firewood and a small wood- burning stove. The smell of fresh baking was mouthwateringly intense, and Gemma realized she was ravenous.
While Hugh fed the stove, Rosemary filled two teapots from a kettle steaming on the Rayburn, then pulled a plate piled with scones from the warming oven. “I don’t suppose you like scones,” she said to Kit, who was standing near her, “or homemade plum jam, or clot-ted cream.”
“But I do,” answered Kit, returning her smile and adding, “Can I help you?”
Gemma breathed a small sigh of relief as Kit helped ferry plates and cups to the table, carrying on a quiet conversation with his grandmother. Within a few minutes, they were all squeezed round the table, with the dogs tussling on the floor by the fire and the lubri-cant of food and drink beginning to loosen human tongues.
Seated between Toby and Rosemary, Gemma watched her son’s manners anxiously, hoping he wouldn’t stuff his mouth too full of scone, and worse, talk through it. Kit sat on the other side of the table, between Lally and his grandfather, while Sam had wedged himself into the small space at the end.
Kit was answering his grandfather’s questions about school politely—if, as Gemma now suspected, less than truthfully—but she noticed he still hadn’t made direct eye contact with Lally.
She shifted her attention back to Rosemary, who was saying,
“. . . we’d planned to go to midnight mass after dinner at Juliet’s, if that’s all right with you, Gemma. It’s a bit of a tradition in our family.”
“I know,” said Gemma. “Duncan told me. We meant to go last Christmas, but things . . . intervened.” It had been work, of course, that had interrupted their Christmas Eve, and matters had gone steadily downhill from there.
A shadow crossed Rosemary’s face. “Gemma, dear, I’ve never had a chance to tell you in person—”
“I know. It’s all right.” Gemma made the response that had gradually become easier, and that realization gave her an unexpected sense of loss. Her grief had given her something to hold on to, an almost tangible connection with the child she had lost, but now even that was slipping away from her.
Casting about for a change of subject, she asked, “Do you always have your Christmas Eve dinner at Juliet’s?” Her own family usually went to her sister’s, although Gemma considered an evening with Cyn’s overexcited, sugar-fueled children more an ordeal than a celebration.
“Yes, she’s insisted, ever since the children were small.” Rosemary gave a worried glance at the large clock over the Rayburn. “I can’t think why she would have stayed so late at the building site on her own, and today of all days. And what could she possibly have foun—” She stopped, her eyes straying to the children, then said instead, “Do you think they’ll be long?”
Gemma hesitated over the truth. If Juliet had in fact found a body, missing Christmas Eve dinner might be the least of her worries. “I really can’t say. Is there anything we could do to help, in the meantime?”
“No. It’s just ham and salads, and those Juliet will have made ahead. Nor would Caspar thank me for messing about in his kitchen uninvited,” she added with a grimace. “Although he’s happy enough s
to help himself to my punch—” This time it was her granddaughter’s quick glance that silenced her. “Let’s give it a bit,” she amended.
“Surely we’ll hear from them soon.”
The younger boys having divided the last scone between them, Sam stacked his plate and cup and pushed away from the table.
“Nana, may we be excused? Can I show Toby and Kit the ponies?”
