the middle, and the table talk was wrenched back into innocuous paths. But the quick protest had given me something to think about: As I had suspected, Darling’s plans in Germany rested on the financial support of Justice Hall. Marsh not only knew this, I saw, but had just declared that although Darling might perform as the master of Justice Hall, master was he not. The duke had publicly and knowingly cut Darling’s legs out from under him; Darling responded with a brief inner fury followed by a summoning of civility, and the party went on.
Marsh’s taste for mischief was awakened, however, so that when eventually the interminable meal had wound to its end and Phillida was rising to lead us ladies out, a pair of bright ducal eyes flicked between me and Iris, and he said, “I imagine my two feminist companions will choose to stay for the port?”
It was command, not question; we stayed. Phillida could do nothing but usher her three entertaining ladies from the room, leaving behind seven variously startled men, two highly amused women, and a trouble-making duke.
The port was waiting in the library, a pair of noble and cobwebby bottles with the equipment to decant them laid out like an array of surgical tools. As we came into the room, Marsh waved at the display and said, “Sidney? You care to do the honours?”
Another man, with another voice, might have been restoring his sister’s husband to authority, with a tacit apology. Or with a slightly different emphasis, might have been condemning Sidney to the humiliating position of mere wine steward. With Marsh, it could have been either, or both. It might only have been a simple admission that Sidney would do a better job of it—and even I could not tell which attitude he intended. Sidney certainly had no idea. I could see the moment when the man decided that there was no point in taking umbrage, that making the most of an uncertain situation would impart the most dignity. He nodded graciously and took up the tongs, to heat them in the glowing coals (although the emphasis with which he thrust the long-handled implement into the fire made me suspect that he was visualising applying their prongs to the neck of his brother-in-law, not the neck of the bottle).
Red-hot tongs, cold wet cloth, the clean snap of the bottle’s neck, and the painstaking decanting of the dark liquid through a silver sieve: Men have more rituals than women have hair-pins. Then the cigar ritual followed, and talk made awkward by the presence of two ladies and a duke who was not One of Us; it was no wonder the men drifted away to the billiards table and left us in possession of port and fire. Long before the women rejoined us, the limits of conversational topics among the men had been firmly established, enforced by sharp, eloquent silences during which stern looks and gestures were exchanged, and by the occasional clearing of throats. Germany’s politics were forbidden, its art and music allowed (although the Marquis’s knowing reference to some night-club elicited two simultaneous throat-clearings); business of any kind was out, which meant that horses and horse-racing were permitted, whereas stud fees and auction houses were not.
We three sat listening through the open doors to this verbal dance as it smoothed out from its stilted beginnings, and I could see that any opportunity for learning more about the Darling situation was probably gone for the night. I was just about to take my leave of the duke and his unlikely duchess when Marsh’s head came around and he fixed me with a look in which swirled meaning and mischief.
“What would you say to a game of darts, Mary?”
I puzzled for a moment at the overtones behind the question; when I caught his meaning, the surprise of it knocked a sharp laugh out of me.
Once upon a time, Marsh and I had teamed up to cheat an unsuspecting village of their hard-earned savings, linking his gift for smooth patter with the unexpected accuracy of my throwing arm. If I understood him aright, he was proposing to set up his brother-in-law’s friends for a similar fleecing. I was sorely tempted, not only for the pleasure of the thing in itself but for the joy of forging an alliance with Marsh Hughenfort; reluctantly, I had to decline.
“Marsh, I would absolutely adore playing such a game with you, but I think I had better put it off for the moment. Perhaps at the end of this week-end, when everyone is more . . . relaxed?”
His eyes were dancing when he agreed, and I went to bed, well pleased.
Saturday dawned clear—and I do mean dawned. The house broke its fast early, despite the late night, with a breakfast that would have done a Victorian household proud. The previous night’s quartet of entertainers were conspicuously absent, either allowed to sleep in or, I thought more likely, already bundled up and got out of the way. Nonetheless, their numbers over the groaning buffet table were more than made up for by friends and neighbours—and, I saw to my amusement, by the wives of the gentlemen in our party of the night before—gathered to spend the day trudging across frozen hillsides and firing expensive shotguns at our host’s carefully raised and artfully driven birds.
I have, I hasten to say, nothing against a shoot. As an enterprise, it is no more silly or time-consuming than many. The objective viewer may find it incongruous for a landowner to rear, coddle, and set free hundreds of birds just for the challenge of shooting them out of the sky and picking lead shot out of one’s food; however, one could argue that (other than the occasional cracked molar) it is little different from raising chickens for the family plate, with the additional benefit of fresh air and open skies for bird and shooter alike. There even exists the narrow—very well: minuscule—chance that some of the nurtured birds may escape the flying lead to assume their ordained state in nature. Even the man with the gun appreciates a crafty escape.
I say “man” advisedly, for generally speaking, women were permitted to spend the day of a shoot at their leisure, perhaps joining the shooting party for a picnic lunch alfresco and lingering to witness the next drive before being packed off home for tea, a long bath, and preparation for the travails of dinner. Certainly Phillida and the visiting wives planned such a calendar, along with a number of the morning’s newcomers who were hardly dressed for a day in the open.
I was waiting my turn at the buffet, smiling absently at strangers and anticipating a day of literary pleasures under the watchful eye of Obediah Greene. (What to wallow in first? A folio today:
“Mary,” he called. “Will you be joining us today?”
I looked across the room, saw the expression on his face, and decided that the intensity of his gaze indicated that the question had taken the form of the Latin “question expecting the answer yes.” I spooned another egg onto my plate, and kept the surprise (and, I hoped, disappointment) from my face.
“I shall be happy to, if the gentlemen don’t mind,” I answered.
“We’ll pair you with Iris then, shall we? Put the ladies together? She’s a formidable shot.”
“I’m sure that Iris is formidable at anything she sets her hand to,” I said easily, which answer seemed to please him. I took my plate to the table and bolted my hearty breakfast, then trotted upstairs to change from my decorous skirt into the tightly woven trousers I’d worn the day before. At least it looked to be dry again today. Freezing, but dry.
Downstairs, I found the shooting party beginning to drift out of the front door and down the steps to the drive. Neither Marsh nor Iris seemed to be among them, although another motor had just driven up and was off- loading yet more newcomers. The two males of the party retrieved guns from the boot and went to join the other warmly clad gentlemen; the females darted up the steps, clutching the sorts of bags used for knitting or needlework. The men were all involved in hearty greetings and introductions, followed by the inspection of weapons, so I went back inside. On the other side of the Great Hall I spotted the multitalented Emma, walking coquettishly at the side of an unfamiliar figure with a crooked nose and the dress of a manservant. Unwilling to shout across the echoing space to attract her attention, I speeded up to catch her before she vanished into the house. Before I could do so, Ogilby emerged from the same doorway towards which Emma and the stranger were heading. She went immediately demure under the butler’s glare, leaving me to reflect on the scant opportunities for romance among the staff of a country house.
“Mr Ogilby,” I said, when that good gentleman was in earshot. “Have you seen the duke or duchess?”
“Her Grace suggests that you join her in the gun room,” he replied, and led me there himself, to a room in the stables wing not far from the estate offices.
“Quite a lively gathering,” I commented to his shoulder.
“Indeed,” he agreed, sounding more gratified than harassed.
“Does Lady Phillida do a lot of entertaining?”
