He had spoken loud enough for Olivia to overhear. Laying aside the secateurs, she tiptoed over to the sleeping babe and, ignoring Vince's remarks, said sternly 'You mustn't cheat, Jamie - that's very naughty. Gentlemen don't cheat.'
'Are you including doctors and artists in that category, my dear?' teased Vince; and to Faro, 'He has picked up chess amazingly - better than I did when you tried to teach me as a wee lad.'
Faro smiled at the memory, albeit a little painfully since he had been singularly unsuccessful in that respect with the sullen resentful stepson who had been eight-year-old Vince.
Now joining the trio gazing fondly upon the new arrival, he was relieved that Olivia's pregnancy was safely over, remembering all too well the hazards that had taken Vince's mother, his own beloved Lizzie. Two girls, Rose and Emily, then a stillborn son had cost her her life and brought Vince and Faro with less than twenty years between them as close as brothers in their shared grief;
Such were the thoughts in Faro's mind surrounded by that scene of happy family life. Ruffling Jamie's curls, so like his father's in boyhood, he said: ‘Aye, I reckon you'll be like all little lads, won't you? First you'll be a lamplighter and go through all the stages to Lord Advocate. Then perhaps you'll please your mamma by settling for a respectable Edinburgh profession.'
'And Baby must be an opera singer with a voice like that,' said Vince.
Their laughter was accompanied by a blackbird's bitter-sweet requiem to a dying year, although on that radiant afternoon, cruel winter and such melancholy intimations were not even visible as a tiny dark cloud to mar an azure sky.
The kitchen door opened and there was Mrs Brook, bringing out a tea tray. Vince leapt up to assist her. Jamie followed suit, rushing forward to be restrained from seizing a piece of her excellent sponge cake.
As he wailed that he loved Mrs Brook's cakes, she smiled indulgently on these dear people she had served as housekeeper for many years and come to regard not as employers, but as her family.
Dr Laurie now occupied the whole house, his surgery shared with a medical partner. Two rooms were set aside for guests and his father's fleeting visits, on the first floor were the family apartments, and above were attics, the domain of a nanny and a maid. Mrs Brook had been reluctantly persuaded by increasing age and a certain stiffness in her joints, which she refused to admit, plus the doctor's increasing family, that she could no longer take care of the whole house single-handed.
Sipping his tea, Faro sat back in his chair. So this was retirement. He sighed blissfully, happy and at peace with the world.
Vince took the seat opposite and had stretched out his hand for the still-folded newspaper with its sensational headline, when a noise like a foghorn, or a ship in distress on the distant River Forth, signalled that Baby, as she was presently known, was awake.
The fond father leaped to his feet and rushed over to the perambulator. 'Baby - hello - a smile for your Pappa.'
Baby indeed, thought Faro, she had not yet a name and would continue her anonymous existence until her parents made the difficult choice. A decision which threatened to wreck that otherwise happy marriage. Vince wanted Mary or Elizabeth (Lizzie after his mother) while Olivia wanted Amelia after her own grandmother. Daily the argument continued back and forth and as the time of registration loomed, unheeded, it seemed that Miss Laurie would be doomed to be known as Baby for the rest of her life.
Faro, asked to mediate, said tactfully he thought Mary more appropriate. Without the merest flicker of presentiment he had his own uncomfortable reasons for not wanting a granddaughter called Amelia.
Some thirteen years ago he had known an Amelie, the foreign version of Amelia. She rarely entered his thoughts any more and he had little desire to have a constant daily reminder of that thoroughly unsettling incident - a strange mystery and the brief emotional turmoil which had marked his encounter with the Grand Duchess of Luxoria.
Such matters were past history, voluntary retirement had settled dangerous royal rescues for ever. Here was peace at last, he told himself very frequently - the time he had waited for, scarred by thirty years of dealing with the threat of death.
Here was the Indian summer of a man's life. Content, he lolled in a garden chair, with a pile of unread books at his side and an unwritten lecture for Glenatholl College the only serpent in his Eden.
When that was over, he could indulge again his newly found love of travel. The excitement of new places in Europe had been denied him during his long service, which included serving Her Majesty incognito as personal detective within limits set by the borders of England and Scotland. Now the popularity of railway trains, frequent at home and on the Continent, opened up new opportunities for fast and comfortable travel.
At his side, Vince, setting down his teacup, picked up the newspaper and about to open it, folded it once again in an irritable gesture as the sudden breeze threatened to wrest it from his grasp. Seeing Olivia carrying Baby into the house for her afternoon feed, he said, 'can't read outside - think I'll go in. Come along, Jamie. Grandpa has work to do.'
Faro smiled. ‘Let him stay.'
‘If he promises to be good. How's the talk for Glenatholl coming along?’
'Where's Glen-ath-oll? Can I come?' demanded Jamie.
'Not this time, but some day when you are older, you will be going there as a pupil. You'll like that,' said Vince.
'Is it far? And will Baby be going too?'
'It isn't very far, and no, Baby won't be going. It's a boys' public school.'
Famous too. And costly
