In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (13 page)

“He's going to kill himself mixing pills with booze if we don't watch him,” Julian had told her soon after her arrival. “Sam, will you help me? With you here to keep an eye on him, I can get more work done on the estate. I might even be able to put some plans in motion … if you'll help me, that is.”

And within days of meeting him, Samantha had known that she would do anything to help her cousin Julian. Anything at all.

Which was something that Jeremy Britton obviously knew as well. Because hearing her return from the vegetable garden in the late afternoon and clomp across the courtyard ridding her boots of soil, he'd actually emerged from the parlour and sought her out in the kitchen, where she was beginning to prepare their dinner.

“Ah. Here you are, my flower.” He leaned forward in that gravity-defying posture that seemed second nature to drunks. He had a tumbler in his hand: Two small pieces of ice and a slice of lemon were all that remained of his latest gin and tonic. As usual, he was dressed up to the nines, every inch of him the country squire. Despite the late summer weather, he was wearing a tweed jacket, a tie, and heavy wool plus fours that he must have resurrected from a predecessor's wardrobe. He might have passed for an eccentric albeit well-to-do landowner in his cups.

He placed himself at the old wooden work top, precisely where Samantha wished to be. He jiggled the ice in his tumbler and drained what little liquid he was able to coax from the melting cubes. That done, he set the glass next to the large chef's knife that she'd removed from its stand. He looked from her to the knife to her once again. And he smiled a slow, happy inebriate's smile.

“Where's our boy?” he inquired pleasantly, although it came out as whairshare boy? His eyes were so light a grey that their irises might not even have existed, and the whites of them had long since gone yellow, a colour that was beginning to suffuse most of his skin. “Haven't noticed Julie skulking about today, don't you know. Fac’ tis, I don't believe he was home last night at all, our little Julie, because I don't recall seeing his mug at breakfast.” Except it was hishmug-gabrekkest, and having said this much, Jeremy waited for her reaction to his remarks.

Samantha began emptying the vegetable trug of its contents. She placed lettuce, a cucumber, two green peppers, and a cauliflower into the nearby sink. She began to wash them free of soil. To the lettuce she gave particular attention, bending over it like a mother examining her infant child.

“Well,” Jeremy went on with a sigh, “I s'pose we know what Julie was up to, don't we, Sam?” Doe-we-Sham? “That boy won't see what's before his face. I don't know what we're going to do with him.”

“You haven't taken any of your pills, have you, Uncle Jeremy?” Samantha asked. “If you mix them with spirits, you could be in trouble.”

“I was born for trouble,” Jeremy said—I-sh born f'trouble—and Samantha tried to discern if his slurring was any worse than usual, an indication of an assault on his consciousness. It was just past five o'clock, so he'd be slurring anyway, but the last thing Julian needed to contend with was his father's usual drunken slumber working its way into a coma. Jeremy sidled along the work top till he was standing next to Samantha at the sink. “You're a good-looking woman, Sammy,” he said. His breath was a study in mixing his beverages. “Don't you think I'm ever so many sheets to the storm that I don't notice what a looker you are. Thing is, we've got to make our little Julie see that. No point showing off those legs of yours if the only one looking is this old sod. Not that I don't appreciate the sight, mind you. Having a nice young thing like you running about the house in those tight little shorts is just the very thing that—”

“These are hiking shorts,” Samantha interrupted. “I wear them because it's been warm, Uncle Jeremy. Which you'd know if you ever left the house during the day. And they aren't tight.”

“Jus’ a compliment, girl,” Jeremy protested. “Got to learn to accept a compliment. And who better to learn from than your own blood uncle? Christ, it's good to know you, girl. 'Ve I mentioned that?” He didn't bother to wait for a response. He leaned even closer for a confidential whisper—“Now let's figure what to do about Julie.” Less figger whatta do bow Julie.

“What about Julian?” Samantha asked.

“We know what we're dealing with, don't we? He's been mounting the Maiden girl like a randy donkey since he was twenty years old—”

“Please, Uncle Jeremy.” Samantha could feel her neck getting prickly.

“Please Uncle Jeremy what? We got to look at the facts so we know what to do with them. And fact number one is that Julie's been tupping the Padley Gorge ewe every chance he's had. Or, better said, every chance she's given him.”

For a drunk, he was remarkably observant, Samantha thought. But she said, rather more primly than she intended, “I really don't want to talk about Julian's sex life, Uncle Jeremy. It's his business, not ours.”

“Ah,” her uncle said. “Too nasty a topic for Sammy McCallin? Why's it I don't think that's the case, Sam?” ThassacaseSam.

“I didn't say it was nasty,” she replied. “I said it wasn't our business. And it isn't. So I won't discuss it.” It wasn't that she felt odd about sex—embarrassed, shy, or anything like that. Far from it. She'd had sex when it was available to her ever since getting past the awkward inconvenience of virginity by pressing one of her brother's friends into service when she was a teenager. But this … talking about her cousin's sex life … She couldn't afford to discuss it and run the risk of giving herself away.

“Girly girl, listen,” Jeremy said. “I see how you look at him, and I know what you want. I'm on your side. Hell, keep the family for the family in the family's my motto. You think I want him chained to the Maiden tart when there's a woman like you hanging round, waiting for the day when her man'll wise up?”

“You're mistaken,” she said, although the pounding just beneath her skin told her how her blood was giving the lie to her words. “I'm fond of Julian. Who wouldn't be? He's a wonderful man—”

“Right. He is. And d'you actually”—ackshully—“think the Maiden sees that in our Julie? Not on your life. She sees a bit of fun when she's hereabouts, a bit of tumble-in-the-heather-and-poke-me-if-you-can.”

“But,” Samantha went on firmly as if he hadn't spoken, “I'm not in love with him and I can't imagine ever being in love with him. Good grief, Uncle Jeremy. We're first cousins. I think of Julian the way I think of my brother.”

Jeremy was silent for a moment. Samantha took the opportunity to move past him, cauliflower and peppers in hand. She placed them into the cutting trough, where four hundred years of vegetables had been chopped. She began breaking the cauliflower into florets.

“Ah,” Jeremy said slowly, but his tone was sly, which told Samantha for the first time that he wasn't as drunk as he seemed. “Your brother. I see. Yes. I do see. So he wouldn't interest you in the other way. Wonder how I got the idea … ? But no matter. Give your uncle Jer a touch of advice, then.”

“About what?” She fetched a colander and scooped the cauliflower into it. She turned her attention to the green peppers.

“About how to cure him.”

“Of what?”

“Of her. The cat. The mare. The sow. What you will.” Whachewill.

“Julian,” Samantha said in a last-ditch effort to divert her uncle from his course, “doesn't need to be cured of anything. He's his own man, Uncle Jeremy.”

“Bollocks, that. He's a man on a string, and we both know where it's tied. She's got him so he can't see up for down.”

“Hardly.”

“Hard's the word, all right. He's been hard so long that his brain's made a permanent journey into his dick.”

“Uncle Jeremy—”

“All he thinks about is having a suck on those pretty pink teats of hers. And once he gets his prong inside and has her moaning like a—”

“All right.” Samantha drove the chef's knife through the green pepper like a cleaver. “You've made your point thoroughly, Uncle Jeremy. I'd like to get on with making dinner now.”

Jeremy smiled slowly, that inebriate's smile. “You're meant for him, Sammy. You know that as well as I.” Swellseye, he said. “So what're we going to do to make it happen?”

He was suddenly looking at her steadily, quite as if he were not drunk at all. What was the mythological creature that could fix you in its stare and kill you? Cockatrice, she thought. Her uncle was a cockatrice.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said, but she sounded, even to herself, much less assured and far more afraid.

“Don't you.” He smiled, and when he left the room, he didn't walk the walk of a man who was remotely tipsy.

Samantha kept determinedly chopping the peppers until she heard his footsteps on the stairs, until she heard the kitchen door latch shut behind him. Then, with a careful control that she was proud to be able to muster in the circumstances, she set the knife to one side. She put her hands on the edge of the work top. She bent forward over the vegetables, inhaled their scent, directed her thoughts into a self-created mantra—“Love fills me, embraces me. Love makes me whole”—and tried to regain a sense of serenity. Not that she'd had any serenity since the previous night when she'd realised what a mistake she'd made in conjunction with the lunar eclipse. Not that she'd had serenity at all once she'd realised what Nicola Maiden was to her cousin. But forcing herself to whisper the mantra was habit, so she used it now, despite the fact that love was the very last feeling of which she pictured herself capable at the moment.

She was still attempting the meditation when she heard the harriers barking from their kennels in the converted block of stables just to the west of the manor house. The sound of their sharp, excited yelping told her that Julian was with them. Samantha looked at her watch. It was feeding time for the adult harriers, observation time for the newly born pups, and rearranging time for the play runs in which the older puppies were beginning the socialisation process. Julian would be out there for at least another hour. Samantha had time to prepare herself.

She wondered what to say to her cousin. She wondered what he'd say to her. And she wondered what it mattered anyway, with Nicola Maiden to consider.

From the moment she'd met her, Samantha hadn't liked Nicola. Her dislike wasn't grounded in what the younger woman represented to her though—primary competition for Julian's affections. It was grounded in what Nicola so patently was. Her easiness of manner was an irritant, suggesting a self-confidence that was entirely at odds with the girl's appalling roots. The daughter of a little more than a publican, graduate of a London comprehensive and a third-rate university that was no better than an ordinary polytechnic college, who was she to move so easily through the rooms of Broughton Manor? Decrepit as they were, they still represented four hundred years of unbroken possession by the Britton family. And that was the kind of lineage that Nicola Maiden could hardly claim for herself.

But this knowledge didn't seem to faze her in the least. Indeed, she never acted as if she was in possession of the knowledge at all. And there was a single good reason for this: the power that went with her English-rose looks. The Guinevere hair—unnatural in colour though it doubtless was—the perfect skin, the dark-lashed eyes, the delicate frame, the seashell ears … She'd been given every physical advantage a woman could be given. And five minutes in her presence had been enough to tell Samantha that she bloody well knew it.

“It's brilliant to meet one of Jules’ relatives at last,” she'd confided to Samantha on their first meeting seven months earlier. “I hope we'll become the best of friends.” Half term for Nicola, she'd come to spend her holiday with her parents. She'd rung Julian on the morning of her arrival, and the moment he pressed the telephone receiver to his ear, Samantha had seen which way the wind was blowing and for whom. But she hadn't known how strong that wind was till she met Nicola herself.

The sunny smile, the frank gaze, the shout of pleased laughter, the artless conversation … Although she'd rather more than mildly disliked her, it had taken several meetings with Nicola for Samantha to make a full evaluation of her cousin's beloved. And when she did, the realisation she reached did nothing but add to Samantha's discomfort whenever they met. For she saw in Nicola Maiden a young woman completely content with who she was, offering herself to the world at large without the slightest care as to whether the offering would be accepted. Not for her were the doubts, the fears, the insecurities, and the crises of confidence of the female in search of a male to define her. Which was probably why, Samantha thought, she had Julian Brit-ton so hot and bothered to do just that.

More than once in the time she'd been at Broughton Manor, Samantha had come upon Julian engaged in an act that was testimony to the thrall into which Nicola Maiden drew a man. Hunched over a letter he was writing to her, sheltering the telephone receiver from unwanted eavesdroppers as he talked to her, staring sightlessly over the garden wall at the footbridge that spanned the River Wye as he thought of her, sitting in his office with his head in his hands as he brooded about her, Samantha's cousin was little more than the prey of a huntress he couldn't begin to understand.

There was no way that Samantha could make him see his beloved as she truly was, however. There was only the option of allowing his passion to play itself out, to culminate in the marriage he was so desperate to attain, or to lead to a permanent break between him and the woman he desired.

Having to accept this as her only course had brought Samantha face-to-face with her own impatience, and it accosted her at her every turn at Broughton Manor. She fought her longing to beat the truth into her cousin's head. Time and again she deliberately turned from the appetite for derogation that rose in her whenever the subject of Nicola came up. But these virtuous efforts at self-control were taxing. And the price she was beginning to pay was anxiety, resentment, insomnia, and outright rage.

Uncle Jeremy didn't help matters. By him, Samantha was daily regaled with lubricious innuendoes and direct assaults, all circling or landing upon the subject of Julian's love life. Had she not quickly seen upon her arrival how necessary was her presence at Broughton Manor, had she not needed a respite from her mother's incessant displays of lugubrious mourning, Samantha knew that she would have decamped months before. But she maintained her position and held her peace—most of the time—because she'd been able to see the bigger picture: Jeremy's sobriety, the blessed distraction that a reunion with him would provide her mother, and Julian's gradual awakening to the contribution Samantha was making to his well-being, his future, and his hope of transforming the derelict manor house and the estate into a thriving business.