The Haunted Season (5 page)

He deserved no such thing, she had informed him frostily. He was, after all, a Baaden-Boomethistle.

“I saw you,” said the dowager suddenly, turning aggressively in her chair to face Bree head-on. She settled her cup noisily into its saucer; there was an unattractive smear of her liberally applied coral lipstick on its rim. “You needn't look so smug. I saw what you did.”

Bree upped the power of her smirk to a full-wattage sneer, still managing to look lovely despite a rather cruel curve to her delicately tinted upper lip.

Quite a feat, when you thought about it. Rosamund watched the exchange with some amusement, for she could read her grandmother pretty well and had, in any event, heard many times the woman's opinions of her son's choice of life partner. The dowager refused to admit that in much the same way had Camilla captured a young prince's heart in a castle far, far away and long, long ago: It was not as if there were no precedent. More remarkably, the dowager seemed not to realize that this Cinderella scenario was precisely the same dreck she had foisted on an unsuspecting reading public for years.

Or perhaps that is what she found particularly galling—that the fairy tales she wrote had come true in real life. Rosamund thought it was enough to make a cat laugh, the whole thing, as much as she sympathized with the dowager's dilemma: Bree was a threat to the dowager and her safe little niche here at Casa Totleigh.

Bree was a threat to all of them. It was a wonder no one had tried to set her up for a fall.

Oh, my,
thought the butler, entering the room carrying Rosamund's plate of fried eggs, with a rasher of bacon and caddy of buttered toast. They can't let it rest, not for a single day, can they? I used to think the holidays were particularly bad, but the fact is, every day has been like this since the first wife died. Certainly the children never got over it.

“Thank you, Hargreaves.”

At least Rosamund was always polite. The son was another matter. He oozed a sense of entitlement, because he was. Entitled, that is. Richer than anyone deserved to be without working a single day for it. Any sweat that came off that noble brow came from his daily runs about the grounds of the manor house.

The atmosphere shifted noticeably and the butler's thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle himself, who took a seat next to his shiny young wife, kissing her forehead and gruffly addressing the rest of the room with a general good morning.

“Morning, Father,” said Peregrine, thinking that the old man was looking exhausted. This is what came of robbing the cradle.

Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, in turn, regarded his son. Although he had not for some time been quite certain how to regard Peregrine. Quite often the phrase “pig in a poke” flittered through his mind.

Peregrine was in trouble at University—again. He was probably going to be sent down this time. Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was friends with Peregrine's tutor and, as a result, he knew more about his son's problems than he should do. For once, though, he wasn't certain how to approach the situation. He didn't want to do or say anything he'd have to apologize for later. Not that apology was a big part of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle's repertoire at any time.

That a son of his should read Land Economy at University was all right; it was an honorable calling, traditional for a member of the landed gentry, particularly now that Prince William, the duke of Cambridge and probable future king himself, had jumped aboard that blue-blood bandwagon. And it was not as if Peregrine had the brainpower to do much else; the course offered a light workload for those who wanted it, allowing the sons and daughters of the nobility more time for sports, napping, and carousing. Fortunately, other people had already split the atom and suchlike. But it was distressing nonetheless. As the only son of the house, Peregrine had had great hopes pinned on him from the time he was in diapers. Nothing had been too good for him, no spoon too golden; his mother had doted on his every achievement, however trivial. Now the boy's lack of a life plan for after university was disturbing. He himself, Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, had no intention of shuffling off this mortal coil anytime soon. What was the boy to do with himself for the next thirty years? Comparisons with Prince Charles were inevitable, a man awaiting his chance to do
some
thing, and in the meantime not able to do very much so long as his mother sat on the throne. Peregrine was even less well placed, and less well equipped, to have any kind of impact on world or even local affairs.

And what was the matter with his hair lately?

“We've had a call from someone in the village,” Lady Baaden-Boomethistle informed her husband, pushing back a strand of her own dark hair. Today parted in the middle and held by a clasp at the back of her head, tresses framed her face like gleaming satin, reflecting the rays of sunlight through the window. “Eugenia Something-Something, and something to do with a duck race. She said Noah of Noah's Ark Antiques would be in Europe for the duration. Why that's anything to do with us, I can't imagine. I said I'd bring it up with you. So I have. Brought it up.” She returned her attention to the horse-racing news. “Grand Red Cayenne won again. I told you we should have bought him.”

Lord Baaden-Boomethistle put down the front section of his own newspaper. “I suppose they'll be wanting to use the grounds for their duck race. What a nuisance. Litter and children everywhere.”

“Not to mention people in Bermuda shorts who should never be seen in anything less than a tent.” This from Peregrine, and he cast a significant glance at his sister as he spoke, a glance that did not go unrecognized.

Why don't you just die, she thought.
Die.

“I'll have a word with the vicar,” said Lord Baaden-Boomethistle. “He's bound to be in touch about it. I am not dealing with some village idiot from the Parish Council or the Women's Institute.”

“I don't see why we have to deal with it at all,” said Peregrine. “It's a duck race, for God's sake.”

“Because,” sniffed the dowager, smoothing the ruffle of her blue silk blouse, purchased to set off the blue of her eyes, “it is our duty. You should know that.”

“It's for charity,” his father informed him. “And from time out of mind we have supported these daft little village entertainments. It's expected of us.”

Hargreaves took the breakfast order of the lord of the house, and took the measure of the temperature of the room, rightly predicting that this would not be a day of fireworks, but a day of simmering discontent. A day like any other, in fact. They would sit around the table, fuming and rehearsing clever retorts they would never dare utter. Lord Baaden-Boomethistle would simply bark his displeasure at any notion he didn't like, until all resistance was quashed.

Only Lady Baaden-Boomethistle had a different technique from that of most people, and indeed different from that of her predecessor, in dealing with her husband. The current Lady Baaden-Boomethistle seemed to be secretly amused by everything the lord did, smiling her catlike little smile, flicking her catlike tongue at her lips, and practically purring as he wound himself up more and more over any- and everything. It was impossible to say if this secret hilarity were at his expense or not. Hargreaves suspected it was. But before any of them knew it, the lord's anger would have been dissolved, or diverted into safer channels. She had that power over him.

A fragment of the famous quotation went through his mind, although he wasn't sure how apt it was. That she was a braver man than he was, Gunga Din.

Which made no sense at all.

Lady Baaden-Boomethistle now made a beckoning gesture with her free hand and her husband obediently took that hand in his. It was a telling move on her part, less a sign of affection than a statement to anyone watching: See how quickly he does as I command.

The dowager, noticing it, too, did not feel she had imagined this. Bree's quick darting look in her direction spoke volumes. It was a tiny power play, one of many in their ongoing struggle for supremacy. For the dowager lived on sufferance in the new household established by her son's remarriage, or at least this was how it felt to her. She had rights by law, of course. They could not just chuck her in the street. But how massive and unseemly a scuffle it would be to assert those rights. How constant the fight was even now. This fear as she grew older was a real thing, a tiger lurking round each corner of the massive house.

The butler leaned over her shoulder to refill her cup. And now Peregrine was whining, letting his unhappiness about something be known—something about borrowing the car—and this unhappiness was framed by a major sulk that was in no way as appealing as Lady Baaden-Boomethistle's little game of sulking, a game to which Hargreaves had often borne witness. In fact, the butler thought the son's mewling was the sort of juvenile performance that was sure to backfire eventually. It reminded the faithful servant that the apples in this privileged family had not fallen far from the tree; inbreeding would one day be the downfall of all the gentry.

They were simply impossible—the dowager, Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, and the children, particularly the son—and Hargreaves could not wait for his days of service to them to end.

As Hargreaves moved away from the table to see to the rest of the food, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle's glance traveled around the room before returning to rest briefly and dispassionately on her aging husband's red face. It was a look the butler could never quite read, whenever the lady looked at her lord. It seemed to contain affection, but there was something more going on.

He, Hargreaves, would not want to be in the lord's shoes. Not for all the rich lands and titles and the privilege and everything that went with it. For the lord did not know whom to trust, and he certainly seemed to be trusting all the wrong people.

Now Lady Baaden-Boomethistle was addressing Peregrine in that exasperated tone she often adopted with him. Hargreaves had not caught the topic, but it didn't matter. She would fillet the boy, regardless.

“You are, I suppose, entitled to your opinions. It would be refreshing if those opinions were original once in a while.”

Rosamund stifled a snort as Peregrine, clearly wounded, wrestled to put on a mask of indifference.

“Lay off,” he said sourly. “You—I say, you really need to lighten up once in a while.” It was a misjudged accusation and it missed the mark by a mile. “Be more phlegmatic.”
Phlegmatic
had just turned up, used incorrectly, in one of the papers he was attempting to write for a tutorial. “That means—”

“I know what it means,” drawled Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. “If
you
get any looser, you'll dissolve into a puddle of space goop. Oh, wait, I see I'm too late.”

Peregrine, now as red in the face as his father, looked as if he might stand and flee the room. Now Rosamund smothered a laugh. She had to hand it to Bree—she could annihilate with the slightest inflection, the merest lift of an eyebrow. She didn't need words, but she was good with them, aiming them like little poisoned darts.

As Rosamund, to her sorrow, knew too well.

“Puh-leeze,” said Lord Baaden-Boomethistle. “I thought we had agreed…”

Lady Baaden-Boomethistle subsided with a pretty sulk. This seemed to infuriate Peregrine even more. Bree was at her most appealing when she sulked, her glossy pink lips scrunched into a little-girl pout. It was how Peregrine lost every argument on every subject. She was irresistible to Lord Baaden-Boomethistle when she pulled this stuff, and she knew it. She was irresistible, period.

While enjoying the conflict, still Rosamund cursed the day Bree had come into her father's life, cursed the day her mother had died, cursed Bree for being Bree, with her effortless and deadly charm. Her father didn't stand a chance with her in his life, in their lives.

The dowager was thinking, meanwhile: This Bree creature is such a step down from the first wife. Step? Make that a falling off a cliff. She is the daughter of a
groom.
She grew up in a
stable.
Not an ounce of blue blood in her veins, certainly not like her predecessor.

Why, oh why, had her son thrown them all into it like this? He could have had his pick. He didn't have to foist this … this
trollop
on all of them.

It was going to end badly. Anyone could see that.

The dowager set down her empty cup and gathered herself to leave. She had agreed to help feed the homeless later that morning in a church in Monkslip-super-Mare. Well, not feed them so much as show up and offer encouragement. Dabbing at her lips with her serviette, she stood and announced as much to the others.

“I wouldn't,” said Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, “encourage them if I were you.”

“I meant,” she said, “encourage the volun
teers.
Show the flag. Let them know the family stands behind their little humanitarian efforts, however pointless they may be.”

“Good,” said her son, with a wink at his wife. “The poor we will always have with us. No need to encourage them.”

His wife stood also. “I promised to drop by, myself. Perhaps I'll see you there.”

“Me, too,” said Rosamund. “And I was planning to do more than just show up looking good,” she said pointedly. “I shall go in there and get my feet dirty. It wouldn't hurt either of you to do the same.”

At a look from her father, she subsided.

No need for Rosamund to ask either woman for a lift. In her grandmother's case, it almost certainly wouldn't be offered.

And Bree Baaden-Boomethistle went almost everywhere on horseback.

 

Chapter 3

LADY BOUNTIFUL

The event the dowager had mentioned at breakfast was the weekly Bowls for Souls luncheon for the poor.

Although people were astonished to hear it, Nether Monkslip had poor people. Well, sometimes just the one: Roger Hayden, who had raised being unemployed to a noble calling, complete with slogans (“Down with Corporations and GMF”). Still, he was what they had, and the mission of the church dictated that he could not be excluded from the table.