She Shoots to Conquer Page 6

  “I was teasing, my dear. Only teasing! I adore a spirited woman. You are a lucky man, sir,” he swiveled around to look up at Ben, “what zest she must put into your life and so captivating in her looks. I have always been an admirer of the subtle beauty of the woodland nymph fleshed out to full womanly glory.”

  “Ellie and Ben Haskell,” I said hastily. “Wherever did you spring from?”

  He performed a half-swivel this time, waving a vastly plump hand as he did so. “Through an archway beyond the dark reaches of all these hellish medieval furnishings. What possesses people to accumulate the hideous? The British nobility and their excesses! Take the Empire, for one small example. Ah, but as someone, possibly myself, so pertinently phrased it-vulgarity on a vast enough scale achieves a certain grandeur. For myself, I prefer the Spartan elegance of midcentury modernism in my London and Paris pieds à terre. But each to his own, and Aubrey Belfrey is a decent enough chap, perhaps not to be blamed for the sins of his forebears. One has to be broad-minded.”

  “My wife is an interior designer.” Ben offered this tidbit warily.

  “We don’t have your name,” I pointed out.

  “Apologies! Apologies! Did I not say? It is Georges LeBois. Forgive the lack of a French accent.” He performed another of those hand flourishes. “My formidable English nanny, may she rest in peace,” eyes raised heavenward, “drilled it out of me. She was less successful in inuring me to milky puddings and toad-inthe-hole.” His vast stomach quivered noticeably at the horror of memory. “Is it any wonder that I escaped into the world of make-believe and at the conclusion of my incarceration within the vilely conceived British public school system studied film and became a director? I am here, at the aptly named Mucklesfeld Manor, for the making of Here Comes the Bride.”

  “So we have been told.” It really was too bad of Ben not to make an effort to sound impressed. Monsieur LeBois might look and sound like a self-satisfied, overfed bloodhound, but he might also be a very nice man. Although perhaps not fanatically truthful. I doubted that he was French. The only trace of an accent he possessed sounded as if it had been born within sound of Bow bells. Probably started out as George Woods and had the imagination to reinvent himself. I doubted the nanny and the posh schooling, too.

  “And I have been told that you are a chef.” A stark hunger came into his eyes as he looked at Ben. “Have you any idea what a godsend that makes you in this house, where that gruesome female in need of wooden teeth to go with her Georgian male wig serves up food that a starving rat wouldn’t eat! My dear, noble sir! In one day I have become the shadow of the man I once was. I endure torturous rumblings”-he placed his fat hands tenderly upon the enormous waistcoated stomach-“soon, I fear, there will be an outcry from within equal to that of the mob that stormed the Bastille! Believe me, I have not suffered such outrage to my constitution since the horse-riding accident that placed me in this wheelchair. An egg, one superlatively cooked simple egg, is all I ask of you. Even that foul creature cannot get inside the shell of an egg to pervert its intrinsic goodness. And your wife!” The purplish bloodhound jowls shook with emotion. “Surely you will not subject her to being poisoned before your eyes, when all that is required of you is to follow me down a warren of damp corridors to the kitchen.”

  “What state is it in?” All Ben’s professional instincts were aroused, as evidenced by the tilt of his dark head, the flash of blue-green in his eyes, the fact that he proceeded to turn his back on me. For the moment, my headache and I were nothing to the intriguing challenges to be met behind a green baize door.

  “A dungeon. All the well-rusted implements for drawing and quartering. Livestock in the pantry, I wouldn’t doubt, and typhoid in the drains!” Georges LeBois eyed Ben narrowly through puffy lids, a professional sizing up how far to push his actor, shifting and leveling the camera to get the reaction he wanted. “A challenge surely no chef of any spirit with an ounce of stuffing inside him could resist.” I was wondering where his assistants were lurking when Ben asked Georges how he had discovered he was a chef.

  “From Plunket. And I do, despite my aversion to men with pimples, have to give the mealy-mouthed fellow some points for trying to cheer me up upon seeing how low I was feeling following the accident. You know we lost one of our contestants? Most unfortunate-particularly for the woman herself, of course-but five is an awkward number to be left with. Still, I knew if I pressed that point too hard, Belfrey was liable to back out and we wouldn’t want that. I’m convinced this one could be a winner.”

  Something flickered behind his eyes. Did I glimpse a cold-blooded ruthlessness that would let nothing stand between him and what he saw as his big chance to become a household name? I’d certainly never heard of him before today, not that that meant much. Or was he a man driven to the edge of reason by a frenzied desire to rend a pork roast limb from limb?

  “Ben makes superb omelets,” I said.

  My beloved had eyes for me once more. “Would you like one, sweetheart?” he asked tenderly.

  “Well, yes-I would rather. If you can find a mixing bowl and utensils to sanitize and a pan could be radiated.” I broke off when the door opened to reveal Lord Belfrey and Mrs. Malloy, and all thought fled at the sight of her smug smile. His lordship’s expression was that of the concerned host. He said he was pleased to see that we had met Georges LeBois and explained that Dr. Rowley had spoken with him, expressed relief that I hadn’t seriously injured myself, and hoped I would pass a comfortable night in the bedroom that was ready for me.

  “Is it the room that was to have been Suzanne Varney’s?” I asked. Somehow I hated the idea. I pictured her setting out on her journey to Mucklesfeld, a pretty woman, so Tommy had said, not all that much older at forty-five than myself. Had she been excited? Nervous?

  “Not that one,” Lord Belfrey assured me, “but I’m afraid there weren’t many to choose from. What were the family apartments and the nursery wings are in a bad state of disrepair, which leaves the servants’ quarters. Small rooms with space only for single beds.” He looked questioningly from me to Ben, who said it wouldn’t bother him to sleep on the floor. Of course I wouldn’t let him do that; we could squeeze cozily in together. Even as I thought it, I knew he wouldn’t agree to that. He’d insist that I get an undisturbed night’s sleep.

  His lordship provided an alternative. “The room I picked has a cubbyhole attached that has a small window. I had Plunket set up a bed in there, and I think you may be quite comfortable despite the rather tight squeeze, Mr. Haskell.”

  “Ben. This is very good of your lordship.”

  “My pleasure. Shall I show you both the way?”

  “Who’d have thought when we set off in the car, Mr. and Mrs. H, that we was in for such an adventure?” Mrs. Malloy fluttered her false lashes, attempting to look soulful, but merely looking as though she had something in her eye.

  “I’d like my next adventure to be that omelet we were talking about.” Georges LeBois spun his wheelchair in a circle and brought it back to face Lord Belfrey. “You do know this man’s a chef, Aubrey?”

  “Plunket told me.”

  “Manna from heaven, my dear fellow. Do what it takes to keep him here. Choose him as your bride! Now that would be a reality show!”

  His lordship smiled and Ben did not. What had happened to my beloved’s sense of humor? My headache was coming back full force. I barely restrained myself from snapping at Mrs. Malloy when she suggested accompanying us.

  Lord Belfrey eased the moment by encouraging her to stay and get acquainted with Georges. After a momentary pout, she set her face back to rights and waved me off as if watching a liner shift away from the quay to carry me to parts unknown. Which was the truth of the matter in the small scheme of things. Icebergs and squalls might not await, but as we followed Lord Belfrey down a corridor and up a flight of angular stone steps, I did have the feeling we were entering alien and possibly hostile territory.

  Ben’s muttering “Damn!” (for want
of a worse word) upon stumbling in the ubiquitous half-light didn’t help my increasing feeling that Mucklesfeld Manor did not embrace a visitor with promises of warm and fuzzy delights to come. His lordship flipped light switches with efficient speed, but a candle would probably have worked better. Several more passageways and series of steps loomed. I felt rather like a piece being shuffled forward on the board of Snakes and Ladders-always in danger of shooting precipitously back down to the bottom and having to start the whole business over again. His lordship turned every dozen paces to make sure that we were comfortably keeping up with him.

  “Where are we at this minute?” Ben asked with, I was pleased to hear, just the right amount of interest as we stood in a small room off a landing. It was lined with shelves containing nothing but dust and the occasional mildewed cardboard box.

  “Used to be one of the linen closets in the days when there were mattresses on the beds and working taps on the baths.” His lordship spread expressive hands.

  “It must be next to impossible to keep places like Mucklesfeld up these days,” said Ben conversationally as we passed into yet another passageway. I knew he was thinking that the time had come to throw in the towel… if there were any to be had.

  “But we owe the past something, at least that’s my assessment,” his lordship replied, and it seemed to me that his eyes sought mine in hope of understanding. Or was he worrying that what seemed to have been a twenty-mile trek had exhausted my weakened constitution?

  “I can appreciate the sense of responsibility,” I said.

  We plunged on, up another flight of steps to another landing, down again, and along what proved to be the last stretch. His lordship opened a door, flipped the switch to his right, and surprisingly the round globe in the center of the ceiling produced a sufficiently decent light to reveal a box of a room provided with a narrow bed covered with a faded paisley eiderdown. There wasn’t much else to observe: a couple of clothes hooks protruding from the discolored plastered walls, a bentwood chair, a door in addition to the one we had entered, presumably giving entry to the cubbyhole in which Ben was to sleep, and a narrow window sliced into the sloping ceiling.

  Lord Belfrey followed my gaze upward. “We are directly under the roof of the east wing. For centuries the female servants slept in one vast open space up here, but sometime in the early part of the twentieth century it was divided up into a warren of single or double rooms to provide them some privacy when they came off duty for the night.”

  “That must have been a treat,” I said, adding with what I hoped was a cheery smile, “Is it much of a bus ride to the bathroom?”

  “Right next door on your left. It is why I selected this room for you.” His dark eyes seemed to take in my every movement as I sat gingerly down on the chair that didn’t look as if it could support a Teddy bear. “I wish I had better to offer you.” He did not embellish, there was no need. His voice said it all. “As for a meal, I’ll take your husband to the kitchen and hopefully between the two of us we can concoct something that he can bring up on a tray.” He turned to Ben, who was still standing in the doorway to the passage, and now asked him about the tablets Tommy had said he would let me have.

  “We’ll get them from him.” “Then best to get going.” Ben cast me an anxious look that was not alleviated by my bright statement that there was no rush because I was feeling almost back to normal. “Lie down, sweetheart, and try to rest.”

  “What about my night things?”

  “I’ll get our cases from the car.”

  “Plunket can bring them up and put them outside the door,” Lord Belfrey assured me in a voice equally soothing to that of my husband, adding that he’d had Mrs. Foot put a hot-water bottle in the bed. Perhaps I should have kissed them both before they left me. Ben was so incredibly dear, and his lordship emanated a secret sorrow that it was surely the duty of any compassionate woman to assuage. Let it be hoped, I thought rather woozily as I got off the chair, that in one of the contestants he would find a love that went beyond gratitude for helping him save Mucklesfeld. Perhaps an all-consuming passion was too much to be hoped for under the circumstances, especially as at the age of almost fifty-six he must have known and had his pick of countless women. Very likely he had been married in the past. At any other time I would have imagined a scenario to match his fascinating good looks, but I discovered that I was so desperate to lie down that I crawled under the eiderdown without worrying that it was filled with moths or that the pillow on which I laid my head had been around since the plague.

  My feet searched out the hot-water bottle and discovered that it was lukewarm, which didn’t surprise me given my opinion of Mrs. Foot’s incompetence or malevolence… no, there I was being unkind. I turned on my side in hope I would find the lumpy mattress more comfortable that way. My original impression of her had been fueled by pure silliness. She was not the hag who had rejoiced in Wisteria Whitworth’s subjugation at Perdition Hall. And if, as seemed credible, she had dropped the lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head, anyone doomed to live in this house might be excused for occasionally giving way to giddy attempts at humor. I lay thinking about the odd trio of Mrs. Foot, Mr. Plunket, and Boris, who presumably had a last name. Had his lordship hired them because they were affordable or because he was kind and doubted anyone else would?

  If I lay completely still and kept my eyes squeezed shut against the light, which I should have turned off, but hadn’t because the idea of complete darkness was even more unappealing, my headache receded. Except when the window rattled irritably. Checking the latch would have required standing on the flimsy chair and I did not want to risk a pair of broken legs that might keep me at Mucklesfeld beyond the morning. I was wondering what Mrs. Malloy was up to when a jolt jerked me up, and my eyes flew wide open, to find her there, arms akimbo, staring down at me.

  “Did you have to bump into the bed?” I grumbled.

  “I didn’t.” She was smiling dreamily.

  “With the force of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.”

  “Not feeling better, Mrs. H?”

  “I was. More to the point-why are you looking as if you just swallowed a dozen canaries?”

  “Sure you’re up to hearing?” She sat down at the foot of the bed, her ringed hands folded demurely, and I knew instantly what was coming. Even so, my heart gave a thump when she said the words. “I’m to replace the dead lady as the sixth contestant. Now, don’t go looking at me like that, Mrs. H, it’s not a case of me dancing on her grave, just being practical like, and after all we do owe his lordship for taking us in out of the fog.”

  “So you proposed marriage to him out of a sense of obligation?”

  “What makes you think I asked him?”

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded haughtily. “Really, I don’t know what’s got into you, Mrs. H. I’d have thought you’d be thrilled for me, getting the chance to live out me romantic dreams. All them books we’ve both read with the blissfully happy endings.”

  I could have pointed out that these invariably occurred after a couple of bodies had turned up along the way, either in the millpond or the suspiciously locked turret additionally guarded by the yellow-eyed black dog, but I restrained myself out of concern for my head, which had been good to me over the years. “This isn’t a situation that invites the grand passion, Mrs. Malloy, it’s a reality show. Which some people might consider vulgar.”

  Understandably, she bridled. “You’re saying that his lordship-my intended-lacks refinement?”

  “No, no!” I protested hastily. “I’m sure only dire necessity drove him to this course…”

  “Coarse?” Her voice rose, along with the rest of her, but fortunately she sank back down without grabbing my throat.

  “Course of action. I suppose it could even be said that there is something noble in his desire to save his ancestral home. What really worries me is the thought of your being hurt when… if, he doesn’t select… choose
you as his bride.”

  “Well, that’s the chance I’ll be taking. Tomorrow we’ll get to size up the other candidates, won’t we?”

  “We? But Ben and I will be going home first thing.”

  “What? Rush off before you’ve had breakfast?” She eyed me as if I had just produced a stake to thrust through her heart. “Or lunch. Well, I must say, that wouldn’t be treating his lordship very nice after all he’s done for you.”

  “He didn’t say anything to me or Ben about his arrangement with you.”

  “And why should he?”

  Why indeed? It was unreasonable of me to feel left out in the cold. Perhaps, despite Tommy’s assurances to the contrary, I had injured my brain when I fell.

  “It’s not like I’m under age, needing a guardian’s approval,” Mrs. Malloy pointed out.

  “I’m sorry. This house must be getting to me.”

  “What’s wrong with it? I think it’ll be lovely and comfy with a little tweaking.”

  Make that demolition, I thought.

  “Although,” Mrs. Malloy addressed the wall behind the bed, “being the gentleman he is, his lordship said as he wouldn’t make the agreement final until he had a word with you and Mr. H. I suppose, despite me mature charms, he saw the vulnerable girl inside.” Her purple-lipsticked mouth flickered like a butterfly landing on a dewy rose. Then her eyes hardened, giving off an iridescent sparkle to match her shadow. “But that doesn’t go giving you license to stand in me way. Of course, I understand how you’ll miss my slaving away for you at Merlin’s Court, but it’s not like I won’t come over to visit you and Mr. H and the kiddies when I can find time away from opening the summer fête or hosting a ball.”