“Not too soon, I hope,” her husband said. “Or my gallery walls will be bare. Fiona’s been doing more lunching than painting lately.”
“Painter’s block, would you call it?” asked David Sanborne with interest.
“Something like that,” Fiona replied tersely, casting an injured glance at Bram.
“Coffee, anyone?” Winnie said brightly, and received a relieved-sounding chorus of affirmatives.
“I’ll help, shall I?” Andrew offered as they rose to return to the drawing room.
“Jack and I can manage,” Winnie shot back, and the look Andrew gave Jack could have drawn blood.
Returning to the drawing room after he had helped Winnie clear the table, Jack made an effort to ignore Andrew. He slipped Handel’s Dixit Dominus in the CD player, and as the conversation flowed around him, he thought of what he and Simon had discussed. Was it possible that they were right in thinking it was the Abbey’s lost chant Edmund wanted them to find?
Winnie’s recent warning about Simon crossed his mind, but he dismissed it easily enough. Surely Winnie had been mistaken—perhaps overly zealous in the defense of her dead friend. And if not—if Simon had done such an unscrupulous thing, Jack could not believe it was more than an isolated incident that Simon had later regretted.
Hoping for a moment alone with Winnie, he went back into the kitchen. She stood at the worktop, her back to him, stacking cups and saucers on a tray. He placed his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her exposed shoulder just above the neckline of her dress. She relaxed against him, and he wrapped his arms round her.
But before he could speak he felt a prickling at the back of his neck, and a small current of air. Turning, he saw Andrew Catesby standing in the doorway, watching them.
“Oh, good, Andrew—you can carry the coffee,” said Winnie, as if nothing were amiss, but Jack had seen the venom in her brother’s eyes.
With a forced smile, she handed Jack the cheese tray, and as he left the kitchen he heard Andrew say, “Not very fitting behavior for a priest, fawning all over him like a common tart.”
Winnie snapped something in reply that Jack couldn’t quite make out. He’d turned back, determined to intervene, when Winnie came out of the kitchen, cheeks flaming.
“Winnie—”
“Later. We’d better serve the guests.”
They returned to the drawing room, and when Andrew had joined them, David Sanborne said, “Nice choice, the Handel. I believe that’s what the Somerfield choir is doing at Christmas this year—am I right, dear?” He glanced at his wife.
“Our Nigel’s hanging on to his soprano part by a hair, I’m afraid. We’re all praying his voice will hold another few months.”
“It must be frustrating for boys that age, being neither fish nor fowl,” said Winnie, her color still high. “And then just when they’ve got themselves sorted out, grown a bit of hair on their chests, they have to move up and deal with Andrew.”
“I do what I can,” Andrew said. “Vile, back-stabbing little buggers, most of them. Your son excepted, of course.” He nodded at the Sanbornes.
David Sanborne grinned. “Sixth-formers shaping up this year, are they?”
“As well as they ever do, meaning it would take a miracle to make historians out of them.” He gave Jack a malevolent glance. “Montfort here is an amateur historian of a sort—why don’t you tell them about your interest in the history of the Abbey?”
The bastard, thought Jack, groping for an acceptable answer. “Just a bit of local genealogy, really. It’s odd, but with both my parents gone, I suddenly realized I wanted to know more about my family. I’ve been able to trace Montforts in Glastonbury as far back as the twelve hundreds, but earlier than that it gets fuzzy.”
“Montfort’s a French name, surely,” said Fiona, who had been quiet since her husband’s dig about her painting. “If your ancestors didn’t arrive until after the Conquest, that would explain why the trail disappears.”
“Any relation to Simon de Montfort, the reformer?” asked Bram.
“An interesting idea,” Andrew mused, “but that de Montfort came to a very bad end. His revolutionary zeal got him gutted on the battlefield, I believe.”
“Simon Fitzstephen’s been remarkably helpful,” Jack said as he saw Winnie blanch. “I’m sure if there was a connection, he would have found it.”
“Yes, but would he have told you?” murmured Suzanne. Then, seeing all eyes turned on her expectantly, she shook her head slightly. “Oh, that was out of turn. Too much wine, I expect. It’s just that Simon’s been known to withhold information when it suited him. Church politics can be surprisingly vicious, and Simon was a master player.”
David Sanborne stood. “I think I’d better take you home, my dear, before you become indiscreet. And I’ve got early surgery tomorrow—you know what they say, farmers and doctors never get a lie-in.”
“We’d better be going too,” said Bram Allen. “Fiona needs her rest. It’s been an interesting evening, Winnie. Unparalleled, you might say.”
As they made their farewells, Fiona took Jack’s hand. With a glance at her husband, she said softly, “I am glad to meet you.”
It was a fine, crisp night, with stars hard and bright in a clear sky, and when the two couples had left, Andrew remained on the porch, shifting from one foot to the other. Winnie moved closer to Jack, slipping an arm round his waist.
“Well, I’ll leave you two young lovers to it, shall I?” Andrew spat, then turned on his heel, and strode away. A moment later his car sped out of the drive.
Guiding Winnie by the shoulder, Jack stepped inside and shut the door. In the brighter light of the hall, he could see that her eyes were swimming with unshed tears.
“He was beastly,” she said. “Absolutely beastly.”
“I’m sorry, love. It’s my fault for getting you into this—”
“If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine, for not seeing this coming—but there’s no excuse for his behavior.”
“Winnie, he’s jealous! And I think he’s terrified of losing you.”
“No, there’s something wrong, really wrong, but he won’t talk to me. We were best friends for most of our lives, and now I seem to have become the enemy.”
“Let’s not think about Andrew right now.” He pulled her to him and stroked her hair. “You’re cold. Come in by the fire—I’ve something to tell you.”
Pushing the chair back, Gemma stretched, yawning, then sipped at the dregs of cold tea in her mug. The clock on the cooker in her tiny kitchen alcove read half past eleven, and if she didn’t get to bed she’d be struggling at work tomorrow. Giving the papers on the tabletop a halfhearted shuffle to straighten them, she stood and padded into Toby’s room in her stocking feet.
Although it was one of the first cold nights of the autumn, he’d kicked off his small duvet and lay spread-eagled on his stomach. It wouldn’t be long before he outgrew his junior bed: how would they fit anything larger into what was essentially a boxroom?
Giving the covers a last pat, she turned away with a sigh. They would just have to manage. She wasn’t willing to contemplate leaving the garage flat just now—one change at a time was enough.
The adjustment to the new job had been more difficult than she’d expected. Although she’d been a rookie at Notting Hill, she’d just had her own bit of turf to worry about in those days. In the past two months she’d discovered that the reality of command was a different beast altogether, and with it came a mountain of paperwork that was never finished—hence her midnight stint at the table with cold tea. Added to that was the lingering sexism demonstrated by both her chief inspector and some of the male officers under her command. Only now did she realize how much she had taken her working relationship with Kincaid for granted, and how much it had insulated her from active prejudice.