T Kinsey - A Quiet Life in the Country (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery Book 1)

‘Quite so, my lady. Lunch in ten minutes?’

The afternoon passed with only one further interruption, in the form of a message delivered by a uniformed chauffeur. He insisted upon waiting for a reply, but declined the offer of a seat in the kitchen and remained on the doorstep.

The message was from Sir Hector and Lady Farley-Stroud, the local landowners. They lived at The Grange, a large, comfortably dishevelled manor house, which we’d seen on the hill as we drove through the village the day before. The Farley-Strouds apologized for the short notice but wondered if Lady Hardcastle might like to come to dinner that evening ‘to meet a few people’, an invitation that, of course, she had readily accepted. Bert – for that was the chauffeur’s name – took her note and assured me that if her answer was ‘yes’ he’d be back at half past seven to collect her and drive her to The Grange.

I helped Lady Hardcastle dress. Then, once she was gone, I settled into one of the comfortable chairs in the sitting room with a book and a sandwich. She had suggested that I open one of the bottles of wine we’d brought from the London flat, but I made do with water. Wine was for sharing.

Time passed quickly as I lost myself in my book. My journal doesn’t record what I was reading, but I do recall enjoying it, so it probably wasn’t Thackeray. I never could get on with Thackeray.

Shortly before midnight Lady Hardcastle breezed into the sitting room.

‘What ho, Flo,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to find you still up.’

‘You know how it is, my lady,’ I said, waving the book.

‘Ah, yes. You and your books.’

‘Just so. How was dinner?’

‘Really rather more pleasant than I expected. I thought I was in for a dull evening in the company of the pompous country squire and his frightful wife, but they turned out to be really rather splendid.’

‘How so?’ I said, sitting up more comfortably.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. ‘Do you think these pearls go with this blue dress?’

‘As if the ensemble were designed by the finest Parisian couturiers , my lady. You have the attention span of a wasp. What was so splendid about the Farley-Strouds?’

‘Oh, yes, sorry. Not only are they the most charming old buffers ever to draw breath, it turns out that Gertie Farley-Stroud knew my mother. I walked in and she said, “Now tell me, dear, before we carry on, was your maiden name Featherstonhaugh?” So I said, “Ye–es.” And she said, “And do you have an older brother, Harry?” And I said, “Ye–es”, again in that exact same drawn-out, puzzled way, thinking she must have looked me up in Who’s Who or something. And then she said, “My dear, I knew your mother.”’

‘Apparently she and Hector met my parents when Daddy was in India and they kept in touch. She said the last time she saw me was in the family home in London. I was four years old and recited Newton’s Laws of Motion to her and then played Frère Jacques – quite badly, she says – on the piano before announcing that when I grew up I was going to be a polar bear.’

‘You were ambitious, even then,’ I said.

‘Always, dear, always. Evidently she and Mummy wrote to each other for years and Gertie followed my progress: up to Cambridge, marrying Roddy, all our postings abroad, everything. When Jasper’s agent introduced me as the new tenant of this place, she wondered if I might be the same Emily Hardcastle she knew of old and, as it turns out, I am.’

‘Surely there can be only one, my lady,’ I said.

‘Well, quite. But they were sweet and charming and quite as barmy as a sack of gibbons and I had a lovely time. The only oint in the flyment was that they insisted I should meet the local “people” so that I might be properly introduced to Gloucestershire society. I could have done without it, to be honest, but it seemed churlish to make a fuss so I mucked in as best I could. What I’d expected to be an intimate supper with the local landowners turned into some manner of formal introduction to the Great and the Good. Or the local equivalent, at least. The Moderately Significant and the Well-Intentioned, perhaps. Still, they think themselves frightfully important and that’s what counts, I suppose.’

‘Any juicy gossip?’

‘None whatsoever, I’m afraid. The only thing happening of note at all is that the Farley-Strouds’ daughter has become engaged to the scion of a local commercial family. They’re in shipping or something. It’s all anyone can talk about. I confess I paid little attention.’

‘Still, it could be worse. You could have been called upon to foil the assassination of the Bulgarian ambassador. Again.’

‘That was a lark, though, wasn’t it?’

‘A lark indeed, my lady. I think we’re better off without all that, though.’

‘You’re probably right. How was your evening?’

‘Sandwiches and a good book – I can’t imagine better.’

‘An evening with me, of course. Do you fancy a nightcap? I could do with a brandy before bed.’

I fetched the brandy and a couple of glasses. Life in the country wasn’t so bad, after all.

2

I had been assured that our new life in Gloucestershire would be peaceful and uneventful. A train from the nearby market town would take us north to Cheltenham or Gloucester, or south to Bristol or Bath, and we could be in any of those bustling cities in ‘no time at all’. We’d not be entirely cut off from civilization, but I’d been promised that there would be calm after the years of adventure (and occasional terror). Lady Hardcastle and I would finally be able to relax. And to rest. To take it easy. Away from the violence.

And so it was that we were up and eating breakfast together in the morning room shortly after dawn on our second full day in the village.

‘You promised me a life of ease,’ I protested as I put another sausage on her plate.

‘And you’ll get one,’ she said, spearing the sausage with her fork and waving it in the air before her. ‘Gertie has arranged for two promising potential servants to call on us tomorrow, so you’ll soon have so much time that you’ll not know what to do with yourself.’

‘And yet here I am at the breakfast table while even the birds are thinking it might be a bit early and are contemplating another half an hour in their nests before they have to face the day.’

‘You’ll thank me later,’ she said. ‘We shall go for a walk to explore our new surroundings. Perhaps make a few sketches. Then we’ll pop into the village and place some orders with the shopkeepers – it’s nice to show one’s face. I wonder if there’s a tea shop – we could stop for a cuppa and a sticky bun.’

‘And all before lunch,’ I said.

‘Exactly so. We can do all that and still have the best part of this glorious summer’s day ahead of us.’

‘You make a good case, my lady,’ I said as I made a start on clearing away the breakfast things. ‘But I’m reasonably certain that I’d have preferred an extra hour in bed and then still have all those things to look forward to.’

‘I’ll be back to my sluggardly ways in no time. I think it’s the change of air.’

‘That’s definitely something for me to look forward to.’

She rose to leave.

‘I’ve put your outdoor boots by the front door,’ I said.

‘You’re a marvel,’ she said. ‘Ready to leave in ten minutes?’

Ten minutes later we were indeed almost ready to leave. Almost.

‘I say, Flo, you couldn’t be the absolute sweetest of sweethearts and pop out to the orangery for me? I should like to take some drawing things with us. The bag is in there somewhere.’

Lady Hardcastle was an inveterate sketcher. She kept pencils and a sketch pad in a canvas bag, always packed and ready for adventure. Always packed, at any rate. The bag was never actually ready for the adventure because she could never remember where she had left it.