A Christmas Escape (3 page)

A
t luncheon, Charles was introduced to the rest of the guests at the house.

Candace came into the dining room looking demure and very well behaved. She glanced at him once, almost shyly, and then looked away. She was accompanied by an elderly man, who was tall, thin, and white-haired. He had a mild face, which was ascetic and a little pale except for the beginning of sunburn on his nose and high cheekbones.

“Roger Finbar,” he introduced himself. “You must be Latterly. How do you do? This is my great-niece, Candace Finbar.”

“How do you do, sir?” Charles replied. Then he glanced at Candace as if he had not seen her before, and saw the relief brilliant in her eyes for an instant, then gone again. “Miss Finbar,” he acknowledged her.

The only other woman in the party was decidedly handsome, but in a calm and gentle way that did not especially appeal to Charles. She could not have been the heroine of a book anyone would have entitled
Fire
. She was introduced by Finbar as Mrs. Isla Bailey.

“Where is your husband?” Finbar asked to fill the momentary silence when the polite acknowledgments had been made.

“Not returned yet from his walk,” Mrs. Bailey replied. “He must have gone farther than he intended. Please don't wait for him.”

“Certainly not,” another man agreed, coming into the room from the opposite door. He was of at least average height with fair hair and dull, precise features. He was very casually dressed, but Charles could tell at a glance that his clothes were of excellent quality and perfectly tailored to his slightly lopsided physique.

He gave a faint bow, more just a gesture of his head.

“Percival Quinn,” he murmured. “I presume you are Latterly, the final member of our group?”

“Yes, Mr. Quinn. How do you do, sir?” Charles acknowledged him. He regarded Quinn with interest. So this was the man who had written the book about the woman who had filled her life with such passion. Charles was inclined to agree with Candace; Quinn did not look like a man whose imagination could create such a work. Perhaps this went to show that it was one of life's classic mistakes to judge the heart or mind of a person by the cast of their features!

Just as everyone had chosen a place at the single long table, they were joined by another man. There was no hesitation in Charles's mind as to his identity. He was tall, very straight-backed and square-shouldered. His upper lip was decorated with a meticulously trimmed mustache and his cheeks were of rich color from the sun- and windburn of many seasons. This had to be Colonel Bretherton.

“Late,” Bretherton said unhappily. “I apologize. Mrs. Bailey, Miss Finbar.” He looked at Charles as he pulled out his chair with a slight squeak as its legs scraped the floor. “Bretherton. You must be Latterly. How do you do, sir?”

Stefano bustled in with steaming pasta to add to the vegetables and the huge dish of prawns. He beamed at his guests, bade them welcome, and told them to enjoy. There were glasses on the table, and a carafe of wine from which they were to help themselves.

There was only one chair unoccupied.

Into this pleasant gathering the last member arrived late. He was a middle-aged man, vigorous and wiry. His brown hair was receding slightly, making his broad brow even more prominent. Now he looked irritated.

“I see you have begun without me.” It sounded very much like a criticism as he pulled his chair out, banging it against the wall behind him deliberately. “I'm glad I didn't keep you waiting.” His tone did not convey pleasure. He helped himself from the various bowls and began eating immediately. He had had several mouthfuls before he spoke again. He looked first at Isla Bailey, who said nothing, then across at Charles.

“Since no one is going to introduce me, I suppose I had better introduce myself. I am Walker-Bailey. I assume someone has introduced you to my wife, Isla? Bretherton, no doubt.” He shot a hard glance at the colonel but did not leave him time to deny it.

“Charles Latterly,” Charles responded. “How do you do, Mr. Bailey?”

“Walker-Bailey,” Bailey corrected him. “Not exactly the place to pass over one's card, but it is hyphenated.”

Charles knew that he was supposed to apologize for the slip, but the man's disregard for the courtesies of the meal annoyed him, so he didn't. The ease had gone from the room.

Bailey turned to Quinn. “Been writing again this morning?” he asked. “Seeking the muse?”

“If you want to put it that way,” Quinn replied, taking another mouthful of salad.

Bailey smiled, but the curve of his lips was not kind. “It must be terribly difficult to find such a…” he hesitated, looking for exactly the right word, “…unique, passionate voice,” he finished.

Isla looked uncomfortable, glancing at her husband, then at Quinn.

Bretherton cleared his throat but ended up saying nothing.

“Did you imagine writing was easy?” There was a note of challenge in Quinn's voice, but solely for Bailey. He ignored everyone else.

Bailey swallowed his mouthful of food and took a sip of wine. “Perhaps you made an error—a technical one, of course, not a literary one—in letting Lucy die at the end of your…novel?” he suggested, looking again at Quinn.

“Oh, no!” Candace interrupted with certainty in her whole bearing. “It was right. It was the end of her life. Anything more after that would have ruined it.”

Everyone at the table turned to look at her, with varying expressions of surprise or disbelief, except Charles, who already knew that she had read it. Finbar, who should have known better, seemed the most taken aback.

Bailey raised his eyebrows very high. “I beg your pardon?”

Candace blushed, but she met his eyes without flinching and repeated exactly what she had said.

“I heard you,” Bailey said tartly. “I was giving you an opportunity to rephrase your remarks a little more appropriately.”

Charles spoke before he considered the wisdom of it. “They seemed perfectly appropriate to me. If a story is complete, then you diminish it by adding more.” He remembered some advice from years ago. “The recipe for a perfect speech is to begin at the beginning, go through the middle, come to the end, and then for heaven's sake stop!”

“Most amusing,” Bailey said dryly. “Who did you say you were again? I apologize, but I don't recall.”

“Charles Latterly, Mr. Bailey,” Charles said deliberately.

“He likes to be known as Walker-Bailey,” Colonel Bretherton added, with a discreet but very genuine smile.

Candace smothered a giggle in her napkin. Then, aware that everyone was looking at her, she turned it into a sneeze, and then a second one.

Charles passed her a glass of water, not with the idea that it would be any use at all, but just as a sign of solidarity.

Finbar sighed, but shot him a look of appreciation.

Bailey peered at her, then turned to her great-uncle. “I'm surprised you allow a child her age to read such things. It has some rather…explicit passages in it, don't you think? All imagination, of course. I cannot conceive of the notion that Quinn actually asked elderly ladies how they felt about such…physical…behavior…” He stopped, clearly uncertain how to say what he meant without being crude in front of his wife and Candace.

Quinn started to say something, then stopped, possibly for the same reason.

Candace looked down and reached for the glass of water again, to hide her expression.

“I didn't allow it,” Finbar said with grace. “I was not aware she had read it. But she is very nearly old enough to know about such things. I thought the descriptions were rather good, actually. Emotional, tender, rather than simply graphic.”

“I can't imagine how you come to be guardian of a child, and a girl,” Bailey said gravely. “What on earth were her parents thinking of?”

“Please…” Isla implored, her voice thick with embarrassment and distress, both for Candace and for Finbar.

“Probably that they would not die so young!” Charles filled the silence.

Finbar looked across at Isla, a gentle pity in his eyes. “Looking after Candace is a privilege I inherited largely by default.”

Bretherton turned slightly in his chair and stared at Bailey.

“Did you walk up toward the crater this afternoon?” he inquired with a tone of interest he could not have felt.

Bailey stared at him for a moment, startled out of his contemplation of Quinn's book and Candace's guardian.

“Did you?” Isla echoed.

“Of course I did,” Bailey replied. “It was well worth the climb. The views are unlike anything else in the world. The sky, the sea, and fire on the earth right under your feet. There is a sense of timelessness one cannot even imagine anywhere else. No wonder the ancients believed in gods the way we only pretend to now. They felt the enormity of creation! We only sit in polite rows in man-made churches and talk about sets of rules. I recommend that each of you climb as far as you can, and look at the marvels of the world.”

No one answered him. Perhaps they felt no need.

Before the silence could gather weight, Stefano came in from the kitchen with a large bowl of fruit: late autumn apples, and a few odd-shaped fruits that Charles had not seen before.

“You should finish with something sweet,” Stefano said, setting the bowl down. “Maybe you come back one year when the peaches are ripe? Such peaches we have, the juice runs down your chin!”

“Thank you.” Isla smiled at him. “It seems everything here is so good.”

“But of course!” He beamed at her. “You think I serve to you anything that is not the best? Never!”

Bailey opened his mouth, but at a glare from both Quinn and Charles, he closed it without speaking.

Stefano smiled at them all and went out again to the kitchen. Charles realized he had his own way of dealing with ungraciousness, without ever descending to rudeness. He found himself not only liking the man but admiring him. It was a good feeling: warmer and easier than anything he could remember in a long time—too long to bring back to mind with any clarity. He knew that, and acknowledged it as probably no more than the unfamiliarity of the place, Stefano's good humor, and of course the warm, cloudless sky.

A
fter lunch was over Charles walked alone around the area immediately next to the house. The meticulous care with which it was tended pleased him. Whitewash over all the stones and clay of the buildings was a very simple decoration, but it was also clean and fresh. Nothing was ornate, but the doors and windows were functional and that quality had its own beauty.

He was strolling toward one of the more private areas of the garden, just outside the larger rooms, when he heard voices within. He recognized them straightaway. One of them was that of Isla Bailey.

He stopped, not wanting to intrude.

“I've already told you! I don't want to go.” The reply came from Bailey, as Charles would have expected. “You're making a fuss over nothing.” His tone was abrupt, more than irritated.

“It may be nothing to you!” she responded. Now her voice was thick with emotion. Clearly she was distressed. “I care very much. I don't know why you can't see that!”

“I can't see it because it is all in your own feelings…”

“We're talking about feelings!” she protested.

“
You
are. I am talking about facts,” he corrected her tartly. “We need to be realistic.”

“There's nothing unrealistic about staying.”

They may have had the argument many times before—from the distress and exasperation in their voices that would be easy to believe—yet apparently there was deep disagreement between them still.

“It's far too big.” He made an exaggeratedly patient attempt to explain his point to her.

Charles could not help imagining the sneer in his face.

“We do not need two acres of garden and an orchard, Isla,” Bailey continued. “The outbuildings are totally useless to us and will cost a fortune to reroof.”