Dying For a Cruise (2 page)

‘Or cold milk, if you prefer,’ Jenny added, guessing correctly that Mr Lucas Finch had probably never purchased squash in his life.

‘Milk!’ He brightened at once and disappeared briefly, returning a minute or so later with a glass full of the white liquid. It was so cold the glass had developed tiny beads of condensation, and Jenny took it gratefully. She and hot weather didn’t always see eye to eye. Eagerly she took a few good hefty swallows.

Lucas watched her generous chin wobble just slightly as she drank, and backed into a chair, unable to take his eyes from such an impressive sight. As a self-made man, and definite ‘character’ himself, he instinctively knew another ‘character’ when he came across one. And, because he was at heart a gregarious, people-friendly sort of chap, he found himself quite taking to his temporary cook.

Jenny put down the glass on her left knee, and glanced at him patiently.

Lucas smiled. ‘Right. You’re the cook,’ he said, then suddenly brightened. ‘Of
course
you are.’ As if, he might just as well have added out loud, you could possibly be anyone else.

Jenny caught on at once, and far from being offended, positively beamed at him. ‘My father always says you can’t trust a thin cook. It makes people feel uneasy,’ she said promptly.

Lucas Finch laughed.

The parrot laughed.

Jenny laughed. Then, typically, got straight down to business. ‘Now, Mr Finch,’ she began briskly. ‘I understand you require a cook from Saturday breakfast to the Sunday evening meal?’

Lucas nodded, relaxing back into his chair. ‘That’s right.’ He was suddenly very much the businessman now, and potential host. ‘I have guests coming for the weekend. I don’t often entertain, but when I do, I like to do it right. I hate anything to be stingy. I have a housekeeper here, of course, but for guests, I like to push the boat out.’ And he laughed, as if at some private joke.

‘Exactly,’ Jenny concurred, her voice rich with approval. ‘Now, how many are you expecting?’

‘Well, there’s young David Leigh and his wife, Dorothy. She’s just discovered she’s up the spout, by the way, so if you see her barfing into the river, don’t think it’s something you cooked.’

Jenny’s polite smile froze. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ever so sweetly, if through gritted teeth. ‘I won’t.’
As if
! The damned cheek of it. Even pregnant women,
especially
pregnant women, found her food sheer ambrosia.

Lucas, if he’d known her better, would have started grovelling in apology immediately. But since he didn’t, he merely nodded, and carried on blithely. ‘Then there’s that old codger, Gabriel Olney and his wife, the luscious Jasmine. Now I wouldn’t mind planting her in my garden, I can tell you.’ And he drawled the double entendre with such a childish delight that it was almost impossible for Jenny to take offence. Although a woman’s libber would have jumped right down his throat at such an openly sexist remark, she mused with a wry twitch of her lips. ‘Bugger me, if she ain’t a little goer. She’s not so young, actually, but all the better for it, if you know what I mean?’

Jenny, stifling a sigh, began to understand what her friend the hapless cyclist had meant. Politically correct Lucas Finch most definitely wasn’t. Suddenly, she was not at all surprised that Mr Finch wasn’t ‘any too popular around these parts’. Even in this day and age, villagers, as she knew only too well, tended to be an insular and conservative lot.

And for different reasons entirely, he was beginning to become very unpopular with his cook as well. Any implied slur on her cooking was guaranteed to get her gander up.

‘So it’s just the four guests?’ she clarified. She’d have to keep Dorothy Leigh’s delicate condition in mind, of course. Plenty of vegetables and rice dishes for her.

‘Right. Oh and myself, and yourself, of course, and Captain Lester and the engineer. Oh, and Francis. My manservant,’ he added. He said the final words very much like a magician might say ‘abracadabra’ before producing a rabbit from a hat.

Jenny found it, much to her chagrin, rather touching.

That Lucas Finch must indeed have had a poverty-stricken upbringing, she didn’t doubt. The way he liked to throw his money about when entertaining was a sure sign. And now, the very reverence with which he referred to Francis by the ultra old-fashioned title of manservant made her heart contract in compassion. No doubt to the young Lucas Finch, growing up in London’s grime, the thought of him ever having a servant must have been as fantastic a dream as owning a goldmine.

Of course, what the absent Francis felt about being described as a manservant to Lucas probably didn’t bear thinking about. Jenny shrugged the thought aside. She was allowing her mind to wander off the point.

‘So you have—’ she made a quick mental count ‘—five guests, and … er … the engineer? And Francis and myself.’

Lucas frowned, looking puzzled.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s just the Olneys and the Leighs.’

‘And the captain?’ Jenny prompted. He counted as a guest, surely?

Lucas looked at her as if she was mad. ‘The captain steers the boat, love,’ he explained with a gentle patience that would have been kind, if it hadn’t been so patronizing.

Jenny fixed him with an eye that was beadier than the eye the parrot was giving her. ‘Boat?’ she echoed sharply.

‘Course,’ Lucas said, looking surprised now. ‘The
Stillwater Swan
.’ He said the name as lovingly as Romeo would have addressed Juliet.

‘The
Stillwater Swan
.’ Jenny repeated his words flatly and felt herself flush. She was beginning to feel as if she and the parrot might have a lot in common, after all. ‘I don’t recall the mention of any boat in our correspondence, Mr Finch,’ she said, her voice like steel.

The fact was, Jenny was not so sure that she liked the sound of the word ‘boat’.

Her father, who’d been a top chef in both London and then Paris for most of his career, had told her once about working on the
Queen Elizabeth II
. And all about some of his more harrowing experiences during a typhoon just off Bora-Bora. She still, to this day, had nightmares about trying to cook a seven-course dinner in a kitchen that wouldn’t keep still.

Lucas Finch suddenly slapped his forehead in a well-blow-me-down gesture, making the parrot on his shoulder jump nervously.

‘You silly sod,’ the parrot said, quite clearly.

Jenny glanced at the bird in some surprise, then shrugged. No doubt the bird had picked up quite a few less than salubrious phrases from its master over the years. It was just a sheer coincidence that it had chosen to utter the comment at such an appropriate moment.

‘Of course, I didn’t say, did I?’ Lucas grinned at his own neglect. ‘Come on, er … Miss … er….’

‘Starling.’

‘Starling. I’ll show you my pride and joy.’

Jenny wasn’t any too sure that she wanted to be shown Lucas Finch’s pride and joy. Nevertheless, she got rather reluctantly to her feet, and followed his tall, white-haired figure through the house and out into the vast back garden where, at the bottom, the River Thames meandered by, like some stately relative just calling in for a visit. And there, moored to a large wooden landing, was the most beautiful sight Jenny had ever seen.

The ‘boat’ was a large, flat-bottomed, two-storeyed paddle steamer – obviously purpose-built and to spec, in order to traverse England’s biggest river. Not exactly a Mississippi riverboat special, it was certainly unusual and undeniably elegant. It had, in fact, class written all over it.

It was also, as its name suggested, painted a bright, almost blinding white, with black and orange trim. As they approached it, the cook noticed how the steam whistle that rose above the structure was carved like the neck and head of a swan, with its orange-painted beak wide open, to allow the steam through.

The riverboat had tiny balconies on the upper storeys, with hanging baskets affixed to the walls, frothing over with blue, red, green and yellow. Its brass fixtures gleamed like gold. Its planked decking was dry and clean, and a light gold in colour. The windows on both floors were wide and pristine, and glass sliding doors led out onto the lower deck. It was most definitely a rich man’s toy.

‘Isn’t she summat?’ Lucas Finch asked with masterly understatement and beaming pride, and Jenny nodded.

‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, her blue eyes sparkling. ‘She certainly is summat.’

‘Want the guided tour?’

Jenny nodded. If she was to spend the weekend cooking on this lovely vessel, she most certainly did want the guided tour. Especially of the kitchen. Or, she supposed she should say, the galley.

The
Stillwater Swan
didn’t so much as bob at her mooring as they stepped from the jetty, through the open boarding gate and onto its lower deck. Jenny went straight to the rear and looked at the large paddles below.

Long, elegantly curved paddles rested in the still, clear water of the Thames. She could just imagine them turning, gently and smoothly pushing the boat along. What was it about paddle steamers, she mused meltingly, that so boggled the imagination? She felt like a giddy schoolgirl about to go to her first dance. She’d cooked in castles, in colleges, and indeed in some of the stateliest homes of England in her time. But this was something special. Perhaps it was the magic of steam, or simply the call and romance of a bygone era that made her heart flutter.

‘This here’s the engine room.’ Lucas briefly opened the door, giving her a glimpse of a large but modern boiler, and a row of technical-looking, state-of-the-art dials. ‘The coal and water are stored here.’ He nodded to the side, where a small door led off to the storerooms. ‘We also have another freshwater butt on the starboard side, in case of fires, or if the tanks run low.’

Jenny nodded but in fact knew nothing about the mechanics of how such a boat must work. Nor was she particularly interested. Just so long as, when she turned on the taps in her kitchen – no,
her galley
– the water came on, then she was happy.

‘But the guests, of course, have nothing to do with the dirty, smelly end,’ Lucas laughed. ‘Up there—’ He nodded above, to the balconies on the second storey ‘—are three bedrooms and a bathroom. Double beds, mind. And thick carpets. And real antiques. When I had the
Swan
built, must be twenty years ago now, I had her fitted out with nothing but the best.’

Jenny ignored the boasting, having got her measure of the man by now.

She didn’t doubt that Lucas always had to have the best of everything, and for once she was not amused or touched by his extravagance. The
Stillwater Swan
, it was plain,
simply deserved
the best of everything.

She followed him as he led her to the main salon, that also served, she saw at once, as the dining room.

In the centre of the room was a large, gleaming mahogany table that could easily have seated twenty. The cook could just imagine it set with a snowy white cloth (what other colour for the
Stillwater Swan
?) and awash with gleaming crystal, a towering candle-and-flower centrepiece, and silver cutlery set for a seven-course feast.

She began to practically quiver in anticipation.

Lucas Finch watched her reaction with a smile of satisfaction, and nodded. In that instant, he knew that this surprising cook would not let him down. His guests would be treated to nothing but the best. ‘I’ve got flowers arriving later on tonight, plus the delivery of food.’

At the magical word ‘food’, Jenny turned to him, her blue eyes sparkling. ‘Yes?’

Lucas smiled. ‘Don’t worry, love, you can check it all out for yourself, and if I’ve forgotten anything, then tell me. I have an arrangement with the butchers and greengrocers around here. What I want, I get.’ And his eyes glinted, just for a moment losing their jovial, laid-back twinkle.

Jenny made a mental note to watch out for that particular gleam. Only truly ruthless men could get quite that expression in their eye. She followed with a rather wry smile as he led her to the galley, which was nowhere near as poky as she had feared and imagined.

A large gas cooker stood in one corner, surrounded by adequate top-space. Cupboards were arranged in that very neat way that was peculiar to boats, taking up the minimum amount of space, whilst at the same time making the most of every square inch. A large sink and a small table completed the ensemble. All in all, not too shabby.

She made a quick inspection of the utensils – plenty of pots, pans, and cutlery. She had with her, of course, and packed securely in the van, her own portable set of knives, spoons, spatulas etc. No cook worth her salt travelled without them.

After a long, thorough inspection, she nodded, turned to look at him, and smiled. ‘This will do nicely,’ she said judiciously.

Lucas Finch grinned.

The parrot on his shoulder coughed.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to kip in the adjoining cook’s bunkhouse,’ he said, and went to a small door set in one bulkhead. It opened into a tiny bedroom, that contained one single bed, and a narrow wardrobe with one drawer at the bottom. There wasn’t so much as a porthole, and Lucas pulled on a cord that turned on a rather weak light. Jenny eyed the bed with a jaundiced eye, and then shrugged her massive shoulders. It was only for one night, after all.

‘It’ll do,’ she said shortly, and turned back to her galley. ‘So you’ll be wanting a full English breakfast for Saturday and Sunday mornings?’

‘Right. Might as well start the cruise off on a good nosh-up,’ he said cheerfully, and Jenny positively beamed at him.

He was a man after her own heart, despite the rather rough edges.

‘Then, something light for lunch – salad, paté, something like that,’ he agreed enthusiastically, ‘then as lavish a meal as you can manage, say, round about eightish at night?’

Jenny gave him a long, considering look. ‘I can manage a very lavish meal, given the right ingredients,’ she warned him. It was her dream to be let loose on a no-holds-barred feast. She tended, she knew, to go rather over the top though.

Lucas laughed. ‘I bet you can.’

Jenny looked at him archly. ‘How many courses had you in mind, Mr Finch?’