London Broil (18 page)

"Oh yes, Oliver
is so good to me," sighed Phoebe.

Laura noticed
that Rodney Belmont-Speck, who had been gazing at Phoebe with an
unmistakable expression of longing, now turned a glowering eye
on Nolly. "He'd do well not to conduct himself as anything other
than a gentleman," he growled.

"Why, so I do,"
said Nolly mildly. "The ancient ideals of our green and pleasant
land are always uppermost in my mind."

"Oliver believes
in everything old-fashioned," said Phoebe happily.

"God save little
shops, china cups and virginity," quoted Laura.

She'd meant it
to be ironic, but Phoebe looked at her as though she'd just
announced the cure for cancer. "Oh, yes, that's exactly how I
feel," she said. "Papa made Amelia and me take an abstinence
pledge to save ourselves for our husbands, just like the Vestal
Virgins of Rome."

Laura saw that
Nolly was looking disconcerted, as though this was the first
he'd heard of the abstinence pledge, and James was trying, with
only partial success, to stifle a laugh. Rodney, meanwhile, had
fixed Phoebe again with his burning, deep set eyes, which now
held an approving and almost triumphant look.

"The Vestals are
so interesting," said Laura. "But I wonder whether they were as
innocent as everyone thinks. They kept a model phallus in their
temple to use in rituals, you know. And just the other day I was
reading in Plutarch's
Life
of Numa
that if one of them was guilty of a minor
infraction, the Pontifex Maximus would chastise her, with a
curtain between them for modesty's sake."

Laura noticed
that everyone at the table was staring at her. Phoebe looked
crestfallen, and the Baron looked confused, while Nolly and
Angela were beaming at her, and James was regarding her with a
frankly speculative look on his face. Rodney was furious, his
face flushing a deep red color.

During this
exchange, they had been passing the serving dishes around while
Emily poured claret into each of the wine glasses. The first
dish held slices of rare roast beef, the second baked potatoes
with a curried cream cheese topping, and the third, overcooked
green beans. Emily appeared at Laura's right and set down a
plate containing a mushroom omelette. Nolly caught her eye and
winked. He must have had a word with the cook.

"Miss
Livingston," said Rodney in his deep voice, "I see that you have
failed to partake of our good English beef and that you have
instead requested an
omelette
."
He spoke this last word with a sneer. "Am I to understand that
you refuse to eat meat?"

Laura sighed
inwardly. She had been confronted like this many times. "Yes,
that's correct."

"May I ask your
reasons?"

Laura put down
her fork and said calmly, "I am a vegetarian. I have not tasted
either meat or fish for twenty years. I have good reasons, but
they are not appropriate for discussion at the table. Now, I
hope that all of you will enjoy your meal. Lord Belmont-Speck,
before we came in, I believe you had some fascinating things to
say about the merits of
Cyclamen
hederifolium
for dry shade?"

The Baron opened
his mouth to speak, but Rodney cut him off. "It's people like
you who are undermining our way of life," he said bitterly. "You
and the Pakis and the wogs. And sick pervs, who ought to be
beaten to a miserable jelly." He glared at Nolly as he said
this. There was a pause during which Laura stared blankly at
Rodney, unable to form a response.

The Baron
coughed, and then said, "Laura, please excuse my son and heir.
We occasionally have protesters on our land who disrupt the
grouse shooting, and he takes it all to heart. Roddy, you owe my
guest an apology," he added in a surprisingly steely voice.
"Sorry," said Rodney sulkily. He looked as though he would have
liked to storm out of the room. Then Nolly asked about a new
restaurant in York, and the conversation flowed relatively
smoothly after that, with very little input from Roddy.

After the salad
and cheese, Laura gratefully retired to her room to recover from
the long day. Her chamber faced the front lawn of Belmont Hall,
where earlier she had noticed sheep grazing in the green grass.
She finished arranging her few clothes in the wardrobe and went
to the ladies' bath to brush her teeth and use the toilet, which
she figured out how to flush by a process of trial and error.
Then she changed into her stretchy pink pajamas. Like the Red
Drawing Room and all the other rooms in the house, her bedroom
was very chilly. There was a serious draft from the window, so
she drew the curtains and switched on the bedside lamp. The bed,
an antique four-poster, was so high that she had to make use of
a little wooden step-stool beside the bed in order to climb into
it. The bedding seemed damp and cold; she could only hope that
sooner or later her body heat would warm it. She settled down to
continue her reading of
The
Heart of Midlothian
.

About an hour
later, she decided she wanted a different book and rose to
retrieve her Kindle from her suitcase. The door handle turned
and James came into the room, shutting the door quietly behind
him. He was wearing pajamas and a wool flannel robe. He came
straight to her and kissed her enthusiastically. "I've missed
you, Livingston," he said. "Want to play Vestals and Pontiffs?"

"Only if you
dress up like Julius Caesar, with one of those bronze
breastplates that has nipples and sixpack abs. Oh, and one of
those kilts of little leather strips with metal studs on them.
Caesar was Pontifex Maximus, you know." She giggled, thinking of
James in a Caesar costume. "If you go to that much trouble, I'll
let you chastise me. But only through a curtain, mind you."

"Mmm. You could
wear one of those virginal white robes." His hands crept down to
rub her behind and press her hips against his. "You'd have to
bend over a cushioned footstool and pull up your robe to show
your bottom, and I'd turn it all rosy for you."

"In your dreams,
Whelan. Speaking of overbearing males, what is wrong with Roddy?
Obviously he's a racist, but there seems to be something
happening between him and Phoebe."

With his hands
still on her behind, he walked her closer to the bed. "Yes.
Apparently Phoebe used to date Roddy and they broke up for some
reason. Now he's violently jealous."

"Is she really a
virgin, or is this some kind of ploy to get Nolly to pop the
question?"

James laughed
softly. "If you ask me, she's for real, but she's also dead set
on becoming a countess. Nolly's smitten, but he'll get nowhere
near her lady bits until the wedding vows are spoken. And even
then, I doubt Phoebe's the type to enjoy his particular...
tastes. No, poor Nolly would be far happier with someone else,
someone like you, as a matter of fact. Luckily for me, I have
you and he doesn't."

She pressed
herself against him from head to toe, trying to absorb his
warmth. In the process, she felt a delicious shiver of lust pass
through the length of her body. It had a warming effect, but she
was still chilled. He boosted her onto the bed and stood between
her legs. "You're cold." He took off his robe and draped it
around her shoulders as she put her arms in and pulled it about
her. This was much better. His navy blue pajamas were thin, but
had a sheen to them as though they were made of silk. As she
embraced him, his warm hands massaged her, first her outer
thighs in long, firm strokes; then his fingers skimmed along her
inner thighs, summoning heat from the rest of her body to pool
in the delicate tissue between her legs.

"Lift your bum,"
he said, and she braced her feet on the frame of the mattress
and raised her pelvis so that he could step back and pull off
her pajama bottoms. He laid hold of her hips, sliding her to the
edge of the mattress and spreading her legs until her crotch was
firmly in contact with the stiff flesh straining against his
silky pajamas. He grinned at her. "Perfect, isn't it? Now I know
why they used to make beds this high." And placing the index
finger of his left hand on her breastbone, he gently but
inexorably pressed her backwards onto the bed.

22.
The Nymph of Belmont
Hall

On Saturday
morning she awoke early, but James and his body heat were
already long gone from her bed, and when she went down to find
some breakfast, dressed in corduroys and two sweaters, she
discovered that the grouse party had left for their shoot. They
would take luncheon on the moor, and the morning's bag was to be
carted back to Belmont Hall and converted into a sumptuous
dinner while the shooters carried on until late afternoon.
Angela found her in the Red Drawing Room, finishing some cold
toast with jam and scrambled eggs, the only available non-meat
choices left from the shooters' breakfast.

"They've all
gone, haven't they?" Laura asked.

"Yes, even
Gerald tore himself away from the garden long enough for a
shoot. I wish it was walked up instead of driven grouse. Older
men need the exercise, poor dears. It's good for their
circulation," said Angela, and gave Laura a smile that could
only be described as naughty. "I'll show you the library," she
went on. "And I really must apologize for my son's behavior last
night." Her face took on a look of exasperation as she recalled
the scene at the dinner table. "I cannot imagine how I came to
give birth to such a pratt as Roddy. Perhaps he was a
changeling."

"He does seem
very different from you and the Baron," Laura said cautiously.

"I have a
maternal fondness for whatever is small and ugly. Roddy fails to
meet the former criterion, but he certainly fulfills the latter.
I sometimes fancy that he's a genetic throwback. He is rather
gorilla-like, don't you agree?"

They had now
reached the library. Instead of answering the question
truthfully, which she knew would be rude, Laura exclaimed over
the beauty of the room. It was spacious, with a large fireplace.
All four walls were clad in shelves of dark wood with intricate
carvings. The books themselves would have been ornament enough,
but over the mantel hung a large picture that took Laura's
breath away. It depicted a slender young woman with long reddish
hair that flowed down her back. She was seated on a rocky shore
before a green lagoon, with tide pools and massive outcroppings
of sea-sculpted stone about her. The girl was nude, and absorbed
in the contemplation of a large conch shell. The outer part of
the shell was white and tan, but the lip and the interior were a
rosy, vivid red, spread over a calcareous white background.

"Lovely, isn't
she?" said Angela. "She's a Waterhouse, acquired by Charles, the
seventh Baron. When I first came here, I was as much in love
with Charles as I was with his son. He was a war hero with the
RAF. Flew a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. But such a
mild and gentle man. He saw how I felt, and we used to have
wonderful talks right here, beside this fireplace, but no more
than that. His heart was with his books, always. When I learned
that you wanted to see the books, I knew I would like you."

"Thank you for
letting me come here. This nymph, she was special to him. That's
why he hung the picture here, where he would see it every day
from his desk," said Laura.

"Yes. I never
learned the significance, but I always suspected that she
resembled a girl he knew before the war, before he married. But
let's get you sorted. You said you're interested in a group of
books that he purchased in 1981?"

"Yes, is there a
catalogue of the collection?"

"I'm afraid not,
but he organized his books by the year, and if they were the
same year, then alphabetically. The collection starts with the
incunables over there--" she pointed to a few shelves full of
largish books bound in heavy pigskin bindings with clasps,
"--and continues on clockwise through the room, year by year."

"That ought to
be good enough, since I have a list of all the books that were
in the lots," Laura said.

"If you'd like a
sandwich, pop into the kitchen, or you can wait until tea is
served in the Red Drawing Room at half past three."

Laura began by
locating and removing all the books in the Patterson lots from
the shelves. She checked each one against her sale catalogue to
make sure it was the same copy. The books in the lots belonged
mainly to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with a
few stragglers; most were published well within Pope's lifetime.
The titles included French authors such as Voiture, La Fontaine
and Perrault, but also essays by Addison and Steele, and some
books on gardens. Very promising given Pope's interests, she
thought.

She felt a
slight tremor in her hand as she picked up the next volume. It
was the second edition of Pope's masterpiece,
The Rape of the Lock
,
published in 1714. Her excitement increased when she saw the
signature "Martha Blount" on the back flyleaf: at least one of
the books had been owned by Pope's dearest friend. But as far as
she could tell, the book had no other marks; there was no proof
that it had belonged to Pope. The poem told the story of a
beautiful heroine named Belinda, who suffered the dastardly
theft of a lock of hair, won by a lustful, scissors-wielding
Baron. The mock-epic was enlivened by a host of guardian sylphs,
gnomes and sprites attending the fair virgin Belinda, who was by
no means innocent of sexual desire, and well aware of her own
powers of attraction. She turned to the dedication, a letter
addressed to Arabella Fermor, the model for Belinda: