Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [66]
Another man, with another voice, might have been restoring his sister’s husband to authority, with a tacit apology. Or with a slightly different emphasis, might have been condemning Sidney to the humiliating position of mere wine steward. With Marsh, it could have been either, or both. It might only have been a simple admission that Sidney would do a better job of it—and even I could not tell which attitude he intended. Sidney certainly had no idea. I could see the moment when the man decided that there was no point in taking umbrage, that making the most of an uncertain situation would impart the most dignity. He nodded graciously and took up the tongs, to heat them in the glowing coals (although the emphasis with which he thrust the long-handled implement into the fire made me suspect that he was visualising applying their prongs to the neck of his brother-in-law, not the neck of the bottle).
Red-hot tongs, cold wet cloth, the clean snap of the bottle’s neck, and the painstaking decanting of the dark liquid through a silver sieve: Men have more rituals than women have hair-pins. Then the cigar ritual followed, and talk made awkward by the presence of two ladies and a duke who was not One of Us; it was no wonder the men drifted away to the billiards table and left us in possession of port and fire. Long before the women rejoined us, the limits of conversational topics among the men had been firmly established, enforced by sharp, eloquent silences during which stern looks and gestures were exchanged, and by the occasional clearing of throats. Germany’s politics were forbidden, its art and music allowed (although the Marquis’s knowing reference to some night-club elicited two simultaneous throat-clearings); business of any kind was out, which meant that horses and horse-racing were permitted, whereas stud fees and auction houses were not.
We three sat listening through the open doors to this verbal dance as it smoothed out from its stilted beginnings, and I could see that any opportunity for learning more about the Darling situation was probably gone for the night. I was just about to take my leave of the duke and his unlikely duchess when Marsh’s head came around and he fixed me with a look in which swirled meaning and mischief.
“What would you say to a game of darts, Mary?”
I puzzled for a moment at the overtones behind the question; when I caught his meaning, the surprise of it knocked a sharp laugh out of me.
Once upon a time, Marsh and I had teamed up to cheat an unsuspecting village of their hard-earned savings, linking his gift for smooth patter with the unexpected accuracy of my throwing arm. If I understood him aright, he was proposing to set up his brother-in-law’s friends for a similar fleecing. I was sorely tempted, not only for the pleasure of the thing in itself but for the joy of forging an alliance with Marsh Hughenfort; reluctantly, I had to decline.
“Marsh, I would absolutely adore playing such a game with you, but I think I had better put it off for the moment. Perhaps at the end of this week-end, when everyone is more . . . relaxed?”
His eyes were dancing when he agreed, and I went to bed, well pleased.
Saturday dawned clear—and I do mean dawned. The house broke its fast early, despite the late night, with a breakfast that would have done a Victorian household proud. The previous night’s quartet of entertainers were conspicuously absent, either allowed to sleep in or, I thought more likely, already bundled up and got out of the way. Nonetheless, their numbers over the groaning buffet table were more than made up for by friends and neighbours—and, I saw to my amusement, by the wives of the gentlemen in our party of the night before—gathered to spend the day trudging across frozen hillsides and firing expensive shotguns at our host’s carefully raised and artfully driven