CHAPTER SEVEN

Seven? In the dining room? Right. And not taking no for an answer? Now some might say, standing against their room door yet again, as she was now, after she'd sort of peeled her clothes off--but not--that that hadn't gone so well. In fact some might say four words when it came to ‘seven in the dining room.’ Over their dead body.

Dress up? Look pretty? Eat food? Her? Not this side of hell. And they would be right.

How could she? Affront Ennis’s memory further either if he was waiting for her on the other side and saw her doing this? Especially after earlier and Divers O'Roarke's shameless display of his chest. She couldn't. And they would pass their hand over their face and push their hair back from their forehead, when they'd give the clothes they'd never removed from their back to go lie down in that bed there.

But she wasn't one of them.

How could she be? No. That sodding bastard had flung down a gauntlet.

And if he thought, for one second, she was going to do anything other than pick it up, even if it killed her, he'd a big prize coming in the another thought coming competition.

***

There was—alas--only the solid tick of her heartbeat for Destiny to come downstairs to now Great Grandmother Endelienta’s clock wasn’t working for whatever reason—probably because Divers O’Roarke had taken the pickaxe to that too. Fortunately her heart was was already smashed so it was no real trouble to do this. Put on the awful Egyptian blue gown, aware that it hung on her like a shroud, run Aunt Kehelland’s comb through her hair, pad, in her silver slippers, down a staircase which yesterday at this time had been hers. Orwell’s anyway. The red gown? The other gowns? Not if you shoved three inch nails beneath fingernails. The one abiding light? She wasn’t done.

How could she be? Ennis and Doom Bar Hall were at stake here.

All she’d done was dodge a little heavy musket fire in the matter of the dresses this afternoon.

Funny though that she hadn’t wanted to think of how welcoming she’d once thought the family crypt was. As if this gown, much as she hated it, with its memories of that other world she’d once lived in, sucked strength into her veins. Yes. Or maybe it was the searing memory—the one she’d rather not think of--of how she’d only gone and unfastened her dress this afternoon? To ensure Divers O’Roarke never took her dresses out the wardrobe again, of course.

Whatever it was, when Tom Berryman next came begging for a place to hide his ill-gotten gains, the ones she’d deposit on the flowerbeds later, he could go to hell. Orwell could too if he didn’t stop drinking like a whale. How happy she’d finally be walking amongst her beloved treasures. And she would. She bet Divers O’Roarke didn’t think she could do this. When she could, despite the way her heart hammered in her throat, strangling her far worse than any satin choker and she'd far rather be mending that cushion cover she'd started on last week for the dining room, or dreaming of Ennis. Normally she’d time to do both but the inconsideration of some people knew no bounds.

“For feck’s … ”

She paused. Had a plate just hit Great Aunt Modest’s stone flagged dining room floor? And was even now lying there in smithereens? Her throat tightened. She hoped not. But so long as one of Great Aunt Modest’s porcelain mazarine blue and gold patterned dinner plates hadn’t breathed its last like Great Grandmother Endelienta’s clock, it was … nothing to get upset about.

Even if on an early summer’s day her life was so much better when she popped her head around the door to admire them in the light that peered through the heavy ivy fronds surrounding the window. The ones she’d strategically cut so the light poured, golden as honey onto that very spot.

The little things. The things some might say she held onto, to hold onto something bigger. The rhythm of the life with which she held herself together, knowing one break in the chain would bring her down. Because, let's face it, what the sodding else was there to hang to?

“I told you, this was sheer stupidity without any servants,” Gil Wryson droned. “I’ve done my rock bottom best to serve you as usual but I warned you, just like I warned you that plate was hot, I was never engaged as a cook. You should have sent to the village, or better still shown her the door. Her and that brother of hers propping up the bar stool back at Daindridge’s, hoping to win back a farthing or two.”

“And I told you I will do just that when the time is right and not before,” Divers O’Roarke’s low voice—bossy, yet bored, sludgy as the river bottom, in fact--grated on her spine.

She tilted her jaw. Of course some might say that people who listened at doors never heard any good of themselves but she was so far down the lines in terms of ever hearing anything nice, did it matter? Time being right was a very odd thing to say, especially from a man who had probably broken her clock.

That thought that had been waiting in the wings came out and took first prize in the standing center stage competition. How right she was regarding the servants not being sent away to spite her after all. Her heart thudded harder. He was up to something good and proper.

Then there was the matter of him bashing that wall to bits. It could be his job. It might not be. Lastly there was the matter of him not wanting her to auction off these dresses.

This supper? My God, this supper, now she stepped back from it, wasn’t an attempt to hit back at her. He was up to something here, something illegal. Something Customs and Excise would be very interested in knowing. Anonymously of course. When her own summerhouse was stuffed to the brim with what had partly helped fund the restoration of the house, it wouldn’t do to be had up before the magistrate alongside him, bringing the Rhodes’ family name into the mud trough. Unless she could strike a deal? To do that she’d need more information.

Let's face it, he hadn't asked her to supper because he liked her. Or intended on taking her up on her offer of herself. No. No matter how cucumber cool he’d been, terror that she was going to auction off these dresses must have gripped him. With hot pincers at that. This was surely her chance to find out why.

She glanced sideways, behind her, then sideways again. Sir Tredwynne’s suit of armour shone in the flickering candlelight, feet from the dining room door. Get behind that and no-one would ever know she was there. Then she might hear what he really was up to good and proper.

Grasping her skirts she tiptoed a step then she tiptoed another. Thank God she’d had the foresight to order Chesten to dust behind the suit earlier this week. Destiny would be the first to deny it if she sneezed and was caught red handed, the first to say she was dusting, if Divers O’Roarke or his sidekick came out and caught her, though.

Thank God she hadn’t got upset about the plate getting broken. It may have taken a while but finally the Fates were kissing her face. For that she could spare the odd plate. The odd wall too.

Taking a deep breath she wedged herself behind the suit. As she did, another clatter went right through her bones. It probably went through Sir Tredwynne’s too, despite the fact he didn’t have any. There were no prizes for guessing what it was, when what it was was as clear as the crystal jug on the side table inches from the edge of her skirt. More porcelain had just been murdered on the stone floor. It was enough to make her ... stand here. Take a breath. Walls and plates, remember? Walls and plates. Even if her eyes watered with the exertion of containing her fury. After all, it might be something else that had clattered off the floor.

“Well, the time better hurry up and be right before you break another plate, sir,” Gil Wryson’s laugh carried right across the stone flags. “Or there won’t be anything to eat off, the rate you’re going at.”

My God. Two of her lovely plates--all right, they were his—were broken. Smashed beyond repair. She sipped another breath into her tortured lungs. Her lungs that were working like bellows in her chest. Two of the plates, the lovely plates, antiques … were not important. Where was the cool, calm Destiny who never got het up about anything?

“They’re damn hideous anyway, so they are. Only fit for the floor or the rubbish tip. You know, I’m probably doing the world a favor, breakin’ the feckin’ things, so I am. I mean breaking them.”

“Aye, sir. You know? I couldn’t agree more. Maybe we should smash some more?”

Not important? What? Stand here in the shadows when that sodding Irish as the sodding Droghedan pigs, bastard wasn’t just wrecking the dining room, he was insulting her taste in plates with his friend?

Not this side of hell. She snatched her skirt. It was caught on the end of Sir Tredwynne’s sword. Worse, Sir Tredwynne obviously either didn’t like that, or wanted up it because he clattered down, one metal leg going one way, the other, the opposite. His helmet rolled in an arc around the floor. And not just his helmet, his sword, his axe, his breastplate, rolled and spun like knives in that game they’d played as children where you’d to sing if it ended up pointing at you. Except what she did was sneeze. Obviously Chesten never dusted a sodding thing, the lazy sodding heifer that she was, when here was Destiny taking in smuggled bottles and risking all sorts. to pay her too. Maybe Divers O’Roarke was right to have dismissed the lot of them after all?

“What the hell was that?”

As Destiny stood rooted to the hall floor, someone’s boots echoed crisply across the flags. As for what the hell it was, wasn’t that sodding obvious with Sir Tredwynne’s gauntlet lying in the plant pot and his left arm trying to get up her skirt? And her sneezing like she’d shoved an elephant sized snuff box up her nose.

“A-a-a-a-a-choooooo!”

What was Divers O’Roarke trying to win? First prize in the local idiot competition?

“A-a-a-a-a-choooooo!”

My God. But if she didn’t think of something when Divers O’Roarke stood there, large as life and twice as awful, his glittering eyes, stoic mouth and elegantly tied navy cravat, everything she didn’t want to see in the candlelight, she was finished over two smashed plates. What did she want more? The plates, or the house, when she couldn’t live in a plate? And he was up to all sorts?

Somehow, at an exorbitant cost to herself, she stiffened her spine, cleared her throat, set her jaw, fixed him with her calmest stare, much as her heart burned.

“What does it look like, Divers? Sir Tredwynne … fell. As I was crossing the hall he … he toppled down, nearly on me. Perhaps it was the vibration caused by whatever it was you broke beyond repair? How would I know?”

“Broke?”

All right some might say about the plates not being much good because she couldn’t live in them, but she wouldn't and she needed to. In fact, given the way his grey eyes narrowed as they met hers, she needed to and more. To bite her tongue too. But it was all right—surely--so long as she didn’t put any other feet stupendously wrong? And she wouldn’t. Not if he broke every plate in the house. My God, maybe the time was right to put her out now? What it cost her to smile was probably as much as a mine-owner's fortune.

“But maybe I’m mistaken? Certainly, he has stood … stood right here, since I can remember.”

He took a step towards her, flicked his gaze over Sir Tredwynne, then flicked it over her. Oh, he did believe her, didn’t he? “That long ago, eh? Then you must be far older than I gave you credit for.”

“Sir, I’d say that if that suit of armour fell …” Unfortunately, given how she needed to keep her mouth shut and forget about these plates, Gil Wryson wandered into the hall. “It was because she was--”

He spoke too. In a way that some might say wasn’t exactly encouraging. But, on reflection and swallowing what leapt into her throat, at the thought of being marched out of here, they would be wrong. In all his life, one thing Divers O'Roarke had never liked was being caught red-handed having broken something.

“Me? What? Snooping? On you two? Are you serious?” She smothered a laugh. Who did Gil Wryson think Divers O’Roarke was going to side with here? “I mean, come on--behind some mouldering old suit of armour that means sod all to me and is now in bits, like whatever you broke, at that? Well I’m sure, if that’s your worry, the suit can be put together again. Maybe even you’d be so kind, Mr. Wryson seeing as you’re standing here, not doing anything else and Divers and I are going to supper? Well? At least I hope we are.”

Silence fell like a cold blanket on the hall.

“Me? Miss Rhodes?”

“I am sure I did not mean to order you about, Mr. Wryson--”

“Good because it’s not really in my line of duty, Miss Rhodes.”

“—but Sir Tredwynne can hardly get up off that floor and put himself back together now, can he? And now there’s no servants about the place, I suppose we must all muck in as best we can. And I mean, I would do it, but as you so kindly pointed out, it’s hardly my property now, is it? What's more I wouldn't like to mess up the dress I put on especially for Divers after he asked me.”

“Well, then.” Gil smiled faintly. “I don’t suppose it matters if the bits just lie there, now does it?”

Maybe it didn’t, except to her. Letting the plates go wasn’t she?

“But of course. You know, I never thought of that, not always being greatly known for my brains. But perhaps we should ask Mr. O’Roarke here, seeing as it’s his floor? And he is a house designer and all? But maybe untidiness is the new fashion in London?”

She turned her gaze on Divers O’Roarke, staring at the floor in that way that measured a yard and knew to the nearest quarter inch whether it was short or not, even if he didn't know where. Probably in the fact she'd said snooping when Gil Wryson actually hadn’t.

Oh God, it wasn't like her to pray but she did now. So hard she'd win the embroidered scripture verse in the specially made gold frame, in the local, praying to live and fight another day competition. But she wasn't just his enemy, the woman he’d cursed. Just maybe she was the woman who was on to him, enough to get behind that suit and break it? Who now asked him to prove he was a house designer? So, if he didn't ...?

“Well, Divers?”

He jerked up his chin, turning his ice-cool gaze on Gil.

“Let’s do what the lady says, shall we? You go ahead and pick up Sir Tredwynne, while Miss Rhodes and I have the splendid supper you cooked. Not much, Destiny, I’m afraid, but better than nothing.”

“Thank you, Divers. Your kindness is truly as exceptional as it is unexpected.”

Was it hell? She was doing well here though, wasn't she? Getting him just where she wanted. Getting in between him and this Wryson man. Divide and rule. If she said so herself, she had concluded this part of the matter to her satisfaction and nothing he said would detract from it either.

“Don’t thank me yet. When you’re done picking up the bits, Gil, get rid of them will you? I really don’t have any use for that old junk in here. It’s not as if Sir-whoever-the-hell-he-was, is anything to do with me, now is it? Now then, Destiny, shall we have supper?”