Page 121 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘I’m terribly late – I had a puncture and—’ He broke off and stopped dead halfway over the threshold, his dark, mobile face suddenly frozen as he gazed at Henry … and Henry, for once speechless, stared right back into his eyes, seemingly stunned.
They showed no sign of breaking eye contact any time soon, so I said, ‘Do come in, Mr Melling, so I can close the door!’
He obeyed, but like a sleepwalker. Then they both suddenly seemed to become aware of their surroundings at once.
‘You don’t already know each other, do you?’ I asked.
‘Notyet,’ said Dominic Melling, with a singularly impish grin. He had a boyish air about him, though he couldn’t be much younger than Henry.
He held out a hand to shake Henry’s. ‘Iloovethe Jeeves outfit! I’m Dominic Melling, but call me Dom.’
‘Henry – and this is my business partner, Dido. We’re here to cater for the house party.’
Their hands remained clasped and I noticed that Dom’s was somewhat grimy, presumably due to changing a tyre.
‘You’d better show Mr Melling the cloakroom so he can wash his hands before joining everyone in the sitting room,’ I suggested, then left them to it and returned to the kitchen, smiling to myself.
If ever I saw love at first sight – a totalcoup de foudre– I’d just seen it now. And Mrs Powys’s attempts to keep a socialdivide between staff and guests, already undermined by Nancy, looked doomed to failure.
Henry didn’t return for some time, having taken all the luggage up to the guest rooms, but when he did, he was singing ‘I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy’.
He caught my eye and grinned. ‘Say nothing, or the spell might break!’
‘OK, but only ifyoustop teasing me about Xan, because we’ve agreed to be just good friends until after Mrs Powys has had her lovely Christmas.’
‘I’ll try,’ he promised. He put the two bottles of port he was carrying down on the table.
‘These are Dom’s present to Mrs Powys and I was told to bring the Fortnum and Mason hamper through, too. I’ll fetch that now.’
‘Odd how everyone’s minds seem to have run to food or drink as presents.’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, Mrs Powys seems to have told them about her illness, so that must have limited the gift options a bit.’
‘I suppose you’re right, Henry. Did you go into the sitting room? I wondered how things were shaping up.’
‘I followed Dom in, to see to the fire, and everyone was being verypoliteto each other, but my Rudge Cocktails before dinner will loosen them all up a bit.’
‘As long as you don’t make it so strong that they’re loosened to the point where their wheels drop off,’ I warned him. ‘I’m going to have a little break in our sitting room now, with a cup of coffee and a sandwich, before I start to think about dinner.’
‘Good idea. I’ll get that hamper and then join you,’ he said, and went out, bursting into song again.
This time it was ‘Love Is the Sweetest Thing’.
I only hope he remembered to stop before he got within earshot of Mrs Powys.
The dining room looked rather splendid when I helped Henry carry the main course through.
He’d laid the table with a white cloth and then added a long festive scarlet runner down the centre. This, together with the rich red of the drawn velvet curtains and the firelight gleaming off the silver and cut glass, made it look like a scene from a Victorian novel, or it would have done except for the guests’ modern dress.
This was mostly informal. Nigel and Frank Melling wore suits, but Xan had on an open-necked shirt and dark cords, while Dom sported a black T-shirt that proclaimed across it: ‘Hogwarts Forever!’.
Nancy had made a token gesture by donning a long, rubbed-velvet skirt, while Mrs Powys was, as usual, attired in an evening dress that looked simple and inexpensive, but was probably the opposite.
As to Lucy, it was hard to tell one set of layered grey or beige garments from another.
Of course, Henry had long since resumed his black tunic and trousers, and I noticed that he and Dom seemed to be trying not to catch each other’s eye, a ploy I was using with Xan after his giveaway smile at me in the sitting room earlier.
‘How nice it is to have all the remaining members of my family gathered around this table with me tonight,’ Mrs Powys said. ‘I hadn’t realized how few were left, until recently.’
