Page 11 of Happily Ever After
I shuffled over the threshold to see that the table was laid immaculately. There were covered tureens on a sideboard, silverware on a cloth so white it made my eyes ache, some wonderful china which looked old, and a smell of sausages and bacon that made me start to dribble.
Hugo half rose in his seat. ‘Ah. Andi, good morning,’ he said pleasantly.
‘Eventually.’ Lady Tanith was drinking coffee. ‘We eattogetheron the twenty-first of every month, Andromeda.’
‘Oh.’ I refused to be abashed. I’d learned this much in my few weeks here; Lady Tanith would be scathing whether I was apologetic or unabashed, and it was less painful to me if I just shrugged and let her sarcasm bounce off. ‘Nobody told me. Why?’
I heard Hugo give a little gasp, and when I looked towards him he was making little ‘cut throat’ mimes.
Lady Tanith stood up. For a moment I thought she might pour her coffee over my head. ‘Because,’ she enunciated, as though I were a very stupid child, ‘the twenty-first is the date on which darling Oswald died.’
I’d stopped being afraid of her, that was it. She needed me to find Oswald’s diaries; I couldn’t see anyone else being desperate enough for a job to stick around this haunted, wobbly place for more than a couple of days listening to her being rude, even if they did intend to marry her son. Besides, I did feel a bit sorry for her and her devotion to the deceased Oswald. She had clearly loved him very much and every time I thought of her solitary loyalty to the memory of a man who’d been dead half a century, I had a tiny heart-twang of pity.
I raised my eyebrows at Hugo. He pulled his mouth down sideways, stopped the mime and looked firmly down at his plate, where half a rasher of bacon and some egg stains showed that I had missed the start of breakfast by some margin.
‘I’m very sorry, Lady Tanith. I didn’t know,’ I said, but without the obsequiousness that I’d had when I first started here. ‘It would have been helpful if someone had informed me last night,’ I continued, still speaking like someone in a 1920’s drama.
Both she and Hugo had sat in the library yesterday evening. Hugo had been reading the paper, and Lady Tanith had kept her hawk-like stare trained on me the entire time. I think she wanted to make sure that, had I actually suddenly found Oswald’s diaries, I wasn’t going to announce the fact in front of her son. Either one of them could have mentioned this ‘eating together’ tradition, and I hoped I’d managed to inject the tiniest amount of sarcasm into my words to get this point over.
‘Well.’ Lady Tanith subsided in the face of incontrovertible fact. ‘We’ll say no more about it, but please bear it in mind for next month, Andromeda. If you are still with us, of course.’
I knew I was meant to take this as a rebuke, as a threat that she could fire me at any time. As I’d not only come to the conclusion that shewouldn’t, I’d also decided that I’d be only too delighted to be sacked, and I’d regard living in the draughty and rusty old bus again as an improvement, because at least it wasn’t haunted, I just smiled and sat down.
Hugo visibly relaxed and ate the rest of his bacon.
Nobody made any attempt to tell me where the food was or what I was meant to do, so I got up again and went to investigate the tureens. Lady Tanith began a conversation with Hugo which seemed so pointedly obscure that I knew I was meant to feel left out, but I was so enthused by the sight of more bacon, and eggs done three ways, plus a pile of toast that had been covered by a napkin to keep warm, a dish of butter and some crumpets, that I didn’t even bother to try listening in. It was something to do with the estate, I got that much.
The food was delicious. I’d endured two weeks of Mrs Compton’s random dinners, whatever cereal Hugo didn’t want and a vacuum flask of tea, so I dug in. Once I’d heaped my plate with bacon, sausage and toast and poured myself a cup of coffee, I sat down again, to find that Lady Tanith had stopped talking and was staring at me.
‘Are you going to eat all that?’
‘Yep,’ I said, with my mouth already full.
Hugo grinned at me. His hair looked as though it needed cutting; it was beginning to flop, but the unstructured look suited him and his incredible bone structure. I grinned back, around a sausage, and renewed my intention to marry him and put ground glass in Lady Tanith’s food.
‘Alady,’ Lady Tanith continued, ‘should watch her weight. Elegance in all things, Andromeda.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Butter dripped down my chin. I wiped it on my hair towel.
‘I trust you will be joining us for the service of thanksgiving in the chapel this afternoon?’ she tried again, and this time I looked at her.
Lady Tanith was sipping her coffee delicately. She looked a little tired and I had that little twist of empathy for her again. Poor woman, still mourning her lost love after all this time and living in his house with all his things around her to try to feel close to him. Grief, I knew, could do strange things to people and it had obviously stuck Tanith in time, pinned to Templewood as it had been when Oswald had been alive. It really was dreadfully sad.
I knew there was no point in saying any of this to her. Lady Tanith was far too upper class to admit to any emotions, and I didn’t want to antagonise her, not when she might be my future mother-in-law. It was bad enough having Mrs Compton calling me names, I didn’t have that many people who cared whether I lived or died that I could rile one of the few who actually needed me. So I nodded.
‘Good.’ Lady Tanith stood up now. ‘I’m visiting Jasper this morning, Hugo. Any message?’
Hugo shook his head and Lady Tanith left the room, closing the door firmly behind her. I put more sausages on my plate and listened for sounds of her opening a door somewhere in the house to rising screams. They didn’t come and I had to assume that Jasper wasn’t chained up anywhere within earshot. Why didn’t he come to the family breakfast, if the twenty-first was so important?
‘Do you do thiseverytwenty-first?’ I asked.
‘It keeps her happy,’ he replied.
I wanted to say ‘that’shappy?’ but didn’t. She was his mother, over the top insane though she may be. ‘Your brother doesn’t come and join you?’
‘No.’ This was definitely tight-lipped and I saw Hugo narrow his eyes at the bacon still remaining on his place. Questions about the invisible Jasper obviously made Hugo uncomfortable.
‘Where’s the chapel?’ I asked, to change the subject.
