Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Celia, slightly coldly. They were moving into the dining room after cocktails (mixed rather inexpertly by the twins themselves). ‘Exactly what one wants to hear at the beginning of an evening. I’m not in the least tired, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘Well, I’m delighted to hear it,’ said LM. ‘I envy you. I’m very tired myself.’
    Celia looked at her: it was true. LM did look – well, not exhausted, but weary. She worked much too hard; her position as managing director of Lyttons demanded it to an extent of course, but she could perfectly well have more help. She always said it wasn’t worth it, that it would be more trouble than it was worth. Probably right, too; in Celia’s experience, it was usually a great deal quicker and easier to do things yourself. Just the same, LM wasn’t very young any more: Oliver’s big sister, as she always described herself, was fifty-four this year. The initials actually stood for Little Margaret, for she had been named after her mother; but no name could have suited her less and indeed nobody remembered it most of the time. She was a daunting figure, and became more so as she grew older: tall, very tall, over six foot, thin, with a deep voice and extraordinarily probing dark eyes in a pale face. She dressed with great severity, almost eccentricity, even now wearing the uniform of her girlhood, long skirts, tailored shirts and cravats, tailored jackets, and her mass of dark hair, greying now, was drawn tautly back into a rigidly neat chignon. But she was an acutely attractive woman, with an instant and rather surprising warmth and a quick, sharp humour; men still found her sexually attractive and women invariably liked her too for her directness and lack of guile. She was, Celia often said, her very best friend; they had been through a great deal together.
    ‘How’s Jay?’ said Kit politely as they sat down. He had been placed next to LM at Celia’s suggestion, knowing he would ask her about Jay, and that she would be able to answer at great length.
    ‘He’s very well, thank you. Enjoying this term. He’s being tried out for the junior First Eleven already, and he’s playing tennis for his junior house team. And then he’s in the choir—’ LM’s voice had softened; her adoration of Jay, her only child, was legendary in the family, and the only time anyone had seen her cry had been when he had gone away to Winchester the term before. Indeed Gordon, her husband and Jay’s stepfather, had frequently said he would name Jay in any divorce petition he brought.
    ‘No doubt at all about who LM loves best,’ he would say cheerfully, his pale blue eyes twinkling at her, ‘and it isn’t me.’
    A lesser man might have been genuinely jealous of Jay and of LM’s passion for him; but Gordon Robinson was blithely unconcerned by it. He had fallen in love with LM and married her only six years earlier; to him, Jay had been a part not simply of LM’s life but of her very self, and her love for him was essential to her own generous and passionate nature. The fact that she was too old to bear him a child of his own was of no interest to him; small children horrified him. Jay, at eight, tough, cheerful, hugely intelligent, with a passion for the countryside and for wildlife that matched his own, seemed to Gordon an ideal child, readily assimilated into his life.
    Gordon came into the room now, talking intently to Oliver; he towered over everyone, making even the huge dining room seem suddenly smaller. He was enormously tall, six foot seven, one of the few men LM could literally look up to, as she often said. Celia adored him, said he was the best addition to the family since herself.
    ‘My dear Celia, may I say again how lovely you look. Incredible that you should be the mother of all these grown-up children.’
    ‘I’m not grown up,’ said Kit, ‘I keep her feeling young. Don’t I, Mummy?’
    ‘For now you do, Kit, yes. I don’t want you growing up any more,