Dying For a Cruise Read Free

Finch laughed.
    The parrot laughed.
    Jenny laughed. Then, typically, got straight down to business. ‘Now, Mr Finch,’ she began briskly. ‘I understand you require a cook from Saturday breakfast to the Sunday evening meal?’
    Lucas nodded, relaxing back into his chair. ‘That’s right.’ He was suddenly very much the businessman now, and potential host. ‘I have guests coming for the weekend. I don’t often entertain, but when I do, I like to do it right. I hate anything to be stingy. I have a housekeeper here, of course, but for guests, I like to push the boat out.’ And he laughed, as if at some private joke.
    ‘Exactly,’ Jenny concurred, her voice rich with approval. ‘Now, how many are you expecting?’
    ‘Well, there’s young David Leigh and his wife, Dorothy. She’s just discovered she’s up the spout, by the way, so if you see her barfing into the river, don’t think it’s something you cooked.’
    Jenny’s polite smile froze. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ever so sweetly, if through gritted teeth. ‘I won’t.’ As if ! The damned cheek of it. Even pregnant women, especially pregnant women, found her food sheer ambrosia.
    Lucas, if he’d known her better, would have started grovelling in apology immediately. But since he didn’t, he merely nodded, and carried on blithely. ‘Then there’s that old codger, Gabriel Olney and his wife, the luscious Jasmine. Now I wouldn’t mind planting her in my garden, I can tell you.’ And he drawled the double entendre with such a childish delight that it was almost impossible for Jenny to take offence. Although a woman’s libber would have jumped right down his throat at such an openly sexist remark, she mused with a wry twitch of her lips. ‘Bugger me, if she ain’t a little goer. She’s not so young, actually, but all the better for it, if you know what I mean?’
    Jenny, stifling a sigh, began to understand what her friend the hapless cyclist had meant. Politically correct Lucas Finch most definitely wasn’t. Suddenly, she was not at all surprised that Mr Finch wasn’t ‘any too popular around these parts’. Even in this day and age, villagers, as she knew only too well, tended to be an insular and conservative lot.
    And for different reasons entirely, he was beginning to become very unpopular with his cook as well. Any implied slur on her cooking was guaranteed to get her gander up.
    ‘So it’s just the four guests?’ she clarified. She’d have to keep Dorothy Leigh’s delicate condition in mind, of course. Plenty of vegetables and rice dishes for her.
    ‘Right. Oh and myself, and yourself, of course, and Captain Lester and the engineer. Oh, and Francis. My manservant,’ he added. He said the final words very much like a magician might say ‘abracadabra’ before producing a rabbit from a hat.
    Jenny found it, much to her chagrin, rather touching.
    That Lucas Finch must indeed have had a poverty-stricken upbringing, she didn’t doubt. The way he liked to throw his money about when entertaining was a sure sign. And now, the very reverence with which he referred to Francis by the ultra old-fashioned title of manservant made her heart contract in compassion. No doubt to the young Lucas Finch, growing up in London’s grime, the thought of him ever having a servant must have been as fantastic a dream as owning a goldmine.
    Of course, what the absent Francis felt about being described as a manservant to Lucas probably didn’t bear thinking about. Jenny shrugged the thought aside. She was allowing her mind to wander off the point.
    ‘So you have—’ she made a quick mental count ‘—five guests, and … er … the engineer? And Francis and myself.’
    Lucas frowned, looking puzzled.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s just the Olneys and the Leighs.’
    ‘And the captain?’ Jenny prompted. He counted as a guest, surely?
    Lucas looked at her as if she was mad. ‘The captain steers the boat, love,’ he explained with a gentle patience