The Notorious Lord Read Free Page A

getting back into his clothes rather than out of them. Instead, she walked back along the edge of the Midwinter Royal burial ground, an ancient site that had drawn her parents to Suffolk in the first place. The sun was higher in the sky now and it bathed the excavation in its bright light. It was going to be another scorching hot day.
     
    As Rachel entered the house, she heard her mother’s voice raised in the hall as she gave the footman instructions on the morning’s excavations.

    ‘And make sure that you sift the soil from yesterday’s trench, Tom, before you start digging the long barrow…’
    Rachel smiled a little. Poor Tom Gough had had no idea when he had accepted the post that none of his duties would be of a conventional nature and all of them would relate to the excavation work that was going on in the field next door. For twenty-five years Sir Arthur and Lady Odell’s entire life had revolved around the search for antiquities. This dig in Suffolk was just the latest in a long line of excavations. Sir Arthur fretted that the war against Napoleon kept them at home, and told tales of the time some six years previously when he had had to flee the advancing French army and leave behind all his discoveries in the Valley of the Kings.
    By the time that Rachel had divested herself of her spencer and straw hat, and had taken the basket back to the kitchens, Lady Odell was in the library, removing some artefacts from a large packing case. Rachel wandered into the room. The bright morning light illuminated the cracks in the plaster ceiling and the threadbare patches on the carpet. Midwinter Royal was no worse than the other two dozen houses that Rachel had lived in and it was a lot less shabby than some. She had no expectation that she would stay there any longer than she had in the other places. Six months was a long time for Sir Arthur and Lady Odell to remain in one place.
    Lavinia Odell was a stocky woman whose face habitually wore an expression of vague sweetness. Her eyes were a warm brown flecked with green and gold and were her finest feature, a feature that her daughter had inherited from her. Her hair was a faded mouse colour, lighter than Rachel’s chestnut brown, and her skin had long since given up the struggle against harsh sun and abrasive sand, and was sunk in lines and wrinkles. One unkind ton dowager had likened Lady Odell’s face to a leathery boot, crumpled and tough. Lady Odell, to whom a parasol was an alien notion, had laughed heartily when she heard this piece of spite.

    ‘I met Cory down by the river just now, Mama,’ Rachel said. ‘You did not tell me that he was to visit.’
    Lady Odell looked confused. ‘Did I not? I had a letter from him only yesterday saying that he would be joining us on our excavation. Is that not simply splendid? And you say that he is here already?’
    ‘Yes, Mama.’ Rachel smiled. ‘He was taking a morning swim. I believe that he will be joining you once he has got his clothes back on.’
    ‘Good, good…’ Lady Odell said vaguely. She held out what looked to be a statue of a small cat. The cat was brown and very shiny, its expression malevolent, its legs braced as though it were about to scratch. Rachel grimaced when she saw it.
    ‘I thought that this could go on the drawing-room mantelpiece. It will bring us luck.’
    Rachel shuddered. ‘Mama, pray do not. The only thing that it will attract is the flies. I fear that it smells. ’
    Lady Odell looked affronted. She clutched the cat protectively to her large bosom. ‘It does not smell! This is an antiquity, Rachel, from the third millennium before Christ—’
    ‘Which is why it smells, Mama,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘The poor creature has been dead several thousand years and should be permitted to rest in peace now. It is no wonder that it looks so very bad-tempered.’
    Lady Odell sighed and placed the cat reverently back in the bottom of a half-empty packing case next to a Greek vase. ‘Well,