The Notorious Lord Read Free Page B

perhaps you are correct. Embalming methods were not always completely successful.’
    ‘No, Mama,’ Rachel said. She knew all about the success or otherwise of ancient embalming methods for she had absorbed a great deal of knowledge simply through travelling with her parents. She had not learnt through inclination. Once, as a small child, her maternal aunt had found her sitting on the carpet, chewing a human bone that she heldclutched in her small, fat fist. The aunt’s scream had brought Lady Odell hurrying in, to coo with delight over her only child’s precocious interest in antiquity.
    It was the only sign of interest that Rachel was ever to show in her parents’ work. At the age of six she had chosen to be addressed as Rachel rather than Cleopatra, her given name, and had refused to answer anyone who tried to call her otherwise. Shuffled from pillar to post as the Odells pursued their eccentric hobby around the world, Rachel had taken an utter dislike to her parents’ passion. She would have given a great deal for a dining room full of Wedgwood, with not a barbaric death mask in sight.
    ‘I do not believe that the ladies of the Midwinter villages are quite ready for your collection, Mama,’ she said now. ‘I doubt that anyone will call if they find themselves confronted by your set of Anglo-Saxon skulls.’
    Lady Odell shrugged her plump shoulders under the cambric shirt that she always wore for working. ‘I shall not have time to do the pretty with the visitors anyway, with all the work that is required on the excavation. I shall leave that to you, Rachel.’
    ‘Of course, Mama,’ Rachel murmured. She had done the pretty for their visitors in houses all over England. It was her role in life. Organising her parents, exhorting the servants, dealing with all the minutiae of daily life…Rachel had fulfilled such a role since she was about twelve years old.
    She followed her mother out on to the front steps of Midwinter Royal. By now it was another hot June day. The grass along the carriage drive was already turning yellow from lack of rain and the sky was a hard steely blue without a cloud in sight. The weathercock on the top of the stables was motionless. In the fields to the south, Rachel could just make out the figures of her father and a couple of the servants measuring the length of one of the haphazard scatterof burial mounds that lay between the house and the river beyond.
    Lady Odell sighed happily. ‘What a perfect day for the digging. After all these years I still dislike excavating in the wet.’
    ‘Pray be careful that the sides of your trenches do not crumble away into dust,’ Rachel said, unable to help herself. ‘It is very dry at present. Remember how you were buried under that landslide at the barrow in Wiltshire and Cory and I had to dig you out? Don’t let that happen again. And Mrs Goodfellow and I shall have prepared a cold luncheon for you all at twelve. Please do not forget, Mama.’
    Lady Odell patted her hand absent-mindedly. ‘Of course not, my love. Now I must get back to work. Your father has already been out above an hour and a half.’
    ‘I saw him down at the excavation,’ Rachel said. ‘Make sure that he is wearing a hat, Mama. The sun can be most fierce at this time of year.’ She squinted along the line of dusty elm trees that shaded the drive, and was not surprised to pick out a figure riding towards them. ‘I do believe Cory is here now.’
    ‘Oh, how splendid!’ Lady Odell positively ran down the steps, her necklace of Persian beads clicking excitedly.
    Rachel followed more slowly. The advancing figure had now resolved itself into a gentleman on a grey horse. The horse was a prime bit of blood and Rachel could see that, whether his clothes were on or off, Cory Newlyn was what many ladies would also consider to be a prime specimen. He was considerably more formally dressed now, but he still looked extremely attractive.
    Rachel watched, lips pursed in disapproval,