It would be strange not to have her brother continuously loitering in the background, mused Lucia. It wasn’t that she had disliked him exactly; merely that he had been such a source of annoyance. A liability too: one was never quite sure what jam he was going to get into next or who he was going to offend. She thought grimly of the blackmailing episode at his school when he had put the frighteners on that ridiculous little housemaster. There had been an awful hullaballoo and he had been expelled. It wasn’t the expulsion as such that had mattered but its repercussions. It was when she had been invited to stay in a rather grand house in Wiltshire and had her eye on the hostess’s son. When the lady learnt of her brother’s expulsion and its cause the invitation had been hastily withdrawn. The memory still rankled.
And then there had been the time when he had approached her then current beau for money: had brazenly tapped him on the shoulder when the two of them had been getting rather snug in the tool shed, and said: ‘My sister doesn’t come cheap you know. How about a few fivers?’ The swain had fled never to be seen again … Yes he really had been such a little beast!
The more Lucia dwelt on Edward’s failings and his talent to annoy the more incensed she became, and the more quickly any incipient pain over his loss evaporated. The whole thing was still very shocking of course but it was also strangely liberating. In fact without the nagging fear of Edward fouling things up she could now proceed unencumbered to pursue Guy and the title. Not that there was much money there of course; but play her cards right and her grandfather might help – although that was by no means certain. So tight-fisted!
She frowned and then gave a little smile. Actually there was always the possibility of finding that Horace book, the one that Edward had been engaged to get hold of. After all, as she had explained to him, she knew exactly where that Murano vase was – or where it certainly had been the last time she was at Bill’s studio. Secure that and she was half way to fortune. And the other half? Well Carlo might still have his uses. He had been rather cagey the last time she had enquired of the book, when Edward was pursuing it; in fact he had been tiresomely vague. She would have another go and pin him down; he was bound to know something. She could also try Lupino when he elected to open his shop again.
Of course it would be just her luck for that British Museum woman to have already found the thing and whisked it off to London; though presumably if that were the case those two friends of hers would surely have said something in the café the other day. She pictured the two men. She hadn’t liked them from the start, when Guy had first introduced them on the Accademia Bridge – not one tiny bit. And now she liked them even less, especially the flower seller: such a sardonic little face. And how appallingly rude he had been. Totally unwarranted! Why Guy felt he had to be so civil to them she had no idea. Things would certainly change once she had got him to propose and she had the title: he would be steered away from such obnoxious nonentities!
And thus like her deceased brother Lucia too allowed her imagination to ramble – not so much over Ferraris, tailored suits and private planes but rather to playing hostess to venerable members of the Scottish aristocracy. As her canny grandfather might have warned, ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men …’