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The Mertons stayed on guard, carefully not talking about anything, until Jimmy returned with a key. Bill locked the room, considered a moment, then slipped the key into his pocket. “You needn’t mention I have this to anyone. Let’s go down.”
They passed a couple of groups of panicky-looking servants whispering in the hall. The house party was gathered in the drawing room, all present except for the obvious omission, in total silence. Victoria sat very straight, with Preston hovering by her; Lady Anna was next to her mother on the sofa but not touching her, dry-eyed and white-faced. Jack stood behind her, as if on guard. The Earl huddled in a chair with Fen crouched next to him in a pool of skirts.
Bill touched Jimmy’s arm as they walked in. Jimmy turned to look at the fireplace, a gesture so obvious that everyone followed it. The emptiness of the sheath hanging next to the mantelpiece seemed glaring now.
“The kirpan,” Victoria said in a thread of a voice. “It’s missing. Was that—”
“I’m afraid so,” Jimmy said. “I’m awfully sorry.”
“You saw it was gone at two o’clock, is that right? Did anyone notice it was gone earlier?” Bill asked, to a general shaking of heads. “Nobody?”
Victoria’s hands were entwined, knuckles standing out. “I didn’t observe— It’s always been there. That was my father’s gift. It is an insult.”
“Some might say the insult was to my husband,” Lady Anna said, in a voice cold and sharp as broken glass.
Victoria turned sharply. Fen rose, putting herself between the two. “May I ask, what is to be done now?”
“We’ll need a doctor, and the police,” Bill said. The Countess gave a faint cry of protest.
“It’s thirty miles to the nearest police station,” Jimmy said. “We could ’phone from the village if the lines haven’t come down in the storm, and summon Dr. Chorley as well, but we can’t send a man there tonight unless we want another—that is, we can’t.”
“Why do we need a doctor?” Pat asked. “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Fen made a noise that sounded like a giggle, and clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes widening in horror. Pat couldn’t blame her. She felt on the edge of hysteria herself.
“Procedure,” Bill said. “I dare say the police will have their own man, but someone needs to examine the body as soon as possible.”
“And he must be laid out,” the Countess said, sitting up. “Anna, you must—”
“No,” Lady Anna said. “No, you can’t make me do that. You can’t!”
“Nobody must do that, madam,” Bill said. “It—he must be left untouched until the police arrive.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Merton. My son-in-law will be given the respect that any man, any member of this family is due.”
“Rites,” the Earl added. “Decencies.”
Bill looked between them, then pointedly at Jimmy, who swallowed. “Ma, Pa, you don’t understand. It’s—well, it’s murder.”
“No,” the Countess said. She was shaking. “No.”
“He’s got a knife in his back.” Jimmy’s control sounded to be slipping. “The knife from down here, stuck in his back while he was sitting at a desk. He didn’t trip and fall on it!”
“Jim,” Bill said. “Get another drink. Get me one, while you’re at it. I’m afraid he’s right. Mr. Haworth has been murdered and this is a police matter.”
“But that’s not possible,” Preston said. “That is, obviously it is, but for heaven’s sake. How did the fellow get in?”
“What fellow?” Bill asked.
“The murderer.”
“What murderer?”
“The one who put a knife in his back!”
Bill massaged his temple with one hand. “I grasp that, but what do you mean, get in?”
“I think he means that it was a—a passing tramp,” Pat said. She could feel a laugh rising again, and dug her nails into her thumb.
“Exactly,” Preston said. “Someone who came in to steal. Maurice must have surprised him.”
“He was stabbed in the back while sitting at a desk on the first floor.” Jimmy spoke with tenuous calm. “He was killed with a knife taken from this room. And how many passing tramps have you seen out there?”
“It’s a nice thought,” Bill added, more gently. “But it isn’t awfully likely.”
“But it has to be,” Fen said. “Because if it wasn’t someone from outside the house, you know, it would have to be someone inside, which— Oh.”
“One of you.” The bones were stark under Lady Anna’s skin. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? One of you killed him.”
“The servants—” Jack began.
“Have all been with us for years,” Jimmy flashed. “And had no reason to kill him.”
“And any of us did?” Jack retorted, and then his face changed. The silence spread like spilled oil, rolling and dripping over them all.
“You hated him,” Lady Anna said. She was looking straight ahead, not at anyone in particular. Jimmy and Preston both shifted. “You all hated him and one of you killed him.”
“One of us did, yes,” Bill said. “Would anyone care to confess?”
“What?” Jimmy’s eyes bulged.
“The police will come tomorrow and the first thing they’ll ask is what reason any of us had to dislike Maurice Haworth. As Lady Anna says, there will be a lot to talk about.”
A cry of protest came from several throats at that brutal statement. Bill ignored it. “We’re all going to have to account for our whereabouts, and our motivations, and each other’s motivations. The police do not respect personal feelings, and they will find out the killer in the end. Whoever murdered him could spare us all a great deal by admitting it.”
He was carefully not looking at anyone, so Pat scanned every face she could. She saw anger, shock, incomprehension. She couldn’t see that anybody looked guilty, whatever guilty looked like.
The silence stretched for a moment, then Bill shrugged. “In that case, I suppose there’s not much more to be said except, of course, that nobody ought to leave the house.”
“Well, there is something else,” Fen said. “I’m sorry to labour the point, but either one of the servants is a homicidal maniac or someone in here is a murderer, and I’m a little nervous about going to bed under these circumstances!”
Thunder cracked overhead, with stage-perfect timing. Several of the women jumped and shrieked.
“For heaven’s sake,” Preston said. “You’re not in danger.”
“That depends on why somebody killed Maurice,” Victoria pointed out.
“We could pair up,” Pat said. “Or at least anyone who’d feel safer that way could. Er...” she added, as the flaw in that dawned on her.
“Indeed,” Victoria said. “One would need to be sure of one’s pair.”
The Countess put a hand over her mouth. Preston moved closer to Victoria, a protective sway.
“Anyone who wishes to, should,” Bill said. “In fact it might not be a bad idea if we could all vouch for each other’s whereabouts from now on.”
“What do you mean?” Pat asked.
“Just thinking ahead. I can’t see there’s much more we can do except batten down the hatches, summon the police tomorrow, and wait.”
“Wait,” Lady Anna said. “Wait for what? She hated him, and her father’s knife killed him! What are you waiting for?”
“Anna!” the Countess almost shrieked. Fen gave a sharp gasp, Preston an inarticulate shout.
Victoria looked at her accuser with bafflement. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“The Sikhs are a fighting people. Didn’t you always say that?” Lady Anna swung to her father. “You always said, rely on a Sikh to avenge an insult. Of course she had a grievance against Maurice because he said what he thought.”
“If you’re going to accuse everyone your husband insulted, the field will be pretty wide,” Pat said. It wasn’t, perhaps, the kindest remark to a widow, but Lady Anna wasn’t being terribly kind herself, and Victoria’s look of stunned betrayal was unbearable.
“Quite. What utter nonsense,” Preston said. “As though we don’t all know who had an actual motive to kill him.”
“I don’t know who you’re directing that at, and I don’t care to find out,” Jimmy said thinly.
Jack held up both hands. “We all need to stay calm. This won’t help anyone. Granted the use of that particular knife is, ah, suggestive—”
“Yes, it is,” Pat said. “The blade must be six inches long judging by the sheath, and it was driven in to the hilt. I doubt I could do that and I’m stronger than Victoria. And more used to cutting up carcasses.”
There were multiple noises of strong objection. Bill said, “Could have put that better, old girl.”
“I’m still right. A man struck that blow. If I don’t have the arm strength, none of us women do.”
“We’ve only your word that you don’t,” Lady Anna said. “And you made your dislike of Maurice very clear.”
“Luckily, you don’t need Pat’s word for anything,” Fen told her. “I’ve been with her almost every minute since we last saw Mr. Haworth alive, so you may keep your nasty insinuations to yourself, and I would if I were you before people wonder why you’re so awfully keen to assign blame to other people considering that horrible man was your husband!” She took a much-needed gasp of breath.
“How dare you, you impudent slut!”
“Stop it, all of you. This is getting us nowhere,” Bill said. “We’re all tired and shocked and we all need to sleep. And Miss Carruth made a good point, I fear: someone in this house killed Haworth, and we all need to be conscious of that. I think we fellows should pair up, so we can account for one another’s whereabouts. Preston, suppose you and Jack share a room, and so will Jimmy and I.” He did not look at Pat as he said that.
Jack and Preston looked warily at one another. Pat said, “Good idea. Victoria, if you want to squash in with Fen and me...?”
“My room has a lock and a key,” Victoria said. “And I shall put a chair under the door handle. But thank you.”
“Then I think it’s probably bedtime,” Pat said. “Coming, Fen?”
Fen headed across the room, then took a detour to the drinks table. She poured two hefty whiskies, handed one to Pat, said, “Now I am,” and led the way out.
“Cheers,” Bill said from behind them.
***
FEN’S MAID WAS WAITING in her room, eyes wide. “Miss Fen!”
“I know. Are you doubled up with someone for the night?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Good. Get along now. Miss Merton will be in here tonight, so she can unbutton me, if you shouldn’t mind, Pat.”
“Not at all.”
“But, miss—”
“No, go,” Fen said. “The sooner we’re all in our rooms the better. I don’t want you wandering around the corridors.”
“Sir Peter would want me to stay with you,” Travers said obstinately. “In case anything happens.”
“Miss Merton is armed,” Fen said. “With a gun. And she can shoot it, so off you go.”
“I’ll get my revolver if you like, but I’m not bringing it to bed,” Pat said, once the maid had left.
“I can’t think you’d need it. There’s no maniac prowling the halls, is there? He wasn’t killed at random.” Fen handed her a glass, hopped onto the bed, and patted the covers. Pat locked the door—she agreed about the homicidal maniac but there was no point taking risks—and came to sit by her. “I suppose you’re right that it had to be a man?”
“Probably,” Pat said. “I wouldn’t swear to it. I wanted to end that line of conversation, but the truth is, if the knife was sharp enough, I’m pretty sure I could have done it and so could any determined woman.”
“Oh. So Victoria could have killed him, theoretically?”
“Probably, but I can’t see why she would. She could have just left the house and never seen him again.”
“Unless you believe this idea that she would be naturally inclined to avenge an insult.”
“That sounds like a lot of nonsense to me,” Pat said. “I don’t know anything about Sikhs, but it’s a silly way to talk about people. I don’t feel ‘naturally inclined’ to behave like every Anglican alive. And Victoria studied at Girton, for heaven’s sake. I suppose there may be Girton women who would avenge an insult in blood, but she doesn’t strike me as one of them.”
“Indeed. I’m sure she hoped something awful would happen to Haworth; I’m sure we all did. But I can’t see why she’d kill him either, so when you said ‘any determined woman’, you were thinking of Lady Anna?”
Pat supposed she’d get used to Fen’s occasional sharpness, peeking out from her lush appearance like a velvet-handled stiletto. “I was, rather.”
“She has arms like chicken bones,” Fen said unkindly, considering her own delightfully round and dimpled arms. “Then again, the papers say drug fiends are capable of all sorts of unexpected physical feats. Why would she kill him?”
“You don’t think being married to him would be a motive for murder?”
“Well, obviously, but I suppose I meant why today. I dare say there may have been something.”
“A row in the night, an insult too far. This is an awful conversation.” Pat wrapped her arms around her knees.
“It is awful,” Fen said. “And it would be nice to believe in the passing tramp, or blame one of the servants, but—”
“But the house is full of motives.”
“Is it full? Who else would want him dead?”
Of course. Fen didn’t know about Lord Witton’s troubles. Pat hesitated a second, then threw caution to the wind. She needed to talk this out. “I’m afraid the Earl is in a tricky situation.”
She explained the business as she understood it. Fen looked appalled. “My goodness. Of course I knew they’d lost money, but I had no idea the Earl was to blame. I’m extremely surprised Daddy didn’t find this out after Jimmy proposed.” She paused. “Unless he did, and didn’t tell me.”
Pat winced on her behalf. “It’s under investigation. He might not have known the Earl is personally implicated.”
“With your brother investigating.” Fen made a face. “I don’t suppose Jimmy likes that. But why would it benefit the Yoxalls to have Haworth dead?”
“I got the impression he was wringing money out of them under the threat of making the financial business look bad for the Earl. And of course he was holding Lady Anna’s well-being, and the child’s, over their heads.”
“So the whole family had every reason to want him to go away,” Fen said. “Ugh. Does anyone else apart from the family have a motive? Mr. Keynes?”
“I’d have said no, except that he had a good try at killing the blighter last night.”
“He did, didn’t he? I suppose he’ll have some explaining to do to the police, with the bruises on Haworth’s throat.”
Pat hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, dear. Yes, that won’t look good at all. Though that was a hot-blooded response to insult, whereas this was cold-blooded murder. And that particular knife points the finger at Victoria. I can’t think Preston would do that.”
“If he realised it would be taken that way, of course. But even so, it seems utterly out of character, though murder generally must be, mustn’t it? What about Mr. Bouvier-Lynes?”
Pat frowned. “There’s his affair with Lady Anna, but wouldn’t it be more likely that Haworth would have murdered him?”
“I suppose Jack might be desperate to marry her?” Fen offered dubiously. “A grand passion, no chance of divorce, this is the only way for her to be free?”
“How...newspaperish. People do kill for love, I suppose.”
Fen pulled a face. “I wouldn’t have guessed that he loved her that much. Not that he could show it in the circumstances, so perhaps I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look like a great tragic love affair. Which brings us back to the family.”
“Yes. Although— Oh Lord, Fen, there’s something else. Haworth was a blackmailer. I heard him at it.”
Fen’s eyes rounded. “What? When?”
“My first morning here.” Pat explained how she’d come to hear the conversation. “I couldn’t tell who he was speaking to, only that it was a man, but he was unquestionably demanding money and threatening to spill the beans about something.”
Fen nodded slowly. “Are you going to tell the police what you heard?”
Pat hugged her knees closer. “It would be concealing important evidence not to.”
“Does it make a difference, though? I suppose if he were blackmailing Mr. Keynes—but that’s awfully hard to imagine. I don’t see how he could do much damage to Mr. Bouvier-Lynes either. A scandal might be inconvenient to him, but not in the way it would be to Lady Anna.”
“I wasn’t really thinking of him.”
“No.” Fen took a gulp of whisky. “You’re thinking of Mr. Merton and Jimmy.”
“Oh God, Fen,” Pat whispered. “He was a blackmailer, and Jimmy hated him, and we saw Jimmy heading into the East Wing with Haworth coming after him—and if it was Jimmy, if Haworth was blackmailing him over Bill— Oh dear heaven, what will I do? I can’t tell the police about the blackmail if it risks Bill, but if I don’t and someone gets away with murder—”
“Stop it. Come here.” Fen held out her arm. Pat hesitated a second and then leaned against her side. Fen pulled her close, and Pat twisted to bury her face in the warm shoulder.
“I can feel your heart beating,” Fen murmured. Her hand was moving gently over Pat’s hair. “Breathe.”
Easier said than done with her nose and mouth pressed against Fen’s skin. “I can’t,” Pat mumbled.
“Of course you can,” Fen said, apparently unaware that the mound of her bosom was almost as much an impediment to working lungs as the shadow hanging over Bill. “And don’t panic. This is dreadful, I grant you, but we don’t know what sort of dreadful. Haworth might have been blackmailing Jimmy, but it might just as well have been, uh, someone else.” Pat didn’t miss that little hesitation: evidently no alternative candidate leapt to mind. “The fact is, Mr. Merton was quite right in what he said, that the police will pry into everyone’s private business. So I think we just have to do what he suggested, and everything will be all right.”
Pat couldn’t remember Bill offering a solution. “Mph?”
“Find out who did it, and have them confess before the police arrive.”
Pat sat up as if pulled by a string. “What?”
“Well, what else is there?” Fen asked reasonably. “If we’re mired in a police investigation, with journalists hanging round and so on, it will be awful. We can’t have your brother’s private affairs come out at all, Victoria might well be accused because of the knife, and Jimmy could be arrested because honestly he is the obvious suspect from about three different directions. And I don’t wish to be selfish, but it’s bad enough ending my third engagement at all, let alone while my fiancé is under investigation for murder. No, there’s no two ways about it. We need this cleared up right away before everyone’s dirty linen is washed in public.”
“So we’re going to clear it up?” Pat asked faintly. “You and me?”
“Why not? You’ve got more sense than anyone I know, and I can ask the most awful questions because people expect me to be silly. And we were together more or less every minute since we saw him going into the East Wing, so unlike everyone else, we didn’t do it, if you see what I mean.”
“It would be something if everyone else did do it.” Pat briefly pictured the guests and hosts of Rodington Court queueing up outside that first-floor room, knives in hand, and had to rub her eyes. “I’m not sure I know how to investigate a murder.”
“I’ve never done it before either, but there’s a first time for everything.” Fen took her hand. “I’m serious, Pat. Everyone else is afraid or untrusting, and hiding something. You and I are the only people with no—what’s the phrase? Motive, means, or opportunity.”
“Everyone had the means,” Pat pointed out. “Anyone could have taken that knife off the wall.”
“But whoever it was stabbed Haworth in the back at the table while he wrote, so it must have been someone he was intimate with, enough to pay them no attention while they stood behind him. He’d have looked round at someone who’d just come in, wouldn’t he?”
“They might have crept up on him, I suppose, but I think you’re right. He wasn’t writing, though. I didn’t see paper or a pen, and there were playing cards spilled over the desk.” She frowned. “The desk faced the wall so he wasn’t playing opposite anyone. I suppose he was playing Patience.”
“Why would he go to a room in the East Wing to play Patience? Everyone else was retreating to remote parts of the house to get away from him.”
“Maybe he wanted a private conversation,” Pat said. “Possibly with the chap he was blackmailing. Maybe he was playing Patience while he waited, or even while he talked to him. It’s the kind of discourtesy he’d show.”
“That’s it. He arranged a discussion with his victim, or perhaps it was the other way around. ‘I’ll get your money but we need to discuss terms.’ And then whoever it was took the knife off the wall and—ugh. But someone will have seen them, on their way to or from the East Wing, say. We’ll work it out.” She must have read Pat’s uncertainty in her face because she added, “We can certainly try, at least, and you never know, we might find it was a tramp after all. Please don’t fret, darling. Of course you’re worried about your brother, but we might be completely wrong, mightn’t we? We’ve no reason to suppose Haworth had any idea about him and Jimmy.”
“He was good at snouting out secrets, though” Pat said. “He noticed about Preston and Victoria. And he twice said things to me, which...well.”
“That remark about wooing a pretty girl? True. Although he obviously wasn’t that good, or he might have noticed the pretty girl wooing you.”
Pat felt her cheeks flame. “You were not. Were you?”
“Of course I was. Goodness, Pat.” She took Pat’s whisky glass, leaned over to put both on the bedside table, then turned back with a look that blended determination, uncertainty, and a definite glint of wickedness. “You do know I like you awfully, don’t you?”
“I don’t really know what that means.” Pat’s chest felt constricted. “That is—well, I don’t know where it gets us.”
“We’re here,” Fen said. “That’s a good start, isn’t it?”
Pat nodded. Fen leaned forward, and Pat met her mouth, tasting the whisky, feeling a sense of sudden urgency. She grasped Fen’s shoulder, felt a hand on her own hip, and found Fen’s soft lips devouring her own, open and greedy, a tongue touching hers, darting and stroking, shockingly intimate.
“Let’s go to bed,” Fen whispered, the breath warm on Pat’s wettened lips. “I want to hold you.”
“Can we? That is—” She didn’t want to say it wasn’t right, but she couldn’t forget what was going on outside this room. There’s a dead man in the East Wing. A murder. A hanging to come.
We’re alive.
“We’re alive,” Fen said, as if she’d read Pat’s mind. “I’m sorry for Haworth, but— No, actually, I’m not. I’m tired of him. He made too many people miserable, I don’t see why he should do it any more, and I want to be with you. That’s important. Please?”
Pat nodded, breathless. Fen brushed a kiss over her lips. “Thank you.”
They undressed each other mostly in silence, with gentle strokes and touches rather than the giggling excitement of the previous night. This time, though, Fen took off her combinations instead of leaving them on to be worked around. Pat could barely breathe at the sight of pale skin, unrestrained breasts, soft belly, the dark hair that formed a tangled triangle over her mound. Fen had left her hair up as she undressed; she removed the pins now as Pat watched dry-mouthed, and glinting brown hair spilled over her pale, naked shoulders.
“You’re so beautiful,” Pat whispered. “I’m not sure how anyone can be so beautiful.”
She felt a tiny bit self-conscious shedding her own combinations. Fen had made her feelings clear last night, but one night didn’t change a lifetime of being plain and practical, no matter what the eye of the beholder might see. All the same, she stepped out of the heap of muslin and stood unclothed under Fen’s gaze.
“You’re beautiful,” Fen said softly, stepping forward. She traced a finger down Pat’s arm. “Diana the huntress, strong and lean and...sparse? That’s not the word, but you know what I mean. Like the countryside around here. Bare and beautiful.”
“Whereas you’re more of a lush landscape.” Pat stroked the side of one heavy breast, heard Fen inhale. “I prefer curves.”
“Then we’re both lucky, aren’t we?” Fen caught her hand. “Come to bed.”
The sheets were cool against Pat’s skin. Fen gave a little squeak as she lay down, and Pat winced. “Shh. No squealing. The last thing we need is someone rushing in here thinking there’s another murder going on.”
“I shall be quiet as a mouse,” Fen promised her. “Despite all provocation. I hope you’re planning to offer provocation?”
“Lots of it.” Pat shifted to lie half over her, and felt Fen move a warm thigh so that their legs were entwined. She rubbed up against Fen’s hip, feeling the pleasure build at her centre as Fen pressed back against her, and angled her head so their mouths met again. Kissing, clutching, pushing urgently against one another, the join of Fen’s legs wet against her thigh. A moan rose in Pat’s throat and she had to clamp her lips shut against the urge to cry out.
She moved instead, pulling away to prop herself on her elbows. Fen looked up. “Mmm?”
“Mmm,” Pat agreed, and crawled backwards down the bed to settle herself between Fen’s legs.
“Mmm.”
Even Fen’s private hair was different, Pat reflected, as she stroked with an exploratory finger. Pat’s was fairish and thin, Fen’s far bushier, the hairs thick though still silky, a dark brown with hints of red in the candlelight. She parted the curls, clumping with damp, to reveal Fen’s sex, and wished to goodness she knew what a sophisticated woman might call those parts. The carelessly-speaking men back home said cunny, which always made her think of rabbits, but with Fen lying before her, thighs parted, somehow it didn’t seem so inappropriate. Maybe one just had to get used to it.
She slid her finger up and down, parting the folds of pink flesh. Fen was breathing hard, restraining her usual volubility. Pat wished she could squeal. She let her fingertip rest a second over Fen’s opening, then pushed it in.
Fen gave a tiny gasp. She was impossibly smooth and hot and slick against Pat’s skin. She slid her finger in further, astonished at herself and Fen and this glorious dream, saw Fen’s thigh muscles twitch.
She’d come down here for a reason. Pat kept her finger where it was, leaned in to the curly hair, and kissed Fen’s cunny.
“Oh.” That was a pant. “Yes please.”
Hair in the way. Pat parted the curls with her free hand, then carefully licked at the little nub of pleasure, and Fen went rigid. “Oh!”
“Shh,” Pat breathed against her.
Fen mumbled something under her breath. Her hand came down to Pat’s head, and Pat leaned in and ran her tongue up the length of her cunny, then over the nub again, and then set to work. It felt so animal to be licking like this, or at least natural. Unfettered, unrestrained, without concern for any rules except the one that said Fen should have whatever she wanted. The taste of Fen filled her mouth. Her hand was clamped in Pat’s hair, her hips rocking to push her cunny against Pat’s tongue, and Pat lavished her with all the adoration she could, with finger and tongue and free hand kneading her perfect, plump buttock, until Fen gave a shrill gasp and Pat felt her muscles, inside and out, contract violently. She couldn’t help a tiny moan herself, muffled by Fen’s skin, as Fen thrashed and clutched her hair, and finally sagged back onto the mattress with a shuddering sigh.
Pat carefully withdrew her hand, wiped her mouth, and crawled up the bed to lie by her. Fen’s lips were bee-stung, dark red, her eyelids heavy. She looked wanton, thoroughly pleasured, utterly irresistible. Her dark nipples were peaked too. Pat captured a breast with a hand and ran a thumb very lightly over the tight point. Fen squeaked, and snuggled up into her arms.
“You look wonderful,” Pat said. “That was right?”
“It was outstanding,” Fen said. “And considering that was, what, only your second time of trying, do you know what that tells us?”
“No?”
“I’m a better teacher than you.”
She looked so delightfully smug that Pat was forced to kiss her before pointing out, “Or I’m an apter pupil.”
“Pish tosh.” She ran a hand down Pat’s back, over her bottom. “Goodness, that was lovely. I hope you appreciate my restraint. Left to myself, I should have made enough noise to wake the dead.”
“Thank God you didn’t.”
Fen gave her a raised eyebrow that would have suited a dowager duchess. Pat clapped a hand to her mouth. “I meant, thank God you didn’t make noise. Not—”
“Yes, but we wouldn’t have wanted that either, in fairness.” She pushed Pat gently on to her back. “Your turn to be very, very quiet indeed. Do you think you can manage it?”
“Of course.”
Fen’s eyes glittered like diamonds in the candlelight. “Would you care to put a wager on that?”