Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold

by Nancy Atherton

  Shortly after he left, Emma appeared at my elbow to stir the mulled wine. While she stirred, I gestured toward the unfamiliar dessert and asked who’d made it.

  “I did,” she replied. “They’re an Indian sweet called besan ladoo.”

  “Since when do you make Indian sweets?” I asked, more impressed than ever by my friend’s seemingly limitless fund of talents.

  “Since last night,” she replied. “The recipe was tucked into an old handwritten recipe book I found in the kitchen when we first moved into the manor. I was looking for something new to make this year, so I did a little research and discovered that besan ladoo are eaten during Indian festivals.”

  “Like Christmas?” I said doubtfully.

  “Why not?” Emma rejoined. “Go ahead, try one. They may look a little drab, but they’re delicious.”

  “I’m sure they are,” I said, “but if I try one right now, I’ll explode. Your besan ladoo will have to wait until my dinner has settled.” Lowering my voice to a confidential murmur, I asked, “Do you know what’s up with Bree?”

  “Not a clue,” said Emma, “but it must be something serious. She was in a funk when she got here, and she talked Lilian’s ear off before dinner.”

  “Which means that Lilian must know what’s going on,” I said. “Let’s ask her.”

  “Lilian!” Emma called. “Have a taste of my cider. I think I may have used too many cinnamon sticks.”

  “I doubt it,” Lilian called back, but after making her apologies to Grant, she crossed to join us.

  The vicar’s wife was a slender, scholarly woman in her late fifties. Though she preferred to wear tweeds in winter, she’d dressed up for the evening in a tailored gray skirt suit with black velvet lapels. Her antique silver Christmas tree brooch provided a tasteful contrast to my sons’ artistic creation.

  To keep our cover story intact, Emma handed her a cup of cider, asking, “What do you think?”

  “I think the cider’s perfect,” Lilian replied, without tasting a drop, “but it makes as good an excuse as any to get me over here so you can quiz me about Bree.”

  “Consider yourself quizzed,” I said.

  “Sorry,” said Lilian. “I’ve taken a vow of silence. Bree wants to break the news herself.”

  “What’s she waiting for?” I asked.

  “She’s waiting for the dishwashers to join us,” Lilian replied. “Otherwise, she’ll have to repeat her news, and it’s not the sort of news she wants to repeat.”

  “She’s not dying, is she?” I asked, glancing anxiously at Bree.

  “My lips are sealed,” said Lilian, contradicting herself by taking a sip of cider. “As I thought. Perfect.”

  I’ll never know whether I could have badgered Lilian into spilling the beans about Bree, because at that moment, Peter, Cassie, Kit, and Nell entered the great hall, followed by Bill, who’d clipped the baby monitor to his belt. He’d evidently had no trouble persuading Bess to sleep in a room that was not her own.

  Peter and Cassie Harris were in their late twenties, and compared with Kit and Nell, they were a charming but unremarkable couple. They’d traveled the world together before deciding that Peter’s childhood home would be the best place to raise a family. To Emma and Derek’s infinite delight, they were well on their way to starting one—their first child was due in April.

  Kit and Nell Anscombe-Smith were unlike any couple I’d ever met. A grand opera could have been written about them, but only if the composer gave it the happiest of happy endings. By a strange twist of fate, Kit had, like Nell, grown up at Anscombe Manor. As a young man, he’d endured poverty, illness, and heartrending grief before another twist of fate brought him back to the manor to work as Emma’s stable master.

  Nell had been a schoolgirl at the time of his return, but she’d known from the first moment their eyes met that they were two halves of one soul. The age difference that troubled Kit meant nothing to Nell, who’d always been mature beyond her years. She was eighteen when yet another twist of fate enabled Kit to acknowledge his love for her, and they were wed. Their marriage had been as inevitable as it was sublime.

  As if that weren’t enough, they also happened to be two of the most beautiful creatures on God’s green earth. Both were tall and slender, though Kit’s feet touched the ground while Nell’s seemed to glide gracefully over it. His short crop of prematurely gray hair gave him an air of gravity that softened when Nell’s nimbus of guinea-gold curls came into view. Kit’s violet eyes still made my heart melt, and Nell’s ethereal loveliness still took my breath away. When they were together, it was hard to look anywhere else.

  But it wasn’t impossible. When they entered the hall with the others, my gaze went immediately to Bree Pym. The assembly had assembled. It was time for her to make her big announcement. I hoped fervently that it had nothing to do with her health.

  Bree waited while the quartet of dishwashers were given a hearty cheer for volunteering to do the dirty work. She then turned her back to the fire and cleared her throat. Bree was just twenty-two and slightly built, with a heart-shaped face, expressive brown eyes, and short, spiky hair so dark it was almost black. Her nose ring glinted in the firelight, but the elaborate tattoos on her arms were hidden by the sleeves of a bulky navy-blue pullover that made her seem like a child dressed in a grown-up’s clothing.

  “Um,” she said, and the room became silent save for the fire’s crackle. “I don’t tell you often enough how much you mean to me. I inherited a lot more than a house when I came to Finch. I inherited a family as well. You’re my family, and I need to tell you something. I won’t mind one bit if you pass it along to everyone else in Finch. It’ll save me the trouble of breaking the same news over and over again.” She thrust her hands into the pockets of her faded blue jeans, took a shaky breath, and said, with a slight quaver in her voice, “It’s about Jack MacBride. You remember Jack, don’t you?”

  Heads nodded. We remembered Jack. He was a handsome Australian conservationist and Bree’s fiancé. We loved Jack, but Bree was in love with him, or at least she had been the last time I’d checked.

  “Jack rang me from Stockholm this morning,” Bree continued. “Turns out he won’t be here for Christmas. In fact, he won’t be coming back here anymore. He’s met someone else he loves better than me, a Swedish microbiologist who likes to travel as much as he does. Neither one of them wants to put down roots, and that’s all I want to do, so it’s for the best. Maybe I should have known that things wouldn’t work out between us, but I didn’t. There won’t be the wedding you wanted, and I’m sorry for that, but”—with a nod at Cassie—“you have a christening to look forward to, and—”

  The rest of her speech was cut short by the arms that enfolded her, one pair after another, hugging her, rocking her, assuring her without words that her family would be there for her, no matter what. The thought of her apologizing to us for the wedding Jack had canceled with a phone call brought tears to my eyes, but I held them back for her sake when my turn came to hug her.

  “Enough!” Charles Bellingham roared, and everyone swung away from Bree to stare at him. Tall, portly, and balding, Charles was exquisitely attired in a crisp white dress shirt, black tuxedo trousers, a paisley smoking jacket, and a red satin bow tie, which he tweaked as he began, “Bree, my dear, I wish you’d found the man of your dreams—and I promise you, you will—but in the meantime, I refuse to allow a Swedish microbiologist to spoil your Christmas.”

  “So do I,” said Grant Tavistock staunchly. Grant was shorter, slimmer, less bald, and less flamboyantly dressed than Charles, but he was no less chivalrous. “We’ll throw a pity party for you after the holidays—”

  “Oh, I love a good pity party,” Charles interjected enthusiastically.

  “—but right now we’re going to cheer you up, whether you like it or not,” Grant continued. “If we can’t cheer you up, we can cer
tainly distract you. Have you ever heard Charles yodel?”

  “Yodel?” Charles said in alarm, giving Grant a sidelong look.

  “I haven’t heard him, either,” Grant admitted, “but there’s a first time for everything, as the actress said to the bishop.” Like a ringmaster introducing a circus act, he extended an arm toward his partner and said, “Take it away, Charles!”

  Even in the depths of her misery, Bree had to smile at the prospect of seeing a portly Englishman in a paisley smoking jacket make his yodeling debut. The prospect must not have appealed to Emma, however, because she came to her beleaguered guest’s rescue.

  “I have a better idea!” she said brightly.

  “I can’t think of a worse one,” Charles muttered, sinking weakly into an armchair.

  “As you know,” Emma went on, “Cassie’s baby is due in April.”

  “They’d have to be blind not to know it,” said Peter, gazing proudly at his wife’s blossoming figure.

  Emma paused while a wave of affectionate chuckles rolled through the hall, then pressed on.

  “As part of our preparations for the big day,” she said, “Cassie and I have been hunting for a room that will make a suitable day nursery. Two weeks ago we found one room that will serve the purpose and another room that puzzled us. Derek and I have always used it as a storeroom, but once I cleared out the junk—”

  “And donated it to the charity shop in Upper Deeping, where it has already brought in a tidy sum,” I interrupted, raising a glass of mulled wine to Emma’s generosity.

  “Once I cleared out the junk and looked at the room with fresh eyes,” Emma continued, brushing aside my compliment, “I couldn’t figure out what its original purpose had been. Kit doesn’t know, either.”

  Kit, who’d spent his childhood at Anscombe Manor, shook his head.

  “Not a clue,” he said. “We used it for storage, too. I’d never seen it empty until Emma cleared it out.”

  “It seems to me that, if we put our heads together, we might come up with an answer,” said Emma.

  “Of course we will,” said Lilian Bunting. As a local historian, the vicar’s wife took a lively interest in the local manor house.

  “Take us to the room at once!” Grant demanded.

  “Please do.” Charles got to his feet and put an arm around Bree. “Solving a puzzle is a much better distraction than hearing me yodel, my dear.”

  “Much better for whom?” Bree asked slyly.

  “For the civilized world,” Charles declared.

  “All right, then,” said Emma. “Follow me.”

  Emma strode toward the vestibule and the rest of us trailed after her, but her house tour was nipped in the bud by Will and Rob, who barreled into the great hall, shouting excitedly.

  “Mum! Dad! Come and see! The fog has turned to ice!”

  Four

  When the adults in the hall were slow to react, the boys clucked their tongues impatiently, scurried behind the trestle table, and pulled back the drapes.

  “Look!” Rob entreated.

  “Ice!” Will repeated, in case we hadn’t heard him the first time.

  With a wheeling maneuver that would have earned a severe reprimand from any self-respecting drill instructor, we rushed en masse to the windows to gaze, dumbfounded, at a landscape transformed from a horror film backdrop into a scene from a fairy tale.

  The world beyond the wavy panes looked like a snow globe filled with glitter. At some point in the evening, the fog had lifted, the temperature had dropped, and the persistent drizzle had begun to freeze in midair. Sleet twinkled like tinsel as it fell from the sky, coating everything it touched in a crystalline carapace. Bathed in the hanging lanterns’ pools of light, trees, fence rails, and pastures glowed with an otherworldly radiance. Enchanted, I half expected the Snow Queen to dash up the drive in a silver sleigh drawn by a prancing steed.

  Mr. Barlow didn’t share my starry-eyed vision.

  “Just what we need,” he said dourly. “An ice storm.”

  “I’ll find out how bad it is,” said Derek, heading for the vestibule.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Mr. Barlow.

  “So will I,” said Bill, tossing the baby monitor to me.

  “Be careful, Dad,” Will cautioned.

  “It’s slippery,” said Rob. “We fell three times—”

  “—on our way in from the stables,” Will concluded.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, giving my sons a maternal once-over.

  “Sure we are,” said Rob. “It was fun!”

  “Like a gigantic skating rink,” said Will.

  “Wish we’d brought our skates,” Rob said wistfully.

  “Wish I’d brought mine,” I said, giving him a sideways hug.

  I clipped the monitor to the waistband of my trousers, then turned my attention to the not-so-great outdoors as Bill, Derek, and Mr. Barlow came into view, bundled up to the eyeballs and walking as though they, too, wished they’d brought their skates. They crept gingerly across the floodlit terrace and clung to the balustrade as they descended the broad stone stairs. While Bill examined the parked cars, Derek and Mr. Barlow advanced slowly up the drive, stopping at each hanging lamp to take a closer look at the ice-covered gravel.

  Indoors, Grant was the first among us to find his voice. “I didn’t see this coming,” he commented.

  “Nor did I,” said Lilian, “and I listened to the weather report before Teddy and I left the vicarage. Fog? Yes. Drizzle? Yes. Ice storm? Not one word of warning.”

  “It takes great courage to predict the weather in England,” said the vicar, forgivingly. “Conditions change so rapidly that our forecasters are bound to get it wrong from time to time.”

  “They certainly got it wrong this time,” said his wife, less forgivingly.

  “Who made the goat cheese tartlets?” Charles asked.

  “I did,” I replied.

  “They’re scrumptious,” he said, brushing telltale crumbs from his lips with a napkin. “Your cheese straws are good, Lori, but the tartlets are great. You should bring them every year.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” I promised, preening inwardly. “What did you bring?”

  “The mince pies,” he replied, “but I didn’t make them. Henry looked so lonely in the tearoom that I bought some, just to keep him company.”

  “You can’t go wrong with Sally’s mince pies,” I said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Charles. “In fact—”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Grant interrupted, nodding at the windows, “but Derek, Bill, and Mr. Barlow are coming back.”

  The intrepid explorers had regrouped on the terrace. After the front door opened and closed, the rest of us came out from behind the trestle table and stood before the fireplace to await their pronouncements. As the three men trooped into the great hall, still clad in their jackets, caps, and gloves, I could tell by the grim expression on Mr. Barlow’s face and by the frost on Bill’s eyelashes that the news wasn’t going to be good.

  “Well?” said Emma.

  “No one’s driving home tonight,” Derek announced.

  “The car doors are frozen shut,” said Bill, “and you’ll be taking your lives in your hands if you try to walk.”

  “It’s slicker than whale snot out there,” Mr. Barlow declared, provoking a snort of laughter from Bree, “and the frozen stuff is still coming down.”

  “Not to worry,” Derek said briskly. “If the ice doesn’t melt by morning, I’ll use the tractor to spread sand and straw on the lane. It should give you enough traction to drive home safely.”

  “No use waiting for the county to do the job for us,” Mr. Barlow observed. “They don’t know Finch exists.”

  “And in the meantime?” Grant asked.

  “In the meantime,” said Derek, “I’d
advise you strongly to stay here.”

  “No choice,” said Mr. Barlow.

  “I blame my wife,” said Bill.

  “Me?” I said, startled. “Why me?”

  “You’ve already been snowbound by a blizzard and marooned by a flood,” Bill said, referring to two unfortunate incidents in my past, one of which had occurred fairly recently. “It stands to reason that you’d be stranded by an ice storm next.”

  “You were marooned by the flood, too,” I pointed out.

  “I’ve never been snowbound,” he countered. “Let’s face it, Lori. You’re a magnet for weather disasters.”

  “But we still love you,” said Charles, and everyone, including me, laughed.

  “You’re more than welcome to stay the night,” Emma said to her guests. “We have enough beds and bedrooms to go around, and—”

  “Why do you have so many extra beds?” Grant inquired curiously.

  “The stable hands have to sleep somewhere when the weather turns ugly,” Emma replied. “Since we don’t have a bunkhouse, they sleep in the manor.”

  “Lucky stable hands,” said Grant.

  “As I was saying,” Emma continued, “I’m sure we can wrangle up some pajamas and nightgowns for you to use. I can provide everyone with a new toothbrush as well.” Before Grant could ask why she had so many new toothbrushes, she turned to him and explained, “I keep them on hand for our students to use before gymkhanas. Clean teeth make a good impression on judges.”

  “May we sleep in the stables, Mum?” Will asked, his brown eyes alight with gleeful anticipation.

  “We left our sleeping bags here the last time we stayed over,” Rob reminded me.

  “You may sleep in the stables,” I told them, “as long as you promise to take off your boots before you climb into your sleeping bags.”

  The boys high-fived each other, then hesitated, as if they’d realized that the ice storm might pose problems they hadn’t envisaged.