Free Embrace Me by Roberta Latow

her name. He had, on the few times he had heard her on those intellectual chat shows aired at midnight, found her fifty per cent charlatan and one hundred per cent intelligent. She was one of the new breed of women who had inherited their rights from the seventies activists and now that they had them didn’t quite know what to do with them. He liked and admired her and now, seeing her without an audience to impress, just strolling in the sunshine, he thought shemight be fun to interview as well as a very plausible suspect who just might have whisked Lady Olivia away to a safe haven.
    Harry stopped her with a, ‘Good morning.’
    ‘Hello,’ said Marguerite with a broad smile.
    ‘Will you have coffee with me at Miss Marble’s tea room?’ he asked.
    ‘Well, I am rather fond of her drop scones. I usually have them around eleven every morning that I come into the village, but only after I feed the ducks in the pond. I might agree if I knew who you are,’ she told him as she walked away towards the water. Harry followed.
    From the basket of stale bread and cake she was carrying, Marguerite tossed pieces on to the water. He reached into her basket and took a handful too. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked before tossing it on the water. ‘My name is Harry Graves-Jones and I’m staying at the pub for a few days.’
    ‘Cambridge,’ she guessed.
    ‘That’s very good. How did you know?’
    ‘Linguistic analysis – and your college tie,’ she told him, laughing.
    ‘Not mine, my dead uncle’s, but I
did
go to Cambridge.’
    ‘So did I. That’s good enough for me to accept an invitation to coffee. My name is Marguerite Chen.’
    There was something immensely attractive about this stranger, she thought, not only physically but in the way he carried himself. He was wearing a blue shirt, the college tie, and a waistcoat of Harris tweed over grey flannel trousers with turnups. There was an ease about him that was madly attractive and she felt instantly that he was something special, that one in a hundred thousand you actually wanted to meet.
    By now the ducks had come up to her and Marguerite squatted down and fed them by hand. Harry joined her and before long they were laughing together and feeding the endearing creatures who were madly quacking and fluttering their wings. They teased and tantalised Marguerite, one even pulling at the chiffon bow over her ear and running off with a banner of purple streaming behind him.
    ‘The little bastard got me! I call him Wolfgang. He’s the reallyfeisty one who’s always trying to snatch something from me. My guard must have been down today. He never succeeds usually.’
    They watched Wolfgang drag the chiffon scarf over the surface of the pond. Marguerite turned over the contents of the basket then slipped her arm through Harry’s, announcing, ‘Come on, you can row the boat. I
really
like that scarf.’
    Half an hour later the limp wet scarf was safely in her basket and they were walking arm in arm into Miss Marble’s tea room. There were half a dozen people already sitting at the small cream-clothed tables with garden flowers in small glass vases at their centre.
    They sat down at a table in the window after Marguerite had introduced Harry to Miss Marble as someone staying for a few days at the pub. Harry, who had a passion for marvellous sweets, puddings and cakes, was surprised by what was on offer. There were pedestal cake plates proffering luscious-looking triple-layered cakes covered in chocolate, each layer spread thick with apricot jam, lemon tarts, glazed fruit tarts, a coffee cream cake, strawberry cream cake … The choice seemed to go on forever.
    ‘I’m spoiled for choice,’ he told Miss Marble.
    The plain-looking grey-haired lady smiled with delight as she told him, ‘Yes, they come from far and wide for tea and cake here. The Americans, in particular, want to taste it all so we do a special taster – small portions of various cakes. How would you like to try