the cheese.â
âItâs a full-time job keeping up with you. What cheese?â
âA pound of Double Gloucester for tomorrow and after lunch on Sunday. What if someone wants some tonight?â
âThought you said the freezer was full.â
âYou canât freeze cheese.â
âFamily hold back then. I must sayââSimon smiled, hoping to jolly up the atmosphereââyou look smashing in that shiny thing.â
âI donât feel it.â This was true. Blue lamé slithered and slipped on chestnut leather. âI feel Iâm going to start squeaking any minute.â To add to her discomfort Laurie was aware that her deep suntan stopped a good six inches from the neck of her dress. And that her recalcitrant hair, at the moment confined in a silver turban (sans egret), was just waiting its chance to sneak past those rigorous folds and bound about every which way.
âHugh will be struck all of a heap,â continued Simon. âWhere is he anyway?â
âHow should I know?â
âI see.â Simon lifted his lip rodent fashion and stuck out his front teeth.
âYou donât âseeâ anything. Pacey isnât like that.â
âAll girls are like that given half a chance.â
âHavenât you got anything to do?â
âAll done. Iâve even managed to dig up some beer and a spot of Guinness for the god-awful Gibbses.â
âTheyâre not awful. Mr. Gibbs was telling me he has a large business.â
âProbably scrap metal.â
âWith a staff of over two hundred.â
âNonsense. How can a music-hall double act and a stuffed raccoon in drag run a business? Heâs having you on.â
âIf youâre rude to them, Simon, after taking all that money, I shall be furious.â
âRude? When am I ever rude? I shall behave impeccably as I always do.â Simon perched on the desk near a large globe, varnished deep amber from years of exposure to Uncle Georgeâs tobacco smoke. He spun it slowly, holding his finger on the very center.
âDâyou rememberâ¦Heyââ Laurie looked at him. âDo you remember what you used to call the equator?â
âNo.â
âA menagerie lion running round the world.â
Laurie closed her eyes more out of irritation than with a wish to recall the past. Yet suddenly there he was. She saw him as clearly as she had when she was seven. Loping along under a brazen sun, the wind stirring his mane, looking neither to left nor right. His great paws left prints in the sand like flowers. His eyes were triangles of golden light and he was kind.
Laurieâs eyes filled with quick tears and she blinked them hard away. She felt tired and cross. She didnât want to be bothered with all these people. Or with clean sheets and fresh flowers and Bath Olivers and cheese. Especially she didnât want to be bothered with cheese. What she really wanted more than anything else was to be a child again in the kitchen garden with Mackintosh, helping to set the shallots. The fact that this was quite impossible she laid at Simonâs door. Everything was his fault. She opened her eyes, glared at him and said, unkindly:
âYouâre very skeptical about Hugh and me. What about your own future? When are you going to fall in love?â
âNever.â There was a sharp scraping sound. The globe stopped spinning and Simon studied his broken nail. âItâs a dead loss. So much wasted energy. Hours of heaving and sighing and mooning about and nothing to show for it at the end. Give me the clear-eyed pursuit of capitalism any day.â
âSo you mean to marry money.â
âI shall certainly âfall in love,â as you so soggily put it, where money is.â
âWhat about Rosemary Saville, then? Sheâs very pretty.â
âAll heiresses are pretty. And I quote.â
âOr perhaps
Landon Dixon, Giselle Renarde, Beverly Langland