Kate put her hand over her aunt’s. “Tell us how you met them. I assume it’s a happy story and we need some happy.”
“I can tell it the way Byon told it to all of us. He expanded it, embellished it and made us laugh. He didn’t like me much at first, but I eventually won him over.”
The four of them leaned back in their chairs as they prepared to listen.
Twenty-One
Byon and Nicky were on their way back from university to spend the weekend at Oxley Manor. They were dreading it. Bertram would be there, ready to tell his son he was a wastrel. Clive was at school, but he was so eager to please he would arrive hours before the others did. To add to the horror, lately, Bertram had been asking Nicky when he was going to get a wife. “At least get something from your years at that school.”
“We could go somewhere else,” Byon said. “Maybe to...” He had no words to finish the sentence. Nicky’s image at school was of a young earl-to-be who had responsibilities at his Great House. He couldn’t just go drinking all weekend—or heaven forbid—study.
Besides, Nicky only liked a few people in the world—and the feeling was mutual.
When the old car slowed down, then stopped completely, they didn’t know whether to be glad or terrified. They were on a country road with nothing around them but trees. They got out.
“What the hell do we do now?” Nicky asked.
Byon looked around. “Find someone to ask for help?”
“Are you going to walk?” When things weren’t going his way, Nicky attacked whomever was nearest. Usually, that was Clive. “The income-sucker,” Nicky called him. “Taking what isn’t his.”
They were leaning against the boot of the car, both smoking Spanish cigarettes, when out of the trees came a woman on a big horse.
When she saw the car in her direct path, she yelled, “Bloody hell!” then reined in. The horse, angry, confused and torn between obeying and fighting, reared up. The young woman gripped with strong thighs and iron fists.
It took minutes but she brought the animal under control and halted in front of the car. She dismounted, soothed the frightened animal, then tied the reins to a tree branch.
Nicky and Byon were in exactly the spot they’d been in. They prided themselves on being cool, on being “men of the world.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted at them. “You could have killed Raven.”
“Is that your horse’s name?” Byon asked blandly.
“Mare,” she snapped.
“Forgot to look.” Byon bent over, his head low as he looked toward the underside of the horse. “No dangly bits so you might be right.” He straightened his shoulders and smiled at her.
She took a few seconds to decide on keeping her anger or not. She let it go. “I see you two at school.” She glared at their cigarettes. “Do you ever stop smoking those filthy things?”
Byon took a long, deep puff, but Nicky dropped his cigarette to the road and crushed it with the toe of his custom-made Lobb shoe.
She looked at Nicky. “Oxley Manor, right?”
He nodded.
Byon was looking from one to the other, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. Nicky was his.
“What’s wrong with your car?” she asked.
“How would we possibly know that?” Byon snapped.
She gave him a look up and down that was pure dismissal. He wasn’t worth her time.
Nicky got out of his slouch and walked to the front of the car. “It quit running.”
To Byon’s astonishiment, Nicky’s voice was deeper, more melodious than usual.
She looked at the old car, then deftly opened the hood. “Carburetor,” she mumbled. She moved a few things around, then said, “Try it now.”