Read Online The Shape of Sand by Marjorie Eccles - Free Book Online Page B

of his line dying out, Stoke Wycombe going to some distant cousin, was insupportable. It was not yet too late, too impossible, surely? He was not yet fifty. He had a large fortune and a title to leave. He was healthy, and fit, and was not, he believed, repulsive to women. But he could not yet bring himself round to the idea.
    Maybe this time, though … He would see what the weekend brought.
    He patted bay rum into his skin until his face tingled with its aromatic oils and astringents and, picking up his silver hairbrushes, he contemplated what the next few days might mean. Iskander. Good God! He thought he had seen the last of that one in Luxor – he might have known that life is never so unpredictable a tiger as when you think you have it by the tail.

3
    EXTRACT FROM HARRIET’S NOTEBOOK:
    We were eleven for dinner tonight, including the family, which now automatically means Bertie as well, the besotted fiance, who spends more time at Charnley than he does at his mother’s house at Falconforde. Not that I blame him for that: Lady Rossiter is a querulous widow and Henrietta and Lily, both older than Bertie – the Ugly Sisters as Daisy will insist on calling them – are a living warning to avoid the unmarried state at all costs.
    To begin with, the evening seemed perfect. We were in the small dining room tonight, and the silver and the polished wood of the table gleamed in the warm, flickering candlelight, the glass sparkled, the napkins crackled with starch. The flowers were roses, two silver bowls of them, one at each end of the table, mixed pink and red, nestling in asparagus fern, with trails of smilax from one to the other, their rich scent wafting all around the room. As we began, I saw that we were having Mrs Heslop’s famous consommé, so clear one might almost read a newspaper through it.
    Mama was wearing Attar of Roses, which complemented rather than fought with the perfume of the table decorations, as mine did. The Floris Geranium that Kit had bought me last Christmas, saying enigmatically that its sharp edge had reminded him of me, had been a bad choice to wear, but unlike Mama, I had not known what the flowers were to be tonight. She looked beautiful as usual, serene in gold ribbed silk with champagne lace and her pearls. Vita wore her smart pale green peau de soie piped in black. It didn’t matter what Daisy and I wore, no one was looking at us.
    Daisy is old enough now to come down and join us for dinner, but we were still an unevenly matched eleven at table, though Mrs Betts, the housekeeper, had ordered the D-ends of the table to be set up, in order to form a rounded oval which made the seating informal and less awkward. Mama had placed herself between Kit and Uncle Myles who was even more than usually
quiet tonight. He is always rather grave and reserved, though we are all very fond of him – he never forgot birthdays when we were children and was always extremely generous in bringing back curios for us from his various postings overseas. Mr Iskander was placed next to Miss Jessamy, whom we are now instructed to call RJ, if you please! She has a certain charm, one must admit, despite looking most peculiar in a multicoloured robe of sorts and a scarf tied around her head like a turban, covering that truly awful haircut, indeed, but making her appear as though she’d stepped straight out of The Arabian Nights. She and Mr Iskander carried on an animated conversation about ancient Egypt for most of the meal, which quite dominated the table, despite Mama’s efforts to disseminate it. Mr Iskander did attempt several times to ask her opinions – she had, after all, visited Egypt and seen those very things he was talking about – but she was not to be drawn, for some reason.
    He sets himself out to please, Mr Iskander, perhaps not meaning to be ingratiating, though that is unfortunately how it appears. He has brought us all presents, very pretty trifles of