Heart of the Cotswolds - England

Chapter 2-2

Time to confront the beast. He led Jane toward the heart of the enemy.

“We’ll be stuck until the cake cutting,” Jane whispered breathily in his ear. “It won’t be for a while. We can still run away, maybe to Italy.” He liked the sound of that.

“We’re on a mission, then. Operation Cake—a surgical strike, then bug out.”

“Operation Sugar.”

“Yes, ma’am. Whatever you say, ma’am.”

She squeezed his arm like a laugh.

Then she clenched it hard enough he almost yelped. Her nails were short, but his shirt was thin and her grip strong.

“There you are, sis. You know that I’ve had the servants looking just everywhere for you,” Debbie whisked across the lawn like the Wicked Witch of the West. The belled skirt made it look as if she slid rather than walked. Jane glanced at the perfect lawn but couldn’t spot the inevitable trail of slime her sister left wherever she went.

“Fat chance,” Jane cursed herself for going straight to nasty but Debbie brought out the worst in her.

Debbie had never cared crap about where Jane was. Though now that she had servants to order about, maybe she had sent them looking for her sister, just so that she could issue commands.

Besides, Debbie wasn’t paying any attention to her. Instead she was looking at…

At…

Jane turned to look at…him. Hadn’t she asked his name? She must have. She’d invited the man to her sister’s high society wedding so he must have a name. This so wasn’t like her.

Unsure of what to do next, she turned to Debbie to explain…something. Except Debbie was still looking at…him. With a look Jane knew all too well.

Jane grabbed tighter onto his arm. How many boyfriends had Debbie ripped away from her with her deep-red hair, her pumped-up breasts, and her low-cut dresses? Mom never really saw. The Debbie she’d always described was frail, uncertain, and in desperate need of protection from the cruel world. The Debbie that Jane knew was a spoiled, cast-iron b***h who would have sold their mother to the devil for the price of a new pair of Jimmy Choo pumps. Jane tried to count how many boyfriends and potential boyfriends Debbie had stolen and felt a twirl of vertigo at how fast the number climbed.

“Hi,” his voice had dropped about half an octave lower than it had already been. Very dangerous. Very alpha-male sexy.

Jane had never dated alpha-male sexy—not her type. She had tended toward intelligent, often professors. Had! She’d never make that mistake again. Squinting at the various men who were turning to watch the fun, none of them were even half as alpha-male sexy as her nameless escort. Maybe she should give him a try.

But it was too late.

He held out his right hand to Debbie. Jane’s hand about his right elbow also moved forward. She started to remove it because that was just too silly. Then he reached across with his left hand and clamped her hand into place as he shook Debbie’s. His grip keeping her in place wasn’t merely strong; it was powerful.

“I’m Aaron Mason. Thank you for having me.”

Aaron. Aaron. Aaron. Jane repeated it in her head a few more times to be sure that she had it down. Mason. Aaron Mason.

“My pleasure,” Debbie drawled out in her best I-don’t-care-if-it’s-my-wedding-day-come-f**k-me-in-the-hydrangeas voice.

Jane braced herself for it. Waited for the gut slam of yet another man being caught by purchased breasts and her coy moue practiced in the mirror since birth.

Aaron extracted his hand from Debbie’s, but didn’t let go of his left hand clamping Jane’s to his right elbow. Possessively. As if he actually meant to stay beside her.

Debbie’s eyes narrowed, reading the same signals, which meant Jane wasn’t merely imagining them.

Her sister’s look said this wasn’t over yet, but the committee-to-repulse-boarders moved in and trumped Debbie’s next move.

“Debra, darling.” The groom began his approach. Debbie had always hated being called Debra, but she hadn’t trained the Third Worm of Evenston yet. He was accompanied by one of the bridesmaids, who was obviously hoping to count coup on the nuptial night, and another of the worm sons. They came across the perfect green lawn like a flock of descending vultures to rend her and Aaron’s (Aaron’s) flesh. The earl and the eldest son, Jane noted, hung back, doing their best to be polite about the whole thing.

“Am I going to get you in trouble?” She kept her voice down to a whisper. Aaron (Aaron, Aaron) worked in this town and these were powerful men.

“The best defense is a good attack,” he patted her hand without releasing it and turned to face the onslaught.

Aaron avoided the fight by trumping their move. Moments before the unwelcoming committee reached his position, he stepped aside, almost losing Jane to the manicured lawn. He’d forgotten that she wouldn’t be trained to read his body language like a Special Operations soldier could—remember to give clearer signals.

Another step sideways—foreshadowed by a firm tug with his elbow—placed a waiter with a tray of champagne glasses neatly between the two of them and the incoming squad. He took two flutes, trusting Jane’s degree of panic to keep her holding on to his arm after he released his hold on her. She did. Good.

Following the flow of the waiter, a seemingly casual stroll at a forty-five degree angle of attack, set up a tortoise topiary as a running block. Looping behind an incoming lad with a tray of finger canapes, he came up beside the earl and his Number One son. He calculated that they were his best shot at sanctuary.

Tactics 101. Come at them head-on, then you’re the enemy. Come up beside them, they’ll wait to see if you’re a friend.

“This is really a splendid house, sir. I was so glad when Jane offered me the opportunity to see it up close.” Aaron launched in as if they were already in mid-conversation and he and Jane went way back. Old friend of the family, mate. Don’t mind me. He waved his full champagne glass at the towering edifice of the manor house, while Jane focused (a little too deliberately) on emptying her own glass. Next time he’d have to find coffee.

Before the earl could do more than start a bewildered acknowledgement, he continued.

“I know that the foundation is Jacobean. It’s a pity that none of that survived the fire of 1232, except that base run.”

Jackpot. He could see that the earl didn’t know that fact about his own home.

“Fire turns the Cotswolds’ yellow limestone reddish when it is exposed to high heat. That’s why the lowest part of the outer wall is red. I love the Byzantine design of the main house and the blending of the two wing additions: the Gothic of 1497 and the early Baroque of 1651 to repair the damage from your Civil War. It wouldn’t have worked if not for the consistent use of the Birdlip Limestone Formation.” For perhaps the first time since he’d started working English stone, he blessed Trent’s wandering stories. The old mason who he had apprenticed himself to was so dug in to the history of the town, stone by stone, that he never seemed to run out of tales to tell. And many of those were about the construction of “that monstrosity on the hill.”

Monstrosity or not, Aaron blessed Trent now. Soon he and Jane were away from the initial hazards of the wedding party and firmly entrenched behind enemy lines. They were escorted on a personal tour of the interior—only the earl and his first son along for the ride. Large scales of capital had been used to purchase ancestral quality antiques to fill the rooms. Thankfully the twenty-first century interior designer had been expensive enough to have more taste than the ancient architectural ones.

As long as they were talking about stone, Aaron could at least pretend he knew what he was doing. A long-ago part of his training had been in interrogation techniques. The “Knowledgeable Friend” technique was an undercover tactic run from a few facts and then asking apparently casual questions to keep the targets talking. Normally he’d be looking for the element of operational opportunity.

This evening he was only after survival.

Survival, and not letting Jane anywhere near her poisonous sister.

“How did you do it?”

“What?” Aaron (Aaron) responded with all innocence.

Jane sat shoulder-to-shoulder with him on the old limestone wall around the front of the stables. This wall, instead of having the normal vertically-set capstones that Aaron (Aaron) said kept the sheep from jumping over, had a rounded cap of smooth mortar more suited to sitting on.

No one was likely to find them here. Night had fallen, and while the bright Chinese lanterns (which had been kitschy even for Debbie) lit the grounds far and wide, the only thing here was moonlight and stars shining down on the broad Cotswold valley. The fine racing horses were bedded down in the majestic stone building behind them and the rolling valley before them offered pale fields crisscrossed by dark lines of hedgerows and stone walls. A distant field of yellow rapeseed (that Aaron had said was the same as canola) shone in the moonlight like a magic carpet.

“Well, I slipped the waiter a ten pound note if he promised to deliver two slices of cake without exposing our secret operation.” He tapped the edge of the dinner plate in his lap. She looked down at the plate, which held two enormous pieces of cake, but couldn’t remember who they had operated on to get them.

“Which secret operation?” Maybe it was a secret from her too.

“Operation Sugar.”

“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten but she knew about that secret operation. Or was there some other one that she didn’t know about? Not knowing if the vague swirls in the moonlit canola fields were due to a breeze or the fact that the world had slipped off its axis, she decided to keep her focus on Aaron.

The last hours had been a dizzying whirl of architecture, family history, brandy in the library (Earl Conrad Evenston had also appeared glad of an excuse to temporarily escape the wedding), champagne for the toasts, more champagne for Debbie’s long-winded dinner speech that had clearly and carefully included their deceased parents but left out her only sister. That last had bothered several in the crowd, though Jane couldn’t care at all. She tried a what-do-I-care dismissive hand wave, but it felt silly.

Besides, she’d had enough to drink that Debbie could break into a striptease on the wedding table and Jane wouldn’t bat an eye. Again, wouldn’t be surprised.

Aaron’s whispered, “She’s even more of a b***h than I first thought,” had been all the support she needed.

Somehow Aaron’s presence had given her permission to let loose on the stranglehold she’d been using to stay under control. Of course, she’d let loose in other ways as well. The last time she’d been this drunk…college…maybe?

No, the final night of Larry Jenkins. Her final academic lover—ever! Now that she’d spent a night on the arm of an alpha-sexy male, she was never going back. He’d been so protective of her and instead of being irritating, it had been charming. Got some news, Mom. Debbie isn’t the one who needs protecting. Not that Jane did either, but it was nice to try it on for one night, like a cashmere ensemble. It definitely didn’t suck.

Jane remembered that last night of Larry. Her Last-Larry. Of Larry the Lech. Of… She had been riding high from finishing an overnight systems upgrade hours ahead of plan, only to come home to… Old story.

Arriving home at two a.m. she’d found her almost-fiancé and some coed bimbo in pigtails passed out n***d on the living room rug. They’d still been bleary enough with alcohol that she’d been able to get them both outside and lock the door before they really came to. She’d taken their half-finished bottle of whiskey and killed it off herself with her back against the front door while they pounded on the other side. Something about wanting their clothes, but she couldn’t rouse herself enough to care.

She had finally given the clothes to the nice policeman who some neighbor had called to take the two “disturbers of the peace” away—after she’d made sure to recover the house key from Larry’s pants pocket. Good old Jane Tully was efficient if nothing else, she’d assured herself. She’d also sorted through Ms. Bimbo’s purse (turned out she was a Bimbette). Jane had made sure the policeman noticed the birthday on the ID. Barely old enough to drive a car (not old enough to be in one of Larry’s college classes). Once the courts were done with him, apparently Ms. Bimbette hadn’t been the first in line, it had turned out that Larry wasn’t going to be a problem for a long time.